978
AN GAOḊAL.
glorious old Tongue in which Patrick preached
and Ossian chanted his matchless lays. Season
after season gives us a fine crop of so-called pat¬
riots. How many of them endeavor, or ever attemp¬
ted to show the Irish people the priceless value of
their own Irish Language? How many of them
have ever labored to show that one of the surest
means to regain their lost heritage, their freedom
and nationality, is to cultivate their native Ton¬
gue? And yet, where is the intelligent Irishman
who in his heart does not know this to be so. Its
chilling to witness their apathy.
I enclose you p.o.o. for two dollars, it is but the
widow's mite, but it is offered with at least a good
heart. I can assure you, a poor priest in these
frontier missions can do little with his purse. In
the East it is not so, and it is surprising how care¬
less the many good Sagart seem to be regarding
this movement. I was happy to see by a copy of
the Gaodhal that my old friend Tim Halvey is
still in the ranks. God bless him and prosper him.
Wishing you and the good work in which you
are engaged every success, I remain, my dear Mr.
Logan,
Your sincere friend,
M. C. BRENNAN.
O'Curry's Lectures.
ON THE
MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL OF ANCIENT IRISH HIS¬
TORY.
LECTURE IV.
[Delivered March 22, 1855]
(Continued)
I say probably by the O'Luinins, because the Du¬
blin copy was transcribed by Ruaidhridhe, or Ro¬
ry O'Luinin, as appears from two insertions which
occur in that volume in a blank space, at the end
of the year 1373. The first is written in a good
hand, as old at least as the year 1600, in the fol¬
lowing words: “Let every one who reads this lit¬
tle bit bestow a blessing on the man who wrote
it." And this immediately followed by these words,
"It is fitter to bestow it on the soul of Rory O'Lui¬
nin, who wrote the book well."
From another note which is written in this copy
in the lower margin of folio 35, col. 3. a, it is evi¬
dent that the writer of this latter note was engaged
in making a transcript of the volume at the time,
but have no means of knowing who he was.
The O'Luinins were physicians, historians, and
genealogists, chiefly to the MacGuires of Ferman¬
agh, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centu¬
ry. One of that family, named Gillapatrick O'¬
Luinin, of Ard Luinin, in the County of Ferman¬
agh, chief chronicler to MacGuire, assisted the
friar Michael O'Clery, the chief of the Four Mas¬
ters, in the compilation of the Leabhar Gabhala
(or Book of Invasions and Monarchial Successions
of Erinn), for Brian Ruadh MacGuire, first Baron
of Inniskillen, in the year 1630 or 1631.
The Bodleian MS. (Rawlinson, 489) is called the
original copy of those annals, says Dr. O'Conor,
because, it is the matrix of all the copies now
known to exist. But it is not meant that there
were not older manuscripts, from which Cathal
Maguire collected and transcribed, before the year
1498.
Nicolson says that the Ulster Annals begin at
444, and end, not at 1041, as the printed catalog¬
ues of our MSS. assert, but at 1541. Mr. Edward
Llhwyd, the celebrated Welch antiquarian, men¬
tions a copy of these annals which he calls Senat¬
enses, which he had from Mr. John Conry, written
on vellum in a fair character, but imperfect at the
beginning and end, for it begins, says he, at the
year 454, ten years later than the Duke of Chan¬
dos', and ends several years sooner, at 1492,
The truth is, as stated in the Rerum Hibernica¬
rum, vol. I., that neither Maguire nor Cassidi was
the author of these annals, but only the collector.
Augustin Madriadan had preceded both in the same
task, and continued to his own time, says Ware,
the chronicle, which the monks of his monastery
in the island of All Saints, in the Shannon, had
commeneed; and he died in 1405.
We have seen that MacGraidagh was in all pob¬
ability the continuator of Tighernach, but I know
of no reason for assigning to him any part in the
compilation of the the Annals of Ulster.
In the Bodleian MS. (Rawlinson, 489), better
known by the name of the Chandos MS, four folios
are missing after the leaf paged 50. That leaf con¬
cludes with the seventh line of the year 1131, and
the next leaf (numbered 55) begins with the con¬
clusion of 1155, so that there is an hiatus of 24
years. The copy now before us concludes with
the year 1131, where that hiatus occurs.
The first page of the Oxford MS. is nearly obli¬
terated. By some unaccountable barbarity the en¬
graved seal of the University is pasted over the
written page, so as to efface all the writing under¬
neath, the words which are illegible there are re¬
stored in this Stowe transcript, by aid of the copy
in the British Museum, which is imperfect and in¬
terpolated. The folios of the original Bodleian are
paged from I to 134, in modern Arabics, and they
are rightly paged down to the year 1131, after
which four leaves are missing down to the year
1156. The leaf containing the first part of 1131,
is rightly paged 51, and the next is rightly paged
55. How the four intermediate leaves have been
lost, it is impossible now to ascertain. Folio 66 is
erroneously paged 67, as if one leaf were missing
there, which is not the case. Folio 70 is paged
80, as if ten leaves were missing, whereas not one
is lost. One folio is missing from the year 1303 to
1315 inclusive, and the paging is then incorrect to
the end. In its present state the folios of this ma¬
nuscript are precisely 126.
We must be cautious, continues Dr. O'Conor, in
asserting that the whole of this MS. was written
by one person, or at one time. Down to 952, the
ink and characters are uniform, but then a finer
style of writing follows down to 1001.
When the transcriber comes to 999, he states on
the opposite margin, that this was really the year
of our aera 1000, for that the Ulster Annals pre¬
cede the common aere by one year — a clear proof
that the transcriber was not the compiler or author
for this note is in the same ink and characters with
the text. He annexes the same remark frequently
to the subsequent years, as at 1000, where he says
alias 1001.
It is remarkable that these are uniform in ante-
dating the Christian aera by one year only, down
to the folio numbered 68, year 1263. and that there
instead of preceding our aera by only one year,
they precede by two, so that the year 1265 is really
1264, as stated on the margin in Ware's hand —
