The dynasty of the Celtic kings of the Isles came to an end in 1478, when the last Lord of the Isles was forfeited; and there followed upon their fall a period of great confusion in the Highlands, when the clans which had been united under their sway were thrown loose, and struggled for the possession of their lands. During this period of darkness education was neglected, and all knowledge of the cultivated or written Irish seems to have perished out of the land. It is during this period that a solitary exception, Dean Macgregor of Lismore, endeavoured to rescue from oblivion the oral literature of the Highlands by transcribing, in 1512, such poems as he could collect; but he was fain to write them down in a phonetic spelling, which has rendered his collection valuable, as indicating the pronunciation of the language at the time, and the degree of divergence between the spoken dialects and the standard Irish.[852] His collection, however, contains also several poems by Irish bards, and among others some of a religious cast by Teague og O’Huggin, whose death is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters in 1448 as ‘chief preceptor of the poets of Erin and Alban;’ and the same annals record in 1554 the death of Teague O’Coffey, ‘chief teacher of poetry in Erin and Alban.’ A contract of fosterage, by Sir Roderick Macleod, in 1614, in Gaelic, has been preserved, which is written in the Irish character; but it is evident that he had to resort to Ireland for his scribe, as the writer of it is obviously an Irishman, and he alone subscribes as a witness in the Irish written language, the three other witnesses all bearing Gaelic names, and two of them, respectively ministers of Duirinish and Bracadale, in Skye, being unable to do so.[853]
The spoken language of the Highlands now begins to be called Irish in place of Scotch. John Major, who wrote in 1520, not long after the Dean of Lismore had made his collection, thus describes the languages in his day: ‘In the island of Britain there are three different languages, as we know, which are mutually unintelligible. The first towards the south is the Welsh (Vallica), which the Britonised Britons use. The second, more extended than the first, the wild Scots and Islanders use, and this is Irish, though somewhat broken (Hibernica licet quodammodo fracta). The third language, the principal one in the island, is the English (Anglicana), which the English and the civilised Scots have.’[854] Thus, what Fordun called Scotica in the fourteenth century, John Major calls Hibernica in the sixteenth; and what Fordun termed Teutonica, Major calls Anglicana. The expression used by John Major, with regard to the Gaelic spoken in the Highlands and Islands, shows that the differences between it and the written language of Ireland were then quite apparent. While, however, all learning had perished out of the Gaelic-speaking part of the country, there had arisen a literature in the language of the lowlands. Barbour, who was archdeacon of Aberdeen, leads the way not long after Fordun’s time; but he terms the language in which he wrote ‘Inglis,’ or English.[855] He was followed in the next century by Wyntoun, prior of Lochleven, in his Metrical Chronicle. But Gawin Douglas, who wrote in the same Lowland dialect in 1516, terms the language in which he wrote ‘Scottés,’ or Scotch. We thus find in the beginning of the sixteenth century the term Scotic, or Scotch, passing from the written Gaelic to the Anglican dialect of the Lowlands, and the spoken Gaelic of the Highlands coming to be denominated Irish.
