A fresh start in the study of Celtic literature—Advent of foremost scholars—The new basis found by Zeuss—Resurrection of ancient texts—Unexpected light—H. d’Arbois de Jubainville and his mission to this country—The numbers, dates, and localities of Gaelic MSS.: (1) on the Continent; (2) in the British Isles—Subject matter—Examples of the oldest written Gaelic poetry in Europe—The great books of saga—Leabhar Na h’Uidhre—Books of Leinster, Ballymote, and Lismore—Quotations—Account of the Ancient Annals—Tighernach—The Chronicon Scotorum—The “Four Masters”—Romance of the fugitive documents.

It is practically within the last fifty years that the great revival in the study of Celtic literature has taken place. About the middle of last century the foremost scholars began to arrive, and since then there has been quite a galaxy of experts, both on the Continent and in the British Isles, who have approached the subject on scientific lines, and by careful literary research have not only opened to us the treasures of the past, but have also thrown a flood of light on them.

Prior to their advent, Celtic studies had no solid basis, for the sufficient reason that the materials were not available. Old-time convulsions had dispersed the documents to the four winds, and they remained where they lay, buried for ages from the public eye.

Such learned men as occupied themselves with these studies before the middle of last century confined their attention in great part to the languages and literatures of the Neo-Celtic races—the Welsh and the Bretons. They sought in these light to dissipate the obscurity that hung over the early history of the Celtic race—the period anterior to the conquest of Gaul by the Romans. They consulted grammars and dictionaries published in Brittany, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, during the last three centuries. Of the texts themselves, the oldest they knew were Welsh, dating from about the thirteenth century; and some poems of Welsh bards preserved in MSS., of which the most ancient went no farther back than the end of the twelfth century. These were literary treasures indeed, with the characteristic Celtic flavour, as may be seen from the beautiful critiques of Renan and Matthew Arnold, both of whom were charmed by the spirit and sentiment they breathe.

But in general it may be said that the early scholars had only mastered the more modern forms of the language, and it was from texts comparatively recent that they sought illumination of a past removed from them by more than nineteen centuries.

Such was the stage Celtic study had reached—a kind of arrested development—when suddenly a unique resuscitation took place.

The first of the new scholars to arrive were O’Donovan and O’Curry. Eugene O’Curry, Professor of the Catholic University of Ireland, went straight to the necessities of the case by publishing in 1849 a catalogue of the Gaelic MSS. in the British Museum, and then, of those in the Royal Academy of his native land. Afterwards, besides other valuable contributions, he gave to the world his Lectures on the MS. Materials of Irish History, enhancing the interest of the work by putting a very large and varied selection of facsimiles of the ancient writings in the appendix. A very Tischendorf was this indefatigable MS. hunter and interpreter. Very aptly indeed did he speak of himself as an underground worker. Much had been done by other labourers, but the foundation was still to seek and still to lay. And it is significant of former methods, that he knew not one man previous to his own time who had qualified himself for the work in hand, either by mastering the ancient Gaelic, or by making himself acquainted with the MSS. And yet these are the genuine sources of historical and antiquarian knowledge in this department.

Close after O’Curry came the great Continental savant Zeuss, who may be regarded as the real founder of the new and solid basis on which Celtic studies now rest. His monumental work, the erudite Grammatica Celtica, appeared in Leipzig in 1853, giving a new impetus all over Europe to a study which hitherto had attracted but a languid, or at the best, a restricted attention. And when, following up this great work, the German grammarian published the glosses found in some of the oldest Gaelic MSS. on the Continent, it was recognised that he had opened up a new and most fertile field for future explorers. These latter were immediately forthcoming—learned authorities, like Nigra, Ascoli, Ebel, Stokes, Windisch, and Zimmer, who brought to light other important documents and explained their significance. Thus was the new movement in Celtic study duly inaugurated, with what results we shall see.

