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neous and of no value. According to the account given me by 

 Father Prendergast, the last abbot of Cong, and last represen- 

 tative in Connaught of the Augustinian Order, the cross was 

 brought into Ireland and deposited at Cong, with the monks 

 of that order, by St. Patrick, though the order did not exist till 

 two centuries later, and was not established in Ireland for many 

 ages afterwards. This, he said, was the historical tradition con- 

 nected with it, and which he believed to be true ; and though I 

 endeavoured, by reading to him the inscriptions carved upon the 

 shrine, to convince him that such tradition was altogether erro- 

 neous, I found it impossible to make any impression upon him. 

 But the want of any historical accounts of this shrine for so long 

 a period is of little importance, as, from the fact recorded of the 

 archbishop for whom it was made, that he died in the monastery 

 of Cong, we may reasonably infer that the shrine was left by 

 him in that great religious establishment, in which so many of 

 his name and family subsequently ruled, and that it must have 

 been preserved there till the final extinction of the Augustinian 

 Order, as connected with Cong, in our own time. Father Pren- 

 dergast further stated that the shrine, with a great number of 

 the ancient manuscripts of the monastery, at the dissolution of 

 the monastic houses in Ireland, had been concealed in an old 

 oaken chest in a cottage of the village, and so remained till he 

 became abbot, and took possession of them. But in this, also, 

 he was probably in error, for the shrine must have been seen 

 by the learned Humphrey Lloyd, during his tour in Connaught 

 at the commencement of the eighteenth century, as he quotes 

 and translates in his Archseologia, published in 1709, the in- 

 scription relative to Muireadhach O'Dubhthaigh as being 

 carved upon it ; and this inscription is also given by the learned 

 Dr. O'Brien in his Irish dictionary, though it is very proba- 

 ble that the bishop only quoted the passage from the work of 

 the former. And hence it appears to me to be more probable 

 that the concealment of the shrine and manuscripts, — which 

 manuscripts, I regret to say, were subsequently destroyed, — 



