CURRENT LITERATURE
PROFESSOR MACALISTER, than whom there is no greater living authority on Irish antiquities, says in his preface that Mr. Lawler's work at Nendriun, on Island Mahee in Stmngford Lough, is "the most complete and instructive excavation that has ever been made in any Irish Christian foundation:, Mr. Lawler had indeed the advantage of exploring a long deserted site with no modern graves in it, but he has made admirable use of the opportunity, and his scholarly monograph summarizes clearly both the literary evidence and the results of the digging. Mochaoi—pronounced Mughee—was one of St. Patrick's converts. He founded his monastery in or about the year 445, and died there in 497. A charming legend says that he stayed in a wood listening to a bird's song for three hundred years and returned home to find himself a Rip van Winkle. The monastery flourished, with intervals of decay, for five centuries until the Danes came. The last abbot, the annals record, "was burned in his own house" in 974. A small church was built later but was destroyed in the Elizabethan civil wars. Mr. Lawler has found sad testimony to the fate of the monastery in a heap of skeletons hastily buried and in the remains of burnt build- ings. He found, too, the monastic bell which had been hidden by a fugitive ; it is a bell such as the Swiss cows still bear on their necks in the Alps and has numerous fellows in the Irish Academy's collection. Mr. Coffey, we remember, contended that this type of bell originated in Ireland. The monastery was enclosed within three cashels or stone dykes, almost certainly of pre-Christian origin and probably inhabited by the Cruithni who preceded the Celts in Ireland. Many fragments of very early hand-made pottery were found on the site. The stump of a round tower remains. Mr. Lawler thinks 'that it 'was dismantled by the builders of the church. We must not touch on the many large questions which the book raises. We hope, however, that Mr. Lawler's success will inspire other Irish archaeologists to go and do likewise. The elucidation of Ireland's early history depends mainly on the spade, now that her records have been destroyed.
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