Muiredach, abbot of Monasterboice, 890-923 AD.; his life and surroundings . IRELAND 29 Christian believers had been held ; and they display certain details whichcannot be explained satisfactorily except as translations into stone of featuresessential to the wooden buildings (PI. V). Most notable among these arethe rectangular plan ; the high-pitched roof ; corner pilasters, which repro-duce the heavy upright corner beams of the wooden house ; the projectingbracket, about the use and symbolism of which many wild conjectureshave been made, but which is merely a translation into stone of the pro-
Muiredach, abbot of Monasterboice, 890-923 AD.; his life and surroundings . IRELAND 29 Christian believers had been held ; and they display certain details whichcannot be explained satisfactorily except as translations into stone of featuresessential to the wooden buildings (PI. V). Most notable among these arethe rectangular plan ; the high-pitched roof ; corner pilasters, which repro-duce the heavy upright corner beams of the wooden house ; the projectingbracket, about the use and symbolism of which many wild conjectureshave been made, but which is merely a translation into stone of the pro-jecting ends of the wooden wall-plate. On the wealthier houses theseprojecting ends were probably decorated with carving or with ornamental. Fig. 5.—A \Vinged Finial. {From an example at Iniscaltra drawn by the author) metal plates. And lastly, the winged finial, a peculiar ornamental terminalfrequently found on the gables of our earliest stone churches, which isan attempt to represent the crossing tops of the great beams of the gable-end. When we look at the head of the Cross (see the frontispiece), we seemost of these details reproduced. The strong corner-posts, the rooftimbers crossing in an ornamental X form, the shingled roof, are all side walls have been turned into panels for the reception of sculpture,but otherwise the head of the Cross is a perfect little model of a winged finial can be best seen in the drawing in fig. 35 below. It might be called a model of a church, but this is only moving the house 30 MUIREDACH original a step further back ; for, as the foregoing paragraphs have shown,the older Irish churches were modelled on the contemporary framed timberhouses, in which no doubt the earl
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidmuiredachabb, bookyear1914
