From the door of the house a walk ascends to a small hillock, with the remains of a wall upon each side of the walk, which grows wider to the hillock."--(_Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol. xiv. p. 200.) At the old heremetical establishment of St. Fechin, on High Island, Connemara, there is "a covered passage, about 15 feet long and 3 wide," leading from the oratory to the supposed nearly circular, dome-roofed cell of the Abbot.--(Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p. 425.)] [Footnote 51: This window seems very ancient, and no mistake! Compare it with the window of the oratory near Kilmalkedar, in my _Towers_, p. 184. First edition.--P.] [Footnote 52: This fact is, I think, very interesting and important as an evidence of the great antiquity of the building. Such built-passages are often found in Ireland connected with small churches and oratories of the sixth and seventh centuries, but never, to my knowledge, with any of a later age. They may, in fact, be considered as characteristic appendages, or accompanying features, to the ecclesiastical structures of those times. There is one at Rathmichael, near Dublin, where there is the butt of a round tower. I have seen many of them in various states of preservation, and I think all were about 4 feet both in breadth and height. They were, however, never arched, but roofed with large flags, laid horizontally, and their upper surface level with the surrounding ground.--P.] [Footnote 53: After this sentence Dr. Petrie adds, "Good--very good."] [Footnote 54: This is a strong evidence in favour of the antiquity of the structure.--P.] [Footnote 55: See other similar notices of the visit of Alexander I. to Inchcolm in Buchanan's _Rerum Scoticarum Historia_, lib. vii. cap. 27; Leslaeus _de Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, lib. vi. p. 219, etc.] [Footnote 56: Joannis de Fordun _Scotichronicon_, cum Supplementis et Continuatione Walteri Boweri Insulae St. Columbae Abbatis; cura Walteri Goodall (1759), vol. i. p. 286.] [Footnote 57: My friend Mr. David Laing, with his usual kindness, has examined, with a view to this point, several manuscripts of the _Scotichronicon_, and has found that the account in that work of King Alexander's visit to Inchcolm is from the pen of Bower, and, as Mr. Laing adds in his note to me, "not the less curious and interesting on that account." In his original portion of the History, Fordun himself merely refers to the foundation of the Monastery of Inchcolm by Alexander.] [Footnote 58: _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, p. 66.] [Footnote 59: _History of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 336.] [Footnote 60: See Mr. Turnbull's Introductory Notice to the Abbotsford Club edition of the _Extracta_, p. xiv.] [Footnote 61: _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, p. 66.] [Footnote 62: Boece's _History and Chronicles of Scotland_, translated by John Bellenden, book xii. chap. 15, vol. ii. p. 294.] [Footnote 63: _Scotorum Historiae_, lib. v. fol. cclxxii. First Paris Edition of 1526.]