Archaeological Essays Part 6

[Footnote 30: Images, or statues in wood, of the founders or patrons of churches of the sixth and seventh centuries, were common in Ireland, and no doubt in the Gaelic portion of Scotland. Some of these "images" are still preserved in islands on the west coast of Ireland. "St. Barr's wooden image" was preserved in his church in the island of Barray.--See Martin's _Western Isles of Scotland_, pp. 92, 93. But Macaulay, in his _History of St. Kilda_, p. 75, says, that this was an image of St.

Brandan, to whom the church was consecrated.--P.]

[Footnote 31: _Ibid._ lib. xiii. cap. 34. When, in 1355, the navy of King Edward came up the Forth, and "spulyeit" Whitekirk, in East Lothian, still more summary vengeance was taken upon such sacrilege. For "trueth is (says b.e.l.l.e.n.den) ane Inglisman spulyeit all the ornamentis that was on the image of our Lady in the Quhite Kirk; and incontinent the crucifix fel doun on his head, and dang out his harnis."--(b.e.l.l.e.n.den's _Translation of Hector Boece's Croniklis_, lib. xv. c. 14; vol. ii.

p. 446.)]

[Footnote 32: _Scotichronicon_, lib. xiii. cap. 37.]

[Footnote 33: See George Chalmers' _Caledonia_, vol. i. p. 320.]

[Footnote 34: "Within the bay call'd _Loch-Colmkill_, three miles further south, lies _Lough Erisort_, which hath an anchoring-place on the south and north."--Martin, p. 4. "The names of the churches in Lewis Isles, and the saints to whom they were dedicated, are St.

_Columbkil's_, in the island of that name," etc.--_Ibid._ p. 27. I suspect that all the churches founded by Columba bore anciently the name of Columbkill. Bede tells that the saint bore the united name of Columbkill.--_Hist. Ec._ v. 9; and all the churches founded by him in Ireland, or places called after him, are, I think, invariably so designated. Thus also the lake near Mugstot, in Skye, now drained, and on the island of which the most undoubted remains of a monastic establishment of Columb's time still exist, was called Lough Columbkill, and the island Inch Columbkill.--P.]

[Footnote 35: See, for example, the notes on this pa.s.sage in the editions of Steevens and Malone.]

[Footnote 36: Holinshed's _Chronicles_, vol. v. p. 268.]

[Footnote 37: _Scotorum Historiae_, lib. xi. f. 225, 251.]

[Footnote 38: See his great work on the _Sculptured Stones of Scotland_, plate cxxv. p. 39.]

[Footnote 39: I do not believe that there is a single example of armorial bearings to be found either in Scotland or Ireland of an earlier date than the close of the twelfth century.--P.]

[Footnote 40: b.e.l.l.e.n.den's _Translation of Boece's Croniklis of Scotland_, lib. xii. 2, vol. ii. p. 258.]

[Footnote 41: _Scotorum Historiae_ (1526), lib. xii. p. 257.]

[Footnote 42: _History of Fife and Kinross_, p. 35.]

[Footnote 43: _A Tour in Scotland_, part ii. p. 210. See also Grose's _Antiquities of Scotland_ (1797), vol. ii. p. 135.]

[Footnote 44: I feel quite satisfied that this monumental stone is of a much earlier date than the thirteenth century, and that it is most probably a Danish or Dano-Scottish monument.--P.]

[Footnote 45: In the _Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland_, or metrical version of the History of Hector Boece, by William Stewart, lately published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, and edited by Mr. Turnbull, there is a description of the Danish monument on Inchcolm from the personal observation of the translator; and we know that this metrical translation was finished by the year 1535. The description is interesting, not only from being in this way a personal observation, but also as showing that, at the above date, the rec.u.mbent sculptured "greit stane," mentioned in the text, was regarded as a monument of the Danish leader, and that there stood beside it a Stone Cross, which has since unfortunately disappeared. After speaking of the burial of the Danes--

Into an yle callit Emonia, Sanct Colmis hecht now callit is this da,

and the great quant.i.ty of human bones still existing there, he adds in proof--

As _I myself quhilk has bene thair and sene._ Ane croce of stane thair standis on ane grene, Middis the feild quhair that they la ilk one, Besyde the croce thair lyis ane greit stane; Under the stane, in middis of the plane, Their chiftane lyis quhilk in the feild was slane.