The glosses published by Zeuss, though they furnish no fresh ideas, offer to the learned world a grammatical interest of the highest kind. They belong, some to the eighth century, others to the ninth, and the venerable Gaelic in which they are couched presents certain antique and curious characteristics which are entirely lacking to the Welsh of the same period, and still more to that of the twelfth and following centuries—the only forms known to the scholars before Zeuss.

Since his time the new basis which he found for Celtic studies has been wonderfully enlarged, chiefly through the discovery of other Gaelic texts contemporary with some of those that served for his own beautiful work. And then the remarkable publications of erudite men in Dublin, and the excellent work of Windisch, Professor of Sanskrit at Leipzig, have called the attention of experts on the continent to a great mass of documentary material in the British Isles. Under the transcription and retouching of many of these MSS. by later copyists, there are found original compositions, primarily in the ancient Gaelic of which Zeuss was the first interpreter.

Unlike the glosses, they furnish us with a vast storehouse of new ideas and traditions of every sort, comprising especially the mythological and legendary, the legal also, and even the grammatical under various forms. Their originality is unquestionable. These texts, in carrying us back to pagan times, throw quite unexpected light on the incomplete though precious accounts which ancient writers like Cæsar, Diodorus of Sicily, and Strabo have given of the primitive civilisation of the Gauls. We should expect to find in this mass of curious heroic literature some expression of the traditions common to all the Celtic race before the settlement of the different branches in the countries which now bear their name, and we are not disappointed. The MSS. preserved do give us a crowd of fresh thoughts on the beliefs and customs of the Celts in the most ancient epochs of their history.

In this respect they help to gratify the longing desire of living men to know something of the actions, the range of thought, the character of mind, the habits, the tastes, the arts, the religion, and, in short, the everyday life of so old and venerable a race as our own, which has played such a wonderful part in the drama of history.

The French authorities have been fully alive to the value of these studies, and on one occasion, at least, the Minister of Public Instruction showed his interest in a very practical and laudable way. In February of 1881 Jules Ferry, who was in office at the time, appointed H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Professor of Celtic in the College of France, as a special commissioner to visit the British Isles, and investigate and make a list of all the Gaelic MSS. he could find. This literary mission De Jubainville carried out the same year, subsequently embodying his report in a book which gives not only his catalogue of MSS. inspected in England and Ireland, but also a list of those on the Continent. For some reason or other he omitted to include Scotland in the area of his research, and so the large collection of valuable documents in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, is not chronicled in his interesting résumé. Yet still, we have now for the first time a pretty general estimate of all the more important material available.

We need not follow this enthusiastic MS. hunter in his peregrinations through the British Isles and on the Continent, entering, as he frequently did, the precincts of ancient universities, cloisters, and museums, sitting in odd corners in libraries, poring over musty leaves, deciphering antique characters, looking at some documents through glass cases which he would fain see opened, handling others with eager, hurried scrutiny, while a verger or a monk mounts sentry over the inquisitive foreigner, watching the precious relics with jealous care, and limiting the time for observation.

What concerns us most are the tabulated results; and we might look in the passing at some of the more striking facts which they exhibit.

And first of all it is not a little surprising to learn that, while the libraries of the Continent possess twenty MSS., or more correctly twenty portions of MSS., written in the Gaelic language before the eleventh century, in the libraries of England and Ireland there are only seven of that remote age. But after that date the British libraries take the lead, since the number of their Gaelic MSS. before the seventeenth century amount to 133, whereas the total on the Continent down to the seventeenth century is only thirty-five. Of course this excludes the Celtic Latin MSS., of which there are upwards of 200 in European libraries.

Altogether there are just fifty-six Gaelic documents that are known to be on the Continent of dates ranging from the eighth to the nineteenth century, and these are distributed as follows:—

Besides the number, antiquity, and wide distribution of these MSS., we are struck with two things. First, the fact that Milan and Cambray, two Continental cities, have the honour of possessing the two most ancient Gaelic MSS. now extant. One of these relics is a Latin commentary on the Psalms, the other a Latin sermon, but in both there are glosses in Irish or Gaelic written in the eighth century. Earlier than that we cannot go for actual writing still extant in the native tongue.

