[3] "Grössere oder geringere Kenntniss klassischen Alterthums, vor allem Kenntniss des Griechischen ist daher in jener Zeit ein Mazstab sowohl für die Bildung einer einzelnen Persönlichkeit als auch fur den Culturgrad eines ganzen Zeitalters" (Zimmer, "Preussische Jahrbûcher," January, 1887). [4] He plays on his own name Columba, "a dove," and turns it into Greek and Hebrew, περιστερά and הנוי. [5] Dr. Sigerson prints an admirably graceful poem either by this or another Sedulius of the ninth century at p. 411 of his "Bards of the Gael and Gaul." It shows how far from being pedants the Irish monks were. This poem is a dispute between the rose and lily. [6] This translation which Charles sent to the Pope threw Anastasius, the Librarian of the Roman Church, into the deepest astonishment. "Mirandum est," he writes in his letter of reply, dated 865, "quomodo vir ille barbarus in finibus mundi positus, talia intellectu capere in aliamque linguam transferre valuerit" (_See_ Prof. Stokes, "R. I. Academy Proceedings," May, 1892). [7] St. Jerome tells us that the people of Marseilles were in his day trilingual, "Massiliam Phocæi condiderunt quos ait Varro trilingues esse, quod et Græce loquantur, et Latine et Gallice" (Migne's edition, vol. vii. p. 425). [8] _See_ appendix to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 547-- "Margaid mor na n-gall ngregach I mbid or is ard étach." [9] He is said to have spent eighteen or twenty years there and to have acquired all the wisdom of the Scots. The reason why he was sent to Slane, as Dr. Healy well observes, was, not because it was the most celebrated school of the time, but because it was in Meath where the High-kings mostly dwelt, and it was only natural to bring the boy to some place near the Royal Court. ("Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 590.) [10] "Quos omnes Scotti libentissime suscipientes victum eis quotidianum sine pretio, libros quoque ad legendum, et magisterium gratuitum, præbere curabant" ("Ecc. Hist.," book iii. chap. 27). Amongst these were the celebrated Egbert, of whom Bede tells us so much, and St. Chad. [11] He is called Mailduf by Bede, and Malmesbury Maildufi urbem, which shows that the aspirated "b" in _dubh_ had twelve hundred years ago the sound of "f" as it has to-day in Connacht. [12] O'Reilly states that the poem consisted of ninety-six lines, but Hardiman, in his "Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 372, gives only sixty. Hardiman has written on the margin of O'Reilly's "Irish Writers" in my possession, "I have a copy, the character is ancient and very obscure." Aldfrid may well have written such a poem, of which the copy printed by Hardiman may be a somewhat modernised version. It begins-- "Ro dheat an inis finn Fáil In Eirinn re imarbháidh, Iomad ban, ni baoth an breas, Iomad laoch, iomad cleireach."