The real facts of the case are these. So popular were the works of ‘Master Gerald,’ as Mr. Dimock observed, that they survive, not only in many MSS., but in several early translations. The pedigree of these translations has not been properly worked out. At Trinity College, Dublin, we have two in E. 3, 31, and F. 4, 4, while at Lambeth we have the so-called ‘Conquest of Ireland’ by Bray--published by Messrs. Brewer and Bullen, with the Book of Howth--and in the latter (pp. 36–117) there is included another and more modernized version. Of these the one assigned to Bray was held by Professor Brewer to have been written about the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century, and to be “so interesting and curious a specimen of English as spoken in the Pale” that he decided to print it in full and to retain the original orthography. But E. 3, 31 was, he admitted, “a still earlier version.” Yet this latter MS., when submitted by Mr. Dimock to so competent an authority as Mr. Earle, was pronounced by him to be “a truly interesting specimen of fifteenth (_sic_) century Hibernian English.” He added that it well deserved publication, in which remark I certainly concur, its language being most curious. Professor Brewer (p. xxiii.) declared it “an error” of Mr. Dimock and others to term this MS. a translation of Giraldus, but the real error, we shall find, was his own. The other Dublin MS. (F. 4, 4), to which he does not allude, is assigned by Mr. Dimock to “the sixteenth century” (p. lxxvii.), and declared to be “a transcript from the earlier E. 3, 31,” a description which, unfortunately, misses the point. The solution, I believe, of the whole mystery is that there was a very early and exceedingly free translation of Gerald’s ‘Expugnatio,’ which, after the mediæval fashion, spoke of him at times in the third person, and thus assumed, in places, a quasi-original form. This original translation, which seems to be now lost, was copied both by the writer of E. 3, 31 and by Bray in his ‘Conquest of Ireland,’ the latter only modernizing somewhat the language. Then come the two other MSS., both of the latter part of the 16th century. Of these the distinctive feature is that while still copying, though further modernizing, the original translation--for internal evidence seems to prove that the Book of Howth at least was derived from neither of the above copies--they interlard it with certain passages taken from another and distinct source. This discovery, which corrects Mr. Dimock and overthrows the conclusions of Professor Brewer, is based on collation of the essential passage in the Book of Howth with its parallel passage in the Dublin MS. F. 4, 4 as given in Hardy’s ‘Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to the History of Great Britain,’ on the authority of Mr. W. M. Hennessy: BOOK OF HOWTH. TRIN. COLL. MS. F. 4, 4.