The other striking thing about the list is the entire absence of Gaelic MSS. in the northern countries of Europe, such as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, where we should most expect to find them. There is one indeed at Stockholm, but it is merely a copy written in the sixteenth century. Surely this goes far to confirm the sinister reputation of the marauding Danes and Norsemen with regard to learning. Keating, writing 250 years ago, asserts their destructiveness. “It was not allowed to give instruction in letters.... No scholars, no clerics, no books, no holy relics, were left in church or monastery through dread of them. Neither bard nor philosopher nor musician pursued his wonted profession in the land.”

Apparently these northern pillagers, who laid waste so many monasteries, instead of removing the rare and precious books to their own lands, were no better than the Vandals in their mad business of burning and destroying on the spot what they evidently themselves could not value or appreciate.

But coming now to the British Isles, we might briefly consider the literary legacy which the learned Frenchman found in those libraries of England and Ireland that he visited. In all, he mentions 953 as the number of MSS. to which he had access, and these were located as follows:—

So far from being exhaustive, our literary commissioner thinks these figures very far below the actual number of Gaelic MSS. in the British Isles. Though he makes no reference in this respect to Wales or Scotland, he is aware that there must be many in private libraries that he has not indicated. And he admits that, according to O’Curry, Trinity College has 140 instead of the 63 he mentions. And besides its 559 catalogued MSS., the Royal Academy of Ireland possesses about as many more not catalogued, of which only one, the Book of Fermoy, was described to him as worthy of his special attention.

Though in point of antiquity there is none of all these British MSS. to compare with the oldest glosses on the Continent, there are two which come near it. They date from the ninth century, and are both located in Trinity College. These are the Book of Armagh and the Book of Dimna. Next in order, between the ninth and tenth centuries, come (1) the Irish Canons at Cambridge; (2) the Gospel of Maeielbrid Mac Durnâin, tenth century, at Lambeth Palace; (3) the Psalter of Southampton, end of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh, at St. John’s College, Cambridge; (4) The Book of Deer, with its Latin, ninth to tenth, and Gaelic entries tenth to twelfth, also at Cambridge in the University Library; and (5) the Gaelic portion of the Missal of Stowe, bought by the British Government with the rest of Lord Ashburnham’s collection for their Museum.

These seven MSS. are the most ancient, the only ones, in fact, in which you find Gaelic written before the eleventh century within the British Isles. Yet they are not Gaelic MSS., strictly speaking, but Latin ones in which are found some words or phrases or paragraphs written in the native tongue. The Gospel of Maeielbrid, for example, contains only a line and a half of Gaelic, the Book of Armagh four pages.

To find what we would strictly call Gaelic documents, we must come down as far as the closing years of the eleventh century, which yields us four. Henceforth there is no lack of abundant and rich material. The twelfth century is credited with seven, the thirteenth with eight, the fourteenth with eleven, the fifteenth and sixteenth with ninety-six, the seventeenth with sixty-six, the first half of the eighteenth with seventy-seven. Total down to the year 1750, 276 MSS. in the British Isles of the whole number 953 catalogued by De Jubainville. So that the remainder, the vast majority of the British MSS., are of comparatively recent date, subsequent in fact even to the days of Macpherson of Ossianic fame.

More important than the number, dates, and distribution is the subject-matter of our literary legacy, and this now falls to be considered. It is very difficult to classify the MSS. according to their contents, as so many of them are miscellaneous. Yet they do admit of being brought under certain categories. Leaving aside for the present all the later ones written after 1600, we have in all 168 Continental and British documents to deal with.

