Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/418

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SOTES AND QUERIES. or* s. IL NOV. 19,

2. SIR HENRY furthermore asserts that the Irish missionaries in the seventh century built no stone churches. Dr. Healy, a some- what eminent authority, asserts ('Ancient Irish Church,' p. 41) :

"The buildings [ancient Irish churches] were mostly of wood, or of wattles daubed with clay ; only rarely were they made of stone."

This is a concession sufficiently definite to warrant my contention that St. Patrick's chapel at Heysham was built by Irish mis- sionaries on a plan at least sometimes adopted in their own country. As to the alleged minor differences between early Irish chapels and that at Heysham (ashlar, doorway, and roofing), they are as imaginary as immaterial. Besides, as a matter of fact, purely British churches were invariably of wood. In this connexion I commend the following excerpt from Newell's able 'History of the Welsh Church ' (p. 23), which I had the honour of reviewing in the Northern Churchman on its appearance in 1895 :

" The story of Patrick's work in Ireland explains the problem which has sorely puzzled some of our archaeologists why there are so few remains of churches of the Roman period. St. Martin's, Can- terbury, and a few others, none of them in Wales, contain Roman work, and many have been used for Christian purposes even in the Roman period, by the Roman Christians or the Romanized Britons ; but probably the majority of the churches through- out Britain, and almost certainly the majority in Wales, were wooden. Occasionally, when wood was scarce, Patrick built a church of earth, as at Foirrgea, 'fecit ibi seclessiam terrenam de humo quadratam, quia non prope erat silva' (Tirechan in ' Book of Armagh'). At Clebach, also, we are told ' agclessiam terrenam fecit in eo loco' (ibid.). Churches of stone were rare, though probably not without examples even in the time of Patrick. It has been supposed, from the special mention of quadrangular churches at Foirrgea, andfin the reign of Conmaicne, that Patrick usually built round churches, and it is inferred from the fact that only one dimension is given for the buildings of the Ferta at Armagh that they were all circular. It is not improbable that Patrick introduced this custom from Britain, and it has been suggested that the word C6r is a trace."

Stone churches were, therefore, probably as numerous as non-diocesan bishops in and subsequent to St. Patrick's days. At all events, they were not a quantite ne"gligeable.

3. Candida Casa, with its white cut stone which, as Innes says, " seemed such a rarity among the Britons of those parts " (Gallo- way) was no doubt a replica of what the British Apostle had seen in Gaul and Italy, and remained useless in its white isolation as an architectural pattern to the wood-building Britons. It was reserved for the later "Irish influence" that spread in ever-broadening waves of light from lona over Strathclyde to

transplant from the parent country local methods,' both liturgical and architectural. As to the latter serving as landmarks to St. Patrick's itinerary, I have no doubt they did. But who erected them? Their struc- ture and materials, together with the incontes- table facts that the Goidhils clustered round Morecambe Bay from the earliest times, and that Columban missionaries flooded the north-west of Britain, point to an "Irish influence " as their origin.

4. Nor is SIR HENRY'S allusion to Manx Treen chapels more happy. Treen meant a township dividing tithes into three, and com- prising three or more quarter lands. Of course, Treen chapels are very ancient in the island, and decidedly Patrician or Columban in their origin and build. A good sample existed a few years ago near Malew. Their materials were necessarily rude, as was also their structure, but they were solid enough, consisting of slate, stone, and undressed granite boulders, put together with mud mortar, and were invariably 21 ft. long, 9 ft. broad, with side walls 8 ft. high, and square- headed windows placed north and south. In all likelihood, as a writer in the Manx Society publications, vol. v., observes, these Manx Treen chapels were the prototypes of similar ones known to exist in Norway, as theirs including the Heysham chapel are to be sought in Ireland. The unfortunate "Irish influence " hovers over each and all alike in style as it does over the Manx race in blood and speech.

5. As to the rock-hewn graves, it is simply a matter of pitting SIR HENRY'S opinion against mine. He contends that they " seem to be much later than had generally been supposed " ; I maintain their probable Viking origin. It is clearly a question of pro- bablism, which is, and always will remain, in history as in morals, a moot point. Will SIR HENRY transcribe for my instruction the precise "canon of genuine history" which my theory violates 1

6. In his reported address SIR HENRY is stated (as I noted in my previous article) to have surmised that St. Patrick set sail from Heysham to Ireland. He says nothing about it now. Perhaps he was reported inaccurately. At all events, his silence is significative.

J. B. S.

Manchester.

P.S. Since the above has been in type, I observe on the latest circular of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society (of which I am a member) that a paper was to be read on 28 October, by the Kev. J. Quine, M.A., on 'Dedications of Manx