One of the most ancient of Ireland's ancient round towers stands on Devinish Island, in the upper lake. It is one of the most perfect, if it is not one of the highest, round towers in the country. There would be no use in speculating on its age, for we are generally left completely in the dark as to the time of the erection of round towers. There are many allusions to them in Irish annals, but the time of the building of them is mentioned only in a few places. The first mention of Devinish by the Four Masters is in A.D. 721, telling of the death of one of its abbots. Devinish, spelled correctly, _Daimhinis_, means "ox island." A Christian church was erected on it at a very early date, probably during the lifetime of St Patrick, for we are told in ancient Annals that Molaise, who appears to have been the first abbot of the monastery that was there, died in 563. A Latin life of St Aeden says that Molaise "ruled many monks in an island in _Stagno Erne_, called Daimhinis by the Irish." It was plundered and burnt many times by the Danes, or some other Northmen, but almost devastated by them in 836, and at other times; it was burnt in 1157 and in 1360. It seems, not like Glendaloch, Monasterboice, and many other places that were abandoned at an early date, to have had a church or monastery on it until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The last mention of it by the Four Masters is under the year 1602. MELLIFONT AND MONASTERBOICE Of all the ancient remains in the County Louth connected with Christian antiquities, the ruins of Mellifont and Monasterboice are by far the most interesting and important. They are only two miles apart, and only about four from Drogheda. Starting from there both places can easily be seen in one day. There is not, even in the beautiful and picturesque county of Louth, a more beautiful location for a church or monastery than the glen in which all the remains of Mellifont is to be seen. It is not a mountain glen; there is no wildness or savageness about it; it is simply a depression in a rich lowland country, with luxuriant crops of grain and grass all round it, and a clear rushing river flowing through it,--supremely beautiful in summer-time and charming even in winter. In summer and autumn days when the hills around it are radiant with flowers of almost every hue, Mellifont even in its desolation is worth journeying a hundred miles to see.