Of these we must place in a section apart all the Latin ones that only contain glosses or poems or notes in Gaelic which are additional or secondary to the original text. This is the case with all the Continental MSS. concerned, except three, one at Rennes, one at Paris, and one at Stockholm. It is also the case with ten Britishers, viz. (1) the Book of Deer, (2) the Irish Canons, (3) the Psalter at Cambridge, (4) the Gospel of Maelbrigte hua Maelûanaig, (5) the Book of Dimna, (6) the Book of Armagh, (7) the Book of Kells, (8) the fragment of Psalter attributed to St. Camin, (9) the Missal of Stowe, and (10) the Gospel of Maeielbrid Mac Durnâin at Lambeth Palace.

That makes a total of forty-two in which the Gaelic is only added in notes to a Latin original. Yet they comprise the most ancient of all we have, and though their grammatical value is very considerable, their literary interest is but meagre—almost nil in fact—with the exception of the few poems at Milan, St. Gall, Dresden, St. Paul in Carinthia, and Klosterneuburg.

As these poems seem to lie like wayside flowers in our path, it is worth our while, before passing on, to turn aside for a little to cull some of the verses.

Of the two poems in the Milan codex, Dr. Stokes declares they are difficult to decipher and more difficult to translate. But of the four quatrains on the margin of the Priscian of St Gall, here are two charming examples, very characteristic of the Gael’s love of nature and learning, as well as reminiscent of his wild environment. The first is not unlike the lyric of Columcille himself, when he describes the peace of Durrow:—

The author of the second, as Professor Mackinnon has fancied, must often have seen the storm burst upon a wild spot on the west of Ireland, or, more likely still, on Iona, Tiree, Oronsay, or Skye.

In the Codex Boernerianus of Dresden we have the following lines. Translated literally, they run thus:—

To go to Rome is much of trouble, little of profit. The King whom thou seekest here, unless thou bring him with thee thou findest not.

Great folly, great madness, great loss of sense, great folly since thou hast proposed (?) to go to death, to be under the unwill of Mary’s Son.

It was the late Herr Mone, Archivdirektor at Carlsruhe, who discovered the Gaelic poems in the MS. belonging to St. Paul in Carinthia, and sent the first verse of the first of these poems to Dr. Reeves. Thereafter Dr. Whitley Stokes wrote him requesting to be favoured with the remainder, with which request he not only complied, but also sent two other extracts from the same codex, and a letter dated Carlsruhe, January 24th, 1859. There are in all five short Gaelic poems or fragments in the MS.

The first, of eight stanzas, is in praise of Aedh, son of Diarmad, and has been translated by Eugene O’Curry.

We give here simply the first and last verses:—

The next to be quoted is part of a longer poem found in the Books of Leinster, Ballymote, Glendaloch, Lismore, and a Bodleian MS. The copy from the Book of Leinster is given in full by Dr. Whitley Stokes in his Goidelica, but here are the two quatrains of it in the Carinthian codex:—

The third poem, Dr. Stokes says, is exceedingly obscure. It seems to mean—

There remains a fort in Tuain Inbir ... with its stars last night, with its sun, with its moon.

Gobhan made that: let its story be perceived by you: my heartlet, God of heaven, he is the thatcher that thatched it.

A house wherein thou gettest not moisture; a place wherein thou fearest not spear-points. More radiant it is than a garden, and it without an udnacht around it.

Another of the pieces in this Carinthian MS. is of a very different order. A monk in a humorous and facetious strain, according to Professor Zimmer, contrasts his own serious studies with the very different pursuits of another person whom he calls Pan Gurban (or Panqur ban, Windisch), a Slavonic name, meaning, as Zimmer thinks, “Mr. Hunchback.”

Omitting the forty-two Gaelic documents from the 168, we have 126 remaining which have been written before the year 1600, and these deal with a great variety of subjects: religion, law, medicine, astronomy, grammar, history, and legendary history.

The texts that treat of theology, mysticism, lives of saints, and martyrologies, are very numerous; those of law few. Medicine figures in a class apart. Astronomy gets even a smaller place than medicine. Its most ancient monument dates from the fourteenth century.

