AN IRISH HISTORICAL COLLECTION.*

THE first volume of this Calendar contains two of the most important sections of the Carew Manuscripts,—namely, the " Book of Howth " and Bray's " Conquest of Ireland." The former is a a3ries of legendary and historical excerpts, completed in the six- teenth century, and deriving its name from a noble owner who at least made one or two entries in it. Mr. Brewer traces thirteen handwritings in the text and marginal additions, and many parts of it have a very hugger-mugger appearance, from the intermix- ture of antique sagas with more modern statistic notices, or in part, we may say, with casual scribbliogs. Thus the first para- • Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. Edited by T. B. Brewer, M.A., and William Bnllen, Esq. Published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 1871.

graph gives us the genealogy of a Danish gentleman, who appears afterwards to have been the last survivor of his race in the island, and to have furnished St. Patrick with the history of their down- fall. The thread of this discourse is suddenly interrupted by the testimony which "Bockas" (Boccaccio) has delivered to the" worth and hardihood" of a "woman called Zenobia,"—by the derivation of the word "Meath,"—and so forth, and our editor has not thought it necessary or feasible to distinguish these various kinds of material or litter by italics, or any similar expedient. Altogether, we are not otherwise assisted in sorting the contents of this reper- tory than by the alphabetic index, for in his introduction Mr. Brewer confines himself to enumerating the authors who are here and there quoted, and to copying a few examples of anecdotes which are historically suggestive, or which illustrate the charac- teristic and inveterate propensity " of the Irish chroniclers to mix up mere jests with their most serious narratives, as where we are told of our Danish friend that St. Patrick accidentally ran a stake, which he was planting in the ground, through his foot, and that the meek convert bore the wound in silence, supposing it to have been an essential part of the rite of baptism..

Among the other early traditions, we have some of a romantic, and some of an exceedingly savage character, as is that of the house burnt over some gentlewomen who had pre- sumed to laugh at an Ultonian miles gloriosus ; and that of an O'Rorke's obscene quarrel with his Queen in Meath, for which two•

of her favourites atoned with their manhood. When we come to the early invasions of the English, the narrative of the " Book of

Howth" agrees closely with that of Bray's "Conquest of Ireland," and there are indications that both the authors have been indebted to a Latin work called Polychronicon, which is founded on the Ex.- pugnatio Hiberniae of Giraldus Cambrensis, but not to be identified therewith. The " Book of Howth " refers to a version of this work executed in 1551 by a Primate of Ardagh named Dowdall. Bray has followed an earlier version ; his text looks more accurate, and

his diction is worth preserving for its antique character and other merits. (Mr. Brewer finds part of the earliest version of the

Polychronicon quoted in an edition of Giraldus Cambrensis, and criticises Mr. Dimock for considering it a translation from that author.) For our part, we should recommend readers of the- Calendar not to turn over a single page of the " Book of Howth "

in this part without a reference to Bray's " Conquest." The one almost everywhere looks like a very ignorant and uncritical modernisation of the other. Witness the puzzling passage (" Book of Howth," p. 49) :—

"In this fight there was a knight that hight William Ferand, that did very well above all others. He was a man that had some land given- him and therefore he put himself always where the most peril was, for he had rather to die than to bo evil thought of, for there was so many strokes upon him that bruised him."

A brave man, evidently ; but how was it that the possession of "some land" made him so ? The " Conquest of Ireland" tells us, " He was a man that had semblent as thegh he were on the miche• evyl [much evil]. And therfor he put hym self at al tymes they the most pereyl was, for he roght not that dethe come betwene hym, and his seknes, or it were much growe on hyrne." This is. uncouth language, but we appear to see that a diseased man is spoken of, and that the writer of the " Book of Howth " has negligently taken semblent for some land, and imaginatively altered' the rest of the passage to suit his own hallucination respecting its import. In another place the "Book of Howth " has " Tongue breaketh band, though himself have none ;" the " Conquest of Ireland," "Tong brekith boone [bone], thegh himself hath hone.'