The Reformation, however, soon after gave rise to a religious literature, which was printed for the use of the Gaelic-speaking people; but here too it became necessary to resort to Ireland for the written language. Bishop Carsewell printed, in 1567, a translation of John Knox’s liturgy, with a prefatory epistle, in which he says that ‘we, the Gael of Alban and Erin, have laboured under the want that our dialects of the Gaelic have never been printed;’ and the language he uses is unquestionably the written Irish of the time. In the following century translations of the metrical version of the Psalms, of Calvin’s Cathechism, and of the Bible, were printed in Gaelic by the Synod of Argyll and by the Rev. R. Kirke of Balquhidder. These were thoroughly Irish in form, and the latter was simply taken from the Irish version of the Bible. Various editions of the Bible were issued in the succeeding century by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge in Scotland; but, from the divergence which now existed between the spoken language of the people and the written language of Ireland, it was found that these translations were not readily understood, and in each succeeding edition they were brought nearer to the spoken idiom, till, for the cultivated Irish, which formed their written dialect in common with Ireland, there was now substituted a written Scotch Gaelic, in all respects assimilated to the spoken language. There can be little doubt that the spoken or vernacular language remained throughout pretty much the same, exhibiting in a greater or less degree those features which distinguished it from the spoken dialects of Ireland; and to this language the Highlanders themselves have never given any other name than the simple designation of Gaelic. It possessed, too, an oral literature in the popular poetry and prose tales of the Highlanders, handed down by recitation; and in 1741 a vocabulary of this Scottish Gaelic was first printed by Alexander Macdonald, schoolmaster of Ardnamurchan, a scholar and a good Gaelic poet. Ten years later he printed a collection of his own poems, written in the vernacular dialect of the Highlands. To this work he gave the title of ‘Resurrection of the Ancient Language of Alban,’[856] and in the preface announced that it was only the prelude to a greater collection of poetry ‘from those of the earliest composition to modern times; their antiquity either proved by historical accounts, or ascertained by the best traditions; with a translation into English verse, and critical observations on the nature of such writings, to render the work useful to those that do not understand the Gaelic language.’[857] It is to be regretted that he never carried this intention into effect. In 1764 the poems of Duncan Ban Macintyre, also composed in the vernacular, were printed, and these collections were followed by numerous others, till this oral literature of the Scottish Gaelic, too, assumed a written form.
And thus, at length, has been created a standard of written Scotch Gaelic, which has stereotyped the language spoken by the Highlanders in its native form and idiom.
786. S. Monenni disciplinis et monitis in Rosnatensi Monasterio, quod alio nomine Alba vocatur, diligenter instructus in virum perfectum scientia et moribus est provectus.—Vit. S. Tigernaci.
In monasterio præfato sub discipulatu illius permansit, et postquam vita atque doctrina ibi sufficientur floruit.—Vit. S. Endæ.
In ejus sede quæ magnum vocatur Monasterium regulas et institutiones monasticæ vitæ aliquot annis probus monachus didicit atque in sanctarum Scripturarum paginis non parum proficiens.—Vit. S. Finniani, Colgan, A.SS., p. 438.
787. Cum S. Kannechus crevisset et perfectus esset sensibus voluit sapientiam legere et religionem discere. Perrexit trans mare in Britanniam ad virum sapientem ac religiosissimum Docum legitque apud illum sedule et mores bonos didiscit.—Vit. S. Kannechi, c. 4.
788. Iste S. Kieranus valde erat humilis in omnibus, qui multum diligebat divinam Scripturam audire et discere. Ipse cum ceteris Sanctis Hiberniæ illius temporis ad virum sanctum Finnianum Abbatem sapientissimum monasterii Cluain Eraird exivit et in divinis Scripturis in sancta schola ejus legebat.—Colgan, A.SS., p. 463.
789. Bede, Hist. Ecc., B. iii. c. 27.
790. Bede, Hist. Ecc., B. iv. c. 27; Vit. S. Cud., c. 24.
791. In ea namque navi diferebantur 50 monachi patria Romani quos vel arctioris vitæ vel Scripturarum peritiæ, tunc in ea multum florentis, desiderium in Hiberniam traxerat, ut ibi vivant sub magisterio quorundam sanctorum patrum, quos vitæ sanctitatæ et monasticæ disciplinæ rigore intellexerant esse conspicuos.—Colgan, A.SS., p. 533.
792. Adamnan, Vit. S. Col., Præf., B. ii. c. 8; B. iii. c. 22.
793. Illa jam cito rememoravit de Alfrido, qui nunc regnat pacifice, fuisse dictum, qui tunc erat in insula quam Hy nominant.—Vit. S. Cuth. auct. anon.; Bede, Opera minora, p. 274.
