Understand, O Reader, that it is for a certain reason, and particularly to avoid tediousness that our intention is to make only a short abstract and compendium of the history of the Scots in this book, omitting the lengthened details of the historical books; wherefore it is that we beg of you not to criticise us on that account as we know that it is an exceedingly great deficiency. He then passes rapidly over the first three ages of the world,—the earlier colonisation of Ireland, the death of the colonists at Tallaght in the county of Dublin, and the visit of Nial, the son of Fenius Farsaid, to Egypt to teach the languages. With winged speed the compiler reaches the year 375, when St. Patrick was born, and then the red letter date 432 which witnessed his arrival in Ireland. Columcille’s prayer at the battle of Cooldrevna is given under the year 561, and numerous scraps of poems here and there quoted as authorities. A large deficiency occurs between 722 and 805 A.D., where the compiler has written, “The breasts (or fronts) of two leaves of the old book out of which I write this, are wanting here, and I leave what is before me of this page for them, I am, Dubhaltach Firbisigh.” A similar defect, it may be noted, occurs in the Annals of Tighernach from 756 to 973. The other Annals above-mentioned carry the history down towards the end of the sixteenth century. Almost contemporary with the _Chronicon Scotorum_ arose the greatest of all, _The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters_, commonly cited as the “Four Masters,” a name given to its authors by Colgan. It was the work of Michael O’Clery and other three great scholars, begun in 1632 and finished in 1636. All the best and most copious Annals he could find throughout Ireland were collected by him for this _magnum opus_. Like so many others of these historical compilations, it begins far back, in the year of the world 2242, and finishes in 1616 A.D. “There is no event of Irish history,” says Dr. Hyde, “from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the seventeenth century, that the first inquiry of the student will not be, ‘What do the “Four Masters” say about it?’ for the great value of the work consists in this, that we have here in condensed form the pith and substance of the old books of Ireland which were then in existence, but which, as the Four Masters anticipated, have long since perished.” The work has been published by O’Donovan in 1851. His is regarded as the best and most complete edition in translation and notes. It forms six volumes, without counting the supplementary index. The autograph MS. still exists, composed of two volumes, of which the first, stopping at the year 1169, forms No. XXI. of the Stowe Collection. Of the second volume there are two autograph copies: the one complete, in the library of the Royal Academy of Ireland; the other, comprising only the years 1335 to 1605, is preserved at Trinity College, Dublin.