244 Proceedings of the Royal L-ish Academy. 



centuries later, apparently in the fom-teentb century, when the present lid 

 was substituted for that which had originally been attached to it. After the 

 Treaty of Limerick, Daniel O'Donel, the representative of the family to which 

 the cumdach has always belonged, who was attached to the cause of the 

 Stuarts, left Ireland for France, and took the cumdach with him. Twenty- 

 seven years later he became a Brigadier Genei'al in the French army.' In 

 France the shrine was found once more to be in need of repair. O'Donel 

 caused this work to be done in 172.S, and at the same time prorided it with a 

 silver case, intended to protect it from fui-ther injury. It is interesting to 

 observe that the shrine was then believed to contain a relic (pignus) of 

 St. Columba, commonly called the " caah " {caihacK), of the exact nature of 

 which possibly nothing was known. The cumdach was, in fact, closed, and 

 for at least two centuries, as will appear later, it had been held that it 

 was unlawful to open it. 



The cumdach remained in France for more than a century. It was found 

 in 1802 in a "monastery or college at Paris," was brought to Ireland by 

 Sir Capel Molyneux, and by him was handed over to his father-in-law, 

 Sir Xeal O'Donel, Bart., of Newport, County Mayo. Ten years later his 

 son, Sir Neal O'Donel — the second baronet — employed Sir "William Betliam, 

 then assistant to the Ulster King of Arms, to compile a pedigree of the 

 O'Donel family. Sir William borrowed the shrine from Dame Mary O'Donel, 

 to whom it had been bequeathed by her husband, the first Sir Neal, with a 

 view to inserting a description of it in the pedigree ; and while it was in his 

 custody, in 1813,' he performed the " unlawful " act of opening it. He found, 

 contrary to cm-rent belief, that it contained a wooden box, " very much 

 decayed,"' in which were some leaves of a Latin Psalter and '• a thin piece of 



1 J. C. O'Callaghan, " ffistory of the Irish Brigades," 1870, pp. 113-115. 



'The date is fixed by the Bill of Complaint of Dame Mary O'Donel, dated 30 April, 

 1814, and the reply of Sir William Betham, sworn 9 June, 1814. Lady O'Donel had 

 instituted an action in Chancery against Betham, charging him with having opened the 

 shrine, contrary to an undertaking given by him that he would not do so, and with 

 having purloined its contents. Betham's reply gives a full account of the opening of the 

 cumdach, much more interesting than that which he published thirteen years later, but 

 inconsistent with it, and less creditable to himself. He states, inter alia, that, in spite 

 of the report that it contained a portion of St. Columba's body, he himself expected to 

 find a manuscript enclosed in it. This was a very astute inference from the parallel case 

 of the shrine of the Boob of Mulling, which had been examined by TaUancey. 



' This description is certainly true. For Sir William Betham, before the shrine was 

 opened, t«sted his hypothesis that it contained a manuscript by passing a " slender 

 wire " through a small opening in it, with which he rubbed the edges of the vellum leaves. 

 It must have pierced the decayed wood. It maybe added that this test would have been 

 useless if tlie manuscript had then been a solid mass. See below, p. 246, note '. There 

 are wooden cases in the Domnach Airgid and Lough Erne shrines in the Academy's 

 collection. 



