[183]. In Jo. Ben’s description of the islands (1529) it is said that the church of Egilsey was dedicated to St. Magnus. But as he adds that St. Magnus was born in Egilsey, and brought up there from his infancy, and that he gave a piece of ground to his nurse, on which she made an underground house with all its furniture of stone, it is plain that he is merely repeating the absurd traditions of the time.
[184]. There were three towered churches in Shetland (see p. [ci].)
[185]. “Its style of architecture,” says Sir Henry Dryden, “discarding certain indications of an earlier date, prevents our assigning to it a date later than the beginning of the 12th century. When we contrast it with the Kirkwall Cathedral begun in 1137, we are forced to give an earlier date than that to Egilsey, and this opinion is corroborated by the churches at Orphir and Brough of Birsay.”—(Ruined Churches in Orkney and Shetland, in the Orcadian of 1867.)
[186]. Those in Britain are Cambridge, consecrated in 1101; Northampton, about 1115; Maplestead, 1118; the Temple Church, London, 1185; the small Norman church in Ludlow Castle, and the Earls’ Church at Orphir in Orkney—the only example in Scotland. “The round churches at Cambridge, Northampton, and London,” says Ferguson, “were certainly sepulchral, or erected in imitation of the church at Jerusalem” (History of Architecture, ii. p. 60). Wilson, on the other hand, supposes that the early dry-built beehive houses of the Western Islands may have served as a model for some of the earliest Christian oratories, of which that at Orphir, he remarks, is an interesting example (Prehistoric Annals, ii. p. 369). But there is no analogy whatever between the architectural features of Orphir and those of the beehive houses, nor has it any resemblance to the earlier oratories and chapels of the Western Isles.
[187]. Pope’s Translation of Torfæus (Wick, 1866), p. 108.
[188]. Sir H. Dryden says this mode of putting on the arch was probably resorted to in order to give a support to the centre on which the arch was built. This seems highly probable, and in some cases it would seem as if the original supports still remain in the shape of two long thin slabs resting on the imposts on either side and meeting in the centre of the arch. See the engraving of the doorway in St. Mary’s Church, Kilbar, Barra, in Mr. Muir’s Characteristics of Old Church Architecture, p. 230.
[189]. Caithness and Part of Orkney, an Ecclesiological Sketch, by T. S. Muir, p. 25.
[190]. From an expression of Jo. Ben’s it would seem to have been dedicated to St. Peter:—“Weir, insula est parva, Petro Apostolo dicata.”
[191]. This church, which was called St. Peter’s in 1726, is called St. Mary’s by Mr. Muir.
[192]. Sir Henry Dryden remarks that the same mode of making doorways is to be seen in the chapels at Lybster in Caithness, at Weir, at Linton in Shapinsay, Uyea in Shetland, and in some of the early oratories in Ireland, and suggests the question—Were there doors in these churches, and if so, where were they placed and how were they hung? “It is known,” he adds, “that in many cottages in old time the door was an animal’s hide hung across the opening, and probably this may have been the case in these unrebated church entrances.” The custom of closing the entrances to the places of worship by a skin or heavy curtain survives in the East to the present day. The “veil of the Temple,” covering the entrance to the Holy of Holies, is a familiar illustration of this ancient custom among the Jews.