Northmen were in the habit of _drowning_ the books they found in the religious houses. Books were in those days, as is well known, made of vellum, or prepared leather, a material hard to burn; they were consequently cast into the nearest lake or river, from which very few of them were probably ever recovered. If it had not been for Scandinavian burnings and plunderings, mediæval Gaelic literature would, even now, be so immense that it would command the respect of the world at large. Those who say that the bulk of mediæval Gaelic writings has come down to us--and there are those that have the unspeakable hardihood to say so--must be classed as very prejudiced, or very ignorant of Irish history. The last entry in the Four Masters relating to Glendaloch occurs under the year 1163. It appears to have been abandoned shortly after that date; but why it was abandoned as an ecclesiastical establishment when Danish raids and plunderings had ceased does not seem to be clearly known. Glendaloch has been thus lengthenedly treated on because it is the most interesting ecclesiastical ruin in the province of Leinster, Clonmacnois only excepted. Its strange and gloomy, yet romantic situation, its antiquity, its sad history of burnings and plunderings, the utter ruin that has overtaken most of its monuments, the halo of legend and romance that is around it, give it a charm even to the non-imaginative and the rude. For the archæologist, the poet, the romancer, or the dreamer, it has attractions and charms greater, perhaps, than they could find on any other spot of Irish soil. "LORDLY AILEACH"