DEER, or DEIR, OLD, a village and parish in the n.e. of Aberdeenshire, in the dis trict of Buchan. Here are vestiges of a Cistercian monastery founded about the year 1219, by William Cumyn, earl of Buchan, on the site of a church believed to have been planted by St.'0Olumbti, and his St. Drostan, about the year 580. A few MSS. which had belonged to the monks of Deir, found their way, after the reformation, to the university library at Cambridge; and among them one has been recently dis covered, which has come to be known among archaeologists and philologists as the Book of Deir. It contains a copy of the gospels (in the Latin version of St. Jerome) and of the Apostles' Creed, in the handwriting of the 9th c., with a portion of a Missa de Infirm's, or "Communion of the Sick" (containing a Celtic or Gaelic rubric), in a later hand. On the blank leaves at the beginning, in the handwriting of the early part of the 12th c., are a few notes or memorials, in the Celtic or Gaelic language, recording
"How Colunicille and Drostan came from Hi to Aberdour, and how Bede the Pict, who was than Maormohr of Buchan, gave them the towns of Aberdoura nd Deir," and how succeeding maormohrs, chiefs of clans, kings, and others, added to the immunities and endowments of the church of Deir. These notes or memorials are of great philological interest, as the only known examples of the Celtic speech of Scotland in the 12th century. They are also of great historical interest, as opening up glimpses of the social state of the country during the obscure period between the 7th and 12th centuries. The Book of Deir has been edited for the Spalding club, by John Stuart, LL.D., the secretary. To Mr. Bradshaw of King's college, Cambridge, we owe the dis covery of the MS.