Old English Libraries | Page 9

is in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. The case is a
wooden cover, divided into hollowed-out compartments for holding the
styles. This specimen dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Slates and pencils were also in use for temporary purposes.--Joyce, i.
483.

Section IV
Our account of the work accomplished by the Irish monks would be
incomplete without reference to their writing, illuminating, and
book-economy, the relics of which are so finely rare.
The old Irish runes gave place slowly to the Roman alphabet, which
came into use, as we have already observed, after St. Patrick's mission.
This new writing was in two forms--round and pointed--but both were
derived from the Roman half-uncial style. The clear and
beautifully-shaped Irish round hand is closely akin to the half-uncial
character of fifth and sixth century Latin writings found on the
Continent. The Book of Kells, written probably at the end of the
seventh century, is the finest example of the ornamental Irish round
hand. St. Chad's Gospels, now at Lichfield, written about the same time,
is a manuscript of like character, but not so good. A later manuscript,
the Gospels of MacRegol, which dates from the beginning of the ninth
century, shows marked deterioration in the writing.
The Irish pointed style, used for quicker writing, is but a modified,
pointed variety of the round hand, the letters being laterally compressed.
This hand appears in some pages of the Book of Kells, but the best
example is in the Book of Armagh.[1]
[1] See Thompson, 236, where Irish calligraphy is fully dealt with;
Camb. Lit., i, 13.
Although the Roman alphabet was introduced by Augustine at the
Canterbury school, it wholly failed to have any effect on the native
hand from that source. On the other hand, when, in the seventh century,
Northumbria was converted by Irish missionaries, the new Christians
copied the Irish writing, so well, indeed, that the earliest specimens
extant can hardly be distinguished from the beautiful penmanship of the
Irish. The Book of Durham, generally called the Lindisfarne Gospels,
of about 700, is an exquisite Northumbrian example of the Irish round
hand, in the characteristic broad, heavy-stroke letters. Another good
specimen of this style is the eighth century manuscript of Bede's
Ecclesiastical History, in Cambridge University Library.
Irish illumination is as characteristic as the writing. Pictures and

drawings of the human figure are not so common as in the work of
other schools, and when they do appear are not often good. Still, some
of them, as the scenes from the life of Christ in the Book of Kells, are
quite unlike the illuminations of any other school; while the portraits of
the Evangelists in the same book, in the Book of MacRegol, and in the
Lindisfarne Gospels, are singularly interesting. Floral work is also rare.
But in geometrical ornament, beautifully symmetrical--diagonal
patterns, zigzags, waves, lozenges, divergent spirals, intertwisted and
interwoven ribbon and cord work--and in grotesque zoological
forms,--lizards, snakes, hounds, birds, and dragons' heads,--the Irish
school attained their highest artistic development. Their art is striking,
not for originality, not for its beauty, which is nevertheless great, but
for painstaking. Knowing but one style of making a book beautiful,
they lavished much time and loving care to achieve their end. The
detail is extraordinarily minute and complicated. "I have counted,"
writes Professor Westwood, "[with a magnifying glass] in a small space
scarcely three-quarters of an inch in length by less than half an inch in
width, in the Book of Armagh, no less than 158 interlacements of a
slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines edged with black ones."
But, this intricacy notwithstanding, the designs as a whole are usually
bold and effective. In the best kind of Irish illumination gold and silver
are not used, but the colours are varied and brilliant, and are employed
with taste and discretion; while the occasional staining of a leaf of
vellum with a fine purple sometimes adds beauty and much distinction
to an excellent design.
Of intricate geometrical ornament and grotesque figures, the
illumination representing the symbols of the Four Evangelists (fo. 290)
of the Book of Kells is perhaps the best example. Of divergent spirals
and interlaced ribbon work the frontispiece of St. Jerome's Epistle in
the Book of Durrow affords notable examples. Two of the peculiar
features of Irish decoration--the rows of red dots round a design and the
dragon's head--appear in the earliest, or nearly the earliest, Irish
manuscript extant, namely, the Cathach Psalter, now in the Museum of
the Royal Irish Academy. Whether the essential and peculiar features of
this ornamentation are purely indigenous, as Professor Westwood
contends, or whether they are of Gallo-Roman origin, as Fleury argues,
is a moot point, calling for complicated discussion which would be out

of place here.
The amount of illumination