One of the most curious and least known of all the Gaelic relics is a treatise on Gaelic grammar, written in Gaelic. It is divided into four books, and is preserved to us in ten MSS. of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The four books of which it is composed are attributed, the first to Cennfaelad, an historic personage who died in 678; the other three to mythical, prehistoric authors, such as Fercertné, Amergin Glûngel, and Fenius Farsaid. The antiquity and ability of the latter grammarian for the work, may be inferred from the somewhat startling statement that he is said to have composed the Gaelic tongue out of seventy-two languages, and afterwards his son Nial visited Egypt to teach the languages after the confusion of Babel. Verily the Celts were an enterprising race to have a grammarian first in the field, and the nebulous Fenius Farsaid deserves a grave as high as Browning’s hero, for even before Moses “ground he at grammar.” It is a pity that this rare old treatise which Ireland possessed in the Middle Ages has not been published. The MSS. are in the British Museum, Royal Academy of Ireland, Trinity College, and with the Franciscans of Dublin.

But not in any of the above-named categories do we find the body and soul of Celtic literature. The real breathing spirit of the past speaks to us rather in the great MSS. of the Middle Ages, those which deal with romance and history—the earlier sagas and the later annals; and these deserve more than a passing reference. The saga or heroic literature is far and away the most curious and abundant. De Jubainville himself chronicles no less than 540 pieces of this class. But its greatest monuments are the miscellaneous MSS. known as the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre, the Book of Leinster, Book of Ballymote, Book of Lecain, and Book of Lismore.

No more precious and important document in the whole range of ancient Gaelic literature has reached us than the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre, or Book of the Dun Cow, said to be so called after an original text of that name now lost, but of which it contains a copy. St. Ciaran, it appears, wrote down from the dictation of the risen Fergus, the tale of the “Táin Bó Chuailgné,” in a book which he had made from the hide of his pet cow. This favourite from its colour was called the Odhar (or Dun), of which Na h’Uidhre is the genitive. The existing Leabhar Na h’Uidhre is a MS. of the end of the eleventh century, and, even more than the Book of Hymns, its contemporary, it merits the distinction of being the earliest exclusively Gaelic document that we have. Besides preserving St. Ciaran’s version of the Táin, it contains a copy of Dallan Forgaill’s famous “Amra” in praise of Columcille, and quite a number of ancient sacred and secular pieces, some of which are of great interest. The compiler of this venerable codex was Maelmuiri, son of the son of Conn nam-Bocht, a writer who met his death in 1106 in the middle of the great stone church of Clonmacnois, at the hands of a band of robbers. There is a quaint inscription at the top of folio 45 in his own original handwriting. The words run, “This is a trial of his pen here by Maelmuiri, son of the son of Conn.”

Next in importance to Leabhar Na h’Uidhre comes the Book of Leinster, written fifty years later. Rich in saga, it contains the fullest account of the “Táin Bó Chuailgné.” O’Curry sets so high a value upon this codex that he writes: “I think I may say with sorrow that there is not in all Europe any nation but this of ours that would not long since have made a national literary fortune out of such a volume, had any other country in Europe been fortunate enough to possess such an heirloom of history.”

The Book of Ballymote belongs to the end of the fourteenth century—that of Lismore to the fifteenth. The latter is the property of the Duke of Devonshire, having been discovered in his Castle of Lismore, county of Waterford, Ireland, so late as the year 1814. Besides containing Lives of saints, etc., it is considered specially important in point of view of the Ossianic cycle.

Of all the heroic sagas the greatest and the longest is that for which we are indebted to the Book of Leinster and Leabhar Na h’Uidhre—the “Táin Bó Chuailgné.” This is not the place to deal with such a lengthy story; but by way of illustrating the quality and literary interest of these old world MSS., preserving as they do the most characteristic traits of Celtic genius in the age before writing, we give two quotations from this wonderful saga.

And the first will show the keen perception, the wealth of pictorial detail, and descriptive power of language so characteristic of the Gaelic ursgeuls and poems. It is the personal account of the Ulster chiefs as given in the Táin.

