Ms. Rawlinson B 512, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, contains a life of St. Brigit in Irish with numerous Latin phrases and passages interspersed. Some sections of this were edited and translated by Stokes in Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, and the whole has been printed without translation, in Irish Texts, fasciculus i (ed. J. Fraser, P. Grosjean and J. G. O'Keeffe, 1931), under the title ‘Vita Brigitae’. I have preferred to call it the ‘Old Irish Life of St. Brigit’, as it is clear from the language of the text that it must have been compiled in the Old Irish period. The edition in Irish Texts is unfortunately disfigured by numerous mistranscriptions, faulty divisions of words and unnecessary conjectural emendations. My translation—a literal one—is based on this edition, corrected by reference to an excellent facsimile of the MS. which I owe to the kindness of the Oxford University Press. For convenience of reference, I have followed the division into sections of the printed text, though, as I shall point out in my notes, this is sometimes misleading.

In the ‘ Testimonium ’ prefixed to the ‘ Annals of the Four Masters ’, and signed by four Franciscan friars, the chief of whom was Bernardine O'Clery, guardian of the convent of Donegal in 1636, there is an enumeration of the principal sources from which the latter portion of the annals was compiled. The last-mentioned of these sources was the ‘ Book of Lughaidh Ó Clérigh ’, which the friars say covered the period 1586–1602. This book, we are to infer from the notice, was written in the form of annals. The other sources referred to are described in such a way as to show that they too were written in annalistic form.

The ‘ Book of Lughaidh Ó Clérigh ’, unlike some others utilized on the same occasion, has come down to us. It is now known as the ‘ Life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell ’, though that title does not appear in the sole authoritative manuscript. Indeed, the form of annals is preserved throughout, though it is not emphasized in the edition published by Denis Murphy in 1893.

The only extant copy of this recension of the life of St. Brigit is found in Rawlinson B 512, a Bodleian MS. of the fourteenth or fifteėnth Century. This MS. has been frequently described and catalogued, most fully by Whitley Stokes (Tripartite Life of Patrick (1887), pp. xiv ff.) and again in his edition of the Martyrology of Oengus (1905, pp. xxii-xxiv). With the exception of the Lebor Gabála, the greater part of the Contents has been edited in various places. The arrangement of the gatherings, the various foliations and paginations of the MS., and the different hands have been described by Dr. Best in ‘Notes on Rawlinson B 512’ (ZCP, xvii. 388 ff.).

‘The Song of Dermot and the Earl ’ is the title invented Mr. Goddard Orpen for the old Anglo-French poem which he edited, in 1892, from the sole manuscript in which it survives, among the Carew papers in the archiepiscopal library Lambeth Palace. As the Song is regarded generally as an important source for the history of the Anglo-Norman invasion Ireland, and as I have reached conclusions on that point serious different from those of the editor, I wish to submit my conclusions for examination.

Sir Thomas Phillips is not to be found among the worthies of the Dictionary of National Biography, nor is he mentioned in Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography or Crone's Concise Dictionary. He was one of those known in early-seventeenth Ireland as ‘ servitors ’—military men who had fought for the crown during Tyrone's rebellion and established claims on the royal generosity which they expected to have satisfied after the peace. In the Ulster plantation, servitors constituted a separate group among the planters, and some of them thus became the founders of great landed families. In his successful pursuit of forfeited land in Ulster, Phillips is a fair example of the servitor class. Very likely he would have left no more mark on Irish history than many another fellow-adventurer, had he not staked his claim in a part of Ulster that presently became a sphere of interest of the city of London. Within a few years of the Londoner's advent, Phillips engaged them in a controversy which he maintained with almost incredible pertinacity for a quarter of a century, and which, on the eve of his death, ended in a crushing defeat for his opponents.

Historians generally have accepted the view that the Irish kingdom of Connacht maintained an independent political existence until the death of Cathal Crovderg (1224). From the time of Henry II, however, individual Anglo-Norman adventurers cast envious glances at the broad lands ruled over by the house of O'Connor, and on more than one occasion in this period it seemed as if the foreigner would secure complete control of the province. An attempt will here be made to describe the successive endeavours to wrest their kingly power from the O'Connors before the death of Crovderg, and the circumstances which brought these to nothing.

