Auraicept na nÉces: A Diachronic Study

With an Edition from The Book of Uí Mhaine

Nicolai Egjar Engesland

A dissertation submitted for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor The 20th of October 2020

Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo

τῳ φωτί τῆς οἰκίας

Foreword First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Mikael Males at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo for his untiring support and crucial input to the project at all stages. His enthusiasm for the field is unmatched. Der var intet valg, kun fremad, ordren ville lyde: døden eller Grønlands vestkyst.

Secondly, I would like to thank Jan Erik Rekdal for having co-supervised the project and for having introduced me to the fascinating field of Irish philology and to Conamara.

I would like to thank Pádraic Moran for valuable help with the evaluation of my work this spring and for useful feedback also during the conference on the dating of Old Norse and Celtic texts here in Oslo and on my visit to the National University of Ireland Galway last autumn. A number of improvements to the text and to the argumentation are due to his criticism. The community at NUI Galway has been very welcoming and I would like to show my gratitude to Michael Clarke and Clodagh Downey for accommodating us during our trip. Clarke also provided me with profitable feedback during the initial part of my work and has been a steady source of inspiration at conferences and workshops both in Ireland and in Norway.

My colleagues and fellow Ph.D.-students on the Old Norse and Celtic 3rd floor of Henrik Wergeland’s House at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo have been very helpful and have provided good feedback when I have presented my work during our weekly Wednesday lunches. Karl Gunnar Johansson provided me with valuable advice on palaeographic studies. Klaus Johan Myrvoll at the University of Stavanger was a very welcome source of inspiration when he occupied a desk in our Ph.D.-office during the spring term of 2019, to which he also attracted Harald Bjorvand for discussions on Germanic philology.

I am very grateful to Michael Benskin for having introduced me to the world of the Anglo-Saxons and for assisting me with the application for this project.

I would like to thank Ciaran Arthur at NUI Galway for comments on an article draft that greatly helped me to clarify an argument that will be published in the Journal of Medieval History next year. Also Daniel Watson at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and Deborah Hayden at NUI Maynooth for allowing me to read their unpublished Ph.D.-theses and for useful feedback when I have presented my work. Scholars who shared information and advice on various conferences include Jacopo Bisagni at NUI Galway; Liam Breatnach at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; Haraldur Bernharðsson at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík; Stefan Schumacher at the University of Vienna and David Stifter at NUI Maynooth.

I would like to thank the staff at the Royal Irish Academy and especially Antoinette Prout, for allowing me to consult their MS A ii 4 (A) during the conference on the Book of Ballycummin, on March 8th, 2019, and also the staff at the Manuscript Department of the Library of Trinity College Dublin, especially Sharon Sutton, for their aid in furnishing me with photocopies of the relevant section of Dublin, Trinity College MSS 1289, 1317 and 1363. The images in Appendix 3 have been provided with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy and The Board of Trinity College Dublin, as well as Irish Script on Screen (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), for which I am very grateful. On this note, I would also like to thank Anne Marie O’Brien at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The staff at the University of Oslo Library has also been very helpful in providing me with books, for the most part from Carl Marstrander’s collection hidden away in their magazine.

I would like to thank the Research Council of Norway for having financed the project.

Special thanks are due to Jacob Ahlqvist, who donated a large part of his late father Anders Ahlqvist’s excellent library to the Old Norse and Celtic milieu at the University of Oslo. This library provided me with access to a number of important books that have greatly improved the quality of the present work.

Javnstøladn, Øystre Slidre

the 14th of October, 2020 Table of Contents

Foreword ...... 5

Table of Contents ...... 7

Introduction ...... 13

1.1. History of Research ...... 13

Early modern reception of Auraicept na nÉces ...... 13

Calder and the editio princeps ...... 17

Rudolf Thurneysen ...... 18

Minor contributions ...... 19

A. G. van Hamel ...... 20

The Early Irish Linguist: Anders Ahlqvist ...... 20

Later studies ...... 23

Summary of the history of research on Auraicept na nÉces ...... 25

1.2. ‘Auraicept na nÉces’: A Diachronic Study ...... 29

An outline of the structure of the argument ...... 34

1.3. Summary of Chapter ...... 37

The Manuscript Record ...... 40

2.1. The Main Manuscript Witnesses ...... 40

2.2. The Fragmentary Manuscript Copies ...... 42

2.3. Description of the Manuscripts ...... 43

D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 ...... 44

M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 ...... 44

B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 ...... 46

E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72.1.1...... 46

L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2...... 46

A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738) ...... 47

Eg: London, British Library Egerton MS 88 ...... 47

G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 ...... 48 P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53 ...... 48

T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 ...... 48

Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 ...... 49

TCD MS 1289: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.) ...... 49

2.4. Excerpts from Auraicept na nÉces ...... 50

The Lecan Glossary ...... 50

Corpus Iuris Hibernici ...... 51

In Lebor Ollaman : a commentary on Auraicept na nÉces ...... 51

2.5. General Remarks on the Manuscripts ...... 52

2.6. Hyparchetypes ...... 54

BEL (γ) ...... 54

AEgGPY (δ)...... 57

2.7. Stemma codicum ...... 59

3. The Linguistic Dating of Auraicept na nÉces ...... 66

3.1 The Nominal System ...... 68

The article ...... 68

The neuter gender ...... 68

The superlative ...... 70

The pronominal system ...... 70

Varia ...... 72

3.2 The Verbal System ...... 72

Preterite and perfect in narrative sections ...... 73

3.3 Phonology: Hiatus ...... 73

3.4 The Criteria Supporting a Late 7th- or an Early 8th-Century Date ...... 74

A hapax legomenon: conaib ...... 74

The neuter gender of the terminological unit fid ‘letter’, ‘vowel’ ...... 74

The paradigms ...... 75

3.5 Early Old Irish Phonological Features and Old Irish Mergers ...... 77 Preservation of unstressed /ŏ/ ...... 79

/e:/ > /ia/ and /o:/ > /ua/ ...... 80

/e/ for /a/ in frise- (frisa-) ...... 81

/mb/ > /m(m)/, /nd/ > /n(n)/ ...... 81

-o# > -a# ...... 82

Distribution of -g# and -ch# ...... 82

-th# for later -d# ...... 82

The diphthong /au/ ...... 82

Syntactical archaisms ...... 83

3.6 Conclusions on the Linguistic Evidence ...... 83

4. The Authorship of Auraicept na nÉces ...... 85

5. The Structure of Auraicept na nÉces ...... 91

5.1. The Prologue to Auraicept na nÉces ...... 94

Conclusions on the Prologue ...... 98

5.2. Commentary ...... 99

General considerations on the relationship between text and commentary ...... 100

The commentary on § 1,1 ...... 101

The commentary on §§ 2,1–2,10 ...... 103

Summary on §§ 2,1–2,10 ...... 112

The commentary on §§ 3,1–3,11 ...... 113

The commentary on §§ 4,1–4,9 ...... 114

The commentary on § 5 ...... 115

The commentary on §§ 6,1–6,2 ...... 115

The commentary on §§ 7,1–7,2 ...... 118

The commentary on § 8 ...... 118

5.3. The Paradigms ...... 119

Excursus: categories of analysis in B 1893–1925 ...... 123

6. Fontes et testimonia ...... 125 6.1. Hiberno-Latin Grammatical Literature ...... 125

6.2. The Irish Tradition ...... 130

Sanas Cormaic ...... 130

The Leinster poems ...... 131

Genesis as background to the Irish pseudo-history ...... 136

The first paragraph of The Early Irish Linguist (Ahlqvist’s § 1,1) ...... 141

Auraicept na nÉces and Lebor Gabála Érenn ...... 144

Summary on the Irish tradition ...... 148

7. §§ 1,2–1,17 of Anders Ahlqvist’s Edition ...... 151

7.1. The Building Blocks of the Tower of Babel ...... 161

8. Excursus: Early Insular Manuscript Culture and the Continent ...... 165

8.1. Insular Influence on Continental Monasteries and Scriptoria ...... 172

8.2. Reducing the Vernacular to Writing: Germanic Comparanda ...... 180

8.3. Notes on the Ogam Alphabet ...... 182

9. The Alphabet Tables in Auraicept na nÉces ...... 186

9.1. The Sources of Auraicept na nÉces: New Parameters ...... 186

The Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabet tables as a tertium comparationis ...... 188

9.2. The Transmission of the Hebrew and Greek Alphabets ...... 191

9.3. Carolingian Alphabet Tables ...... 193

Hrabanus Maurus, Fulda and De inventione litterarum ...... 194

9.4. The Alphabet Tables and the Grouping of the Manuscripts ...... 198

The Hebrew letter names in Auraicept na nÉces ...... 202

The Greek letter names in Auraicept na nÉces ...... 208

The shapes of the Greek letters...... 215

The numerical values of the Greek letters ...... 216

βαυ ἐπίσημον ...... 219

9.5. An Insular Error in Paris MS 5239 and in Auraicept na nÉces ...... 219

9.6. The Interpretations of the Hebrew Letters...... 221 Virgilius Maro Grammaticus ...... 224

9.7. Xenography in Codex Bernensis 207 and the Book of Ballymote ...... 225

9.8. Summary of Chapter ...... 225

10. Conclusions ...... 227

Bibliographical References and Abbreviations ...... 231

Manuscripts ...... 231

Facsimiles ...... 232

Editions and Translations ...... 232

Secondary Literature ...... 239

Appendix 1: Transcripts of the Passage B 1034–57 from all Manuscripts ...... 257

B 1034–57 ...... 257

L fol. 157rb19–vb1 ...... 257

E fol. 23rb32–47 ...... 258

Y col. 532, ll. 7–28 ...... 258

G p. 197a23–b3 ...... 259

P pp. 105–106, l. 9 ...... 259

A fol. 56v ...... 260

M fol. 141va29–b1 ...... 260

D p. 12°17–53 ...... 261

T p. 189, ll. 6–23 ...... 261

Appendix 2: An Edition of Auraicept na nÉces from the Book of Uí Mhaine (M) ...... 263

Appendix 3: Plates ...... 306

1. D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 (E 3.3), 12r ...... 306

2. M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 (D ii 1), fol. 141vb ...... 307

3. B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 (536), fol. 175vb ...... 308

4. E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72. 1. 1. (Gaelic I), fol. 23v ... 309

5. L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (535), fol. 158v ...... 310

6. A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738), fol. 57rv ...... 311 7. G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (H 2. 15b), 198b–199a...... 313

8. P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53, pp. 113–114 ...... 315

9. T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 (H 4. 22), p. 190 ...... 317

10. Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 (H 2. 16), cols. 434–435 ...... 318

11. Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.), p. 560 ...... 319

12. Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337/1, vol. 3, p. 35 ...... 320 Introduction Auraicept na nÉces (‘The Scholars’ Primer’) is the earliest conserved attempt at a grammatical description of the Irish language.1 The text has been preserved in late medieval manuscripts from the last decade of the 14th century onwards as a composite product with roots in the Old Irish period (c. 700–900) and a largely Middle Irish transmission.

1.1. History of Research Early modern reception of Auraicept na nÉces The earliest critical use of Auraic. na nÉces as an historical source was made by Geoffrey Keating (Seathrún Céitinn; c. 1569–1644) in his major work Foras Feasa ar Éirinn ‘The History of Ireland’, completed by 1634–35 (ed. Comyn and Dinneen 1902–14), in which he contrasts the teaching of our text with the opinions he found in other sources. Although the references to Auraic. na nÉces and its author Cenn Fáelad are numerous in Keating’s work, we do not find any quotations sensu stricto from the older strata of the text, and just a few citations of poetry from the younger additions. These could also have reached Keating from Lebor Gabála Érenn ‘The Book of the Taking of Ireland’ (ed. Macalister 1932–42). The sources used by Keating (see Cunningham 2000: 105– 41) are in many cases the same as those which were utilized by the Franciscan brother Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, affiliated with the college of St Anthony (established in 1607), Louvain, and the three laymen Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh, Fearfeasa Ó Maol Chonaire and Peregrinus Ó Duibhgeannain, who were working on their Annála Ríoghachta Éireann / Annála na gCeithre Máistrí contemporaneously (between 1632 and 1636).2

1 The title has been translated in various ways, e.g. ‘The Scholars’ Primer’ (Calder), ‘Studenternes elementærbok’ (Marstrander, translating ... na nÉicsíne), ‘Leerboek der Dichters’ (van Hamel), ‘Fibel der Gelehrten’ (Poppe), ‘Manuel élémentaire des poètes’ (Ahlqvist), ‘manuel de formation des (futurs) savants’ (Lambert). Older attempts are: ‘Praecepta poetarum’ (Ó Flaithbheartaigh), ‘A book for the Education of Youth’ (O’Brien), ‘Rudiments of Education’ (Shaw) and ‘An Accidence or Primmer’ (Lhuyd). See Ahlqvist 2013: 221–36 on the term auraicept/airaiccecht ‘primer’. I will avoid the use of the abbreviation ‘Auraic.’, as eDIL uses this to refer to any text in Calder’s edition (which has continuous line-numbering). The full title is used throughout to avoid confusion. References to other texts contained in Calder’s book have the format ‘Calder (1917: ...)’ with page numbers, following the practice suggested in Breatnach 2017: 12n38. 2 It is interesting to note that Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, then circulating in manuscript, was referred to by Tuileagna Ó Maol Chonaire in his criticism of the Four Masters, which was to delay the date of the publication of their work due to the influence of Tuileagna within the Irish Franciscan community. 13

The copy of Auraic. na nÉces in Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53 has been attributed to Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh (NLI Fasc. II; but cf. P. A. Breatnach 2013). This is a testimony to the intense activity in the fields of historiography and genealogy in 17th-century Ireland and, as this copy of Auraic. na nÉces has text-critical value, also evidence that witnesses to our text that have been lost in relatively recent times were available to the early modern scholars and antiquarians.

Among the earliest learned works in another language than Irish to mention our text is Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh’s Ogygia, seu, rerum Hibernicarum chronologia (1685). The copy of Auraic. na nÉces that was in Ó Flaithbheartaigh’s ownership was passed on to the Royal Irish Academy from the Stowe Library and seems, judging from the content of the manuscript mentioned in the catalogue of the Stowe manuscripts by Charles O’Conor (1818: 189), to have been Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4.3 Ó Flaithbheartaigh was in contact with scholars such as Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, Daibhidh Ó Duibhghennáin and Edward Lhuyd. The first of these, Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (fl. 1643–71) was among the latest traditionally trained scribes and his library 1 once contained a great portion (c. /3) of the manuscripts that provided Daniel A. Binchy with the text for the law tracts of his Corpus Iuris Hibernici (1978; see below). Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh had obtained these manuscripts from the law school of the learned family of Mac Aodhagáin (according to Ó Muraíle as reported in Cunningham 2010: 255). Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh was, together with his grandfather Dubhaltach Mór Mac Fhirbhisigh, responsible for the copy of Auraic. na nÉces in the paper manuscript Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (G).4 In addition to this, he collaborated with the Irish historian Sir James Ware (1594–1666), for whom he prepared translations of Irish works in English. The revised and greatly expanded edition of Sir James Ware’s The Antiquities and History of Ireland (1705) by William Harris (see Ware 1745: 23) is the first work in English known to me to deal with Auraic. na nÉces. It is relatively dependent on the work of Ó Flaithbheartaigh.5 The works of Ó Flaithbheartaigh and Ware were published earlier than the latest preserved manuscript witness, which was copied in Dublin by Tadhg Ó Neachtain in the second quarter of the 1700s and signed in 1732. The faint

3 O’Conor’s reference is somewhat imprecise. 4 This is possibly an apograph. See the stemma codicum. 5 A catalogue of the Book of Uí Mhaine was made while it was in the possession of Sir James Ware. Several folios have been lost since that time. 14 beginnings of the modern reception of Auraic. na nÉces thus roughly coincide with the end of the manuscript tradition.

Auraic. na nÉces offered ample material for the linguistic speculations of the eighteenth century and had been rendered available to a learned audience with limited command of Irish through the works mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Thus, for instance, Charles Vallancey (1731–1812), a British military surveyor who established himself as an authority on Irish antiquities and sometime owner of the Great Book of Lecan before it was passed on to the Royal Irish Academy, used the text as a source for his grammar of the ‘Iberno-Celtic or Irish language’, although he depended on Ó Flaithbheartaigh for the understanding of the manuscript source that was in his keeping. Vallancey was further aware of a copy of Auraic. na nÉces kept in the library of Trinity College Dublin. In Dissertations on the History of Ireland (1766), Charles O’Conor (1710–91), the grandfather of the chaplain and librarian with the same name mentioned in the previous paragraph, remarks that the Irish language was one of the ‘most copious’ languages of the world, a notion which is ultimately drawn from our text, although the author does not cite the source for this statement. The various eighteenth-century theories of the linguistic affiliation of Irish to other languages, such as Hebrew and Punic, are no less fanciful than the medieval theories based on the narration of the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of tongues that have abundant reflexes in the Irish tradition and, perhaps most of all, in Auraic. na nÉces.6

The introduction of a rigid methodology in the editing of ancient texts with the seminal works of Karl Lachmann, Jacob Bernays and others (see e.g. Lanza and Ugolini 2016: 139–55) in the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the rise of a scientific method in comparative and especially Indo-European linguistics, notably in the Leipziger Schule with figures such as Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) and August Leskien (1840–1916), brought new premises for the study of the literary heritage of medieval and early modern Ireland (see McCone 1996: 40–41).7 John O’Donovan (Seán Ó Donnabháin; 1806–

6 This also goes for the speculations on the various writing systems, such as Edward Davies’ Celtic Researches from 1804, which gives an account of e.g. the ‘druidical letters’. Davies was indepted to Ó Flaithbheartaigh, like many of his contemporaries and predecessors, and his magnum opus was justly characterized by John O’Donovan as a ‘singular specimen of ingenious triffling’ (O’Donovan 1845: xxxi). 7 McCone is perhaps guilty of putting overt emphasis on the importance of Thurneysen in the following statement (1994: § 1.3.): ‘D’éirigh le Johann Caspar Zeuss gramadach na Sean-Ghaeilge a dhéanamh amach 15

1861) mentions Auraic. na nÉces in his seminal grammar of the Irish language, as part of an overview of earlier studies in the field of Irish grammar. He was aware of three of the manuscript witnesses of Auraic. na nÉces that have reached us (O’Donovan 1845: xxviii– xxxiii, lv).8 His contemporary Eugene O’Curry (Eoghan Ó Comhraidhe; 1794–1862) dealt with Auraic. na nÉces to some extent in his lectures from the 1850s. These lectures were edited posthumously as On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, published in three volumes in the period 1873–83. O’Curry’s contribution to the study of Auraic. na nÉces was modest, but his work represents a clear departure from the methodology of the works named so far, frequently guilty of describing the obscurum per obscurius, and this enabled him to make some valuable observations on the early history of the text that will be discussed in the present thesis. His is also not a mere reproduction of the traditions contained within the text itself, but rather he sought to relate it to other texts in the preserved corpus and he may have been the first to do so.

To the nineteenth century, the still unedited Auraic. na nÉces, being a medieval treatise on grammar, orthography, and poetics, appeared to be a rich source of information about the linguistic structure of the Irish language, and O’Curry remarked that:

Indeed I believe I would not be in error if I should say that there are not three Irish Grammar writers, or rather compilers, now living, who ever read it, or even heard of it; nor is there now, perhaps, any one man living who could individually make it accessible to the student by reducing it to proper order, though there are scholars capable of accomplishing the task conjointly; and yet until this is done, and Cormac’s and other Glossaries published, it is, I think, premature to talk of a complete grammar of the Irish language (O’Curry 1873: 54).

A response to the lack of an edition of Auraic. na nÉces, on the other hand, appeared roughly half a century after O’Curry’s death in 1862 and after the publication of the seminal grammatical works of Johann Kaspar Zeuß (1806–56), Holger Pedersen (1867– 1953), and Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940), as well as the prolific editorial activity of Whitley Stokes (1830–1909), Ernst Windisch (1844–1918), Kuno Meyer (1958–1919) and the other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pioneers in the study of the

go réasúnta iomlán le cuidiú na ngluaiseanna thar aon rud eile ina Grammatica Celtica (1853) agus chuir Rudolf Thurneysen an obair seo i gcrích, a bheag nó a mhór, ina Handbuch des Altirischen (1909) [...]’. 8 The reader is referred to the overview provided by O’Donovan, being of great interest for the early studies of the Ogam alphabet and hence of some interest to the reception of our text. 16 medieval Irish literary record and the language in which it had been cultivated. A more or less complete grammar of the Old Irish language was achieved through entirely different means than those envisaged by O’Curry, namely through the extensive analysis of glossed contemporary documents kept on the Continent, rather than on meta- linguistic discourse in grammatical literature. Auraic. na nÉces has not proven to be the rich source of linguistic information that O’Curry thought it to be, although it does preserve a few pieces of information that would otherwise have been lost (see the discussion of the date of the text at p. 74 and p. 291n532). It has also been of great importance to the study of medieval linguistic thought. The state of Old and Middle Irish lexicography was still not satisfactory in the early decades of the twentieth century (see the discussion in McCone 1996: 39) and the Dictionary of the Irish Language (DIL), then edited by Carl Marstrander, was still in its infancy.

Calder and the editio princeps The first edition and translation of Auraicept na nÉces (‘The Scholars’ Primer’) was published in 1917 by George Calder and to a great extent fulfilled the challenge posed by O’Curry. It is fair to say that Calder’s edition marks the beginning of the systematic study of this important witness to early Irish linguistic thought. Calder was the first to identify the indebtedness to the Latin grammatical canon and a number of the sources that has been used, notably Isidore’s Etymologiae. His notion of heavy Virgilian influence on Auraic. na nÉces is discussed in Chapter 6.

Calder’s edition, based mainly on the copies in the Book of Ballymote (B) and the composite manuscript the Yellow Book of Lecan (Y), with an appended dictionary, rendered the full text of two recensions of Auraic. na nÉces available to non-Irish speakers as well as to twentieth-century scholarship. Calder provided a harmony between the two recensions, which facilitates their comparison, but did not deal with text-critical matters at any length in his introduction, and so many aspects of the transmission were left unresolved. The editorial procedure is not described in detail in the introduction, but the editions are obviously semi-diplomatic transcripts equipped with limited critical apparatus for each recension.9 Some minor additions, indicated with

9 For the short family Calder gives a transcription of Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12, fols. 170va–180ra (B), with variants from Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72.1.1, fols. 20rb14–25v (E) and Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 fols. 151ra–161vb27 (L), while the long family is represented by Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 cols. 504.23–549.13 (Y) with variants from London, 17 brackets, have been made to each transcript. In addition to the two recensions of Auraic. na nÉces, he prints the so-called Treḟocal Tract from Dublin, Trinity College MS 1339 (the Book of Leinster; p. 37a–38a), the De Duilib Feda with the copy in the Book of Ballymote as the base text (166rb10–32), and the tract on the Ogam alphabet that follows it and precedes Auraic. na nÉces in the same manuscript (fols. 167vb–170v).10 The transcripts are for the most part reliable, but by comparing the two it becomes clear that Calder did not make a serious attempt at establishing a sound text as the basis for his translation, and thus did not ‘reduce it to its proper order’ in O’Donovan’s words. His edition was criticized on this account by Rudolf Thurneysen some ten years after its publication (1928: 280; see below). The ‘short version’ of the text is still relatively well- served by the edition due to the inclusion of many significant variants in the apparatus criticus. The same cannot be said of the ‘long version’. Calder himself mentions in the preface to the edition (1917) that he chose to publish his text despite the shortcomings of the introduction, because the appearance of Auraic. na nÉces in print was ‘long overdue’. Calder’s edition has until now been the only edition and translation of the text with commentary.

Rudolf Thurneysen In the roughly hundred years that have passed since Calder’s pioneering edition put the study of Auraic. na nÉces on firm ground, our understanding of the text has progressed in uneven paces. The first serious study of the text after the appearance of the editio princeps was an article by Rudolf Thurneysen. This was published in the seventeenth issue of Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (ZCP) and appeared roughly one decade after the publication of Calder’s edition (Thurneysen 1928: 277–303). Thurneysen’s characteristically miscellaneous article made a few important contributions to the study of Auraic. na nÉces, the most important of which is the attempt at establishing a date for

British Library Egerton 88 63ra26–76rb15 (Eg). The transcriptions are relatively reliable, but they contain a number of errors (especially in the resolution of abbreviations and of numerals) and are not diplomatic. The translation (provided only for B) is a valuable aid, but is likewise often problematic. See the following chapter on the manuscript record for abbreviations and further notes on the manuscripts. 10 Some of the texts printed by Calder were associated with Auraic. na nÉces already by the scribes of our manuscripts (i.e. in the late 14th century), as evidenced for instance by the colophon by Solamh Ó Droma in B (Finit amen finit solam͘ o droma nomine scripsit B fol. 180ra17), which is located after the Treḟocal and hence is indicative of the close relation of these two texts in contemporary reception. 18 the split in the transmission and thus a terminus ante quem for the archetype (1928: 285).11 Thurneysen’s article supported Calder’s division of the tradition into two branches and helpfully suggested that the second and longer redaction must have been completed in outline before the end of the 11th century (op. cit.: 283). Thurneysen remarks that: ‘Manche Fehler sind beiden Fassungen gemeinsam, also älter als die Spaltung der Überlieferung’ (op. cit.: 281). This is evidence for a common archetype.12 Thurneysen dates the split in transmission to before the end of the 11th century (op. cit.: 285) and that date has been generally accepted (van Hamel: 1946; Ahlqvist 1983: 32). This hypothesis, however, has in general not informed the discussion of the dating of Auraic. na nÉces. The consequences of the hypothesis have therefore had little influence on scholarly response to the text. Thurneysen also noted the fact that Calder’s edition presents us with a number of smaller items—‘12 Texte oder Text-Konglomerate’ (op. cit.: 281–300)— gathered into a larger whole. This division is useful for navigating the edition, which should not, however, be confused with the actual manuscript record to which it bears imperfect witness. It must be noted that Thurneysen’s contribution to the textual history of Auraic. na nÉces was restricted to the material offered by the two transcriptions in Calder’s edition. His analysis is sometimes inadequate, consider e.g. ‘Fassung II läſst oft den zusammenhängenden alten Text weg, hat aber allerlei Erweiterungen und Strofenzitate im Kommentar’ (Thurneysen 1928: 281).13 This is imprecise: the second (‘long’) recension shares the older text with the first (‘short’) recension, the only difference being that it is frequently interspersed with additional glosses and commentary–‘to leave out’ is hardly a relevant description of this procedure, which is of obvious importance for the history of transmission.

