Debates on Ireland's (in fact mythical) oriental origins and other similar accounts of ancient Ireland continued well into the early part of the twentieth century, even if by the middle of the nineteenth century a gradual consensus was taking shape on more rigorous historiographic standards, including more stringent methods of comparative and evidential verification. These improved historiographic standards also benefitted from advancements in philological and archaeological research criteria taking place around the same time, as flawed as some of these developments happened to be by our standards (without implying here that present-day standards are somehow perfect). The frequently intersecting fields of archaeology, philology, and history continued to serve as battlegrounds in ongoing debates on Ireland's ancient past in the second half of the nineteenth century, by which time the question of ancient Irish identities and Irish mythology also extended into emergent and inter-related fields of ethnography, anthropology, and folklore studies, which at the time were methodologically far less scrupulous compared to archaeology or even history. The ravages of the Great Famine of 1845–51 provided added impetus for studies in Irish folklore and other so-called traditions that seemed to be fast disappearing.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Petrie's (d.1866) assertion of the Christian origin of the Round Towers was rapidly gaining consensus in scholarly circles and among leading commentators. Petrie's verdict was even validated in such works as the 1864 Handbook for Travellers in Ireland, appearing as part of the prominent London publisher John Murray's series of handbooks of countries around the world and of different constituent parts of the United Kingdom. The Handbook, going through subsequent editions, noted with some confusion that, among other hypotheses, the Round Towers were believed by some to have been of Danish origin, while