“There came another company there,” said Mac Roth; “no champion could be found more comely than he who leads them. His hair is of a deep-red yellow, and bushy; his forehead broad and his face tapering; thin red lips; pearly shining teeth; a white smooth body. A red and white cloak flutters about him; a golden brooch in that cloak at his breast; a shirt of white kingly linen with gold embroidery at his skin; a white shield with gold fastenings at his shoulder; a gold-hilted long sword at his left side; a long, sharp, dark-green spear with a rich band and carved silver rivets in his hand.” “Who is he, O Fergus?” said Ailill. “The man who has come there is in himself half a battle; the fury of the slaughter hound,” etc.

Truly a wonderful accoutred warrior was this, and gorgeous in his apparel for his age. Like our Oriental Nabobs and savage chiefs he believed in colour and luxurious display.

But I fancy it would be hard to beat the second quotation as an illustration of the riotous luxuriance of the Celtic imagination in the days when it was at its best, unsobered by science, unrestricted by reason. The quotation is from the description of the fight between the two rival bulls in Queen Meve’s country. In the poetic language of the tale, “the province rang with the echoes of their roaring, the sky was darkened by the sods of earth they threw up with their feet, and the foam that flew from their mouths; faint-hearted men, women, and children hid themselves in caves, caverns, and clefts of the rocks, whilst even the most veteran warriors but dared to view the combat from the neighbouring hills and eminences. The Finn-bheannach or White-horned at length gave way, and retreated towards a certain pass which opened into the plain in which the battle raged, and where sixteen warriors bolder than the rest had planted themselves; but so rapid was the retreat and the pursuit that not only were all these trampled to the ground, but they were buried several feet in it. The Donn Chuailgne at last coming up with his opponent, raised him on his horns, ran off with him, passed the gates of Meve’s palace, tossing and shaking him as he went, until at last he shattered him to pieces, dropping his disjointed members as he went along. And wherever a part fell, that place retained the name of that joint ever after.” And thus it was that “Ath Luain, now Athlone, which was before called Ath Mor or the Great Ford, received its present name from the Finnbheannach’s luan or loin having been dropped there.”

This “Táin Bó Chuailgné” opens a window upon the past, and were it only for the rich and abundant historical details it so lavishly furnishes, must be held a treasure. “Notwithstanding the extreme wildness of the legend,” says O’Curry, “I am not acquainted with any tale in the whole range of our literature in which the student will find more of valuable details concerning general and local history; more of description of the manners and customs of the people; of the druidical and fairy influence supposed to be exercised in the affairs of men; of the laws of Irish chivalry and honour; of the standards of beauty, morality, valour, truth, and fidelity exercised by the people of old; of the regal power and dignity of the monarch and the provincial kings, as well as much concerning the division of the country into its local dependencies; lists of its chieftains and chieftaincies; many valuable topographical names; the names and kinds of articles of dress and ornament; of military weapons; of horses, chariots, and trappings; of leechcraft as well as instances of perhaps every occurrence that could be supposed to happen in ancient Irish life. All of these details are of the utmost value to the student of history, even though mixed up with any amount of the marvellous or incredible in poetical traditions.”

So much for the sagas and monuments of heroic literature. There remain the other great class of MSS. to which we have referred—the Annals. They serve as a basis for Irish history, and only the more quaint and important need be mentioned here, such as the Annals of Tighernach, the Chronicon Scotorum, the Annals of Innisfallen, the Annals of Boyle, the Annals of Ulster, the Annals of Loch Cé, the Annals of Clonmacnois, and most important of all, the book called the “Four Masters.”

Of all these the Annals of Tighernach is the most ancient and most reliable, having for author the abbot of that name who died in 1088. It is supposed that in compiling this work he had as basis a chronicle kept by the monks from the founding of the abbey in 544. The MS. of this history belongs to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A considerable part of it is in Gaelic, interspersed with numerous quotations from Latin and Greek authors. Dr. O’Conor, commenting on this, remarks that Tighernach’s balancing of these authorities against each other manifests a degree of criticism uncommon in the early age in which he lived.

