A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day. Douglas Hyde

      [11] Literally: "There are at the western door, in the place where the sun goes down, a stud of steeds with grey-speckled manes and another crimson brown. There are at the eastern door three ancient trees of crimson crystal, from which incessantly sing soft-toned birds. There is a tree in front of the court, it cannot be matched in harmony, a tree of silver against which the sun shines, like unto gold is its great sheen."

[12] A Befind in raga lim / I tír n-ingnad hifil rind / Is barr sobairche folt and / Is dath snechtu chorp coind. Literally: "O lady fair wouldst thou come with me to the wondrous land that is ours, where the hair is as the blossom of the primrose, where the tender body is as fair as snow. There shall be no grief there nor sorrow; white are the teeth there, black are the eyebrows, a delight to the eye is the number of our host, and on every cheek is the hue of the foxglove.

      "The crimson of the foxglove is in every brake, delightful to the eye [there] the blackbird's eggs. Although pleasant to behold are the plains of Innisfail, after frequenting the Great Plain rarely wouldst thou [remember them]. Though heady to thee the ale of Innisfail, headier the ale of the great land, a beauty of a land, the land I speak of. Youth never grows there into old age. Warm, sweet streams traverse the country with choicest mead and choicest wine, handsome persons [are there], without blemish, conception without sin, without stain.

      "We see every one on every side, and no one seeth us; the cloud of Adam's wrong-doing has concealed us from being numbered. O lady, if thou comest to my brave land, it is a crown of gold shall be upon thy head, fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have with me then, fair lady."

      Apropos of the Irish liking for swine's flesh, Stanihurst tells a good story: "'No meat,' says he, 'they fansie so much as porke, and the fatter the better. One of John O'Nel's [Shane O'Neill's] household demanded of his fellow whether beefe were better than porke. 'That,' quoth the other, 'is as intricate a question as to ask whether thou art better than O'Nell.'"

      CHAPTER XI

      EARLY USE OF LETTERS, OGAM AND ROMAN

We now come to the question, When and where did the Irish get their alphabet, and at what time did they begin to practise the art of writing? The present alphabet of the Irish, which they have used in all their books from the seventh century down, and probably for three hundred years before that, is only a modification—and a peculiarly beautiful one—of the Roman letters. This alphabet they no doubt borrowed from their neighbours, the Romanised Britons, within whose territory they had established themselves, and with whom—now in peace, now in war—they carried on a vigorous and constant intercourse.[1] The general use of letters in Ireland is, however, to be attributed to the early Christian missionaries.

But there is no reason to believe that it was St. Patrick, or indeed any missionary, who first introduced them. There probably were in Ireland many persons in the fourth century, or perhaps even earlier, who were acquainted with the art of writing. Already, at the beginning of the third century at least, says Zimmer in his "Keltische Studien," British missionaries were at work in the south of Ireland. Bede, in his history, says distinctly that Palladius was sent from Rome in the year 431 to the Irish "who believed in Christ"—"ad Scottos in Christum credentes." Already, at the close of the third century, there was an organised British episcopate, and three British bishops attended the Council of Arles held in 314. It is quite impossible that the numerous Irish colonies settled in the south of England and in Wales could have failed to come into contact with this organised Church, and even to have been influenced by it. The account in the Acta Sanctorum, of Declan, Bishop of Waterford, said to have been born in 347, and of Ailbe, another southern bishop, who met St. Patrick, may be looked upon as perfectly true in so far as it relates to the actual existence of these pre-Patrician bishops. St. Chrysostom, writing in the year 387, mentions that already churches and altars had been erected in the British Isles. Pelagius, the subtle and persuasive heresiarch who taught with such success at Rome about the year 400, and acquired great influence there, was of Irish descent—"habet progeniem Scotticæ gentis de Brittanorum vicinia," said St. Jerome. As St. Augustine and Prosper of Aquitaine call him "Briton" and "British scribe," he probably belonged to one of the Irish colonies settled in Wales or the South-west of England. His success at Rome is a proof that some Irish families at least were within reach of literary education in the fourth century. His friend and teacher, Celestius, has also been claimed as an Irishman, but Dr. Healy has shown that this claim is perhaps founded upon a misconception.[2]

"The influence of the ancient Irish on the Continent," says Dr. Sigerson, "began in the works of Sedulius, whose 'Carmen Paschale,' published in the fifth century, is the first great Christian epic worthy of the name." Sedulius, the Virgil of theological poetry, flourished in the first half of the fifth century, and seems to have studied in Gaul, passed into Italy, and finally resided in Achaia in Greece, which he seems to have made his home. There are at least eight Irish Siadals (in Latin Sedulius, in English Shiel) commemorated by Colgan. The strongest evidence of Sedulius's Irish nationality is that the Irish geographer Dicuil, in the eighth century, quoting some of his lines, calls him noster Sedulius. John of Tritenheim, towards the close of the fifteenth century, distinctly calls him an Irishman natione Scotus, but attributes to him the verses of a later Sedulius. Dr. Sigerson, by a clever analysis