In attempting a study of local government in Ireland at the beginning of the Tudor period, it must be stated that only very tentative conclusions can be made as to its nature and effectiveness. This is due on the one hand to lack of materials and difficulty in interpreting what there are, and on the other to the absence of detailed studies of Anglo-Irish feudalism and of Irish society in the later medieval period.

In theory, the royal administration, established in Dublin and organised on English lines, was competent to provide law and government for the whole island. In practice, its effectiveness diminished successively in four groups of territories.

A new edition of Professor Curti's History of Medieval Ireland is very welcome. Though essentially the same book, much has been rewritten : there are additions to the text as it appeared in 1923, and a good deal of detail and some footnotes have been omitted, for which the first edition must be consulted. Other changes are the division of the chapters into headed sections, the inclusion of genealogical tables, and appendices on the Ostmen, the towns and the legal treatment of the Irish.

The merits of Dr.Curti's work are very great, and chiefly his determination to write the history of the whole of Ireland, to rest every statement upon evidence, and to give exact references.

Athough abundant evidence is available for the first few years of the Anglo-Norman invasion, the observance of due proportion in the ordinary textbook of Irish history usually precludes a detailed presentation of the progress of the invasion prior to the arrival of Henry II in 1171. As this has tended to obscure the real significance of the invasion, a careful analysis of the course of events in the years 1167-71 is called for.

The history of financial administration in both Great Britain and Ireland is such a neglected subject that it is not surprising to find the years 1641–9, which form a period of special difficulty and confusion, receiving scarcely any attention from serious historical scholars. During this time the responsible authorities in Ireland, England, and Scotland, devoted much time and thought to raising money for the British forces in Ireland. The problems with which they were confronted, and the methods by which they attempted to solve these problems, have an important bearing on the course of the rebellion in Ireland and on its ultimate result.

Under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, which forms, with some slight amendments, the written constitution of Northern Ireland, power was given to the province to set up a separate record office for itself. When the transfer of services to Northern Ireland took place, no steps were at first taken to establish such an office, although circumstances would soon have necessitated the consideration of such a course. Local departments and minor courts contained an accumulation of documents which were aged over twenty years from the date of making, and therefore, according to a statutory provision, fit for transfer to the central repository. Partly from the disturbance of customary routine due to war conditions, partly from motives of prudence owing to the disturbed state of the country, which rendered transport unsafe, these documents had for some time not been transferred to Dublin. The destruction of the Four Courts in June 1922—which involved the loss of the Irish records and the specially equipped building in which they had been preserved—entailed the consequence that there was no longer in existence a repository suitable for the receipt of Northern Ireland records, even supposing that such would be sent out of the province in the altered situation. By an act of 1923, the northern government set up its own record office.

If a librarian who makes no claim to any Special knowledge of history needs an excuse for contributing to this Journal, it may be found in the boldness with which some historians undertake bibliographical tasks without admitting the ignorance they do not feel. But an acquaintance with bibliographical method is a necessary part of the equipment of every scholar, and to promulgate the theory of it is very much the business of librarians. The primary object of a published bibliography is to enable users of it to identify books in the catalogues of libraries, and it must therefore consist of accurate descriptions made on recognisable principles. A valuable secondary object is to help librarians to supply the deficiencies of their collections, and this cannot be done unless the bibliography is competently Condensed from a survey of all the relevant material. This essay, then, is not intended to be a direct contribution to the history of Ireland ; I have merely chosen a limited period of Irish history from which to draw examples illustrating some principles of bibliographical compilation.

The following list gives particulars of theses on Irish historical subjects, or on subjects having a distinct bearing on Irish history, which were successfully completed or were in progress for higher degrees in the universities of Ireland, Great Britain and the U.S.A. during 1937-8. For the Irish universities, the information has been supplied directly by the responsible supervisors; for the British universities, the editors have utilised the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research: Theses Supplement, no. 6 (June 1938); for the American universities the List of Doctoral Dissertations in History now in progress at American Universities, December 1937 (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Division of Historical Research, 1938). The editors of these publications have kindly given permission for the reprinting of relevant information.

Particulars of omissions in the list and suggestions for enlarging its scope would be welcomed.