398 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



have to be re -transcribed later in more calligraphic form, and this would 

 perhaps require a larger stock of parchment than was available. Of course 

 our knowledge of the early (Latin) script of Ireland is as limited as our know- 

 ledge of the early (Greek) script of Egypt used to be, before Messrs. Grenfell 

 and Hunt unearthed all these papyri from the Fayoum. It may be that, if 

 we had a sufficient number of early specimens preserved, we should find the 

 script of the Cathach to be a common type. As things are, it seems to be 

 unique. It gives the impression of a script which would not often be used 

 for books, a half-uncial which, under the necessity for haste, has been forced 

 to discard some of its characteristics. Since there is no specimen of this 

 type' to which one can appeal, my note will have to keep to general remarks, 

 and cannot come at all near a satisfactory decision of the question. Perhaps 

 the best way of trying to convince a reader will be to ask him to look at a 

 photograph of the last page of the famous Hilary codex in the Biblioteca 

 Basilicana at Rome, the page containing the corrector's subscription. A photo- 

 graph will be found in Steffens' " Lateinische Palaeographie " (first edition), 

 plate 17, or in Ehrle and Liebaert's " Specimina Codicum Latinorum," 

 plate 6 a. The Hilary text is in half-uncial script, the subscription in every- 

 day cursive. Both text and subscription belong to 509 or 510 a.d. Let the 

 reader try to imagine for himself how the half-uncial of the text would be 

 altered if it were slightly modified in the direction of the cursive of the 

 subscription. Would not something like the script of the Cathach be the 

 result ? 



A palaeographer of last century would probably assign the script to 

 " about 700 A.D." If induced (not always an easy thing) to state his reasons, 

 they would perhaps take a shape like this : " From the mss. I have seen in 

 the British Museum and the Bodleian, and from the Palaeographical Society's 

 photographs of various mss. of Continental libraries, I have been led to 

 associate formed minuscule script with the ninth and following centuries, 

 uncial with the fifth to the eighth, half-uncial with the sixth to the eighth. 

 The script of the Cathach is a small-sized half-uncial on the way to minuscule. 

 If the minuscule element were more pronounced, I would assign it to the 

 middle of the eighth century ; as it is, I assign it to the very beginning." 



The evidence on which a palaeographer has to frame a verdict consists 

 (unless he has visited foreign libraries) mainly of the publications of our own 

 and other Palaeographical Societies. These are, as a rule, taken from 

 calligraphic specimens, partly because the subscribers like to see beautiful 



' The " quarter-uncial " of the Bobbio Juvenal fragments found by Mons. Ratti i.s not 

 quite the .same thing. (See the photographs, in natural size, which accompany his article 

 in "Rendiconti R. 1st. Lombard, di .Sc. e Lett.," Serie li, vol. xlii, 1909.) 



