4^6 [Proc. B.N.F.C., 



seems reasonable to suppose that tradition is right — that all 

 now left of St. Patrick sleeps, if not in this identical spot, yet 

 somewhere within the precincts of the church that bears his 

 name, and that St. Brigid's and St. Columb's remains may also 

 be enshrined in proximity to his. Although of many of the 

 minute details of traditionary lore we may well be sceptical, of 

 the broad, general features we can hardly be too believing. 



A century ago the cathedral was a ruin ; it is now, though 

 not architecturally imposing, yet a substantial and shapely 

 structure. As a building, it does not call for much remark. 

 There are no transepts and no choir in the usual manner, a 

 screen across the western part of the nave answering that 

 purpose. Almost the only features that tell now of the 

 fourteenth century church are some five or six stone capitals of 

 the piers, grandly carved with animals and human heads, and a 

 figure of a bishop and crozier built into the inside face of the 

 western wall. From the cathedral the party made their way to 

 the great fort, the greatest in the district, that overlooks the 

 marshes through which flows the Quoile. The central strong- 

 hold of this island — for so it still is in time of flood, and must 

 always have been before the tidal water was banked out — forms 

 quite a lofty hill, the base of which is surrounded by a double, 

 in some places a triple, rampart and fosse. Here, secure amid 

 their morasses, dwelt a line of heathen warriors and princes, 

 and when, as we may suppose, St. Patrick, or one of his disciples 

 converted the then holder of the great dun to Christianity, on 

 the hill immediately adjoining was reared a church of the tiny 

 dimensions that marked these early structures, with its narrow 

 door, having flat lintelled head and sloping jambs, such as in 

 the one still to be seen upon St. John's Point, near Ardglass. 

 Three times at least, Dun-da-Leathglas, as it was now called, 

 was plundered by the Danes, and after one of these plunderings 

 a new and larger church was built on the site of part of the 

 present cathedral, and across the foundation of the smaller and 

 earlier one a lofty round tower was raised, either as a refuge for 

 the ecclesiastics or to mark the site of an episcopal see, or for 

 both purposes combined. This may perhaps have been in the 



