centuries later, apparently in the fourteenth century, when the present lid was substituted for that which had originally been attached to it. After the Treaty of Limerick, Daniel O'Donel, the representative of the family to which the cumdach has always belonged, who was attached to the cause of the Stuarts, left Ireland for France, and took the cumdach with him. Twenty-seven years later he became a Brigadier General in the French army.[1] In France the shrine was found once more to be in need of repair. O'Donel caused this work to be done in 1723, and at the same time provided it with a silver case, intended to protect it from further injury. It is interesting to observe that the shrine was then believed to contain a relic (pignus) of St. Columba, commonly called the "caah" (cathach), of the exact nature of which possibly nothing was known. The cumdach was, in fact, closed, and for at least two centuries, as will appear later, it had been held that it was unlawful to open it.
The cumdach remained in France for more than a century. It was found in 1802 in a "monastery or college at Paris," was brought to Ireland by Sir Capel Molyneux, and by him was handed over to his father-in-law, Sir Neal O'Donel, Bart., of Newport, County Mayo. Ten years later his son, Sir Neal O'Donel—the second baronet—employed Sir William Betham, then assistant to the Ulster King of Arms, to compile a pedigree of the O'Donel family. Sir William borrowed the shrine from Dame Mary O'Donel, to whom it had been bequeathed by her husband, the first Sir Neal, with a view to inserting a description of it in the pedigree; and while it was in his custody, in 1813,[2] he performed the "unlawful" act of opening it. He found, contrary to current belief, that it contained a wooden box, "very much decayed,"[3] in which were some leaves of a Latin Psalter and "a thin piece of
- ↑ J. C. O'Callaghan, "History of the Irish Brigades," 1870, pp. 113-115.
- ↑ The date is fixed by the Bill of Complaint of Dame Mary O'Donel, dated 30 April, 1814, and the reply of Sir William Betham, sworn 9 June, 1814. Lady O'Donel had instituted an action in Chancery against Betham, charging him with having opened the shrine, contrary to an undertaking given by him that he would not do so, and with having purloined its contents. Betham's reply gives a full account of the opening of the cumdach, much more interesting than that which he published thirteen years later, but inconsistent with it, and less creditable to himself. He states, inter alia, that, in spite of the report that it contained a portion of St. Columba's body, he himself expected to find a manuscript enclosed in it. This was a very astute inference from the parallel case of the shrine of the Boob of Mulling, which had been examined by Vallancey.
- ↑ This description is certainly true. For Sir William Betham, before the shrine was opened, tested his hypothesis that it contained a manuscript by passing a "slender wire" through a small opening in it, with which he rubbed the edges of the vellum leaves. It must have pierced the decayed wood. It maybe added that this test would have been useless if the manuscript had then been a solid mass. See below, p. 246, note1. There are wooden cases in the Domnach Airgid and Lough Erne shrines in the Academy's collection.