The precious historical composition known as the Chronicon Scotorum exists in a copy written towards 1650 by Duald Mac Firbis. The original belonged to the twelfth century, the chronicle itself ending in 1135. It begins with the following title and short preface by the compiler:—

The chronicle of the Scots (or Irish) begins here—

Understand, O Reader, that it is for a certain reason, and particularly to avoid tediousness that our intention is to make only a short abstract and compendium of the history of the Scots in this book, omitting the lengthened details of the historical books; wherefore it is that we beg of you not to criticise us on that account as we know that it is an exceedingly great deficiency.

He then passes rapidly over the first three ages of the world,—the earlier colonisation of Ireland, the death of the colonists at Tallaght in the county of Dublin, and the visit of Nial, the son of Fenius Farsaid, to Egypt to teach the languages. With winged speed the compiler reaches the year 375, when St. Patrick was born, and then the red letter date 432 which witnessed his arrival in Ireland. Columcille’s prayer at the battle of Cooldrevna is given under the year 561, and numerous scraps of poems here and there quoted as authorities. A large deficiency occurs between 722 and 805 A.D., where the compiler has written, “The breasts (or fronts) of two leaves of the old book out of which I write this, are wanting here, and I leave what is before me of this page for them, I am, Dubhaltach Firbisigh.” A similar defect, it may be noted, occurs in the Annals of Tighernach from 756 to 973.

The other Annals above-mentioned carry the history down towards the end of the sixteenth century.

Almost contemporary with the Chronicon Scotorum arose the greatest of all, The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, commonly cited as the “Four Masters,” a name given to its authors by Colgan. It was the work of Michael O’Clery and other three great scholars, begun in 1632 and finished in 1636. All the best and most copious Annals he could find throughout Ireland were collected by him for this magnum opus. Like so many others of these historical compilations, it begins far back, in the year of the world 2242, and finishes in 1616 A.D. “There is no event of Irish history,” says Dr. Hyde, “from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the seventeenth century, that the first inquiry of the student will not be, ‘What do the “Four Masters” say about it?’ for the great value of the work consists in this, that we have here in condensed form the pith and substance of the old books of Ireland which were then in existence, but which, as the Four Masters anticipated, have long since perished.”

The work has been published by O’Donovan in 1851. His is regarded as the best and most complete edition in translation and notes. It forms six volumes, without counting the supplementary index. The autograph MS. still exists, composed of two volumes, of which the first, stopping at the year 1169, forms No. XXI. of the Stowe Collection. Of the second volume there are two autograph copies: the one complete, in the library of the Royal Academy of Ireland; the other, comprising only the years 1335 to 1605, is preserved at Trinity College, Dublin.

And now looking back over this long legacy of vellum, is there not something eerie in the thought of these old-world musty MSS. creeping out once more into the light, after ages of gravelike oblivion?

If we could follow their actual history, from their slow genesis under the pen of ancient amanuenses through their subsequent fortunes, when perhaps some of them under the cloak of a fleeing monk, or in a shaky coracle at sea, barely escaped the fury of illiterate warriors or the waves; some of them other perils on land in their wanderings through the British Isles and the Continent,—what a revelation of life and destiny that would be! They have slept a long sleep through turbulent ages since then, apparently unappreciated, buried, neglected, and forgotten, but now in this new age, as we have seen, there is a mighty hunt and scramble for the resurrected relics. Many of them have been already published, and there is a movement afoot by the Irish Text Society to print the more important of the rest. Libraries and individuals compete with each other for possession of the originals. So that now, in the eyes of the wise and the wealthy, the hitherto obsolete MSS., often cast aside in odd chests and closets as mere brown rubbish, are more prized and coveted as rare treasure than even their rivals of to-day. And what a legacy of vellum all-told we owe to the old scribes of cell and cloister; from the legended Fenius Farsaid all the way down to the “Four Masters.”