794. Et exceptis his, quæ aut Lex, aut Prophetæ, aut Evangelium, aut Apostoli loquuntur, grande debet esse ab aliis de Trinitate silentium. Dei enim tantum de Deo, hoc est, de seipso credendum est testimonium.—Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxxvii. col. 233. When Columbanus goes on to say, ‘Cæterum disputatio, seu ingenium humanum, aut aliqua superba sapientia, quæ vel mundi in ratione fallitur, de Deo magistra esse non potest, sed sacrilega et impia in Deum præsumenda est,’ it is hardly possible to avoid the suspicion that it was intended as a protest against the Athanasian Creed and its metaphysical definitions, which probably made its appearance about this time in the Church.
795. See for an account of these scribes Colgan, Tr. Th., p. 631, where a list of them during the eighth and ninth centuries is given. The first mention of them is in 697, when the death of ‘Caisan Scriba Luscan’ is recorded in the Ulster Annals.
796. A.D. 807 (808) Torbach mac Gormain Scribhnidh Leghthoir agus Abb Ardamacha esidhe decc.
844 (845) Feardomhnach eagnaidh agus Scribhnidh toghaidhe Ardamacha decc.—A. F. M. See Proc. R. I. A., vol. iii. p. 316, 356, for papers by Rev. Charles Graves, now bishop of Limerick, on the date of the Book of Armagh.
797. The Book of Armagh by Dr. Reeves; first published in the Swords Parish Magazine, 1861.
798. 657 Obitus Ultain ic U Concubair.—An. Ult.
799. 699 Quies Aedo anachorite o Sleibhtiu.—Ib.
800. Dr. Todd’s translation of this preface has been adopted.—Life of St. Patrick, p. 402.
801. See Colgan’s Tr. Th., pp. 518, 527, and the Bishop of Limerick’s paper in Proc. R. I. A., vol. viii. p. 269.
802. 462 (463) Mors Laegaire fili Niell.—An. Ult.
803. 457 (458) Quies senis Patricii, ut alii libri dicunt.
804. That this is the true reading of his name Dr. Todd has shown, though the scribes have made it ‘Amatho rex,’ and in the ablative ‘Amatho rege.’
805. Colombcille Spiritu Sancto instigante ostendit sepulturam Patricii, ubi est confirmat, id est, in Sabul Patricii, id est, in ecclesia juxta mare pro undecima (proxima), ubi est conductio martirum, id est ossuum Coluimbcillae de Britannia, et conductio omnium Sanctorum Hiberniæ in die judicii.—Reeves’s Adamnan, ed. 1874, p. lxxx.
806. This suggestion is made by Dr. Graves in his account of the Book of Armagh.—Proc. R. I. A., vol. iii. p. 356.
807. See Introduction to the Irish version of Nennius, pp. 12 and 14.
808. Compare the following passage:—
| Certe enim erit quod Palladius archidiaconus Papæ Celestini urbis Romæ episcopi, qui tunc tenebat sedem apostolicam quadragensimus quintus a Sancto Petro apostolo, ille Palladius ordinatus et missus fuerat ad hanc insolam sub brumali rigore positam convertendam; sed prohibuit illum [Deus] quia nemo potest accipere quicquam de terra nisi datum ei fuerit de cœlo. Nam neque hii feri et inmites homines facile reciperunt doctrinam ejus, neque et ipse voluit transegere tempus in terra non sua, sed reversus ad eum qui misit illum. Revertente vero eo hinc et in primo mari transito cœptoque terrarum itinere Britonum finibus vita factus. —Muirchu, Book of Armagh. | Missus est Palladius episcopus primitus a Celestino episcopo et Papa Romæ ad Scottos in Christum convertendos; sed prohibuit illum Deus per quasdam tempestates, quia nemo potest accipere quicquam de terra, nisi de cœlo datum fuerit illi desuper. Et profectus est ille Palladius de Hibernia, et pervenit ad Britanniam, et ibi defunctus est in terra Pictorum. —Nennius, Hist. Brit. |
809. Compare the following:—
| In IIII rebus similis fuit Moisi Patricius. | Quatuor modis æquantur Moyses et Patricius, id est, |
| I. Primo angelum de rubo audivit | Angelo colloquente in rubo igneo. |
| II. xl diebus et xl noctibus jejunavit. | Secundo modo, in monte quadraginta diebus et quadraginta noctibus jejunavit. |
| III. Quia annos cxx peregit in præsenti. | Tertio modo, similes fuerunt ætate, centum viginti annis. |
| IV. Ubi sunt ossa ejus nemo novit. Tirechan, Book of Armagh. |
Quarto modo, sepulchrum illius nemo scit, sed in occulto humatus est, nemine sciente. —Nennius, Hist. Brit. |
810. See Dr. Todd’s unfinished preface to the poem in the Liber Hymnorum, part ii. p. 287, where its true character is very clearly established.