(See vol. ii. p. 635). Within the last few months there has been discovered by Mr. Crichton another sculptured stone on Inchcolm. But the character of the sculptures on it is still uncertain, as the stone is in a dark corner, the exposed portion of it forming the ceiling of the staircase of the Tower, and the remainder of the stone being built into, and buried in the wall. The sculptures are greatly weather-worn, and the stone itself had been used in the original building of the Tower. The Tower of St. Mary's Church, or of the so-called Cathedral at Iona, is known to have been erected early in the thirteenth century. Mr. Huband Smith, who believes the Tower of the Cathedral in Iona, and perhaps the larger portion of the nave and aisles, to be "probably the erection of the twelfth and next succeeding century," found, in 1844, on the abacus of one of the supporting columns, the inscription "DONALDUS OBROLCHAN FECIT HOC OPUS;" and already this inscription has been broken and mutilated.--(See Ulster _Journal of Archaeology_, vol. i. p. 86.) The obit of a person of this name, and probably of this builder, occurs, as Dr. Reeves has shown, in the _Annals of Ulster_ in 1203, and in the _Annals of the Four Masters_ in 1202; and Dr. Reeves considers the Church or Cathedral at Iona as "an edifice of the early part of the thirteenth century."--(_Life of Columba_, pp. 411 and 416.) But the Tower of the Church of Inchcolm is so similar in its architectural forms and details to that of Icolmkill, that it is evidently a structure nearly, if not entirely, of the same age; and the new choir (novum chorum) built to the church in 1265 (see _Scotichronicon_, lib. x. c.

20) is apparently, as seen by its remaining masonic connections, posterior in age to the Tower upon which it abuts. Hence we are, perhaps, fairly ent.i.tled to infer that this sculptured stone thus incidentally used in the construction of the Tower on Inchcolm, existed on the island long, at least, before the thirteenth century, as by that time it was already very weather-worn, and consequently old.[46]]

[Footnote 46: I, too, consider this church to be of the early part of the thirteenth century. Parts of it, however, I believe to be of the twelfth century. I allude particularly to that portion on one of the columns of which the name of the builder appears, and who, I have little doubt, was the eminent person whose death--1202--is recorded by the Annalists. Pinkerton, vol. ii. p. 258, is in error in supposing any portion of the church to be of the eleventh century. The family of the O'Brolchans were of distinguished rank in the county of Derry, and intimately connected with the churches there. See my notices of them in the _Ordnance Memoir of the Parish of Temple More_, pp. 21, 22, 29. It may be worthy of remark that this family of O'Brolchain, or a branch of it, appear to have been eminent, hereditarily, after the Irish usage, as architects or builders. At the year 1029 the _Annals of Ulster_ record the death of Maolbride O'Brolchan, "_chief mason_ of Ireland." And at the year 1097, the death of Maelbrighde _Mac-an-tsaeir_ (son of the mason) O'Brolchan. And, lastly, we have the name of Donald O'Brolchan as the architect of the great church at Iona. But if this Donald be the person whose death is recorded in the _Annals_ as "a n.o.ble senior" in 1202, that part of the building in which the inscription is found must be surely of the twelfth century; and the style of its architecture supports that conclusion.--P.]

[Footnote 47: Twelfth.--P.]

[Footnote 48: Square recesses or ambries of this kind are common in the most ancient Irish oratories.--P.]

[Footnote 49: The unusual breadth, 4 feet, of this doorway, is perhaps the only feature in the structure likely to excite a doubt of its early antiquity. I cannot remember ever having seen in any very ancient church or oratory in Ireland a doorway so wide. The widest doorway that I have met with is, I think, that of the great church at Glandelough, which is 3 feet 10 inches wide at its base. The usual width in doorways of small churches and oratories is from 2 feet to 2 feet 10 inches.--P.]

