fragment of fifty-eight leaves of a Latin Psalter, styled the
Cathach or "Battler." For centuries this fragment has been
preserved in a beautiful case as a relic of Columba; as, indeed,
the actual cause of the dispute between Columba and
Finnian of Moville.

[1] Trans. R. I. Acad., vol. xviii. 1838,



Section V

Two features of book-economy, although not peculiar
to Ireland, are rarely met with outside that country. The
religious used satchels or wallets to carry their books about
with them. We are told Patrick once met a party of
clerics and gillies with books in their girdles; and he gave
them the hide he had sat and slept on for twenty years to
make a wallet.[1] Columba is said to have made satchels,
and to have blessed them. When these satchels were not
carried they were hung upon pegs set in the wall of the
cell or the church or the tower where they were preserved.[2]
We have already noted the legend which tells how all the
satchels in Ireland slipped off their pegs when Longarad
died. A modern writer visiting the Abyssinian convent
of Souriani has seen a room which, when we remember the
connection between Egyptian and Celtic monachism, we
cannot help thinking must closely resemble an ancient
Irish cell.[3] In the room the disposition of the manuscripts
was very original. "A wooden shelf was carried in the