[26] "Lóchran na gcreidhmheach."
[27] In the MS. marked H. 2. 7. in Trinity College there is a story of Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick and Bocigam [Buckingham], and p. 348 of the same MS. another about Bibus, son of Sir Guy of Hamtuir. These must have been taken from English sources. Of the same nature, but of different dates, are Irish redactions of Marco Polo's travels, the Adventures of Hercules, the Quest of the Holy Grail, Maundeville's Travels, the Adventures of the Bald Dog, Teglach an bhuird Chruinn, i.e., the Household of the Round Table, the Chanson de geste of Fierabras, Barlaam and Josaphat, the History of Octavian, Orlando and Melora, Meralino Maligno, Richard and Lisarda, the Story of the Theban War, Turpin's Chronicle, the Triumphs of Charlemagne, the History of King Arthur, the Adventures of Menalippa and Alchimenes, and probably many others.
[CHAPTER XLI]
THE IRISH ANNALS
We have already at the beginning of this book had occasion to discuss the reliability of the Irish annals,[1] and have seen that from the fifth century onward they record with great accuracy the few events for which we happen to have external evidence, drawn either from astronomical discovery or from the works of foreign authors. We shall here enumerate the most important of these works, for though the documents from which they are taken were evidently of great antiquity, yet they themselves are only comparatively modern compilations mostly made from the now lost sources of the ancient vellum chronicles which the early Christian monks kept in their religious houses, probably from the very first introduction of Christianity and the use of Roman letters.
The greatest—though almost the youngest—of them all is the much-renowned "Annals of the Four Masters." This mighty work is chiefly due to the herculean labours of the learned Franciscan Brother, Michael O'Clery, a native of Donegal, born about the year 1580, who was himself descended from a long line of scholars.[2] He and another scion of Donegal, Aedh Mac an Bháird, then guardian of St. Anthony's in Louvain, contemplated the compilation and publication of a great collection of the lives of the Irish saints.
In furtherance of this idea Michael O'Clery, with the leave and approbation of his superiors, set out from Louvain, and, coming to Ireland, travelled through the whole length and breadth of it, from abbey to abbey and priory to priory. Up and down, high and low, he hunted for the ancient vellum books and time-stained manuscripts whose safety was even then threatened by the ever-thickening political shocks and spasms of that most destructive age. These, whenever he found, he copied in an accurate and beautiful handwriting, and transmitted safely to Louvain to his friend Mac an Bháird, or "Ward" as the name is now in English. Ward unfortunately died before he could make use of the material thus collected by O'Clery, but it was taken up by another great Franciscan, Father John Colgan, who utilised the work of his friend O'Clery by producing, in 1645, the two enormous Latin quartos, to which we have already frequently alluded, the first called the "Trias Thaumaturga," containing the lives of Saints Patrick, Brigit, and Columcille; the second containing all the lives which could be found of all the Irish saints whose festivals fell between the first of January and the last of March. Several of the works thus collected by O'Clery and Colgan still happily survive.[3] On the break-up of the Convent of Louvain, they were transferred to St. Isidore's, in Rome, and in 1872 were restored to Ireland and are now in the Convent of the Franciscans, on Merchant's Quay, Dublin, a restoration which prompted the fine lines of the late poet John Francis O'Donnell.
From Ireland of the four bright seas
In troublous days these treasures came,
Through clouds, through fires, through darknesses,
To Rome of immemorial name,
Rome of immeasurable fame:
The reddened hands of foes would rive
Each lovely growth of cloister—crypt—
Dim folio, yellow manuscript,
Where yet the glowing pigments live;
But a clear voice cried from Louvain
"Give them to me for they are mine,"
And so they sped across the main
The saints their guard, the ship their shrine.