Every corner was now the scene of Christian zeal; and every neophyte strove to surpass his neighbour in evincing devotion to the newly-revealed religion. “Kills,” or little churches,--from the Latin _cella_, now for the first time introduced,--were built in the vicinity of every spot which had before been the theatre of pagan adoration--whether as cromleachs, as Mithratic caves, or as Round Towers. These were the memorials of _three distinct species_ of paganism, and were, therefore, now singled out as appropriate sites for the erection of Christian “Kills,” the ruins of which are still to be traced, contiguous to _each_ of those idolatrous reminiscences,--disputing with the false divinities the very ground of their worship, and diverting the zeal of the worshippers from the creature to the Creator. Nay, to such a pitch did the crusaders, in their conflict, carry the principle of their enthusiasm, that many of them adopted the names of their late idols, and intertwined _those_ again--now Christianly appropriated--with the _old_ favourite denominations of many of the localities. For instance, St. Shannon assumed _that_ name from the _river_ Shannon, which was an object of deification some time before; and St. Malloch adopted _this_ name from the city of Malloch, that is, the Sun, or Apollo,--the supreme idol of pagan Ireland’s adoration,--from which again, with the prefix “Kill,” he made the name Kill-_malloch_,--the latter alone having been the ancient name of the place, converted by Ptolemy into “Macollicon”; which is only giving his Greek termination, _icon_, to the Irish word _Malloch_, and transposing, for sound’s sake, the two middle syllables. Chaildee was the pious but appropriate epithet by which those patriarchs of Christianity thought fit to distinguish themselves. The word means _associate of God_. Having obtained the gospel from the see of Rome, they adhered implicitly--yet without conceding any _superiority_--to the Roman connection--agreeing in all the grand essentials of vital belief, and differing only as to some minor points of ecclesiastical discipline. This variance, however, has afforded handle to some lovers of controversial doubt to maintain that Ireland was never beholden to Rome for the gospel. The fallacy is disproved by the fact of all our early neophytes betaking themselves, for perfection in the mysteries of revelation, to the Roman capital. On one of which occasions it was that Montmorency himself brought over his hundred and fifty volunteers, to accompany back one of those converted students, who had gone there to learn the very minuteness of the doctrine which the Romans inculcated.