2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
To reconcile this idea with the accusative form of ‘‘Gallias” it has 
been surmised that the terminal ‘‘ex” of the 18th and the initial 
“a” of the 19th line should be read together, so as, with the addition 
of an interposed suggested ‘‘ tr,” to make up the word ‘‘extra.”” But 
it would, I believe, be a singularity in Irish paleography, which has 
a regular contraction for ‘‘tra,” if a terminal ‘‘a” were needlessly 
carried to the beginning of a new line, and a surmised ‘“‘tr’ at the 
end of the other left to be supplied by the reader’s imagination. The 
text of the MS. affords no ground for the supposition; and, indeed, 
unless ‘‘ obitus,’’ in the passage which it is now time to present 7 
extenso, could be read in the sense of its opposite ‘‘ exitus,” it is hard 
to see how any consistent meaning could be extracted, even by that 
process. The writer is speaking of the obligation cast upon him by 
the mercies of which he had been the object :— 
‘“Oportet . . . . sine repre- 
hensione periculi notum facere donum 
Dei et ejus consulationem eternam sine ti 
more fiducialiter Dei nomen ubique ex 
pandere, ut etiam post obitum meum ex 
agallias relinquere fratribus et filiis meis 
quos in Domino ego baptizayi tot milia ho 
minum.” 
“Tt behoves me, regardless of danger, to make known the gift 
of God, and his everlasting consolation, without fear faithfully to 
spread abroad everywhere the name of God, so as also even after 
my death to leave [these] so many thousands of men ‘ex agallias”’ 
to my brethren and sons whom I have baptized in the Lord.” 
What, then, is 
(a5 ex 
agallias ” ? 
Let us first examine if it be one word or more. It certainly is not 
‘Cextra Gallias”; for, in addition to what is above observed, the ‘‘a” 
and the ‘‘ gallias”’ are not graphically disconnected; on the contrary, 
they are written in clear graphic continuity. Now, there is no such 
word, so far as I know, as ‘‘agallias,”’ even supposing its accusative 
form capable of reconcilement with the antecedent ‘‘ ex.’’ Hence arises 
a cogent inference that ‘‘exagallias” is one word, divided by the 
scribe, just as in the next line above he has divided ‘‘ expandere.”’ 
Being an accusative, as well as ‘‘ tot milia hominum,” and there being 
but the one verb, ‘‘ relinquere,” to govern both, we may infer next, 
with considerable confidence, that the meaning is that the writer 
should, after his death, leave these thousands of men to his brethren 
and children in the Lord as ‘ exagallie,” whatever that may be. 
Now, the word ‘‘ exagellz”’ is used by an ecclesiastical author who, 
during part of his lifetime, was cotemporary with our Patrick, and 
who wrote shortly after that holy person’s death, in a sense which 
