arolean
date. There are three round towers in the county, but all are
fragmentary.

DOWN, a smooth rounded hill, or more particularly an expanse of high
rolling ground bare of trees. The word comes from the Old English
_dun_, hill. This is usually taken to be a Celtic word. The Gaelic and
Irish _dun_ and Welsh _din_ are specifically used of a hill-fortress,
and thus frequently appear in place-names, e.g. Dumbarton, Dunkeld, and
in the Latinized termination--_dunum_, e.g. Lugdunum, Lyons. The Old
Dutch _duna_, which is the same word, was applied to the drifted
sandhills which are a prevailing feature of the south-eastern coast of
the North Sea (Denmark and the Low Countries), and the derivatives, Ger.
_Dune_, modern Dutch _duin_, Fr. _dune_, have this particular meaning.
The English "dune" is directly taken from the French. The low sandy
tracts north and south of Yarmouth, Norfolk, are known as the "Dunes,"
which may be a corruption of the Dutch or French words. From "down,"
hill, comes the adverb "down," from above, in the earlier form "adown,"
i.e. off the hill. The word for the soft under plumage of birds is
entirely different, and comes from the Old Norwegian _dun_, cf.
_aedar-dun_, eider-down. For the system of chalk hills in England known
as "The Downs" see DOWNS.

DOWNES [D(O)UNAEUS], ANDREW (c. 1549-1628), English classical scholar,
was born in the county of Shropshire. He was educated at Shrewsbury and
St John's College, Cambridge, where he did much to revive the study of
Greek, at that time at a very low ebb. In 1571 he was elected fellow of
his college, and, in 1585, he was appointed to the regius professorship
of Greek, which he held for nearly forty years. He died at Coton, near
Cambridge, on the 2nd of February 1627/1628. According to Simonds d'Ewes
(_Autobiography_, ed. J. O. Halliwell, i. pp. 139, 141), who attended
his lectures on Demosthenes and gives a slight sketch of his
personality, Downes was accounted "the ablest Grecian of Christendom."
He published little, but seems to have devoted his chief attention to
the Greek orators. He edited Lysias _Pro caede Eratosthenis_ (1593);
_Praelectiones in Philippicam de pace Demosthenis_ (1621), dedicated to
King James I.; some letters (written in Greek) to Isaac Casaubon,
printed in the _Epistolae_ of the latter; and notes to St Chrysostom, in
Sir Henry Savile's edition. Downes was also one of the seven translators
of the _Apocrypha_ for the "aut