HOW THE ANCIENT IRISH WROTE DOWN ALL THEIR LITERATURE, AND HOW BOOKS INCREASED AND MULTIPLIED.

Printing was not invented till the fifteenth century, and before that time all books had of course to be written by hand.

According to our native records the art of writing was known to the pagan Irish, and the druids had books on law and other subjects, long before the time of St. Patrick. Besides these home evidences, which are so numerous and strong as hardly to admit of dispute, we have the testimony of a learned foreigner, which is quite decisive on the point. A Christian philosopher of the fourth century of our era, named Ethicus of Istria, travelled over the three continents, and has left a description of his wanderings, in what he calls a ‘Cosmography’ of the World. He visited Ireland more than a hundred years before the arrival of St. Patrick; and he states that he found there many books, and that he remained for some time in the country examining them. So far then as Ethicus records the existence of Irish books in the fourth century, he merely corroborates our own native accounts.

The pagan Irish books were, of course, written in the Irish language; but as to the nature or shapes of the letters, or the form of the writing, or how it reached Ireland, on these points we have no information, for none of the old books remain. The letters used in these books could hardly have been what are known as Ogham characters, for these are too cumbrous for long passages.

Ogham was a species of writing, the letters of which were formed by combinations of short lines and points, on and at both sides of a middle or stem line. Nearly all the Oghams hitherto found are sepulchral inscriptions. Great numbers of monumental stones are preserved with Ogham inscriptions cut on them, of which most have been deciphered, either partially or completely. They are in a very antique form of the Irish language; and while many were engraved in far distant pagan ages, others belong to Christian times.

But whatever characters the Irish may have used in times of paganism, they learned the Roman letters from the early Roman missionaries, and adopted them in writing their own language during and after the time of St. Patrick: which are still retained in modern Irish. These same letters, moreover, were brought to Great Britain by the early Irish missionaries already spoken of (p. 52), from whom the Anglo-Saxons learned them; so that England received her first knowledge of the letters of the alphabet—as she received most of her Christianity—from Ireland. Formerly it was the fashion to call those letters Anglo-Saxon: but now people know better. Our present printed characters—the very characters now under the reader’s eye—were ultimately developed from those old Irish-Roman letters.

After the time of St. Patrick, as everything seems to have been written down that was considered worth preserving, Manuscripts accumulated in the course of time, which were kept in monasteries and in the houses of professors of learning: many also in the libraries of private persons. The most general material used for writing on was vellum or parchment, made from the skins of sheep, goats, or calves. To copy a book was justly considered a very meritorious work, and in the highest degree so if it was a part of the Holy Scriptures, or of any other book on sacred or devotional subjects. Scribes or copyists were therefore much honoured. The handwriting of these old documents is remarkable for its beauty, its plainness, and its perfect uniformity; each scribe, however, having his own characteristic form and style.

Sometimes the scribes wrote down what had never been written before, that is, matters composed at the time, or preserved in memory; but more commonly they copied from other volumes. If an old book began to be worn, ragged, or dim with age, so as to be hard to make out and read, some scribe was sure to copy it, so as to have a new book easy to read and well bound up. Most of the books written out in this manner related to Ireland, as will be described presently; and the language of these was almost always Irish; except in copies of the Roman classics or of the Scriptures, where Latin was used.

Books abounded in Ireland when the Danes first made their appearance, about the beginning of the ninth century; so that the old Irish writers often speak with pride of “the hosts of the books of Erin.” But with the first Danish arrivals began the woeful destruction of manuscripts, the records of ancient learning. The animosity of the barbarians was specially directed against books, monasteries, and monuments of religion: and all the manuscripts they could lay hold on they either burned or “drowned”—i.e., flung them into the nearest lake or river. Next came the Anglo-Norman Invasion, which was quite as destructive of native books, learning, and art as the Danish inroads, or more so; and most of the old volumes that survived were scattered and lost.

Notwithstanding all this havoc and wreck, we have still preserved a large number of old Irish books. The ornamented and illuminated copies of the Scriptures are described in the chapter on Art. We have also many volumes of Miscellaneous Literature in which are written compositions of all kinds, both prose and poetry, copied from older books, and written in, one after another, till the volume was filled. Of all these old books of mixed compositions, the largest that remains to us is the Book of Leinster, which is kept in Trinity College, Dublin. It is an immense volume, all in the Irish language, written more than 750 years ago; and many of the pages are now almost black with age and very hard to make out. It contains a great number of pieces, some in prose and some in verse, and nearly all of them about Ireland:—histories, accounts of battles and sieges, lives and adventures of great men, with many tales and stories of things that happened in this country in far distant ages.

The Book of the Dun Cow is preserved in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. It is fifty years older than the Book of Leinster, but not so large; and it contains also a great number of tales, adventures, and histories, all relating to Ireland, and all in the Irish language.

Two other great Irish books kept in Dublin are the Yellow Book of Lecan [Leckan] and the Book of Ballymote. These contain much the same kind of matter as the Book of Leinster—with pieces mostly different however—but they are not nearly so old. The Speckled Book, which is also in Dublin, is nearly as large as the Book of Leinster, but not so old. It is mostly on religious matters, and contains a great number of Lives of saints, hymns, sermons, portions of the Scriptures, and other such pieces. All these books are written with the greatest care, and in most beautiful penmanship.

The five old books described above have been lately printed, in such a way that the print resembles exactly the writing of the old books themselves. The printed volumes are now to be found in libraries in several parts of Ireland, as well as in England and on the Continent; so that those desirous of studying them need not come to Dublin, as people had to do formerly. Another grand old book preserved in Dublin is the Book of Lecan. Besides these there are vast numbers of Irish manuscript books in Dublin and elsewhere, both vellum and paper, having no special names, all containing important and interesting pieces. There are also numerous books of law, of medicine, of science, genealogies, Lives of saints, sermons, and so forth, which on account of limited space cannot be described here.

Many people are now eagerly studying these books; and men often come to Ireland from France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and other countries, in order to learn the Irish language so as to be able to read them. But this requires much study, even from those who know the Irish of the present day; for the language of these books is old and difficult.