Page:Irish essays; literary and historical.pdf/21

 Yes, let them work for the glory of God and the honour of Erin:—

Brother Michael, in his thread-bare habit, at the head of the table, and now nearly sixty years of age, was in his young days known as Teige of the Mountain, and, doubtless, shared the danger and the glory of the dauntless Red Hugh through the battle-smoke of many a desperate day. He went abroad with the exiled Earls, in 1607, or very shortly after, and subsequently became a lay-brother in the celebrated Franciscan Convent of St. Anthony in Louvain. Ward and Fleming, members of that community, were just then engaged in collecting materials for the Lives of the Irish Saints—those materials afterwards so well employed by Father John Colgan. Brother Michael was an accomplished Irish scholar, and belonged, moreover, to one of those learned families whose duty it was to make themselves familiar with all the old books of their country. So it was resolved to send him home to collect materials for their work. Brother Michael, of course, obeyed, and spent fifteen years in Ireland collecting those precious materials, without which Colgan could never have accomplished his own immortal work.

During these years of unremitting toil, Brother Michael had a two-fold object in view first, to collect materials for the lives of the saints as projected by his own superiors in Louvain and, secondly, to gather at the same time all the books and documents that might prove to be useful in the execution of his own special project, namely, the compilation of the ancient annals of Ireland, both sacred and profane. What I especially wish to call your attention to is the long-continued and unremitting—ay, and unrequited—labour which he spent in accomplishing this double purpose. At this time no member of a religious order, and especially no friar from France or the Low Countries, could travel through Ireland without constant and imminent peril of his life, because they were regarded as agents or emissaries of the exiled Irish princes. But Brother Michael, with the most