Lawlor — The Catk/ich of St. Coliimha. 245 



board covered with red leather, very like that with which eastern Jiss. are 

 bound." The leaves, he tells us, " appeared to have been originally stitched 

 together, but the sewing had almost entirely disappeared."' 



It appears that no one thought it worth while to preserve the woodeu box 

 or the board covered with red leather, or even to measure or describe them. 

 And though the stitching had not entirely disappeared, no record was kept of 

 the way in which the leaves were arranged in gatherings. The binder's knife 

 has deprived us of all possibility of discovering the arrangement now.' 



By the kind permission of its present owner, I have been enabled to 

 make a study of this interesting manuscript, the results of which I propose 

 to lay before the Academy. 



Desceiption. 



The Cathach^ is a fragment consisting of fifty-eight consecutive leaves, all 

 of which are more or less mutilated. The first verse of which any part is 

 legible is Ps. xxx. 10, and the last Ps. cv. 13. Consequently the existing 

 leaves, before mutilation, included rather more than half the Psalter, and the 

 manuscript when complete must have had about 110 leaves. That it was 

 complete in the eleventh century is not probable.* It is true that the loss of 

 portions of the leaves may be due, not to rough usage before it was encased, 

 but to the action of damp after that event. And it is possible that a con- 

 siderable number of the leaves were so far decomposed when the cumdaeh was 

 opened that they were thought unworthy of preservation. Sir William 

 Betham is not very explicit on that point. He writes thus^ : — " It was so 



"W. Betham, "Antiquarian Researches," i, HO. Betham was obviously ignorant of 

 O'Donnell's Life of St. Columba, which will engage our attention in the sequel. The 

 shrine, he says, had been closed for "more than a century" (i.e. from the time of 

 Daniel O'Donel ?), "under an idea that it contained the bones of St. Columkill himself." 

 This, I believe, was an inference from the inscription on the outer case, according to 

 which it held a pignus Columbani. The word pignus was used for the body of a Saint 

 after death (see, e.g., V. S. Brendani I, ^ 105, Plummer, i. 151). Betham was unable to 

 discover the meaning of the name C'aah, " which is not an Irish word " ! 



- It may be conjectured, however, that the two pairs of transposed leaves, 35, 36, and 

 42, 43 (see below, p. 247, note), were pairs of conjugates, each in the middle of a gathering. 

 If that be so, the two successive gatherings to which they belonged had probably one 6 

 and the other 8 leaves, or both 6 leaves, with the addition of a leaf without a conjugate 

 in one of them. But I must add that I find it difficult to reconcile this supposition with 

 other phenomena of the sis. 



^ This word is sometimes used as the name of the shrine. It is properly applicable to 

 the book preserved in the shrine. 



* Betham held the contrary opinion. " From the depth of the wooden box," he writes 

 (p. Ill), "there is no doubt but it once contained the whole Psalter." A most precarious 

 inference. 



^IhicL, p. 110 f. 



