179 



view of many ancient rights and customs of this country, which as 

 yet continue in the utmost darkness and obscurity."* The Royal 

 Irish Academy have often entertained the subject, but the labour of 

 finishing such a work, as it should be executed, must demand an appli- 

 cation of funds greater than that body could command, and a devo- 

 tion of time and honest research, beyond what the most enthusiastic 

 could be expected to impart gratuitously. 



Different species of ordeal seem to have been introduced at this 

 time into the administration of justice. S. Brigid is said to have 

 touched the altar in testimony of her chastity. -f- And Bede, in his 

 Marty rology, (at 1st February,) repeats the tradition of a miracle on 

 the occasion. :]: There is evidence also from a canon made in a synod 

 held by Saint Patrick, Auxilius, and Isserninus, that the trial by com- 

 bat, (the barbarous model of duelling,) was then too prevalent. " If 

 a clerk," says that canon,§ " become surety for a gentile in any sum, 

 and if it happen, which is not uncommon, that the gentile by any 

 craft should over-reach the clerk in his dealings, the clerk shall pay 

 the debt ; for, if he engage in combat with him, he shall be justly 

 adjudged to be out of the pale of the church." Canonical modes of 

 purgation were also in certain cases enjoined ; thus, in an ancient 

 canon of Saint Patrick, under the title " De contentione duorum 

 absque testibus," it is decreed, that if any fact is to be proved, it 



* Nicholson's Irish Histor, Lib. p. 134, and see London Philosoph. Trans. No. 336, 

 Art 3. 



f " Altari genua humiliter flectens, et suam virginalem corollam coram Domino omnipo- 

 tente offerens, fundamentum ligneum, quo altare fulciebatur, tetigit. Quod lignum in comme- 

 morationem pristinae virtutis usque ad pra;sens tempus viride, ac si non esset excisum et decor- 

 ticatum sed in radicibus fixum, virescit.'' — Cogitos. Vita. S. Brigid. c. 3. 



1 " Quae (S. Brigida) cum lignum altaris in testimonium virginitatis tetigisset, viride 

 factum est." 



§ As cited by Ware. Antiquities, fo. 153. 



A A 2 



