122 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



mention. This is the more remarkable, inasmuch as St. Patrick's preaching 

 at Clogher is referred to, and the see-lands are regarded as in some sense 

 belonging to him. 1 Thus there is some reason to think that the tradition, 

 ancient as it seems to have been, that the Domnach Airgid belonged to 

 St. Patrick, was never current at Clogher. If so, its value for historical 

 purposes is seriously diminished. It may well have been invented to support 

 the ever-growing pretensions of the see of Armagh. 



I conclude by summing up the main results to which this investigation 

 seems to have led us. It appears probable that the Domnach Airgid was 



served at < logher from the time of its construction to the end of the 

 sixteenth century. Then vidence that it was a book-shrine. At the 



end of the thirteenth century it was certainly used as a reliquary. It is 

 unlikely that at that period it held a book. The manuscript which was found 

 in it in 1832 was probably put into it in some later century, just as some 

 leaves of a manuscript which do not 1 _ it were placed in the cumdach 

 of the Book of Mulling. 5 Lastly, there is the gravest reason to doubt the 

 historicity of the tradition which credi;- St Patrick with having given the 

 D :..: . 3 Cairthinn. That tradition cannot be invoked as a proof 



be antiquity of the G k which it enshrined in later times. The 



que- . ttlement is possible, by tin- 



palaeographers. 



E AIiPED in Pw 

 When the : . read before the Academy, my friend 



r made some striking remarks upon it, the 

 substance of which he has kindly reduced to writing in the following com- 

 munication : — 



I. — The following facts have been brought forward : — 

 1. There was in mediaeval times a shrine _ ler known as Domnach 



known including a lock of hair of the 



Blessed Virgin. One tradition, n otly universally believed, ascribed 



its origin to St. Patrick. 



is opened in the year 1308, and further relics (not a book) 

 were a"" . The nature of these relics 



is specified at least in general terms in the Register of Clogher. 



3. The shrine in the tion, identified by Petrie with the 



Clogher shrine, was traditionally called Domna 



Petrie: it contained ' d relics, nature not specifi- he Statistical 



. O'Beirne's letter, append Traits and £ mentions 



a lock of hair of the Virgin as among its contents. It is curious that Petrie 



1 Extract iv. trs on the Book of Mulling, p. 12 f. 



