ROUND TOWERS. Tall narrow towers tapering gradually from tire base to the sum- i. mit, and found abundantly in Ireland, and occasionally in Scotland, are among the earliest and most remarkable relics of the ecclesiastical architecture of the British Islands. They have been the subject of endless conjecture and speculation among antiquaries, who have-connected them with pagan times and pagan rites, but the controversies regarding them have to a certain extent been set at rest by the investigations of Dr. Petrie; and there can be now no doubt that they are the work of Christian architects, and built for religious purposes. They seem to have been in all cases attached to the immediate neighborhood of a church or monastery, and like other early church-towers (an older invention than bells), they served as symbols of dignity and power—while they were also capable of being used as strongholds, into which, in times of danger, the ecclesias tics, and perhaps the inhabitantsof the country around, could retreat with their valuables. After the introduction of bells, they were also probably used as hell-towers. About 118 towers of this description are yet to be seen in Ireland-20 of which are entire or nearly zo; and Scotland possesses three similar towers, at Brechin, Abernethy, and St. Eghishay in Orkney. They are usually capped by a conical roof, an.1 divided into stories, some times by yet existing floors of masonry, though oftener the floors have been of wood. Ladders were the means of communication from story to story. There is generally a small window on each story, and four windows immediately below the conical roof. The door is in nearly all cases a considerable height from the ground. The tower at Deven ish, in h; land, which may be considered as a typical example of the class, is 82 ft. in height, and furnished with a conical cap. A baulemented crown occasionally supplies the place of the conical and in one instance the base of the tower is octagonal. Dr.
Petrie is to think that a few of these remarkable structures may be as old as the 6th c.; but this great antiquity has 1.een questioned by later, writers, particularly Dr. Daniel Wilson, who t onsiders it cot borne out by the character of the architectural details, and would assiga them all to a period ranging from the 9th to the 12th centuries. The source whence this ;Orli of tower was derived, and the cause why it was so long persisted in by the Irish arehlteeta, are points which have not yet been cleared up. Two round towers, similar to the Irti-h type, are to be seen in the yet extant plan of the monas tery of St. Gall in Switzerland, of the brat half of the 9th c. ; and, in the Latin description attached to the plan, tiny are said to be ad universa superspicienda.. The church and towers as rebuilt, at that date are no longer in existence; but the latter were probably introduced in honor of the founder of the monastery. who was the leader of a colony of Irish monks, who, early in the 6th c., carried civilization and relittfim into the fastnesses of the Alps. The form thus iratrnclnced became traditional inVest Germany in the succeeding Romanesque style, 'allure we have it reproduced with but little modification at Worms cathedral and elsewhere. Etc Dr. George Petrie's Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireht nd anterior to the A»glo-.Norman facasion (Dublin, 1845); Dr. Daniel Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, EOM', a Scotch legal term synonymous with auction (q.v.). • .1107SAY, or RONVFA, one of the Orkney islauda, between the island of Westray on the n., and Pomona on the south. It is 4 m. tong, 3 in. broad, is hilly, and covered with heath in the center, but has a margin of fertho land along the shore. Pop. '71 860.