Miscellany Presented to Kuno Meyer by Some of His Friends and Pupils On
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
g: fyxmll mmretjsitg ^ilravg leltic Collection THE GIFT OF 3ame$ Morgan fiart """""'*" "'"""^ PB 14.M6lia6 3 1924 026 503 148 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026503148 MISCELLANY PRESENTED TO KUNO MEYER BY SOME OF HIS FRIENDS AND PUPILS ON THE OCCASION OF HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE CHAIR OF CELTIC PHIL0LOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN EDITED BY OSBOEN BERGIN and CARL MARSTRANDER HALLE A.S. MAX NIEMEYEB 1912 MISCELLANY PRESENTED TO KUNO MEYER BY SOME OF HIS FKIENDS AND PUPILS ON THE OCCASION OF HIS APPOINTMENT TO THE CHAIR OF CELTIC PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN EDITED BY OSBOKN BERGIN and CARL MARSTRANDER HALLE A. S. MAX NIEMEYEB 1912 Contents. Page Alfred A ns combe, Lucius Eex and Eleutherius Papa .... 1 George Henderson, Arthurian motifs in Gadhelic literature . 18 Christian Sarauw, Specimens of Gaelic as spoken in the Isle of Skye 34 Walter J. Purton, The dove of Mothar-I-Eoy 49 J. H. Lloyd, Prom the Book of Clanaboy 53 R. ThurneysenI, Das Futurum von altirisch agid 'er treibt' .... 61 E. Priehsch, „Grethke, war umb heffstu mi" etc., das „Bauer-Lied" Simon Dachs 65 E. An wyl, The verbal forms in the White Book text of the four branches of the Mabinogi 79 H. Gaidoz, Le mal d'amour d'Ailill Anguba et le nom de Laennec . 91 G. Dottin, Sur I'emploi de .i 102 E. Ernault, Les nouveaux signes orthographiques dans le breton du Mirouer Ill J. Glyn Davies, Two songs from an Anglesey MS 121 Ferdinand Sommer, Der keltische Dual 129 R. I. Best, The Lebar Brecc tractate on the canonical hours .... 142 E. C. Quiggin, A poem by Gilbride Maenamee in praise of Cathal O'Gonor 167 E. J. Gwynn, Beim Foris 178 Douglas Hyde, Seilg mhor SUiabh Luachra 185 Maud Joynt, The fate of Sinann 193 J. Lloyd- Jones, The development of the verbal r-forms 198 Julius Pokorny, Eine altirische Legende aus dem Buch von Leinster 207 J. Eraser, A use of the verbal noun in Irish 216 John Rhys, Three ancient inscriptions (from Wales) 227 Eleanor Knott, A poem by Giolla Brighde Heoghusa 241 IV CONTENTS. Pago J. G. O'Keeffe, A portrait 246 George Coffey, Amber beads found in Ireland 250 Thomas P. O'Now Ian, Imchlod aingel ... 253 Tadhg- O'Donoghue, Cert cech rig co reil 258 Alice Stopford Green, Henry VHI, "King of Ireland" 278 J. Vendryes, A propros des groupes initiaux dentale \- v .... 286 Alexander Bugge, Norse loan words in Irish 291 Tomas OMaille, Merugud cleirech Choluim ChLUe 307 W. P. Ker, On a lyric stave called in Irish ochtfoclach bee .... 327 John Sampson, The leaves that hung but never grew (a Welsh gypsy folk-tale) 333 Carl Marstrander, Varia (1. ir. allsmann, 2. n. pr. Suibne) . 342 0. J. Bergin, Poems attributed to Gormlaith 343 Carl Marstrander, Diin na Trapcharla 370 Carl Marstrander, Deux contes irlandais 371 List of Illustrations. Page Frontispiece : Portrait of Dr. Kuno Meyer. MS. Sloane 1021; Bl. 87''''. Autograph des Johannes Stobaeus ... 73 Ailill Anguha, Pachtna et Etain — en Asie-Minenre (d'apres un tableau d'Ingres) 92 A bilingual Inscription at Nevern, Pembrokeshire 228 Part of a Koman inscription at Nevern 231 Trehowel Stone with the Cross 236 Trehowel Stone, lower part 237 Bronze Age objects from Mountrivers 251 Fragment d'un vitrail allemand . 371 Plomb, trouve au Pont -au- Change . 421 Plomb, trouve au Pont St-Michei 421 Figure de saint Eloi dans I'eglise de Semur 421 Fresque de I'eglise de Stubbekobing 423 LUCIUS REX AND ELEUTHERIUS PAPA. The initial problem presented by the Lucius legend to the consideration of investigators of the sources of ecclesiastical history is not an historical one. It is essentially and funda- mentally chronographical. From the earliest medieval times ecclesiastical historians in a long and erudite succession have tried to synchronise the rulers who are referred to in the legend, and to date the British king with whom those rulers are alleged therein to have been in communication. But the historians have all failed — not, of course, through lack of scholarship, but because the problem, if regarded in no other way than that in which the historian conceives it, is and must remain, inscrutable. The emperors are named in one source only; the same pope does not appear in all the sources; and although the same year in the era of the Incarnation is set down in two of them, that year fits neither of the popes mentioned. It is true that, at one period, as I shall show, the correct name of the pope with whom Lucius is alleged to have corresponded did appear in the report; but that name, as we shall find, was neither Evaristus nor Eleuther, and we may well doubt whether it survived any- where until the