Of the four pages of this volume which have been selected for copying, two are a portion of the Martyrology and two of the Psalter. The first of these last contains the first two verses of the 101st Psalm, surrounded by an elaborate border formed by the intertwinings of four serpentine monsters. The initial D of Domine is also expressed by a coiled snake, with its head in an attitude to strike; the object of its attack being a creature which it is impossible to designate, but which bears some resemblance to the hippocampus, or sea-horse. The second page of the Psalter contains the 115th, 116th, and 117th Psalms, in which the same serpentine form is woven into shapes to represent the initial letters. The version of the Psalms given in this volume differs from that used in England in Bishop Ricemarch's time. It is written in Latin in Gaelic characters. The volume belongs to Trinity College, Dublin.
Next in order appears the Leabhar na h-Uidhré, or Book of the Dark Gray Cow, a fragment of one hundred and thirty-eight folio pages, which is thought to be a copy made about the year 1100 of a more ancient MS. of the same name written in S. Ciaran's time. It derived its name from the following curious legend, taken from the Book of Leinster, and the ancient tale called Im thecht na trom daimhé, or Adventures of the Great Company, told in the Book of Lismore. About the year 598, soon after the election of Senchan Torpeist to the post of chief filé (professor of philosophy and literature) in Erinn, he paid a visit to Guairè, the Hospitable, [pg 214] King of Connaught, accompanied by such a tremendous retinue, including a hundred and fifty professors, a hundred and fifty students, a hundred and fifty hounds, a hundred and fifty male attendants, and a hundred and fifty female relatives, that even King Guairè's hospitality was grievously taxed; for he not only had to provide a separate meal and separate bed for each, but to minister to their daily craving for things that were extraordinary, wonderful, rare, and difficult of procurement. The mansion which contained the learned association was a special source of annoyance to King Guairè, and at last the “longing desires” for unattainable things of Muireann, daughter of Cun Culli and wife of Dallan, the foster-mother of the literati, became so unendurable that Guairè, tired of life, proposed to pay a visit to Fulachtach Mac Owen, a person whom he thought especially likely to rid him of that burden, as he had killed his father, his six sons, and his three brothers. Happily for him, however, he falls in with his brother Marbhan, “the prime prophet of heaven and earth,” who had adopted the position of royal swineherd in order that he might the more advantageously indulge his passion for religion and devotion among the woods and desert places; and Marbhan eventually revenges the trouble and ingratitude shown to his brother by imposing upon Senchan and the great Bardic Association the task of recovering the lost tale of the Táin Bó Chuailgné, or Great Cattle Spoil of Cuailgne. After a vain search for it in Scotland, Senchan returned home and invited the following distinguished saints, S. Colum Cille, S. Caillin of Fiodhnacha, S. Ciaran, S. Brendan of Birra, and S. Brendan the son of Finnlogha, to meet him at the grave of the great Ulster chief, Feargus Mac Roigh—who had led the Connaught men against the Ulster men during the spoil, of which also he appears to have been the historian—to try by prayer and fasting to induce his spirit to relate the tale. After they had fasted three days and three nights, the apparition of Feargus rose before them, clad in a green cloak with a collared, gold-ribbed shirt and bronze sandals, and carrying a golden hilted sword, and recited the whole from beginning to end. And S. Ciaran then and there wrote it down on the hide of his pet cow, which he had had made for the purpose into a book, which has ever since borne this name.
The volume contains matter of a very miscellaneous character: A fragment of Genesis; a fragment of Nennius' History of the Britons, done into Gaelic by Gilla Caomhain, who died before 1072; an amhra or elegy on S. Colum Cille, written by Dallan Forgail, the poet, in 592; fragments of the historic tale of the Mesca Uladh, or Inebriety of the Ulstermen; fragments of the cattle-spoils Táin Bo Dartadha and Táin Bo Flidais; the navigation of Madduin about the Atlantic for three years and seven months; imperfect copies of the Táin Bó Chuailgné, the destruction of the Bruighean da Dearga, or Court of Da Dearga, and murder of King Conairé Mór; a history of the great pagan cemeteries of Erinn and of the various old books from which this and other pieces were compiled; poems by Flann of Monasterboice and others; together with various other pieces of history and historic romance chiefly referring to the ante-Christian period, and especially that of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Three [pg 215] pages, containing curious prayers and the legend of The Withering of Cuchulain and the Birds of Emer, extracted from the Leabhar buidh Slaine, or Yellow Book of Slane, one of the ancient lost books of Ireland from which the Leabhar na h-Uidhré was compiled, have been selected.
