The form of dwelling indicated by the Cells or “Kills” which I have alluded to is not wholly alien to that still existing (or at least in use at the commencement of the present century) in the distant island of St. Kilda, excepting that the cells were for one person while the St. Kilda houses are for a family. Dr. Edward Daniel Clark thus describes these houses in 1797:--“The construction of their dwelling-houses differs from that of all the western islands. They consist of a pile of stones without cement, raised about 3 feet or 4 feet from the ground, forming a small oblong enclosure, over which is raised a covering of straw, bound together with transverse ropes of bent.... Round the walls of their huts are one or more arched apertures, according to the number of the family, leading to a vault, like an oven, arched with stone, and defended strongly from the inclemency of the weather; in this they sleep. I crawled on all-fours, with a lamp, into one of these, and found the bottom covered with heath; in this, I was informed, four persons slept. There is not sufficient space in them for a tall man to sit upright, though the dimensions of these vaulted dormitories varied in each hut, according to the number it was required to contain, or the industry of the owners.” The central apartment he describes as without either chimney or window, but with two holes, some 7 inches square, to let out a little of the peat smoke. There exists in the greater island of Arran, in the Bay of Galway, among many primæval antiquities, a house (Fig. 193), supposed to be of the Pagan period, which is thus described by Mr. Petrie, in his admirable work on the _Ancient Architecture of Ireland_:--“It is in its internal measurement 19 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches broad, and 8 feet high, and its walls are about 4 feet thick. Its doorway is but 3 feet high, and 2 feet 6 inches wide on the outside, but narrows to 2 feet on the inside. The roof is formed, as in all buildings of this class, by a gradual approximation of stones laid horizontally, till it is closed at the top by a single stone; and two apertures in the centre served the double purpose of a window and a chimney.” [Illustration: Fig. 193.--Stone House, Arran.] The cells of the monks differed but little from this, excepting in being quadrangular within, though round or oval without. It would appear that some of the Irish monasteries had whole towns of such insulated cells, and it was from the great number of these erected by St. Columba that his name received the affix of “Kill,” and which caused his famous foundation in Iona to be called “I Colmkill.” The earlier oratories seem frequently to have been a development of the construction of these cells, “built of uncemented stones admirably fitted to each other, and their lateral walls converging from the base to their apex in curved lines.” [Illustration: Fig. 194.--Oratory of St. Gallerus.]