[Footnote 50: When I first visited Inchcolm the ancient cell described in the present paper was the abode of one or two pigs; and on another occasion I found it inhabited by a cow. In consequence of the attention of the Earl of Moray (the proprietor of the island), and his active factor, Mr. Philipps, having been directed to the subject, all such desecration has been put an end to, and the whole building has been repaired in such a way as to r.e.t.a.r.d its dilapidation. The plans required for its proper repair were kindly drawn out by my friend Mr. Brash of Cork, a most able architect and archaeologist, who had performed on various occasions previously a similar duty in reference to the restoration of old ecclesiastical buildings in the south and west of Ireland. All these restorations preserve, as far as possible, in every respect the original characteristics of the building. In making these restorations, several points mentioned in the text as visible in the former dilapidated state of the building, are now of course covered up, such as the section of the arch of the roof, represented in woodcut, Fig. 9, etc. Other new points, not alluded to in the text, were cleared up and brought to light as the necessary repairs were proceeded with.

The opening in the western part of the south wall of the building was found to be the undoubted original door of the cell; and when the earth acc.u.mulated up against it externally was cleared away, there was discovered, leading from this door to the south, and in the direction of the well of the island, a built way or pa.s.sage,[52] gently sloping upwards out of the cell, 4 feet in width, like the door itself, but becoming slightly wider when it reached the limit to which it has been as yet traced--viz., about 13 or 14 feet from the building. The built sides of this pa.s.sage still stand about 3 or 4 feet in height; the lime used, as cement in constructing these sides is apparently the same as that used in the construction of the walls of the cell itself; and, further, the pa.s.sage has been coated over with the same dense plaster as that still seen adhering at different points to the interior of the oratory. It is impossible to fix the original height of the walls of this pa.s.sage, but probably these walls were so high at one time, near the entrance at least into the oratory, as to be there arched over; for, as stated in the text, the stones composing the outer or external arch of the doorway offer that appearance of irregular fracturing which they would necessarily show if the archway had been originally continued forward, and subsequently broken across parallel with the line or face of the south side wall. It is perhaps not uninteresting here to add, that in Icolmkill a similar walled walk or entrance led into the small house or building of unknown antiquity, named the "Culdee's Cell." In the old _Statistical Account_ (1795), this cell is described as "the foundation of a small circular house, upon a reclining plain. From the door of the house a walk ascends to a small hillock, with the remains of a wall upon each side of the walk, which grows wider to the hillock."--(_Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol. xiv. p. 200.) At the old heremetical establishment of St. Fechin, on High Island, Connemara, there is "a covered pa.s.sage, about 15 feet long and 3 wide," leading from the oratory to the supposed nearly circular, dome-roofed cell of the Abbot.--(Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p. 425.)]

[Footnote 51: This window seems very ancient, and no mistake! Compare it with the window of the oratory near Kilmalkedar, in my _Towers_, p. 184.

First edition.--P.]

[Footnote 52: This fact is, I think, very interesting and important as an evidence of the great antiquity of the building. Such built-pa.s.sages are often found in Ireland connected with small churches and oratories of the sixth and seventh centuries, but never, to my knowledge, with any of a later age. They may, in fact, be considered as characteristic appendages, or accompanying features, to the ecclesiastical structures of those times. There is one at Rathmichael, near Dublin, where there is the b.u.t.t of a round tower. I have seen many of them in various states of preservation, and I think all were about 4 feet both in breadth and height. They were, however, never arched, but roofed with large flags, laid horizontally, and their upper surface level with the surrounding ground.--P.]

[Footnote 53: After this sentence Dr. Petrie adds, "Good--very good."]

[Footnote 54: This is a strong evidence in favour of the antiquity of the structure.--P.]

[Footnote 55: See other similar notices of the visit of Alexander I. to Inchcolm in Buchanan's _Rerum Scoticarum Historia_, lib. vii. cap. 27; Leslaeus _de Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, lib. vi. p. 219, etc.]

[Footnote 56: Joannis de Fordun _Scotichronicon_, c.u.m Supplementis et Continuatione Walteri Boweri Insulae St. Columbae Abbatis; cura Walteri Goodall (1759), vol. i. p. 286.]

[Footnote 57: My friend Mr. David Laing, with his usual kindness, has examined, with a view to this point, several ma.n.u.scripts of the _Scotichronicon_, and has found that the account in that work of King Alexander's visit to Inchcolm is from the pen of Bower, and, as Mr.

Laing adds in his note to me, "not the less curious and interesting on that account." In his original portion of the History, Fordun himself merely refers to the foundation of the Monastery of Inchcolm by Alexander.]

