Chapter I: (pp. 1-15)

The book opens with a preliminary statement, in general terms, of the object which its author has in view. It is to prove that the round towers date from a more remote antiquity than that usually assigned to them; that they were, in fact, erected long before Christianity reached these islands, and even before the date of the Milesian and Scandinavian invasions. In support of this view, he contrasts the materials, architecture, and costliness of their construction with those of the early Christian churches usually found in their vicinity (cf. p. 514), and accounts for the contiguity of the latter by stating that the Christian missionaries selected, as the sites of their churches, localities previously consecrated to religious use, in order that they might thereby “conciliate the prejudices of those whom they would fain persuade”; whilst he points out that a Christian origin has not been claimed for Cromleachs and Mithratic caves, in the vicinity of which ecclesiastical remains likewise abound. On the other hand, he insists that the general structure and decorative symbolism of the round towers is clearly indicative of pagan times and a pagan origin, more especially of that primitive form of paganism which, originating in Chaldea, diffused itself eastward until it overspread a considerable part of Asia, and which is known as _Sabaism_. Dissenting from the theories of his predecessors in the same field of inquiry, he rejects the various theories that the round towers were intended as “purgatorial columns,” or “beacons,” or “belfries,” or “dungeons,” or “anchorite-cells,” or “places of retreat” in the case of hostile invasion, or “depositories” for State records, Church utensils, or national treasures; and he states as his conviction, based on examination of their structure, that it was not the intention of their founders to limit their use to any one specific purpose.