The Exposition states, that Sheannachan, with the three bards and those in their retinue, when about to depart from the court of Guaire, being called upon to relate the history of the Tain bho, or cattle spoil of Cuailgne, acknowledged their ignorance of it, and that having ineffectually made the round of Ireland and Scotland in quest of it, Eimin and Muircheartach, two of their number, repaired to the grave of Fergus, son of Roich, who, being invoked, appeared at the end of three days in terrific grandeur, and related the whole of the Tain, as given in the twelve Reimsgeala or Portions of which it consists. In the historical anecdotes allusion is made to Ossian, the son of Fingal, who is represented as showing, when young, an inclination to indulge in solitude his natural propensity for meditation and song. A fac simile of the characters of this MS. is given in the Highland Society’s Report upon Ossian, Plate I., fig. 1, 2, and in Plate II.
2. Another parchment MS. in quarto, equally beautiful as the former, from the same collection. It consists of an Almanack bound up with a paper list of all the holidays, festivals, and most remarkable saints’ days in verse throughout the year—A Treatise on Anatomy, abridged from Galen—Observations on the Secretions, &c.—The Schola Salernitana, in Leonine verse, drawn up about the year 1100, for the use of Robert, Duke of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, by the famous medical school of Salerno. The Latin text is accompanied with a Gaelic explanation, which is considered equally faithful and elegant, of which the following is a specimen:—
Caput I.—Anglorum regi scripsit schola tota Salerni.
1. As iat scol Salerni go hulidhe do seriou na fearsadh so do chum rig sag san do choimhed a shlainnte.
Si vis incolumem, si vis te reddere sanum;
Curas tolle graves, irasci crede prophanum.
Madh ail bhidh fallann, agus madh aill bhidh slan; Cuir na himsnimha troma dhit, agus creit gurub diomhain duit fearg do dhenumh.
The words Leabhar Giollacholaim Meigbeathadh are written on the last page of this MS., which being in the same form and hand, with the same words on a paper MS. bound up with a number of others written upon vellum in the Advocates’ Library, and before which is written Liber Malcolmi Bethune, it has been conjectured that both works originally belonged to Malcolm Bethune, a member of a family distinguished for learning, which supplied the Western Isles for many ages with physicians.[109]
3. A small quarto paper MS. from the same collection, written at Dunstaffnage by Ewen Macphaill, 12th October 1603. It consists of a tale in prose concerning a King of Lochlin and the Heroes of Fingal: An Address to Gaul, the son of Morni, beginning—
Goll mear mileant—