Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The tour of the French traveller M. de La Boullaye Le Gouz in Ireland, A.D. 1644 (Author: François de La Boullaye de la Gouz)

Chapter/Section 16

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XVI.

The assertion of our traveller that the Irish is not a written language, appears founded on his having seen a monk who had been probably educated abroad write it in English characters, which however M. le Gouz candidly admits he could not understand. So might any one write Greek, which an Englishman ignorant of the language would have the same difficulty in comprehending.

That the Irish is a written language of considerable antiquity no scholar can for a moment doubt, although he may hesitate about the identity of the Phoenician and the Iberno Celtic. It is judiciously observed by Mr. Anderson in a little volume entitled Historical Sketches of the Ancient Native Ireland— a work small in size but rich in information relative to the literature, education, and oral instruction of the Irish peasantry, that ‘with regard to the native Irish, such has been the singular fate of their manuscripts,106 and even such is their present condition, that difficulties almost insuperable present themselves at the threshold of enquiry. Many of these unquestionably perished in the Danish invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries, and that singular species of policy which obtained for centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion, must account for the loss of many others. Collections of others are,

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it is true, happily still in existence; but whether those of the greatest value are to be found in this kingdom, or on the continent, it is impossible for any one to affirm. The probability is that they are abroad.’

‘I am aware,’ continues Mr. Anderson, ‘of the valuable collection in Trinity College, Dublin, of that in the Bodleian Library, and the Cottonian manuscripts, as well as the treasure contained in the Chandos collection at Stowe, part of which, in four volumes quarto, with a Latin translation, has been recently printed at the charge of the proprietor, his Grace the Duke of Buckingham.’

Besides these there are various manuscripts in the possession of Irish gentlemen, members of the Iberno-Celtic Society and others, some of which are of considerable antiquity. Of the more modern compositions of the two last centuries, the titular Bishop of Cork Dr. Murphy has at least ten thousand pages transcribed. Were, however, the more ancient Irish manuscripts now in the King's library at Copenhagen, or the still larger collection in the Royal Library at Paris examined; were the Spanish manuscripts decyphered, or the stores which are believed to be deposited in the Vatican; it is almost certain that the claims of the Irish to a very early cultivation of letters would be set at rest, and admitted by all.

Ancient records, the very decyphering of which was strangely regarded in former times, as tending to endanger the tranquillity of the kingdom, were not likely to remain long in it, and hence we fully account for the foreign collections; but that, under the influence of the same fear, the laudable and natural desire of translating any part of these by a foreign power, should not have been met and gratified, proves the extent to

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which the dread of Irish composition had gone.107 At such a period prejudice would consign to oblivion whatever came within its power. Indeed, until the reign of James I. if not later, it seems to have been an object to discover every literary remain of the Old Irish with a view to its being either destroyed or concealed.108

At the same time, no individual can even at present distinctly inform us, whether what we have in our possession be of real value or not, or whether these manuscripts are not nearly the only remaining source from which light may be thrown on the ancient history of Ireland, and perhaps discover to us some of their ideas respecting other countries as well as their own. The stores even in Dublin have never been impartially and thoroughly canvassed, nor does even a complete Catalogue Raisonnée of the collection in Trinity College exist.

I may repeat it, therefore, that the actual state of Irish manuscripts, for these last two hundred years, is one of the most striking illustrations of the power of prejudice as to one branch of our national history to which any historian can point. In the most ancient and curious, which, I presume, must be abroad, historical narration there must be, of whatever value; assertions also, many, in which the writer had no

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motive to falsify, though in various instances he might prove to be mistaken. But what is the amount of information in these numerous written compositions, no man can tell. We have been printing, very properly, ancient and modern Greek in parallel columns; Turkish for the Turk, and struggling hard to decypher the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but the records of one branch of the British population are still to be explored. Of the manuscripts said to be in Spain, no one informs us whether they are in the Escurial, or at Salamanca, Alcala, or elsewhere. Of the King's Library at Copenhagen, as there has never yet been a printed catalogue, nor the written one completed, what those manuscripts were, which a former Monarch wished to have translated, we are yet to be told. In Paris, by a few these manuscripts may be known to exist. In the Vatican they have slumbered since, and from before the days of Wadding. Fragments have been translated from a few at home, and if all the rest are of no higher value, we should have the less reason to regret their neglect; but chance specimens from a body of written composition are not like the specimens of most other things.

In our present state there is no judicious man who would hazard more than conjecture, and perhaps add,—before you decide, examine at least, what seem to be the most valuable, and are most valued in different libraries; and before you return your verdict, forget not the relative character of other nations. At present we are prepossessed with unexamined opinions; and the positive assertions of national prejudice, whether for or against the antiquity or value of Irish writing have yet to be met by a positive and candid examination of the writing itself. At all events, there is one evil which has hitherto ‘pursued the antiquities of Ireland,

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that the writers in general, who have known her language, have been deficient in critical knowledge; while those who possessed the genuine spirit of criticism have not only been ignorant of her ancient tongue, but despised it.’—C.