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was the Ferleiginn, lector or man of learning, whose functions were more closely connected with education. He appears first in Clonmacnois; and we find in 794 the death of 'Colgu Ua Duineachda Ferleiginn of Cluainmicnois, he who composed the Scuaip-Chrabhaidh,' recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters. There is no doubt that he is the 'Colcu lector in Scotia,' to whom Alcuin wrote an epistle.40 It appears from his life that he was 'supreme moderator and prælector of the school of Clonmacnois, and that he arrived at such eminence in learning and sanctity that he was called chief scribe and master of the Scots of Ireland.' 41 In the following century the Ferleiginn appears also at Armagh, and we are told that in the year 876 Maelrobha, son of Cuimmhach, abbot of Armagh, was taken prisoner by the Galls of Loch-Cuan, as was also the Ferleiginn, Mochta.42 During the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries these lectors, or Ferleiginn, are repeatedly mentioned in the Irish Annals in connection with the various monasteries in Ireland.43 They also appear in the Columban monasteries both of Ireland and of Scotland. In 992 we find the death of Dunchadh ua h-Uchtain, Ferleighinn of Cenannus,' or Kells, recorded; and in 1034 'Macnia ua h-Uchtain, Ferleighinn of Kells, is drowned coming from Alban with the bed of Columcill and three of Patrick's relics, and thirty persons along with him.' In Scotland he appears in the early part of the reign of David I., in connection with the Columbau monastery of Turbruad, or Turriff, founded by Comgan, where 'Domangart, Ferleginn Turbruad, or of Turriff, witnesses a charter by Gartnait, Mormaer of Buchan, and Eta his wife,

40 Printed by Usher in his Sylloge, No. xviii.

41 Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 396, note e.

42 lb.,

p. 523.

43 See Colgan, Tr. Th., p. 632, for a list of some of them. See also Dr.

Reeves's Ant. of Down and Connor, p. 145, note.

44 An. F. M., pp. 729, 829. Dr. Reeves has shown that what the annals here call the bed was the Culebadh, or hood, of St. Columba. -Vit. Adamnan, p. lxxxviii.

The
Scolocs.

to the church of Deer; 45 and we find him at Iona in 1164, when the Ferleighinn Dubside appears among the prominent functionaries of the monastery.46 In the following century the name of Ferleiginn is still preserved in connection with the church of St. Andrews and its schools. Between the years 1211 and 1216, a controversy which arose between the prior of St. Andrews and his convent, on the one part, and the master of the schools and the poor scholars of the city of St. Andrews, on the other, in regard to certain lands and dues which the latter claimed, was amicably settled 'with the assent and goodwill of Master Laurence, who was both archdeacon and Ferleyn of the said city;' and the prior and canons became bound to pay to the foresaid Laurence the Ferleighinn (Ferlano) and his successors, at the house of the Ferleighinn (in domo Ferlani) of the said city, for the use of the poor scholars,' certain dues from these lands. Thus was agreement made between the parties, and by authority confirmed, so that neither archdeacon nor Ferleighinn (Ferlanus), nor master of the schools, nor poor scholars, shall hereafter move controversy against the same.' 47

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These scholars seem to have been the lowest order of the ecclesiastical community, and to have been clerics who were undergoing a course of training and instruction to fit them for performing the service of the church. Their Pictish name was Scolofthes, as we learn from Reginald of Durham, who mentions the clerics of the church (of Kirkcudbright),

45 Book of Deer (Spalding Club), p. 93.

46 See antea, p. 414.

47 Reg. Priorat. St. And., pp. 317, 318. See also Dr. Joseph Robertson's valuable paper on the scholastic offices in the Scottish Church, pp. 26, 27. With regard to the functions of archdeacon and lecturer being

discharged by the same person, Dr. Robertson remarks: We can trace a connection between the offices elsewhere.' Thus Ducange quotes a charter of the year 1213, in which Hugo, archdeacon of Auxerre, narrates that to his office of archdeacon it belongs to provide a lecturer for the church of Auxerre, who shall order the whole course of reading.

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the Scolofthes as they are called in the Pictish speech, and gives 'Scholasticus, a scholar,' as its Latin equivalent. We find them under the name of Scolocs in three of the churches belonging to St. Andrews. In the church of Ellon, which was of old the capital of the earldom of Buchan, they appear in 1265 as holding certain lands under the bishop of St. Andrews; and in 1387 the church lands of Ellon are called the Scolog lands, and were hereditary in the families of the Scologs who possessed them. An inquest regarding these lands, held in that year, bears that from one quarter or fourth part of these lands there are to be found for the parish church of Ellon four clerks with copes and surplices, able to read and sing sufficiently;' another quarter or fourth part 'is bound to find a house for the scholars;' a third is bound to find twice in every year twenty-four wax candles for the 'park' or 'perk,' that is, the bracket or corbel before the high altar; and the fourth quarter is bound to find a smithy. These lands are indiscriminately called the Scolog lands' and the 'Scholar lands,' and are described as 'lying in the schoolry (Scolaria) of Ellon.' The Scolocs are also found in the church lands of Arbuthnot in the Mearns, which they likewise held of the see of St. Andrews. Here, in an inquest regarding the lands of the Kirkton of Arbuthnot, held in the year 1206, we find the ecclesiastical territory held by certain tenants called parsons, who had subtenants under them, having houses of their own and cattle which they pastured on the common; and the tenants of these lands are termed by several of the witnesses Scolocs, and are also termed the bishop's men. These Scolocs were finally ejected altogether from the land which they appear to have tilled. They also appear at the neighbouring church of Fetteresso, likewise belonging to the bishop of St. Andrews.18 The name of Scoloc is also found in connection with one of the Columban monas

