details on the subject in my Ecclesiastical History.  For further information at present, I refer the reader to the Rev. J.P.  Gaffney’s Religion of the Ancient Irish Church p. 43, and to Dr. Moran’s learned Essays, p. 287.  I especially request the superiors of religious orders to afford me any information in their possession concerning the history of their respective orders in Ireland, and also of their several houses.  Details of re-erections of religious houses on old sites are particularly desired.  All books or documents which may be forwarded to me shall be carefully returned.

[185] Solivagus.—­Four Masters, p. 391.

[186] Ireland.—­The elder Sedulius, whose hymns are even now used by the Church, lived in the fifth century.  The hymn, A solis ortis cardine, and many others, are attributed to him.

[187] Culdee.—­There was much dispute at one time as to the origin and true character of the Culdees.  The question, however, has been quite set at rest by the researches of recent Irish scholars.  Professor O’Curry traces them up to the time of St. Patrick.  He thinks they were originally mendicant monks, and that they had no communities until the end of the eighth century, when St. Maelruain of Tallaght drew up a rule for them.  This rule is still extant.  Mr. Haverty (Irish History, p. 110) has well observed, they probably resembled the Tertiaries, or Third Orders, which belong to the Orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis at the present day.  See also Dr. Reeves’ Life of St. Columba, for some clear and valuable remarks on this subject.

[188] Measure.—­The subject of Irish poetical composition would demand a considerable space if thoroughly entertained.  Zeuss has done admirable justice to the subject in his Grammatica Celtica, where he shows that the word rhyme [rimum] is of Irish origin.  The Very Rev. U. Burke has also devoted some pages to this interesting investigation, in his College Irish Grammar.  He observes that the phonetic framework in which the poetry of a people is usually fashioned, differs in each of the great national families, even as their language and genius differ.  He also shows that the earliest Latin ecclesiastical poets were Irish, and formed their hymns upon the rules of Irish versification; thus quite controverting the theory that rhyme was introduced by the Saracens in the ninth century.

[189] Order.—­This refers to the vision in which St. Patrick is said to have seen three orders of saints, who should succeed each other in Ireland.

[190] Discipline.—­Bede, lib. iii. cap. 3.  We have used Bohn’s translation, as above all suspicion.

[191] England.—­Camden says:  “At that age the Anglo-Saxons repaired on all sides to Ireland as to a general mart of learning, whence we read, in our writers, of holy men, that they went to study in Ireland”—­Amandatus est ad disciplinam in Hiberniam.