To Be Concluded Next Month.
Fac-Similes Of Irish National Manuscripts.
Few of our readers are probably aware that the English government, for the last ten years, has been making fac-similes of the most important national MSS., for publication and sale, by the process of photo-zincography. The Domesday Book was the first work taken in hand. This wonderful record, without a peer in the world, is a general survey of the land of England, ordered by William the Conqueror in the year of our Lord 1085. It is the undisputed testimony of the relations existing at that period between the landlords and their tenants; and it describes the state of society which existed in England under the Anglo-Saxon kings up to the conquest of the kingdom by the Duke of Normandy. So successfully was the printing of the fac-similes of the Domesday Book accomplished, [pg 103] and so acceptable to historical students of every degree was its publication, that, in the spring of 1864, the Lords of H. M. Treasury unanimously endorsed the proposal by the late Master of the Rolls (Lord Romilly) that the same process of photo-zincography should be applied to the reproduction and perpetuation of some of the “National Records.” Three volumes of English manuscripts and three volumes of Scottish manuscripts have been followed by the preparation for three volumes of Irish national MSS., which will rank (says Mr. William Basevi Sanders, the Assistant Keeper of Her Majesty's Records, in his Annual Report, printed in the year 1873, on the fac-similes photo-zincographed at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton) among the first of the many valuable publications which Sir Henry James (the military engineer officer in charge) has been the means of laying before the public.
Let us look over Mr. Sanders's description of the Irish MSS. He has gathered his information from the best sources, having consulted and freely used O'Donovan's edition of the Annals of the Four Masters, the accessible works of Dr. Petrie, Dr. Todd, Dr. Reeves, and Prof. Westwood, and more particularly from the elaborate investigations of Prof. O'Curry, published in his Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History.
The first of these MSS., both in point of age and on account of the remarkable history that attaches to it, is the volume known as Domhnach Airgid, or Silver Shrine. This is a volume of the Gospels—perhaps the oldest in the world—of the Vth century, and traditionally believed to have been the private book of devotion of S. Patrick himself, and to have been given by him to S. Mac Carthainn when he placed him over the See of Clogher. The legend in which this curious story is narrated appears in the Tripartite Life of S. Patrick, and O'Curry in his lectures gives the following literal translation of it:
“S. Patrick, having gone into the territory of Ui Cremthainn, founded many churches there. As he was on his way from the North, and coming to the place now called Clochar, he was carried over a stream by his strong man, Bishop Mac Carthainn, who, while bearing the saint, groaned aloud, exclaiming ‘Uch! uch!’
“ ‘Upon my good word,’ said the saint, ‘it was not usual with you to speak that word.’
“ ‘I am now old and infirm,’ said Bishop Mac Carthainn, ‘and all my early companions on the mission you have set down in their respective churches, while I am still on my travels.’
“ ‘Found you a church, then,’ said the saint, ‘that shall not be too near for us for familiarity, nor too far from us for intercourse.’