The Book of Leinster, a folio of over four hundred pages, appears as the next. It was compiled in the first half of the XIIth century by Finn Mac Gorman, Bishop of Kildare, by order of Aedh Mac Crimhthainn, the tutor of Dermot, King of Leinster. Among other pieces of internal evidence pointing to this conclusion are the following entries, the first in the original hand, the second by one strange but ancient, translated and quoted by O'Curry:
“Benedictions and health from Finn, the Bishop of Kildare, to Aedh Mac Crimhtain, the tutor of the chief King of Leth Mogha Nuadut (or of Leinster and Munster), successor of Colaim Mic Crumtaind of, and chief historian of, Leinster, in wisdom, intelligence, and the cultivation of books, knowledge, and learning. And I write the conclusion of this little tale for thee, O acute Aedh! thou possessor of the sparkling intellect. May it be long before we are without thee! It is my desire that thou shouldst always be with us. Let Mac Loran's book of poems be given to me, that I may understand the sense of the poems that are in it; and farewell in Christ.
“O Mary! it is a great deed that has been done in Erinn this day, the Kalends of August—Diarmait Mac Donnchadda Mic Murchada, King of Leinster and of the Danes (of Dublin), to have been banished over the sea eastwards by the men of Erinn! Uch, uch, O Lord! what shall I do?”
The more important of the vast number of subjects treated of in this MS. are mentioned as being: The usual book of invasions; ancient poems; a plan and explanation of the banqueting-hall of Tara; a copy of The Battle of Ross na Righ in the beginning of the Christian era; a copy of the Mesca Uladh, and one of the origin of the Borromean Tribute, and the battle that ensued; a fragment of the battle of Ceannabrat, with the defeat of Mac Con by Oilioll Olium, his flight into, and return from, Scotland with Scottish and British adventurers, his landing in Galway Bay, and the defeat of Art, monarch of Erinn, and slaughter of Olium's seven sons at the battle of Magh Mucruimhé; a fragment of Cormac's Glossary; another of the wars between the Danes and Irish; a copy of the Dinnsenchus; genealogies of Milesian families; and an ample list of the early saints of Erinn, with their pedigrees and affinities, and with copious references to the situation of their churches. The volume belongs to Trinity College, Dublin.
Three pages have been selected. The first contains a copy of the poem on the Teach Miodhchuarta of Tara—a poem so ancient that of its date and author no record remains—and of the ground-plan of the banqueting-hall by which the poem was illustrated, published by Dr. Petrie in his History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. The ground-plan, which in this copy is nearly square, is divided into five compartments lengthwise, the centre and broadest of which contains the door, a rudely-drawn figure of a daul or waiter turning a gigantic spit, furnished with a joint of meat, before a fire, the lamps, and a huge double-handed vase or amphora for the cup-bearer to distribute. [pg 216] This great spit, called Bir Nechin, or the spit of Nechin, the chief smith of Tara, which in the drawing is half the length of the hall, appears to have been so mechanically contrived as to be able to be coiled up after use; and the instrument is thus described in another MS. belonging to Trinity College, Dublin, quoted by Dr. Petrie: “A stick at each end of it, and its axle was wood, and its wheel was wood, and its body was iron; and there were twice nine wheels on its axle, that it might turn the faster; and there were thirty spits out of it, and thirty hooks and thirty spindles, and it was as rapid as the rapidity of a stream in turning; and thrice nine spits and thrice nine cavities (or pots) and one spit for roasting, and one wing used to set it in motion.”
In the two compartments on either side are enumerated in order of precedence the various officers and retainers of the king's household, together with their tables and the particular portions of meat served out to each, forming a very curious and instructive illustration of the social condition and habits of the early Irish. The description of the rations that were considered specially adapted to the several ranks of consumers is very amusing. For the distinguished men of literature, “the soft, clean, smooth entrails,” and a steak cut from the choicest part of the animal, were set aside; the poet had a “good smooth” piece of the leg; the historian, “a crooked bone,” probably a rib; the artificers, “a pig's shoulder”; the Druids and aire dessa, a “fair foot.” These last are said to decline to drink; not so the trumpeters and cooks, who are to be allowed “cheering mead in abundance, not of a flatulent kind.” The doorkeeper, “the noisy, humorous fool and the fierce, active kerne” had the chine; while to the satirists and the braigitore, a class of buffoons whose peculiar function was to amuse the company after a fashion which will not only not bear description, but almost defies belief—licensed and paid Aethons of the court—“the fat of the shoulder was divided to them pleasantly.”
The selection is continued by the Leabhar Breac, or Speckled Book, probably named from the color of its cover, or, as it was formerly called, Leabhar Mór Duna Doighré, the Great Book of Dun Doighré, a place on the Galway side of the Shannon not far from Athlone. It is a compilation from various ancient books belonging chiefly to churches and monasteries in Conaught, Munster, and Leinster, beautifully written on vellum, as is supposed about the close of the XIVth century, by one of the Mac Ogans, a literary family of great repute belonging to Dun Doighré.