Minor contributions Auraic. na nÉces was dismissed as being largely useless by Osborn Bergin when he presented his Sir John Rhŷs memorial lecture to the British Academy (1938: 205–35). This negative attitude towards the pre-Bardic grammatical accomplishments, combined

11 This could be seen merely as a clarification of Calder’s remarks (1917: xxxi). Calder states that ‘[...] Hence Auraicept was not completed before the middle of the tenth century, perhaps not till towards the end of the eleventh [...]’, which is an inept way to invoke the idea of a split in the transmission. 12 Thurneysen does not present a list of such errors, although some are discussed in the article. Several others will be presented in the course of the present argument. 13 Thurneysen’s ‘Fassung II’ is the text of Eg and Y. Following Ahlqvist’s edition this now includes AEgGPY. ‘Fassung I’ is the text of BEL. 19 with the authority Bergin held within the field, may have contributed to the relatively limited scholarly interest in the Auraic. na nÉces (see also Bergin 1970). Howard Meroney’s brief article “Fénius and Gáedel in the Lebar Cindfáelad” published in Modern Philology (1945: 18–24) provided some insights of relevance to the further study of the text and to some degree to Irish editorial practice in general.

A. G. van Hamel Next came A. G. van Hamel’s article “Primitieve Ierse taalstudie”, published by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946 (pp. 295–339). This is a relatively comprehensive survey of the linguistic teaching of Auraic. na nÉces that provides an outline which is still useful as an introduction to the text and has no real equivalent in English.

The Early Irish Linguist: Anders Ahlqvist After the appearance of van Hamel’s study, no substantial work that has come to my attention was done on the Auraic. na nÉces until the appearance of the edition and translation of the core text by Anders Ahlqvist, published as The Early Irish Linguist: An Edition of the Canonical Part of the ‘Auraicept na nÉces’ (1983). Ahlqvist’s work profited from various editions and publications from that intervening period, such as R. A. S. Macalister’s Lebor Gabála Érenn (LG), in five volumes (1932–56), and Binchy’s Corpus Iuris Hibernici (CIH), the monumental diplomatic edition of the bulk of the Irish law corpus published in six volumes in 1978.14 The 1983 edition of the Auraic. na nÉces represented a significant advance in the study of the text and accordingly spurred further interest in the material.15 The edition was anticipated and followed up by articles by the editor himself (1972: 269–74; 1975: 162–67; 1979: 64–66; 1980: 202–11; 1983b; 1985: 246–57; 1986: 54–71; 1989: 1–6; 1992: 107–14; 2000: 81–90; 2013: 221–36), the latest

14 Brian Ó Cuív’s 1969 University College Dublin statutory lecture “The Linguistic Training of the Mediaeval Irish Poet”, published in the tenth issue of Celtica (1973: 114–140) was chiefly concerned with the Bardic tradition and passes quickly over the earlier tradition of vernacular grammatical analysis and poetics. Thomas F. O’Rahilly’s discussion of the ‘five kinds of Irish’ in Early Irish History and Mythology (1946: 85–91) might also be mentioned. 15 Ahlqvist’s edition was reviewed by Pierre-Yves Lambert (1985: 381–82) and Harry Roe (1988: 337–39). Especially the latter review is of great interest and should be consulted along with Ahlqvist’s own corrections (1989: 1–6). 20 published in 2016 (Ahlqvist 2016: 101–111). Ahlqvist’s importance to the study of the text is furthermore seen in the aid he provided to younger scholars in the field.16

Despite the fact that it was intended as an interim edition and as an impetus towards further editorial work, Ahlqvist’s edition has become the standard reference point for all subsequent research on Auraic. na nÉces. It provides a more extensive evaluation of the manuscript witnesses than the first edition did, and among these it includes a few copies which were unknown to Calder. According to its reviewer Harry Roe, Ahlqvist’s edition provides a ‘reliable and solid basis for further scholarship’ (1987–88: 339). Roe still invites to caution with regard to some of the basic assumptions of the editor and provides a few improvements on the text and translation, some of which will be adopted when quoting from the edition in the present thesis. Some minor corrections to the edition were published in Ahlqvist’s article “Latin Grammar and Native Learning” (1989: 1–6) and should be consulted.

Acknowledging the indisputable merits of Ahlqvist’s edition, his study of the manuscript tradition, as presented in the introduction, has significant shortcomings and some corrections will be presented below. The editorial policy used to establish the so-called ‘canonical text’ of Auraic. na nÉces, which Ahlqvist dates to c. 700 or a ‘fairly early stage of the Old Irish period’, is described in the introduction to the edition (Ahlqvist 1983: 34–35; 36). It might be noted here that Ahlqvist’s edition of that canonical text is not dependent on his hypotheses on the relationship between the manuscripts.17

Some of the manuscripts distinguish a ‘core text’ graphically from the accompanying commentary by employing a hierarchy of script. The basic premise of Ahlqvist’s edition is one that has also informed the editing of the early medieval Irish corpus of law texts, namely that gathering together the lemmata and pericopes yields a text corresponding

16 An obituary by Paul Russell (2019: 198–200) records some of Ahlqvist’s merits in the field of Celtic studies, as does that by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh (2019: 308–10). 17 The editorial policy was stated in somewhat clearer terms in a paper presented by Ahlqvist at the First Australian Conference of Celtic Studies at The University of Sydney in July 1992. This paper has been published in the proceedings from that conference (see Ahlqvist 2000). In this paper, Ahlqvist equals ‘canonical text’ with ‘original text’: ‘What I have done, on the other hand, is to edit only that part of the text which I consider, for various reasons (palaeographic, linguistic, etc.) to be the original or canonical text, but I have tried to edit it from the much larger number of manuscripts that are now known to us’ (Ahlqvist 2000: 82). 21 more or less to the original composition.18 The limitations of this method have been pointed out at several occasions (Meroney 1945: 18–19; McLaughlin 2009: 2; Hayden 2010: 91–92) and is also alluded to in the introduction to CIH (ed. Binchy 1978). A criticism of the method was published already in ZCP XVII by Charles Plummer in an article “On the Fragmentary State of the Text of the Brehon Laws” (Plummer 1928: 157– 166), which is especially concerned with the lack of continuity in the texts that result from juxtaposing the transmitted lemmata (see especially p. 160).19

Ahlqvist chose B as his main text, delimiting the core text by the application of the criteria of hierarchic script, and emended this with the aid of several manuscripts that were unknown to Calder. A serious objection to the application of this method is the fact that the diagnostic criterion, viz. a hierarchy of script size used to demarcate pericopes from commentary, does not have support in all branches of the transmission and is not consistent even within the branches. It is also occasionally at odds with other evidence, such as lack of agreement between the various recensions.20 It is significant that the method that has been applied by the editor is a departure from the principles of textual criticism, which are intended to minimize interpretation while establishing the transmitted text, and that it as the predictable result of this becomes subordinate to medieval reception and presentation of the text. The mode of visual presentation is in itself of great interest when we try to retrace the development of the text through its manuscript transmission, as many features of the text as we have it in the individual manuscript witnesses are difficult to explain unless we allow for the possibility that the text has also been transmitted in a format clearly distinguishing a main text from surrounding gloss and commentary (cf. Russell 2014: 68–69). Nonetheless, the comparison between the various manuscript copies shows that attributing the distinction in script size to the archetype (α) is somewhat problematic. This is true also for the reconstruction of the text of the original (Ω) based on the evidence provided by this criterion, which is the tacit purpose of Ahlqvist’s edition. Some of its content is

18 For a discussion on the mechanisms involved in the preservation of canonical law texts surrounded by commentary, the reader is referred to Fergus Kelly’s article “Texts and transmission: the law-texts” (2002) as well as his A Guide to Early Irish Law (1988: 225ff.). 19 Plummer’s solution to the issue, invoking ‘the fragmentary deposit of the oral teaching in the Irish Law Schools’ (1928: 162), might be disregarded for present purposes. 20 Note e.g. that no statement of Amairgen’s is treated as canonical in B. In Y several of them are. 22 recoverable on the basis of other considerations, however, such as the interplay between various strata (when attributable to the archetype) and quotations in the commentary.

Ahlqvist is consistent in the application of his method. This stringency makes his edition valuable as a point of departure, but the validity of the method itself remains doubtful and will be addressed at various points in the present thesis. Furthermore, one of Ahlqvist’s conjectures is consequential enough to deserve mention here, namely the replacement of §§ 1,2–1,17 against the evidence of all manuscripts (Ahlqvist 1983: 33– 34, 47–48). The result is a textual sequence that has probably never existed before the appearance of this edition, and one which has considerable consequences for the analysis of the text. I will return to this passage since it is important to the present argument by virtue of its content.

Later studies The article “Les premières grammaires celtiques” by Pierre-Yves Lambert (1987: 13–45) provides an overview over the various Celtic grammatical traditions and touches upon Auraic. na nÉces:21

Très tôt, les irlandais ont tenté d’appliquer à leur propre langue la problématique des grammairiens hiberno-latins. Si l’on en croit l’introduction de l’Auraicept, il s’agissait de reconnaître la noblesse de la langue gaélique : motivation, donc, patriote. Il y a aussi la rivalité de deux cultures : si la culture latine est bien l’apanage des clercs, la culture indigène, sitôt admise dans l’écriture, a nécessité elle aussi une préparation à la lecture, un apprentissage de la langue écrite (Lambert 1987: 17).

Auraic. na nÉces, according to the views Lambert expresses in this article, filled a ‘gap’ that might have been felt in the literary scenery in the period, viz. an introduction to the vernacular language.22 The lack of practical scope—‘il est sûr en tout cas que l’Auraicept ne pouvait être d’aucune utilité pratique’ (op. cit.: 20)–leads Lambert to suggest that the text has been written in order to create ‘une Grammaire pour l’irlandais’ (ibid.). This is

21 See also Lambert’s 2003 article “Les Differentiae dans la littérature irlandaise ancienne”. 22 The expressions ‘vernacular language’ and ‘vernacular alphabet’ are admittedly not quite satisfactory, as both terms might convey the wrong connotations; ‘vernacular’ in the context of this treatise simply means ‘that which is not Latin’ (i.e. used irrespective of high vs. low register and certainly not used in a derogatory fashion), while ‘alphabet’ is used of all systems of writing based on the alphabetic principle, viz. the principle that there is a one-to-one correspondence, though in reality this is a rare achievement, between grapheme and phoneme. 23 an important point, as Auraic. na nÉces is mentioned in a Middle Irish text edited as Mittelirische Verslehren II (ed. Thurneysen 1891: 1–182) as part of a curriculum for the poets. Auraic. na nÉces has hence been seen as a propaedeutic text for use in poetical schools in the secondary literature, which is in obvious contrast with Lambert’s view.

Diego Poli has published a series of articles that discuss various topics which are dealt with in the text, notably “La metafora di Babele e le partitiones nella teoria grammaticale irlandese dell’Auraicept na n-Éces” (1986–89: 179–97). The first significant contributions after the new edition entered the stage, however, were made by Erich Poppe (1995–97: 195–203; 1996: 55–74; 1999: 191–201; 2002: 296–312).23 The most important of these for present purposes is the 2002 article “Latin Quotations in Auraicept na nÉces: Microtexts and their Transmission”, which analyses the Latin citations in the text of B and clearly demonstrates the dependency of our text on the Hiberno-Latin Donatan commentary tradition. Erich Poppe characterizes Auraic. na nÉces as ‘the vernacular branch of the so-called Hiberno-Latin exegetical grammars’ (1996: 191). Although it contains material derived from several Latin sources, it is not a translation of any specific grammatical work written in Latin. Poppe’s position has implications for the date of the text and for the various changes it underwent in response to external intellectual developments and provides a convenient starting point for an investigation of a few key characteristics of the preserved text.

Abigail Burnyeat (2007: 181–217) is an interesting study of the text in the wider context of medieval grammar. James Acken (2008) is a study of the structure of the text mainly as it appears in the standard edition with some observations on the terminological units employed in the linguistic and poetic analyses. 24 This, like van Hamel’s article, provides useful overviews and might be supplemented with the 2013 article on lexical specificity by the same author. Roisin McLaughlin (2009: 1–24) contrasts the teaching of Auraic. na nÉces with alternative traditions found in a commentary on this text which often precedes it in the manuscripts. Deborah Hayden is the author of a number of important studies on the text (2010; 2011: 1–34; 2012a: 134–79; 2013: 91–124; 2014: 23–61; 2016: 35–64; 2017: 67–93). In some of these (e.g. 2012a; 2016) she has made original contributions to our knowledge of its transmission history, and is, to my knowledge, the only scholar to have done so in print after the appearance of Ahlqvist’s

23 Poppe’s 1999 article is a reworking of a conference paper that was held in 1996. 24 Hayden’s review of this monograph in Études celtiques (2012b: 330–34) should be consulted. 24 edition. These contributions will be discussed at greater length in the course of the argument. Rijcklof Hofman (2013: 185–98) likewise presented an interesting scenario for the development of the text that will be reviewed in greater detail at a later stage (see pp. 37–38; Chapter 5).

Summary of the history of research on Auraicept na nÉces The various articles mentioned so far will be discussed further in the relevant sections of the present thesis. The important contributions among them represent vastly different approaches towards the text. These are generally more analytical than synthetical in the sense that various individual findings have not been fitted together in attempts at evaluating the circumstances under which a work like Auraic. na nÉces may have been composed, and what the text may have looked like in its early transmission. The reliance on Ahlqvist’s edition has led to the appearance of a great deal of consensus in the secondary literature, some of which, in the present writer’s view, builds on fairly tenuous evidence and for this reason will be revisited in the course of the argument.

A couple of considerations arising from the survey of previous research made in the previous paragraphs might be stressed: Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh’s Ogygia, seu, rerum Hibernicarum chronologia provided the earliest investigators into the text with the bulk of their information. These therefore provided little if any evidence of independent research and they lacked the means to pursue a systematic and informed study of the text. Some of Ó Flaithbheartaigh’s ideas still emerge from time to time, such as the idea of an oral background for the teaching of Auraic. na nÉces. The basis for Ó Flaithbheartaigh’s work seems to have been Dublin, RIA MS A ii 4. The copies in the two manuscripts London, British Library MS Egerton 88 (Eg) and Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (L) were frequently referred to in the early modern studies. The relative importance of the copy in Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 (B) to subsequent studies seems to be an effect of the choice made in Calder’s edition. This was of course reinforced by the fact that Ahlqvist similarly chose B as the main text for his edition, which has furthermore become the locus of a great many of the ideas that have been presented in later studies.

A study of the text that integrates some of the contributions remains a desideratum. The importance of such consolidation is underscored by the fact that the literature referenced above is for the most part highly specialized: Auraic. na nÉces has proven inaccessible for

25 most generalists and on occasion even for specialists in Irish philology.25 Furthermore, it is fair to say that the implications of the existence of this unprecedented and unparalleled text within the broader setting of early medieval European linguistic literature have not been properly investigated.26 The few attempts at accommodating the text in the history of linguistic thought have proven more or less erratic. A couple of examples might be mentioned, noting that the works in question in many other respects present good scholarship, such as The History of Linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600, the highly useful introduction to the field by Vivien Law (2003). Law’s chapter on the ‘medieval vernacular grammars’ (2003: 185–209) characteristically overlooks the Irish situation and the tendencies of that chapter towards generalization and simplification in the analysis of ‘vernacular grammar’ as one phenomenon is a weakness that serves to mask the very individual traits that characterize the early attempts, in Ireland and Iceland, at grammatical theorizing. Law’s description of Auraic. na nÉces also obscures the relationship of the text to the Latin grammatical tradition through the introduction of irrelevant post hoc categories (viz. the untenable distinction between particular and universal vernacular grammars in the context of vernacular grammatical literature) that have no substantial support in the sources.27 A more recent major collection of articles, published as The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics (ed. Allan 2013) contains

25 The term ‘philology’ will be employed with its German sense in the present thesis (i.e. avoiding its use as a term corresponding to comparative/historical linguistics, as is frequently seen in English, and reserving it for a concept for which no other English word is adequate). Some relatively recent publications demonstrate a tendency towards a similar restoration of the term in English (e.g. Turner 2000; Pollock et al. 2015). 26 A good example of the consequences of this difficulty of access is Umberto Eco’s treatment of Auraic. na nÉces in La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (1996: 22–23), which reproduces and reinforces a mistake that was made in Poli’s article (mentioned above). The same error was made by Arno Borst in his grand study of the Babel motif (1957–63). The origin of the error, namely the equation of the building materials at the Tower of Babel and the eight parts of speech, will be dealt with in more detail at a later stage, as the error in question coincidentally is of high relevance to the subject-matter of the present dissertation. 27 As Auraic. na nÉces aims to ‘describe the features of a specific language’ it becomes a ‘particular grammar’ (Law 2003: 191–92). The fact that the text frequently ventures into discourse of extra-linguistic nature and often discusses details of considerable abstraction is hence overlooked. Consider for instance the discourse on tomus fri fid (‘measure with regard to the Ogam letter’; Ahlqvist 1983: 50–51, §§ 6,1–6,8; B 943–61 with following commentary), which rather fits into Law’s category of universal grammars (Law 2003: 191). 26 one article that mentions Auraic. na nÉces (Linn 2013: 359–74), only to reproduce the inaccuracies found in Law’s book.28 It does not attempt a proper contextualization of the work, which is understandable, given the limited space devoted to the text in a broader survey of this kind. The 37-page introduction to Calder’s edition contains quite a few important observations that could have informed such broader surveys, but it is somewhat convoluted and does not give a satisfactory rundown of the manuscript tradition. For this reason and others, it falls short of opening up the text for the reader.29

Prior to the 13th century, grammatical works were only relatively seldom written in the vernacular. A subset of such texts treated the vernacular language. This group is heterogeneous and each work is distinct from the others, although the Latin grammatical tradition offers a legitimate tertium comparationis, as this provided the basis for all such works that have been preserved. Although Auraic. na nÉces is a typologically distinct production, its engagement with the Latin grammatical literature also opens up for a comparison with some more or less related works from the British Isles, the Scandinavian sphere and Continental Europe. An important contribution to the study of grammar in Ireland and Wales is the collection of articles edited as Grammatica, Gramadach and Gramadeg. Vernacular Grammar and Grammarians in Medieval Ireland and Wales (ed. Hayden and Russell 2016). The Welsh bardic grammars known as the Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid (ed. Williams and Jones 1934) date from the first half of the 14th century, with the earliest text, that of Einion Offeiriad (the Priest), the chaplain of Sir Rhys ap Gruffudd, dated to the 1320s. Like Auraic. na nÉces, this work is concerned with the vernacular language, which it subjects to a mode of analysis that clearly draws on the Latin tradition, but with allowance for necessary departures from the model offered by Latin.

The Irish contribution to the transmission and reception/development of the late antique Latin grammatical canon has been long recognized. The early Insular

28 See also the section on vernacular grammars in Routledge’s History of Linguistics: Classical and Medieval Linguistics (ed. Lepschy 1994), the second volume of a large five volume work, where the relevant section (see especially p. 186), was authored by Edoardo Vineis. It contains a few interesting notes on the treatment of the stress accent in Irish. Among the sources mentioned by Vineis, Virgilius and possibly Pompeius should be removed. 29 Thurneysen criticized the edition for its lack of commentary and aids for the reader in his recension/article in ZCP XVII (1928: 277–303). 27 engagement with the core grammatical texts such as Donatus’s Ars maior had important consequences for the further impact (‘Wirkungsgeschichte’) of such manuals in the Carolingian renaissance and beyond. Authorities on medieval Latin philology and Hiberno-Latin grammatical literature (e.g. Bernhard Bischoff, Bengt Löfstedt and Louis Holtz) for the most part did not venture very far into the study of the subtleties of its vernacular counterpart and did not publish specifically on Auraic. na nÉces, although it might be mentioned here that Löfstedt availed himself of Calder’s text in his edition of the grammar of Malsachanus (1965). Nonetheless, their contributions to the Latin tradition—especially in the way of editorial work—are of great benefit to the study of the vernacular material, as Poppe’s article on Latin quotations transmitted as part of the text (2002: 296–312) has amply demonstrated.30 The potential of instrumentalizing (more or less contemporary) Latin sources will be pursued further in the present thesis.

Among important studies that do not directly deal with our text, I would single out Michael Clarke (2015: 441–480) on the Irish origin legend of Lebor Gabála Érenn (henceforth LG), which argues for a scenario which in my view has important ramifications for Auraic. na nÉces by forcing us to reconsider its relative place in the corpus.31 The same can be said of the two important articles by R. M. Scowcroft (1987: 79–140; 1988: 1–66) on the genesis and growth of LG and the tradition it represents. Pádraic Moran’s recent edition and translation of ‘De Origine Scoticae Linguae’: an Early Irish Linguistic Tract, Edited with a Related Glossary, ‘Irsan’ (2019) (the so-called ‘O’Mulconry’s Glossary’; henceforth DOSL) provides a solid foundation for the further study of a text that in some important respects relates to the present topic as the engagement with the three sacred languages in the glossaries relates to the Irish origin legend as it is framed in Auraic. na nÉces (as suggested in Moran 2010: 18). The study of Irish poetics and material closely related to Auraic. na nÉces, either thematically or intertextually, has been greatly aided by the numerous publications by Liam Breatnach

30 Bischoff corresponded with Thurneysen on matters of Irish relevance, and so a few of the latter scholar’s opinions are found in Bischoff’s publications. 31 Important contributions towards our understanding of the origin legend(s) have been made among others by John Carey (1990: 104–12), Bart Jaski (2003: 1–53) and Pádraic Moran (2015: 481–514). Jaski’s study corroborates some of the suggestions made by Arno Borst (1957–64), who, despite obvious shortcomings (see Carey 1990), made valuable remarks on Irish developments which will be discussed at a later stage. 28

(e.g. 1987; 2017), whose article “The Glossing of the Early Irish Law Tracts” (2016) is also highly valuable for the study of the transmission of early Irish texts in general.

Ahlqvist was of the firm opinion that new material belonging to the textual tradition of Auraic. na nÉces would turn up in the future, as his own survey of the material was limited to that which was available in printed catalogues, notably those of the libraries of the Royal Irish Academy (Mulchrone et al. 1926–80) and Trinity College Dublin (Abbot and Gwynn 1921). Two further fragmentary copies were later identified and discussed by Hayden (2013). Hofman and Smelik presented ‘an unnoticed copy of Auraicept na nÉces’ in Dublin, Trinity College MS H 2. 17 in Ahlqvist’s Festschrift (2005: 63–65). In fact, however, this is not a witness to Auraic. na nÉces at all. Smaller excerpts from the text that were not included in Ahlqvist’s edition will be mentioned below.

1.2. ‘Auraicept na nÉces’: A Diachronic Study The comparative approach of Auraic. na nÉces, which contrasts the Irish language with Latin, is remarkable for its time. The polemical nature of the text is at odds with the general tenor of the strictly synchronic Old Irish corpus, from which we might single out especially Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 904, a glossed copy of Priscianus Caesariensis’ major Institutiones grammaticae that was produced in an Irish environment, possibly Nendrum or Bangor (see Hofman 1996: 12–31) around the middle of the ninth century and has survived in the library of Sankt Gallen on the Continent. The Irish glosses themselves would seem to deny the existence of a divide between Irish and Latin learning such as the one envisaged in Auraic. na nÉces, but equally important is the absence of a comparative approach, which could have plausibly been triggered by engagement with Priscian’s grammar.

In an important article from 1993, Rijcklof Hofman carried out a study on the linguistic preoccupations of the glossators and did not find much evidence that pointed towards the practice of a comparison between Latin and Irish:

In conclusion we can say that the Sankt Gallen commentary on Priscian, notwithstanding the fact that it is bilingual, avoids contrasting Latin and Old Irish. The reason for this is simple: the glossators were involved not in linguistic theory, but in education. Their commentary reflects the activities of teachers, not of linguists. [...] In other words, the glossators focused pretty narrowly upon Latin, explaining Latin phenomena through other Latin phenomena (and authors) without thinking of turning aside to the vernacular. [...] On the other hand, the

29

existence of the Auraicept proves that the Irish of the seventh and later centuries were capable of comparing Latin and Old Irish. In this tract native and Latin learning are combined in a much more explicit way than in the glosses. The aim of the compilers of the Auraicept is different too: their main attention is directed towards their own vernacular language, and in their efforts to explain it they readily resort to Latin. When we compare these two bodies of early Irish linguistic material, we observe that they have part of their linguistic terminology in common. We may perhaps conclude that the glosses were addressed to students of Latin who had mastered the principles of the language, but who had not finished their ‘secondary education’ yet. The Auraicept would in that case have been compiled by ‘teachers at the native schools of poetry’. Its compiler(s) were well versed in native linguistics, but when they got acquainted with Latin linguistic theory, they realized that their students could profit from an education in which the two approaches to language were combined (Hofman 1993: 122).

Pádraic Moran (2015b) suggests that the Sankt Gallen glosses (Sg.) show a marginally greater interest in a comparative approach than Hofman allowed. At any rate, the glossators display a mindset different from that which characterized the author(/s) of Auraic. na nÉces and its later commentators, although the purposes of the various works must be taken into consideration and could be an important part of the explanation for such divergence. It is likely that the first steps towards a description of the vernacular language must have been taken in milieux where Latin grammatical literature was taught and studied at least in part through the medium of the vernacular. A monastic environment is the most likely candidate in this period.

The contextualization of the early text of Auraic. na nÉces has suffered from the fact that the material record postdates the period of composition by a long stretch of time, in which many institutional changes took place. For instance, when Erich Poppe writes of Auraic. na nÉces that ‘Sie kann als summa des sprachwissenschaftlichen Denkens der mittelalterlichen Schulen Irlands bezeichnet werden’ (1996), it is not clear to which period he refers. Such lack of precision is entirely typical in the secondary literature, which is not surprising, given the difficulties involved in applying chronology to the material. As in the quotation from Hofman, the medieval poetical schools are often referred to, even though much must have distinguished the late medieval secular schools from the early medieval monastic ones, and it seems that in many instances, the considerable changes in monastic life and education between the early and late medieval 30 periods are passed over in silence, and later practices and contexts are projected backwards in time.

According to Ó hUiginn (2018: 205–6), the scribes of the Book of Ballymote at various points mention the sources of the works they transcribed. As far as Auraic. na nÉces is concerned, these remarks are always part of the inherited text and have therefore no implications as to the sources available to the scribes at the time of production.

