its way through a road in many places not 6 inches broad, and where certain death attended a slip. The motive which drew so many to a place so difficult of access and so remote from population must have been powerful. What they did is thus described :-Having made the circuit of the church three times, they offered their supplications with clasped hands and bended knees, occasionally throwing stones and water from the well behind their backs. Such practices as these are simple survivals of the earlier habit of pilgrimage. A belief in the special efficacy of devotional ceremonies performed at churches founded by particular saints, soon took the place of those feelings of reverential attachment to the founder's memory, which first drew pilgrims to the spot. But the strange thing here is that the founder is unknown. The church has now no name. It had no name in 1774 when Low visited it. It had no name in 1529 when John Bellenden lived in Orkney and wrote his account of it.1 That the notion of its peculiar sanctity survived so long after the name was lost, is proof that the feeling in which it. originated was strong. The intrusion of the Norse heathenism in the ninth century extinguished many of the Christian traditions of the Northern Isles. But it did not extinguish them all. There are yet seven of the Orkney churches in whose dedications St. Columba is commemorated. We know from Adamnan's Life that St. Cormac-one of the four great founders of monasteries, who were his contemporaries and friends-visited the Orkneys, and had friendly relations with one of their rulers. We know still further

1 Low's Tour in Orkney and Shetland in 1774 (Kirkwall 1879), p. 55. Descriptio Orchadiarun Insularum per me Jo. Ben ibidem incolentem, anno 1529 (MS., Advocates' Library), printed in the Appendix to Barry's History of Orkney.

2 After Cormac had gone far from land in a second attempt to discover a desert in the ocean, Columba, who was then staying beyond Drumalban, recommended him in the following terms to King Brude, in the presence of the

from the concurrence of historic testimony and archæological evidence, that there were many such settlements of the early monastic church in these islands before their Christianity was stamped out by invading hordes of heathen Northmen. But without the assistance of record we cannot proceed to apply this general conclusion to particular examples, and whatever may be the date or the story of the foundation of this settlement on the Brough, the archæological result of this investigation of the existing remains is, not that they are of the time, but that they are of the type, of the earliest Christian settlements.

In these groups of buildings we have thus a distinctive type of composite character, consisting in the association of a number of beehive-roofed cells of uncemented masonry, with churches of various degrees of rudeness of construction, the whole group being either contained within an enclosing cashel, or placed in an insular position. The type of church which is associated with these composite groups is of the smallest size, the simplest form, and the rudest construction. The composite character of the groups may be taken as evidence that they are of the type of the ecclesiastical settlements of the monastic phase of the Celtic church. This conclusion has no reference to the time at which any of them may have been constructed. The thing determined is simply that these groups of structures do actually exhibit the special features which are attributed by historical evidence to the ecclesiastical settlements of the early monastic church. There is no evi

ruler of the Orcades :-"Some of our brethren have lately set sail, and are anxious to discover a desert in the pathless sea; should they happen after many wanderings to come to the Orcadian Islands, do thou carefully instruct this chief whose hostages are in thy hands, that no evil befall them within his dominions." So it came to pass that after a few months, Cormac arrived at the Orkneys, and to this injunction of St. Columba, owed his escape from impending death.—Adamnan's Life of St. Columba (Edinburgh 1874) lib. ii. cap. xliii., p. 51.

dence sufficient to determine of any one of them whether it may be of the time or whether it may not be out of the time -a late survival of the type. But whether this may be the earliest type of Christian edifice erected in Scotland or not, and whether the several groups may be examples of the time or out of the time when the type was dominant, they reveal to us a typical form of which it can be said with truth that no earlier is known to exist, or is likely now to be discovered,

because it is associated with other forms of structure which are not differentiated from the types that are characteristic of Pagan times.

On the other hand, these small single-chambered uncemented churches do occasionally occur in associations from which it may be inferred that they were directly succeeded in the order of time by edifices of more advanced type and

For instance, at

later style of architectural construction. Kilmalkedar, in the county of Kerry, there still exists, close to the chancelled church of Kilmalkedar, an ancient uncemented church, whose walls are not perpendicular, but gradually converge from the foundation until they come near enough to support a roofing of flat slabs (Fig. 41), exactly in the manner in which the chambers in the walls of the Pagan forts and Pagan sepulchres are roofed. This church measures

Fig. 42.-Kilmalkedar. External view. (From a Photograph by Lord Dunraven.)

externally 24 feet in length by 16 feet 6 inches in width, while internally it is 17 feet long and 10 feet wide. The west gable is 4 feet 6 inches thick at the base, and the side walls 3 feet, becoming somewhat thinner as they increase in height. The doorway is in the west end, flat-lintelled, 4 feet high and 2 feet 4 inches wide at the bottom, the jambs inclining to a width of 1 foot 11 inches at the top. Inside the doorway the lintel projects, and has vertical perforations on either side of the opening, by which a door might have been suspended,

working on a horizontal axle-beam with its ends passing through loops fixed in the lintel. It is lighted by a single small window placed in the east end, square-headed and with vertical jambs, but splaying both internally and externally. In the centre of the wall it measures 2 feet 6 inches in height and 5 inches in width, splaying inwardly to 3 feet in height and 1 foot 11 inches in width, the sill being level. A short distance from this church there is a small cell of dry-built masonry, measuring internally 8 feet 3 inches in length, 5 feet 5 inches in breadth, and 6 feet in height. It is roofed with flags laid horizontally across the converging walls. Half a mile distant from the church first described there is another of the same inverted boat-shaped form externally (Fig. 42). It measures on the outside 23 feet long by 18 feet broad, and 16 feet high from the ground to the apex. Internally it measures 15 feet 3 inches in length and 10 feet 2 inches wide. The top is 17 feet 6 inches along the ridge of the roof, which is formed of triangular capping-stones resting on the flags laid across the converging walls. Each of the gables was terminated by small stone crosses, only the sockets of which now remain. The gables as well as the side walls converge towards each other, but not so much as in the case of the first described church. The doorway is in the west end, 5 feet 7 inches in height and 2 feet 4 inches wide at the base, the jambs inclining to a width of 1 foot 7 inches at the top. The walls are 4 feet thick at the ground level. The stones of the doorway are dressed. Over the lintel are two projecting flags perforated as if for the suspension of a door in the manner suggested in the case of the previously described church. The east window (which is the only one in the building) is roundheaded, the arch cut out of two stones. The aperture is 1 foot 4 inches high and 10 inches wide externally, with inclining jambs, and splaying internally in all directions. The stones of the window, like those of the door, are dressed..