Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/152

 IRELAKD

116

IRELAND

Rebellion, also the Histories of Teeling, Cloney, Gordon, Kavanagh, and Maxwell; Fitzpatrick, Sham Squire (Dub- lin, 1895); loB\i, Ireland before the Union CD\ih\m,li&0): Se- ward, Collectanea Hibemica (Dublin, 1812); Ghattan, Ltie and Times of Henry Grattan (London, 1839); Macnevin. Pieces of Irish History (New York, 1807); Holt, Memoirs (London, 1838); Comu-allis Correspondence (London, 1859); Guillon, La France et Vlrlande (Paris, 1888); Stanhope, Pi« (London, 1861); AsHBonRNE, Pi(( (London, 1898); Coote, History of the Union (London, 1802); Castlereagh Correspond- ence (London, 1848).

Period since the Union: — Mitchell, History of Ireland (Gl.isgow, 1869); MacDonagh, The Viceroy's Postbag (London. 1904); Lord Sidmoulh's Life (London, 1847); Colchester, Diary (London, 1861); Canning, Correspondence (London, 1887); Plowden, History. 1800-W (Dublin, 1811); Dunlop, Daniel O'Connell (London, 1900); MacDonagh. Daniel O'Con- nell (London, 1903); O'ConnelVs Correspondence (London, 1888); Fitzpatrick, Dr. Do!/ie (Dublin, 1880); Dotle, Lf«(TS on the Stale of Ireland {Dublin, 1826) ; Peel. Memoirs (London, 1856); Cloncurry. Recollections (London, 1849); Wyse, History of the Catholic Association (London. 1829); Sheil, Speeches (London. 1845); Idem. Sketches (London. 1855); The Annual Reqisler; O'Brien, Life of Drummond (London. 1889); John O'Connell. Recollections (London. 1849); Halli- day Pamphlets; O'Rorke. Irish Famine (Dublin. 1902); O'Brien, Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland (London, 1885); O'Connor, The Parnell Movement (London, 1887); A. M. Sulli- van, A'eu' /rcZanrf; Greville, Memoirs (London, ISSS); Han- sard's Parliamentary Reports; Lucas, Life of F. Lucas (London, 18S6); Duffy, The League of North and South (London, 1886); Idem, Four Years of Irish History (London, 1883); Idem, Young Ireland (London, 1880); Devon Commission Report (Dublin, 1847); Carlisle, Speeches (Dublin, 1865); O'Leary, Fenians and Fenianism (London, 1896) ; Butt, Land Tenure in Ireland (Dublin, 1866); Morley, Li/c o/ Giads(one (London, 1905); Barry O'Brien, Lt/e o/ ParnrfZ (London, 1899); Reid, Life of Forster (London, 1888); Davitt, FaU of Feudalism in Ireland (London, 1904); Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century (London, 1904); O'Riordan. Catholicity and Progress in Ireland (London, 1905); MacCaffrey, History of the Church in the Nineteenth Century (2 vols., Dublin, 1909); O'Dea, Maynooth and the University Question (Dublin. 1903). For Statistics see Thorn's Directories and The Irish Catholic Directory.

E. A. D'Alton.

Irish LiTER,\TirRE. — It is uncertain at what period and in what manner the Irish discovered the use of let- ters. It may have been tliroiigh direct commerce with Gaul, Iiut it is more probable, as MacNeill has shown in his study of Irish oghams, that it was from the Romanized Britons that they first learned the art of writing. The Italian alphabet, however, was not the first to be employed in Ireland. Whoever the early Irish may have been who first discovered letters, whether from intercourse with Britain or with Gaul, they did not apparently bring either the Latin or the Greek alphabet back with them to Ireland, but they invented an entirely new one of their own, founded with considerable skill upon the Latin ; this was used in very early times by the Irish Celts for inscriptions upon pillars and gravestones. This ogham script, as it is called, consists of lines, straight or slanting, long or short, drawn either over, under, or through a given straight line, which straight line is in lapidary inscrip- tions usually formed by the angular edge of a rectan- gular upright stone. Thus, four cuts to the right of the line stand for S, to the left of the line they mean C, and if they pass through the line they mean E. None even of the oldest Irish manuscripts preserved to us is anything like as ancient as these lapidary inscriptions. The language of the ogham stones is in fact centuries older than that of the very oldest vellums, and agrees to a large extent with what has been found of the old Gaulish linguistic monuments. Early Irish literature and the sagas relating to the pre-Christian period of Iri.sh history abovmd with ri-feroncos to ogham writ- ing, which w;is almo.'^t certainly of pagan origin, and which coni inucd to bo employed until the Christ ianiza- tion of the island. It was eventually superseded liy the Roman letters which were introduced by the Church and must have been propagated with all the prestige of the new religion behind them; but isolated ogham inscriptions exist on grave stones erected as late as t ho year 000. When t he script was iiit rodueed into Ireland is uncertain, but it was probably about the eecond centurj'. Although it answered well, in- deed better than the rounded Roman letters, for lapi-

