24 The Round Towers. 



country for many miles around." Sir Walter Scott writes : — 

 " These towers might possibly have been contrived for the 

 temporary retreat of the priests, and the means of protecting 

 the holy things from destruction on the occasion of alarm, 

 which in those uncertain times suddenly happened and as sud- 

 denly passed away." And to this Miss Stokes adds : — " Con- 

 sisting of a series of small chambers, one above the other, at a 

 height above ground, they were fitted for places of storage for 

 the sacred things of the church, places of passive defence for 

 the aged and weak, and could afford temporary shelter for from 

 forty to eighty persons from the attacks of an enemy only 

 armed with bows and arrows, and such weapons as we know 

 were in use at the time in the North- West of Europe." After 

 a very full and careful survey of all the matters connected with 

 this subject, Miss Stokes writes : — " The conclusion drawn 

 from all these data being that such towers, though constructed 

 from time to time over a considerable period, and undergoing 

 corresponding changes in detail, were first built at the close of 

 the ninth century, and that a number seem to have been 

 erected simultaneously ;" and again, in speaking of the first 

 arrivals of Danish invaders in this country — " In the beginning 

 of the ninth century a new state of things was ushered in, and 

 a change took place in the hitherto unmolested condition of 

 the Church. Ireland became the battlefield of the first struggle 

 between Paganism and Christianity in Western Europe, and 

 the result of the effort then made in defence of her faith is 

 marked in the ecclesiastical architecture of the country by the 

 apparently simultaneous erection of a number of lofty towers, 

 rising in strength of ' defence and faithfulness ' before the door- 

 ways of those churches most likely to be attacked. The first 

 descent of the Northmen upon Ireland was in 795, when a 

 party of them sailed across from Wales and plundered the 

 church on the Island of Lambay, near Dublin. The Welsh 

 annals record that the black pagans first came to the Island of 

 Britain from Denmark, and made great ravages in England. 

 Afterwards they entered Glamorgan, and there killed and 

 burnt much ; but at last the Cymry conquered them, driving 



