165 



of the tract so often referred to, but so little known, culled 

 Psaltar na Rami, or " The Psalter of the Poems," or, as 

 Colgan thinks, " Psalter of the Divisions," i. e., " Psalterium 

 multipartitum." — Acta SS. p. 582. It is entitled, in the ori- 

 ginal handwriting of the MS., 



"Pyalccin na ncmn mpo pip, t>o pigni Oenjup cell Oe." 



" The Psalter of the Poems begins here, which was made 

 by Oengus Cele De," or Oengus the Culdee. 



This establishes the authorship of this work beyond any 

 reasonable doubt, for this MS. is certainly not later than the 

 twelfth century, and Oengus flourished in the ninth. He w r as 

 for some time a monk of the celebrated Abbey of Tamhlacht, 

 or Tallaght, near Dublin, and was surnamed Cele'De (or ser- 

 vant of God) from his great devotion and sanctity. Some 

 suppose that he had this title from his having been one of 

 the founders and early members of the order of ecclesias- 

 tics called Cele De or Culdees, of whom so much has been 

 written. 



Oengus was the author of many other works, particularly 

 of the Martyrologies which bear his name, and other tracts 

 relating to the history of the saints of Ireland, all of which 

 are still extant, but, to the disgrace of this country, extant 

 only in MSS., which, in another generation, will probably 

 become illegible, or at least the ample means we now possess 

 for illustrating and translating them will be seriously dimi- 

 nished, if not wholly lost. 



Colgan thinks that Aengus was the author of two works, 

 both of which, although very different in their subject, bore, 

 nevertheless, the same name of Psaltar na Rann. 



One of these he supposes to have had its name in the 

 sense of Psalterium multipartitum, or the Manifold Psalter, 

 from the fact that it consisted of the five following works, 

 all of which are still extant in the Library of the Royal Irish 

 Academy. 



