OLD MANUSCRIPT

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 106, 6 May 1936, Page 11

OLD MANUSCRIPT

A PRIEST'S SEARCH

SEVENTH CENTURY BOOK

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, April 23.

Important developments have taken place in a search for the Book of the Clonenagh, a seventh century vellum manuscript in Gaelic, for which the Rev. Father Fogarty, of Ireland, is searching Victoria, on behalf of the Irish Free State Government.

Since publicity was given to the details of the search, Father Fogarty has received an extensive correspondence. For a time none of the correspondence pitoved of value, but recently he has had information from three independent sources indicating that the precious manuscript is probably still in existence in the Hamilton district and has not been destroyed, as was once feared. In the papers of a deceased estate, there recently appeared a bundle of old documents -which mystified the executor. They were written in Gaelic and he could not make out a word of them, but put the papers aside for further inquiry. These papers were part of the estate known as the "Knaggs property."

The Book of the Clonenagh was a Gaelic manuscript compiled in the seventh century, containing earliest records of one of the Christian colleges in Ireland, and also certain scriptural writings in Gaelic. The school was raided and pillaged several times by the Northmen, and in the course of centuries was destroyed, so that only a mound of turf appeared where the school once stood. The papers were preserved in Rath Castle. Probably at the time of the Reformation, the records passed into the care of the incumbent of the parish, and in the earliest part of the 19th century passed into the keeping of the Rev. Valentine Griffith. He passed it on to his son-in-law, Dr. Robert Knaggs, a surgeon, who went to Melbourne in 1851. All his papers and property passed to his son, James Knaggs, who established the Baccarah station,j near Hamilton. He went to Melbourne to live when he went into retirement, and died without mentioning the existence of the manuscript to his son and daughter. When the Knaggs family, left Baccarah station, several boxes of old books and papers were left in a shed, and it is probable that the ancient manuscript was among them. Father Fogarty is in communication with those who are believed to be now in possession of the manuscript. He will be able to tell by examination whether it is the vellum he is seeking. If it is not, he will probably be able to identify the document.