In the midst of the matter common to these two books (and mostly to Giraldus Cambrensis), the "Book of Howth" inserts some wild legends of the De Courcy family, to which full justice has been done by heraldic writers, and in a work we lately noticed under the title Romance of the Irish Peerage. Bray winds up his narrative (apart from some very meagre appended annals) in an invective about the state of anarchy which followed the arrival of Prince John in Ireland ; and the " Book of Howth degenerates from the same period into a mere litter of historical and local memoranda, which seldom assumes a more regular appearance, except near the time of the Scotch invasion, and again towards the end of the fifteenth century. From the later part Mr. Brewer has culled, among other interesting passages, a glowing eulogium of the Earl of Surrey, who was Wolsey's con- temporary ; and an anecdote, too long to be recorded here, but suited to present " in a favourable and pleasing light " the charac- ter of our Henry VII., and valuable because "popular histories represent that king as never unbending from that grave, serious, and reserved deportment, in which Lord Bacon loved to contem- plate him." But we cannot refrain from copying as a gem of

Irish rhetoric the following speech, relating to a notorious member of the Council in this same reign, who was an inveterate enemy of the Earl of Kildare :—

" This Conk being in England afore the Council, complaining upon the Earl, the tears fell from his eyes. The Earl asked him why he so did. He said it was for pity and contemplation that ho had upon his father's son ; 'but my duty to my prince enforceth me thus to do to you.' Said the Earl, 'He is like the plover-taker in setting his snares, and waiting for his desired purpose, his eyes being against the wind, and the water dropping out. So many plovers as he taketh, he knock- eth their brains out with his thumb, notwithstanding his watery tears of contemplation. Even like Both Mr. Coale with me ; his tears cometh down; he layeth shrewd matters or articles to my charge."

We shall care no more to speak of crocodiles, now that we are acquainted with the tears of plover-takers. We have only a few records in this volume of later date than the reign of Henry VII.

The paragraph noticed by Mr. Brewer, as intimating that Edward VI. and Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, were to some extent believers in necromancy, occurs in a string of anecdotes of various periods, and was not meant for history. But we have been struck by two records of a more remote date, not far from that of the cruel suppression of the Templars, whose alleged crimes made a

sufficient impression in Ireland to get modestly alluded to in a doggrel ballad, and may possibly have contributed to produce a mischievous activity in the ecclesiastical Courts there. In English history we read little about heresy or sorcery till long after the reign of Edward III., yet in 1329 a very malignant- looking prosecution was instituted on both these grounds by the Bishop of Ossory against a family of five persons. Alice Ketell, it was stated, had procured herself a paramour by sacrificing nine red cocks to a certain devil, and had caused the mud of the streets of Kilkenny to be swept into the house of her son, affirming that all the good-fortune of Kilkenny should there- with follow. Petronilla and her two other daughters were charged with abetting her. Alice submitted herself, and gave bail for her good behaviour ; but " fell again into her old folly," and " the Bishop, understanding the same, had her daughter burned at Kilkenny. But when she was judged to die" [that is Alice, if we understand the deponent's very perplexed language], " she de- clared" [apparently to gain time for escape] " that her son William deserved to die as well as she, affirming that by the space of a year and a day he wore upon his bare body the girdle of a devil." Hereupon William was imprisoned by the Bishop with due precautions, but William's money was so cleverly employed upon a temporal magistrate that he was released at the end of nine weeks. and the Bishop "put to prison during the space of three months." The times were as yet too wild for a Holy Office to get on com- fortably. But Alice, who notoriously possessed a charmed staff, with which she could " go through the world without let or hindrance," was threfore again cited to appear before the Dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin. She presented herself, gave surety that she would submit to trial on a certain day, and escaped to England by the aid of a fair wind (though we do not read that she flew on her staff thither). William fell again into the power of the Bishop, but through the intercession of certain noblemen was allowed to compound for his sins by covering a church with lead, notwith- standing that poor Petronilla had averred that he was consent- ing to the sorcery of his mother,—a revolting story, but told in such a chaotic way in the "Book of Howth" that we are tempted to hope it was altogether a bit of blarney, like the duel which Sir John de Courcy was engaged to fight in order to terminate the dispute of the two Kings for Normandy. Somewhat more plainly set down are the grounds on which Adam Douffe, in the year 1327, was pronounced a blasphemer and heretic, and sentenced to be

burned at the Hog's Green by Dublin, having, it is stated, said that " there could not be three Persons in one God," and such like things; but he may, perhaps, be taken for a Rationalist of a more Advanced type than we could have expected to meet with in the fourteenth century.