464 



the reliquary now exhibited to the Academy is the identical 

 brazen arm of which Smith speaks. 



At all events 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 inscrip- 

 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 mi or mip, a month ; if so, it may 

 have contained, not a Gospel or a 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 men re, 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 



