The modern Irish names for books, reading, writing, letters, pens, and vellum, are all derived from the Latin.[19] But there seem to have been other names in use to designate the early writing materials of the Irish. These were the Taibhli Fileadh, "poets' tablets," and Tamhlorg Fileadh, which is translated by O'Curry as poets' "headless staves." This latter word, whatever may be the exact meaning of it, is at least pure Gaelic. We read in the "Colloquy of the Ancients" that St. Patrick began to feel a little uneasy at the delight with which he listened to the stories of the ancient Fenians, and in his over-scrupulous sanctity he feared it might be wrong to extract such pleasure from merely mundane narrations. Accordingly he consulted his two guardian angels on the matter, but received an emphatic response from both of them, not only to the effect that there was no harm in listening to the stories themselves, but actually desiring him to get them written down "in poets' _támhlorgs_ and in the words of ollavs, for it will be a rejoicing to numbers and to the good people to the end of time, to listen to those stories."[20] An ancient passage from the Brehon Laws prescribes that a poet may carry a _tábhall-lorg_ or tablet-staff, and O'Curry acutely suggests that these so-called tablet-staves were of the nature of a fan which could be closed up in the shape of a square stick, upon the lines and angles of which the poet wrote in Ogam. We can well imagine the almost superstitious reverence which in rude times must have attached itself, and which as we know did attach itself, to the man who could carry about in his hand the whole history and genealogy of his race, and probably the catchwords of innumerable poems and the skeletons of highly-prized narratives. It was probably through these means that the genealogies of which I have spoken were so accurately transmitted and kept from the third or fourth century, and possibly from a still earlier period. Amongst many other accounts of pre-Christian writing there is one so curious that it is worth giving here _in extenso._[21] THE STORY OF BAILE MAC BUAIN, THE SWEET-SPOKEN. "Buain's only son was Baile. He was specially beloved by Aillinn,[22] the daughter of Lewy,[23] son of Fergus Fairgé--but some say she was the daughter of Owen, son of Dathi--and he was specially beloved not of her only, but of every one who ever heard or saw him, on account of his delightful stories. "Now Baile and Aillinn made an appointment to meet at Rosnaree, on the banks of the Boyne in Bregia. And he came from Emania in the north to meet her, passing over Slieve Fuad and Muirthuimhne to Tráigh mBaile (Dundalk), and here he and his troops unyoked their chariots, sent their horses out to pasture, and gave themselves up to pleasure and happiness.