In the two compartments on either side are enumerated in order of precedence the various officers and retainers of the king’s household, together with their tables and the particular portions of meat served out to each, forming a very curious and instructive illustration of the social condition and habits of the early Irish. The description of the rations that were considered specially adapted to the several ranks of consumers is very amusing. For the distinguished men of literature, “the soft, clean, smooth entrails,” and a steak cut from the choicest part of the animal, were set aside; the poet had a “good smooth” piece of the leg; the historian, “a crooked bone,” probably a rib; the artificers, “a pig’s shoulder”; the Druids and _aire dessa_, a “fair foot.” These last are said to decline to drink; not so the trumpeters and cooks, who are to be allowed “cheering mead in abundance, not of a flatulent kind.” The doorkeeper, “the noisy, humorous fool and the fierce, active kerne” had the chine; while to the satirists and the _braigitore_, a class of buffoons whose peculiar function was to amuse the company after a fashion which will not only not bear description, but almost defies belief—licensed and paid _Aethons_ of the court—“the fat of the shoulder was divided to them pleasantly.” The selection is continued by the _Leabhar Breac_, or _Speckled Book_, probably named from the color of its cover, or, as it was formerly called, _Leabhar Mór Duna Doighré_, the _Great Book of Dun Doighré_, a place on the Galway side of the Shannon not far from Athlone. It is a compilation from various ancient books belonging chiefly to churches and monasteries in Conaught, Munster, and Leinster, beautifully written on vellum, as is supposed about the close of the XIVth century, by one of the Mac Ogans, a literary family of great repute belonging to Dun Doighré. Its contents are of an extremely miscellaneous character, and they are all, with the exception of a copy of _The Life of Alexander the Great_ from the VIIth century, MS. of S. Berchan of Clonsost, of a religious nature, comprising Biblical narratives, homilies, hymns; pedigrees of saints, litanies and liturgies, monastic rules, the _Martyrology_ of Aengus Céulé Dé, or the Culdee, the ancient rules of discipline of the order of the Culdees, etc., etc. When the Abbé Mac Geoghegan wrote his _History of Ancient Erinn_ in Paris, in the year 1758, this volume, his principal MS. of reference, was in Paris. It is now in the Royal Irish Academy. Three pages have been selected for fac‐similes, giving a description of the nature and arrangement of the _Féliré_, or _Festology_ of Aengus the Culdee, and the date and object of its composition, which was made between the years 793 and 817, when Aedh Oirdnidhe was monarch of Erinn.