37 



February 27. 



Rev. B. LLOYD, D. D., Provost, T.C.D., President, 

 in the Chair. 



Mr. Petrie read a paper, being an account of a valuable 

 Irish MS. belonging to the Earl of Roden, (of which a 

 transcript has been recently made for the Academy, under 

 the direction of Mr. Petrie, by Mr. Eugene Curry,) with 

 a biographical notice of its author. 



This MS., which is of great celebrity among Irish scho- 

 lars and historians, was compiled between the years 1650 

 and 1664, by Duald Mac Firbis, from various ancient 

 historical works many of which are now lost, and contains 

 the most complete historical account of the several tribes 

 who made settlements in Ireland and Scotland, with ge- 

 nealogies of all the principal families descended from them. 

 Its compiler was the last of the hereditary antiquaries of 

 Lecan Mac Firbis, in the county of Sligo, by whom the ce- 

 lebrated MS. called the Book of Lecan, now in the Library 

 of the Academy, was compiled in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries ; and it is a valuable supplement to the genealogical 

 portion of that great work, the pedigrees being, in most 

 instances, continued down to the time of the writer. It also 

 contains a vast quantity of matter not to be found in any 

 other works, as historical and topographical poems, &c, but 

 particularly an account of the Danish and Anglo-Norman 

 families, which is of inestimable value. 



The MS. is a small thick quarto on paper, containing 

 about 1000 pages, and is wholly in the hand-writing of 

 Mac Firbis, with the exception of a small portion in the 

 hand-writing of Michael O'Clery, the chief of the celebrated 

 annalists popularly called the Four Masters. The transcript 

 made for the Academy agrees in every respect with the ori- 

 ginal, with which it has been compared most carefully by 



