562 



conry and Cucogry or Peregrine O'CIery, is dated 18th Au- 

 gust, 1633. 



The Martyrology of Aenghus the Culdee is one of the 

 most curious documents connected with Irish ecclesiastical 

 history which still remain to us; had it belonged to any 

 other country of Europe but this, it would not have been suf- 

 fered to remain so long in obscurity. Its author flourished 

 at the close of the eighth century, and composed the work at 

 the Abbey of Tallaght, near Dublin, of which he was then an 

 inmate. It is an elaborate poem, in an ancient dialect of the 

 Irish language, written in rhyme, and with all the alliterations 

 and other artificial rules of prosody with which the poets of 

 that age were fettered. A stanza of four lines is devoted to 

 each day of the year. In this short space the author pre- 

 scribed to himself to introduce the names of the principal 

 saints of the day, with brief allusions to their peculiar charac- 

 ters or acts. A curious introductory poem at the beginning, 

 and another similar one at the end, complete the work. This 

 document is rendered still more valuable and curious by the 

 ancient interlinear gloss and copious scholia with which it is 

 accompanied. These are probably not later than the twelfth 

 or thirteenth centuries, and portions of them are certainly 

 much older. The object of the gloss is to explain obsolete 

 words and phrases which occur in the text, — words which we 

 must remember were obsolete in the twelfth century, — and it 

 is, therefore, of the utmost value and interest to the student 

 of Celtic philology. The scholia contain genealogical no- 

 tices of the saints mentioned by the author, legends of their 

 acts and miracles, the names of the churches where they were 

 honoured, with other similar information, and often notices of 

 saints whose names were omitted in the body of the work. 



The next document in the volume is the Martyrology of 

 Maelmura (or Marianus) O'Gorman, who was abbot of 

 Knock-na-sengan, near Louth, in the middle of the twelfth 



