In some respects the evidence of book-culture in Ireland in these early centuries is inconsistent. The jealous guard Longarad kept over his books, the quarrel over Columba’s Psalter, and the great esteem in which scribes were held,[37] suggest a scarcity of books. The practice of enshrining them in cumdachs, or book-covers, points to a like conclusion. On the other hand, Bede tells us the Irish could lend foreign students books, so plentiful were they. His statement is corroborated by the number of scribes whose deaths have been recorded by the annalists; the Four Masters, for example, note sixty-one eminent scribes before the year 900, forty of whom belong to the eighth century.[38] In some of the monasteries a special room for books was provided. The Annals of Tigernach refer to the house of manuscripts.[39] An apartment of this kind is particularly mentioned as being saved from the flames when Armagh monastery was burned (1020). Another fact suggesting an abundance of books was the appointment of a librarian, which sometimes took place.[40] Although a special book-room and officer are only to be met with much later than the best age of Irish monachism, yet we may reasonably assume them to be the natural culmination of an old and established practice of making and using books.
Such statements, however, are not necessarily contradictory. Manuscripts over which the cleverest scribes and illuminators had spent much time and pains would be jealously preserved in cases or shrines; still, when we remember how many precious fruits of the past must have
perished, the number of beautiful Irish manuscripts extant goes to prove that books even of this character could not have been extraordinarily rare. “Workaday” copies of books would be made as well, in comparatively large numbers, and would no doubt be used very freely. Besides books properly so called, the religious used waxed tablets of wood, which were sometimes called books. St. Ciaran, for example, wrote on staves, which are called in one place his tablets, and in two other places the whole collection of his staves is called a book.[41] Such tablets were indeed books in which the fugitive pieces of the time were written.[42] Considering all things, Bede was without doubt quite correct in saying the Irish had enough books to lend to foreign students.