Ossian Collection > Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland > Volume 4

lONA. 140
vately, by niglif, and dug- up his friend. To his great
surprise, he found Oran as fresh as a Vampire, extremely
communicative, and talking- most profanely about those
" reg'ions below, which none are permitted to see ;" which
no one but Orpheus, Theseus, and ^Eneas, had seen
before him, and which only Enianuel Swedenburg was
to see after him. On this, to prevent all further disclo-
sure of the secrets of the prison house, Oran was effectu-
ally soldered down.
I formerly remarked, in speaking of Dunkeld, that
we must not judge of the dates of ancient ecclesiastical
buildings in Scotland, by styles : and the remark need
not be limited to Scotland. The reasons were then given ;
and hence it is not uncommon to find a particular style
adopted in some place, long after it had been abandoned
in England; whence, strange errors have crept in, re-
specting the date of many Scottish buildings; the records
having, in most cases, been lost. In the same manner
have antiquaries imagined reparations, where there was
only an ig-norant intermixture of styles; and, in such
cases, the latest fashion is a measure for the date of that
which appears the oldest part. It is more than doubtful
whether Columba erected any buildings in stone. Ex-
cepting the Dunes, the Pictish Towers, the Vitrified
Forts, and the Circles, there is no reason to suppose that
Scotland possesses any building as early as the sixth cen-
tury. Lawyers, like you, contrive to hang men upon
delicate evidence ; and upon such I mean to prove that
the original buildings of lona were, like many other
early ones, constructed of wicker, or wattles. In the
history of the Saint's life, he is reported to have given
orders for indemnifying some land owner, from whom his
monks had stolen stakes to repair their houses. Glaston-
bury was no better at the beginning ; whether St. Joseph
of Arimathea's thorn stick, still growing, was one of the
stakes of that cathedral or not. Gi-eestead, in Essex, is
known to have been built of the same materials. Thus of
many others ; and that this was a common mode of build-