“If by six thousand I was guarded, Or placed _in islet in a lake_, Or in a fortress strong protected, Or in a church my refuge take, Still God would guard His own with care; And even in battle safe they fare. No man can slay me till the day When God shall take my life away.” There is said to be an ancient _Life of St. Patrick_ which contains a notice of one of those dwellings; and in a translation into English of an ancient Irish ms., the “Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne”--two characters belonging to the earliest, indeed generally supposed mythic, period of Irish history--Fionn and Diarmuid are represented as addressing each other, and the one calls to mind that Miodhach the son of Colgan, “had a Bruighean upon land, and a Bruighean _upon the wave_” (_i. e._ an island). The word Bruighean means a palace. The island upon which this structure stood was, according to the text, situated upon the Shannon, and was approached by a “ford.” Thus can be clearly traced a continuous historical occupancy of these structures until all written record of them ceases, and their origin is lost in the mists of antiquity: enough proof has been advanced to show that crannogs existed, as may be fairly surmised, from the first colonization of Erin. In the most diverse climates “water towns” seem to have sprung up independently, by virtue of the natural laws which govern man’s action in a semi-civilized state-- “Facies non omnibus una Nec diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum.”