But, forsooth, the Venerable Bede has distinctly mentioned in the _Life of St. Cuthbert_ that there were numerous _fire receptacles_, remnants of ancient paganism, still remaining in this island!--Admitted. But does it necessarily follow that they were the _Round Towers_?[89] No: here is the enigma solved--they were those _low stone-roofed structures_, similar to what the Persians call the “Atash-gah,” to be met with so commonly throughout all parts of this country, such as at Ardmore, Killaloe, Down, Kerry, Kells, etc. etc. The circumstance of St Columbe having for a time taken up his abode in this last-mentioned one, gave rise to the idea that he must have been its founder: but the delusion is dispelled by comparing its architecture with that of the churches which this distinguished champion of the early Christian Irish Church had erected in Iona,[90] whose ruins are still to be seen, and bear no sort of analogy with those ancient receptacles. Struck, no doubt, with some apprehensions like the foregoing, it is manifest that Miss Beaufort herself, while combating most strenuously for the Round Towers as _fire receptacles_, had no small misgiving, nay, was evidently divided as to the security of her position. “From the foregoing statements,” she observes, “a well-grounded conclusion may be drawn that these _low fabrics_ are seldom found but in connection with the towers, and were designed for the preservation of the sacred fire; in some cases the lofty tower may have served for both purposes.”[91] The lofty tower, I emphatically say, was a distinct edifice. Again, when St. Patrick in person went round the different provinces to attend the pagan solemnities at the respective periods of their celebration, we find no mention made of any such thing as a “tower” occupying any part in the ritual of their religious exercises. When he first presented himself near the Court of Laogaire, not far from the hill of Tara, on the eve of the vernal equinox, and lit up a fire before his tent in defiance of the legal prohibition, the appeal which we are told his Druids addressed to the monarch on that occasion was couched in the following words:--“This fire which has to-night been kindled in our presence, before the flame was lit up in your _palace_, unless extinguished this very night, shall never be extinguished at all, but shall triumph over all the fires of our ancient rites, and the lighter of it shall scatter your kingdom.” In this notification, as I translate it from O’Connor’s _Prolegomena_, i. c. 35, there occur two terms to which I would fain bespeak the reader’s regard; one is the word _kindled_, which implies the lighting up of a fire where there was none before; the second is the word _palace_, which is more applicable to a kingly residence or private abode, than to a _columnar structure_, which would seem to demand a characteristic denomination.