180 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
time, attached some kind of chafing-dish, filled with combustibles, to 
his helmet, so that the superstitious Mysians conceived some super- 
natural being to have come amongst them crowned with flames.* 
What has been said of other recluses will have lessened any 
surprise at the presence of the royal hermit in this story. Nor is 
there anything in the description of his tower in the text inconsistent 
with authority or example. His tower may be inferred to have been 
a round one, agreeably to the instruction for building fortress towers 
given by Vitruvius.” In that part where he dwelt, presumably on 
the ground-level, as being the object of a predatory attack, there was 
no access for light ; whence we may infer that the door to the interior 
existed at a considerable height from the ground, being the method 
of construction found in all the oldest examples of such detached | 
towers, here and on the Continent.“ The facility with which the 
soldiers of Dathi broke through the wall may be accounted for by a 
circumstance, noted by the gloss-writer, and repeated in other editions 
of the story, that the tower was built ‘“‘ of sods and stones,” meaning 
possibly that its stones were cemented with clay,“ or, more probably, 
41 Non minimum terroris incussit barbaris Domitius  centurio satis barbare, 
efficacis tamen apud paris homines stoliditatis, qui foculum gerens super cassidem, 
suscitatam motu corporis flammam velut ardenti capite, fundebat. (Flori Epitom., 
1. iv., ¢: 125s. 116.) 
42 Turres itaque rotunde aut polygonie faciende: quadratas enim machine 
cellerius dissipant, quod angulos arietes tundendo frangunt: in rotundationibus 
autem (ut cuneos) ad centrum adgendo ledere non possunt. (Vitruvius de Arch., 
ISI @s as 
ef ie with one exception, in all the Irish ecclesiastical towers, and uniformly 
in the military donjons ascribed to the twelfth and later centuries, but some of 
them much older, on the Continent. Where an under-storey exists in these, it is 
wholly without illumination, and only approachable by a_trap-door in the first 
vault or flooring. A recluse in such a habitation might well be described as being 
so many feet from the daylight. For tours-recluses, see Eustathius, ed. Tefel, 
. 189. 
ia The use of clay both for cement and as building material was common among 
the barbarian nations. The wall of Severus repaired by the Britons, ‘‘ factus non 
tam lapibibus quam cespitibus, non perfecit’’ (Gildas’ Hist., c. 12). The earthen 
wall of Nurshivan, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, appears to have been a 
better work, the remains exhibiting the consistency of concrete (Ane. Univers. 
Hist., vol. 5, p. 363 ). S. Patrick constructed an early Irish church of clay, be- 
cause wood was not at hand, at Foirrages in Tyrawley (Book of Armagh, fo. 14, 
b. 2). Clay churches stood at Valladolid in Spain till the eleventh century, when 
they were rebuilt, some in brick with clay mortar, and some in stone, by Kings 
Adelphonso 5th and Ferdinand respectively (Du Cange, Lutum). Many of the topes 
of India are cemented with clay (Mitra, Buddha Gaya, p. 102) ; and the old castle 
of Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall, which has so long withstood the storms of the 
Atlantic, is held together by no better binding material. The ‘ sod-wall”’ is of 
traditional use in Ireland. ‘‘ Their houses are of several sorts, but the most 
common is the ‘sod-wall,’ as they call it. By sods you are to understand the 
grassy surface of the earth. Some build their houses of mud, and others use stone 
without mortar for two or three feet from the ground, and sod or mud for two or 
three feet on the top of that.’’ (Complete Irish Traveller, 8yo, London, 1788, vol. ii., 
p. 16.) 
