AN GAOḊAL.
835
bishop of Ferns in the seventh century, with its
ancient box, and the fragment of another copy of
the Gospels, of the same period, evidently Irish.
In the same library will be found too, the chief
body of our more ancient laws and annals, all
with the exception of two tracts, written on vel¬
lum, and in addition to these invaluable volumes,
many historical and family poems of great antiq¬
uity, illustrative of the battles, the personal ach¬
ievements, and the social habits of the warriors,
chiefs and other distinguished personages of our ear¬
ly history. There is also a large number of ancient
historical and romantic tales, in which all the inci¬
dents of war, of love and of social life in general,
are portrayed, often with considerable power of
description and great brillancy of language, and
there are besides several sacred tracts and poems,
among the most remarkable of which is the Liber
Hymnorum, believed to be more than a thousand
years old. The Trinity College collection is also
rich in Lives of Irish Saints, and in ancient forms
of prayer, and it contains in addition to all these
many curious treatises on medicine, beautifully
written on vellum, Lastly, amongst these ancient
MSS. are preserved numerous Ossianic poems re¬
lating to the Fenian heroes, some of them of very
great antiquity.
The next great collection is that of the Royal
Irish Academy, which though formed at a later
period than that of Trinity College, is far more ex¬
tensive, and taken in connection with the unrival¬
ed collection of antiquities secured to this country
by the liberality of this body, form a national mon¬
ument of which we may well be proud, It includes
some noble old volumes written on vellum, a¬
bounding in history as well as poetry, ancient laws
and genealogy, since (for it embrases several cur¬
ious medical treatises, as well as an ancient astron¬
omical tract), grammar and romance. There is
there also a great body of most important theolog¬
ical and ecclesiastical compositions, of the highest
antiquity, and in the purest style perhaps that the
ancient Gaedhlic language ever attained.
The most valuable of these are original Gaedh¬
lic compositions, but there is also a large a¬
mount of translations from the Latin, Greek and
other languages. A great part of the translation
is, indeed of religious character, but there are others
from various Latin authors, of the greatest possi-
importance, to the Gaedhlic student of the present
day, as they enable him by reference to the origin¬
als to determine the value of many now obsolete
Gaedhlic words and phrases.
Among these latter translations into Irish, we
find an extensive range of subjects in ancient My¬
thology, Poetry and History, and the Classical
Literature of the Greeks and Romans, as well as
many copious illustrations of the most remarkable
events of the Middle Ages. So that any one well
read in the comparatively few existing fragments
of our Gaedhlic Literature, and whose education
had been confined solely to this source, would find
that there are but very few indeed, of the great e¬
vents in the history of the world, the knowledge of
which is usually attained through the Classic
Languages, or those of the middle ages, with
which he was not acquainted. I may mention by
way or illustration, the Irish versions of the Arg¬
onautic Expedition, the Destruction of Troy, the
Wars of Charlemagne, including the History of
Roland the Brave, the history of the Lombards,
the almost contemporary translation into Gaedhlic
of the Travels of Marco Polo, etc., etc.
It is quite evident that a Language which has
embraced so wide a field of historic and other im¬
portant subject, must have undergone a consider¬
able amount of development, and must have been
at once copious and flexible, and it may be observ¬
ed in passing that the very fact of so much of
translation into Irish having taken place, shows
that there must have been a considerable number
of readers, since men of learning would not have
translated for themselves what they could so easily
understand in the original.
Passing over some collections of MSS. in pri¬
vate hands at home. I may next notice that of the
British Museum in London, which is very consid¬
erable, and contains much valuable matter, that
of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which, though
consisting of but about sixteen volumes, is en¬
riched by some most precions books, among which
is the copy already alluded to of the remains of the
Saltair of Cashel, made in the year 1464, and some
two or three works of an older date. Next comes
the Stowe collection, now in the possession of
Lord Ashburnham, and which is tolerably well de¬
scribed in the Stowe Catalogue, by the late Rev.
Charles O'Conor. There are also in England some
other collections in the hands of private individu¬
als, as that of Mr. Joseph Monck Mason in the
neighborhood of London, and that of Sir Thomas
Phillips in Worcestershire. The Advocates' Li¬
brary, in Edinburgh contains a few inportant vol¬
umes, some of which are shortly described in the
Highland Society's Report on MacPherson's Poems
of Oisin. published in 1794.
And passing over to the Continent, in the National
or Imperial Library of Paris (which, however, has
not yet been thoroughly examined, there will be
found a few Gaedhlic volumes, and in Belgium (be¬
tween which and Ireland such intimate relations
existed in past times), — and particularly in the
Burgundian Library at Brussels, — there is "a very
important collection, consisting of a part of the
treasures formerly in possession of the Franciscan
College of Louvain, for which our justly celebrat¬
ed Friar, Michael O'Clery, collected, by transcript
and otherwise, all that he could bring together at
home of matters relating to the ancient ecclesias¬
tical history of his country.
The Louvian collection, formed chiefly if not
wholly, by Fathers Hugh Ward, John Colgan and
Michael O'Clery, between the years 1620 1640, app¬
ears to have been widely scattered at the French
Revolution. For there are in the College of St.
Isidore, in Rome, about twenty volumes of Gaedh¬
lic MSS., which we know at one time to have form¬
ed part of the Louvain collection. Among these
MS. now at Rome are some of the most valuable
materials for the study of our langage — the chief
of which is an ancient copy of the Felire Aengusa,
the Martyrology, or Festology of Aengus Ceile De
(pron. Keli De), incorrectly called Aengus Culdee,
who composed the original of this extraordinary
work, partly at Tamhlacht, now Tallaght, in the
county of Dublin, and partly at Cluain Eidhnech
in the present Queens County, in the year 798. The
collection contains, besides, the Festology of
Cathal M'Guire, a work only known by name to
the Irish scholars of the present day, and it inclu¬
des the autograph of the first volume of the Annals
of the Four Masters. There is also a copy, or
fragment, of the Liber Hymnorum already spoken
of, and which is a work of great importance to the
Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, and besides
these the collection contains several important
pieces relating to Irish History, of which no copies
are known to exist elsewhere. It may be hoped,
therefore, that our Holy Father the Pope — who