The present thesis represents an attempt at a nuanced understanding of the composition and development of the text, by emphasizing the importance of a sound approach to chronological development, one premise of which is further analysis of the material offered by the manuscript witnesses in terms of textual criticism. One basis for the arguments that will be developed is therefore a close examination of already published material. One way of circumventing the problems of chronology is the approach of material philology, which focuses on the manuscripts as witnesses to the time of their production. Somewhat ironically, however, the focus on the material remnants qua contemporary products serves to camouflage the fact that this textual tradition was anything but static: the fact that the interest in the text at the time when the sources were written was perhaps first and foremost antiquarian poses difficulties for the study of the manuscripts as contemporary documents. In many studies of a diachronic nature, by contrast, another problem emerges, as intimated above: chronological issues have frequently been circumvented due to what would seem to be an inherited notion of continuity in the medieval period, and this precludes the interrogation of changes to the text and its function through the course of its material history. Although it is obviously paramount to avoid anachronism in interpretation, this is exceedingly difficult as the textual make-up itself invites to it, presenting as it does the various chronological strata of text simultaneously.32

32 The possibly most glaring example of such an idea of the continuity of Irish tradition was offered by Proinsias Mac Cana, who saw Auraic. na nÉces, ‘with its baffling imbroglio of Latin grammatical theory and Irish linguistic forms’, as a ‘fairly typical product of Latino-Gaelic learning’ (1974: 136)—which, from his standpoint, meant the product of a period in between the oral poetic instruction of ‘the earliest times’ before the historical period and the ‘reversion to an older tradition of poetics’ (ibid.) in the description of the literary language of the Early Modern Irish period, which must then presumably have run in parallel with the documented state of affairs that is dependent on Latin. Mac Cana failed to clarify why the relevant features of the grammatical framework followed in the Bardic grammars (ed. Bergin 1916–55) 31

Several important developments are seen for the first time or only in Auraic. na nÉces, and the date of the text is therefore of relevance for the dating of these ideas and their development in relation to their larger context. General surveys of the period, such as Thomas Charles-Edwards’ Early Christian Ireland (2000) or Dáibhí Ó Cróinín’s Early Medieval Ireland (1995), have not questioned the date proposed by Ahlqvist, and place Auraic. na nÉces together with the ideas it conveys at the opening of the eighth century. Among these ideas and developments, we find the attempt at a grammatical analysis of the vernacular language which consists of a discussion of the alphabet, the classification of its letters, of sound and syllables, examples of noun and verbal paradigms, a discourse on gender and declension, comparison of adjectives, discussion of prepositions, and accents. These are all things that might be found in any Latin grammatical work from Late Antiquity onwards, but Auraic. na nÉces is the first preserved text to direct the analysis toward the vernacular language and script. Equally important is the attempt at contrasting the vernacular language with Latin, discussed above, which is in large part carried out by setting up a rhetorical opposition between the ‘Irish scholar’ on the one hand, and the ‘Latinist’ on the other. I am not aware of any examples of a similar opposition elsewhere in the Irish corpus, with the exception of the glossary known as Sanas Cormaic or Cormac’s Glossary (ed. Meyer 1913a; see also the digital edition by Russell et al.) which is dated to c. 900 and has been attributed to the Irish bishop and king of Munster Cormac mac Cuilennáin (ob. 908). Regardless of the date of the inception of the project that we witness in Auraic. na nÉces, its closest textual parallels are found in vernacular texts that are dated to the late ninth century onwards (see Chapter 6.2.). In his book Early Christian Ireland, Thomas Charles-Edwards writes that:

The ninth and tenth centuries were, however, to see a change in the nature of that scholarship. The vernacular had been used, alongside Latin, for religious texts since at least the early seventh century. Now, however, there was a shift by which the vernacular gained a greater prominence. Partly, this prominence consists of the

had to have been bequeathed by an ancient oral tradition of poetics and could not have been the creation of the period in question. The main objection to Mac Cana’s theory is not the absence of evidence, as suggested by himself (1974: 136n40), but rather the failure to come to grips with the material which has actually been preserved together with the projection of key features into the mists of pre-history, instead of relating them to other parts of the preserved corpus. As a result of this Mac Cana’s theory cannot be tested.

32

multiplication of texts that were always in Irish, such as sagas. Yet genres previously restricted to Latin were being invaded by the vernacular (Charles- Edwards 2000: 592).

These remarks are corroborated by the ratio between Latin and Irish in annalistic entries, on which Charles-Edwards is partly building his argument. The period in question has on the whole been disregarded in the study of Auraic. na nÉces, although factors such as the heavy engagement with Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae in the ninth century, multilingual environments on the Continent and the development of national identities through national historiography might have had a formative role in the framing of the text, characteristic because of its comparative outlook, which is geared towards the demonstration of the quality of the Irish vernacular at a time when Latin was the dominant language. A few linguistic criteria, which are either questionable or may be due to the inclusion of earlier material related to teaching, have been used to assign the text to a very early period of Irish literary developments. The number of contextual factors suggesting a later date is significant, however, and while linguistic criteria are potentially reliable, depending on their character and frequency, such deliberations allow us only to date Auraic. na nÉces to the Old Irish period. In default of linguistic evidence that can be used to calibrate this date, we must look to contextual, intertextual, and cultural indications.

The attempt at fitting the Irish language into the framework provided by Genesis 11: 1–9 will be discussed in some detail. The narrative sections in Auraic. na nÉces are concerned with the origin of the Irish language and draw especially on the Biblical narrative. They account for the scholastic creation of Irish out of the many languages resulting from the confusion at Babel. This fits in well with one of the main preoccupations of Auraic. na nÉces, which was to demonstrate the superiority of Irish over the three sacred languages (Greek, Hebrew and especially Latin) together with their alphabets. The most important passage in the text in this respect is found in §§ 1,2–1,17 of Ahlqvist’s edition and will therefore be reproduced here, together with Roe’s corrections (see p. 21) and some minor corrections of my own in the Irish text and in the translation. A full transcript of this section from each of the manuscripts is found in Appendix 1.

Its focus on the pre-archetypal history of the material that makes up Auraic. na nÉces and its early development sets this study apart from the bulk of more recent work on the

33 text.33 This shift in focus is motivated by the hypothesis that the period before the split in transmission was the most important for the development of the text—seeing that the framework of the text and its intellectual character, as well as the bulk of the material that has reached us in the various recensions, must have been in existence by then—and that the text itself is a fundamental and indeed unique witness to the intellectual pursuits of that period.34 The criticism of some of the fundamental teachings of an early section of the preserved text in the unedited commentary known as In Lebor Ollaman (‘The Ollam’s Book’; see especially McLaughlin 2009) supports this assertion. In the period from which the manuscripts descend it is a somewhat antiquated, if patently popular, cousin to the more contemporary Bardic grammatical tracts.

This diachronic approach is also offered as a corrective to the somewhat eclectic reconstructing procedure followed in Ahlqvist’s edition. The methodology followed in the standard edition is such that we might state that a text exactly like the one presented there is unlikely to have ever existed, whereas comparative evidence from the various manuscript witnesses allows us to draw legitimate conclusions as to the content and make-up of the archetype, that may be valid and open to falsification even though a full reconstruction of the archetype might not be possible.35

An outline of the structure of the argument In order to attempt a synthetic, reconstructive analysis of the material record and cultural context of Auraic. na nÉces, I have singled out some themes, partly based on the text itself and the characteristics of its transmission, partly on the discussion—or sometimes lack

33 Poppe’s 1996 article “Die mittelalterliche irische Abhandlung Auraicept na nÉces und ihr geistesgeschichtlicher Standort” is in essence a description of various features of analysis that were prominent in the archetype, although this is not stated explicitly. 34 Here I should like to note the fact that also the marginal commentary in D (see introduction to the manuscript record below) is drawn from within the textual tradition (see Ahlqvist 1983: 22–29). 35 I would like to quote the Norwegian Slavicist and Balticist Christian Schweigaard Stang: ‘Die Wissenschaft ist en Dialog, und niemand von uns kann den Anspruch erheben, auf den allen Punkten zu einem bleibenden Ergebnis zu gelangen. Aber was man vorlegt, wird ja kritisiert, andere melden vielleicht Widerspruch an. Mit Hilfe dieses unorganisierten Teamworks schreitet die Wissenschaft fort. [...] Ein Buch, das nur gesicherte Dinge enthält, wäre für die Mitforschenden überflüssig’ (cited in Watkins 1969: 21). I have sought to follow this advice, as I have often noted that those scholarly contributions which I try to challenge have been the most stimulating to work with—whenever the basis of the hypotheses in the sources is clearly indicated. 34 thereof—found in previous research. Some corrections to the current analysis of the material record are necessary and will therefore form the logical basis of the thematically structured chapters that follow.

A chapter on the material record precedes the more analytical sections of the thesis. An attempt at describing the mechanics that have worked in the course of transmission to frame the extant record has been made, with a focus on those features that are particular to the tradition and present difficulties for the textual critic. The first part of the thesis is thus concerned with the inner consistency and make-up of the material and has been divided into two main components: one dealing with the material record (Chapter 2) and the other with the structure of the Prologue and of the text with commentary (Chapter 5). In between these, I discuss linguistic evidence (Chapter 3) and authorship (Chapter 4).

The second part is an attempt to relate the text to its surroundings within the Irish vernacular tradition. Given the diachronic aspirations of the thesis, the use of this corpus is complicated by the fact that it is mainly transmitted in later manuscripts that obscure the relative dates of the texts, their relationship to each other, such as the direction of borrowing, as well as their original purposes. I have noted above that both the CIH and LG to some degree informed the standard edition, but these resources have been anything but exhausted.

The edition of a core section of Auraic. na nÉces, mentioned in the previous section, which differs on a few points from Ahlqvist (1983), is provided in Chapter 7 in order to discuss the mythographic component of the text.

The third part of the thesis presents an attempt to rectify the lack of secure external anchoring through investigating the text’s relation to Latin grammatical material from the Carolingian and post-Carolingian era—the period before the date of the split in transmission (as suggested by Thurneysen 1928: 285). The alphabet tables in Auraic. na nÉces offer crucial evidence that facilitates a comparative approach, or so it will be argued in Chapter 9 of the present thesis. In my view, the analysis presented in this part strengthens the conclusions in Poppe’s article on the Latin quotations in our text (see above, p. 24), though with the use of very different criteria. The cumulative evidence of a later date of composition or reworking than that proposed by Ahlqvist is therefore significant, and it is valid for key aspects of the core text.

35

The lack of a satisfactory critical edition has presented problems to the study of the text from the first editorial endeavor onwards. So, for instance, Poppe writes that ‘Die Edition, Übersetzung und eingehende Analyse und Kommentierung repräsentativer Zeugen der verschiedenen Rezensionen und Textfamilien des Auraicept bleibt ein Desiderat und könnte zu einem vertieften Verständnis der mittelalterlichen irischen Geistesgeschichte wesentlich beitragen’ (Poppe 1996: 57). Hayden commented on the same issue in her unpublished doctoral dissertation (2010: 4n9, 6) and has done important work on individual manuscript witnesses in articles that ensued later (especially 2012a; 2013), but the fact remains that the state of the art is still very much like it became with the publication of Ahlqvist’s edition and study. This again reinforced a tendency that was introduced by Calder in 1917, namely the reliance on the testimony of the witness that is contained in the Book of Ballymote—in both cases predicated, it would seem, on its legibility, accessibility, and its relatively clean text, rather than on stemmatic considerations.36 A semi-diplomatic transcript of the second-oldest preserved full witness of Auraic. na nÉces contained in the Book of Uí Mhaine (M), hitherto un- edited, is included as an appendix to the present thesis and is intended as a first step towards further editorial work in the future. Translation has not been provided, except for quotations from the transcript in the text of the thesis itself. Frequent reference to the readings of B and Y has been included to facilitate the consultation of the text and the understanding of abbreviated, corrupt, or merely diverging passages in M.

A full investigation of the stemmatic relationship between the witnesses is outside the scope of the present study and the fact that a detailed and reliable stemma is still absent

36 Calder curiously remarks that B ‘curtails the text’ (1917: xxiii), which must be a reference to the frequent use of the marker ⁊rl. (expanded as ocus araile ‘et cetera’) (e.g. the four occurrences at B 435–44), which sometimes might be taken to indicate the omission of content from an exemplar. Most of these contractions, however, are shared by EL and are therefore not useful in order to assess the working methods of the scribes of the Book of Ballymote, as they must be attributed to its exemplar. It might furthermore be noted that Y (which belongs to another recension) frequently agrees with BEL on matters such as this, hence indicating that the content was thus marked already in the archetype. It must be mentioned that the marker is frequently employed where other parts of the text are repeated, e.g. the commentary at B 1110–11 (= Y 4145–46) Cat iat aib [ g ]itri [Y na dtri primberladh ] ⁊rl. ‘What are the alphabets [Y of the three main languages] etc.’), which refers to the section that follows a few lines further down. 36 is reiterated where it might affect the argument, while a few corrections and suggestions to complement Ahlqvist’s survey of the manuscript record will be presented. Despite Ahlqvist’s own reservations, his survey of the manuscript record was sufficiently detailed that, until this day, only very few traces of the preserved material seem to have escaped his notice. I have provided a preliminary stemma as a visual aid in order to clarify the hypotheses of the present work, as it is my contention that the lack of a clear representation of the relationship between the manuscripts and the evidence on which it is based has been unfavourable to the study of the text.

Although the chapters of the thesis might be read as somewhat independent studies, the evidence presented in them and the arguments based on it is cumulative. The dissertation seeks to contribute to the following analyses, which coincide with the thematical subdivisions of the argument: Ahlqvist 1983 (passim), Poppe 1996 (Chapters 5 and 9), 2002 (Chapter 6), Borst 1957–63 (Chapters 6–7), Bischoff 1951 (Chapter 9) and Thiel 1973 (Chapter 9).

1.3. Summary of Chapter The medieval Irish grammatical treatise known as Auraicept na nÉces has received modest attention in academic literature since the first edition appeared in 1917. Dated by its most recent editor, Anders Ahlqvist (1983), to the early eighth century, the core of this text is usually granted the distinction of being the earliest vernacular grammar among those that have been preserved from the medieval West. Both the subject-matter (the vernacular language and alphabet) and the discourse are highly innovative. A probable context for this innovatory work has so far not been presented. The present thesis seeks to establish a foundation for the exploration of possible contexts of composition.

Ahlqvist’s reconstructed text strikes the reader as an unlikely original. Hofman’s solution to this problem is to postulate that the original itself consisted of a ʻcore textʼ plus ʻcommentary’ in analogy with the commentaries known from Latin grammatical manuscripts (Hofman 2013: 193). He concludes that ʻthe phase of a canonical text without commentary was skipped altogether’ (Hofman 2013: 193), and that the compilers chose their format to highlight the most important parts of the text (ibid.). The most difficult part of this argument is that one must presuppose that the Irish were in fact able to copy the core text (but, given Hofman’s view on the genesis of the work, also the commentary) faithfully for several hundred years, maintaining the hierarchical distinction between core text and commentary. The creation of Auraic. na nÉces might

37 well have been as Hofman describes, but if we doubt the similarity of an original text with Ahlqvist’s reconstruction, then internal evidence alone will not suffice. The typical development in the preservation of the law texts was that the amount of commentary and the amount of original text would be inversely proportional (see Kelly 1988: 225– 31). The copy of Auraic. na nÉces in the Book of Ballymote might have served as an illustration of Kelly’s ‘further stage’ (Kelly 1988: 231): where glosses and commentary are presented together, and the original text has been restricted to intermittent quotations.

The present chapter emphasizes the fact that the split in the manuscript tradition is much later than the date assigned to the core text that was edited by Ahlqvist. An analysis of the contents of the archetype might therefore benefit from the context provided by the cultural developments in the ninth and tenth centuries. It will be evident from the preceding discussion that the consensus of an early eighth-century date is untenable, and that a date in the ninth or early tenth is much more plausible. This is the main hypothesis which this thesis sets out to test. The date of the text has been established on the basis of linguistic features and not on its content. A late seventh-century or early eighth- century date for the original core of the text has been cemented in the secondary literature due to frequent reference to Ahlqvist, although the editor himself is rather cautious when assigning this date, which has been based on the Old Irish character of the text, but importantly also on a few forms that could be taken to indicate an Early Old Irish date (i.e. before c. 700; see Ahlqvist 1983: 36). While the Old Irish character of the text is indisputable (evidenced for instance by the explicit recognition of the neuter gender), the criteria for assigning it to the Early Old Irish period are either doubtful or open to alternative explanations, such as the inclusion of some earlier material of a more pragmatic character.

There are also a number of corollary hypotheses. First, Auraic. na nÉces was originally composed with a commentary. Second, the strata of commentary can be discerned with sufficient accuracy for us to be able to talk of several campaigns. Third, the bulk of this activity took place before the split in the tradition in the late eleventh century. Fourth, the composition of Auraic. na nÉces was related to the rise of learned interest in the vernacular on the Continent. Fifth, its treatment of alphabets and the Ogam in particular drew on an identifiable Continental tradition. Sixth, in spite of these connections, without which Auraic. na nÉces would hardly have been conceivable, the text is

38 profoundly innovative in several regards, most notably in its treatment of the vernacular and in the affiliation of it with Biblical history.

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The Manuscript Record

2.1. The Main Manuscript Witnesses The present chapter introduces the manuscript sources and proposes a re-evaluation of some of the evidence put forward by Ahlqvist (1983). A couple of new items are presented (see e.g. 2.2.). The discussion is summarized by some general remarks on the manuscript transmission and by a stemma codicum (2.7., p. 62).

The manuscript copies of Auraicept na nÉces that have been hitherto identified are (following Ahlqvist 1983 and Hayden 2017):37

1) D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 (olim E 3.3), saec. xv–xvi, pp. 3a1–16b23 2) M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 (D ii 1), saec. xiv ex., fols. 138rb55– 143ra60 (the Book of Uí Mhaine) 3) B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 (536), saec. xiv ex., fols. 170va– 180ra (the Book of Ballymote) 4) E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72. 1. 1. (Gaelic I), saec. xv in., fols. 20rb–25v (John Beaton’s Broad Book) 5) L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (535), saec. xv in., fols. 151ra– 162vb (the Great Book of Lecan) 6) A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738), saec. xvii–xviii, fols. 47v21– 64r 7) Eg: London, British Library, Egerton MS 88, saec. xvi med., fols. 63ra26– 76rb15 8) G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (H 2. 15b), saec. xvii med., pp. 107–13438 9) P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53, saec. xviii1/3, pp. 50–144 10) T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 (H 4. 22), saec. xv, pp. 167–210

37 The references to the pages/folia of the manuscripts in Ahlqvist’s survey (1983: 22–24) are now and then inaccurate. They have been silently corrected here with a view towards compatibility with the digitized photographies made available at Irish Script on Screen (URL: http://www.isos.dias.ie). TCD MS 1317 is available on ISOS as of September 16th, 2020, while the three manuscripts A, T and TCD MS 1289 have not been made available publicly as of October 12th, 2020. The order of the manuscripts is the same as in Ahlqvist 1983. 38 The pagination used by Ahlqvist (1983: 105–130) is very faint, if at all visible. The older pagination in ink (the text begins at p. 183 and ends at p. 207.31) is more useful for reference purposes and will be used here. 40

11) Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 (H 2. 16), saec. xvii med., cols. 504.23– 549.13 12) Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.), saec. xviii1/3, pp. 533–71 (and 659–663)

The abbreviations given above are equivalent to those that have been applied in the standard edition by Ahlqvist (1983) and will be employed in the present thesis with specific reference to the witnesses of Auraic. na nÉces themselves. The sigla or names (e.g. the Book of Ballymote) will be used to refer to the manuscripts as such. This distinction is necessary as many of the manuscripts are composite, consisting of sections of varying date that have been gathered some time after their production. Ahlqvist categorizes all these as ‘more or less complete’ copies of the text. Most copies are indeed complete, but T is acephalous, A and D lack the Prologue (M does not, contrary to the claim in Ahlqvist 1983: 25, but its arrangement of this section differs quite a bit from the others—see below), and there is no firm consensus between the various copies as to where the text actually ends. Both D and M break of at the point that corresponds to B 1636.39

TCD MS 1289 is a paper manuscript that contains a copy of Auraic. na nÉces signed in 1732 by Tadhg Tiorthach Ó Neachtain. It is not included in Ahlqvist’s list, although he does mention it at p. 22n1.40 It is a codex descriptus (B being the antigraph; see pp. 49– 50). Among the exemplars of the various texts in this miscellaneous manuscript were Dublin, National Library of Ireland MSS G 2 and G 3, as well as the Book of Ballymote (then in the possession of Trinity College Dublin) and possibly the roughly mid-12th- century Dublin, Trinity College MS 1339 (H 2. 18), known as the Book of Leinster.41

39 References to B and Y are to the lineated transcription published in Calder (1917) for the sake of convenience unless the argument demands reference to the manuscript folia. The lineation is continuous, so that B covers lines 1–2259, while Y covers lines 2260–5055. References to M might be looked up in the transcription included as Appendix 2 (which follows the foliation at ISOS), while the other manuscripts have as yet not been edited and published. 40 See also the entry in the catalogue of manuscripts stored at the library of TCD (Abbot and Gwynn 1921: 54). 41 This was suggested by James Henthorn Todd in his edition of the ninth-century poem Can a mbunadus na nGoídel (1848). 41

TCD MS 1317 from the 17th century is also possibly a codex descriptus (with Y as its exemplar), although this must be confirmed by closer study.

The copy announced by Hofman and Smelik in 2005 (Dublin, Trinity College MS 1319/H 2. 17) does not belong to this textual tradition. The date of the other manuscripts will be discussed individually (2.3.).

Sir James Ware (1594–1666) had in his custody a book ‘filled with such characters’, referring to the Ogam. It is possible that this refers to the various Ogam systems presented in the Book of Ogams (at any rate hardly to text written entirely in Ogam, as surmised by Vallancey) and possibly a copy of the thematically related Auraic. na nÉces. This manuscript is now probably lost (see reference in Vallancey 1773: 4).

2.2. The Fragmentary Manuscript Copies For the so-called fragmentary copies, the reader is referred to Ahlqvist’s introduction to his edition (1983: 28–29), from which the abbreviations and most of the information presented here derives.42 The copies in question contain relatively autonomous sections of text that show close correspondences with the preserved commentary to Auraic. na nÉces, but whose relationship to it is profoundly complicated and unlikely to be fully recoverable. For instance, a ‘fragment’ such as the one preserved in Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 2 (a miscellaneous manuscript written by Ádhamh Ó Cianáin c. 1345) at fol. 11ra17ff. simply contains a paradigm that corresponds to B 1515– 29, 1770–1803 and 1883–93. Related material is also found after the copy of Auraic. na nÉces in Dublin Trinity College MS 1432 (D), at pp. 23b11–24b (Ahlqvist’s D3). Such fragments should perhaps rather be seen as extracts.

C is contained in the Ó Cianáin Miscellany (Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 2) and contains paradigms that correspond to B 1515–29, 1770–1803 and 1883–93. This is the earliest witness to this material that is preserved. Its mid-14th-century date may not be very important, however, as the inclusion of such material in the archetype of Auraic. na nÉces is quite certain and confirms the existence of the paradigms in the 11th

42 Hayden’s 2013 article (pp. 91–124) on two fragments in the Irish Franciscan Archive (Dublin, University College MS Franciscan A 10 fols. 1–2) contains a valuable discussion on these fragments. 42

43 1–2 3 century at the latest. Fragments D are glosses on the text of D, while D is found at some remove from the text itself. D1–3 includes text from both the recension represented by B (D2–3) and that represented by Y (D1).44

Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337/H 3. 18 is a composite manuscript containing an array of legal material (see the catalogue entry in Abbott and Gwynn 1921: 140–58). It contains various pieces of text that derive from Auraic. na nÉces which Ahlqvist denotes with ‘H’.

H1 contains etymologies for the Irish terms for ‘vowel’ and ‘consonant’ and the text corresponds to B 357–70. H2 corresponds to B 1893–1925, which in B is signalled with Incipit do ernailibh in imchomairc in so sis (‘The beginning of the divisions of analysis here below’) (B 1893) and Finit (B 1926). This is therefore a relatively self-contained section.

H3 contains glossed extracts corresponding to text from the opening of Y (2260ff.). H4 corresponds to B 228–60/Y 2542–70, which is a section that refers to and quotes from

B 1034ff./Y 3989ff. Finally, H5 corresponds to B 1–25 followed by Y 2498–520.

N corresponds to B 917–26, with extracts from B 943–61, and B 1927–60 (the Treḟocal). O contains text that corresponds to Y 3619–25, followed by material corresponding to B 810–905.

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (545), fol. 169rb should be added to the fragments listed above. This is a short section corresponding to B 1147ff. which has been included in the Great Book of Lecan after its full copy (L) and that has seemingly enjoyed a separate line of transmission.

2.3. Description of the Manuscripts Described below are only those features of the manuscripts that are most relevant to the textual history of Auraic. na nÉces or to the arguments laid out later on in the present thesis.45 For fuller codicological descriptions of the manuscripts and full lists of their contents, the reader is referred to the various catalogues and the updated entries

43 By simple deduction from the material record. If we turn to historical linguistics, there are strong arguments in favour of a much earlier date for at least parts of this material. This has been presented in Ahlqvist (1983: 36) and is touched upon below in the section on linguistic dating. 44 Thurneysen’s ‘Fassung I’ and ‘Fassung II’ and Ahlqvist’s b and c respectively. 45 The series Codices Eximii Hibernici contains various papers of great value for the Book of Ballymote, the Book of Lecan and the Book of Uí Mhaine. See Hayden (2014) for a discussion of Eg, Y and T. 43 published by Irish Script on Screen (ISOS). A convenient list with subsequent discussion of some of the manuscripts is found in Ahlqvist 1983: 22–29.

D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 has been dated to the 15th or 16th century (Abbot and Gwynn 1921: 307) and is a composite manuscript written in various hands. It contains a copy of John of Gaddesden’s Rosa Anglica (an early 14th-century work on medicine) with sections of Irish translation and an acephalous commentary on Practica super nono Almansoris by Geraldus de Solo, as well as various vernacular legal texts and material from the third recension of the Irish Sex Aetates Mundi. The copy of Auraic. na nÉces is found at 3a1–16b23, but material closely related to it is also included at 23b11–24b. The scribe (see colophon at 23b3–10) was named Diarmuid Ó Dubhugáin.

D is an important witness as it includes rather extensive marginal and interlinear glossing (see discussion in Ahlqvist 1983: 24–26, 28; also McLaughlin 2009: 6). This gloss is attributed to the seventh-century author Cenn Fáelad mac Ailella (see p. 3, marg. sup.), as is the prologue that is included in all the other copies (except A; T is acephalous). The copious glosses on D (D1–3) are an interesting case and might give an idea as to how late medieval scribes would approach the text given the opportunity to compare different manuscripts. D1 is probably written in the same hand as the main scribe and incorporates

2–3 a certain amount of material found in δ, while D make use of γ-material (loc. cit.; see the stemma codicum at p. 62). Ahlqvist (1983: 59–60) notes that the paragraph § 4,3 of 2 his edition is omitted in the main text of D but added in the margin by D . Such glossing practice is probably a key mechanism in the growth of the text in the first place, also before the split in the manuscript tradition.

M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 M is a late 14th -century copy contained in a larger compilatory manuscript Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225, from the territory of Uí Maine, which encompassed the regions around present-day south-eastern Connacht. The compilation was produced by several scribes for Muircheartach mac Pilib Ó Ceallaigh, Bishop of Clonfert and later of Tuam (1378–1394). The Book of Uí Mhaine was formerly known as the Book of Ó Dubhagáin (Codex O Duvegani), which Ahlqvist (1983: 25) sees as a link between this manuscript and TCD MS 1432. The manuscript remained in the possession of the Ó Ceallaigh family until 1757.

