ON THE MANUSCRIPT MATERIALS OF ANCIENT IRISH HISTORY DELIVERED AT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, BY EUGENE O'CURRY, M.R.I.A., PROFESSOR OF IRISH HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY IN THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND; PREFACE. IF I have any regret for the shortcomings of the following analysis of the existing remains of our ancient literature, and the evidences of the literary attainments and cultivated tastes of our far removed ancestors, of the Milesian and other races, I must sincerely declare that my regret arises much more from the consciousness of my incapacity to do merited justice to my subject, than from any concern for what my own reputation must suffer, in coming before the world in so prominent a character, and with such very incommensurate qualifications. When the Catholic University of Ireland was established, and its staff of Professors from day to day announced in the public papers, I felt the deepest anxiety as to who the Professor of Irish History should be (if there should be one), well knowing that the only man living who could fill that important office with becoming efficiency as a scholar was already engaged in one of the Queen's Colleges. At this time, however, I can honestly declare that it never entered into my mind that I should or ought to be called to fill this important situation, simply because the course of my studies in Irish History and Antiquities had always been of a silent kind;—I was engaged, if I may so speak, only in underground work, and the labours in which I had spent my life were such that their results were never intended to be brought separately before the public on my own individual responsibility. No person knows my bitterly felt deficiences better than myself. Having been self-taught in all the little I know of general letters, and reared to mature years among an uneducated people (though a people both intelligent, and fond of learning ごす |