Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/317

Rh CELTIC LITERATURE 305 tinuous Old Irish text. But according to Mone there is in the convent of St Paul, somewhere iu Carinthia, a manu script altogether in Irish, containing among other pieces poems, copies of which are to be found in manuscripts of the 14th century in Ireland. In the Royal Library at Copenhagen there is one manuscript, partly vellum and partly paper, containing Irish poems, which formerly belonged to Professor Thorkelin, but we do not know its age. The manuscripts formerly belonging to the Irish College at Louvain were dispersed, the better portion being taken to the Franciscan convent of St Isidore at Rome, where they remained until within the last five or six years, when they were brought to the convent of the same order in Dublin. The remainder of the Louvain manuscripts, consisting chiefly of copies of Irish lives of the saints made for Colgan when preparing his Acta Sanctorum, are now in the Royal Library at Brussels. These are all the Irish manuscripts now known to exist on the Continent. The Irish manuscripts in the United Kingdom are very numer ous, and by good fortune the majority of them, and these the most valuable, are in public libraries, and are thus at once more accessible to scholars and safer from fire, the danger by which Welsh literature has already suffered much loss. The number of Irish manuscripts which formerly existed must have been considerable if the File were as industrious as they were numerous and well rewarded. More than thirty books are mentioned by special names as sources from which some of the most important existing manuscripts were compiled, which are now lost, although some of them existed as late as the 17th century. Nearly all the most valuable existing books are to be found in four public libraries, namely, those of the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College, Dublin, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the British Museum. The collection of Irish manuscripts belonging to the Royal Irish Academy is the largest of all, and comprises, besides a large number of paper manuscripts containing many things not found elsewhere, the valuable vellum manuscripts, Leabhnr na h-Uidhri or Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Ballymote, the Book of Lecan, tho Leabhar Breac or Speckled Book, the Book of Fermoy. Next in importance stands the collection of Trinity College, Dublin, which contains the Book of Leinster (the most valuable from a literary point of view of all existing manuscripts), the yellow Book of Lecan, and a number of other manuscripts full of poems and prose tales, besides the most valuable of the existing law manuscripts. Tho collection in the Bodleian Library, though consisting we believe of only sixteen volumes, is very valuable. Besides a rare law manuscript it includes a manuscript compiled perhaps as early as the year 1100, and certainly not later than the first half of the 12th century, and containing some important poems not known to exist elsewhere. The British Museum Library has now a considerable number of Irish manuscripts, chiefly, however, written on paper. But besides some law manuscripts of value, there is one vellum manuscript, a small folio of 68 leaves beautifully written about the year 1460, formerly belonging to Sir Henry Spelman, which contains the best extant copies of several of the most celebrated historic tales. Of the vellum manuscripts in private hands the most important are the Book of Lismore, belonging to the duke of Devon shire, and kept at Lismore Castle in Ireland ; a manuscript in the possession of the O Connor Don, containing a largo number of poems of the 15th and 16th centuries; the Liber Flavus, a small folio manuscript of about the beginning of the 15th century; the manuscripts formerly belonging to the duke of Buckingham, and now in the possession of the earl of Ashburnham. The most important manuscript in this collection, which is inaccessible to