471 
Or 00 chomarba 1arlaithe, 00 aed u ossin, Las 1N 
OeRNAD IN Chrossd. 
“A PRAYER FOR THE COMHARBA OF JARLATH, FOR AED O OSSIN, 
BY WHOM THIS CROSS WAS MADE.” 
This inscription, which is accurately given in his ** Eccle- 
siastical Architecture of Ireland,” is of considerable importance, 
as it enables us to make a nearer approximation to the true 
date of the re-erection of the Cathedral Church of Tuam, than 
that—as it would appear—hypothetically given to it by WARE 
and: Harris; and also to correct an error into which both of 
those able antiquaries have fallen in the interpretation of it. 
Speaking of the Cathedral Church of Tuam, Ware states it 
to have been rebuilt ‘* about the year 1152, by the Archbishop 
Edan O’Hoisin, by the aid and assistance of Turlogh O’Conor, 
King of Ireland.” On this statement of Ware's, which has 
been adopted by Harris, Dr. Petrie read the following re- 
marks from his Essay on Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture, 
pages 312 and 313 :— 
«It may be doubted, however, that the date assigned to 
{ the erection of the Church of Tuam, by Ware, is the true one, 
and there is, I think, greater reason to believe that it was 
erected many years earlier,—or, at least, previously to O’Hoi- 
sin’s having received the pall as an Archbishop in 1152, or 
even to his succession to the Archbishopric in 1150. For 
though, in one of the inscriptions above given, he is called the 
comharba of Jarlath,—which might equally imply that he was 
Archbishop or Abbot of Tuam,—yet in the following inscrip- 
tion on the base of the great stone cross, NOW lying in the 
market-place, he is distinctly called Abbot; and it is not in 
any degree likely that this inferior title would have been ap- 
plied:to him after his elevation to the Archbishopric ; for in one 
of the inscriptions on the cross or erozier of the Archbishops 
of Tuam or Connaught,—now, through the liberality of Pro- 
fessor M‘Cullagh, preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish 
