original settlements in "Laighin deas Gabhair," is still preserved in the traditions of the peasantry, and the topographical nomenclature of the great Bealach or pass lying between the Sliabharda and Killamery hills, through which the Oisraighs were compelled to retreat before the advances of the Mummonian forces, the line of retreat being marked by the localities of Mullach, or Mullan Inneona, now called Mullinahone, and which, according to my authority,' means a violent expulsion; and Bealach Urluidhe, Anglicised Earlstown, which implies "the blows or irresistible strokes of valiant men." The Osraighs, being expelled from Munster, settled down in the fertile and expansive tract lying between the King's River and the Killamery hills, then and subsequently known as Magh Reighna; and here the kings of Ossory were first called Righ Reighna, i. e. King of Reighna. Eithne Vathach, the immediate cause of the expulsion of the Oisraighs, seems to have grown up a virago of distinction, as she accompanied her husband Aenghus in his martial expeditions. It would appear that the peculiar delicacy of the unnatural condiments prepared for the acceleration of her womanhood excited also instincts and propensities as unnatural as themselves; for we are told that she attempted the commission of a crime of a most disgraceful nature, which so offended the piety of St. Ciaran of Saighar, that he predicted to Eithne that both herself and her husband, Aenghus, would be slain in battle as a punishment of the crime, which prophecy was fulfilled at the battle of Cill-Osnadha, fought in the now county of Carlow, A. D., 489, when Aenghus and his royal consort were numbered amongst the slain.3 It appears that in the events of this epoch of which we are treating were determined the extent and the boundaries of the future kingdom of Ossory; and it further seems more than probable that at this same period the upper valley of the Nore, or "Airged Ros," was first wrested from the successors of Cathier Mor, and annexed to the portion of Laighin deas Gabhair still in the possession of the King of Ossory, as an indemnity for the encroachment made on this same territory by Aenghus, and granted by him to the Deisi. This would appear probable from the fact, that henceforward we find the kings of Ossory and Munster allied in open hostility to the kings of Leinster. It is certain from the "Will of Cathier Mor," that in the second century "Airged Ros" was not annexed to "Laighin deas Gabhair;" nor did it belong to the King of Ossory's dominions, as it is referred to as part of the kingdom of Leinster; and in the oldest lives of St. Patrick it is still described as the western region of Leinster, whence it would appear to have remained sub 1 Keating, vol. i, p. 286. 2 See the events of this epoch given more in detail in my lastpaper, "Transactions," vol. iii., p. 372, 3. 3 "Annals of the Four Masters," A.D. 489. See also the annotations of the editor, and his quotations from Colgan's "Acta Sanctorum" in the margin. ject to, and to have formed part of, that kingdom down to St. Patrick's time; yet its annexation to Ossory must have been effected, if not previous to, most certainly during the preaching of St. Patrick, and the lifetime of Aenghus. Aenghus Mac Nadhfraich reigned in Munster during the public mission of St. Ciaran in Ossory. According to history and tradition, St. Patrick, on the occasion of his first visit to Aenghus, approached Munster through Lower Ossory, where he met St. Ciaran for the first time in Ireland; and there can be little doubt that the "Elder of Oisraigh" accompanied the "National Apostle" on his journey to Magh Femin, where both of them were received by Aenghus, and introduced by him to his court at Cashel. After the baptism of Aenghus by St. Patrick, when we are told the pastoral staff of the saint perforated the foot of the royal neophyte, we find St. Ciaran taking a prominent part in the deliberations of the council of Cashel, held immediately after, when the jurisdiction of St. Patrick over all Ireland was first acknowledged, and St. Ciaran was invested with ecclesiastical authority over the principality of Oisraigh. This ancient kingdom and the ecclesiastical territory of the same name are allowed to have been conterminous since the establishment of Christianity in Ireland; consequently the kingdom of Ossory must have been coextensive with the present diocese of the same name before it was placed under the guardianship of St. Ciaran. Shane More O'Dugan, chief poet of Hy-Many, who died in the year 1372, has left us a rather concise survey of the kingdom of Ossory. He gives its extent in four different measurements, or rather measures