time when the oldest extant MSS. of the ' Liber Pontificalis ' were written, i. e., until the close of the VII*'' century. It certainly did not so survive at Rome; nor yet in Anglian Britain. Consequently, as it was to the Welsh and Irish that the Angles were indebted for their knowledge of those facts in Celtic ecclesiastical history with which they concerned them- selves, we may assert that the true name was forgotten in Celtic Britain also. It is possible that the name may have been preserved in the memory of the Church of Treves after it had been lost sight MiBcellany Knno Meyer. j^ a ATjFEBD AN8C0MBE, of elsewhere, and in any case the archives of that Church pro- vide information ahout Lucius which is not discoverable in any other quarter. But the papal historiographers did not derive their knowledge of Lucius from that Church; because, in the first place, the information they provide is erroneous; in the second, the errors of which it is the vehicle are insular. Before the year 700 the efforts to solve the problem made by ecclesi- astical writers in both the great racial divisions of Britain, had resulted in a twofold misprision of the truth. At a later date the Celtic and Anglian views of the name of the pope were still divergent, but the two stories began to approximate through false chronology, and continued to do so until at length they coalesced. In the sequel they reacted together upon nearly all independent testimony, confusing and dislocating the little that might still have been preserved historically, until, eventually, the conglomerate of error that we know so well obliterated that testimony almost entirely, and usurped its place. Mommsen, when considering the more salient aspects of the legend (and he and Zimmer paid but little attention to any others) remarked, in the introduction to his edition of the 'Historia Brittonum' (p. 116): "deinde scriptor Eomanus si Bri- tannum secutus est, rationem habet, quod papae nomen mutauit, sine Eucharistum traditum accepit, qui nuUus fuit, siue Euaristum, quem tempora excludunt; at cur Eleutherium potissimum substi- tuerit causa nulla apparet, cum annus 167 ad Soterem duceret episcopum Eomae secundum receptam chronologiam a. 162 — 170." Mommsen's words — cur Eleutherium potissimum substituerit {scriptor Eomanus), have not yet met with any response, and I will now try to give a satisfactory answer to the question those words convey. II. It is not necessary to reproduce here the well-known testi- mony contained either in the 'Liber Pontificalis' Qib. XIIII); or in the 'Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Angiorum' (I. iv, V. xxiy) and the 'Chronica Maiora' (cap. 331) of the Venerable ' Bede; or in the Historia Brittonum ' (cap. xxii). That testimony, as we all know, is self-contradictory, and I propose to treat it comparatively, in the expectation of recovering thereby the sub- stance, if not the sum, of the original record. On comparison, LUCIUS EEX AND ELEUTHERIUS PAPA. 3 then, I judge the several contradictions between the three autho- rities to be mutually destructive of the credibility of the contro- verted evidence which is presented by each and all of them; and I regard these contradictions, when taken collectively, as indicative of the absence from the primary source of our knowledge of exact statements with respect to the points at issue — sc, the identity of the Emperors and the identity of the Pope. Those historians who maintain that the legend is fraudulent and incredible, will naturally ask what value can be attached to such opinions as these of mine — i. e., to opinions which deny the credibility of extant dependent evidence — which assert the inexactness of the statements made in the primary, independent, but non-existent source of our knowledge — and which maintain, nevertheless, that the legend is rooted in truth. But these are among the reasons why the legend must, as I have said already, be inscrutable to those who can only conceive its problems as the historian does. The conclusions I have arrived at, after comparison of the statements made in each authority, are these: I find that the original record, in addition to the notice of baptism, contained only the following items: I. An annuary datum. This was not preserved after the VII*'' century. n. The name of a ruler: sc. Lucius. in. That ruler's title: sc. Bex. IV. A territorial adjective: sc. Britannius. V. An anonymous reference to the contemporary Papa Bomanus. VI. An anonymous reference to the two (or more) contempo- rary Imperatores Bomanorum. It follows that the only exact statement in the original notice, besides the name of the king who sought and received baptism, and the name of the province he belonged to, was the number of the year in which some of the events recorded took place.