HOW THE IRISH SCHOLARS COMPILED THEIR ANNALS.
Among the various classes of persons who devoted themselves to Literature in ancient Ireland, there were special Annalists, who made it their business to record, with the utmost accuracy, all remarkable events simply and briefly, year by year. The extreme care they took that their statements should be truthful is shown by the manner in which they compiled their books. As a general rule they admitted nothing into their records except either what occurred during their lifetime, and which may be said to have come under their own personal knowledge, or what they found recorded in the compilations of previous annalists, who had themselves followed the same plan. These men took nothing on hearsay: and in this manner successive annalists carried on a continued chronicle from age to age.
We have still preserved to us many books of native Annals. They deal with the affairs of Ireland—generally but not exclusively. Many of them record events occurring in other parts of the world; and it was a common practice to begin the work with a brief general history, after which the annalist takes up the affairs of Ireland.
There are many tests which prove the remarkable accuracy of the Irish Annals. For instance, their records of such occurrences as eclipses, comets, tides, and so forth, are invariably found to be correct. Indeed they could not be otherwise, for the good reason that the faithful chronicler noted down the events, each at the very time of its occurrence. If he waited for some future time, or noted down some event that had occurred years before, taking hearsay evidence, or calculating the time backwards as best he could, the chances were that there would be an error in the date.
A remarkable example occurs in the record of an eclipse of the sun of A.D. 664. At the present day astronomers can calculate to a minute the time of an eclipse occurring in that or any other year. But it was otherwise twelve centuries ago. Then the rules of calculation were not quite correct, so that a person calculating backwards was pretty sure to be in error as to the exact time. The great English historian and scholar, the Venerable Bede, who wrote fifty or sixty years after the above-mentioned eclipse, was aware of the year (664), but had to calculate the day and the hour. The rule then in vogue led him astray, and accordingly his record of the date—the 3rd May—is two days wrong. In the Annals of Ulster the correct date—1st May, 664—is given, and even the very hour. This shows quite clearly that the event had been recorded by some Irish chronicler, who actually saw it and noted it down on the spot. We find numbers of records of this kind in our Annals, which, according to the accurate tests we are now able to apply, are all found to be correct.
Another remarkable instance of a similar kind deserves to be mentioned here. We have an old Irish book called “The War of the Irish with the Danes,” written early in the eleventh century, soon after the battle of Clontarf, in which that great battle is very fully described. In the course of his narrative the writer makes these very specific statements:—that the battle was fought on Good Friday, the 23rd April, 1014; that it commenced at sunrise when the tide was full in, and that it lasted the whole day till the tide was again at flood about the same hour in the evening, when the foreigners were routed. Moreover, the old historian puts in the time of high water, morning and afternoon, merely to explain why there was such terrible slaughter of the Danes in the evening; for on account of the full tide they were not able to reach their ships, which lay some distance out in the bay, whereas if it had been low water they might have waded out to them. Beyond that he was not in the least concerned about the time of high tide.
The tide comes in at any particular point of the coast about every 12 hours 25 minutes, and accordingly the hour changes from day to day, so that there might be a high tide at any hour of the twenty-four: but astronomers can now calculate the exact time of high tide for any day of the month at a particular place in any year, no matter how far back. Now, the question is, was the tide really at its height on the Clontarf shore at sunrise on that fatal morning?
Forty years ago, the Rev. Dr. Todd, who was then engaged in translating the old book mentioned above, in order to test the chronicler’s accuracy, put this question to the Rev. Dr. Haughton, a great science scholar, of Trinity College, Dublin:—At what time was there high tide in Dublin Bay on the 23rd April, 1014? After a laborious calculation, Dr. Haughton found that the tide was at its height that morning at half-past five o’clock, just as the sun was coming over the horizon, and that the evening tide was in at fifty-five minutes past five: a striking confirmation of the truth of this part of the narrative. It shows, too, that the account was written by or taken down from an eye-witness of the battle. Dr. Haughton’s calculation—every figure—may now be seen in Dr. Todd’s published book.
Little did the old annalist think, when penning his simple record, that after lying by unnoticed and forgotten on some obscure bookshelf for eight centuries, it was destined to be at last brought out under the broad light of science, and its accuracy fully tested and established.
There are several other ways of testing the truth of our annals. One is by comparing them with the testimony of foreign writers of good standing. Events occurring in Ireland in those early ages are not often mentioned by British or Continental writers. Indeed they knew very little about Ireland, which was, in those times, especially as regards the Continent, a very remote place. But whenever they do notice Irish affairs, it may be said that they are always in agreement with the native records.