its extent between four of its greatest extremes: he first sketches the width of "Laighin deas Gabhair," or Ossory proper, before it was divided by the Munstermen; he next gives the extreme length of the entire kingdom; thirdly, the extreme of Upper Ossory; and, fourthly, the width of the kingdom at near the middle of its territory. The following extracts will form an interesting illustration for our present essay.3 1 Lanigan denies that St. Ciaran, of Saighar, was contemporary with either Aenghus or St. Patrick: asserting that he lived at a much later date; and that the Council of Cashel is a mere fiction, unsupported by historical evidence of any authority. But the great majority of Irish scholars are opposed to him: Ussher, Colgan, O'Flaherty, Ware, Mac Geogheghan, and most modern antiquarians synchronize the public mission of the first bishop of Ossory with the reign of the first Christian King of Munster, and the preaching of St. Patrick in Ireland. See Lanigan's arguments, "Eccle siastical History of Ireland," vol. i., pp. 22, 29, 30, &c.; vol. ii., pp. 7, 8, 98, &c. 2 In Colgan's "Trias Thaum.," we are told that St. Patrick approached Munster through Bealach Gabhran, and was met in the field or plain of Femin by Aengus, son of Nadhfraich, King of Munster, and was by him conducted to his habitation, called Caissel- p. 26,C. 60. 3 The portion relating to Ossory was translated by the late Dr. O'Donovan, and published in a tract along with the Ossorian part of O'Heerin's Topographi cal Poem, which had been edited by him for this society in the year 1850. "From the Bearbha [Barrow] to the Siuir [Suir] westwards, From the soft Bladhma to the sea, The most irriguous fair part of Banbha” [Ireland]. No part of Ossory at any period extended from the Barrow to the Suir, since the time when Southern Ossory and Magh Femin were united under the name of " Laighin deas Gabhair;" hence this refers to that remote period when the Oisraighs were in possession of the entire territory between these two rivers. "From Bladhma to the sea," expresses the extreme length of Ossory, from the Sliabh Bloom (or Bladhma) mountains, in the slopes of which the Suir, Nore, and Barrow, were said to have their respective sources, to the confluence of the same streams before they enter the sea below the town of Waterford. "From Glaise-an-ionathar forth To Baile Daithi in re-measurement, Of aspect how like to loveliness!" Glaise-an-ionathar is translated by O'Donovan the stream of the entrails, and he also asserts that it was the ancient name of the Munster river; Baile Daithi is now called Ballydavis, a locality in the parish of Straboe, in the Queen's County; hence a line drawn between these two extremes would extend from the Kilcooly hills, in which the Munster river rises, across the barony of Galmoy and Upper Ossory to the barony of Maryborough, in which the town of Balldavis is situated. This is called re-measurement, or the second measurement, because it describes the breadth of Ossory in its northern extreme, in contradistinction to the previous sketch of its southern confines "From Mullach-Inneona the hospitable, Is Ossory's part of the land of Gailian Of the country of Flann, eastwards to Leith-ghlinn: The line of measurement here indicated would pass close to the city of Kilkenny. The extract reads thus:-Ossory's part of the land of Gailian (one of the old names of Leinster) extends from the town of Mullinahone, famous for its hospitality, eastwards to Leith-ghlinn, or, as we now call it, Old Leighlin, situated on the Carlow side of the Johnswell mountains. These outlines of the ancient kingdom give us the extent of the present diocese of Ossory, which extends in length from the utmost bounds of the parish of Seir-Ciaran to the Ferrybank of Waterford, nearly sixty miles; and in breadth, from the parish of Kilmacahil, in the diocese of Leighlin, to the west bounds of the parish of Callan, upwards of twelve miles.1 In the reign of Edward II., when Kilkenny became a separate "Liberty," the entire kingdom of Ossory was included in that district, as also in the subsequently formed "county" of Kilkenny; and so continued until the reign of Philip and Mary, when the present Queen's County was being established, and on which occasion the portion of it till then included in Kilkenny was erected into the barony of Upper Ossory, which comprised about one-third of the present Queen's County. The Ordnance Survey in 1840 ignored this ancient barony altogether, and constructed out of it the present baronies of Clandonagh and Clarmallagh, thus civilly obliterating the last trace of the primitive title of the valley of the Nore. The illustration of the history