opening at the bottom, and 3 feet at top, and its depth through the thickness of the wall is 8 feet. Some of the lintel stones yet remain upon it. There are other two entrances, but both are much destroyed. Within the enclosure of the cashel are three churches. The largest is 25 feet 6 inches long, and 12 feet wide; its walls are 2 feet 3 inches thick, with little cement of shell grouting and clay. The doorway is in the west end, 4 feet 6 inches high, and having inclined instead of perpendicular jambs. The only window is in the east end. It is small, round-headed, and deeply splayed. The second church is only 17 feet long and 11 feet 3 inches wide. The door is in the south wall, and the east window is narrow and flat-headed. The third is a small structure about 10 feet square inside, having a door in the west end with vertical jambs, and in the east end a small window with a round head cut out of a single stone, and having inclined instead of perpendicular jambs. Underneath the east window is a rude altar. One circular dry-built house remains. It is about 13 feet in diameter and the same in height. The doorway, which is formed externally of two long flags set on end, with a lintel across, is 4 feet high and 2 feet 3 inches wide at bottom, and 6 inches narrower at top. There is a small window facing south-west, 20 inches wide and 12 inches high. The remains of several other houses of similar construction may yet be traced, but they are greatly dilapidated. One of these, of irregular form externally, had a chamber of rectangular form 10 feet by 7, and 7 feet high, with a beehive roof, which has recently fallen in. Another is 8 feet 6 inches long, 2 feet 6 inches wide, and 5 feet high, roofed over with flags. The enclosing cashel of Innismurry possesses certain constructional features which are remarkable. Their special significance will only become fully apparent when we come to consider the structure of the brochs and other defensive constructions which have no ecclesi astical connections. I therefore simply notice them at present without drawing conclusions from them. The chief of these remarkable features is the construction of chambers in the thickness of the cashel wall, a feature which is also present in the cashel wall at Ardoilean. One of these chambers is 7 feet 6 inches long, 5 feet wide, and 4 feet high. The roof is slightly curved or dome-shaped at the sides, and is finished with large flags covering the centre, the ends overlapping each other from east to west. Another feature of much significance is the existence near the door of the second church of an underground passage, of a curved form, leading by an opening, 2 feet wide and 18 inches high, into an oval chamber 9 feet long, 5 feet wide, and three feet high. This is conjectured to have been a place of concealment for the treasures (ie. the relics) of the monastery in times of danger. The need for such a place of concealment is apparent from the entry in the Annals under the year 802, which records that Inismuredach was burnt by the foreigners, that is by the Norse or Danish Vikings, who first appeared in the Irish seas about A.D. 795. In the Martyrology of Donegal, St. Molaise or Laisren of Inis Muireadaigh is commemorated on August 12, and it is added that “he it was who at the Cross of AthImlaisi1 pronounced sentence of banishment on St. Columba." The obits of two of the Abbots of Innismurry are given in the Annals, viz., Dicolla in 747, and MacLaisre the Learned in 798. The fourth and last of the Irish examples which I have selected is on Oilen-Tsenach or St. Senach's Island, one of the Magherees lying off the coast of Kerry. The monastic settlement is at the south-east corner of the island, and so close to 1 Now Ahamlish, the parish in which Innismurry is situated. Mr. Skene has shown that the later version of St. Columba's connection with the battle of Culdremhne, and consequent excommunication and banishment, must be rejected as inconsistent with the narrative of Adamnan.-Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. p. 83. the sea that a portion of the cashel wall has been washed away. It is also otherwise greatly destroyed by being used as a quarry. In this ruined condition it is still, however, a very remarkable example. The cashel (Fig. 32) encloses an oval space of about 60 yards in its greater and 40 yards in its lesser diameter. It is rudely built of great blocks of limestone, and at the base is 18 feet in thickness. Its height C Fig. 32.