MACAr.iSTHK — The Historij and Antiquities of Inis Cealtra. 139 



" Henry Boucher, who lived to the age of ninety six, or nearer to one 

 hundred years, and is dead only four or five years, saw three floors perfect in 

 this tower." Then follows a description of the windows and offsets, as given 

 above, and then the legend of the tower, which we give in the third part of 

 this paper. 



On the above details the following remarks have to be made. The tower 

 was filled with clay (not stones), as O'Conor says, till the Board of Works 

 restorations. How did all that clay find its way into it ? I can see no 

 answer to this question except that the clay was intentionally placed there, 

 and that the original builders meant the tower to have a clay floor at the 

 level of the door. It should, therefore, never have been dug out at all. 

 The tradition that the clay concealed projecting corbels was shown to be 

 incorrect when the clay was dug out. The masonry below the surface of the 

 clay is much more irregular than the masonry above that level, but there 

 are no corbels. If it be really true that a man born about 1738 (assuming 

 the above data to be correct) saw three floors intact, legend must speak 

 truth in asserting that the tower was never finished ; for the fall of the heavy 

 conical top would have annihilated any floors ; and, moreover, stones, not 

 clay, would have been found in the bottom of the tower. For naturally 

 most of the stones would have fallen down within the shaft. I saw nothing 

 of O'Conor's " holdfast." Boucher's " iron door " was most likely a wooden 

 door protected with iron plates ; but we must remember that Boucher's 

 evidence is available at second-hand only, as he was already dead when 

 O'Conor visited the island. 



VIII. The Landing Stage. 



This is a boat-pier of large undressed blocks of stone, at the eastern side of 

 the island. 1 1 is now some distance from the water's edge, but the level of the 

 loch is known to have sunk a few feet. The level varies with the season and 

 the weather ; when I measured it I found the face of the landing-stage to be 

 26 feet away from the water. The structure is more or less rectangular on 

 plan, 57 feet long, and presenting a face 49 feet broad to the loch. J n vertical 

 section it is triangular ; the face towards the water is about 3 feet 3 inches 

 high, and the height slowly diminishes to nothing as the land rises toward 

 the interior of the island. 



There is a earn of stones on the landing-stage at its inner end ; possibly there 

 was here a cross marking a station for prayer for those landing on the island. 



I cannot find that this structure has been noticed in print before. It is 

 entirely omitted on the 2o-inch Ordnance map. 