or topography of Upper Ossory does not come within the design of the present essay. Our future inquiries shall be principally confined to the elucidation of the history and antiquities of the lower valley of the Nore, or Ossory proper. (To be continued.) ON AN ANCIENT RUNIC CASKET NOW PRESERVED IN THE DUCAL MUSEUM, BRUNSWICK. BY GEORGE STEPHENS, ESQ., F. S. A., PROFESSOR of old English, AND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN. 2 Ir not absolutely the oldest, this coffer, still in fine preservation, is certainly the most elaborate and most precious specimen of this kind of western art now known. It is made up of thin plates of the ivory or tusk' of the walrus, with settings of a sort of yellowish bronze, all whose ornaments are still quite sharp and clear. The bottom plate is also of walrus, or morse ivory, in a similar manner fixt in slips of bronze, on which are carved the Runic letters. These repeat the inscription twice over, the two long lines and the two short ones answering to each other. The shrine now holds a couple of unimportant relics, but Senator Culemann pronounces these to be, as it was natural to expect, of far later date, perhaps 1 Ware's Bishops, at Ossory. The plates which illustrate this paper are engraved full size from photographs of every side, and from a photograph, a rubbing, and a cast of the bottom plate, all taken from the original in the Ducal Museum, Brunswick. For these favours I am indebted to His Excellency, Mr. Gordon, British Minis ter, Stuttgart, and to the Senator Friedrich Culemann, of Hanover, who has personally controlled the execution of every piece, and who kindly took the rubbing with his own hand. I also beg to thank the Geheime-Hofrath Eigner, curator of this museum, for the exceeding courtesy he has shown me on this occasion. from the 13th century. He also informs me that no memorandum exists in the Ducal Museum as to whence this remarkable box came, or when it was obtained, but he thinks it might possibly have been acquired by the Duchess Gertrud, mother of Henry the Lion, who when in France purchast relics to the value of one hundred pounds of silver. We are, therefore, entirely in the dark. Would that we could have followed it in its wanderings from Northumbria to Gallia, and thence far away into Germany! The small holes at the corner of the ivory plates were bored for the better fastening of the bronze framing-slips. The staves are plainly and correctly cut, and any doubt which might arise from slight accidental peculiarities of form is at once dissipated by comparison with the parallel line, as the two inscriptions exactly agree. Before attempting to "uncipher" the characters, we must examine the object on which they stand. This strikes us at once as of high antiquity and of undeniable Old-Western workmanship. This Old-Western style is often difficult to discriminate-the Keltic, the English, the Gallic, and their subdivisions or crosses, running into each other in a way not to be too narrowly or pedantically fixt. Paucity of monuments renders everything uncertain, besides which the style is often to a certain extent modified by the material; parchment, and stone, and metal, and bone, being very different things and producing very different results. We see this in Runes and letters, but we can also trace it in carved ornaments. Still less can we sometimes determine with absolute certainty the date of a particular piece. Excellent judges occasionally differ even by two or three centuries. In art as in language there may be local or personal retardations or anticipations, archaisms long kept up, or new tendencies developed at a bound, and elsewhere long and slowly struggling upward. Anything absolutely similar to the thoroly harmonious and richly composed and delicately rounded and softly modelled, and minutely finisht work in this casket, I have not met with before. We might call it Gallo-Frankic, or Gallo-Irish, or Gallo-English; but for all we know it may be pure Gallic, or pure Keltic, or pure English. Every new "find" modifies our science of "classification," which is yet in its infancy. Nor are we more fortunate as fo the date. It may have been executed in the 7th century. At first blush we might guess at the 9th. Later than the 8th or 9th I think no inscription on so costly a piece (intended for some member of the very highest, and very richest, and most "civilized" classes) would have been carved in Runes. Roman characters would have been employed. But these Runes are not Keltic. They are in no variety of the Keltic Oghams. They are in the usual Old-Northern staves, and, still more distinctly classified, they are Old-English, not Old-Scandinavian. |