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Hayden has made the following observations on the manuscripts (2017): after a heading which reads Incipit dona hUragechtaib, M includes the following texts: MV-III (beg. 133rb20), a tract beginning with Septem sunt gradus Ecclesie (beg. 136rb63), MV-I (beg. 136va10), a tract beginning with Cis lir fodla aire (beg. 137rb55), In Lebor Ollaman (beg. 137va57) and Auraic. na nÉces (138rb55–143ra60). Auraic. na nÉces is followed by the Treḟocal Tract. The catalogue information provided by ISOS is misleading as far as the arrangement of the digital facsimile is concerned. The catalogue (Fasc. 26) states that the text should be read in the following order: 131–134, 136–139, 141, 135, 142, 140, 143, although the reasons for doing so are not presented. The order is not quite correct (and contains one folio too much), although the images have been arranged in the appropriate sequence. A first cause of confusion is due to the fact that the catalogue refers to a foliation in pencil that has been made after the loss of various leaves. This is to be found in between two columns on the upper part of the recto-sides of the leaves but is not possible to see in the digital images. This foliation does not correspond to that given by ISOS (in the images), which is the one that will be used in the present thesis for reference purposes.

The order is therefore: 138rv, 139rv, 140rv, 141rv, 142rv, 143r (the text ends at 143ra60), which is evident from the continuity of the text (controlled against BY). 141r follows 140v: .i. in cet fid airegda bis i foclaib ind im | reagrai ⁊ in taebomna docuirend ... (om. B; cf. Y 3564–54). 142r follows 141v: i os crand rohainmnighead .i. aball ut [dicitur] clithar boascill quert | .i. aball. muin dano ... (cf. B 1185–86; Y 4281–82). 143r follows 142v: amal asbert in file | [..]e .i. .i. inis ⁊ all ... (cf. B 1324–25; Y 6641–42). The text on fols. 131–37 is not part of Auraic. na nÉces, as can be seen from Hayden’s updated catalogue. M, the manuscript witness of Auraic. na nÉces in the Book of Uí Mhaine, hence occupies eleven pages. A couple of deviations from the arrangement of the texts of B and Y might explain the confusion in the catalogue. So also the kindred subject-matter of the preceding text, which is in origin a separate commentary on Auraic. na nÉces (see p. 51).

The readings in M are often better (in the sense that they preserve the Old Irish morphological system) than the ones in the manuscripts that stem from γ and δ (see the stemma codicum). It is unclear to me why Calder (and Ahlqvist) would prefer B, except for the fact that B contains more commentary and also a clear distinction between core text and commentary that is not present in M. There is furthermore a strong tendency in M towards the abbreviation of passages of the commentary with the aid of the 45 device ⁊rl. ‘and so on’. These criteria have—unjustly in my opinion—excluded M. Its text has not previously been published and I have therefore provided an edition of it in Appendix 2 (pp. 262–303).

B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 The Book of Ballymote (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12) was produced in present County Sligo in North Connacht at the very end of the 14th century and contains a rich collection of texts of various genres. Its principal scribes were Solamh Ó Droma, Robertus Mac Sithigh and Magnus Ó Duibgennain. The copy of Auraic. na nÉces (fols. 170va–180ra) was penned by Solamh Ó Droma (see colophon at fol. 180ra17). The text is presented in two columns.

E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72.1.1. E is preserved in the second, early 14th-century part of the composite manuscript that has been catalogued as Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72.1.1., known as John Beaton’s Broad Book. This part of the manuscript is fully independent of the former, the manuscript having been put together in its present form in the early 19th century, hence only the second section is of interest here. This section (fols. 10–25) is a North-Connacht production, which, according to Tomás Ó Concheanainn (1975: 99–101), was written by Ádhamh Ó Cuirnín c. 1425, who was also one of the main scribes behind the Great Book of Lecan. Ahlqvist (1983: 26), building on Ó Concheanainn’s observations, has consequently suggested a close relationship between E and L.

The witness of Auraic. na nÉces contained in John Beaton’s Broad Book (fols. 20r–25v) is presented in two columns and distinguishes main text from commentary through a slight difference in the size of the script.

L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 The Great Book of Lecan (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2), is an early 15th-century North-Connacht manuscript containing a wide range of literary texts. The principal scribe is Gilla Ísu Mac Fir Bisich, who was aided by Ádhamh Ó Cuirnín and Murchad Riabach Ó Cuindlis. The section that contains the copy of Auraic. na nÉces (fols. 151ra–162vb) was written by the latter scribe (see the colophon at fol. 162vb), and is, according to the catalogue, a section in which Ó Cuindlis worked independently from his master. The visual appearance of the various sections of the manuscript varies a great deal according to the scribe responsible (compare for instance fols. 10–30, attributed to

46

Ó Cuirnín, against fols. 150–162, attributed to Ó Cuindlis). The catalogue suggests that the various sections might not be quite contemporary, but we could also imagine that the individual scribes played an important part in defining the decorative program for their respective sections. The content of the manuscript is strongly reminiscent of that of the Book of Ballymote, and it has been suggested that the scribes occasionally had recourse to the same exemplars.46

A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738) Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738), a paper manuscript of unknown provenance, has been dated to the 17th or early 18th century and consists of three fragments in three different hands.47 The manuscript was once part of the library of Ó Flaithbheartaigh (see p. 14).

The scribe responsible for the section containing the copy of Auraic. na nÉces (fols. 46v21–64r) has not been identified. This copy is preceded by an acephalous copy of In Lebor Ollaman (see 2.4. below) that begins with the words co ro taitne grian ⁊ esce atuaid. The copy of Auraic. na nÉces lacks the Prologue (as does D) and begins (p. 47v21) with the words [A]sberad tra augdair na nGoidel. The text is laid out in one column throughout.

Eg: London, British Library Egerton MS 88 London, British Library Egerton MS 88 is a major codex containing law texts and grammatical literature. It was produced between 1564 and 1569 in County Clare in Ireland and is associated with the scribe Domhnall Ó Duibhdábhoirenn, who ran a law school in the district of Burren (see detailed discussion of the provenance in Hayden 2014; see Kelly 1988: 257–59 on the Ua Duibhdábhoirenn law school). Auraic. na nÉces is found at fols. 63ra26–76rb15. The codex contains marginal remarks that give us precious information as to the working methods of the compiler, indicating the practice of preparing copies from several sources (see Kelly 1988: 258).

46 The catalogue adduces the comparison between fols. 211–212 in the Great Book of Lecan and fol. 193 in the Book of Ballymote as evidence for this. 47 See the entry in the Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy (Mulchrone et al. 1936: 2239ff.). 47

G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 is a 17th-century autograph manuscript written on paper by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (ob. 1671), that contains legal literature as well as copies of various Irish glossaries. Auraic. na nÉces is contained on pp. 107–134, a few pages of which have been written by Dubhaltach’s grandfather Dubhaltach Mór. Marginal notes are found in the manuscript in Irish and Latin, as well as Greek.

P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53 Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53 is a composite manuscript consisting of two distinct components that have both been dated to the 17th century. The latter part (pp. 43–144) contains the copy of Auraic. na nÉces (pp. 50–144), which is preceded by an acephalous copy of In Lebor Ollaman. The catalogue entry in NLI Fasc. II by Nessa Ní Shéaghdha contains quite a few important remarks on this copy of Auraic. na nÉces: 1) it corresponds closely to Y, while 2) it often agrees with Eg on the inclusion of additional words and phrases; 3) there is a hiatus of almost three blank pages from p. 74 to p. 77 (corresponding to the text at Y 2903–3022), and 4) Latin quotations were frequently omitted (e.g. Y 3141–43 lacking at P p. 82.4), although enough space has been left to suggest that the scribe intended to fill them in later. The text breaks of prematurely at p. 144 (corresponding to Y 5025) due to the loss of the final leaf. One leaf (pp. 81–82) is cut at the end, possibly, but not necessarily, with loss of text corresponding to Y 3161–62 on p. 82. Similarly, pp. 123–24 have been damaged by the excerption of a piece of the leaf, including a portion of text corresponding to Y 4434–42. Ní Shéaghdha suggested that the manuscript was written by Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh (NLI Fasc. II.: 71), but this has been disputed by Pádraig A. Breatnach in his palaeographical study of the Four Masters and their manuscripts (2013: 127; 127n89).

T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 is a composite manuscript consisting of five parts from different periods. The two gatherings of 14 leaves each that make out the section that contains our text have not been securely dated and various proposals have been put forward. Ahlqvist (1983: 23) dates this part of the manuscript to the 15th century, probably relying on Abbot and Gwynn (1921: 209), while Hayden (2012a: 153, 159–60) seems to prefer a later date in the 16th century. The copy of Auraic. na nÉces was penned by two scribes working alternately, Sairbrethach and Aod, and is in a single-column layout. It occupies pp. 167–210. Edward Lhuyd purchased the manuscript in County Sligo in 1700. 48

Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318, the so-called Yellow Book of Lecan is a highly composite manuscript consisting of parts with heterogeneous provenance. The section that contains Auraic. na nÉces (cols. 504.23–549.13) is dated to the 1560s.48 The text is preceded by In Lebor Ollaman.

TCD MS 1289: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.) Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.) is an 18th-century manuscript in the hand of Tadhg Ó Neachtain. The copy of Auraic. na nÉces is contained on pp. 533–71 (pp. 534– 35 have been left blank). A scribal colophon is found at p. 571 after Conuige so corp in dá | Uraicepta (leg. ind Auraicepta). This dates the witness to 1732 and attributes the copy to Tad[h]g ua nEchtuin. The various marginal glosses provide glimpses of how the text was received and interpreted in the 18th century. The Latin quotations in the text have been distinguished through the use of an italic script, which was not customary in the older period.

The text of TCD MS 1289 does not seem to carry any text-critical value, as it appears to be fully derivative of the Book of Ballymote (see evidence below), from which it has been carefully copied. Note in this respect a correction such as the one at p. 533.16–18, where the scribe has corrected a saut du même au même (see B 170vb3–4). The status of TCD MS 1289 as a codex descriptus needs to be confirmed by a fuller study, but this is not within the scope of the present thesis. Evidence that suggests dependence (exclusively) on B include:

- the (misplaced) incorporation of the gloss nomen, pronomen, verbum etc. at p. 541.5–8, immediately after the list of the building materials of the Tower of Babel.49 The list of parts of speech is not repeated as in B, however, as the scribe here refers to the list already presented: .i. ainm ⁊̅c̅. mar ata s͘uas ‘i.e. nomen etc., as above’ (p. 541.16); - the passive paradigm (p. 548.28–29), which has suffered the same corruptions as that in B (653–55) (see also Ahlqvist 1983: 25);

48 So Hayden 2012a: 136–37. The catalogue seems to date this section to 1408, without adducing the relevant evidence. 49 This misplaced gloss is not found in E. 49

- the mistaken expansion n(on) for n(omen) in the quote at p. 559 (nisi sciris nomen cognitio rerum perit). B reads ⟨n̅⟩. See also the glosses in the margin at p. 559, where the correct reading is worked out; - the reproduction of the faulty order of the Greek letters at p. 560. This is shared by E; - the reproduction (p. 560) of corrupted names of the Greek and Hebrew letters

(as in B), but with superlinear corrections, as e.g ⟨mamma⟩ for B ⟨Γ a̅ma⟩ with the added correction ⟨gamma⟩;50 - the saut du même au même at 547.15–16 (B 173va15–17), although this could have happened also with E as a model (though not with L).

Thurneysen likewise observed that the copies of the Mittelirische Verslehren (MV I–III) contained in TCD MS 1289 were fully dependent on the text of the Book of Ballymote (1912: 59).

2.4. Excerpts from Auraicept na nÉces The following list is intended to cover those excerpts from Auraicept na nÉces that might be of relevance to our reconstruction of the transmission of this text.

The Lecan Glossary The Lecan Glossary is contained in Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (535) (the Great Book of Lecan) at fols. 164r–166r, thus following the copy of Auraic. na nÉces, albeit with a list of Irish saints in between. In an abridged copy it is also found in the Book of Uí Mhaine. Among a number of ‘obscure words’, the Lecan Glossary (ed. Stokes 1900: 50–100) contains several entries that correspond rather closely to glosses or sections in Auraic. na nÉces (see especially 206 ff.). These are introduced with the remark in entry 205: Iargaelad an uraicepta andso bodesta doreir na senudar n-arsannda (‘Here follows an analysis of Auraicept [sc. na nÉces] according to the ancient authors’). This section of the glossary stands out from the rest, as it gives longer definitions of the various entries—elsewhere the practice is to provide single words, although there are a few exceptions to this. The connection to Auraic. na nÉces does not seem to be confined to this part of the glossary, however, as the first section contains glosses on a few words

50 Note also the addition of the names ‘epsilon’ and ‘upsilon’—found in no other manuscript and thus indicative of an interest in Greek on the part of the scribe. Also a couple of the Hebrew letter names have been corrected. 50 which occur in our text, such as tebe (7), forcæmnacair (18) and uindsi (38) (on which see Ahlqvist 1983: 59 with references; also Schumacher 2004: 381–85). After the copy of the glossary in the Great Book of Lecan follows a tract on the letters of the alphabet (166r) – extracted, so it is said, from the precepts of Priscian and Donatus.

The entries in the Lecan Glossary do not seem to have any special relationship to that copy of Auraic. na nÉces (L) which is in fact preserved in the same manuscript—which means that this part of the glossary was not produced specifically for the Great Book of Lecan.51

Corpus Iuris Hibernici Various law texts edited in CIH contain passages that correspond closely to passages in the commentary transmitted with Auraic. na nÉces and that sometimes seem to have been extracted from this or vice versa. The quotations or extracts in Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337 (H 3. 18) have been listed in Ahlqvist’s edition (1983: 23–24, 28).

Bretha Éitgid is of particular interest as it contains passages that resemble sections in Auraic. na nÉces. Particularly striking is the accessus to the two texts (see Breatnach 2005: 381.1–6 as well as the discussion on the authorship of Auraic. na nÉces in Chapter 4).

In Lebor Ollaman : a commentary on Auraicept na nÉces The unedited Middle Irish text known as In Lebor Ollaman contains various commented extracts from Auraic. na nÉces which are subjected to criticism (see Meroney 1945: 19n5, 41n45; 1950: 199 and McLaughlin 2009: 3ff.). The work functions as an ‘exegetical text to be read in conjunction with Auraicept’ (McLaughlin: 2009: 4). The author presumably worked with an annotated copy of that text (ibid.).

McLaughlin notes (2009: 6) that In Lebor Ollaman has a transmission that is independent of that of Auraic. na nÉces, although these texts are very closely related thematically and are found in the same manuscripts (it is not found in any manuscript that does not contain Auraic. na nÉces). As far as arrangement is concerned, with one exception, it always precedes Auraic. na nÉces.

Some of the glosses in D (eight items written by the main scribe, Diarmuid Ó Dubhugáin) derive from this commentary (e.g. p. 12 marg., beg. Michorp so ..., which may

51 The fact that the copy of the glossary in the Book of Uí Mhaine does not contain the references to Auraic. na nÉces would otherwise leave this question open. 51 be compared to the text cited in McLaughlin 2009: 9). Text from In Lebor Ollaman has also entered the running text in D, such as at p. 3.45 (Is é a inchreachadh ...).

2.5. General Remarks on the Manuscripts Immediately obvious from the information provided above is the fact that several of the manuscript copies of our text were produced within relatively short periods, such as B, E, L and M, which have all been securely dated to the period from the end of the 14th century to the first quarter of the 15th century, while Eg and Y both date to the 1560s, and A, G and P to the 17th century. Not all manuscript copies have been firmly dated, and, in the case of D and T, the evidence supporting the date is not adduced in the respective catalogues. A secure date for these manuscripts remains a desideratum.

The fact that the manuscripts date to widely different periods is something that needs to be considered when assessing their textual evidence. We may assume, for instance, that the attitude of the scribe towards the exemplar would be different in a 17th-century context than in a late 14th-century one.52 Orthographical practices come into play here, but also the intellectual outlook of the scholars must be taken into account. A telling example is the faulty expansion of abbreviations such as ps̅ (B 589) as ‘Perseus’ (TCD MS 1289, p. 547.10) (instead of the obvious ‘Priscianus’) in Tadhg Ó Neachtain’s transcript of B. This is interesting, as it gives an insight into the changing perspectives of the scribes in the later period. The failure of a noted scribe to recognize the household names of Latin grammar is suggestive of discontinuity in the tradition—a factor that is often downplayed in modern scholarship on Auraic. na nÉces.

Ní Shéaghdha proposed a three-fold division of the manuscript tradition, where the first period is characterized by ecclesiastical patronage, the second by that of the Gaelic and Anglo-Norman lords and the third by the agency of the ‘common people’ in the production of codices (1989: 41). The first period ends with the Norman invasion, the second with the fall of the Gaelic order and the third begins in the middle of the 17th century (ibid.). Various shifts in the geographical location of the centres of Irish learning occurred during these periods. South-East Ulster, Leinster and Munster were of key

52 Consider for instance the fact that John Kearney’s book on the Irish language, Alphabeticum et Ratio legendi Hibernicam, et Catechismus in eadem lingua, appeared in print in 1571, roughly one decade after the production of Eg and Y (thus being the first book ever printed in Irish types, a single copy of which is preserved in the Bodleian Library). 52 importance in the early period,53 with a shift towards the western areas, North Connacht and South-West Ulster in the second period after the Norman invasion.54 The third period saw the rise of importance of Munster, South-East Ulster, Louth and Meath (ibid.), while Dublin became a focal point for the later manuscript tradition in the 18th century that produced the copy of Auraic. na nÉces in TCD MS 1289. No manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces date from the first period. The continued interest in our text throughout the whole span covered by these periods is therefore noteworthy, albeit by no means unique in the Irish literary tradition. Pádraig P. Ó Néill notes that the western monastic foundations survived both ecclesiastical reforms and the Norman invasion, which ‘may have played a major role in preserving Irish manuscripts that subsequently became the basis of the great codices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’ (2006: 80).

Although the manuscript context of each copy of Auraic. na nÉces is highly interesting in its own right, the thorough investigation of the possible motivations for the inclusion of the text and cognate matters are outside the scope of the present dissertation. In general, it might be observed that Auraic. na nÉces is preserved in relatively substantial codices containing either legal texts (such as BL MS Egerton 88) or texts from a host of different genres (such as the North-Connacht codices).

The centuries that saw the production of the extant copies of Auraic. na nÉces must again be clearly distinguished from the period that pre-dates the Anglo-Norman invasion in the 12th century in which our text was composed and underwent the first stage of its transmission. The various copies of the text owe much of their distinctiveness to a stage of transmission for which no contemporary copies exist, which is the classical premise for textual criticism.

Michael Clarke (2013: 39–71) puts emphasis on the ‘educational and scholarly context of medieval Irish creativity’ (p. 39). Since his article is focused on the nature of the intellectual activity in the monastic setting that produced early Irish literature, Clarke does not address the additional difficulty posed by the fact that this early literature to a large extent survives in sources that are later, and to which we may not without further

53 This is corroborated also by the evidence offered by the obits of scribes in the annals (see Hughes 1958: 243–72; Ó Néill 2006: 79). 54 After roughly 825 there is a tendency towards the concentration of scribal activity (Ó Néill 2006: 79). 53 justification ascribe the mindset of the bilingual communities of the monasteries. The contention that ‘any text that we can read was shaped and transmitted in a milieu dominated by the concerns of monastic intellectualism’ (op. cit.: 41; with reference to Charles-Edwards 2000: 246–81 and McCone 1990: 29–53, 84–106) is appropriate with respect to the period before the 12th century but leaves out the important ‘secular’ reception and production of texts in Hiberno-Norman Ireland.

A few interesting questions relating to the manuscript record are outside the scope of the current investigation. For instance, the intellectual profile of the later law schools (for which see Kelly 1988: 250–63) seems in some respects to be strikingly similar to that of the earlier law schools (for which see Kelly 1988: 242–50) —is this the result of continuity? In answering this question, it is important to remember that the sources to the earlier textual production are always mediated through the latter—and this rather characteristically includes external parallels found in e.g. grammatical texts.

This objection is not relevant to significant Latin documents such as, say, Adomnán’s Vita Sancti Columbae or the texts in Dublin, Trinity College MS 52 (the Book of Armagh), which therefore offer insight into the early period where the interests and aspiration of later intellectuals might be safely ruled out.

2.6. Hyparchetypes

BEL (γ)

A hyparchetype √BEL (γ) must be posited as a common source for the copies of Auraic. na nÉces in the Book of Ballymote from the 1390s55, John Beaton’s Broad Book from c. 1425 and the Great Book of Lecan from c. 1415. This group is uncontroversial. It was suggested already by Calder (1917) and was accepted by Ahlqvist (1983).

The Book of Ballymote and the Great Book of Lecan are among the most substantial preserved codices from late medieval Ireland. They are more or less contemporary and were produced within close geographical distance from one another in today’s County Sligo. John Beaton’s Broad Book was produced about 1425, probably by Ádhamh Ó Cuirnín, who is one of the scribes responsible for the Great Book of Lecan (fols. 1–21v

55 See Ruairí Ó hUiginn 2018 for a fuller discussion on the date of the Book of Ballymote. 54 and 310v–311v).56 It is therefore plausible that also John Beaton’s Broad Book has its origin in North Connacht. Ahlqvist suggests a close textual relationship between E and L (Ahlqvist 1983: 26) but does not present convincing evidence.

This means that all preserved manuscripts of this group are roughly contemporary and that they were produced in the same region. The testimony of these manuscripts is relatively homogeneous, and the demonstration of their affinity is straightforward. This group of witnesses is the one that is best served by Calder’s edition, as the text of B is given in full, while both E and L are represented in a rather consistent manner in the variant apparatus.

Although the relative uniformity of the text presented by this group is evident, none of the manuscript witnesses in this group should be dismissed as descriptus. B is relatively securely dated and is the oldest copy in the group. It may for this reason (and others— see below) not be dependent on the two others. There is in general no evidence of any portion of the Great Book of Lecan being a transcript of the Book of Ballymote (Ó Muráile 2015)—this possibility might be excluded as far as Auraic. na nÉces is concerned. Due to various omissions in E as well as to chronology (op. cit.: 23), L cannot be a transcript of E either. The presence of text in BE that is omitted in L (Calder 1917: 1892– 1925) suggests that the reverse is also out of the question.

Note also that the passages B 300–11, 1001–11, 1019–27, 1271–72, 1296–301, 1313–16, 1336–38, 1366–409, 1435–38, 1494–508, 1536–43, 1550–76, 1580–90, 1595–608, 1620, 1627–36, 1645–48, 1727–29, and 2182–259 are omitted in E, but are found in L. Such omissions are probably what made Meroney suggest that E represents an earlier recension of the work (1945: 18n1; see also Ahlqvist 1983: 26). This hypothesis is weakened by important common innovations in BE against L. The omissions might be due to editorial inference with the text or simply reluctance to admit marginalia in the exemplar into the running text. Various omissions must also be seen as mere errors during transcription as they are detrimental to the sense of the text.

56 A summary of common traits supporting the identification of the scribal hand in E is to be found in Ó Concheanainn 1975. 55

The section B fol. 179ra24–b4 (Calder 1917: 1893–1925) is also found at E fol. 25ra–b but is absent in L.57 This observation challenges Ahlqvist’s statement (1983: 26) on the close agreement between E and L against B.58 The reason for this is simple: the section is only found in B and E and is therefore likely an innovation in their common exemplar. E and L rarely agree with each other against B. The most important evidence for a common node for BE (ε) is presented in the section on the alphabet tables (see p. 214).

E occasionally provides readings that are superior to those of B.59 Some of these are of little significance, as they would have been liable to be corrected by an attentive scribe, but some are significant and provide evidence that E cannot be a transcript of B. When

E gives a fuller text than B, this is in disagreement with L (and with δ), thus due to innovation, instead of a more direct or independent line of transmission.

Calder was of the opinion that also M belonged to this family and occasionally gives readings from that witness as well. This only serves to confuse the relationship between the various copies of the text and Ahlqvist (1983: 24–25) has convincingly demonstrated that M must be separated from BEL.

