[1] "Ionann dam sliabh a's sáile
Eire a's iarthar Easpáine,
Do chuireas dúnta go deas
Geata dlúth ris an doilgheas."
Copied from a MS. in Trinity College. I forget its number.
[2] Published by the Celtic Society in 1848, in 3 vols., with a translation and copious notes.
[3] Regal Visitation Book, A.D. 1622, MS. in Marsh's Library, Dublin, quoted by D'Arcy McGee in his "Irish Writers of the Seventeenth Century," p. 85; but Hardiman, in his "West Connaught," no doubt rightly gives the date of this visitation as 1615. A writer in the "Dublin Penny Journal," identified this schoolmaster with the author of the "Cambrensis Eversus," but Hardiman shows that it, must have been his father. See "West Connaught," p. 420 note.
[4] Elrington's great edition of Ussher's works in 17 vols., but I have not noted volume or page.
[5] The books of ancient authority which Keating quotes as still existing in his own day, are the Psalter of Cashel, compiled by Cormac mac Culinan; the Book of Armagh, apparently a different book from that now so-called; the Book of Cluain-Aidnech-Fintan in Leix, the Book of Glendaloch, the Book of Rights, the [now fragmentary] Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Yellow Book of Moling, the Black Book of Molaga. He also mentions the Book of Conquests, the Book of the Provinces [, the Book of the Pedigrees of Women, and a number of others.
[6] "Innus gur ab é nós, beagnach, an phrimpolláin do ghnid, ag scríobhadh ar Eirionchaibh."
[7] The first volume of Keating's History was published in Dublin by Halliday, in 1811, but that brilliant young scholar did not live to complete it. John O'Mahoney, the Fenian Head Centre, published a splendid translation of the whole work from the best MSS. which in his exile he was able to procure, in New York in 1866, but its introduction into the United Kingdom was prohibited on the grounds that it infringed copyright. Dr. Todd remarks on this translation, "notwithstanding the extravagant and very mischievous political opinions avowed by Mr. O'Mahoney, his translation of Keating is a great improvement upon the ignorant and dishonest one published by Mr. Dermod O'Connor more than a century ago,"—a foolish remark of Dr. Todd's, who must have understood that most readers of Keating are to be found amongst men to whom his own political opinions thus unnecessarily vented, were equally "mischievous." Dr. Robert Atkinson published the Text of the "Three Shafts of Death" without a translation, but with a most carefully-compiled and admirable glossary in 1890. Keating's third work has never been published, but I printed some extracts from a good MS. of it lent me by the O'Conor Don in an American paper. My friend Mr. John Mac Neill has pointed me out what is apparently a fourth work of Keating's on the Blessed Virgin.
[8] From the Kerne's, who was of course utterly ignorant of English, mistaking "make" for the Irish "Mac," it is plain that the ancient pronunciation of this word (Anglo-Saxon macian) had not then been lost.
[9] "Cum Hiberni et bene sint affecti, et insigniter idonei ad studia literarum et liberalium artium, utpote ingeniis bonis et acutis passim præditi, non potuit hactenus obtineri unquam à præfectis Anglis ut in Hibernia Universitas studiorum erigeretur. Imò dum aliquando de eâ re etiam, Catholico tempore, in Concilio Angliæ propositio fieret, obstitit acerrimé unus e primariis Senatoribus, et ipse quidem celebris episcopus, quem cum postea alius quidam admoneret, mirari se quod is utpote episcopus Catholicus tam sanctum atque salutare opus impediret. Respondit ille se non ut Episcopum Catholicæ Ecclesiæ sed ut Senatorem regni Angliæ sententiam istam in concilio protulisse, quâ opus istud impediretur.