Page:Foras feasa ar Éirinn - Keating; Comyn, Dinneen.djvu/18

viii ancient vellums, often from the very same books from which they also derived their information, and it must ever remain a co-ordinate authority to be consulted by historians along with them and the other annalists." The lists of ancient books, given by Keating himself in the course of his work, afford ample evidence of this.

The great annalists mentioned were more rigid in their conception of their duty, and more stiff in composition than some earlier Gaelic writers; the compilers of the Annals of Loch Cé, for instance, display a much freer treatment of their materials and an easier style. Indeed, the gradual modification of the language, and the development of good prose narrative form, to which in early times not much attention was given, may be traced from the 'Irish Nennius,' in the twelfth century, through the 'Passions and Homilies' of the Leabhar Breac, some of the 'Lives' of the Book of Lismore and the Loch Cé Annals, to the translators of the Bible, to Carsuel, and to Keating when the evolution was complete. The various publications, chiefly religious, issued at Louvain, Rome, and Paris, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by O'Molloy, O'Donlevy, and others, afford good examples of a similar style: and at home the sermons of Dr. O'Gallagher, and the writings of the O'Nachtans, and others, show that the language, while undergoing some inevitable modification, had still the same literary standard. To their influence, and to the efforts of humble scribes and teachers in Ireland it is due that, through the darkest period of our history, the native language, at least, was preserved uncontaminated and undegraded till the approach of better days; a marvellous fact when we consider the persecution, misery, and hardship the Irish-speaking people, for the most part, had then to endure.

The present will be the first complete edition of Keating's History. Outside the restricted circle of Irish scholars, nothing was known of the work, save through Dermod