Page 111 - Demo

Chapter Four 111
talented artists who using lichen and vegetable dyes to colour and gold leaf for the most hal- lowed examples, expertly and patiently decorated and illuminated them.
Of all the magniicent ancient Irish books still preserved to us, there is none that can compare in beauty and excellence with the Book of Kells, which was alluded too in an earlier chapter. Written and decorated in the seventh century, and containing copies of the four Gospels and other religious transcriptions, several authorities are of the opinion that there are few treasures extant in the world, that can compare with the artistry, skill, and escoteri- cism displayed within the pages of this book, a book that reaches the zenith of its genius on the page which displays the monogram of Jesus Christ.
Now, while many of the famous books of Ireland’s Golden Age are still preserved in Irish and English museums, and also in several old established monasteries on the Continent of Europe, it must be remembered that thousands of similar books and manuscripts were also destroyed-in the irst place during the Danish invasions, then in internecine wars and again during the wars with England. Yet, in spite of this wholesale destruction, we have somehow managed to safeguard many of the old Irish publications; not only the religious books of the seventh, eight, and ninth centuries, like the aforementioned Book of Kells, the Book of Durrow, and the Book of Armagh, but also books of miscellaneous poems, tales, genealogies, history, etc., pertaining to the eleventh and succeeding centuries, such as Leabhar nah-Uidhre-‘The Book of the Dun Cow’, Leabhar Breac, ‘The Speckled Book’, and the later chronicles or an- nals such as the Annals of Ulster, and the Annals of the Four Masters.
Another remarkable and priceless measure of Ireland’s civilization is to be found in the study of her laws; the most just and most democratic of any in the ancient world. Known as the Brehon Laws, as we have already seen, these laws which were notable in pagan times, were brought to a higher level of almost lawless perfection after Christianity was introduced and more so during the Golden Age, and these ancient laws were still in use in Ireland as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century.
“We see”, wrote one ancient writer “the justice and democracy of these old laws in the fact that a miller, for instance, bringing building stones to his mill, claimed and got, through another’s land, the same right of way that the king would have in carrying stones for his castle. The man who stole the needle of a poor dressmaker, in those days a needle was a very valuable possession-equal in value to a calf, he was condemned to pay a far higher ine than the man who stole the queen’s needle. And the poorest man in the land was protected