Book Description

Excerpt from Irish History for English Readers, From the Earliest Times to the Close of the Year 1885 The sea-board inhabitants had acquired great skill in ship building, and in the manufacture of weapons the Scotti nearly equalled the Romans, whose influence in Britain and Gaul was very beneficial to Erin. Among other arts learned from the Romans was that of building with the aid of mortar, and the presence of mortar in their construction proves the Irish round towers to have been built after the Roman colonisation of Britain. The purpose of these round towers is not known. Some antiquarians hold them to be Christian belfries, but they were probably connected with heathen rites of fire worship. There are in Ireland, as in England, many cromlechs and other Druidic remains of early temples and tombs built before the use of mortar was introduced; among these are funeral piles so vast, and composed of such huge blocks of stone, that they can only be compared to the Egyptian pyramids. Stone and mortar were used only for buildings intended to last for ever; dwelling-houses were of wrought wood, usually oak, and consisted for the most part of one apartment with a dome-shaped roof, in the middle of which there was a space for the smoke to escape. But long before the days of St. Patrick, the houses of the great nobles contained seven or eight rooms, besides separate halls for feasting and for the various members of the chieftain's family. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.