[To TIM EDI7OZ 07 187 SFECTA . 708."1 Slit,-A district in the
north-west of Dublin, near the Phoenix Park, was called Oxmantown or Ostmantown, which the Danes or Ostmen (Eastmen) had appropriated. The site of St. Miehan's Church, named from a Danish saint, formed part of the district, and the records of that old church are said to contain the following curious entry respecting the construction of the roof of Westminster Hall:— " The fair greens or commune, now called Ostomondtowne- greene, was all wood, and hee that diggeth at this day to any depth shall find the grounds full of great roots. From thence, anno 1098, King William Rufus, by license of Murchard, had that frame of timber, which made up the routes of Westminster Hall, ' where no English spider webbeth or breedeth to this day."
It may be added that the vaults under St. Michan's Church (which were visited by Gladstone when in Dublin in 1877) have the curious property of preventing or• arresting decay, and bodies buried in wooden coffins gradually undergo a mummifying process, without the evolution of the gases of Irish literary Society, 20 Hanover Square, W.
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