and honourable reception; but it took him thirteen years to accomplish the object of his mission, which was at length effected the 23d of April 729, when Abbot Duncan and the brethren joined him in the celebration of Easter, which fell upon that day by the Romish calculation which they had hitherto rejected. Ecgbercht happening to die that very day, "the brethren rejoiced in the certain and "catholic knowledge of the time of Easter, and in the pro"tection of the father by whom they had been corrected departing to the Lord *."

Thus it appears, that by the year 730, all Scotland acknowledged the Papal Pasch and Tonsure, which had hitherto formed a principal subject of controversy. And as her clergy then acknowledged the authority of the professed successor of St. Peter in points which they deemed of the utmost importance, we can scarcely presume that the Bishops, Abbots, or Presbyters, of the succeeding generation would show so little deference to him as either to claim or receive the title of Pope, which the universal consent of the Western Church had long before resigned to him; as is manifest from Bede, a church historian of England in that age, who applies the title of Pope to the Bishops of Rome alone, or, as he terms it, of the Roman and Apostolical See, whose spiritual authority he uniform-. ly represents as supreme from the time of Gregory, who was raised to the popedom in 692, and made the first attempt to reclaim the English from the Pagan superstition of their ancestors +.

There is every reason to believe, then, that the life of Papa Murchus (be he bishop, abbot, or presbyter) in whose cœnobium or college our MS. was written, did not extend beyond the close of the eighth century; and if the

✦ Bed. Hist. Ecclesiat. Lib. V. cap. 23.

↑ Histor. Eccles, Gent. Anglor. L. I. c. 23. 25. ut et passim.

annexed fac simile of its characters in Plate I. Fig. 1, 2. and in Plate II. throughout, be compared with the speeimens which M. Mabillon and Mr. Astle have exhibited of the writing of that age, such a belief will be found to be fully warranted *.

The orthography of this MS. also bears evidence of its high antiquity, u being employed in it to denote the sound which is uniformly expressed in other MSS. from the ninth century to the sixteenth downward by bbb or bh. Nor should it escape our notice, that the death of a Muredachus, prior of Iona, is marked by the diligent and learned Colgan under the year 777t. For the letter d in Muredachus, by the rules of Gaelic orthography, is quiescent, and serves merely to lengthen out the sound, in the manner of a circumflex accent: So that actually the sound of Muredachus is much the same as that of Muirchius.

The title of prior, it is observable, existed before priories were erected, and was at times used for abbot; besides which, four several kinds of priors connected with monasteries are described by Du Cange, as Prior scholae regionariae, Prior major, Prior claustri, Prior conventualis. If the Head of

* See Mabillon DeRe Diplomaticâ Tab. V. p. 353. 2d part of the 2d specimen, and Tab. IX. And compare the ornamented letters of our MS. Fig. 1, 2. of Plate I. hereunto annexed, with those of Mr. Astle's 18th, Plate, No.1, 2. (first edition, of his Origin and Progress of Writing) which were written in the 8th century; and its capital letters, as represented in Plate II. with those which are engraved from MSS. of the 7th and 8th centuries in his 14th, 15th and 18th Plates; attending to the observation which he makes, p. 103. "It is observable, that square or cornered characters were not disused at this time. [the 8th century] in the titles of Manuscripts."

"Anno 777. S. Muredachus, filius Huagalii, Prior Hiensis obiit." Joan. Colgan. Tri. Thaumaturg. p. 500. Lovanii 1647.

"The Mutable are such as by the addition of an b, or else by a full point () above them, either alter or lose their pronunciation: viz. b, c, d---. Some --- are annihilated, the use of writing them being only to prevent the disguising of the words in case they should have been omitted." Lhuyd's Archæolog. p. 300.

|| Carol. Du Fresne Domini Du Cange Glossar. &c. in voc. Prior.

U

the school which Fithil attended was a Prior, he would answer the first of these descriptions. But it is more probable that the Prior of Iona in the eighth century was Prior of Colidei or Culdees, an order of religious which belonged to the churches of Britain and Ireland exclusively. "The "Culdei, or Colidei, were secular priests, and served in the "choir of the cathedral of Armagh; their president was "called the Prior of the college of the Culdei, and was a 66 precentor to the said church.-A. D. 779, died Kernach, "called the Prior of Armagh *.”

The MS. of which it has been thus attempted to determine the age, consists of a poem moral and religious, some short historical anecdotes, a critical exposition of the Tain, an Irish tale, which was composed in the time of Diarmad son of Cearval, who reigned over Ireland from the year 544 to 565; and the Tain itself, which claims respect, as exceeding, in point of antiquity, every production of any other vernacular tongue in Europe.

On the first page of the Vellum, which was originally left blank, there are genealogies of the families of Argyll and Mac Leod in the Gaelic handwriting of the sixteenth century, before or after the middle of which they were written, as appears from the former ending with Archibald, who succeeded to the earldom of Argyll in 1542, and died in 1588. And it is probable that our MS. came about this period into the possession of the Mac Lachlans of Kilbride, as a Ferquhard, son of Ferquhard Mac Lachlan, was Bishop of the Isles, and had Iona or I Colum Kille in commendam from 1530 to 1544t; from which time, almost nearly to the present, they and the Mac Lachlans of Kilchõan,

• Archdall's Monastic. Hibernic. p. 31. For the Colidei or Culdei of Scotland, particularly those of St. Andrew's, Abernethy, Dunkeld, and Monimusk, see Sir James Dalrymple's Historical Collections, p. 122, 226, 244,

Keith's Catalogue of Scots Bishops, p. 175.