The Great Book-Collectors | Page 6

not one single letter would be drowned.'
Our authorities tell us that the Book of Durrow might possibly be one
of the three hundred, 'as it bears some signs of being earlier in date than
the Book of Kells.'
St. Columba, men said, was passionately devoted to books. Yet he gave
his Gospels to the Church at Swords, and presented the congregation at
Derry with the volume that he had fetched from Tours, 'where it had
lain on St. Martin's breast a hundred years in the ground.' In one of the
biographies there is a story about 'Langarad of the White Legs,' who
dwelt in the region of Ossory. To him Columba came as a guest, and
found that the sage was hiding all his books away. Then Columba left
his curse upon them; 'May that,' quoth he, 'about which thou art so
niggardly be never of any profit after thee'; and this was fulfilled, 'for
the books remain to this day, and no man reads them.' When Langarad
died 'all the book-satchels in Ireland that night fell down'; some say, 'all
the satchels and wallets in the saint's house fell then: and Columba and
all who were in his house marvelled at the noisy shaking of the books.'
So then speaks Columba: 'Langarad in Ossory,' quoth he, 'is just now
dead.' 'Long may it be ere that happens,' said Baithen. 'May the burden
of that disbelief fall on him and not on thee,' said Columba.
Another tradition relates to St. Finnen's book that caused a famous
battle; and that was because of a false judgment which King Diarmid
gave against Columba, when he copied St. Finnen's Psalter without
leave. St. Finnen claimed the copy as being the produce of his original,
and on the appeal to the court at Tara his claim was confirmed. King
Diarmid decided that to every mother-book belongs the child-book, as
to the cow belongs her calf; 'and so,' said the King, 'the book that you
wrote, Columba, belongs to Finnen by right.' 'That is an unjust
judgment,' said Columba, 'and I will avenge it upon you.'
Not long afterwards the Saint was insulted by the seizure and execution
of an offender who had taken sanctuary and was clasped in his arms.

Columba went over the wild mountains and raised the tribes of
Tyrconnell and Tyrone, and defeated King Diarmid in battle. When the
Saint went to Iona he left the copy of Finnen's Psalter to the head of the
chief tribe in Tyrconnell. It was called the Book of the Battle, and if
they carried it three times round the enemy, in the sun's course, they
were sure to return victorious. The book was the property of the
O'Donnells till the dispersion of their clan. The gilt and jewelled case in
which it rests was made in the eleventh century: a frame round the
inner shrine was added by Daniel O'Donnell, who fought in the Battle
of the Boyne. A large fragment of the book remained in a Belgian
monastery in trust for the true representative of the clan; and soon after
Waterloo it was given up to Sir Neal O'Donnell, to whose family it still
belongs. It is now shown at the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
'The fragment of the original Book of the Battle', says O'Curry, 'is of
small quarto form, consisting of fifty-eight leaves of fine vellum,
written in a small, uniform, but rather hurried hand, with some slight
attempts at illumination.'
We have now to describe the great increase of books in Northumbria.
In the year 635 Aidan set up his quarters with a few Irish monks on the
Isle of Lindisfarne, and his Abbey soon became one of the main
repositories of learning.
The book called The Gospels of St. Cuthbert was written in 688, and
was regarded for nearly two centuries as the chief ornament of
Lindisfarne. The monastery was burned by the Danes, and the servants
of St. Cuthbert, who had concealed the 'Gospels' in his grave, wandered
forth, with the Saint's body in an ark and the book in its chest, in search
of a new place of refuge. They attempted a voyage to Ireland, but their
ship was driven back by a storm. The book-chest had been washed
overboard, but in passing up the Solway Firth they saw the book
shining in its golden cover upon the sand. For more than a century
afterwards the book shared the fortunes of a wandering company of
monks: in the year 995 it was laid on St. Cuthbert's coffin in the new
church at Durham; early in the twelfth century it returned to
Lindisfarne. Here it remained until the dissolution of the monasteries,
when its golden covers were torn off, and the book came bare and

unadorned into