FIRE TOWERS AND BELFRIES.
(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
In No. 333 of the MIRROR, there is an article on the ancient round towers in Scotland and Ireland, in which it is stated that the said towers “have puzzled all antiquarians,” that they are now generally called fire towers and that “they certainly were not belfries.”
I have often thought that antiquarians, and particularly our modern Irish antiquarians, have affected to be puzzled about what, to the rest of mankind, must appear to be evident enough; and this for the purpose of making a parade of their learning, and of astonishing the common reader by the ingenuity of their speculations.
I think I shall be able to show, that a motive of this kind must have operated in the case of these round towers, otherwise “all the antiquarians” could not have been so sadly puzzled about what to the rest of the world appears a very plain matter.
The fact is, that when St. Patrick planted the Christian faith in Ireland, in the middle of the fifth century, (he died A.D. 492,) the practice of hanging bells in church steeples had not begun; and we know from history, that they were first used to summon the people to worship in A.D. 551, by a bishop of Campania; the churches, therefore, that were erected by St. Patrick, (and he built many,) were originally without belfries; and when the use of bells became common, it was judged more expedient to erect a belfry detached from the church, than by sticking it up against the side or end walls, to mar the proportions of the original building.
This is the account of the matter given by the old Irish historians, not one of whom appears to have been aware what “puzzlers” these round towers were to become in after ages; and in a life of St. Kevin, of Glendaloch, (co. Wicklow,) who died A.D. 628, we are told that “the holy bishop did,” a short time before his death, “erect a bell-house (cloig-theach) contiguous to the church formerly erected by him, in which he placed a bell, to the glory of God, and for the good of his own soul.”
I am not unaware, in giving you the above quotation, that “all the antiquarians,” and particularly those of Scotland, have long since decided, that in every matter connected with the ancient history of Ireland, her native historians (many of whom were eye-witnesses of the facts they relate) are on no account to be credited; and that the safest way of dealing with those chroniclers is, in every thing, to take for granted exactly the reverse of what they may at any time assert. In deference, therefore, to such high authorities, I shall waive any advantage which I might claim on account of a quotation from the works of a native historian, and proceed to show, from the reasonableness of the thing itself, that those towers which you state “were certainly never belfries,” were in fact belfries, and were never any thing else.
First.—They are all situated within a few yards of some ancient church, and which church is invariably without a steeple.
Secondly.—It is impossible to conceive, from their slender shape, their great height, and their contiguity to the church, for what other purpose they could have been intended, having, to a spectator inside, who looks up to the top, exactly the appearance of an enormous gun-barrel.
Thirdly.—That in all of them now entire, the holes, for the purpose of receiving the beam to support the bell, remain; and that in one at least, that upon Tory Island, co. Donegal, the beam itself may be seen at this day.
Fourthly, and which appears to me more conclusive than all the rest, that these towers, in every part of Ireland, are, to this day, called in Irish by the name of clogach, (cloig-theach,) that is, bell-house, and that they are never called (in Irish at least) by any other name whatever.
H.S.
P.S. We have heard a good deal of late of a chimney or high tower erected at Bow, by the East London Water Company, on account of its having been erected without any outside scaffolding. It is remarkable, that the traditions of all the people in the neighbourhood of the round towers in Ireland, agree in stating that they were built in the same manner.