372 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



chulaind : — 1. Of his parentage, birth, and name. 2. Of his acquiring 

 the name Cuchulaind. 3. Stories of his boyish exploits. 4. His posi- 

 tion amongst the Ultonian heroes, bis adventures, prohibitions, and pri- 

 vileges among the Red Branch heroes, etc. 5. Courtship of Cuchulaind, 

 by Derbforgaill, daughter of the King of Britain. 6. Death of Cuchu- 

 laind. 7. The wailing lament of Emer on hearing of the death of 

 Cuchulaind, her husband. These, and a variety of other pieces, such 

 as the death of Medb, death of Celtchair Mac TJthaithir, are of great 

 importance in connexion with the history of this period. There are 

 also a few Ossianic poems and pieces attributed to Find MacCumhail, 

 Cailte, and Ossin, which may claim the attention of students of Ossi- 

 anic lore. 



To close my summary of the contents of the Book of Leinster, I 

 may add that it contains a full copy of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV., 

 authorizing King Henry II. of England to assume the government of 

 Ireland. It is written in old court-hand, and, owing to the darkness 

 of the vellum and the decay of the ink, parts of it are very obscure. 

 It commences on folio 167 b, p. [334]: — "Bulla concena regi anglie 

 super collatione hibernie in qua nichil derogatur iuri hibernicorum sicut in 

 ferie verborum patet." I do not propose to offer any opinion or com- 

 ment as to the authenticity or importance of this document, but it 

 seems to me that the fact of its being preserved in the Book of 

 Leinster indicates pretty clearly the persons as well as the period to 

 which it may be referred. 



The want of a descriptive catalogue of the contents of so impor- 

 tant a book as that of Leinster has long been felt, and to supply this 

 I have now the honour to submit one in which I have endeavoured to 

 specify every piece to be found in the manuscript, noting in all in- 

 stances the page, column, and line where the composition commences, 

 and giving the title or first line of each piece. The number of titles 

 thus contained in this catalogue extends to about 1400. 



To make this description as complete as possible, I have carefully 

 examined and catalogued the eleven leaves of the Book of Leinster, which 

 have recently been brought back to Ireland from Borne by the Fran- 

 ciscan Order. I have included the contents of those leaves in this 

 catalogue, and thus we have, for the first time, an account of the con- 

 tents of the entire remains of the Book of Leinster. 



"With respect to ten leaves of the Book of Leinster formerly in 

 the convent of St. Isidore at Rome, but now in Dublin, Dr. Todd 

 wrote as follows in his Introduction to the Martyrology of Donegal, 

 1864, pp. xiv.-xvii. : — 



II. The Martyrology of Tallaght. 



This work was contained in the Book of Leinster, a MS. of the twelfth cen- 

 tury, preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, but has long disappeared 

 from that volume, which is now very imperfect. 



During my visit to Rome, in 1862, I found eleven of the missing leaves of this 

 precious manuscript (which I recognised at once) among the documents kindly 

 shown me by the Superior of St. Isidore's Convent. These leaves contain some of 



