Open [38.2 MB]

Ireland and the Making
of Britain
It is clear that the scope of these arts could be made
very much wider than the names suggest. There was
nothing that was mechanical or traditional in the Irish
use of them and from the beginning Irishmen showed
little disposition to be content with what was handed
down, but sought to explore new fields of their own.
Under grammar became included the study of Irish, Latin
and Greek literature. They carried the study of dialectic,
which in their hands comprised the core of modern
logic, to so high a pitch that in the Carolingian era they
were the most bewilderingly skilled controversialists in
Europe, and dialectic came to be looked upon and feared
as a distinctively Irish branch of intellectual legerdemain.
Rhetoric covered the study of law also, and a mere glance
over the great volumes containing the old Irish laws,
called the Brehon Laws, the most copious and authentic
mass of material bearing on the history of Ireland, will
give an idea of the labor such study entailed. Geometry
included geography, natural history and the medicinal
properties of plants. Though the Irish adopted the Gregorian
chant, they were themselves the most advanced
people in Europe in the field of music and their pursuit
of that study was as a result almost exclusively Irish.
TEXT-BOOKS AND LEARNED DEGREES
4.
We are not familiar with all the text-books in the hands
of the Irish masters, for they were in possession of both
Latin and Greek works th'at had become almost unknown
on the Continent. We are pretty well informed, however,
in regard to the text-books most in use in the Irish schools
both in Ireland and abroad. They surpassed all the
scholars of the time in their familiarity with such works
of Aristotle as were available, and the trenchant employ-
38