[Footnote 58: _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, p. 66.]

[Footnote 59: _History of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 336.]

[Footnote 60: See Mr. Turnbull's Introductory Notice to the Abbotsford Club edition of the _Extracta_, p. xiv.]

[Footnote 61: _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, p. 66.]

[Footnote 62: Boece's _History and Chronicles of Scotland_, translated by John b.e.l.l.e.n.den, book xii. chap. 15, vol. ii. p. 294.]

[Footnote 63: _Scotorum Historiae_, lib. v. fol. cclxxii. First Paris Edition of 1526.]

[Footnote 64: _De Divinitate_, cap. 46.]

[Footnote 65: Though Roman houses, temples, and other buildings of stone and lime abounded in this country in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, yet the first Christian churches erected at Glas...o...b..ry in England, and at St. David's in Wales, were--according to the authority, at least, of William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis--made of wattles. The first Christian church which is recorded as having been erected in Scotland, namely, the _Candida Casa_, reared at Whithern, towards the beginning of the fifth century, by St.

Ninian, was constructed, as mentioned in a well-known pa.s.sage of Bede, of stone, forming "ecclesiam insignem ... de lapide insolito Britonibus more."--(_Historia Ecclesiast._, lib. iii. cap. 4.) According to the _Irish Annals_, the three churches first erected by Palladius, in Ireland, about the year 420, were of wood, one of them being termed House of the Romans, "Teach-na-Romhan," but not apparently from its Roman mode of building.--(See Dr. O'Donovan's _Annals of the Four Masters_, vol. i. p. 129.) The church of Duleck, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, which St. Patrick erected in Ireland, and the first bishop of which, St. Cianan, died in the year 490, was built of stone, as its original name of Daimhllag (stone house) signifies; and the same word, _damhliag_ or _stone house_, came subsequently to be applied as a generic term to the larger Irish churches.--(See Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p. 142, with a quotation from an old Irish poem of the names of the three masons in the household of St. Patrick, who "made damhliags first in Erin.") When, in the year 652, Finan succeeded to the Bishopric of Lindisfarne, he built there a suitable Episcopal church, constructed of oak planks, and covered with reeds, "more Scotorum non de lapide, sed de robore secto totam composuit, atque arundine texit."--(Bede's _Hist. Eccl._, lib. iii. cap.

25.) When St. Cuthbert erected his anchorite retreat on the island of Farne he made it of two chambers, one an oratory, and the other for domestic purposes; and he finished the walls of these buildings by digging round and cutting away the natural soil within and without, forming the roof out of rough wood and straw, "de lignis informibus et foeno."--(Vita S. Cuthberti, cap. 17.) Planks or "tabulae," also, were employed in building or reconstructing the walls of this oratory on Farne Island, as St. Ethelwald, Cuthbert's successor, finding hay and clay insufficient to fill up the openings that age made between its boards, obtained a calf's skin, and nailed it as a protection against the storms in that corner of the oratory, where, like his predecessor, he used to kneel or stand when praying.--(_Ibid._, cap. 46.) St.

G.o.dric's first rude hermitage at Finchale, on the Wear, was made of turf (vili cespite), and afterwards of rough wood and twigs (de lignis informibus et virgulis).--(See chaps 21 and 29 of his Life by Reginald.) On the construction, by wattles and wood, of some early Irish and Scoto-Irish monastic and saints' houses and oratories, as those of St.

Wolloc, St. Columba, and St. Kevin, see Dr. Reeves' notes in his edition of the _Life of St. Columba_, pp. 106, 114, and 177. In some districts where wood was scarce, and stone abundant and easily worked, as in the west coast of Ireland, all ecclesiastical buildings were--like the far more ancient duns and forts in these parts--made princ.i.p.ally or entirely of stone. But even in parts where wood was easily procured, oratories seem to have been sometimes, from an early period, built of stone. Thus, in the Tripart.i.te Life of St. Patrick, the devout virgin Crumtherim is described as living in a stone-built oratory, "in cella sive _lapideo_ inclusorio," in the vicinity of Armagh, as early as the fifth century.--(Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, p. 163.) And, at the city of Armagh again, we have an incidental notice of a stone oratory in the eighth century; for, in the _Ulster Annals_, under the year 788, there is reported "Contentio in Ardmacae in qua jugulatur vir in hostio [ostio] Oratorii _lapidei_."--(Dr. O'Conor's _Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores_, tom. iv. p. 113.) Dr. Petrie believes that all the churches at Armagh erected by St. Patrick and his immediate successors were built of stone, as well indeed as all the early abbey and cathedral churches throughout Ireland.--(_Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p. 159.)]