57 This folio in E is damaged, especially at the bottom half of the left column where this passage is found, but it is sufficiently legible to identify it by comparison with the corresponding section in B, which is very similar also on the visual level. The section is in both manuscripts initiated by an initial ⟨A⟩, in E at l. 42. 58 Cf. the readings tuisimter E (fol. 22ra) and tuisimther L (fol. 154rb; cited by Ahlqvist as tuismither) against tuisimar B (fol. 173rb). B agrees with e.g. M (fol. 140rb) and Y (col. 519) against E and L. This is cited by Ahlqvist as evidence for a close relationship between E and L but must rather be explained through independent innovations in E and L, whereas B preserves the older reading. This is entirely plausible, as the reading in EL is the lectio facilior. The innovation is found in ELP, but not in ABDEgGMY. I have not been able to locate this passage in T, where p. 179 offers an arrangement that differs significantly from that of Y 3096–3235ff. The same innovation is seen in P (p. 85.15), but not in D (p. 8b), G (tiusimher; p. 190b) or A (tuisemor; fol. 52r). Similar minor variation might furthermore be cited in favour of the opposite conclusion, i.e. a closer connection between B and E against L, e.g. resiu rotobaidhe (B) and riasiu rotopadae (E) against riasiu reteibed (L) and riasiu rotopadae E. It must be realised that these are not significant errors (they might easily be polygenetic) and have very limited value. On the other hand, the opposition between iar n-urd coir (BEL) and iar n-aicned coir (ADEgGMPY), introducing the relevant passage (B 564ff.; Y 3227ff.; om. T), is more significant, indicating an innovation in √BEL (γ). 59 Consider 93–94 sed opera nostra diuiditur (BL) against sed opera nostra diuiduntur (E). E’s variant is the correct one and it agrees with Y. The error is relatively banal and might have been corrected by the scribe of E. 56

AEgGPY (δ)

A strong argument for the notion that the group AEgGPY derives from δ is the inclusion of a section on the Latin accentuation of the word circumdare immediately prior to the lists of the three sacred alphabets.60 This is not incorporated into the text of the older T

60 The word circundamus is formed, according to the text, by inserting the morpheme -mu- between the - a- and the -s of the 2nd sg. ending -as (circunda-mu-s). A (corrupted) paradigm of the verb in the sg. (na tri persanda huathaid) and pl. (na tri persanda ilair) follows in the gloss on this passage. The passage makes use of a couple of items of Latinate grammatical terminology (paenultima, accentus) rendered in Irish (penuilt, aiccent) that is not elsewhere found in Auraic. na nÉces, but which is found in Sg. (for the use of penuilt see Sg. 44b1, 52a15, 54b3, 120a1, 212a13; for the use of aiccent see Sg. 26a6, 213b1, 220a5). See also Sg. 169a3 on circumdare. eDIL lists no further evidence of the use of the word penuilt (eDIL s.v. peneuilt). The passage opens with a question regarding the quantity of the penultimate syllable of the form circundămus. The question is: why is this syllable short, considering that it is formed from inserting -mu- in between the -ā- and the -s of the 2nd sg. form circundās? This, perhaps a mnemotechnical rule of thumb, would logically give **circundā-mu-s, with a long penultimate vowel, which according to Priscian is not correct. This question is not taken from Priscian. The verb is athematic and the -ă- is part of the root. The problem thus arises from incorrect understanding of the morphemic structure of the verb (circum-dă-mus), where the long -ā- is interpreted as part of the verbal stem. From the point of view of historical linguistics, the long -ā- in 2nd sg. dās could be explained in a number of ways. It could for instance be a remodelling of *(di)-dōs (Sihler 1995: 544). Priscian discusses the simplex dăre in his ninth book on verbal conjugation (at GL vol. II: 471; Sg. 168b). He makes the following remarks: compound verbs made from a monosyllabic preposition and the simplex dăre follows the third conjugation. Examples cited are addis (2nd sg.), reddis, and prōdis. But circumdăre follows the first conjugation with the 2nd sg. circumdās. The explanation for this exception is that circum is a disyllabic word and rather an adverb than a preposition. Hence circumdăre is the only verb in the first conjugation that has a short vowel in the penultimate syllable in the present, imperfect, future, infinitive and preterite participle: dămus (1st pl. pres. ind. act.), dătis (2nd pl. pres. ind. act.), dăris (2nd sg. pres. ind. pass.), dătur (3rd sg. pres. ind. pass.), dăbam (1st sg. impf. ind. act.), dăbō (1st sg. fut. ind. act.), dăre (inf. pres. act.), dătus (pp. masc. nom. sg.), dătūrus (fut. part. masc. nom. sg.). The segment -da- is always short before the end of this verb. An exception to this rule is found in the 2nd sg. pres. ind. act. circumdās, but note that Priscian’s ubique ante finem corripitur might refer to the penultimate syllable, in which case the rule holds. Priscian states that hoc solum verbum primae coniugationis a paenultimam in praesenti et in praeterito imperfecto et futuro et infinito et participio praeteriti corripit [...], and further that ‘da’ enim ubique ante finem corripitur in hoc verbo simplici [...] (GL vol. II: 47, ll. 13–17). This information is not included in e.g. Donatus’s Ars maior, but is given in the commentary by Malsachanus (ed. Löfstedt 1965: 215, 16ff.), who also gives circumdo and pessumdo as examples. I have not found it in Murethach (ed. Holtz 1977). Eutyches has the information in the second book de finalitatibus of his De uerbo (GL vol. V: 447–88)—including the example (and an additional example not in Priscian, namely pessum-do). Eutyches’ De verbo was read in Ireland, as is evidenced by the existence of Paris, Bibliothèque 57 but is found on a slip inserted after p. 158 in the manuscript. Variants from this text have been included in Calder’s edition of the passage from Y (4101–35). Ahlqvist placed T with AEgGPY, but this is contradicted by the evidence presented here, as well as the frequent agreement of the types BT ≠ Y and TY ≠ B and T ≠ BY on significant variants.

The passage is marked out as ‘canonical text’ with interlinear glossing in smaller script in EgPY.61 This gloss covers only the first half of the passage, and the format of text and gloss is in itself of considerable interest and is reminiscent of the layout of bilingual manuscripts with a main text and translation. The various preserved manuscript versions of this section are closely related and the agreement on its location, especially, perhaps, as this seems to be arbitrary, means that it was to be found at this place in their common exemplar. In this manuscript, it has most probably been incorporated from a source independent of the textual tradition of Auraic. na nÉces. The gloss on the passage employs the phrase lasin Laitneoir, familiar from the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces. The addition can be illustrated as follows, where the broken line indicates that the passage has not been incorporated into the text of T: 62

nationale de France MS Latin 10400 (fols. 109–10) and MS Latin 11411 (fols. 124–25), which contain a fragment of the text produced in Ireland in the ninth or tenth century. 61 Its being part of the archetype is out of the question and this passage therefore challenges the criteria of demarcation employed in Ahlqvist’s edition. 62 The use of the petrified infixed -d- (fodera) goes back to the glosses (e.g. Wb. 3c33 and Sg. 120a4). This use is found also when the verb (fo·fera) is followed by its object, as in Y 4101. This form continues in use in the later period (eDIL s.v. fo-fera quotes examples from the Annals of the Four Masters) and is transformed into a prepositional phrase. 58

2.7. Stemma codicum The preserved Auraicept na nÉces might reasonably be seen as the result of a merger between originally separate tracts, of conflations of different copies of the text itself (i.e. pre-archetypal contamination of the tradition; this was already suggested by Calder 1917: xlvii, see pp. 64–65 below), and of concatenation of tracts that came to be associated with it. The last of these processes went on both before and after the split(s) in the transmission.

Modern views on the unity of the text have been greatly determined by the make-up of Calder’s edition (Hayden 2018) but it has medieval precedence, as is evidenced by the transmission of the text and of meta-textual commentary in the manuscripts. Thus, Auraic. na nÉces is typically presented along with cognate matter in thematic clusters dealing with grammar and poetics in a broad sense and might have served as a catalyst for linguistic thought—its development as a compendium facilitated the inclusion of related material and obscured its outer edges as a text. The question-and-answer-driven discourse is mainly fueled by etymological derivations and could therefore conveniently accommodate other small tracts with related subject-matter. The etymological inquiries are introduced without regard for context and the result is a rather disorganized text. In important ways Auraic. na nÉces therefore shares characteristics with so-called ‘open texts’ or ‘open recensions’, such as for instance the various medieval Irish glossaries (see

59 especially Moran 2019). A decisive period in the history of the reception of the text is in this way encoded into the inherited text itself. Ahlqvist suggests that c. 1100 represents the end of the common tradition for the commentaries on Auraic. na nÉces (1983: 32)— in other words, this is a rough terminus ante quem for the archetype (see also Thurneysen

1928: 283). This is also the rough date of α in the stemma.

The composite character that the text has assumed through its manuscript transmission is shared with many texts from the Irish Middle Ages and the editorial challenges posed by Auraic. na nÉces are therefore by no means unique. Since a large segment of the text is transmitted only as quotations with commentary it is difficult to decide with any degree of certainty what the original composition might have been like. Ahlqvist’s reconstructed text does not have a very coherent structure and there is a possibility that the archetype was designed as a collection of pericopes from an older text or a collection of texts. Parallels to this are found in CIH (see Breatnach 2016: 113–32). All of these factors greatly complicate the task of arranging the main lines of the textual tradition in a stemma codicum. It is tempting to imagine the existence of an independent set of commentary/gloss in order to explain the divergences, and some evidence that suggests the existence of such material is found in e.g. the Lecan Glossary and, in a somewhat different way, in the independent passage from Auraic. na nÉces in the Great Book of Lecan.

The tradition might to some extent be compared to that of Lebor Gabála Érenn (ed. Macalister 1932–42), which presents us with a similarly complex tradition. Its editor, R. A. S. Macalister, refused to set up a stemma due to the complexity of the material. In more recent articles, R. M. Scowcroft has carried out important work on the tradition and has suggested (1987) that two principles allow for the rough reconstruction of the developments of the text: the first premise is that the text is the product of a mindset that to some extent differs from the one that is presupposed in classical textual criticism because the text has a marked tendency towards growth. The apograph is therefore likely to contain the text of its exemplar with additions (cf. the Donatan tradition as analyzed in Holtz 1983: 447). The growth of the text is of course accompanied by corruption and loss as in any manually transmitted literature.

Sometimes repetitions are signalled by markers such as Y’s amal adrubrumair romaind (4148–49), and the frequent use of the abbreviation ⁊rl. (ocus araile ‘and so on’) suggests that the suppressed content was expected to be known. Many omissions/abbreviations

60 of this kind are confined to either recension, so that the content is usually possible to reconstruct by cross-reference—it is interesting to note that internal citations in the text are in all cases (that I am aware of) themselves inherited, which means that the precise wording of doublets within a single manuscript witness will vary. In brief, the reiteration of passages in the various recensions of Auraic. na nÉces confirms that their common source was a complex and, from a teleological point of view, mature version of the text.

61

The number of hypothetical units (α–ε), the evidence for which is presented above, as well as in the discussion on the alphabet tables in Chapter 9, has been kept to a minimum. Even so, the stemma remains provisional and is offered here mainly as a complement to the analysis in order to illustrate the present stage of inquiry. It might not be very efficient: when it comes to illustrating the addition of material, through glosses and commentary, the traditional stemma is not very apt.63

The dashed lines represent the horizontal transmission (or contamination) that has been suggested by Ahlqvist (1983: 15–26), namely the glosses on D (D1–3), which contain material from γ and δ (or descendants) that has not been incorporated into the main text. With this exception, I have not indicated contamination or external influence on the tradition, much of which would at any rate have happened before α.

63 Sometimes such addition borders on anthology, as when Y 2616–44 introduces two different but not wholly different accessus topics regarding the origin of Auraic. na nÉces. B 63–78 gives only the first of these, while the second is an elaboration of the details preserved at the introduction to the Book of Ferchertne at B 735–38 = Y 3493–96. 62

Special attention should be given to the following features, which distinguish this stemma from those implicit in Calder (1917) and Ahlqvist (1983): 1) β, which unites γ and δ, rather than M and D as in Ahlqvist (1983: 24–26)64, and explains the relation of

T to γ on the one hand and to δ on the other; 2) ε, not recognized before (against Ahlqvist 1983: 26 and Meroney 1945: 18); 3) the absence of a node uniting MD (against Ahlqvist

1983); 4) the hypothesis Y = √G.65 The two hyparchetypes γ and δ, on the other hand, are both implicit in Calder and Ahlqvist’s introductions, and also the rather obvious α was recognized by Calder and, in clearer words, by Thurneysen.

Several of the later witnesses (A, G, P) show corrections of various information (Greek letter names etc.) that have been carried out with resort to material that did not reach the scribes through their main exemplars of Auraic. na nÉces.66 This is somewhat infortunate for present purposes, as the information in the alphabet tables otherwise is highly apt for a stemmatological analysis. I have sought to base the stemma above on features that evade this problem, and the result is largely compatible with the investigation of other parts of the text.

64 Based on a re-evaluation of the distinction between Trennfehler and Bindefehler. 65 To ascertain that Y is in fact the antigraph of G would of course demand a very close study of the entire text of both copies. The situation is complicated somewhat by the fact that various readings in G have been corrected from other sources. 66 A curious example is mentioned by Ahlqvist (1983: 27), namely the fact that A, alone among the witnesses of Auraic. na nÉces, has the (presumably) correct reading honorificabilitutinetatibus (60v15; cf. GL vol. VIII: 164.18; Hagen 1875: 371). The word is found in the works of Petrus Grammaticus, the main teacher of Charlemagne, who flourished in the eighth century. See for instance Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 522 (saec. ix in.). The word can therefore have entered Auraic. na nÉces at an early stage. But the word is also found in a variety of writings from a later period. Among these are texts such as Huguccio Pisanus’s Magnae Derivationes or Liber derivationum, the early etymological treatise from the very end of the 12th century, Dante Alighieri’s De vulgari eloquentia (second book, vii), Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Adagia (a collection of Greek and Latin proverbs) and François Rabelais’ The Complaynt of Scotland from 1549. The word is furthermore mentioned by the character Costard in the fifth act of William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (‘... for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus’). To my mind this relatively broad circulation (in England also including inscriptions on tableware from c. 1400) of the term might indicate that the correct form of the ‘longest word in Latin’ could have reached the scribe of A independently and enabled him to perform an emendation that distinguishes his copy from the rest.

63

The pre-archetypal contamination might be envisaged as follows:

The two nodes ω1 and ω2 are suggested by Calder’s observation that ‘the present text [e.g. B, Y] is made up from at least two versions which sometimes contained the same material in different order. Hence no doubt comes the disjointed character of many passages’ (Calder 1917: xlvii). Note that one of the two examples Calder adduced, viz. B 1486ff. against B 1502ff., could be more efficiently explained by assuming that a gloss has been incorporated into the text twice, which is demonstrably the case at B 293– 303/B 316–21 (on the eight parts of speech, see pp. 162–65). The reduplicated passages do not allow us to draw detailed conclusions on the different versions, however, and so the exact distribution of the content between ω1 and ω2, respectively, is uncertain. The broken line above indicates that the text of ω1 was contaminated with content from ω2. I would be inclined to think that this conflation marks the end of the common transmission and that ω1 (and, presumably, also ω2) was a text that was relatively close to

α, with glosses and commentary. The notion of a pre-archetypal conflation or contamination is important because that stage of the transmission has greatly characterized the text in its present state. Part of the variation between the later recensions is the response to the textual arrangement imposed by this merger. The incorporation of some text from the so-called Auraicept Muman could have happened in

64

β, as it is absent in M.67 Nothing more can be said about this text, however, and its relation to Ω and ω1/ω2 must remain undecided.

67 Calder cites Auraicept Muman in his glossary under the entry for Fer Muman (Calder 1917: 370; see also Thurneysen 1928: 286). McManus (1991: 143) reads it as Auraicept of Munster (so also van Hamel 1946: 330 and Ahlqvist 1983: 26n28). 65

3. The Linguistic Dating of Auraicept na nÉces A full discussion of the language of Auraicept na nÉces is outside the scope of the present thesis, but some observations that are important to the argument are dealt with in the following paragraphs.68 The features discussed below are, as a methodological necessity, not limited to the canonical core as edited by Ahlqvist. Neither are they more frequent there. Some features occur only in text that is not included in the edition, but this is not of great importance, given the fact that the text we find there is so short and therefore contains a somewhat limited range of features.

The complexity of the language in which Auraic. na nÉces is preserved was already noted by Calder (1917: xxiii): ‘The language is Middle Irish, but the basis, which has been much worked over, all belongs to the Old Irish period’. Calder provided only a few scattered examples of Old Irish usage in support of this claim in the preface to his edition (1917: xxv).

Ahlqvist (1983: 36–39) gives a comprehensive account of the verbal and pronominal systems of the portion of the text included in his edition. References are to the para- graphs of the edition itself, and I have therefore included some of Ahlqvist’s findings below with references either to Calder’s edition or to the manuscripts. This gives a more precise idea of the degree to which the various usages are preserved in the textual tradition. I include some new observations that are in line with Ahlqvist’s account.

The Old Irish (or Early Middle Irish) date of parts of the text and commentary is uncontroversial. Calder noted (op. cit.: xxiv) that even the commentary features Old Irish usage, viz. the recognition of three grammatical genders and the preserved distinction between the accusative and dative cases after prepositions (B 1651ff.). We also find confusion between cases in the paradigms (e.g. at B 1778ff.), such as i firu no i [MS. a] feraib, which is given as both ‘ingressive’ (1782) and ‘locative’ (1783) plural. The Old Irish distribution between the cases has been lost on the way—in the singular the distinction is preserved (accusative singular i fer as opposed to dative singular i fir), and there is no doubt that the basic framework must have been created whilst this distinction was still maintained.

68 Stifter’s 2013 article on the dating of early Irish law texts provides a few criteria that could be applied to the older strata of Auraic. na nÉces in order to further test the evidence for the date assigned to it by its latest editor. This I intend to do in my continued research. 66

Ahlqvist notes a few forms that would seem to push the date of composition back into the Early Old Irish period (1983: 36). This early date seems to me to rest on slender evidence, and a more thorough investigation is called for. Such forms will therefore be discussed separately (pp. 74-77). A similar notion of the antiquity of Auraic. na nÉces seems to account for the fact that several forms have been quoted in the revised translation of Thurneysen’s Handbuch des Alt-Irischen (Binchy and Bergin 1946). With one important exception (condaib at pp. 274, 503), these have all been quoted from the text of B.69 An analysis of the orthography and the language of the individual manuscript copies from a comparative perspective remains a desideratum.

It is important to note that the appearance of sporadic old forms in a text like Auraic. na nÉces is no guarantee for the date of the composition as a unit. As noted by Binchy in the introduction to his edition of Críth Gablach (1979), with reference to the law texts:

Every tract is a compilation consisting of several strata, and as a rule it is only the latest of these strata that we can hope to date. The compiler who gave the tract the form in which it has descended to the law schools wove into it materials of a much earlier epoch (Binchy 1979: xiii).

The evidence cited by Ahlqvist for the early date of Auraic. na nÉces consists of the following three archaisms: 1) the prepositional pronoun con(d)aib (see Th. Gr.: § 436; § 830), 2) the neuter gender of fid, and 3) the archaic accusative singular form bein (Th. Gr.: § 291.1). In the following, I begin with a discussion of Old Irish features, and I thereafter turn to Ahlqvist’s Early Old Irish features and such features in general.

69 As they therefore represent a clear departure from the general methodological approach of Thurneysen’s synchronic grammar, the following forms should be excluded in any future revision of the standard grammar:

- The form uinnsiu (B 1153), quoted at p. 211. - The irrelevant spelling næde (B 1022) (= the -io-stem noíde, the numeral ‘9’ in substantive use with the neuter suffix -de), quoted at p. 243. - The pronominal form sib-si (B 650), quoted at p. 254. - The form gabiam at Calder (1917: 259.5087), which is not from Auraic. na nÉces, as indicated in the grammar (p. 64), but from the Book of Leinster copy of the Treḟocal Tract. - Finally, the paradigm mentioned at p. 307 (B 649–51). This does not have any plausible value as a source to Old Irish usage (see discussion and various suggestions in Ahlqvist 1983: 60).

67

3.1 The Nominal System The article The disyllabic article inna is attested in the following cases: inna foclu (B 354), inna lethgutai ceatamus (B 446 = Y 2904; 2946), intan bith fo nihilus ina guthaige (B 970), int aichnius inna ræt (B 1100), inna sillab ⁊ inna n-aimser (B 1412), inna filideachta (B 1324), inna firu a inchosc ilair (B 1773), inna mna (B 1836 = Y 5021), berla innani sin (B 142), secip fid ina sgripthar (Y 4869), la filedu ina scuili cetna (B 1762). The ratio between inna and na (compare Stifter 2013: 183–84) is not a useful criterion in this case as none of the occurrences in the text can be metrically secured—most are furthermore found in just one recension. The tendency to replace the older form with the younger one is very strong.

The neuter gender Features of the nominal system that indicate an Old Irish date are highlighted in the quotations below. I quote from only one of the manuscripts/editions: agreement between the recensions on features other than the one under discussion is therefore not implied.70

Remnants of the neuter gender have been preserved in the text and the neuter gender is also recognized explicitly. It should be noted that diagnostic examples are mainly confined to a few key items of vocabulary such as bélra/bérla ‘language’. The following is an exhaustive list of forms in B and Y that show nasalization following a neuter noun or adjective in the nominative singular or preservation of the neuter article, distinguishable in the nominative/accusative singular:

Nasalization after the nominative singular: leithiu quam cech mbescna (B 35 = Y 2317)71, berla nEbraidi (B 188–89 = Y 2488–89; Y 2498; Y 2503; Y 2504), berla

70 The format is as follows: ‘=’ identifies the passage in one of the recensions with the corresponding passage in the others, while ‘;’ is used to separate different occurrences of the same example. 71 L has seach cach mbescna (f. 151r). 68

n-edarscartha (B 198–99 = Y 2511; B 210),72 ni deilm ndil (B 546 = Y 3182)73, cach ndialt (B 1231).

The nominative singular neuter article: a mberla (B 198; 207; M 141va29; D p. 3b30; 3b31; 3b40), a mberla n-edarscartha (B 198–99), a mbelra (B 1046), a fid (Y 2796; Y 3950), gurup ȩdh a fid (E 23ra, l. 9 from bottom = Y 3950)74.

The examples with initial n- are potentially ambiguous, unlike those with e.g. initial m-, due to the ninth-century reduction of the vowel in the definite article and the subsequent similarity in vocalism between the neuter nominative singular article a N and the masculine and feminine nominative/accusative singular article in (Th. Gr.: § 245n), which led to confusion in orthography. The preposition i N ‘in’ is relatively frequently rendered with ⟨a⟩ in our manuscripts. Also note the following example of nasalization after da ‘two’: da n-ai (B 393 = Y 2782).75 An example of nasalization after the nominative singular of a masculine noun (gním n-ingnad n-indligthech), attributable to the archetype, is presented at a later stage.

The disappearance of a grammatically distinct neuter gender is initiated already in the Old Irish period (Vgl. Gr. vol. II: § 408) but takes place mainly during the Middle Irish period (see Th. Gr.: § 245) and may be observed in 12th-century manuscripts where there is fluctuation between features belonging to the neuter and to the masculine genders (McCone 2005: 143–44).

72 Note that cach/cech in Old Irish would be followed by nasalization of neuter nouns or any noun in the acc. sg., but that nasalization later spreads to other contexts (see eDIL s.v. cach/cech). 73 The example is taken from a poetical quotation meant to illustrate the use of neut. for masc./fem. The scribes seem to have misunderstood the use of the neut. def. art., as might be seen from a comparison of B 544 is ed a cheann ‘it is his head’ (with lenition, i.e. similar to the masc. 3rd sg. poss. pron.) and Y 3174 is ed in cend ‘that is the head’ (with the masc. def. art.), which both probably derive from is ed a cenn ‘that is the head’ with the neut. def. art. 74 This is the form that supports Ahlqvist’s reading at § 6,12 and his observation that neuter gender is conserved in the canonical core of the text. Note the agreement between E and Y. B and L have the masc. article here. The Würzburg glosses invariably treat fid as a masc. -u-stem (Wodtko 2001: 427; see also Th. Gr.: § 307). eDIL mentions that the word is sometimes followed by nasalization in the nom. sg. The word is the Irish reflex of Proto-Celtic *widus (based on the equation with Modern Welsh gwŷdd). 75 Another example of this might be seen in da fid (B 1391; 1397 etc.) without mark of lenition after da (thus perhaps to be read as /v/, i.e. as a neuter). 69

Consider also the inflexion of uindim (Ahlqvist 1983: 50 § 4,3; Calder 1917: 647, 3347) which contrasts the use of uinn-se ‘he is seen’ and uinn-si ‘she is seen’ for the masculine and feminine respectively, with the passive form ondar ‘it is seen’ for the neuter. See the comprehensive discussion of these form in Schumacher 2004: 381–85, where he

e suggests the Proto-Celtic reconstruction ?*u-n-d- /o- ‘(den Blick, das Augenmerk) auf etwas richten’. Schumacher notes that the association with the three grammatical genders in Auraic. na nÉces is unhistorical (2004: 382). The contrast between emphasizing particles and the passive form does obviously not belong to the grammatical system of the language (cf. B 705).

Some traces of the neuter gender have been preserved in the manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces. The evidence is relatively scanty and is mostly provided by key vocabulary items that could have formed part of petrified expressions (e.g. bérla n-etarscartha), but the preservation of the neuter gender at the time of composition is corroborated by the explicit recognition of three genders including the neuter in the discussion of indsce (Ahlqvist 1983: 49 § 3; Calder 1917: 520ff., 3023ff.), as well as the recognition of neuter nouns (nem, cend) and pronouns (ed). The preservation of the neuter gender in the discussion in the text itself is significant and carries far more weight for the dating of the text than do forms preserved in e.g. the paradigms, accompanying the text in some of the manuscripts. The forms are guaranteed by context insofar as they appear as an integral part of the composition.

The superlative The superlative form of the adjective (for which see a discussion in Breatnach 1994) is attested in a few instances in Auraic. na nÉces. The following exhaustive list is based on the text of B and Y, including sections that are not found in Ahlqvist’s text, which means that this feature cannot be used to distinguish text and commentary.

Superlative as a predicate of the copula: is e ba soom din schoil (B 25 = Y 2309), ba huaisliamh dib (B 256), morshesiur ba huaisleam and (B 258–59), ed is grannium sain (B 548), pa uaislem don sgoil (Y 2558), ba airecam diph (Y 2405), a fidh is moaum (Y 2796), is airechdam bes and (Y 3218), is lugam a serbi (Y 3489), ar is innti is moum (Y 3821), airdem dosaiph dair (Y 4275–76), sruithem aicdhe feorus (Y 4303), cinntechem oldas aipgitir Eupra (Y 4367), a n-us moam de (Y 4497). The pronominal system Class-A infixed pronouns: no-m·charthar-sa (M), no-t·charthar-su (M), no-n·charthar-ni (D), no-bar·charthar-si (D). 70

All these forms are found in the paradigm provided under the heading etargaire persainni i cessadh ‘distinction of person in the passive’. The forms have obviously suffered greatly in transmission in the shorter recension (BEL all show corrupted readings of both infixed pronoun and the passive forms of the verb). The 2nd pl. -bar- is an analogical Middle Irish form based on the possessive pronoun for and the similarity between the possessive first- and second-person singular pronouns and the corresponding infixed pronouns (see Breatnach 1994: 267).76 No manuscript gives the correct Old Irish no-b·carthar-si (see Ahlqvist 1983: 60–61). Class A of infixed pronouns is frequently found in Middle Irish texts and is not a strong criterion for dating.

Infixed pronouns (continued) class C: 3rd sg. masc.: is e ro-d·n-alt asa oetid (B 25 = Y 2309), con-da·delighetar tria n-airde (B 984).

The neuter pronoun required in Old Irish in the construction ron(d)·gab (paraphrasing the present tense of the substantive verb) (compulsory e.g. at B 1038) is not preserved in any manuscript.

Ahlqvist notes that the pronominal system presented in Auraic. na nÉces has been thoroughly modernized with respect to the Old Irish system (1983: 60). With reference to the forms fadén (sg.) and fadessin (pl.), he adds that ‘there is a reasonable possibility that our text records a state of the language earlier than that of the glosses’ (1983: 60). His argument is that the lack of some of the forms presented in the Old Irish paradigm at Th. Gr.: § 485 could be due to the text pre-dating a fuller development of the paradigm. Auraic. na nÉces distinguishes only two forms, one in the singular and the other in the plural (see further eDIL s.v. fadéin). Ahlqvist also mentions the opposite possibility, namely that the forms in Auraic. na nÉces post-date the state depicted in the standard grammar and instead represent a step towards paradigmatic levelling. This seems to me to be the preferable explanation—not only because it is the only methodologically acceptable one, basing the analysis of the grammatical system on contemporary documents—but also because other pronominal systems (infixed pronouns and absolute forms of the personal pronouns) in the text contain younger elements as well. The two forms in Auraic. na nÉces are found in the Old Irish period, but continue in use as mainstream Middle Irish forms, used irrespectively of gender, number and person.

76 The analogical form is predominant in the Book of Leinster copy of the Táin Bó Cúailnge and it is also predominant in the tenth-century SR (Breatnach 1994: 267). 71

The forms themselves are not sufficiently well explained (see McCone 1994: 189; also the attempt at reconstruction with reference to earlier literature in Schrijver 1997: 72– 78).77

Varia The loss of the dative plural must have been a feature of the common exemplar of BEL (see Thurneysen 1928) and is also frequent in M. The Old Irish dative plural is never found in the article suffixed to prepositions.