811. The poem with a Latin translation and the glosses at length, is printed by Colgan in his Trias Thaumaturga, p. i. Mr. Whitley Stokes has also printed the poem, with an English translation, in his Gædelica, p. 126.
812. The word here is Scelaib, from Scel, a relation, a tale or story.
813. Dr. Samuel Ferguson, in the notes to his poem of Congal, p. 196, has suggested an ingenious theory with regard to this name of Nemthur, and Mr. Gilbert, in his introduction to the National MSS. of Ireland, appears to adopt it. He refers to the name of Neutur or Nevtur appearing in the old Welsh poem, which, however, he reads Nentur, and adds, ‘The N in both belongs to the article, as in N’ewry; so that the choice lies between Emtur and Entur; but Entur is a good Celtic local name (“unica turris”), just as Endrum (“unica collis”) was the old name of Mahee island, and Entreb (“unica domus”) was the old name of Antrim, whereas Emtur is an “irreconcilable.” The probability, therefore, is that “Emtur,” which, in the Tripartite Life, is always spoken of a place close to, or forming part of, Dumbarton, is simply Entur disguised by the accidental use of M instead of N.’
There appear to the author to be serious objections to this theory. First, it requires us to suppose that Nemthur has been written by mistake for Nenthur in the hymn of Fiacc and in all the lives which contain the word, and equally it requires us to suppose that Neutur has been written in place of Nentur in the Book of Caermarthen (The Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. ii. p. 3). Secondly, it is true that in Irish names of places N before a vowel sometimes represents the article; but is this true also of Welsh names? The author is unaware of any parallel instance, and does not see how Entur in Welsh could become Nentur. Thirdly, if this be so, then the Welsh must have adopted the Irish form of the name; but the inhabitants of the district in which Alcluaid was situated were a Welsh-speaking people, and the name is more likely to have passed from them into Irish. Lastly, Nem in old Irish, and Nev, or as it would now be written Nef, in Welsh, are exact equivalents. Thus in Cormac’s Glossary, edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes (p. 126), we have Nem (heaven), and the editor adds, ‘W. and Corn. Nef, Br. env. The old Welsh form occurs in uuc nem, is nem (above heaven, below heaven). Juvencus, p. 1, line 9.’
814. Dr. Todd’s St. Patrick, p. 360. The Irish historians who have investigated the history of St. Patrick, have viewed the introduction of Armorica into the legend with much favour, and have been inclined to transfer St. Patrick entirely to Gaul as the place of his birth as well as where he was taken captive. The most elaborate attempt to do this has been made by Lanigan in his Ecclesiastical History of Ireland; but he is obliged to remove him from Armorica to the sea-coast north of the Seine. It is sufficient to say that his theory requires us to suppose Bannavem written by mistake for Bononia, Tabernia for Tarabanna, that Nemthur means Neustria, and that the term Britanniæ, or the Britains, applies to that part of Gaul. The author has always considered it conclusive against any theory that it requires conjectural emendations of the text to support it.