-Ground-plan of the Cashel and its included structures on OilenTsenach. (From Lord Dunraven's Notes on Irish Architecture.) cannot now be ascertained. It has but one doorway 4 feet wide. In the area enclosed by the cashel are the remains of two small churches, three circular beehive-roofed cells, and three leachtas or burial-places. Only one of the churches is entire. Externally it is 28 feet in length by 22 feet in width, the walls being 7 feet in thickness at the base. The doorway in the west end is 4 feet 4 inches high, and 2 feet 6 inches wide at the bottom, narrowing to 1 foot 10 inches at the top. There is but one window placed in the east end, small, flat-headed, and having an inclination to the south. The buildings being constructed without cement are all much ruined, but, though the roofs are wanting, the ground-plans are still determinable. The second church is even more ruined than the first, its east end having been carried away by the sea. Its walls were about 8 feet thick. The doorway is 3 feet 6 inches in height, 2 feet wide at the bottom, and 1 foot 9 inches at the top. Over the doorway there is a cross formed of white quartz boulders set in the wall, as was noticed in one of the beehive-roofed cells on Skellig Mhichel. The largest of the three circular houses has no doorway remaining. In the second the doorway is 4 feet 6 inches in height, 2 feet 4 inches wide at the bottom, and 1 foot 10 inches at the top. What of the roof remains exhibits occasional projecting stones, as in the cells at the Skellig. From a consideration of the details of the structures composing these groups, we gather that the characteristic features of the earliest type of Christian remains in Ireland. are (1) That they exist as composite groups comprising one or more churches, placed in association with monastic dwellings, which consist of dry-built cells of beehive shape, the whole settlement being enclosed within a cashel or rampart of uncemented stones;1 (2) That the churches found in this 1 At Kilmurvey, in Aran Mor, Galway Bay, the cashel of Muirbheach Mill (a mythic hero of the Firbolg race), encloses two churches and several ruined cells. One is the church of St. Colman MacDuach, consisting of nave and chancel, and built of massive stones. The nave is 18 feet 8 inches long, and 14 feet 6 inches wide, the chancel 15 feet 4 inches long, and 11 feet 2 inches wide, and the walls are 2 feet 8 inches thick. Two of the stones are over 17 feet in length. The other church is small and single-chambered, 15 feet 6 inches in length, and 9 feet 6 inches in width. One round house remained visible when Dr. Petrie visited it in 1811, and the cashel was then in some parts 20 feet high, and 14 feet thick, and traceable for 100 yards.—Dunraven's Notes on Irish Architecture, p. 8 and p. 75. association are invariably of small size and rude construction; (3) That whether they are lime-built with perpendicular walls, or dry-built and roofed like the dwellings, by bringing the walls gradually together, they are always rectangular on the ground-plan, and single-chambered; (4) They have usually a west doorway, and always an east window over the altar. It appears, further, that these characteristics are in accordance with what we learn of these early settlements from incidental statements in the chronicles and annals which are the sources of our historical information regarding them; and we cannot doubt that if such was the character of the structures in use in the parent church, the same style of building, the same forms of huts and churches, and the same assemblage of both within a fortified enclosure must have prevailed in the period of the planting of the Christian Church in Scotland. I cannot, however, point to a single example in this country so completely typical as those that have been described; but if I were to conclude from my inability to do so that such groups never existed, I should commit the common mistake of drawing from mere ignorance of the facts a conclusion which could only be legitimately drawn from complete knowledge. I rather incline to the opinion founded on my experience of how very little we do know of the real character of the vast majority of the great stone cashels and earthen raths of Scotland, that there may yet be found among them some which exhibit distinct and complete evidence of this Christian character. But our present business is with the remains which are already known. Here, as in Ireland, it is only on the smaller uninhabited and inaccessible islands that we find such traces as we are in search of. These lonely rocks were not only the earliest outposts of the Christian Church, but there the primitive structures were not superseded by the grander constructions of |
