“The Dona is nine inches and a half long, seven wide, and not quite four thick.
“So far I have been enabled to describe the Dona from the evidently accurate and well executed drawings you were so good as to present to me. Why the description is less particular than it should have been, I shall take another opportunity of explaining to you.
“There are three inscriptions on the Dona: one on a scroll from the hand of the figure of the Baptist, of ECCE AGNUS DEI. The two others are on plates of silver, but their exact position on the box is not marked in the drawing, but may be guessed by certain places which the plates exactly fit. “The first is--
“JOHS: OKARBRI: COMORBANVS: S. TIGNACH: PMISIT.”
“'_John O'Barrdan made this box by the permission of John O'Carbry, successor of St. Tigermach_.'
“St. Tierny, or St. Tigernach was third Bishop of Clogher, having succeeded St. Maccartin in the year 506. In the list of bishops, St. Patrick is reckoned the first, and founder of the see. Tigernach died the 4th of April, 548.
“John O'Carbry was abbott of Clones, or Clounish, in the County of Monoghan, and as such was _comorb_, or _corb_*--i. e., successor--of Tigernach, who was founder of the abbey and removed the episcopal seat from Clogher to Clounish. Many of the abbots Were also bishops of the see. He died in 1353. How long he was abbot does not appear; but the age of the outside covering of the Dona is fixed to the 14th century.
* All the successors of the founder saints were called by the Irish _comorbs_ or _corbs_. The reader Will perceive that O'Carbry was a distant but not we immediate successor of St. Tigernach.
“Since the foregoing was written I have seen the Dona, which was exhibited at the last meeting of the Royal Irish Academy. it has been put together at a guess, but different from the drawing. There is inside O'Barrdan's case another of silver plates some centuries older, and inside that the yew box, which originally contained the manuscripts, now so united by damp as to be apparently inseparable, and nearly illegible; for they have lost the color of vellum, and are quite black, and very much decayed. The old Irish version of the New Testament is well worthy of being edited; it is, I conceive, the oldest Latin version extant, and varies much from the Vulgate or Jerome's.