"The histories and synchronisms of Erin were written and tested in the presence of those illustrious saints, as is manifest in the great books that are named after the saints themselves and from their great churches; for there was not an illustrious church in Erin that had not a great book of history named from it or from the saints who sanctified it. It would be easy, too, to know from the books which the saints wrote, and the songs of praise which they composed in Irish that they themselves and their churches were the centres of the true knowledge, and the archives and homes of the manuscripts of the authors of Erin in the elder times. But, alas! short was the time until dispersion and decay overtook the churches of the saints, their relics, and their books; for there is not to be found of them now [1631] but a small remnant that has not been carried away into distant countries and foreign nations--carried away so that their fate is unknown from that time unto this." As far as actual existing documents go, we have no specimens of Irish MSS. written in Irish before the eighth century. The chief remains of the old language that we have are mostly found on the Continent, whither the Irish carried their books in great numbers, and unfortunately they are not books of saga, but chiefly, with the exception of a few poems, glosses and explanations of books used evidently in the Irish ecclesiastical schools.[5] A list of the most remarkable is worth giving here, as it will help to show the extraordinary geographical diversity of the Irish settlements upon the Continent, and the keenness with which their relics have been studied by European scholars--French, German, and Italian. The most important are the glosses found in the Irish MSS. of Milan, published by Ascoli, Zeuss, Stokes, and Nigra; those in St. Gall--a monastery in Switzerland founded by St. Gall, an Irish friend of Columbanus, in the sixth century--published by Ascoli and Nigra; those in Wurtzburg, published by Zimmer and Zeuss; those in Carlsruhe, published by Zeuss; those in Turin, published by Zimmer, Nigra, and Stokes in his "Goidelica"; those in Vienna, published by Zimmer in his "Glossæ Hibernicæ" and Stokes in his "Goidelica"; those in Berne, those in Leyden, those in Nancy, and the glosses on the Cambrai Sermon, published by Zeuss.[6] Next in antiquity to these are the Irish parts of the Book of Armagh, the poems in the MSS. of St. Gall and Milan,[7] and some of the pieces published by Windisch in his "Irische Texte." Next to this is probably the Martyrology of Angus the Culdee. And then come the great Middle-Irish books--the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Book of Leinster, and the rest.