_The Ulster Annals_, year 949, furnish us with the following fact:--“Cloicteach Slane do loscadh do Gall Athacliath. Bacall ind Erlamha, 7 cloc badec do cloccaibh, Caenechair Ferleghinn, 7 sochaide mor inbi do loscadh.” That is, the belfry at Slane was set fire to by the foreigners (the Danes) of Dublin. The pastor’s staff or crozier, adorned with precious stones, besides the principal _bells_, and Canecar the lecturer, with a _multitude_ of other persons were burned in the flames. _The Annals of the Four Masters_, noticing the same event, use nearly similar words: “Cloicteach Slaine do loscadh can a lan do mhionnaibh 7 deghdh aoninibh, im Chæinechair Fearleighinn Slaine, Bachall an Eramha 7 _clocc_ ba deach do chloccaibh.” That is, The belfry at Slane was _burned to the ground_, along with several articles of value which were therein, and _numbers_ of _individuals_, besides the Slane prælector, the patron’s staff, and all the bells, which were there of _most_ worth. Now take notice that within those “belfries” a “_multitude_ of persons” used to have been collected, whereas the Round Towers could not accommodate above “a dozen” at one time. The belfries also are represented to have been reduced to ashes by the conflagration, which accords with the description given by both Ware and Colgan, of the _wooden_ substance whereof they were composed; whereas the Round Towers are made of _stone_, and cemented by a bond of such indurated tenacity, that nothing short of lightning or earthquake has been known to disturb them:--and even though other violence may succeed in their overthrow, yet could it not be said with any accuracy that they were reduced by _fire_ to cinders. But, above all, those very Annals which I have above quoted, when recording a greater and national calamity, place the belfries and the Round Towers in the same sentence, _contradistinguished_ from one another,--the former characterised by their appropriate name of _Cloicteach_, as exhibited before, and the latter under the still more apposite denomination of _Fidhnemeadh_, as we shall explain elsewhere. Again, if designed as fortresses for the monks, and receptacles for their riches, is it not strange that in the isle of Hy,--which was literally a nest of ecclesiastics, and which Columb Kill himself evangelised at the time when Montmorency was--in a _dream_--employing him and his coadjutors at the erection of the Round Towers,--is it not strange, I say, that this little isle, the most defenceless, as it is, and forlorn of all lands that ever projected above the bosom of the sea, should yet, in the allotment of monastic artillery, be left totally destitute of an _aërial_ garrison?