Welsh Journals

too (Bxputeion of tot ©essu By PROFESSOR KUNO MEYER, PH.D. OUR knowledge of Irish history during the early centuries of our era is fortunately not confined to the meagre accounts of the Annals. In addition to them, and as independent sources, we possess a large mass of materials in the histories of individual tribes, genealogical tables, chronological poems, sagas, and saints' Lives, all bearing upon the early history of Ireland. These materials are, of course, of the most varied origin and age, and will have to be carefully tested and sifted. Not until this has been done will the historian of Ireland have before him all the materials which Irish literature affords. Much inedited matter of this kind is found in the Bodleian codices Rawlinson B. 502 and 512, and in Laud 610. Among other important texts I may mention the piece called Baile in Scdil, or The Vision of the Phantom,' which enumerates more than fifty Irish kings from Conn Cétchathach (A.D. 123-157) downward to the eleventh century, together with the duration of their reigns, long lists of battles fought by them, the circumstances of their deaths, and other details. But it is the tribal histories that are perhaps of the greatest historical value, as they certainly are of the widest interest. One of these, dealing 1 There is a fragment of the same piece in Harleian 5280, of which I am preparing an edition for publication in the third number of the Zeitschrift fiir Celt. Philologie, vol. iii.