Then comes the _Leabhar Buidhe Lecain_, or _Yellow Book of Lecain_, a large quarto volume of about five hundred pages, which was written by Donnoch and Gilla Isa Mac Firbis in the year 1390, with the exception of a few tracts of a somewhat later date. O’Curry, in his ninth lecture, supposes it to have been originally a collection of ancient historical pieces, civil and ecclesiastical, in prose and verse. In its present imperfect state it contains a number of family and political poems; some monastic rules; a description of Tara and its banqueting‐hall; a translation of part of the Book of Genesis; the Feast of Dun‐na‐n Gedh and the battle of Magh Rath; an account of the reign of Muirchertach Mac Erca, and his death at the palace of Cleitech in the year 527; copies of cattle‐ spoils, of the Bruighean Da Dearga, and death of the king; the tale of Maelduin’s three years’ wanderings in the Atlantic; tracts concerning the banishment of an ancient tribe from East Meath, and their discovery in the Northern Ocean by some Irish ecclesiastics; accounts of battles in the years 594, 634, and 718, and many other curious and valuable pieces and tracts. It is preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. Two pages have been selected. The first contains the plan of the Teach Miodchuarta of ancient Tara, with a portion of the prose preface to the poem, which the plan is intended to illustrate. This ground‐plan differs somewhat in the shape of the hall and the arrangement of the tables from that given in the _Book of Leinster_, an earlier copy of a different original. It is also very much superior to it, both as regards the drawing and writing. The _daul_ and his spit are unrepresented here, but there is the door, the common hall, the swinging lamp and candles, the great double‐handed vase, called the _dabhach_ or vat, and three places marked out for the fires. The arrangement of the hall appears to have been this: Each of the two outside compartments contained twelve seats, and each seat three sitters; the two _airidins_ or divisions on either side of the centre of the hall held each eight seats and sixteen sitters. There were eight distributors, cup‐bearers, and herdsmen at the upper end of the hall, and two sat in each of the two seats on either side of the door, being the two door‐keepers and two of the royal fools. The daily allowance for dinner was two cows, two salted hogs, and two pigs. The quantity of liquor consumed is not specified, but the poem states that there were one hundred drinkings in the vat, and that the vat was supplied with fifty grooved golden horns and fifty pewter vessels. The order of precedence seems to have ranged from the top of the external division to the left on entering the hall; then to the top of the external division to the right; then the two internal divisions beginning with the left; then the _iarthar_ or back part of the hall, the upper end opposite the door; and last the seats on either side of the door itself.