CELTIC MANUSCRIPTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 387, 10 September 1880, Page 11

CELTIC MANUSCRIPTS.

(From the Chicago Times.') There are three very notable volumes in the Chicago Public Library at present. These are the National Manuscripts of Ireland. They consist principally of fac-similes of a page of each of the best known Gaelic, Latin, Norman, French, and English old books produced in Ireland in ancient times, and that have escaped the multitudinous wars and invasions of which that unhappy country was so long the theatre. Judging by the remnant that has been Bpared by Dane, Norman, and Cromwellian, the early literature of Ireland must have been enormous in quantity ; and it seems a strange inversion of facts that '.he nation of all others of mediaeval Europe that was most noted for the production of books and a love of literature should be the one which to-day stands, if not the lowest, at least veTy low in the scale of education or love for books. However great the distaste for books that too many Irishmen evince at present, it is certain that in the past they held them in the highest veneration, and produced them in extraordinary abundance. A glance over the table of contents of the three volumes under notice will convince the most skeptical of the amount of the existing manuscript matter in the old Gaelic language, not to speak of what is in Latin. The five volumes generally known as the " five great booke," contain almost as much matter as exists in manuscripts of equal antiquity in the whole of tie rest of Furope 1 These five books are known by the names of the " Book of the Dun Cow," the " Speckled Book." tbe " Book of Leinster," the " BoJc of Ballymoat," and the " Book of Lecan." They were written between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries; but the greater part of them consists of copies of manuscripts of vastly greater age. The " Book of the Dun Cow," for instance, is a copy, or rather a fragment of a copy, of the original, compiled in the latter part of the seventh century. Some of these books are very voluminous, and contain probably as much matter as the Old Testament. One of the strangest things connected with the ancient literature of Ireland is the fact that so little of it is= yet translated. There is not an ancient manuscript known to exist either in Saxon, old French, or Norse, that has not been transla f ed and retranslated long ago ; but since the death of O'Donovan and O'Curry, very little has been done in the way of translations from the old Gaelic. There are only two volumes of the " Brehon Laws " yet translated, and there are ten volumes yet to be done. One prime cause of the slowness in bringing out translations of the old literature and laws of Ireland is the apathy of the nation at large about them. People who have been born in Ireland, and whose immediate ancestors were English or Scotch, might naturally enongh be excused for not taking much interest in such a class of literature ; but when we see the loudest-mouthed Fenians and self-styled Nationalists just as apathetic and indifferent as the Saxon about rescuing from oblivion the strongest possible evidences of their country's ancient civilisation, we are forced to come to the conclusion that there is very little hope for Ireland until her children learn to love her better, and that a great deal of what we hear about the patriotism of the Irish people is an exaggeration. Another difficulty exists about translating these old documents, and that is, the extreme antiquity of the language in which most of them are written ; and there is yet another difficulty — namely, the contracted form of the writing. However, if the present race of Irish people cared to kco-w what these old books contained, and to puichase them when translated, tianslators would be soon found in abundance. Whatever has already been done in translating and copying these old books has been done almost altogether at the expense of the British Government. Matthew Arnold in his " Celtic Literature,' 1 speaks in tbe strongest terms of the immensity as of the interesting quality of the old literature of Ireland. He has, in fact, paid it a higher tribute of praise than any Irish writer ever has paid it ; and Germany, as a nation, has done nearly as much to bring the ancient literature of Ireland under notice as li eland herself has done. Within the last twenty-five years a school of German philologists has sprung up, and has given a great stimulus to the study of old Gaelic ; and it seems probable that if the ten volumes of Brehon law tracts are ever translated the work will be done by the scholars of Germany. It must, however, be admitted that John O'Donjvan was the man who not only gave the first real stimulus to the study of ancient Celtic literature, but who saved a good deal of it from destruction. Theie were great piles of vellum manuscripts in many libraries in Great Britain and Ireland that excited hardly any interest, simply because they were known to be Irish, and little curiosity, because no one could decipher them. As soon, however, as some of them were translated, their quaintness and beauty excited considerable interest, and O'Donovan kept on translating them as long as he lived. His death seems to have been followed by a general apathy with regard to early Celtic literature, and with the exception of what his assistant and contemporary, O'Curry, translated, very little has been done since his death to familiarise the English reader with the hidden treasures of the early Celtic. But the work achieved in the three volumes of Irish national manuscripts under notice is a step in the right direction. Nothing can exceed the admirable style in which those colossal volumes are brought out ; no expense seems to have been spared on them, and to the lover of literature, no matter what bis nationality may be. or to the artist, it is haidly too much to say that they are the mest interesting books in the library ; the Irish race may feel justly proud of them. It is true that they are a treat for the artist as well as the antiquarian ; ihefac similes of illuminated letters from the book of Kells aud other manuscripts are amongst the greatest pictorial works of art extant : the very writing is a marvel of beauty and style. In fact, the illuminated Irish manuscripts, as works of art, excel those of any other nation. Large as tbe three volumes are, they are not large enough to give specimens of all the Irish national manuscripts ; but all the important ones known to exist in Great Britain and Ireland, not including the Brehon law tracts, are mentioned in a summary attached to each volume, and the time when the manuscripts were written is also mentioned as nearly as can be

ascertained. There are, however, large quantities of Gaelic mamijj scripts in the libraries of the Continent which are not noticed in these volumes. The citizens of Chicago, the Irish ones especially, should feel grateful to Mr. W. J. Onahan, as he was mainly instrumental in having those magnificent books got into the Public Library here, and it speaks well for the literary taste and enterprise of Chicago that she was the first city in the United States to become possessed of such expensive but most interesting books.