worshipped there in the twelfth century, it may be further argued, that,
where they were not constructed of perishable materials, it was in
consonance with the practice of these early times to preserve carefully
houses and buildings of religious note, as hallowed relics. Most of the
old oratories and houses raised by the early Irish and Scottish saints
were undoubtedly built of wattles, wood, or clay, and other perishable
materials, and of necessity were soon lost.[65] But when of a more solid
and permanent construction, they were sometimes sedulously preserved,
and piously and punctually visited for long centuries as holy shrines.
There still exist in Ireland various stone oratories of early Irish
saints to which this remark applies--as, for example, that of St. Kevin
at Glendalough, of St. Columba at Kells, those of St. Molua and St.
Flannan at Killaloe, of St. Benan on Aranmore, St. Ceannanach on
Inishmaan, etc. etc. Let us take the first two examples which I have
named, to illustrate more fully my remark. St. Kevin died at an extreme
old age, in the year 618; and St. Columba died a few years earlier,
namely in the year 597. When speaking of the two houses at Glendalough
and Kells, respectively bearing the names of these two early Irish
saints, Dr. Petrie--and I certainly could not quote either a higher or a
more cautious antiquarian authority--observes, "I think we have every
reason to believe that the buildings called St. Columba's House at
Kells, and St. Kevin's House at Glendalough, buildings so closely
resembling each other in every respect, were erected by the persons
whose names they bear."[66] If Dr. Petrie's idea be correct, and he
repeats it elsewhere,[67] then these houses were constructed about the
end of the sixth century, and their preservation for so long an
intervening period was no doubt in a great measure the result of their
being looked upon, protected, and visited, as spots hallowed by having
been the earthly dwellings of such esteemed saints.

In the great work on _The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_,
which I have just quoted--a work, let me add, overflowing with the
richest and ripest antiquarian lore, and yet written with all the
fascination of a romance--Dr. Petrie, after describing the two houses I
speak of, St. Kevin's and St. Columba's, farther states his belief that
both of these buildings "served the double purpose of a habitation and
an oratory."[70] They were, in this view, the r