Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

2 66 Old Irish Relioions,
It is obvious enough, as has been pointed out, that " St.
Patrick and his followers almost invariably selected the
sacred sites of paganism, and built their wooden churches
under the shadow of the Round Towers, then as mysterious
and inscrutable as they are to-day."
Mrs. S. C. Hall, noting the carvings on the Devenish
Tower, writes, " Some of the advocates of the Christian
theory, on looking at these carvings, and at
those of Cormac's
Chapel in Cashel, and on the corbel stones in the
interior of the Ardmore Tower, would argue a
Christian
period of erection. We confess we cannot see them in the
same light."
The anchorite theory was mentioned by the Rev.
Thomas Harmer, in 1789, He saw a parallel in the hermitage
of St. Sabba ; saying, " The height of the door of
the Tower belonging to St. Sabba is a circumstance in
which it appears to agree with the Scotch and Irish
Towers." A bell on the top served as a warning of the
approach of foes to the hermits. Some saw them as
serving to sustain such self-martyrs as Simon Stylites.
Wright, the antiquary, observed, " Some will have them
to have been watch-towers or beacons ;
but their low situation
seems rather to argue against it. Others are of
opinion that they are purgatorial pillars, by which the
penitent was elevated, according to his crime, by a
to fast and pray, and so purge away his sins."
ladder,
" They are
certainly not belfries," says Higgins ;
" and the fire-tower
scheme being gone, I have not heard anything suggested
having the slightest degree of probability." To Bede they
were an enigma.
H. O'Brien, on the Round Tozvers, held that they were
built by the Tuath de Danaans, and " were specifically constructed
for a twofold purpose of worshipping the Sun and
Moon, as the authors of generation and vegetable heat.