The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran by Anonymous (recommended reading txt) 📖

cach aés bes nithé

(A young man who is taken before its time, the honour in which he may be is not discovered: from his youth of following folly, to his age every company ... (?).)

Ni horta laeg rianáes daim ár cach sen as tressiu achách,
ni horta uan na horc maith ni coilte cr ... [31] a bláth

(A calf is not slaughtered till it is of ox's age, 'tis the ploughing (?) of every old one which waxes stronger: a lamb or a good pigling is not slaughtered, the (saffron?) is not plucked till its flower.)

Buain guirt riasiu bas abbuig is m ... cacaid, a Rí rind?
is e in longud riana thráth blath do choll in tan bas find

(To reap a field before it is ripe, is it a right (thing), O King of stars? It is eating before the time to violate a flower while it is white.)

Fuiniud immedon laa ni hord baa rian ...
matan in aidche, in dedoil ria na medon cia mó col

(Sunset in midday, no order of profit before...; morning in night, twilight before its noon, though it be greatest wrong.)

Cluinti itgi notguidiu is mo chridiu deroil dúir
a Mic mo De cianomrodba is bec mo thorba dondúir

(Hear Thou the prayer I pray Thee in the depth of my wretched hard heart, O Son of my God, although Thou cuttest me off, small is my profitableness ... )

Duitsi a Mic motholtu cen cope sentu dom churp,
cenambera cen taithlech no co bia maith fe[in] fort

(To Thee, O Son, ... (?), that without my body becoming aged, I be not taken without reason till I shall myself be good in Thy sight.)

Is fort shnádud cach ambi ria ndula m' chri, a Ri slán,
ic do guide dam cen dichil, an rimm a Rí richid ran

(On Thy protection is every one whereso he is; before departure of my body, O Perfect King, I am praying Thee without negligence, stay for me, O King of glorious heaven.)


LIV. THE PANEGYRICS (LA, VG)

There is little that need be said about these paragraphs, which are of conventional type. There are two references in VG which may, however, be noted. The first is to the relics left in the hollow elm, of which we have already heard at the beginning of these annotations: here said to have been deposited by Benen (the pupil of Patrick, and his successor in Armagh) and by Cumlach (the leper of Saint Patrick). The second is an allusion, on which I am unable to throw any light, to some evidently well-known story of a certain Peca and his blind pupil.


THE METRICAL PANEGYRIC IN LB

This is a patchwork of extracts from different sources.

1. Fifteen-syllable lines, with caesura at eighth syllable; every line ending in a trisyllabic word, rhyming (not always) with a word preceding the caesura. A dissyllable or trisyllable precedes the caesura. Rhythm of Tennyson's Locksley Hall , proceeding by stress only, independent of vowel-quantity or hiatus. In line seven, 'Keranus' must be pronounced in four syllables, Kiaranus. Refers to the wizard's prophecy, incident II.

2. Four lines, in Locksley Hall rhythm, with a dissyllabic rhyme running through the quatrain. Relates incident IX.

3. Four lines, twelve syllables trochaic, caesura at seventh syllable. Each line ends with a trisyllable or a tetrasyllable, with dissyllabic rhyme running through the quatrain. The rhythm is that of the following line (which is intentionally misquoted to serve the present purpose)-

"Gather roses while you may, time is still a-flying."

The incident is not recorded in the prose lives; but it appears in the
Book of the Dun Cow , in the story of the Birth of Aed Slaine (son of King Diarmait, reigned A.D. 595-600). Diarmait, it appears, had two wives (for, notwithstanding his friendship to Ciaran, he was but a half-converted pagan), by name Mugain and Muireann. Muireann had the misfortune to be bald, and Mugain, who, as is usual in polygamous households, was filled with envy of her, bribed a female buffoon to remove her golden headgear in public at the great assembly of Tailltiu (Telltown, Co. Meath), so as to expose the poor queen's defect to the eyes of the mob. The messenger accomplished her purpose, but Muireann cried out, "God and Saint Ciaran help me in this need!" and forthwith a shower of glossy curling golden hair flowed from her head over her shoulders, before a single eye of the assembly had rested upon her. Compare Ciaran's own experience, incident XLVI.

4. Three lines in the same metre, but apparently with three instead of four lines in each rhyming stanza. Refers to incident XVIII.

5. Three lines in the same rhythm as extract 1, but with a different rhyme-scheme; apparently three lines from a quatrain rhyming abab . Refers to incident XLI.

6. Six lines in elegiac couplets. This probably refers to XLVI, but without their original context the lines must remain obscure. In any case the versifier has the story in a rather different form from the prose writers, and appears to regard it as an incident of the boyhood period.

