not earlier
than, the time of St. Patrick, or about the fifth century--the stone
roof, though constructed on the principle of the horizontal arch, is of
the pointed form. The whole section of the oratory of Gallerus is that
of a pointed arch commencing directly at the ground line.[97] "I have,"
Mr. Brash writes me, and I could not well quote a better judge or more
learned ecclesiastic antiquary, "carefully examined the oratory at
Inchcolm, and it is my conviction that the pointed arch supporting the
stone roof does not in any wise whatever militate against its antiquity,
particularly when taking it in connection with the extreme rudeness and
simplicity of the rest of the structure, and the total absence of any
pointed form in either door or window."[98]

Let me add one word more as to the probable or possible age of the
capellula on Inchcolm. Granting, for a moment, that the building on
Inchcolm is the small chapel existing on the island when visited by King
Alexander in 1123, have we any reason to suppose the structure to be
one of a still earlier date? Inchcolm was apparently a favourite place
of sepulture up, indeed, to comparatively late times; and may possibly
have been so in old Pagan times, and previously to the introduction of
Christianity into Scotland. The soil of the fields to the west of the
monastery is, when turned over, found still full of fragments of human
bones. Allan de Mortimer, Lord of Aberdour, gave to the Abbey of
Inchcolm a moiety of the lands of his town of Aberdour for leave of
burial in the church of the monastery.[100] In Scottish history various
allusions occur with regard to persons of note, and especially the
ecclesiastics of Dunkeld, being carried for sepulture to Inchcolm.[101]
The Danish chiefs who, after the invasion of Fife, were buried in the
cemetery of Inchcolm, were, as we have already found, interred there in
the seventh or last year of King Duncan's reign, or in 1039, nearly a
century before the date of Alexander's visit to the island. But if there
was, a century before Alexander's visit, a place of burial on the
island, there was almost certainly also this or some other chapel
attached to the place, as a Christian cemetery had in these early times
always a Christian chapel or church of some form attached to it. The
style and architecture of the building is apparently, as I have already
stated, as old, or even older than this; or, at all events, it
corresponds in[102] its featur