96 
‘Tt is difficult toa German to understand the ancient Irish language, 
because we have not an old Irish dictionary ; and I know not if the 
Vocabulary of Cormac is yet published or not. If you desire to have a 
copy of this Irish hymn, I shall send it to you, and you will oblige me 
very much if you please to return to me a literal translation.” 
I submitted the verse to Dr. O’ Donovan, from whom I received the 
following translation :— 
‘¢ Aidus magnus in protrahendo jejunium 
Aidus hilaris in gaudiis solemnitatis ; 
Ingenium peracutum, pulcherrimum ; 
De mirabilibus Hibernize campestris.” 
Or, as he paraphrased it :— 
“ Aedh was ascetic during the fasts, 
But joyous and merry during the festivals ; 
His genius was sharp as a pin; his face the fairest of men,— 
In short, he was one of the wonders of the plain of Erin.” 
I wrote back to Mone, enclosing the above translation, but the re- 
mainder of the poem has not yet arrived. 
The little composition which forms the leading subject of the paper 
which you have now done me the favour to listen to, possesses no literary 
merits, but it is a well-defined trace of that early religious emigration 
which commenced in the sixth century, and waxed more and more vi- 
gorous till it attained its height in the ninth, taking with it not only 
the language and literature of the Scoti, but also their legendary asso- 
ciations, which they clung to in foreign climes ; and not only so, but left 
them on record in manuscripts which have weathered a thousand 
years, and are now beginning, through German industry, to be reflected 
on the mother country, where they find their counterparts, after a sepa- 
ration of so many centuries. 
Joun Rosert Kinanan, M.D. T.C.D., read the following paper— 
ON A PROPOSED SCHEME FOR A UNIFORM MODE OF NAMING TYPE-DIVISIONS. 
Tue present system of names for types and type-divisions labours under 
the disadvantages of uncertainty of value in terms, and cumbersomeness 
of detail. Scarcely any two authors employ the same group-name in the 
same signification. One term is often found to be used for divisions of 
very unequal value, not merely as to absolute perfection or extent, but 
also as regards the mutual dependence and sequence of the divisions, and 
their relation to other types. The terms used, also, are too numerous, 
every division, no matter what its extent, being represented by a distinct 
name, and these names being merely of arbitrary signification, and in no 
ways expressing the relation ofthe groups to one another. 
This, probably, has arisen from the transference to a natural system 
of the machinery of a system which was, for the most part, artificial, and 
in which, as a matter of course, it was of extreme moment that the divi- 
sions should be of equal extent. 
