This is a curious book, throwing some glimmerings of light upon a very remote and obscure period of Irish history. In 1852 a government commission, called the "Brehon Law Commission," was issued to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord Rosse, Dean Graves, Dr. Petrie, and others, appointing them to carry into effect the selection, transcription, and translation of certain documents in the Gaelic tongue containing portions of the ancient laws of Ireland, and the preparation of the same for publication. In pursuance of this, the commissioners employed Dr. O'Donovan and Professor O'Curry, two Gaelic scholars of high distinction, to transcribe and translate various law tracts in the Irish language in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, of the Royal Irish Academy, of the British Museum, and in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The transcriptions occupy more than 5,000 manuscript pages, including all the law tracts which it was thought necessary to publish, and have nearly all been translated; but the two chosen scholars did not live to complete and revise their translations. The portion now published was prepared for the press by W. Neilson, Hancock, LL.D., first in conjunction with Dr. O'Donovan, and, after his death, with the Rev. Mr. O'Mahony, professor of Irish in the university of Dublin. It is a volume of some 300 pages, the Irish on one page and the translation opposite, containing the first part of the _Senchus Mor_ (we are not told how much is to follow), treating of the law of distress or distraint, with an Irish introduction, and various Irish glosses and commentaries on the text. The title _Senchus Mor_ (pronounced "Shanchus Môr") for which seven or {130} eight different derivations are suggested, appears to mean "the great old laws," or "the great old decisions." The chief manuscripts of it which are known to exist are three in Trinity College, Dublin, and one in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, and the earliest of these is assigned to _circa_ A.D. 1300. But quotations from the _Senchus Mor_ are found in "Cormac's Glossary," the greater part of which was probably composed in the ninth or tenth century, and the date of the original compilation is put by good judges, on various evidence, at A.D. 438 to 441. It is, in short, a codification and revision, under the direction of St. Patrick, of the judgments of the pagan Brehons. Three kings, three poets, and three Christian missionaries (of whom Patrick was one) were combined in this work, and the code then established remained the national law of Ireland for nearly twelve centuries. The pagan laws embodied in this revised code were in force during a period of unknown antiquity, prior to the introduction of Christianity to the island.