Armstrong and Lawlor — The Domnach Airgid. 125 



world," 1 1 can recall no instance in which the material of a shrine is specified. 

 We may infer that these were exceptional shrines, and that the nse of the 

 precious metals, or what passed for such, was unusual. This conclusion is 

 not disturbed by the legend that St. Columba desired a church " full of gold 

 and silver to cover relics and shrines withal," 2 We may believe, therefore, 

 that " silver shrines " were rare, though we have an example, perhaps older 

 than the Clogher shrine, in the Lough Erne shrine, which, like it, is coated 

 with tin. The very name Domnach Airgid, clearly in the tenth century a 

 widely current designation of a well-known reliquary, implies as much. 

 It would be remarkable if there were then two " silver shrines " in the 

 neighbouring churches of Clogher and Clones, one of which was called 

 Domnach Airgid as a distinctive epithet, while the other was simply known 

 as the Domnach. 



4. The Clogher and Academy shrines seem to have been of even date. 

 Mr. Armstrong has assigned the latter, and I the former, to the eighth 

 century. Mr. Armstrong's terminus a quo is the end of the seventh century ; 

 my terminus ad quern is the beginning of the ninth. 



5. Dr. O'Beirne, in a letter written to Betham before the latter had seen 

 the Academy shrine, reporting information gleaned from "the country people" 

 as to its contents, declared that " the chief treasure it was supposed to contain 

 was a lock of the Virgin's hair." 3 Petrie thought it probable that a fragment 

 of the Cross was concealed under the crystal above the representation of the 

 Crucifixion. This is unlikely to have been a pure guess, and it may well 

 have been a tradition reported to him by Mr. Smith, who was associated with 

 Dr. O'Beirne in his investigations into the local traditions. It has now 

 proved correct, and I have suggested that this relic may have been removed 

 from the interior in the fourteenth century. But among the relics in the 

 Clogher shrine were also a fragment of the Cross and some hairs of the 

 Blessed Virgin. 



6. On Professor Macalister's theory the Academy shrine was transferred 

 from Clones to the Maguire country ; on Petrie's from Clogher to the same 

 district. The latter is the more probable hypothesis; for the Maguires 

 must have had closer relations with their cathedral church than with the 

 monastery of Clones. When the princes of the diocese were called together 

 in 1297 to consider the bull Clcricis laicos, they assembled in three groups. 

 The first consisted of Donmall O'Neill and the chiefs of Tir Eoghain. 

 The second included Brian MacMahon, King of Oriel, bis brother Ralph, 



1 Annals of Ulster s. aa. 799, 800, 1006. The cumdach of the Book of Durrow is not 

 said to have been of ' plated silver,' as Miss M. Stokes asserts {Early Christian Art in 

 Ireland, p. 90). Ic was adorned with a silver cross (Robinson, Celtic Illuminative Art, 

 p. xx). 



' Stokes, Lismore Lives, p. 17-1. 3 Carleton, Trails ami Stories, 1853, vol. iii. p. I-Il'. 



