(including of course "Lives" of Saints) is carried on with the United
States. Wealthy, often ignorant, Irish-Americans, who are unable to
read them, are making collections of Irish MSS. and rare Irish books, to
Ireland's loss. Some Irish MSS. too, including Lives of Saints, have
been carried away as mementoes of the old land by departing emigrants.

The date or period at which the Lives (Latin and Irish) were written is
manifestly, for half a dozen good reasons, a question of the utmost
importance to the student of the subject. Alas, that the question has
to some extent successfully defied quite satisfactory solution. We can,
so far, only conjecture--though the probabilities seem strong and the
grounds solid. The probabilities are that the Latin Lives date as a
rule from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they were put into
something like their present form for reading (perhaps in the refectory)
in the great religious houses. They were copied and re-copied during
the succeeding centuries and the scribes according to their knowledge,
devotion or caprice made various additions, subtractions and occasional
multiplications. The Irish Lives are almost certainly of a somewhat
earlier date than the Latin and are based partly (i.e. as regards the
bulk of the miracles) on local tradition, and partly (i.e. as regards
the purely historical element) on the authority of written materials.
They too were, no doubt, copied and interpolated much as were the Latin
Lives. The present copies of Irish Lives date as a rule from the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries only, and the fact that the Latin
and the Irish Life (where there is this double biography) sometimes
agree very perfectly may indicate that the Latin translation or Life is
very late.

The chief published collections of Irish Saints' Lives may be set down
as seven, scil.:--five in Latin and one each in Irish and English. The