48 For these notices of the Scolocs see Dr. Joseph Robertson in the Scholastic Offices, p. 18.

Influence of the

Church on

and lan

guage.

teries in Ireland; for in one of the charters preserved in the Book of Kells, which must have been granted between the years 1128 and 1138, we find that among the functionaries of the monastery, after the Coärb of Columcille, or the abbot, the Sacart or priest, the Ferleiginn or lecturer, the Aircennech or Erenagh of the house of guests, and the Fosaircennech or vice-Erenach, appears the Toisech na Scoloc, or Chief of the Scologs, Aengus O'Gamhna.49

Whether there existed in Ireland a pagan literature, in the proper sense of the term, prior to the introduction of literature Christianity, and whether the art of writing was known in any shape to its pagan population, is a very difficult question, Art of and one into which it is not necessary for our purpose to writing introduced. enter. But whether there existed among them an anteChristian civilisation of any kind or not, there can be no doubt that the early Celtic Church, such as we have found it to be, must have been a powerful agent in civilising the people, and not less in fixing a standard of language; and the earliest lives of St. Patrick certainly attribute to him the introduction of the written alphabet. Thus Tirechan, having

49 Irish Charters in the Book of Kells; Irish Arch. Misc., vol. i. p. 141. Dr. J. Stuart, in a note to his valuable preface to the Book of Deer, p. cxxxix., says-'It may be doubted whether sufficient evidence has been adduced for holding that all the persons called Scolocs or Scologs in our early records were of the same character, or were in all cases, as has been assumed, scholastics, or the lowest members of the clerical order; but, on the contrary, were in some cases simply the husbandmen or tenants of the land.' The author concurs in this opinion. The word Scoloc or Scolog unquestionably comes from Scol or Sgol, a school; but the word Sgolog has come to signify in Irish simply a husbandman or farmer, and appears

at one time to have been given to a class of cottars in the northern isles. Buchanan, in his Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790, p. 6, says that there is an unfortunate and numerous class of men known under the name of Scallags. The Scallag, whether male or female, is a poor being, who, for mere subsistence, becomes a feudal slave to another, whether a subtenant, a tacksman, or a laird. The Scallag builds his own hut with sods and boughs of trees. Five days in the week he works for his master; the sixth is allowed to himself for the cultivation of some scrap of land on the edge of some moss or moor, on which he raises a little kail or colworts, barley and potatoes.'

mentioned that Patrick had consecrated three hundred and fifty bishops in Ireland, adds: 'Of presbyters we cannot count the number, because he used to baptize men daily, and to read letters and abgetoric, or alphabets, with them; and of some he made bishops and presbyters, because they had received baptism in mature age.' 50 Of the two alphabets known to have existed among the Irish, the one now called the Irish alphabet, and supposed to be peculiar to the Irish language, is, as Dr. Todd well remarks, nothing more than the Roman alphabet, which was used over all Europe in the fifth and some following centuries. The other, called the Ogham, which is mainly confined to inscriptions upon stone monuments, though it occasionally appears in MSS.,51 is of the same character as the Scandinavian Runes, and has now also been clearly shown to have a post-Christian origin.5

50 See Dr. Todd's St. Patrick, p. 507, for a discussion of this question. It certainly appears to the author that the plain inference from the passages there quoted is that letters and the art of writing were introduced by St. Patrick.

51 See the account by Dr. Graves, now bishop of Limerick, of the marginal glosses in the Ogham character on the St. Gall Ms. of Priscian.-Proc. R. I. A., vol. vi. p. 209.

52 Mr. Burton, in his characteristic manner, rejects the Ogham character as unreal and the mere creation of fanciful antiquaries. He says, in his chapter on the sculptured stones (vol. i. p. 148)— 'It would be deemed by some unpardonable not to note that some scratchings on these stones have been set down as inscriptions in the Ogham or Ogam character. This professes to be a method of secret writing, being, indeed, no other than that in which the Druids concealed their mysteries. Its

VOL. II.

52

avowed qualities are simplicity and flexibility. These qualities are vouched for us on the faith of experiments made chiefly in Ireland, and especially of one in which two antiquaries had read an inscription to pretty nearly the same result, and afterwards found, on comparison of notes, that the one had read from left to right and the other from right to left. This phenomenon seems not to have created much surprise among the learned body who received the reports of the decipherers. That the inscription could be read either way was only a testimony to the power and simplicity of the Ogham character, which has also the faculty that, by shifting the places of the letters or cyphers, a long story may be made out of a few straight lines.' And Mr. Burton's sole reference is to a paper in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (i. 3), read in the year 1785.

It would have been unfair to Mr. Burton not to give his reasons for 2 F

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