Antediluvian occupation of Erinn

The next book of considerable antiquity that we find reference to is that called the CIN DROMA SNECHTA or Cin of Drom Snechta. The word Cin, pron in Engl Kin, is explained in our ancient Glossaries as signifying a stave of five sheets of vellum and the name of this book would signify therefore the Vellum stave Book of Drom Snechta Tne words Drom Snechta signify the snow capped hill or mountain ridge and it is believed to have been the name of a mountain situated in the present county of Monaghan. The Cin of Drom Snechta is quoted in the Book of Ballymote fol 12 a in support of the ancient legend of the antediluvian occupation of Erinn by the Lady Banbha who is, however, in other Books called Cesair, pron Kesar. There are also two references to it in the Book of Lecan. The first of these fol 271 b is in the same words preserved in the Book of Ballymote From the Cin of Drom Snechta is taken this little bit as far as Cesair See APPENDIX No IX The second is fol 77 b col 2 where the writer says in summing up the genealogies of some of the families of Connacht that he compiled them from the Chronicles of the Gaedhil.

O’Curry, Eugene, M.R.I.A., Lectures on The Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, delivered at the Catholic Uniersity of Ireland, during the sessions of 1855 and 1856, P.13.

The Elders of the End of the World

More bitter to me than Death coming between my teeth are the folk that will come after me, who will be all of one kind.

Wicked is the time which will come then; envy, murder, oppression of the weak, every harm coming swiftly, and neither layman righteous nor righteous priest.

No king who concedes right or justice, no virgin bishop over the altar, no landowner who will raise tithes from his herds and his fine cattle.

The elders who did God's will at the beginning of time were bare-haunched, scurvy, muddy; they were not stout and fat.

The men of keen learning, who served the King of the Sun, did not molest boys or women; their natures were pure.

Scanty shirts, clumsy cloaks, hearts weary and piteous, short rough shocks of hair - and very rough monastic rules.

There will come here after that the elders of the latter-day world, with plunder, with cattle, with mitres, with rings, with chessboards,

With silk and sarsenet and satin, with delightful featherbeds after drinking, with contempt for the wisdom of beloved God - they shall be in the safe-keeping of the Devil.

I tell the seed of Adam, the hypocrites will come, they will assume the shapes of God - the slippery ones, the robbers.

They shall fade away with the same speed as grass and young corn in the green earth; they shall pass away together like the flower of the fields.

The imposters of the latter-day world shall all go on one path, into the grasp of the Devil, by God' will, into dark bitter torments.

Irish, author unknown, twelfth century?
From 'A Celtic Miscellany', Penguin Classics.