﻿240
AN GAODHAL.
archs, provincial kings, chefs, and beads or distin¬
guished members of families, but also, as far as he
could find them, the succesion and deaths of the
bishops, abbots, superiors, superioresses, and oth¬
er distinguished ecclesiastics and religious of the
countless churches, abbeys, and convents of Ire¬
land, from the first founding of its religious sys¬
tems down to the year 1611.
The work of selection and compilation having
been finished, as we have seen, in the year 1636,
Father O'Clery, to stamp on it a character of truth¬
fulness and importance, carried it for inspection to
two of the most distinguished Irish scholars then
living, whose written approbation and signature
he obtained for it; these were Flann Mac Aedha¬
gan of Bally Mac Aedhagain in County of Tippe¬
rary, and Conor Mac Bruaideadha (or Brody) of
Cill-Chaidhe and Leitir Maelain in the County of
Clare. And, along with these, he procured for his
work the approbations and signatures of Malachy
O'Kelly, Archbishop of Tuam; Boothghalach or
Boetius Mac Aegan, Bishop Thomas Flemming,
Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland; and Fr
Roche, Bishop of Kildare; and thus fortified with
the only approbation he deemed necessary to give
general currency and a permanent character to his
work, he committed it (in manuscript only) to the
care of time and to the affection and veneration of
his countrymen.
Upon the chronology of the Annals Dr. O'Conor
has made the following remarks in his Catalogue
of the Stowe MSS (among which is one of the or¬
iginal copies of his work).
"This volume begins, like most chronicles of the
middle ages, from the Deluge, which it dates with
the Septuagint, Anno Mundi 2242; and ends with
the Anglo Norman invasion of Ireland, A.D. 1171.
..... Notwithstanding these approbations,
there are some glaring faults in these annals, which
no partiality can disguise. The first, and greatest
of all faults, relates to their system of chronology.
We quarrel not with their preferring the chronol¬
ogy of the Septuagint to that of the Hebrew text:
great men have adopted the same system; making
the first year of our era agree with the year of the
world 5199. But in applying to chronology, they
commit two faults. Dating by the Christian era,
they generally place the events four years, and
sometimes five, before the proper year of that era,
down to the year 800, when they approach nearer
to the true time; this is their greatest fault; and
it is evident, from the eclipses and corresponding
events occasionally mentioned by themselves.
From the year 800 to 1000, they differ sometimes
by three years, semetimes by two. From the year
1000, they are perfectly accurate. Their second fault
is more excusable, because it is common to all the
annalists of the middle ages; they advance the an¬
tiquities of their country several centuries higher
than their own succession of kings and generations
by eldest sons will permit.
"Following the technical chronology of Coeman
they ought to have stated, in notes, the chronolo¬
gy of Flann, who preceded Coeman, and given the
Christian era accurately, as it agrees with the years
of the Julian period, and of the Roman Consuls
and Emperors, whom they synchronise. This is
Bede's method, and has been that of all the beat
chronologers, who, by adering to it, have success
fully determined the chronology of Europe.
"'We see no reason for denying to Ireland a se¬
ries of kings older than any in Europe,' says Mr.
Pinkerton.
"The oldest Greek writers mention Albion and
Ierne as inhabited; and Pliny says, no doubt from
the Phoenician annals, which are quoted by Festus
that the Phoenicians traded with those islands in
the days of Midacritus, a thousand years before
the Christian era. But to begin the pagan histo¬
ry of Ireland nearly 3000 years before that era, is
absurd; and to make the events of the Christian
period differ, by four years, from the regular course
of that reckoning, is not excusable. This differ¬
ence, however, is easily adjusted, because it is uni¬
form down to the year 900, except in a very few
instances, which are corrected and restored to their
true places in the notes.
"The grand object of the Four Masters is to give
chronological dates, and, with the exception above
nothing can be more accurate. The years of foun¬
dations and destructions of churches and castles,
the obituaries of remarkable persons, the inaugu¬
rations of kings, the battles of chiefs, the contests
of clans, the ages of bards, abbots, bishops, etc.
are given with a meagre fidelity, which leaves no¬
thing to be wished for but some details of manners
which are the grand desideratum in the Chronicles
of the British Islands."
With all that Dr. O'Conor has so judiciously said
here we fully agree. A book, consisting of 1100
pages, beginning with the year of the world 2242,
and ending with the year of our Lord's Incarnation
1616, thus covering the immense space of 4500
years of a nation's history, must be dry and mea¬
gre in details in some, if not in all, parts of it.
And though the learned compilers had at their dis¬
posal, or within their reach, an immense mass of his¬
toric details, still the circumstances under which
they wrote were so unfavorable that they appear
to have exercised a sound discretion, and one con¬
sistent with the economy of time and of their re¬
sources, when they left the details of our very ear¬
ly history in the safe keeping of such ancient ori¬
ginal records as from remote ages preserved them,
and collected as much as they could make room for
of the events of more modern times, and particu¬
larly of the eventful times in which they lived them¬
selves. This was natural; and it must have app¬
eared to them that the national history, as written
of old, and then still amply preserved, was in less
danger of being quite lost or questioned than that
more modern history which approached more near¬
ly to their own era, till at last it became conver¬
sant with facts of which they were themselves wit¬
nesses, and many of the actors in which were per¬
sonally known to them; and so they thickened the
records so much, I believe, as they possibly could
in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourtenth, and fifteenth
and particlarly in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
(To be continued.)
OBITUARY.
David O'Keeffe, one of the oldest and best Gae¬
lic scholars in America, died at his daughter's resi¬
dence in this city, last month.
Also, M. J. Hogan of Tobyhanna, Pa. an old
subscriber, died some time ago, his father religious¬
ly transmitting his indebtedness to the Gael.
Died also, on December 15, of pneumonia, after
five days' sickness, Mary M., the eldest daughter
of the editor of this journal, in whose demise THE
GAEL has lost a true friend.
May they all be wafted to the Kingdom of Glory,