815. The word here is Lini, which implies a written record. The statement seems taken from the former narratives of Tirechan and Muirchu in the Book of Armagh.
816. ‘He preached for threescore years the cross of Christ to the tribes of Feni.’
817. Is sed ro gell Patraic mac Calpuirn do Sen Phatraic commad immaille ro regtais do chum nime, ocus ised inniset corobai Patraic ota. xiii. (xvi.) kt Aprail co. ix. kt Septembris ar immaig ocus aingil imme oc irnaigte Sen Patraic.
818.
819.
820.
821. .i. i n-Gloinestir na n-Gaedel i Saxsanaib .i. in Britannia.—Petrie, Ant. of Tara, p. 95.
822. Aite Patraic Macha, Sancti Patricii Episcopi doctor.—Petrie, p. 96.
823. Sen Patraic o Rus dela aMuig locha, sed verius est Comad i nGlastingiberra na nGaedel i n-desciurt Saxan ata; Scoti enim prius in peregrinatione ibi abitabant. Acht a tati a thaisi i n-Ulad. Sen Patraic i n-Ardmacha.—Ib.
824. Colgan has unquestionably assigned too early a date to these lives, and the process by which he has done so is not very critical. He conjecturally connects the anonymous lives with the names of those who are said to have written biographies of the saint, and then takes the date of the death of the supposed author as indicating the period when the life must have been compiled. If the life contains expressions indicating a later date he supposes interpolations. There is, however, a very simple test by which these lives fall into the two groups above referred to, and that is by their use of the term Scotia, which was transferred from Ireland to Scotland in the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century. In Colgan’s second and fourth lives Scotia is applied to Ireland, which places them before that period. The fifth life bears in itself to be written by Probus, and his expression ‘Scotiam atque Britanniam, Angliam et Normanniam ceteraque gratis insulanorum baptizabis,’ indicates a later date, while his only name for Ireland is Hibernia. He dedicates his life to a certain Paulinus, whom he addresses with much veneration; but this name is the Latin form of the Irish Maelpoil, and the Irish Annals record in the tenth century the deaths of four ecclesiastics of this name. These are, in 901 Maelpoil, abbot of Sruthair-Guaire; in 920 Maelpoil mac Aillela, bishop, anchorite and scribe, of Leath-Chuinn, an abbot of Indedhnen; in 992 Maelpoil, bishop of Mughain; and in 1000 Maelpoil, bishop of Cluain-mic-nois, and Coärb of Feichin.—An. F. M. The last is probably the Paulinus meant. Of Colgan’s third life the first eleven chapters do not properly belong to it, but are part of his second life, and the life really commences with chapter twelve. It was certainly compiled after the life by Probus, from which much of it appears to have been taken. The life termed by Colgan the Tripartite has been given by him in a Latin translation only; but the original Irish text was discovered by the late Professor O’Curry in the British Museum, and another and somewhat older version in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It likewise belongs to this group, and a translation of the Irish text by Mr W. M. Hennessy has been annexed to Miss Cusack’s Life of St. Patrick. The latest life of all is that by Jocelyn of Furness, which must have been compiled about the year 1185.
825. Printed by Usher in his Sylloge, No. xviii.
826. Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 396, note e.
827. Ib., p. 523.
828. See Colgan, Tr. Th., p. 632, for a list of some of them. See also Dr. Reeves’s Ant. of Down and Connor, p. 145, note.
829. An. F. M., pp. 729, 829. Dr. Reeves has shown that what the annals here call the bed was the Culebadh, or hood, of St. Columba.—Vit. Adamnan, p. lxxxviii.
830. Book of Deer (Spalding Club), p. 93.
831. See antea, p. 414.
832. Reg. Priorat. St. And., pp. 317, 318. See also Dr. Joseph Robertson’s valuable paper on the scholastic offices in the Scottish Church, pp. 26, 27. With regard to the functions of archdeacon and lecturer being discharged by the same person, Dr. Robertson remarks: ‘We can trace a connection between the offices elsewhere.’ Thus Ducange quotes a charter of the year 1213, in which Hugo, archdeacon of Auxerre, narrates that to his office of archdeacon it belongs to provide a lecturer for the church of Auxerre, who shall order the whole course of reading.
