464 
the reliquary now exhibited to the Academy is the identical 
brazen arm of which Smith speaks. 
At allevents we are enabled to give a tolerably exact date 
to this ancient piece of art, which, even in its present dilapi- 
dated state, exhibits great evidence of the workman’s skill in 
inlaying and minute ornamentation of the most elaborate kind. 
It is clear that it must have been made before the death of 
Maelseachnaill O’Callaghan, who is stated in the first inserip- 
tion to have made or caused it to be made; and, as he died in 
1121, it is certain that we have before us a specimen of what 
could be done by Irish artists in inlaying and jewellery, within 
the first twenty years of the twelfth century. 
Dr. Todd exhibited also the Missagh, or Miosach, a va- 
luable Irish reliquary, supposed to have formerly contained a 
MS. of the Gospels or Psalms. The box, however, is now 
empty. 
This beautiful specimen of ancient art is the property of 
St.Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and has been entrusted 
by the Warden and Fellows, with the permission of His Grace 
the Lord Primate, to the Academy, to be exhibited with their 
Museum at the Great Exhibition. 
The word Misach, or Miosach, seems to signify a Calen- 
dar, and to be derived from m or mip, a month; if so, it may 
. have contained, not a Gospel ora Psalter, like other reliqua- 
ries of this class, but a Calendar. The inquisition of 1609, 
however, which will be quoted presently, evidently assumed 
the word to be the plural of maipe, an ornament, for it speaks 
of it as the missagh or ornaments left by Columbkille. 
An account of this reliquary, with an engraving, will be 
found in Sir William Betham’s Antiquarian Researches, and 
it is mentioned also in General Vallancey’s Collectanea, but 
the attempt there given, to refer the word Miosach to a 
Hebrew root, is totally absurd and groundless. Dr. Todd 
stated also that he could not agree with Sir W. Betham in 
woe eS Se? 
