Anecdota. 271 The Te Deum. It is not the object of this paper to discuss the questions which have been raised as to the antiquity and authorship of the Te Deum, or to add to the number of commentators on that noble Hymn. The story that it was composed by St Ambrose and St Augustine, at the baptism of the latter, is well known, and is now regarded by all competent scholars as a legend un- worthy of any credit. They who desire information on the critical history of this celebrated composition may find it in Herman Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus, and in the authorities to which he refers. The object of the present paper is to make known the text of the Te Deum which was used in the offices of the ancient Irish Church prior to the ninth century, and to offer some short remarks on the discrepancies between that and the text now in use. The Manuscript from which the following copy of the Te Deum has been transcribed, is preserved in the Library of Trinity College Dublin, and was formerly in the possession of Arch- bishop Ussher. On some future occasion, if such a paper should prove acceptable to the readers of the Journal, I may perhaps trouble you with a more full account of this interesting volume. At present, I shall content myself with observing that it is a Hymnarium or Antiphonarium containing several very ancient hymns, many of them peculiar to the Irish Church, and some in the Irish language*. A great many of the hymns are accompanied by a gloss and marginal notes, containing historical matter, sometimes of considerable interest, and proving beyond a question the great antiquity of the hymns, even at the time when the Manuscript was written, which is undoubtedly not later than the 10th century. Mention is made of this MS., and of the copy of the Te Deum which it contains, by Archbp. Ussher in his learned work " De Romanse Ecclesiae Symbolo Apostolico vetere, aliisque fidei for- mulis, in prima Catechesi et Baptismo proponi solitis, diatriba." The Archbishop however makes one mistake respecting this copy of the Te Deum which I am unable to account for, except
- One of these, in a very ancient in his learned paper on the Antiquities
dialect of the Irish Gaelic, has been pub- of Tara Hill, in the Transactions of the lished with a translation, by Dr Petrie Eoyal Irish Academy.
