Reeves — MS. " Lives of Saints " in Marsh's Library. 341 



volume is the identical one which Ussher spoke of as "MS. meus," 

 and " MS. quo usus sum codice."* 



Further, this manuscript contains in various parts short marginal 

 notes, written in that peculiarly minute and delicate hand which 

 Laud described as his "small close hand,"t and which any one con- 

 versant with his writing will unhesitatingly recognise as his. How 

 or when this volume passed into its present depository is unknown ; 

 possibly it is one of the many books which were stolen while the 

 Archbishop's library was stored in the Castle of Dublin previous to 

 the accession of Charles II. (See Ussher' s Life, by Elrington, p. 303.) 



I shall now produce my argumentum cruets to prove that this manu- 

 script is the Codex Ardmachanus of Fleming. In the 1 7th section of the 

 " Life of Saint Comgallus," at fol. 91 la, near the foot, an account is 

 given of some thieves and robbers who carried off the vegetables and 

 fruit of the brethren, of which they complained to their abbot, saying, 

 " Laboramus frustra pater, quia labor noster nee fratribus nee hos- 

 pitibus prodest, tollentes malifici illud a nobis." So it is in the 

 Trinity College MS.,^ and so it was written prima manu in the Marsh 

 manuscript. This was in conformity with the construction often 

 observable in the rustic Latin of Irish hagiology, where the nomina- 

 tive absolute is used instead of the ablative. But a later hand, de- 

 siring to improve the Latinity of the passage, altered tollentes malifici 

 into tollentilus malificis thus : — 



69 



tollentes maMctftllo a noliis, 



putting the dele mark under the es in ' tollentes,' and writing the con- 

 tracted lus over it, inserting also a slender s at the end of ' malifici.' 



But strange to say, the scribe, who in 1626 copied this piece for 

 Fleming — whether Francis Mathews, or a person employed by him — 

 so far forgot himself as not only to read the correction as intended, 

 but also to regard the interlineation 69, his, as the numeral 69, and 

 he accordingly took down the words, as they appear in Fleming's 

 printed text, and nowhere else — " tollentibus sexaginta novem male- 

 hcis illud a nobis." § 



This was a large band, indeed, for one neighbourhood, and, what 

 is ludicrously remarkable, counted so accurately as not to deal in 

 whole numbers, although the outrage had been committed in the dark ; 

 unless we suppose that the country about Bangor was infested by a 

 gang of sixty-nine, like Ali Baba and the forty thieves ! 



* Ussher's Works, vol. vi., pp. 236, 415. 



t Letter to the Lord Deputy (Strafford's Letters, vol. ii., p. 24). 



J E. 3. 11. fol. 58 ab. 



§ Collectanea, p. 306 b. 



3 A 2 



