A Reading Book in Irish History

by P. W. Joyce

In old times all books were handwritten, printing being a late invention. There were persons called [Scribes], many of whom made writing the chief business of their lives. From constant practice they became very [expert]; and the penmanship of many of them was extremely beautiful and highly ornamented, much more so than any writing executed by the very best penmen of the present day.

In Ireland, most of these scribes were monks, inmates of monasteries; but many were laymen. These good and industrious men wrote into their books all the learning of every kind that they could collect; so that although the work of writing was slow, the numbers of books rapidly increased; and very large libraries grew up, especially in the monasteries. The leaves of these books were not paper like those of our books, but parchment or vellum, which was generally made from sheepskin, but often from the skins of other animals.

Sometimes the scribes wrote down what had never been written before, that is, matters composed at the time, or preserved in memory: but more commonly they copied from other volumes. If an old book began to be worn, ragged, or dim with age, so as to be hard to make out and read, some scribe was sure to copy it, so as to have a new book easy to read and well bound up. Most of the books written out in this manner related to Ireland, as will be described presently; and the language of these was almost always Irish. For in those times the Irish language was spoken by all the people of Ireland.

A favourite occupation was copying portions of the Holy Scriptures, nearly always in the Latin language; and in this good work some monks spent nearly all their time, in order to multiply copies of the sacred books. Some of the greatest saints of the ancient Irish Church employed themselves in copying the Gospels and other portions of the Bible, whenever they could get the opportunity, as we shall see in the case of St. Columkille.

Copies of the Scriptures, and also prayer books, were generally ornamented in the most beautiful way: for those [accomplished] and [devoted] old scribes loved to beautify the sacred writings. Many of the lovely books they wrote are still preserved, of which the most splendid is the Book of Kells, now kept in the [Library] of Trinity College, in Dublin. It is a copy of the Four Gospels, and the language is Latin, though the letters are Irish. It was written by an Irish scribe eleven or twelve hundred years ago, but who he was is not known.

There is no old book in any part of the world so skilfully ornamented as this. The capital letters are very large—one of them fills an entire page—and are all illuminated, that is, painted in brilliant colours; and after the lapse of so many centuries the colours are still very fresh, though not so bright as when they were first laid on.

In this Book of Kells, and in others like it, the capitals are ornamented in every part with a kind of [interlaced] work, all done with the pen, in which bands and ribbons are curved and plaited and woven in the most wonderful way. These plaits and folds are so small and so close together that one must sometimes use a [magnifying glass] in order to see them plainly: in one space, the size of a half penny, in a page of a splendid old volume, called the Book of Armagh, the ribbons appear woven in and out more than three hundred times.

A specimen of this interwoven ornamental work is seen at the head of the first page of this book; but it gives only a poor idea of the beauty of the Book of Kells. The frontispiece of the "Child's History of Ireland" is a perfect copy, in full colours, of a complete page of the Book of Mac Durnan, which is almost as beautiful as the Book of Kells. The Irish used this sort of ornamentation also in metal-work and stone-work, of which an example is given here.

Ancient Irish Ornamental Sculpture on a Stone Monument.