[Footnote 66: The _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, anterior to the Anglo-Saxon Invasion, comprising an Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, pp. 437, 435 and 430.]

[Footnote 67: "That these buildings (St. Columb's House at Kells and St.

Kevin's at Glendalough), which are so similar in most respects to each other, are of a very early antiquity, can scarcely admit of doubt; indeed, I see no reason to question their being of the times of the celebrated ecclesiastics whose names they bear."--(Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p. 430.) In his late edition of Ad.a.m.nan's _Life of St. Columba_, Dr. Reeves, when describing the Columbite monasteries and churches founded in Ireland, speaks (p. 278) of Kells as "having become the chief seat of the Columbian monks" shortly after the commencement of the ninth century. Among the indications of the ancient importance of the place which still remain, he enumerates the fine old Round Tower of Kells, its three ancient large sculptured crosses, the "curious oratory called St. Columbkille's House," and its great literary monument now preserved in Trinity College, Dublin--namely, the _Book of Kells_. He quotes the old Irish _Life of St. Columba_, followed by O'Donnell, to show that it is there stated that the saint himself "marked out the city of Kells in extent as it now is, and blessed it;"

but he doubts if any considerable church here was founded by Columba himself, or indeed before 804. He grounds his doubts chiefly on the negative circ.u.mstance that there is "no mention of the place in the _Annals_ as a religious seat" till the year 804. But the _Annals of the Four Masters_ record two years previously, or in 802, that "the church of Columcille at Ceanannus (or Kells) was destroyed" (vol. i. p. 413), referring of course to an _old_ or former church of St. Columba's there; whilst the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_ mention that two years afterwards, or in 804, "there was a new church founded in Kells in honour of St.

Colume."--(See _Ibid._, footnote.)[68] The learned editor of the _Annals of the Four Masters_, Professor O'Donovan, has translated and published, in the first volume of the _Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society_, an ancient poem attributed to St. Columba, and which, at all events, was certainly composed at a period when some remains of Paganism existed in Ireland. In this production the poet makes St. Columba say, "My order is at Cenna.n.u.s (Kells)," etc.; and in his note to this allusion Dr. O'Donovan states that at Kells "St. Columbkille erected a monastery in the sixth century."--(_Miscellany of Archaeological Society_, vol. i. p. 13.) Some minds would trust such a question regarding the antiquity of a place more to the evidence of parchment than to the evidence of stone and lime. The beautiful _Evangeliarium_, known as the _Book of Kells_, is mentioned by the _Four Masters_ under the year 1006 as being then the "princ.i.p.al relic of the western world,"

on account of its golden case or cover, and as having been temporarily stolen in that year from the erdomh or sacristy of the great church of Kells. In the same ancient entry this book is spoken of as "the Great Gospel of Columcille," and whether originally belonging to Kells or not, is certainly older than the ninth century, if not indeed as old as Columba. The corresponding _Evangeliarium_ of Durrow, placed now also in Trinity College, Dublin,--"a ma.n.u.script" (says Dr. Reeves, p. 276) "approaching, if not reaching to the Columbian age,"--is known from the inscription on the silver-mounted case which formerly belonged to it, to have been "venerable in age, and a reliquary in 916" (p. 327). In the remarkable colophon which closes this ma.n.u.script copy of the Evangelists, St. Columba himself is professed to be the copyist or writer of it, the reader being adjured to cherish the memory "Columbae scriptoris _qui hoc scripsi_." In the _Ulster Annals_, under the year 904, there is the following entry regarding Kells: "Violatio Ecclesiae Kellensis per Flannum mac Maelsechnalli contra Donchad filium suum, et alii decollati sunt circa _Oratorium_."--(Dr. O'Conor's _Rerum Hibern.

Scriptores_, tom. iv. p. 243.) Is the scene of slaughter thus specialised the Oratory or "House of St. Columb," which is still standing at Kells?[69]]