The bee-hive houses of the monks, the early churches, and the round
towers are a development of that architecture which constructed the
central chambers of the raths. In this fact lies, too, the
explanation of the cyclopean style of building which characterizes
our most ancient buildings. The cromlech alone, formed in very
ancient times the central chamber of the cairn; it is found in the
centre of the raths on Moy Tura, belonging to the stone age and
that of the Firbolgs. When the cromlech fell into disuse, the
arched chamber above the ashes of the hero was constructed with
enormous stones, as a substitute for the majestic appearance
presented by the massive slab and supporting pillars of the more
ancient cromlech, and the early stone buildings preserved the same
characteristic to a certain extent.
The same sentiment which caused the mediaeval Christians to
disinter and enshrine the bones of their saints, and subsequently
to re-enshrine them with greater art and more precious materials,
caused the ethnic worshippers of heroes to erect nobler tombs over
the inurned relics of those whom they revered, as the meanness of
the tomb was seen to misrepresent and humiliate the sublimity of
the conception. But the Christians could never have imagined their
saints to have been anything but men--a fact which caused the
retention and preservation of the relics. When the Gentiles exalted
their hero into a god, the charred bones were forgotten or ascribed
to another.
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