Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/40

 xxxii PREFACE. " TORiA Britonum." — The Irish mss. contain several versions of an Irish translation of the " Historia " Britonum," with additions connected with the legendary history of the Picts and of the Scots of Ireland. This translation is said in one MS. to have been the work of Gillacaemhin, who died in the year 1072, and every indication afforded by the translation itself corresponds with this date. The earliest copy of the version appears in the " Leabhar " na h-uidhre," a MS. compiled by Maelmure, who died in the year 1 1 6, of which a fragment only is pre- served. A complete copy is preserved in the "Book " of Ballimote," a MS. of 1391. Another complete copy, and part of a fourth, in the " Book of Lecain," a MS. of 1418, and another copy in a MS. in Trinity College, Dublin, which cannot be dated earlier than the sixteenth century, and which was probably com- piled in the ye<ar 1577. The Irish version of Nen- nius has been published by the Irish Archaeological Society, edited by the Rev. Dr. Todd ; but it is much to be regretted that the latest MS., that of the sixteenth century, has been selected for the text of this work. That MS. differs very much in its order from the older MSS., and bears evident marks of more modem interpolation and alteration. The whole text has been brought to correspond too much with the Latin text of Nennius, instead of presenting the version of Gillacaemhin, with its additions inter- woven into the text in their original form, which in the Editor's opinion are better represented by the