317 



So effectually had the original writing been effaced in these 

 places, that, in the first instance, Mr. Graves gave up the 

 attempt to decipher it as utterly hopeless. But his attention 

 was again urgently drawn to the subject by Mr. Eugene 

 Curry, who had independently noticed the same fact. Being 

 aware that it was usual for Irish scribes to insert, at the end of 

 books written by them, their own names, and some notices of 

 the date or occasion of the writing, he had been looking at 

 these very places in the hope of finding such entries, and, to 

 his disappointment, he had ascertained that they had been 

 erased. Still he did not despair of their being ultimately read : 

 and as he thought it probable that, like the body of the work, 

 they were written in Latin, a language with which he is not well 

 acquainted, he requested Mr. Graves to endeavour to make 

 them out. One of the erasures to which he particularly 

 directed attention was the one marked 7 in the list given 

 above, and to this Mr. Graves first applied himself. He reads 

 it as follows : 



Pro Ferdomnacho ores. 



A well-executed fac simile is subjoined, for the purpose of 

 enabling those who have access to the manuscript to judge 

 whether his reading be correct. 



On turning to erasures 3, 4, and 8, he satisfied himself that 

 the same words had been written in those places also. It is 

 thus established that the whole volume was executed by the 

 same scribe, as, indeed, the uniformity of the handwriting suf- 

 ficiently proves. Erasures 6 and 7 are considerable ones ; and 

 there is good reason to apprehend that, in both these instances, 

 we have to deplore the loss of much information respecting 

 the manuscript. 



At all events, we know that it was written by a scribe 

 named Ferdomnach. But it yet remains to be ascertained who 

 this Ferdomnach was, and at what time he lived. 