3.2 The Verbal System There are a few unambiguous examples78 of nasalizing relative clauses introduced by in tan: intan ismberar (Y 4757–58), intan do·n-occaibh79 uath cend douiph (Y 3898–99; 3902).

Note the use of the transitive deponent verb deiligidir ‘separates’ in MD, and on the other hand the use in B of what is probably a reanalyzed form of ·dechrigetar (Ahlqvist 1983: 37), for which Ahlqvist cites no manuscript evidence, from the verb dechraigidir ‘divides, separates’: no-s·deochratar (B 523); no-s·deligidar (M f. 140ra16), no-s·delighedar (D p. 6b18–19). A gloss on this verbal form is found in both M and D, which have inherited the presumably obsolete form, while the gloss is absent in B and Y, which both have the alternative verb dechraid. This form was probably better understood at a later stage of transmission. The verb deiligidir is used in a grammatical context in Sg. 6a19: .i. inter f. ⁊ alias mutas .i. fogur tantum no-da·deligedar fri muta [...] (‘i.e. between “f” and other mutes, i.e. the sound only distinguishes it from mutes [...]’) and 28a15: .i. cith .m. namma scríbthar and huare nád·deligedar fri prenomen cosmail do (‘i.e. even if “m” only is written there: because it does not distinguish from (another) praenomen like it’).80 Also dechraigidir is found on several occasions with the meaning ‘differ’, ‘stand apart’: 28a14, 46a9, 155b5, 177b1, and 202a4. The attestation of the verb deiligidir in a kindred context in Sg. would have justified its adoption in Ahlqvist’s edition (at § 3,4; compare § 6,3: conda·deligitar) as the lectio vetustior.

77 Schrijver mentions the presence of the paradigm of this pronoun in Auraic. na nÉces, but that evidence does not square well with that of the glosses, as he suggests (1997: 75). 78 The four examples of as·mberar noted by Ahlqvist (1983: 37) are not well preserved in the manuscripts. 79 This form I take as a corruption of do·n-eccaim, the 3rd sg. pres. ind. of the verb do·ecmaing ‘meet’. See e.g. Y 4323 for the use of this verb in a similar context. 80 Text and translation from the St Gall Prician Glosses (ed. Bauer, Hofman, Moran. URL: http://www.stgallpriscian.ie). 72

Preterite and perfect in narrative sections The text edited by Ahlqvist contains no unaugmented preterite forms in the active. A couple of forms are found in the passive, on the other hand, namely the preterite passive singular ar·ícht (from ar·icc ‘invents’, ‘comes upon’), plural ar·íchta, and the preterite passive singular do·aiselbad (from do·aissilbi ‘assigns’) (see Ahlqvist 1983: 38).

3.3 Phonology: Hiatus The following stanza is metrically defective as it has been preserved:

Esse feda is fretede ferr duib a aicne occaib in blog æoir thepide techtas i n-elluch focail (B 899–902).

‘Esse feda, essence of a vowel, it is to be studied, better for you to have the knowledge of it; the fragment cut off of air which it possesses in composing a word’ (Calder 1917: 69).

Reconstruction:

Esse feda (i)’s fretede, ferr duib a aicne occaib; in blog aëir thepide techtas i n-elluch focail.

The form aer must be disyllabic to make the scheme 73 + 72 + 73 + 72. See Stifter 2013: 184–85 on hiatus as a somewhat problematic dating criterion. Note the parallel between in blog aëir thepide and vox est aer ictus in Donatus (Holtz 1981: 603.2; also in Pseudo- Sergius at GL vol. IV: 487.4).81

81 The expression is further found in Donatus’s contemporaries Pseudo-Probus (GL vol. IV: 47.2) and Marius Victorinus (Mariotti 1967: 66.9; also in GL vol. VI: 3–31) as well as earlier in the third-century Sacerdos (GL vol. VI: 429.19). 73

3.4 The Criteria Supporting a Late 7th- or an Early 8th-Century Date Ahlqvist adduces three features as the evidence for an Early Old Irish date for Auraicept na nÉces, and these are therefore discussed separately in the following paragraphs.

A hapax legomenon: conaib B 954 condaib (Th. Gr.: § 436, § 830d.), also conaib (M), is a hapax legomenon and is possibly an archaic form. The preposition co N almost never occurs in the corpus with suffixed third-person pronouns and this is therefore an exception to the usual complementary distribution of the prepositions la H and co N where la replaces co in this position, as well as before the relative particle (s)a N. The so-called Scéla Eogain ⁊ Cormaic, edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 610, fol. 96ra35ff. (ed. Máirín O Daly 1975: 64–73) contains an example of co N with the suffixed 3rd singular neuter (conu) at l. 436. This example is cited by Thurneysen (Th. Gr.: 503, § 830d).

The manuscript evidence for this form is very good and there can be no doubt that the form was present in the archetype. Its value for the date of the text is unclear, however.

The neuter gender of the terminological unit fid ‘letter’, ‘vowel’ Among the indications of an Early Old Irish date of composition is the evidence that the word fid ‘letter’ is treated as a neuter noun. The arguments (for which see Ahlqvist 1983: 36, 61–62) for this appear to be well-founded, and the relevant occurrences in the text (ibid.) have good support in the manuscripts (including in phrases such as is ed a fid, with agreement with the neuter pronoun). Consequently, the archetype probably treated fid in part as a neuter, in part as a masculine noun. Ahlqvist takes the neuter gender of this noun to be one of the ‘genuinely old’ features that allow the text to be dated to the Early Old Irish period. The loss of the neuter in the ninth to tenth centuries is a well- known development, conditioned not least by the lack of difference in the vocalism in the nominative and accusative singular of the article, i.e. lack of distinction between neuter a N as opposed to masculine and feminine in (see Th. Gr.: § 245n.), and the presence of etymologically correct neuter forms is therefore an in-dication of an Old Irish origin.

Two difficulties present themselves: first of all, the neuter gender of fid does not receive much support from within the Irish corpus. The Würzburg glosses (Wb.) treat fid ‘tree’ as a masculine noun, but they do not provide examples that are informative with respect to which declensional class it belongs (see Kavanagh and Wodtko 2001: 427). Sg. gives the following gloss on esculetum: escalchaill .i. fid arddmár (Thes. Pal. vol. II: 107; Sg. 74

53a10) ‘a wood of Italian oak, .i. a very tall tree’ (ibid.). The word is not followed by nasalization and is consequently not a neuter in this source. There are a couple of examples of fid followed by nasalization in later sources, e.g. Fid nGabli (LL 159a50, 216b) (see eDIL s.v. fid).

Perhaps a more important objection is that, on comparative grounds, fid is not expected to be a neuter noun in Early Old Irish. It continues Proto-Celtic *widus (< *u̯idhu-, compare Proto-Germanic *widuz, giving Old English wudu, Old Norse viðr etc.) which also gives Welsh gwŷdd (fem.) ‘trees’ and Bretonic gwez (see Vgl. Gr. I: 41, § 29). It is more or less consistently treated as a masculine -u-stem in the Irish corpus. Deviation from this in Auraic. na nÉces, and especially the fact that the manuscripts agree on this matter, might rather be taken to indicate that the archetype belongs to a period when the neuter gender was disappearing, especially considering the fact that the word would originally be expected to be a masculine noun. The inconsistent treatment of the word fid in the archetype is therefore perhaps due to hypercorrection (consider the nasalization after the masculine noun gním), although this hypothesis might be contradicted by the possibly neuter plural form fid.

The paradigms The paradigms appended to Auraic. na nÉces present the most convincing evidence of material that predates c. 700. Ahlqvist observed that:

The section on declensions is old (Thurneysen 1927, 286), but seems to me, partly on the evidence supplied above, and partly on internal grounds, originally to have been an independent tract, which came to be associated with the Auraicept proper simply because it too contained matter that was felt to be important to the study of language (Ahlqvist 1983: 18).

All forms in the paradigm of ben ‘woman’ developed regularly from Proto-Indo- European (PIE) and the difference between the forms of the stem in the nominative/accusative singular on the one hand and in the dative/genitive singular on the other is due (following McCone 1994: 100) to the proterokinetic pattern of accentuation and ablaut alternation of this noun in PIE, where the accent moved between the root (strong cases, nom./voc./acc. sg.) and the suffix (weak cases).82 The paradigm

82 Noting that this noun provides key evidence for this alternation in PIE (Sihler 1995: 321, § 311a). See also Pokorny 1959: 473–74, s.v. g  nā as well as Brugmann 1886: § 428a, § 437a and, especially, § 520. 75 was levelled to some extent at an early stage of the Old Irish period (from Wb. onwards, see Th. Gr.: § 294.1) through the replacement of the regular accusative singular bein

w (< Common Celtic *ben-em < PIE *g én-H2-ṃ) with mnaí (< Common Celtic *bn-ai w a < PIE *g n-éH2-ey; e.g. Wb. 10 10 mnái gl. mulierem), taken over from the dative singular, which might have been motivated by the correspondence between these two declensional forms in the majority of feminine nouns (e.g. the -ā-stem acc./dat. sg. túaith and the -iā-stem acc./dat. sg. soilsi) and would point to a date in the early eighth century for this part of the treatise (Thurneysen 1928: 287).83 McCone (1994: 100) notes that bein is found occasionally in the dative singular, but that this form quickly fell out of use.84 In the paradigms of B (e.g. 1830–45), however, both forms are given as alternatives after prepositions that take either the accusative or the dative in Old Irish.

There are therefore two distinct possibilities. The first is that the inherited accusative singular (bein) is in fact preserved from a paradigm that was put to parchment in a language that predates that of Wb. I can see no strong reason to exclude this possibility. In such a scenario, the paradigms—or perhaps only the earliest of them (see the development suggested in Ahlqvist 1983: 29–31), representing cases also found in Latin—may well be from the Early Old Irish period, but this has no bearing on the dating of Auraic. na nÉces as a whole. In stating that the paradigms are from an independent tract, but also using bein as a dating criterion for our text, Ahlqvist does not draw the logical conclusion of the first observation: namely, that the ‘independent tract’ may be— indeed is likely to be—older than Auraic. na nÉces. This is important, since the form bein is potentially the strongest indication of an Early Old Irish date.

The second possibility is that the paradigms were written down at a somewhat later stage, where the analogy had instead affected the dative singular (mnaí >> bein). There

83 The relationship between the nom. sg. ben (/n/) and the acc. sg. bein (/n j/) corresponds to that in for instance the -ā-stems (nom. sg. túath (/θ/) against acc. sg. túaith (/θ j/). McCone (1994: 100) derives the neuter noun bé ‘woman’, preserved as a poetic and legal term, from an anomalous vocative form *ben that originated due to the loss of the laryngeal consonant in pausa. Andrew L. Sihler (1995: 321) offers a slightly different explanation of the relationship between the two vocabulary units and suggests that PIE

w N *g én-H2 resulted in the Old Irish neuter bé , while ben (fem.) must be from a remodeled stem such as CC *benā. 84 Thurneysen remarks (1928: 288–89) that the dative forms preserved at B 1833 = Y 5020 (bein) are erroneous, and one might speculate whether they represent the older analogous form or scribal ‘hypercorrection’ based on the preservation of the old accusative in the paradigms they copied. 76 is evidence elsewhere in the corpus for both analogical developments, although the replacement of the accusative singular with the dative singular is the solution that prevailed. It might further be noted that at least the first of these developments towards levelling of the paradigm would be reversible in theory, given that the necessary components for analogy were transmitted by the remaining forms. So we might set up the following proportion:

túath (nom. sg.) : túaith (acc. sg.) :: ben (nom. sg.) : X (acc. sg.), where X = bein.

This equation would involve analogy with the pattern of the common -ā-stem nouns. In the paradigms, both forms are found after prepositions that can govern the accusative and dative cases. This must be taken as the result of the fact that the distinction in meaning conveyed by the choice of case was no longer part of the language of the scribes.

3.5 Early Old Irish Phonological Features and Old Irish Mergers With regard to the eclectic method employed in the edition, Ahlqvist notes:

Due to the many manuscripts involved, it is often possible to find one that will produce the expected Old Irish forms. In some cases, however, it seems more than likely that a possible archaism is, in a particular manuscript, at any rate, due to a scribal innovation rather than the preservation of a genuinely old form (Ahlqvist 1983: 36).

The shifting representation of /ǝ/ in later manuscripts indeed makes it easy to find orthographical variants that superficially resemble Early Old Irish forms with preserved vowel quality in unstressed syllables. This does not mean that such orthographical variants have evidential value. The following section will suggest that the relevant phonological parameters would likely have been confused or lost altogether already in the first period of transmission due to the change in the phonological structure of the language.

The Latin lives of Saint Patrick preserve a number of Irish words and proper names that show various seventh-century orthographical features. These have been discussed by Fergus Kelly in an appendix in Bieler’s edition (1979: 242–48), to which the reader is referred for examples of the various traits mentioned below. The seventh-century Patrician biographies, Muirchú’s Vita Patricii and Tírechán’s Collectanea, are both preserved in Dublin, Trinity College MS 52, the Book of Armagh, dated to the beginning of the ninth century (completed before the death of Ferdomnach in 845/846). The Book of Armagh also contains the so-called Additamenta (fols. 16rb–18vb), which supplement

77

Tírechán’s account (or related material; see Bieler 1979: 46) largely through the medium of Irish. The Additamenta are interestingly ended with an apology for the use of the vernacular. If compared to texts preserved in late medieval manuscripts, the line of transmission is relatively short, and the sources stand in closer proximity to the original.

The linguistic evidence offered by the Irish names of Muirchú’s Vita Patricii is consistent with the internal indications towards a date of composition before c. 700. They preserve the distinction between unstressed /e/ and /o/, which during the early eighth century merge as /ə/ (see discussion in Stifter 2013: 178–79). The monophthongs /e:/ and /o:/, which later become /ia/ and /ua/ respectively, are likewise conserved. The archaic spelling ⟨th⟩ for Classical Old Irish ⟨d⟩ in auslaut is preserved in some instances. This old spelling is common into the 730s but is also recurrent during the ninth century (Stifter 2013: 173).

In the textual assemblage edited as the Additamenta (Bieler 1979: 166–78) there is a larger fluctuation between forms that belong to different chronological layers. Kelly notes that the oscillation between archaic and later spellings results in some uncertainty regarding the date of composition (Bieler 1979: 246). A relatively consistent presence of probably genuine archaic spellings still allows for assigning an early eighth-century date to the texts in the collection (ibid.; see also p. 49 of the introduction, where Bieler suggests that the three files of the Additamenta were united c. 750).85 A case in point is the preserved distinction between the diphthongs /ai/ and /oi/. The Book of Armagh hence provides important clues as to the expected state of preservation of a text from c. 700 in a document that is approximately one century younger. A few remarks suffice here:

- Evidence that might be used to calibrate the date within the period, thus, to distinguish an Early Old Irish text from a Classical Old Irish text, is present, but reflects the tension between the language of the exemplar and the contemporary language. - Historically correct forms might be original, but they could also be due to unhistorical spelling conventions in a transitional period right after the various phonological developments took place. Inverse spellings such as arith

85 Kelly observes that the spelling arith, with -th for etymologically correct -d (acc. sg. of arae ‘charioteer’) is a case of ‘pseudo-archaism’ (Bieler 1979: 247). At any rate it is an inverse spelling which shows that the change is carried through in the language of the scribe and its presence calls for some caution with regard to ascribing even etymologically justified -th to the exemplar. See discussion of the change in Stifter 2013: 173. 78

offer proof that the scribe did not distinguish -th from -d in his language. The question is therefore whether forms with etymological -th stem from the exemplar or from scribal convention.

In a text that is securely dated to the period before such changes, historically correct spellings might be ascribed to the exemplar. An important question is whether ‘residual’ spelling conventions would influence the scribe in the composition of a new text in this period. In that case we encounter the following scenario:

- An original from a period after phonological mergers could contain spellings that belong to the period before the merger. These might or might not coincide with the historically correct forms. They are not ‘archaizing’ in the sense that they are intended to make the text look older. Orthographical conventions could themselves provide useful criteria for the dating of texts.

The Book of Armagh is an important document for the present study for two reasons: 1) it suggests that Irish forms in a Latin context are preserved differently from a running Irish text and 2) it gives an idea of the state of preservation of an Irish text from approximately 700 in an early ninth-century manuscript, postdating various phonological developments that distinguish Early Old Irish from Classical Old Irish, but predating changes that make fine-grained investigation of such phenomena difficult or even futile. These observations are useful for the following discussion on a few important Old Irish mergers.

Preservation of unstressed /ŏ/ Non-final unstressed /a/, /e/, and /i/ merged as mid-central /ǝ/ by the Early Old Irish period (McCone 1996: 134), the spelling (and probably pronunciation) of which varies depending on the quality of the flanking consonants. This change in the Old Irish phonemic system reduced the opposition between /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ in non- final unstressed syllables to a distinction between /ǝ/ and /u/ (see further McCone 1996: 136). The Cambrai Homily (Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale MS 679, fols. 37rb– 38rb) provides forms that belong to the phonological system as it was before this merger, such as fēdot ‘lord’s’, tu·thēgot86 ‘which come/who resort to’, tu·esmot ‘who pour forth’,

86 Note pretonic tu-/to- in two verbal forms in the Cambrai Homily. Stifter 2013: 188 observes that later scribes were able to reintroduce to - in etymologically correct position on the basis of the prototonic alternants. Examples of this in late manuscripts are therefore ambiguous and carry no value as evidence. 79 and aut·rubert ‘said it’ (Thes. Pal. vol. II: xxvi; 244–247), but also examples of the result of the merger.87 Conservatism in the written language would account for the presence of archaic forms, but the fluctuation—especially when seen against the situation as it is in the Würzburg glosses, where the merger is not recognized by the prima manus—is probably an indication that the merger happened only shortly before the composition of the homily. Neither does the Cambrai Homily show the late seventh-century breaking of internal /e:/ > /ia/ before neutral consonance (Th. Gr.: § 53; Vgl. Gr. vol. I: § 40, § 219) or that of /o:/ > /ua/ (Th. Gr.: § 60; Vgl. Gr. vol. I: § 219) that was completed before the Middle Irish period (Vgl. Gr. vol. I: loc.cit.).88

Ahlqvist’s implausible suggestion of the preservation of unstressed /o/ in Auraic. na nÉces is based on a single reading in the 17th-century paper copy in P: [A]sperott.89 This reading is rightly dismissed by the editor, however. 90 In line of principle, an original form could appear anywhere in the stemma, provided that the manuscript in question is not a codex descriptus, but the value of this specific form is nullified by the orthographical practice of the scribe.

/e:/ > /ia/ and /o:/ > /ua/ Presence of monophthongal /e:/ (in stressed syllables) for later /ia/ (for which see Th. Gr.: § 53) would indicate a date before c. 690/700 (Stifter 2013: 176). I am not aware of any examples of this feature in Auraic. na nÉces. A similar breaking caused the change of /o:/ > /ua/ by the time of Wb., although not before guttural consonants. This is attested, albeit not invariably, in the Milan glosses (Ml.) and Sg. (Th. Gr.: § 60).

87 The reader is referred to Ó Néill 1981: 137–47 for a discussion of the material state of the Cambrai Homily. 88 The manuscript witness to the Cambrai Homily is dated to the 8th century (Thes. Pal. vol. II: xxvi) while the language is dated to the second half of the 7th century or the beginning of the 8th (loc. cit.).

89 The manuscript lacks the initial here (p. 53, l. 7), and the historically correct initial ⟨a⟩ in the word as·berat is elsewhere in this manuscript (e.g. p. 53, l. 8) rendered with ⟨ı⟩ and not with ⟨a⟩ as implied by Ahlqvist. 90 As Ahlqvist notes, P also utilizes ⟨p⟩ for Old Irish /b/ in the same word (like Y), which in this position does not have an etymological basis. Perhaps most importantly, the scribe, identified by Nessa Ní Shéaghdha as Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh (NLI Cat. II.: 71–72; but cf. Breatnach 2013: 127), also writes ⟨o⟩ for Old Irish ⟨a⟩, ⟨ae⟩ or ⟨aı⟩ (see Ahlqvist 1983: 36) and P does therefore not conserve an old distinction. 80

/o:/ for later /ua/ before guttural fricative: hi sloghaib (B 115 = Y 2395–96), sron ⁊ slog ⁊ mor (B 1549 = Y 4778)91. The form slúag is not found in Auraic. na nÉces.

/e/ for /a/ in frise- (frisa-) Ahlqvist prints the form frise·toimister in his edition (1983: 50, § 5).92 EgY are the only manuscripts to actually give the form with -e, but several manuscripts have -i (EGPT), which is rendered by the common subscript variant ⟨sı⟩. Thurneysen observed that late legal manuscripts often have ⟨frısı⟩ and that this probably represents an older form /frise/ (Th. Gr.: 312, § 492; cf. the archaic forms are·n-indarbe, ine lāim etc. in the Cambrai Homily).93 The retraction of /u/, /e/ to /o/, /a/ and related changes in proclitic elements took place during the seventh century (McCone 1996: 134–35), but these are only occasionally expressed orthographically in the Cambrai Homily. The archaizing or rather traditional spelling with ⟨e⟩ is occasionally found also in the Old Irish period (Stifter 2013: 178)—into the ninth century.

In DIL the forms frisi·, risi· are seen as Middle Irish (eDIL s.v. fris; see further examples in Breatnach 1994: 328). It might be possible, perhaps, to attribute the variation between the manuscripts to the older inherited spelling, but more likely it owes to the fact that there is no difference in pronunciation after the merger of all vowels in this position as /ə/.94 At any rate the etymologically correct spelling could be attributed to the archetype without dating this to the Early Old Irish period.

/mb/ > /m(m)/, /nd/ > /n(n)/ Calder remarks (1917: xxiv) that the assimilation of the consonant clusters [mb] > [m] and [nd] > [n] is not reflected in the teaching of Auraic. na nÉces, as otherwise the digraphs ⟨mb⟩ and ⟨nd⟩ would have been treated in the section introduced by ‘What is the vowel that takes the force of a consonant [...]?’ (Calder 1917: l. 1375ff.). This section,

91 The example quoted is an illustration of the use of fors͘ail, namely a mark (the letter ⟨s⟩ in suprascript) of long quantity. See Th. Gr.: § 60; and the discussion of this feature in Stifter 2013: 176–77. 92 Note that Ahlqvist treats ·toimister (the variant in DE) as the 3rd sg. pres. subj. pass. of do·midethar (which has the -s-subjunctive: mess-). The use of the subjunctive would be as in Th. Gr.: § 516, (2). BLM give the form ·toimsither, which I take as the 3rd sg. pres. pass. ind. of the denominative verb toimsid (-ī-), also toimsigid, cf. the form ·toimsighther in Y (col. 524, 10) with entry in the vocabulary provided by Calder (1917: 358), which is formed from tomus (see Vendryes 1978: T-105), verbal noun of do·midethar. 93 Thus the phrase is rendered as sechta frisi·tomaist er gaedhealg at CIH 963.17, in a section that consists of ‘citations from Old Irish text with commentary’ (Breatnach 2005: 42). 94 Thus, the preposition i is often rendered with ⟨a⟩ in the manuscripts. 81 dealing with phonographematic relations, is found only in the commentary, which would then have originated in the Old Irish period, before the assimilation of voiced obstruents to preceding homorganic nasals, but more likely in the later part of this period, as this did probably not happen before the 9th century (Stifter 2013: 183). This negative evidence is probably best taken as a weak indication, however.

-o# > -a# Final /o/ for later /a/ in -i- and -u-stems: ut dicitur luth lego ngedal (Y 4287), dilis fedho i fidh dono (Y 4868).

Y also gives fedho as the nominative plural (3906) and the spelling with -o- in fedoibh at 3970, which detracts from the evidence presented here.

Distribution of -g# and -ch# Free distribution of word-final velar fricatives in unstressed syllables (as opposed to the standard Old Irish complementary distribution between the palatal -ig /ɣj/ and the non- palatal -ch /xɣ/): do na fuilet freacarthaich icon Laitneoir (B 1089–90 = Y 4084), cnaim mullaich (B 1825 = Y 5014).

-th# for later -d# Final /θ/ for later /ð/ or ⟨th⟩ for ⟨d⟩ after unstressed vowel: Iafeth mic Noe (B 176 = Y 2484 = D p. 3b1), Baith meic Ribath (Y 2469 = D p. 3a71-72), saliath (B 245 = Y 2560), meic Dealphaith (Y 2810), .i. for [fh]idbaith (Y 3644), be a aircealla calaith (Y 5030–31).

The Biblical names are of limited use as evidence but have been included above in order to provide a comprehensive list. The phonological change took place at the beginning of the eighth century (Stifter 2013: 173), but orthographical usage varies in the period afterwards. Lack of agreement between the manuscripts and the late date of Y seems to render the evidence preserved here insignificant.

The diphthong /au/ The diphthong /au/ (as in the opening of our text (auraicept) becomes a monophthong /u/ during the Old Irish period (Stifter 2013: 181). The word is variously attested in the sources with er-, a(i)r-, ur- etc. (see eDIL s.v. airaiccecht for examples). Thurneysen suggests that the form aur- developed before the prepositions uss-/oss- and fo-. He suggests that it is generally replaced with the other variants (air-/er-/ir-) in the gloss corpora. In Middle Irish ur- is commonly found (Th. Gr.: 498). The title of

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Auraic. na nÉces is rendered with any of these variants in the manuscripts. See further Th. Gr.: 51–52, § 80c, for the spelling au for original /a/ and /e/—‘evidently we are dealing here with a vowel for which the Irish script had no unambiguous symbol’.

Syntactical archaisms Ahlqvist acknowledges that there are no syntactical archaisms in the canonical core of Auraic. na nÉces (1983: 36). He explains this as the result of the basic ‘Sachprosa’ style of the text, which, as he says, ‘would not differ materially from the spoken language of its day’ (loc. cit.). A parallel is found in the Cambrai Homily, which is written in an archaic language, but which does not demonstrate any syntactic archaisms. Rather than comparing the textbook style of Auraic. na nÉces to the contemporary spoken language, to which sources are scarce, I would be inclined to view it as an essentially written composition with written, rather than oral, models. Thus, a contrast with the presumably orally transmitted law texts is provided and the parallel with the Cambrai Homily (ed. Thes. Pal. vol. II.: 244–47) is kept. Hence, I agree with Ahlqvist when he suggests that the lack of syntactical archaisms does not necessitate a younger date for the text.