833. For these notices of the Scolocs see Dr. Joseph Robertson in the Scholastic Offices, p. 18.
834. Irish Charters in the Book of Kells; Irish Arch. Misc., vol. i. p. 141. Dr. J. Stuart, in a note to his valuable preface to the Book of Deer, p. cxxxix., says—‘It may be doubted whether sufficient evidence has been adduced for holding that all the persons called Scolocs or Scologs in our early records were of the same character, or were in all cases, as has been assumed, scholastics, or the lowest members of the clerical order; but, on the contrary, were in some cases simply the husbandmen or tenants of the land.’ The author concurs in this opinion. The word Scoloc or Scolog unquestionably comes from Scol or Sgol, a school; but the word Sgolog has come to signify in Irish simply a husbandman or farmer, and appears at one time to have been given to a class of cottars in the northern isles. Buchanan, in his Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790, p. 6, says that there is ‘an unfortunate and numerous class of men known under the name of Scallags. The Scallag, whether male or female, is a poor being, who, for mere subsistence, becomes a feudal slave to another, whether a sub-tenant, a tacksman, or a laird. The Scallag builds his own hut with sods and boughs of trees. Five days in the week he works for his master; the sixth is allowed to himself for the cultivation of some scrap of land on the edge of some moss or moor, on which he raises a little kail or colworts, barley and potatoes.’
835. See Dr. Todd’s St. Patrick, p. 507, for a discussion of this question. It certainly appears to the author that the plain inference from the passages there quoted is that letters and the art of writing were introduced by St. Patrick.
836. See the account by Dr. Graves, now bishop of Limerick, of the marginal glosses in the Ogham character on the St. Gall MS. of Priscian.—Proc. R. I. A., vol. vi. p. 209.
837. Mr. Burton, in his characteristic manner, rejects the Ogham character as unreal and the mere creation of fanciful antiquaries. He says, in his chapter on the sculptured stones (vol. i. p. 148)—‘It would be deemed by some unpardonable not to note that some scratchings on these stones have been set down as inscriptions in the Ogham or Ogam character. This professes to be a method of secret writing, being, indeed, no other than that in which the Druids concealed their mysteries. Its avowed qualities are simplicity and flexibility. These qualities are vouched for us on the faith of experiments made chiefly in Ireland, and especially of one in which two antiquaries had read an inscription to pretty nearly the same result, and afterwards found, on comparison of notes, that the one had read from left to right and the other from right to left. This phenomenon seems not to have created much surprise among the learned body who received the reports of the decipherers. That the inscription could be read either way was only a testimony to the power and simplicity of the Ogham character, which has also the faculty that, by shifting the places of the letters or cyphers, a long story may be made out of a few straight lines.’ And Mr. Burton’s sole reference is to a paper in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (i. 3), read in the year 1785.
It would have been unfair to Mr. Burton not to give his reasons for rejecting the Ogham as spurious, as the author cannot refrain from saying that it appears almost incredible to him that any one professing to have made himself acquainted with the literature of the subject could give so uncandid an account of it. The Book of Ballimote, a MS. compiled in the year 1383, contains an account of the Ogham manner of writing, with several alphabets, one of which corresponds with the inscriptions found in numerous stone monuments in Ireland and in Wales, several of those in the latter country being biliteral, and having a corresponding inscription in debased Roman characters. That it was a secret mode of writing known to the Druids is the opinion of only a small section among antiquaries, and is not generally received. Its true character was very clearly brought out by Dr. Graves, now bishop of Limerick, in two papers read in 1848 and 1849 to the same body as that referred to by Mr. Burton (see Proc. R. I. A., vol. iv. pp. 174, 356); and the investigations of Dr. Graves and Dr. Samuel Ferguson in Ireland, and Professor Westwood in Wales, all of which Mr. Burton simply ignores, have placed the genuineness of the Ogham inscriptions beyond the reach of challenge.
