these stone celts is found by a peasant, it is almost invariably built into the chimney of the house to preserve it from being struck by lightning; and the Breton name for one of these celts is "Men Gurun," or "Thunder Stone." Here I may remark that the great menhirs, etc., as a rule are all formed of the granite of the neighbourhood, greyish in colour and passing to red if exposed to fire: the two chief exceptions to this rule being the menhir of Plouhinec and the gigantic one at Locmariaquer, which are of another grain and mingled with quartz veins.

The shape of the stones tends to the cubic and quadrangular, natural to the splitting of this kind of rock.

According to some theorists, from the fact that the alignments vary from the line of the Equinoxes and the Solstices, their orientation points to the fact that the inhabitants who reared these stones were worshippers of the sun. But, inasmuch as the three names of the three great alignments signify "The Place of Remembering," "The Place of the Dead" and "The Place of Burning," and that there have been found in the dolmens bones partly burnt, bones unburnt, weapons and other instruments in stone, different kinds of pottery, golden bracelets, etc., I am strongly inclined to favour the theory that these stones were, first, places of burial among a pre-Celtic race; secondly, that they were used and adopted by the Romans in many instances for shelter and residence; and that, thirdly, they were subsequently utilized by the peasantry for the same purpose.

Cæsar, it will be remembered, expressly refers to the magnificence of some of the Gallic funerals and cremations, and as to valuable articles being ruthlessly committed to the flames.

THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND

THE

JAMES FERGUSSON

HE Round Towers which accompany the ancient churches have long proved a stumbling-block to antiquaries, and more has been written about them and more theories proposed to account for their peculiarities, than about any other objects of their class in Europe.

The controversy has been, to a considerable extent, set at rest by the late Mr. George Petrie.' He has proved beyond all cavil that the greater number of the towers now existing were built by Christians, and for Christian purposes, between the Fifth and Thirteenth Centuries; and has shown that there is no reasonable ground for supposing the remainder to be of a different age or erected for differ

ent uses.

Another step has been made by Mr. Hodder Westrop, who has pointed out their similarity with the Fanal de Cimetière, so frequently found in France, and even in Austria.

To any one who is familiar with the Eastern practice of lighting lamps at night in cemeteries or in the tombs of saints, this suggestion seems singularly plausible when

The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland anterior to the AngloNorman Invasion (Dublin, 1845).

coupled with the knowledge that the custom did prevail on the Continent in the Middle Ages. It is, however, far from being a complete explanation, since many of these towers have only one or two very small openings in their upper story; and there is also the staggering fact that this use is not mentioned in any legendary or written account of them which has come down to our time. On the other hand, they are frequently described as bell-towers, and also as treasuries and places of refuge, and seem even better adapted to these purposes than to that of displaying lights.

That they may have been applied to all these purposes seems clear, but a knowledge of their use does not explain their origin; it only removes the difficulty a step farther back. No attempt has been made to show whence the Irish obtained this very remarkable form of tower, or why they persevered so long in its use, with peculiarities not found either in the contemporary churches or in any other of their buildings. No one imagines it to have been invented by the rude builders of the early churches, and no theory yet proposed accounts for the perseverance of the Irish in its employment, at a time when the practice of all the other nations of Europe was so widely different. It must have been a sacred and time-honoured form somewhere, and with some people, previous to its current adoption in Ireland; but the place and the time at which it was so still remain to be determined.

Although, therefore, Mr. Petrie's writings and recent investigations have considerably narrowed the grounds of the

inquiry, they cannot be said to have set the question at rest, and any one who has seen the towers must feel that there is still room for any amount of speculation regarding such peculiar monuments.

In nine cases out of ten they are placed unsymmetrically at some little distance from the churches to which they belong, and are generally of a different age and different style of masonry. Their openings have, in all cases, from the oldest to the most módern, sloping jambs, which are very rare in the churches, being only found in the earliest examples. Their doorways are always at a height of seven, ten or thirteen feet from the ground, while the church doors are, it need hardly be said, always on the ground level. But more than all this, there is an unfamiliar aspect about every detail of the towers which is never observed in the churches. The latter may be rude, or may be highly finished, but they have never the strange and foreign appearance which the towers always present.

Notwithstanding this, the proof of their Christian origin is in most cases easy. St. Kelvin's Kitchen, Glendalough, for instance, shows a round tower placed upon what is, undoubtedly, a Christian chapel, and which must consequently be either coeval with the tower or more ancient. At Clonmacnoise the masonry of the tower is bonded with the walls of the church, and is evidently coeval therewith, the chancel arch being undoubtedly Christian round Gothic of the Tenth or Eleventh Century. At Kildare the doorway of the tower is likewise of unquestionable Christian art and