3.6 Conclusions on the Linguistic Evidence An Early Old Irish date of composition places Auraicept na nÉces before the earliest extant sources to Old Irish. Such a scenario is a priori not inconceivable but should rest on solid and cumulative rather than spurious evidence. Such evidence is an unlikely find in an archetype from the eleventh century that is already the product of reworking and at a remove of at least two generations of manuscripts. Indeed, no evidence has been presented to justify an Early Old Irish date on a phonological basis. Morphological evidence supports an Old Irish or early Middle Irish date but does not allow us to further calibrate this. Those two features (the accusative singular bein and the hapax legomenon condaib) that could be taken to indicate an earlier date than that suggested by the evidence presented above must each be evaluated against the fact that they might not be relevant for the text as a unit (bein) or that their value as evidence to the date is uncertain (condaib). The dating of texts by the aid of linguistic criteria is reliant on external chronological points of reference (see discussion in Stifter 2013: 164ff.). Ahlqvist argues that the paradigms were originally not a part of Auraic. na nÉces (1983: 29), but still cites forms from them as evidence of the text’s antiquity (op. cit.: 36). He noted that:

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However, the introduction of forms like these once the original no longer was understood is more understandable than would the insertion of the archaisms mentioned (as pseudo-archaisms), so that one may conclude that they do not prevent us from ascribing the text to a fairly early stage of the Old Irish period (1983: 36).

The presence of archaic forms in paradigms which accompany Auraic. na nÉces in 14th-century manuscripts have little or no value in judging the age of composition of the text, which must rather build on a comprehensive analysis that takes into account the following methodological considerations:

The principal diagnostics used to differentiate Archaic from Old Irish belong to the spheres of phonology and syntax, especially word-order, rather than morphology, and it has recently been shown that the relevant syntactic features in particular by no means necessarily point to a pre-eighth century date. Even the phonological features need to be treated with considerable caution, since highly literate scribes were quite capable of producing archaizing spellings throughout the so-called Old and Middle Irish periods. It follows that only their cumulative and consistently accurate presence in a text can provide reasonably convincing grounds for assuming a seventh-century original (McCone 1997: 163).

Neither the phonological nor the morphological features that could in theory be used to distinguish Early Old Irish from Classical Old Irish are likely to survive the process of recopying in sufficient number to warrant a dating to before c. 700 (see McCone 1996: 31). We have seen that relevant criteria have already been obscured to a considerable extent in the Patrician texts preserved in the Book of Armagh in the early ninth century. The linguistic evidence that has been presented so far therefore does not justify the dating of the text to the Early Old Irish period (before c. 700) but does provide it with a secure anchoring in the Old Irish or Early Middle Irish period (c. 700–950). Within this period other parameters must be taken into consideration for evaluating the date of the text. The apparent coherence of the primarily linguistic perspective of the standard edition has contributed to hide methodological inaccuracies and has left other resources that relate to the content of the text more or less untouched.

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4. The Authorship of Auraicept na nÉces It is broadly true that medieval literature in the Irish vernacular is anonymous. Admittedly many prose compositions are attributed to famous historical or pseudo- historical authors, but the accessūs ad auctores are frequently stereotyped and we also at times get variant introductions and multiple suggestions regarding the authorship of individual texts. The lack of secure authorial attributions presents an obvious impediment to the interpretation and contextualization of vernacular texts. Allied to this difficulty is the lack of explicit information as to the specific institutions that produced the literary output itself. This is felt most acutely for the timespan roughly corresponding to the Middle Irish period (c. 900–1200), from which contemporary documents are scarce. We have significant manuscripts for the period preceding this, notably the Würzburg, Milan and Sankt Gallen manuscripts, and towards the very end of the Middle Irish period where we get important vernacular manuscripts such as Lebor na hUidre and the Book of Leinster.95 The literary sources to the centuries in between have been preserved in younger documents from the 14th century onwards.

The traditional view attributes the composition of Auraic. na nÉces to the poet Ferchertne. So for instance the twelfth-century poem Aimirgin Glúngel tuir tend attributed to the poet and monastic scholar Gilla in Choimded úa Cormaic from Tulach Léis (ed. Smith 1994; see also Hofman 2000: 278–85).96 Lines 233–40 (§§ 59–60) read:

Auraicept na nÉces n-ard ro·chum Feirchertne fiam-garg i nEmain Macha co m-blaid i r-ré in fír-chaím Conchobair.

Ro-n-athnaig, ba rith renna, Cend Fáelad mac Oilella; i n-Daire Luráin ro-lá i r-ré Domnaill meic Áeda (cited from Smith 1994).

95 See the online platforms cited in the bibliography for digital reproductions of the Würzburg and Sankt Gallen manuscripts as well as Lebor na hUidre and the Book of Leinster. 96 The full text of this poem is contained in the Book of Uí Mhaine (scribe: Ádhamh Cúisín), as well as the younger manuscripts Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 488 (saec. xviii–xix) and Dublin, King’s Inns MS 20 (written by Tadhg Ó Neachtain c. 1720). 85

This information, which includes the notion of a revision of the text by Cenn Fáelad mac Ailella, a topos also in Auraic. na nÉces itself, was presented by Keating (c. 1634) and somewhat later, in Latin, by Ó Flaithbheartaigh:

Quem librum uraicęaċt na nęigios, .i. Præcepta Poetarum inscriptum, et Centena Carminum genera complexum Kenfoela filius Olilli, Donaldo Rege Hiberniæ multis abinde Sœculis apud Doire-lurain interpolavit (1685: 217).

‘This book is titled Auraicept na nÉces, that is Praecepta Poetarum. It encompasses a hundred poetic varieties and was reworked/interpolated by Cenn Fáelad son of Ailill many centuries after this at Daire Lurain, when Domnall was king of Ireland.’

Ó Flaithbheartaigh was the source for later writers on Irish history and language and several hypotheses that circulated in the 18th and 19th centuries are found in his major work. These include Charles Vallancey, who wrote that Auraic. na nÉces was ‘written by Forchern some few years before our vulgar æra, transcribed and illustrated by Cennfaolidh na foghlama, or Kinfaolidh the learned, an author of the seventh century’ (1773: 8). He was aware of two copies of the text, both of which are preserved (L and one manuscript then in the Trinity College library), and neither of which is illustrated, but obviously drew crucial parts of his information from Ó Flaithbheartaigh. The expositions are not quite similar as regards the exact nature of the work performed by Cenn Fáelad, presented by Ó Flaithbheartaigh (and the Irish tradition) as an interpolator/reviser and by Vallancey as a scribe.

Ahlqvist (1983: 18) suggests caution on the matter, with reference to Thurneysen (1928: 281), Meroney (1945: 19), van Hamel (1946: 5) and Mac Cana (1970: 64). The authorship was accepted with varying degrees of scepticism by O’Donovan (1845: lv), O’Curry (1873: 64), Calder (1917: xxvii), Mc Neill (1922: 441), Grosjean (1955: 95), Bieler (1952: 215) and Stanford (1976: 183).

Stanford is the least cautious of these and dates Cenn Fáelad’s text to ‘about 618’ (1976: 183)—presumably because it must necessarily have been composed later than the Etymologiae (written about 615). Stanford develops his hypothesis in the statement ‘In the early seventh century, it seems, the Irish were making efforts to avoid intellectual insularity’ (loc. cit.), but the significance of this is unclear and in any case such an early date for Auraic. na nÉces cannot stand. The early dissemination of Isidore’s work among the Irish is well evidenced, however, and a fragment (a singleton) of the Etymologiae 86

(11. 1. 43–46, 51–53) belongs to the very oldest sources to the Irish cursive minuscule. This is Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 1399 a 1 (CLA 7/995) from the seventh century. Another testimony to Irish engagement with Isidore’s text is Laon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 447 (see Contreni 1989; Clarke 2015: 454n51), a copy of Etymologiae produced at Laon before c. 850 that has been glossed with material that relates to the origin of the Irish and is reminiscent of the story of LG. See the discussion of the dissemination of the works of Isidore in Bischoff 1966: 171–94 and, in an Irish context, in Smyth (2016: 111–31).

O’Donovan (1845: lv) likewise accepts the traditional notion of a revision by Cenn Fáelad at Derryloran (County Tyrone) and dates this to ‘about the year 628’ (probably following Ó Flaithbheartaigh 1685: 217, marg.).:

Copies of this work, as remodelled by Cennfaeladh, are preserved in the Books of Lecan and Ballymote, in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, and a more ancient one, on vellum, in the British Museum, which the Author has recently perused (O’Donovan 1845: lv).

This latter manuscript is presumably London, British Library, Egerton MS 88 from the 1560s. O’Donovan (loc. cit.) was further aware of the copy in Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.) but did not recognize that this was a transcript of the copy in the Book of Ballymote and therefore his knowledge of the actual contents of the various manuscript witnesses cannot have been very accurate.

Eugene O’Curry discussed the authorship and early reworking of Auraic. na nÉces to some extent in the lectures that were published posthumously in 1873 as On the Manner and Customs of the Ancient Irish (vols. II–III), with a lengthy introduction by W. K. Sullivan (vol. I). In his third lecture (1857), O’Curry stated:

There is extant, in the Books of Ballymote and Lecain, as well as others, an ancient tract on the Grammar of the Gaedhelic Language; comparing it, to some extent, with the Hebrew and Greek Languages; but more particularly and copiously with the Latin. [...] This tract, as it now stands, was evidently compiled in the ninth century, when the writings of Isidore, Priscian, and Donatus, became so familiar in the Irish Schools; and the object of the writer appears to have been to extent the comparison of the Grammar of the Gaedhelic Language with that of the Latin, which it would seem had been already touched upon by Cennfaeladh about the year 650. This grammatical tract bears, I think, internal evidence of its having been 87

written in its present shape either by the celebrated Cormac MacCullinan, King and Archbishop of Cashel, or by some one of the noble school to which he belonged, towards the close of the ninth century (O’Curry 1873: 53–54).

O’Curry’s view, also expressed in the fifth lecture (1873: 93–94), is clearly a great deal more nuanced than implied by Ahlqvist (1983: 19) and attaches an important role to Cormac mac Cuilennáin. The internal evidence upon which the hypothesis is based he unfortunately passed over in silence, excepting the somewhat tenuous general dating to the ninth century on the basis of the sources used by the compiler. Poppe’s 2002 article provided more specific evidence that corroborates the idea of a ninth-century compilation. No real evidence in support of the attribution to Cormac mac Cuilennáin has been presented.97

Kim McCone opined that the relative lack of importance attached to the monastery at Túaim Drecain (as well as of Daire Luráin/Derryloran in County Tyrone) could support the veracity of the legend surrounding Cenn Fáelad’s merging the three branches of learning (1990: 66). This is a very weak indication, even among the argumentum e silentio type. Contrary to the argument presented by McCone (1990: 23–24), it is quite feasible that the story was meant to bolster the authority of this monastery. Note for example that Saint Bricín, the abbot of Túaim Drecain, is supposed to have cured Cenn Fáelad’s injury after the battle at Mag Rath (636 AD) and that he also had an important vision at this place.98

Bretha Éitgid contains an accessus that is very similar to one in Auraic. na nÉces (see Breatnach 2005: 381.1–6). The text is reproduced here from Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS D v 2 (a) (ed. Breatnach 2005: 378–464), which is roughly contemporary with the copy of Auraic. na nÉces in the Book of Ballymote (B).

RIA MS D v 2 (a) (fol. 1ra): Locc don liubar-sa daire lubran ⁊ aimser do aimser Domnaill mic Aeda meic Ainmireach, ⁊ persa dó Cend Faela mac Ailella, ⁊ tucait a denma a hincind dermait do bein a cenn Chind Faela i cath Maighe Rath. Teora buadha in catha-sin .i. maidm ar Congal Claen ina ghae ria nDomnall ina fhirinde,

97 O’Curry did not present the evidence underlying this assumption. The hypothesis seems to rest on the association of the text with Cormac’s Glossary, which was known to O’Curry (loc. cit.). 98 This is recounted in Baile Bricín (ed. Meyer 1913b: 449–57), which was evidently composed after Baile in Scáil (ed. Murray 2004). 88

⁊ Suibhne Geilt do dul re geltacht, ⁊ a incinn dermait do bein a cind Chind Faela (cited from Breatnach 2005: 381, 1–6).99

B 68–78: Log ⁊ aimser ⁊ perso ⁊ tucait scribind in libhuir sin Cindfæladh, log do Daire Luran, aimser do aimser Domnaill mic Æda mic Ainmireach. Perso do Cendfæladh mac Oilella, tugait a scribind a hinchind dermait du beim a cind Chindfaelad i cath Muighi Rath. Ceithri buadha in catha sin: Maidm for Conghal ina gæi re nDomnall ina firindi; et Suibni i ngealtacht, acht is ar a mhed du laidib duroni; in fear d’Albanachaib do breith in Erennaich ̓na chois dar muir gen airiugudh .i. Dubhdiadh a ainm; et a inchind dermaid du bhem a cind Cindfæladh ar a mhed do fhilideacht ⁊ do bhriathraibh ⁊ do legeand rothaisigh.

‘As regards place, time, person, and cause of writing that book of Cenn Fáelad: its place Derrylorran, its time the time of Domnall, son of Aed, son of Ainmire. Its person Cenn Fáelad son of Ailill; cause of writing it, that his brain of oblivion was dashed out of Cenn Fáelad’s head in the battle of Moira. Four glorious events of that battle: Rout of Congal in his lie before Domnall in his truth; and Suibne in madness, but it is owing to the quantity of poems he had made; the Scotsman bearing the Irishman along with him over the sea without being noticed, Dub Diad was his name; and his brain of oblivion being dashed out of Cenn Fáelad’s head, owing to the extent of poetry, words, and reading that he amassed’ (Calder 1917: 7, with minor adjustments).

These passages are without doubt sufficiently similar to suggest a genetic link between them. All information about provenance, date, authorship, and cause of writing corresponds, but note the discrepancies in the synopsis of the victories at the battle of Moira. Breatnach (2005: 359) suggests that the account found in this version of the Bretha Éitgid may have been taken from the later commentary to Auraic. na nÉces, but Meroney (1945: 18) notes that none of the recensions of Auraic. na nÉces has it right and furthermore that the individual errors in B and Y could have risen within the textual tradition of Auraic. na nÉces. Meroney notes that the attribution of Auraic. na nÉces to Cenn Fáelad occurs in ‘statements open to suspicion as late work’ (ibid.)—with an important example being a passage in the commentary that with certainty post-dates the

99 This first accessus to Bretha Éitgid is followed by a second one (Breatnach 2005: 381, 21ff.) that ascribes the work to Cormac rather than Cenn Fáelad. 89 composition of the tenth-century Treḟocal Tract (B 1019–27; Y 3974–84), recently edited and discussed at length in Breatnach (2017).100 The similarity between the passages is enough to show that the introductions to important texts were stereotyped. This in itself limits their value as evidence.

The section on the linguistic dating of the text has shown that the language in which it is preserved does not support a mid-seventh-century date. The notion of a substantial reworking by Cenn Fáelad was in existence by the 11th century at the latest, but whether it originated in Auraic. na nÉces itself or in an external source awaits further study.

100 Y here, in what is probably the reading of the archetype, mentions the poet Cináed (which is probably the priméices Cináed ua hArtacáin, the first with this title mentioned in the annals (see Richter 1999: 56), who died in 975 and to whom is ascribed, inter alia, the poem Fianna bátar i nEmain). 90

5. The Structure of Auraicept na nÉces The structure of Auraicept na nÉces has been dealt with to some degree in various publications.101 Erich Poppe has suggested that Auraic. na nÉces is organized by two principles: ‘a horizontal sequence of books’ and ‘a vertical sequence of base—or canonical— text and gloss-commentary’ (2002: 296).102 This is an apt description of the preserved text which holds true for all the manuscript witnesses, but in my view, it has limited potential for further analysis. The distinction between a horizontal and vertical axis is metaphorically suitable to any glossed text and does not highlight the features that are particular to Auraic. na nÉces.

The division into four books—Poppe’s horizontal sequence—is a device that is interesting in its own right and especially so since it provides a merger between medieval philological work (textual preservation and arrangement) and mythography, through the attribution of sections of the text to pseudo-historical authors. The commentary suggests that Auraic. na nÉces has been arranged so that the chronological order of composition has been reversed (B 63–67), which in a way takes the reader back to the origin of language and cultural identity at Babel (the book of Fénius Farrsaid, Íar mac Nema and Goídel mac Etheoir), with seminal textual events having taken place both during the settlement of Ireland (the book of Amairgin), in the age of the Ulster Cycle (the book of Ferchertne) and in relatively contemporary times (the prologue of Cenn Fáelad and his seventh-century revision of the work). The immense antiquity of some of these settings, as well as the observation that the individual books can hardly have formed self- contained units (so e.g. Ahlqvist 1983: 18–19), undermines the tetralogy as a relevant feature for textual criticism, and the structure could perhaps rather be seen as a narrative architecture superimposed on existing material that served to anchor this in a larger historiographical context.103 While the chronological progression is described in the

101 In his Structure and Interpretation in the ‘Auraicept na nÉces’ (2008), Acken deals with the structure of the text as it appears in Calder’s transcripts of B and Y (with some notes also on D, E and M) and as it has been reconstructed by Ahlqvist. The following discussion will serve to highlight some of the problems that arise as a consequence of the approach taken in Acken’s book, which should be read in conjunction with Hayden’s review (2012: 330–34)—a useful overview of some of the particular challenges that pertain to the study of Auraic. na nÉces. 102 A similar distinction is found in van Hamel (1946). 103 The Icelandic author and poet Snorri Sturluson made his own poetical composition to the object of study in his poetics (Háttatal). See Males (2019: 114–18) for arguments regarding the authenticity of this 91 commentary, it is not explained. It does, however, make sense from the perspective of contemporary Irish and may perhaps be understood as a kind of genealogy, working backwards through pivotal ‘fathers’ of the language. The composition of the text, understood as an ‘historical’ event, is given a place in the myth disseminated by the same.

MV-II suggests that Auraicept na nÉcsíne (= Auraicept na nÉces) was thought to consist of three parts: prologue, main part (expressed only implicitly) and paradigms/inflexions (réimenna) (Thurneysen 1891: 32, 115; see also Ahlqvist 1983: 17).104 MV-II, possibly worked into a unified tract in the 11th century (see Murphy 1961: v; see also the more comprehensive discussion in Thurneysen 1913: 83–86 where he dates the oldest part of MV-II to the late eighth century and posits reworking in two separate stages), does not mention the fourfold division which is highlighted and developed into something of a topos in the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces itself.105 Although by no means decisive, the testimony of MV-II might be taken as an admonition against identifying the augtair na nGoídel (§ 1,1) with the pseudo-historical authors of the four books of Auraic. na nÉces, as that correspondence would suggest that the fourfold division of the work was present from the beginning.106 It should be stressed here that it must certainly have been present

commentary and consider Hofman’s ideas on the composition of Auraic. na nÉces as a ‘core text’ with commentary (Hofman 2013). 104 Material derived from MV-II is found at e.g. CIH 553.6, where Auraicept na nÉcsine is mentioned. 105 Is hi tra cetus foglaím na cetbliadna .i. coeca ogum in certoghum ⁊ Airacept na nEicsíne cona broluch ⁊ cona reímendaib ⁊ fiche drécht ⁊ se diana (Thurneysen 1891: 32). ‘First, then, this is the curriculum of the first year: fifty ogams including the certogam and Auraicept na nÉcsíne with its prologue, with its paradigms and twenty drécht [‘poem’, ‘literary composition’] and six díana [name of a class of metre]’. An important stumbling block to the evaluation of the role of Auraic. na nÉces in an educational setting is the shortage of sources. The main testimony is indirect, provided by the texts themselves. This must be used with caution due to the complex nature of the textual transmission: long-term interest in a text does not warrant the assumption of cultural stability or continuity—its use and purpose may instead presumably change without leaving obvious marks on the material record. The testimony of any inherited text may or may not, therefore, be applicable to manuscript-contemporary concerns. So for example the gloss at B 1286 (176va22; interlinear): .i. tabair esemplair (not in Y), which is preserved also at L 159ra2, but not in E. The first-person reference and the style of the following remark likewise suggests didactic use of the text of a lost manuscript: B 1461–62 (corresponding to Y 4571–72) acht is momo lem and chena ni dat bunad Gædelge acht is bunad ceilli. 106 Such an identification is made at B 81–83/Y 2359–60 where the ‘authors/authorities of the Irish’ are identified as Fénius Farrsaid, Íar mac Nema and Goídel mac Etheoir, but the content of the book 92 in the archetype (i.e. by the 11th century at the latest). The failure to mention the tetralogy in MV-II is in any case not evidence of absence, although it might hint at the circulation of a version of Auraic. na nÉces without the Prologue and the paradigms.107 The main point in MV-II seems to be that the entire Auraicept na nÉicsine—including the Prologue and paradigms—is to be studied and the lack of reference to the subdivision of the text into books might not be very significant. Further parameters for determining whether the division was part of the original composition are lacking.

The present chapter offers an analysis of the composition of Auraic. na nÉces through an investigation of the structure of its prologue and the relation of this to the main part (corp) of the text. This is followed by a corresponding analysis of the remainder of the commentary as well as the paradigms that have been transmitted with the treatise. In my view, the alphabet tables are also important to the overall structure of the text, but I have opted for a separate treatment of these in Chapter 9.

The production of a medieval manuscript generally involved several campaigns of work, including stages such as the writing down of the main text and the addition of initials, rubrics, illustrations and so on. The accumulation of glosses on the manuscript page could similarly be divided into campaigns, as the glosses to Auraic. na nÉces have generally been preserved as part of the running text. Palaeographical features and layout do no longer aid in the grouping and stratification of the glosses, which must therefore be carried out on the basis of their content and function in relation to the main text.108 Because of the loss of significant visual evidence in the course of transmission, such an analysis cannot result in a full and detailed stratigraphy of the text, but important insights

attributed to them (which begins at B 1102) does not warrant this and the identification hence leads to incoherence. 107 An alternative could be that the author of MV-II had access to a recension of Auraic. na nÉces which has not been transmitted to us. In this respect it should be stressed that, although quite a few manuscript witnesses have survived, these do not testify to more than a couple of nodes in the 11th century, as has been discussed above (see the stemma codicum). To me it seems plausible that another branch of the textual tradition might have been lost at this relatively early stage, but I find the evidence of MV-II to laconic to warrant any detailed conclusions on this point. 108 This by necessity distinguishes the methodology of the present analysis from, for instance, that of Alderik Blom in his major study of various vernacular glosses on the Psalms, which is based on a widely different corpus. The only manuscript copy of Auraic. na nÉces that could feasibly lend itself to such analysis is D (see description in Ahlqvist 1983: 25–26). 93 can be gained from the identification of core gloss campaigns that might reasonably be thought to predate the transformation of the manuscript layout. As we shall see, these campaigns seem to have served as the basis for later scribes and glossators in the sense that they have determined the structure of the text.

5.1. The Prologue to Auraicept na nÉces Delineating the Prologue to Auraicept na nÉces is not straightforward.109 Both a section of Auraic. na nÉces and its prologue are attributed to Cenn Fáelad (at B 68–69 and 80– 81 respectively). At B 80–81 the status of the Prologue is that of object text, as it is subjected to metatextual commentary. The first sentence that is commented on in such a way (at B 79ff.; Y2356ff.) is Ahlqvist’s § 1,1: As·berat trā augtair na nGoīdel. We might from this deduce that what is explicitly referred to as the prologue (brollach) must have been a text which outlines the myth of the origin of the Irish language, and which corresponded to parts of Ahlqvist’s text.110

The section B 1–78 (Y 2260–2355) reads as a prologue to the text, which reveals a discrepancy between the textual material that we have preserved and the way the text has been construed in the course of its transmission. This, the actual prologue to the text as it stands in some of the manuscripts, does not seem to have been transmitted independently of the rest of the text, and the boundaries between prologue and text are less than clear—which also seems to be the result of confusion between the horizontal (sequential) and vertical (chronological) axes.

Although the border between the Prologue and the following commentary is not easily located, if the ascription to Cenn Fáelad is taken into account, the Prologue is a relatively well-structured entity, which suggests that it was composed as a single unit. This is corroborated by the fact that it builds on narrative strands that differ markedly from those presented in the main text. Unlike the Middle Irish commentary on Auraic. na nÉces known as In Lebor Ollaman (see p. 51), the Prologue does not present

109 B 1–78; M f. 139ra15–b11; Y 2260–2355; om. ADT 110 The language of this section contains various features that are consonant with Old Irish usage. Among these might be mentioned: the correct use of the infixed pronoun (class C) is seen at B 25 ro-d·n-alt (3rd sg. masc. with following nasalization, in Y 2309 the -d- has dropped out)—but this is not a strong criterion, as these are found also in Middle Irish (see Breatnach 1994); the nasalizing relative clause with object antecedent at B 20/Y 2304: do·n-ucc[ad Y]; and the preservation of the superlative in B 25/Y 2309 soom/soam (= sóam, the superlative of óc ‘young’). 94 its alternative version as explicit criticism of the main text that it introduces, as will be seen in the analysis below.

The basic structure of the Prologue is as follows: first it discusses the title of the work itself, Auraicept na nÉces, and provides an analysis of the term auraicept ‘primer’.111 Such an introduction is reminiscent of an early Insular commentary on the Ars minor/Ars maior (possibly from the seventh century) that is known by its opening words Quae sunt quae, which also closely examines the title of the Ars minor after discussing the origin of the work (locus tempus persona).112 Priscian’s Partitiones duodecim uersuum Aeneidos

111 The explanation reads: .i. ‘eraicept’, ar ‘er’ gach toiseach (B 1–2). Calder (1917: 3) translates ‘... beginning of lessons, for every beginning is ér’. The Lecan Glossary, referring to the text of Auraic. na nÉces, gives the meaning úasal (‘noble’, ‘honourable’) for ér (see also eDIL s.v. ér), which suggests a translation such as: ‘... for every beginning is noble’. The glosses on the title are better preserved at Y 2260–64 and, somewhat mal à propos, at B 1111–15, where we find both an Irish and a Latin etymology (< acceptus) for the second element aicept/aicecht. The Latin explanation is in fact correct, aicept having been derived from the stem of the perfect passive participle (accept-) of the Latin verb accipiō. More general use of the term, with the meaning ʻlesson’, is documented for instance in the following passage from the commentary to Félire Óengusso Céli Dé (Stokes 1905: 202): Is ann bói Ciarán ic frital a aicepta soisceli, ⁊ is e ní airithe ro labair .i. Omnia quaecunque uultis ut faciunt uobis homines sic facite iliss. This is rendered by Stokes as: ‘Ciarán was then preparing his Gospel lesson (a aicepta soisceli), and this especially is what he said: “Whatsoever ye wish men to do unto you, that do ye unto them” ’ (ibid.: 203). 112 Quae sunt quae also parses every word of the title (see Zetzel 2018: 223–24) with a technique reminiscent of that employed in the commentary following § 2,1 of Ahlqvist’s edition (see discussion below). The following observation on Quae sunt quae is applicable to Auraic. na nÉces: ‘Donatus’ grammar is no longer a text the content of which needs to be expanded by commentary; it is now a text whose every word is itself the object of commentary. Donatus has become literature, grammar’s answer to scripture’ (Zetzel 2019: 224). It will be seen in the discussion below on the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces that even words which add very little of importance to the text such as the postpositive dano or the phrase ed ón are treated as if they had any interpretive value—thus resembling an exegetical mode of inquiry. It is furthermore interesting to note that the manuscript which contains the most complete copy of Quae sunt quae (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 13025, written at Corbie in the early ninth century) also contains four short tracts on the alphabet (Zetzel 2019: 224). The figure ‘aleph’ in Hebraeo dicitur, ‘alfa’ in Graeco dicitur, ‘a’ in Latino dicitur (op. cit.: 225) is found at Y 3414–15 (and 3425–27), with the important addition ‘ailm’ agcon Gaoidel. This is reminiscent of the inclusion of Irish as a fourth ‘primary language’ in Bretha Éitgid. Also note the history of the origin of the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin alphabets at fol. 25vb (Quaeritur enim quis ...) and the statement (fol. 26rb) that there are two forms of the Hebrew letters—the old ‘Samaritan’ and the one created by the Israelites after the Babylonian captivity. The section on the alphabets is concluded with tables of their respective graphemic inventories (fol. 26v). Quae sunt quae was one of the sources for the eighth-century Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (Zetzel 2019: 356). 95 principalium (GL vol. III: 459–515) also offers a close methodological parallel and there is evidence that this text provided the basis for a section of Auraic. na nÉces (see pp. 124– 25 on the ‘categories of analysis’).

