A Book of the Parish of Deir Author:Alexander Lawson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. Booh of Deir. rnHE Book Of Dei u is a small manuscript volume, in parchment, of over J eighty folios, for the most part closely written on both ... more »sides. It contains the whole of the Gospel of 8. John, and the earlier chapters of the synoptic Gospels — the first six and part of the seventh chapter of S. Matthew, the first four and part of the fifth of S. Mark, the first three and part of the fourth of S. Luke — all according to the text of the Vulgate, but as a manuscript of the New Testament Scriptures it has no features of note, and has, therefore, no special value. It contains also a fragment of a service for the visitation of the sick, with a rubric in Gaelic, the Apostles' Creed, and a brief charter of David I. to the clerics at Deir, referred to in an earlier chapter, and translated in Appendix II. — all in Latin. It has characteristic Celtic illuminations and figures, and those skilled in such matters believe that the handwriting is of the ninth century. The scribe had a human heart, and some heavy burden of his own to bear, for he closes his manuscript with a pathetic cry for himself — " Be it on the conscience of everyone, in whom shall be for grace the booklet with splendour, that he give a blessing on the soul of the wretchock who wrote it." The BOOK was, undoubtedly, the property of the Celtic monastery of Deir, and it thus takes us back a thousand years. There is a high degree of probability that it passed, with other ecclesiastical possessions, into the keeping of the Cistercian Abbey of Deir. Its after-history can only be guessed at. This, however, is known for certain — in 1697 it formed part of a collection of MSS. belonging to Dr. Moore, Bishop of Norwich, afterwards, from 1707-1714, Bishop of Ely, and in 1715, through the liberality of George I., w...« less