258 



do not complete the piece. At the end is a note, indicating 

 that this tract was transcribed in the year 1537 , by Seanchan 

 Mac Gilla Crist Mic Eoin. The scribe, out of a pedantry usual 

 amongst persons of his class, disguises his name by using the 

 letters b,/", k, p, instead of the vowels a, e, i, o. . 



" 5. The volume ends with a piece consisting of four folios, 

 written in a very old and singularly fine hand. I doubt if I 

 have seen any Irish minuscule writing superior to it, except it 

 be in the Book of Armagh. This piece contains : («) An ac- 

 count of Cuchulann's courtship with Eimer, the daughter of 

 Forgall Monach ; also (6) a tract on the law for observing the* 

 Lord's day as a day of freedom. The composition of this 

 tract is ascribed to the close of the eighth century or the be- 

 ginning of the ninth; and certainly the Brehon law part of it, 

 laying down the penalties consequent upon violations of the 

 privilege of the Lord's day, is of great antiquity. There are 

 copies of this most curious tract preserved in the MS. h. 2, 16, 

 in the library of Trinity College, in the Leabhar Breac, and 

 in a M.S. in the British Museum ; but there appears to be 

 some imperfection about them all which a comparison with this 

 one might supply. 



" II. The Emanuel MS., as it is entitled by Astle,* con- 

 sisting of seven folios and a half. 



" It contains uothing but a narrative of events which oc- 

 curred in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. 



" At the bottom of page 4 is a note which I suspect indi- 

 cates the age of the MS. Though nearly illegible at present, 

 it appears capable of being revived by gallic acid. I could 

 read no dT. mT_^u. ; from which it would seem that the MS. 

 is as late as the fourteenth century, though Astle assigns it to 

 the ninth or tenth. 



" It seems strange that a person so conversant with palaeo- 

 graphy as Astle should commit the error of deriving the title 



* See Astle's Origin and Progress of Writings, 2nd edit., p. 123. 



