HioMPHiLi. — The Gospels of Mac Regol of Bhr. 5 



It may be convenient to take first the three snn'iving pictures of 

 evangelists, and dismiss them in few words. They with their borders, which 

 resemble those on the initial pages which follow, are in four colours only ; 

 red, yellow, green, and purple (black is additional). The pigments were 

 mixed with a gummy substance, and have not peeled off, but retain almost 

 their pristine brightness. There is not a trace of gold, nor could gold wire 

 have been used in the drawing of the spirals, which are, it must be confessed, 

 painfully rough. A photograph of St. John's portrait is included as Plate 9] 

 in the first volume of the Palteographical Society, showing the curious yellow 

 disk upon the top of the head, which has been variously interpreted as a skull- 

 cap, the evangelist's hair, and the Eoman tonsure. Plate 16 of Westwood's 

 Facsimiles and Miniakires, containing the same, is the only existing repro- 

 duction in colours of any of these MacEegol portraits. None of the three 

 portraits has a nimlus ; but St. John's has a rainbow. The hair and facial 

 appearance generally of SS. Mark and Luke differ greatly from St. John, and 

 also from one another. The predominant feature of St. Mark is his light 

 yellow hair with wavy red stripes ; and of St. Luke, his large forked beard. 

 It is also interesting to note the ink-pot, with a very long stem fastened to 

 the right-hand side of St. Luke's chair, into which the Evangelist is in the act 

 of dipping his pen. We may compare with this Dr. Keller's reproduction, 

 from a St. Gall MS., of a portrait of St. Matthew in precisely the same 

 attitvide. It is noticeable that the symbolic animal painted over each 

 evangelist is represented by MacEegol as contoumi. This has been implicitly 

 corrected by the Saxon interlineator in his pen-and-ink sketch of St. Mark 

 already mentioned. 



Before passing to what is to me the special feature of the book, the four 

 initial pages, which ought, perhaps, according to strict logical sequence, to be 

 described here immediately after the portraits, I must refer parenthetically to 

 the general body of the text. A photograph of one page, 110 recto (Luke xvi. 

 25-xvii. 6), appears as Plate 90 of the first volume of the Palaeographical 

 Society ; and Sir E. Maunde Thompson gives therewith a valuable detailed 

 analysis of the style of writing, to which the student is once for all referred. 

 For the sake of illustration, I have thought it well to include in this paper 

 another page, 92 recto (Luke iii. 8-17), which is a sufficient sample of the 

 general style of the penmanship. This page contains two small initials 

 surrounded with the red dots' which are so characteristic of Irish scribes." 



' Some of the dots have a kind of silvery substance mixed with the pigment. 

 2 A page of the Genealogy of St. Luke is lithographed by Gilbert in The National MSS. of 

 Ireland, vol, i., plate xxii. 



