surnames and the remarkable places mentioned in this work, which was compiled by Dubhaltach Mac Firbhisigh of Lecain, 1650.”  He also gives, as was then usual, the “place, time, author, and cause of writing the work.”  The “cause” was “to increase the glory of God, and for the information of the people in general;” a beautiful and most true epitome of the motives which inspired the penmen of Erinn from the first introduction of Christianity, and produced the “countless host” of her noble historiographers.

Mac Firbis was murdered[19] in the year 1670, at an advanced age; and thus departed the last and not the least distinguished of our long line of poet-historians.  Mac Firbis was a voluminous writer.  Unfortunately some of his treatises have been lost;[20] but the CHRONICUM SCOTORUM is more than sufficient to establish his literary reputation.

The ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS demand a larger notice, as unquestionably one of the most remarkable works on record.  It forms the last link between the ancient and modern history of Ireland; a link worthy of the past, and, we dare add, it shall be also worthy of the future.  It is a proof of what great and noble deeds may be accomplished under the most adverse circumstances, and one of the many, if not one of the most, triumphant denials of the often-repeated charges of indolence made against the mendicant orders, and of aversion to learning made against religious orders in general.  Nor is it a less brilliant proof that intellectual gifts may be cultivated and are fostered in the cloister; and that a patriot’s heart may burn as ardently, and love of country prove as powerful a motive, beneath the cowl or the veil, as beneath the helmet or the coif.

Michael O’Clery, the chief of the Four Masters, was a friar of the order of St. Francis.  He was born at Kilbarron, near Ballyshannon, county Donegal, in the year 1580, and was educated principally in the south of Ireland, which was then more celebrated for its academies than the north.  The date of his entrance into the Franciscan order is not known, neither is it known why he,

    “Once the heir of bardic honours,”

became a simple lay-brother.  In the year 1627 he travelled through Ireland collecting materials for Father Hugh Ward, also a Franciscan friar, and Guardian of the convent of St. Antony at Louvain, who was preparing a series of Lives of Irish Saints.  When Father Ward died, the project was taken up and partially carried out by Father John Colgan.  His first work, the Trias Thaumaturgus, contains the lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigid, and St. Columba.  The second volume contains the lives of Irish saints whose festivals occur from the 1st of January to the 31st of March; and here, unfortunately, alike for the hagiographer and the antiquarian, the work ceased.  It is probable that the idea of saving—­

          “The old memorials
    Of the noble and the holy,
    Of the chiefs of ancient lineage,
    Of the saints of wondrous virtues;
    Of the Ollamhs and the Brehons,
    Of the bards and of the betaghs,"[21]