39 They sealed their compacts with mutual libations of blood.

But some parts had not then received Christianity.

The Irish possess two historical poems in their na- tive language, of undoubted antiquity, which deserve the notice of the curious.

They are in rhymed qua- trains.

One of them, made about 1057, by an anony- mous author, and intituled, Eolca Albain Uile, in twenty-eight stanzas, briefly notices the events of Irish history to his own times ; the other, a longer chronicle, with more information, written by Gildas Modud, an ecclesiastic of Ardbrecain, in the year 1143, being a versified chronology of the Christian Kings of Britain from St Patrick to that time.