The  principal  copy  of  these  Annals  is  at  present  preserved
in  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford.  "  It  contains,"  says  Dr.
O'Conor,  "  fifty-seven  leaves  (of  parchment),  of  which  the
first  three  are  considerably  damaged,  and  the  fourth  partly
obliterated.  Some  leaves  at  the  beginning  are  also  missing."
The  missing  leaves  seem  to  have  begun  with  a  short  account
of  the  creation  and  the  history  of  the  early  patriarchs  extracted
from  the  Book  of  Grenesis.  At  the  sixth  begins  the  history
of  the  Kingdom  of  the  Greeks  ;  then  it  treats  of  the  general
history  of  the  great  empires  of  the  world  down  to  the  year
A.D.  430  (at  folio  9),  where  their  real  interest  begins.  Thence-
forward there  is  a  brief  chronicle  of  Ireland  in  difierent
hands,  down  to  the  year  a.d.  1319.  The  first  scribe  has
written  down  to  the  year  a.u.  1130  (at  folio  30).  The  writing
of  this  portion  is  free  and  elegant ;  the  initial  letters  are
coloured  and  adorned; and  everything  seems  to  point  to  the
fact  that  the  original  scribe  of  this  manuscript  wrote  no
further.  But  afterwards  the  work  becomes  more  rude  and
careless  ;  there  is  no  attempt  at  ornamentation ;  in  fact,  the
appearance  of  the  manuscript  is  a  faithful  picture  of  the  state
of  the  country — daily  going  from  bad  to  worse.  It  is  fruit-
less now  to  speculate  how  this  -x'enerable  monument  of  Irish
learning  came  into  the  Bodleian  Library  of  Oxford.
The  work  known  as  the  Dublin  Annals  of  Ittnisfallen  is  a
translation  in  Trinity  College  Library,  which  Theophilus
O'Flanagan  testifies^  that   he  made    into   English    "  about

1  In  a  letter  to  Thomwi  Wright,  16th  Jan.,  1803.
504  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  DESMOND.
