1 08 Reviews.
the enumeration of the penalties of Hell far overweighs that of the counter-joys of Heaven.
We notice a few omissions. Mr. Bosvvell does not seem to be aware that Irish copies actually exist of the Vision of St. Paul, although he supposes that the author of the Fis Adamndin must have known of it. There is a copy in Irish in the British Museum (marked Egerton 161, art. 81), and Dr. Hyde, in his Heligiotis Songs of Connachf, mentions another copy known to him. It must therefore have been well known in Ireland. Similarly, it seems likely that the Book of Enoch, so long believed to have been lost elsewhere, was known in early times in Ireland. The scheme of the cosmogony sketched out in St. Columba's great Latin Hymn, the Aitus Prosator seems to be founded upon that in the Book of Enoch, and the First and Second Visions of Adamnan seem influenced by it. The knowledge of these books and of the Book of Adam and Eve, a fifth or sixth century Egyptian work, which Mr. Boswell says is not mentioned outside of Ireland, shows that Ireland was much more closely in touch with the general current of church life than is usually supposed.
Mr. Boswell does not mention in his enumeration of the Irish Visions of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory the detailed account of the Descent of Count Ramon in 1397 into St. Patrick's Purgatory in Loch Derg, Co. Donegal, given in Philip O'Sullivan- Beare's Historice Catholiccz Ivernice Compendium, written in Latin and first published in 1621 in Lisbon, whither Philip had been sent as a child for safety during the Elizabethan Wars of Munster. It gives a minute and pitiless account of the torments of Hell and Purgatory, and is one of the most gruesome, because one of the most unimaginative, of all the mediseval ' Descents.' Though written down and published by an Irishman, it bears the impress of the cold and hard mind of its Spanish author. Possibly Cervantes may have drawn the materials for his drama on St. Patrick's Purgatory from this source. Mr. Boswell says that he thinks that the traditions of St. Patrick's Purgatory must have grown out of some earlier Pagan legend. Is he not aware of the legend of Conan's fight with the peist or water serpent whose blood is supposed to have given its name to
