Apollo’s Temple, or the Round Tower, stands at the corner of the cathedral, subsequently built half-around it: and, as you ascend the parapet of the latter, by an _intermural_ staircase, having to pass, afterwards, from one side of this parapet to the other, just at the very corner by which the Tower is girt, the pass being very narrow, and almost terrific in dimensions, wholly defenceless besides, on the right hand which looks down into the body of the cathedral, the constructors of this latter edifice were obliged, in their desire to intermarry Christianity with paganism, to scoop off, or rather to file, about six inches of the _ancient_ rotund structure, all along, on the left, to the height of the human figure, so as to allow more room; yet even thus mutilated, I could not but reverence and bow down before the Tower. “For, even the faintest relics of a shrine, Of _any_ worship, wake some thoughts divine.”[224] After this transformation, Kilmalloch assumed an entirely Christian aspect; and the monastic buildings that crowded the town surpassed, in their style, anything similar throughout the island. The materials, however, of which those were constructed, being inferior in quality to the _Tuathan_ composition, did not long keep place; so that now, whilst the Round Tower still maintains its bold preoccupancy, the Christian churches exhibit but a pile of ruins! The dreariness of this once imperial site is a moving instance of worldly vicissitudes; and one can scarcely avoid, when passing by the loneliness of its dilapidated mansions, applying the apposite and melancholy apostrophe attributed to Ossian, “Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes, it howls in thy empty courts.” Ard-Mulchan, the name of a village in the barony of Duleck, county Meath, comes from _Ard_, the high place, or mound, _Mulchan_ of Moloch. And, however extraordinary it may appear to some readers, I cannot but hazard my opinion, that the name of the individual to whom St. Patrick had been sold during his captivity in this island, viz. _Milco_-Mac-Huanan, that is, Milco, the son-of-Huanan, originated in the circumstance of the family’s devotion to the service of this idol; and if a doubt remained as to the justness of this conclusion, it will, methinks, be removed, when we consider the close of his mortal career, and the unfortunate blindness with which he clung to his fatuity.