838. ‘Not only the several provinces of Ireland,’ says Donlevy, ‘have a different way of pronouncing, but also the very counties, and even baronies in one and the same county, differ in the pronunciation. Nay, some cantons pronounce so oddly that the natural sound of both vowels and consonants, whereof (even according to themselves) the words consist, is utterly lost in their mouths.’—Quoted in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, p. 13. Donlevy published an Irish-English Catechism in 1742.
839. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. iii. c. 3.
840. Adamnan, B. i. c. 30; B. ii. c. 41.
841. O’Donovan’s Grammar of the Irish Language, p. lxxiii.
842. O’Donovan’s Grammar of the Irish Language, p. 404.
843. Printed by Mr. Whitley Stokes in his Irish Glossaries, who has also edited a translation for the Irish Archæological Society.
844. Copies are contained in the Books of Ballimote and Lecan.
845. Adamnan gives us two instances of this. He says (B. i. c. 27) that the inhabitants of Skye ‘call to this day’ the river in which the Pictish chief Artbranan was baptized Dobur Artbranan, and in Cormac’s Glossary (Ir. Ar. Soc., 1868, p. 53) we find ‘Dobur is water, unde dicitur Dobarchu, i.e. water-dog, i.e. an otter;’ again, in another glossary (Gaelic Soc. Tr., Dublin, p. 12), we have ‘Dobhar, a river.’ Adamnan also tells us (B. ii. c. 38) of a peasant ‘who lived in the district which borders the shores of the Stagnum Aporicum,’ or Aporic lake, by which he means Lochaber, and placed a stake blessed by St. Columba under the water, near the beach of the river, ‘qui Latine dici potest Nigra Dea,’ and caught a salmon of extraordinary size. The river Lochy, which flows from Loch Lochy, and pours its waters into the Linnhe Loch, near Fort-William, answers best to the description of this salmon river in Lochaber. The word Lochy, however, has no connection with the term loch, translated by Adamnan ‘stagnum,’ for the vowel o in the former is long, and in the latter short; but Cormac and O’Clery’s Glossaries (Ir. Ar. Soc., 1868, p. 100) have loch with the o long, meaning dubh, or black. Dea is here not the Latin word signifying goddess, but an Irish river-name. Thus, in the Book of Armagh, St. Patrick lands at the Ostium Deæ, by which the river Vartry, in Wicklow, is meant; and the same place is termed in other lives, and also in the Annals of the Four Masters (ad an. 801), Inbher Dea. The name therefore, the first syllable of which Adamnan translates Nigra, was ‘Lochdea’; and in the title to B. i. c. 28, Adamnan has the same name in his Stagnum ‘Lochdiæ,’ which he places in the Pictish province. It is now corrupted into Lochy, in which the obsolete word Loch, black, is preserved.
846. Adamnan, B. i. c. 27; B. ii. c. 33.
847. The Book of Deer has been ably edited for the Spalding Club, with a valuable preface, by Dr. John Stuart, where an elaborate account of its contents will be found. The Gaelic entries have also been printed by Mr. Whitley Stokes in his Goedelica, and an account of the peculiarities of the language will be found at p. 111.
848. Nam Ken, caput Latine; tyern Albanice, dominus Latine, interpretatur.—Jocelyn, Vit. S. Kentigerni, cap. 33.
849. Codiculum autem alium stilo Scottico dictatum reperi, per totum solæcismis scattentem.—Pref.
850. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 136; Chalmers, Caled., 480; Regist. Aberbroth., p. 228.
851. Fordun, Chron., B. ii. c. 9.
852. This subject is more fully discussed in the introduction to the Dean of Lismore’s book, published in 1862.