Page:Foras feasa ar Éirinn - Keating; Comyn, Dinneen.djvu/20

x the text, my historical doubts and inquiries, and my further acknowledgments.

Dr. Joyce says:—"To publish text, translation, and annotations of old Keating—whom I revere and love—would be a great work, enough to place all Irishmen, present and future, under deep obligations to you. A grand ambition, enough to make a man's whole life pleasant and healthy." I too can claim that I have always had a like deep veneration and affection for our good old author, and to do this work has been with me the desire and dream of half a lifetime: in fact, since I was first able to read the Irish language, and took part, now more than a quarter of a century ago, in the movement for its preservation. I even then hoped to have commenced this undertaking, but other matters, in themselves of minor interest, were more pressing needs for the time: now, however, the Irish Texts Society gives me the opportunity so long wished for; and from Dr. Hyde, the President, Miss Eleanor Hull, the Hon. Sec, my colleagues on the Committee, and other members and friends, I have received such encouragement and assistance, as give me hope that I may be able, under their auspices, to complete so great and useful a work.

As to Dr. Keating's other works, Dr. Atkinson's splendid edition, published by the Royal Irish Academy, in 1890, of the text of the 'Three Shafts of Death,' a moral and philosophic treatise, with an exhaustive vocabulary, has been of great service in the preparation of the present volumes: and the text of 'An Explanatory Defence of the Mass' has been issued by Mr. Patrick O'Brien, and is important and useful. It was Keating's earliest work, and the language is simpler than in the other text named. These two texts, together with the present edition of the History, furnish an ample store of classical Gaelic prose, and to these works, since their first production, so far as they were known, everyone has been satisfied to appeal as to authoritative