7. Eight lines from the hymn of Colum Cille, already commented upon.


ADDITIONAL NOTE ON CIARAN'S BIRTHPLACE

Some place-names in the barony of Moycashel (S. Co. Westmeath), which lies in Cenel Fiachach, support the tradition that Ciaran's birthplace is to be sought there, and not in Mag Ai at all. I can find nothing in the local nomenclature to suggest Ráith Cremthainn; but "Templemacateer" ( Teampull mhic an tsaoir , the "Church of the Wright's son") may be compared with, and perhaps equated to the similarly named "house" (p. 111); "Ballynagore" ( Baile na ngabhar , the "town of the goats," or "horses") perhaps echoes the "Tir na Gabrai" of VG 3. About half a mile to the west is Tulach na crosáin , the "Mound of the crosslet"-possibly the missing cross of Ciaran (LA 4). At the outflow of the Brosna from Loch Ennell is "Clonsingle," which it is tempting to equate to the place-name corrupted to "Cluain Innsythe," in LA 12.

An additional suggestion may here be made to the effect that the eldest son and daughter of Beoit were twins. Their names, Lug-oll "big Lug," and Lug-beg "little Lug," are in correspondence, as twins' names often are.

[Footnote 1: For brevity we shall refer to certain books, frequently quoted in these Annotations, by the following symbols-

LL. Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore , ed. Stokes.
CS. Codex Salmaticensis (Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae), ed. de
Smedt and de Backer.
VTP. Vita Tripartita Patricii , ed. Stokes.
VSH. Plummer's Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae .
TT. Trias Thaumaturga (Colgan's collection of the lives of
SS. Patrick, Brigid, and Colum Cille).]

[Footnote 2: There is a different version, which need not be given here, in the Martyrology of Oengus (Henry Bradshaw Society edition, p. 204).]

[Footnote 3: Mentioned in Annals of Ulster , anno 1166, Annals of Loch Cé , anno 1189, Annals of the Four Masters , annis 1121, 1166.]

[Footnote 4: A collection (in Irish) of the traditions of this person will be found in Targaireacht Bhriain ruaidh uí Chearbháin , by Micheál ó Tiomhánaidhe (Dublin, 1906).]

[Footnote 5: The passage would then read thus- Rothircan Bec mac De condebairt andsin -

" A maic in tsaeir, cot clasaib, cot coraib,
It casair chaeim, cot cairpthib, cot ceolaib. "

The transposition has probably been caused by the error of some scribe who copied first the parts of the two lines preceding the caesura.]

[Footnote 6: The roll of the Kings of Tara was evolved from various sources by the Irish historians of the early Christian Period. Tigernmas was properly a pagan culture-hero, to whom was traditionally attributed the introduction of gold-smelting and of other arts, and who was said to have perished, apparently as a human sacrifice, at some great religious assembly.]

[Footnote 7: This is certainly the reading, curiously misread in LL p. 356, (Irish text), and in VSH i, p. li, note 3.]

[Footnote 8: Ossianic Society's Transactions , vol. v, p. 84 ff.]

[Footnote 9: Edited by Dr. Hyde in Celtic Review , vol. x, p. 116 ff.]

[Footnote 10: On this whole subject see Chapter IV of MacNeill's
Phases of Irish History , a book which may be unreservedly recommended as giving a clear and accurate view of the early history of the country.]

[Footnote 11: It may be noted for the benefit of the reader unaccustomed to Irish nomenclature, that persons are named in one of the following formulae: "A mac B" ( mac , genitive mic , in syntactic relation mhic [pronounced vic ] son): "A ó B" ( ô or ua , genitive ui grandson or descendant): and "A maccu B" ( maccu descendant, denoting B as the name of a remote ancestor). Of course the name B will in every case be in the genitive.]

[Footnote 12: For division of labour between the sexes, see Frazer,
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild , ii, 129. For prohibitions of the presence of males when specifically female work was being transacted, Plummer quotes Grimm, Teutonic Mythology , Eng. Trans., iv, 1778 ("Men shall not stay in the house while women are stuffing feathers in the beds, otherwise the feathers will prick through the bed-ticking"). O'Curry ( Manners and Customs , iii, p. 121), commenting on this story, refers to times and seasons deemed unlucky for dyeing, at the time when he wrote; but the prohibition of the presence of males was forgotten.]

[Footnote 13: Vafthrudnismál 41; Grimnismál 18. ( Edda , ed. Hafn, 1787, vol. i, pp. 24, 48.)]

[Footnote 14: F.M. Luzel, Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1887), vol. i, p. 219 ff. Some other parallels are quoted by Plummer, VSH, i, p. cxliii, note 5.]

[Footnote 15: There is evidence from various literary sources that cattle thus peculiarly coloured were accounted sacred in ancient Ireland.]

[Footnote 16: There should be no hypermetric syllables, but I have been unable to avoid them.]

[Footnote 17: Horae Hebraicae in Evangel. Matt., xv, 36, following the tract Berakoth .]

[Footnote 18: O'Donnell's Life of St. Columba , ed. O'Kelleher, p. 120.]

[Footnote 19: For the story of Coirpre, see Lismore Lives , ed. Stokes, preface p. xvi; Revue celtique , xxvi, 368. For the story of Ambacuc, see Silua Gadelica , no. xxxi; Eriu , vol. vi, p. 159.]

[Footnote 20: A fully illustrated description of this relic by Mr. E.C.R. Armstrong will be found in Journal , Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. xlix, p. 132.]

[Footnote 21: Book of the Dun Cow , printed in Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie , iii, 218.]