The only extant copy of this recension of the life of St. Brigit is found in Rawlinson B 512, a Bodleian MS. of the fourteenth or fifteėnth Century. This MS. has been frequently described and catalogued, most fully by Whitley Stokes (Tripartite Life of Patrick (1887), pp. xiv ff.) and again in his edition of the Martyrology of Oengus (1905, pp. xxii-xxiv). With the exception of the Lebor Gabála, the greater part of the Contents has been edited in various places. The arrangement of the gatherings, the various foliations and paginations of the MS., and the different hands have been described by Dr. Best in ‘Notes on Rawlinson B 512’ (ZCP, xvii. 388 ff.).

In attempting a study of local government in Ireland at the beginning of the Tudor period, it must be stated that only very tentative conclusions can be made as to its nature and effectiveness. This is due on the one hand to lack of materials and difficulty in interpreting what there are, and on the other to the absence of detailed studies of Anglo-Irish feudalism and of Irish society in the later medieval period.

In theory, the royal administration, established in Dublin and organised on English lines, was competent to provide law and government for the whole island. In practice, its effectiveness diminished successively in four groups of territories.

A new edition of Professor Curti's History of Medieval Ireland is very welcome. Though essentially the same book, much has been rewritten : there are additions to the text as it appeared in 1923, and a good deal of detail and some footnotes have been omitted, for which the first edition must be consulted. Other changes are the division of the chapters into headed sections, the inclusion of genealogical tables, and appendices on the Ostmen, the towns and the legal treatment of the Irish.

The merits of Dr.Curti's work are very great, and chiefly his determination to write the history of the whole of Ireland, to rest every statement upon evidence, and to give exact references.

If a librarian who makes no claim to any Special knowledge of history needs an excuse for contributing to this Journal, it may be found in the boldness with which some historians undertake bibliographical tasks without admitting the ignorance they do not feel. But an acquaintance with bibliographical method is a necessary part of the equipment of every scholar, and to promulgate the theory of it is very much the business of librarians. The primary object of a published bibliography is to enable users of it to identify books in the catalogues of libraries, and it must therefore consist of accurate descriptions made on recognisable principles. A valuable secondary object is to help librarians to supply the deficiencies of their collections, and this cannot be done unless the bibliography is competently Condensed from a survey of all the relevant material. This essay, then, is not intended to be a direct contribution to the history of Ireland ; I have merely chosen a limited period of Irish history from which to draw examples illustrating some principles of bibliographical compilation.