PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY FOUR TIMES A MONTH, AND ENTERED AS The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government. Sam Houston Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that freemen acknowledge and the only security that freemen desire. Mirabeau B. Lamar EARLY LITERARY CHANNELS BETWEEN IRELAND AND BRITAIN* BY CLARK HARRIS SLOVER We have seen how the Irish and British maintained communication with each other through the planting of colonies, through military operations, through the setting up of trade routes, and through intermarriage. It is now our duty to investigate the channels of communication maintained through contact between Irish and British-particularly South British-monastic centers. In our treatment of this phase of Irish-British relations we shall take account of the following features: (A) communication between Irish and British ecclesiastical centers, including (1) those Irish monasteries which preserve traditions connecting them with definite places in Britain and (2) those which show connection with Britain in general with no indication of the exact British territory; (B) the inter-relation between Irish monasteries which communicated with Britain; (C) the literary importance of Irish monasteries of the British circle (1) in their production of literature and (2) in their relations with other monasteries producing literature; and (D) the use of intermonastic channels for the transmission of literary material (1) in Ireland and (2) between Ireland and Britain. As we approach the subject of Irish-British ecclesiastical relations, we are immediately attracted by the life stories of two very famous missionaries, Patrick, the British apostle to the Irish, and Columba, the Irish apostle to the North Britons. To our present purpose, however, the careers of these two men are not strictly essential. Patrick, although born in Britain, did not go to Ireland as a representative of the British church. His most famous companions, Auxilius, Secundinus, and Auserninus, were probably Gauls, *A continuation of an article published in Studies in English, No. 6, pp. 5-52 (December, 1926). |