dary inscriptions, yet it was too cumbrous an inven- tion for the facile creation of a literature, though a Erofessional poet may well have carried about with im on his "tablet-staves", as the manuscripts call them, the catchwords of many poems, sagas, and gen- ealogies. Over a couple of hundred inscribed ogham stones still exist, mostly in the south-west of Ireland, but they are to be found sporadically wherever the Irish Celt planted his colonies in Scotland, Wales, Devonshire, and even farther East.

Earliest Manuscripts. — The earliest existing exam- ples of the written Irish language as preserved in manuscripts do not go back farther than the eighth century; they are chiefly found in Scriptural glosses written between the lines or on the margins of reli- gious works in Latin, preserved on the Continent, whither they were carried by early Irish missionaries, or written by them in the numerous monasteries which they founded in Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. The oldest piece of consecutive Irish pre- served in Ireland is found in the " Book of Armagh", written about the year 812. These early glosses, though of little except philological interest, yet show the wide learning of the commentators and the ex- traordinary development, even at that early period, of the language in which they wrote. Their language and style, says Kuno Meyer, stand on a high level in comparison with those of the Old High German glosses. "We find here", he writes, "a fully formed learned prose-style which allows even the finest shades of thought to be easily and perfectly expressed, from which we must conclude that there must have been a long previous culture [of the language] going back at the very least to the beginning of the sixth century " (Kultur der Gegenwart, part I, section xi, p. SO). These glosses are to be found at Wurzburg, .St. Gall, Karlsruhe, Milan, Turm, St. Paul in Carinthia, and elsewhere. The " Liber Hymnorum" and the"Stowe Missal" are, after the glosses and the "Book of Ar- magh", perhaps the most ancient manuscripts in which Irish is written. They date from about the year 900 to 1050. The oldest books of miscellaneous literature are the "Leabhar na h-Uidhre", or "Book of the Dun Cow", transcribed about the year 1100, and the "Book of Leinster", which dates from about fifty years later. Both these books are great miscel- laneous literary collections. After them come many valuable vellums. The date at which these manu- scripts were penned is no criterion of the date at which their contents were first written, for many of them contain literature which, from the ancient forms of words and other indications, must have been commit- ted to writing as early as the seventh century at least. We cannot carry these pieces farther back linguistic- ally, but it is evident from their contents that many of them must have been handed down orally for cen- turies before they were committed to writing. It must also be noted that a seventeenth-century manuscript may sometimesgive a more correct version of a seventh- century piece than a vellum many centuries older.

Earliest Christian Scholars in Ireland. — It happens that Ireland's first great saint is also the first person of whom it can be said without hesitation that some at least of the writings ascribed to him are really his. We actually possess a manuscript (Book of Armagh) 1100 years old, containing his "Confession", or apology. There is no reason, however, for supposing that it was with St. Patrick that a knowledge of the Roman alphabet was first brought to Irehmd. Be- fore his arrival there were Christians in Munster. At the beginning of the third century there were British missio!i:iries at work, according to Zimmer, in the .southern |)rovinee of the i.sland. Bede says distinctly that I'alladius w:is sent from Home to the Iri.sh who already believccl in Christ "ad Scottos in Christum credentes"(IO(cl. Hist., bk.I,xih). Pelagius, tli(-sul)tle heresiarch who taught with such succcssat Rome, and