After this, the Prologue gives an historical introduction to the Irish language, discussing why it is referred to as a ‘select language’. This is followed by related information composed as an accessus, which is remarkable, since an accessus to a language, as opposed to a literary work, is to the best of my knowledge unique. A short discussion on whether Irish is ‘philosophy’ precedes the final part of the Prologue, which introduces Auraic. na nÉces and its structure. This, in a curtailed response to the logaimser at B 63, is said to have been reversed, with the chronologically latest composition placed at the beginning. The Prologue ends with an accessus to the first of the four books of the text, which is ascribed to Cenn Fáelad mac Ailella. In this way the Prologue gradually narrows down from the general to the specific, and although the basic text is interrupted by additions, this gives it a relatively coherent structure. The most remarkable aspect of the Prologue is perhaps the degree to which its assertions on the origin of the Irish language disagree with those of the text that they introduce. The fact that the division into four books is explicitly mentioned indicates that the author of the Prologue must have had access to a text that corresponded rather closely to that of the preserved manuscript copies. He would for this reason presumably have been aware of the lack of harmony between his own account and that of the text which he introduced. I have not identified any citation from other sections of the preserved Auraic. na nÉces in the Prologue. This distinguishes its methodology from that of other parts of the commentary, where pericopes offer the basis for analysis and in which we find explicit quotations.113

A related and characteristic trait of the Prologue (understood as B 1–78/Y 2260–2355, see also M fol. 139ra15–b11), however, is that it alludes to the main text and paraphrases short segments of it in response to various questions on its content. An example of this is B 9–10: Cest, cia tugaid ara n-ebarar berla tobaide din Gædilg? (‘Question: Why is “select language” said of Irish?’). This is followed by the following response: Ni ansa. Uair rotebedh as gach berla ⁊ gach son fordorcha gach berla, fo[f]rith ined doib isin Gædelg ara forleithi seach gach mbescna (B 10–13). ‘Not difficult. Because it was selected from every

113 Such citations occur e.g. at B 173–77 and 241–43, where they are indicated as such. The use of the term corp ‘body’ (borrowed from Latin corpus) to refer to the main part of a transmitted portion of text in grammatical or other commentary has been noted in several studies (notably in McLaughlin 2009). 96 language and each obscure sound in every language—a place was found for them in Irish due to its comprehensiveness beyond every speech.’ This response is based on the account that is given at e.g. B 1034–57, but it is interesting to note that this latter passage, corresponding to §§ 1,2–1,12, does not emphasize the obscure nature of the parts taken from the other languages—on the contrary.

The Prologue further asks questions that have in all likelihood been provoked by reading the main text, but which are not treated by it, such as B 13: Cest didiu: ina raibi Gædelg resiu rotobaidhe? (‘A question then: did Irish not exist before it was selected?’). The response to this question is: Robæ emh, [Cade a demnigud? Nī M] ar ni fagbaiter na da berla sechtmogat ar cheana (B 13–15). (‘It did indeed exist, because a total of 72 languages is not reached otherwise’).114 The notion that the Irish language must have existed in order to reach a total of 72 languages is obviously in conflict with the story told in §§ 1,2–1,12. The Prologue is hence intended to be an active part of the tradition and not a passive digest or introduction to it. Note in this respect that the Prologue shows internal consistency when it states that Goídel brought ‘the whole of it [Irish], except what poets added by way of obscuration after it [Irish] had reached Fénius’ (B 21–22).

At B 26–27 (Y 2310–11) we read that Irish was the first language to be brought (is e berla toisseach rugad on tur) from the Tower of Nimrod. This statement obviously goes against the whole logic of the origin story as presented elsewhere in the work. It is corroborated at B 34 (Y 2317f.): uair is e cetna bescno rugad on tur (‘for that was the first language to be brought from the Tower’).

Other innovations in the Prologue’s various accessūs are the introduction of a character named Sachab mac Rochemhurcos (so B; ruicimorcus Y)115—the only reference to him that is known to me116—as well as the noteworthy alternative explanation of the ‘cause of the Irish language’ (tugait din Gædelg) as expounded at B 42–46: here the whole narrative about the Tower of Babel and the school of Fénius Farrsaid is replaced by a short story that tells us that Goídel (or Sachab, according to an alternative version included at Y 2330–31) went home to his native land where he reduced Irish to writing on tablets and stones. This variant does not seem to have gained currency in the tradition

114 Lit. ‘the 72 languages are not ...’. 115 Y (2324) adds the comment uair is he rodos-fucc on tuor (‘because he brought it [the Irish language] from the Tower’). 116 I have not been able to identify any Biblical referent for this name. 97 and the source for it is unknown to me—it could have been invented by the scholar who was responsible for the Prologue.

Y includes a poem on the four names of Irish in the Prologue at this point (2283–88). This poem is also found in the so-called Míniugud and in the third redaction (Scowcroft’s c) of LG (Macalister 1939: 14, 56, 120, 164). Auraic. na nÉces lacks one of the stanzas there preserved (nr. 5) and the fourth stanza has been moved to the beginning of the poem, so that the order is 4–1–2–3 (but see Macalister 1939: 164 on the manuscript state of the poem). The poem is demonstrably a late addition to Auraic. na nÉces, as it is not found in γ, thus probably was not in β (see 2.7.; T lacks the Prologue), or in DM.

The two introductions to the place, time, author, and cause of writing Auraic. na nÉces at B 63–78 are not included in Y in this section. They are, however, found at Y 2616– 644, where also a third accessus is included. This is a somewhat more developed version of that found as an introduction to the book attributed to Feirchertne at B 735–38 (corresponding to Y 3693–96)—combining the information provided here (the book was composed by Feirchertne at Emain Macha in the time of Conchobur mac Nessa in order to bring helpless and ignorant people to knowledge) with information that is not found in BEL or at Y 3693–96, namely that Cenn Fáelad revised the book in Daire Luráin in addition to the greater part of Scripture (EgGPY) / in addition to the greater part of the (Irish) language (DMT).

Conclusions on the Prologue The fact that the Prologue presents alternatives to the core information in the ‘main text’ of Auraic. na nÉces challenges the concept of a ‘canonical text’ along the lines of what has been current in research after the publication of the standard edition. A certain tension arises from the fact that the Prologue itself is attributed to an important historical or pseudo-historical figure associated with a broad range of learning and hence must in some measure have been viewed as authoritative although parts of its doctrine, to the best of my knowledge, do not resound elsewhere in the tradition. On the evidence of the manuscript record, the author of the Prologue seems to have preferred allusion to and paraphrase of content from the main text to direct quotation. I have seen no signs of an awareness of the discrepancy between the version advanced by the Prologue and that of the main text in the primary sources (including the commentary in In Lebor Ollaman). This discordance has likewise eluded modern critics.

98

The Prologue must have been present in the archetype more or less in its preserved form, as it is shared by BEEgGLMPY (om. ADT), where M lacks some of the material that is found in e.g. BY, such as the question on Irish and philosophy and the accompanying poem. Following Thurneysen, the Prologue might then be given a terminus ante quem in the eleventh century. A few linguistic features would seem to push this date back into the Old Irish period. The disagreement between the Prologue and the object text is such that they cannot be the work of the same author.

5.2. Commentary The stratigraphy of the commentary to Auraicept na nÉces has received little attention to date. The standard edition precludes observation on such matters by definition. Glosses and minor textual components have generally been seen as the results of a gradual process of accumulation in the course of transmission. This model for the development of the preserved text does not take into account the differences in approach that might plausibly have characterized the various strata.

The analysis of the Prologue has suggested a clear stratigraphy between this and the main text, but there is no reason to assume a vague, cumulative process: presumably, one reader thought that Auraic. na nÉces needed a prologue and proceeded to remedy that situation. This highlights the fact that several features of Auraic. na nÉces as it has been transmitted to us might represent authorial idiosyncrasies rather than a standardized and homogeneous tradition. The present section will exploit the potential of subjecting the commentary to similar analysis, aiming at identifying unifying principles of organization in a work that at first glance appear disordered and capricious. In current research, the commentary is discussed without reference to chronological anchor points, the assumption apparently being that it is the product of the period from the eighth/ninth centuries to the second half of the 16th century (Eg and Y). While such an assumption may be valid for features common to all textual transmission, such as orthography, it is probably inept for the description of glossing activity, which demands a conscious and creative effort from the glossator, and is therefore likely to have taken place in a limited number of campaigns.

Although the configuration of the text in the manuscripts will be favoured in the following discussion, the division into paragraphs as it is found in Ahlqvist’s edition (the text itself, including the translation, is reproduced with minor changes) will be used to facilitate reference, leaving out the editorial interpolation §§ 1,2–1,17, which is

99 typologically distinct (see separate discussion) and noting the admittedly rather minor point that some of the divisions Ahlqvist made obscure the coherency of the statements in the text. The approach followed in the present analysis allows for some improvements to our current understanding of the commentary and its relation to the object text, or so it is hoped. The use of the standard edition as the basis for the presentation is the result of two considerations: first, that this is the text that is known and cited in secondary literature, second, that the edition offers a good point of departure for the discussion of various features of the text of the manuscripts. This choice is therefore mainly heuristically motivated.117

The focus in the following remains on the methodology of the commentary and glosses, but I have not aimed for a strict separation of this from the content of the passages under discussion. While the purpose is to understand larger structural features of the commented text, this naturally bleeds into discussions on medieval principles of textual exegesis and grammatical analysis, as well as into (mainly philological) considerations on the relationship between gloss-commentary and object text and on the borders between the two. On this last point I will occasionally suggest methodologically motivated departures from the standard edition. The discussion is not exhaustive and avoids topics that have been carefully treated elsewhere (so e.g. anatomical metaphor in Hayden 2014; the relationship to the Treḟocal Tract, which immediately follows the text of M and others, in Breatnach 2017).

General considerations on the relationship between text and commentary Various methods of expounding the object text may be seen in the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces. The following techniques are frequently applied:

- The text is split up and presented as pericopes which are then further divided into lemmata.118 These are commented on one by one in the Isidorian analytical mode that is often referred to as bérla n-etarscartha (for which see the recent discussion in Breatnach 2016: 121–24), such as in the section on the two divisions of the Latin alphabet (‘vowels and consonants’) at § 2,1

117 The edition gives a relatively faithful rendering of the pericopes as they are presented visually in B. 118 With the term ‘lemma’ here I do not intend the (modern) dictionary form of the words, which generally have no significance for the methodological approach of the text (but see the discussion of frise·toimister under § 5 below). Rather, the declensional forms as they occur in the pericope are broken down into smaller phonetical parts in the analysis, such as e.g. B 328 at ·taat .i. ata æ i n-ait. 100

(B 312–91/Y 2645–780).119 This procedure is followed also in the following passage at B 392–423/Y 2781–866, where a similar twofold division is applied to the Ogam, but words that also occur in the preceding pericope are left out (see below). This first mode of commenting upon the core text is sometimes carried out as parsing, although the focus on occasion directed towards the etymology of the words rather than to their syntactical and morphological categorization. This kind of commentary also occasionally cites the text of the pericope such as at B 420–22/Y 2862–63 and B 422– 23/Y 2863–65. - The content of the text of the pericopes is commented upon and developed. A very clear example of this type is found at B 104–311, where the story of the origin of the Irish language and the nations of the world etc. is preceded by the mentioning of the building of the tower of Nimrod in the object text. The passage B 104–311 includes quotations said to be from the ‘core of the book’ which refer to text that consequently has considerable claim to primacy. - The origin (bunad), quality (inne) and application (airbert) of a word are given. So also its peculiar feature(s) (ruidles), proper feature(s) (díles), common feature(s) (coitchenn) and improper feature(s) (indles) (see e.g. B 739ff./Y 3504ff.).

These procedures obviously provide answers to widely different questions and are therefore often applied to the same words or extracts. An important thing to note is that the term corp does not refer to the part of the text that has been transmitted as ‘canonical’, so that corp ind Auraicepta (B 1636) does not refer to the text transmitted as lemmata or pericopes, but to the composite text with glosses and commentary.

The commentary on § 1,1 The inquiry as to why the introductory statement as·berat trá augtair na nGoídel is written in the present tense receives two different answers in the subsequent

119 The theoretical background for Isidore’s etymological technique goes back to Antiquity. Plato’s Cratylus

‘on the correctness of names’ (περὶ ὀνομάτων ὀρϑότητος) is an important example. The only ancient commentary on this work to have been preserved (ed. and trans. Abbate 2017, based on Pasquali 1908) is attributed to the neo-platonic philosopher Proclus (Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος; ob. 485 AD), based in Athens. The commentary has been edited by one of his students, probably working in Alexandria. Linguistic thought and theological disquisitions are there combined. 101 commentary (B 79–99). The first is of an historical nature and says that the authors referred to by Cenn Fáelad are Fénius Farrsaid and Iar mac Nema, respectively. As it stands in the manuscripts (and in the edition), this explanation is interrupted by another answer, which is of a linguistic nature. This second response to the question states that the present tense might be used for all other tenses (B 84–87). This assertion is corroborated by Latin citations before the remainder of the first answer continues: Cenn Fáelad is not referring to contemporary authors when he uses the present tense. This goes for B—while Y preserves the same interruption, here the second part of the first answer (without which the answer is incomplete and devoid of meaning) seems to have been reinterpreted (the negation ní has been misread/interpreted as the conjunction nó and the pronoun (h)í, referring to frecra, here treated as a feminine noun, has been left out) as a third, alternative solution, although the basic structure is the same as in B and must hence go back to a common source—but this section is not found in DM.120 In this case the two explanations are compatible. The linear arrangement of glosses that either were found side by side or, like in this case, entered the text at various stages, is a characteristic feature of the text as it has been preserved. The result is often a confused text, which is due not least to the fact that the process behind it allowed for individual interpretation at various levels.

The first explanation would have consisted of the following:

Uair is e Cendfælad arainig in lebar-sa .i. brollach ind Auraicepta. Ocus na ugdair na nGædheal, roba he sein Fenius Farsaigh ⁊ Iar na n-ilberla mac Nema. [...] Ni hi dno is frecra dona haugdaraib robadar i n-ænaimsir ris fen tuc Ceannfælad intan roraidh ‘asberait auctair na nGædeal’ (B 80–83, 95–97; om. M).

‘For it is Cenn Fáelad that invented this book, i.e. the Prologue of Auraicept [na nÉces]. And the authors of the Irish, that was [sic] Fénius Farrsaid and Iar of the many languages son of Nema. [...] It was not, however, a reference to the authors that were contemporary with himself Cenn Fáelad gave when he said ‘the authors of the Irish say.’

120 Neither D nor M preserve this commentary and, in this case, read like Ahlqvist’s § 1,1 (1983). T is acephalous and for that reason does not contain the relevant part of the text. M preserves commentary corresponding roughly to B 105–260 and Y 2384–570, which gives a protracted historical background prompted by the gloss .i. cumtach in Tuir Nemruaid (at § 1,1; B 104). 102

A second explanation on the use of the present tense is then introduced into this text where I have put the brackets ‘[...]’—to the detriment of the linear progression and internal consistency of the transmitted text. In a third stage, represented by Y, the second half of the first comment was reinterpreted.

The commentary sometimes juxtaposes the teaching of the main text with alternative explanations, e.g. B 173–77:

Conad de sin as·bert i curp libair: ‘is and roan Fēnius fadesin ocon tur ⁊ is and adrothreabh’. Asberat aroili auctair ni raibi neach di cloind Ionan mic Iafeth mic Noe dia roghenedar Greic ⁊ dia rochin Fenius oc cumtuch in tuir.

‘Hence he said in the body of the book that Fénius himself remained there at the Tower and there he dwelt. Other authors say that the children of Ionan son of Japeth son of Noah from whom the Greeks originated and from whom Fénius sprung, there were none at the building of the Tower’ (Calder 1917: 15).121

This latter explanation is then further developed at B 178ff. with reference to Jerome122 (this section is curtailed with ⁊rl. ‘and so on’ in Y at 2485–86 and the citation from the ‘main part of the book’ is another one, cited at B 241–43 = Y 2555–57—Y therefore hints at, but does not confirm the reading of B).123 See the separate discussion of §§ 1,1–1,17 of the standard edition in Chapter 7.

The commentary on §§ 2,1–2,10 The commentary on the two following sentences (B 312/Y 2645 and B 392–93/Y 2781– 82; Ahlqvist 1983: §§ 2,1–2,2) might serve as an example of the peculiar parsing technique that we find in this first section, as well as a modest development of the content of the statements as such. The commentary differs radically from that to § 1,1 discussed above.

§ 2,1 At·taat di ernail forsind apgitir laitindai .i. guttai ⁊ consona. ‘There are two categories/divisions in the Latin alphabet, namely vowels and consonants.’

121 References to a main body of text as in corp libuir is a feature also of law commentary, as for instance at CIH 2103.27 and 2120.26. 122 E has mac with an abbreviation mark above the ⟨c⟩, which Calder takes as Macirine (1917: 14n179; see also p. 371). 123 B cites Is and roan Fenius ... (see above), while Y has I gcionn deich mbliadan ... 103

§ 2,2 At·taat dano di ernail forsin beithi-luis-nin ind oguim .i. feda ⁊ tāebomnai. ‘So also there are two categories in the BLN of the Ogam, namely vowels and consonants.’

The Irish term for the Latin alphabet is derived from abecedarium, while Beithi-Luis-Nin are the names of the first, second and fifth ogamic letters. To the medieval Irish grammarian, the second statement is the corollary of the first. This is stated explicitly in M (fol. 139rb). The division into two sets of letters, vowels, and consonants, is reproduced for the vernacular alphabet. The terms employed for the vernacular are not based on the Latin ones, however, and none of them is used in the Old Irish gloss corpora with the relevant meaning. This enhances the importance of this paragraph in the general history of Irish linguistic thought. The Ogam was traditionally divided into four (later five) groups of letters, and this division has the support of the nature of the graphemic organization of the system as a whole,124 and is also recognized by Auraic. na nÉces at § 6,3 (see below). The division into vowels and consonants does not overlap with the traditional groupings and thus appears to be secondary.

The commentary on the first sentence is very thorough and gives an etymology in the Isidorian mode for every single word that occurs. It also parses the sentence to some extent, in a grammatical sense, focusing on the verbal form at·taat (3rd pl. pres. ind. act.) which is analysed by recourse to its Latin equivalent (= sunt ‘(they) are’). This is made

o explicit, the term used being frithindledach (so B) or frithindlech (so T) (- /ā-) with a meaning that must correspond approximately to ‘equivalent’ or ‘synonym’.125 The Latin terms for the parts of speech are then listed with their Irish equivalents. Although the verbal form subjected to analysis is Irish, a synopsis of the present indicative singular and plural forms of the Latin verb follows (sum, es, est, ...), and the corresponding Irish verbal forms (which are analytic with independent subject pronouns, e.g. atá sé ‘est’) are given simply as glosses to these.

124 Although these groups of letters might possibly be due to Latinate influence (so Ahlqvist 1983: 8–10), we must presuppose discontinuity in the tradition, various expressions of which have been dealt with in McManus’s important introductory book on Ogam (1991). 125 eDIL has no other reference to the use of this term (vide s.v. frithindlech/frithindledach) and the translation offered here therefore builds on the occurrences in Auraic. na nÉces, at the place cited here and at B 771. 104

The analysis of abgitir Laitindai is more extensive in M and Y than in B. I quote here from my edition of M (fol. 139rb; see Appendix 2) with the addition of a couple of readings from Y where M is illegible:

‘Aipgitir’ .i. ond-i is ‘aipgitorium’ .i. in tindscedal no ‘epi-’ no ‘thepi ugtair’ no ‘epi icc duar’ .i. foc(al) no ‘epi ic tur’ .i. ro·icadh ocon Tur no ‘aipgitir’ air is i aipgiges a bescna do cach no ‘aipg(itir)’ ond-i .i. as cinniud no cend no tosach no clethe no ‘aipg(itir)’ .i. ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’ ⁊rl., no is ‘aipg(itir)’ o Gaedeilg, ‘incipit’ a Laten, [..]126 a Greic, ‘abeccedibum’ [‘apexade depham’ Y] a hEbra ⁊ is e sin amain in dul coir ar is lor do thaithmiuch gach focal a breith go bunad Latindai .i. o Latin mac Puin meic Pic meic [ ]airnd127. Dicta est ‘Latinitas’ ⁊ ‘Latindai’ uaside no ‘Latindai’ a ‘latitudine’ .i. on ‘lęthet’ d(icta) est ar a leithiu i na berla Eb(raide) no Grecda, ar is iar Togail Troe ro·boi Laitin [..]128 fada remi-side ro·fodlait na berlai. Ro·bai Latinitas o sin ille.

‘Aipgitir i.e. from “aipgitorium” i.e. from the beginning or “selection” (epi) or “authors’s selection” or “selection in a stanza/word” i.e. “word” or “selection at the Tower”, i.e. the it was saved at the Tower; or aipgitir because it is it that ripens (aipgiges) everyone’s speech; or aipgitir from limit or head or beginning or perfection (cléithe), or aipgitir i.e. “a”, “b”, “c”, “d” and so on; or it is aipgitir in Irish, incipit in Latin, [aipex Y] in Greek, [apexade depham Y] in Hebrew, and this is the only correct interpretation (in dul cóir), because it is sufficient in the explanation of each word to take its root from Latin, i.e. from Latin son of Pun son of Pic son of [Sadarn Y]. It is called (dicta est) Latinitas and “latindai” from him, or “latindai” from latitudine, i.e. from width, i.e. because it is more extensive/wider than the Hebrew language or Greek129, because Latin was [...] after the destruction of Troy. [It is Y] long before that [i.e. the destruction] that the languages had been dispersed. Latinitas was [...] from that time until the present time.’130

The commentary furthermore discusses the broader implications of the meaning of the passage and displays various features that are well-known from Hiberno-Latin

126 apix B 253, aipex Y 2714 127 Sadairn Y 2724 128 ⁊ is fada Y 2727 129 Translated with the emendation ar is leithiu i na ... ‘because it is more extensive than ...’. Cf. Y 2725–26. 130 The last few lines seem slightly corrupted in both M and Y, which is reflected in the translation. 105 grammatical literature, such as the listing of synonyms in the three sacred languages (B 350–53) and the definition of ‘peculiar’ (ruidles; from ro-díles), ‘proper’ (díles; from dí-les), ‘common’ (coitchenn) and ‘improper’ (indles; from in-díles) (B 380–85), also familiar from vernacular legal commentaries.

Both Donatus (Holtz 1981: 603.8) and Priscian (GL vol. II: 6.12) are quoted in the commentary on the vowels (see Poppe 2002: 296–312 for the Latin quotations in B). The commentary on the second sentence must have been composed after the commentary on the first, as it continues the same approach, but leaves out the information that has already been provided for the first sentence. Attention is directed only at those words which are specific to the second sentence, that is, the postpositive particle dano (‘so also’, ‘so too’)131 and, more importantly, the technical terms that denote the graphemes for vowels and consonants in the vernacular alphabet. The two sections of commentary are therefore complementary. To me this suggests that they were composed at the same time—all the manuscripts agree on this structure, which must therefore be attributed to α.

The content of the gloss-commentary is obviously determined by the kind of questions a medieval Irish scholar would ask himself in the course of reading and working with the text. Once in a while these questions are asked explicitly and become part of the discourse. In the commentary on § 2,1, the focus of the interrogation is first related to the parsing of the sentence, e.g. Coich rand indsce in focul is ‘sunt’? (B 316) ‘What part of speech is the word sunt?’. The questions can also attain some degree of abstraction and distance from the text, such as: Cadiad da dual ⁊ tri duail ⁊ cethri duail ⁊ coic duail in Auraicepta? (B 342–43). ‘What are the two, three, four and five folds of Auraicept (na nÉces)?’ The answer sums up the various divisions of vowels and consonants and builds on material that is found elsewhere in the text, but the strategy of enumerating them in this fashion is not, and is a response informed by exegetical engagement with the text. As we will see, a somewhat related mode of inquiry is found in the section on the letters, and especially the vowels, of the Ogam (B 1135–57).

131 In Y this passage is quite developed (Y 2782–814) with material explicitly taken from In Lebor Ogaim (ed. Calder 1917: 272–99), which dates to the Old Irish period, although it has been endowed with a ‘somewhat later’ prologue (so McManus 1991: 150)—perhaps a somewhat parallel situation. Some of this material is shared with M (fol. 139va). 106

An interesting question is the following: Cid ara n-eibert-sium ‘guta ⁊ consain’, uair ‘guta’ uathaid ⁊ ‘consain’ ilda? (B 370–71/Y 2755–57). ‘Why did he say “vowel and consonants”, seeing that “vowel” is singular and “consonants” plural?’ This must be the response to an erroneous form in an antigraph (β) due to the loss of distinction in vowel quality is absolute auslaut in the Middle Irish period, and it is therefore interesting to note that the question is found in ABEEgLGPTY, but not in DM.132 This is evidence of the

Middle Irish date of β that is independent on the arguments presented by Calder and Thurneysen for the date of the split in the transmission (based on the texts of B and Y). The response to this inquiry is that the correct form in the statement would be guttai ⁊ consain (B 372),133 and in B the text has in fact been corrected (B 312) to the historically correct form ending in -ai (guttae is an -iā-stem and is of frequent occurrence in the Sankt Gallen glosses on Priscian, its stem-class being confirmed at e.g. 4b35). These observations are compatible with the stemma codicum provided in Chapter 2.7, although this is based on other criteria. The text of the standard edition continues:

§ 2,3 Di ernail forsna consonaib lasin Laitneoir .i. lethguttai ⁊ mūttai. ‘There are two categories of consonants according to the Latinist, namely semivowels and mutes.’

§ 2,4 Inna lethguttai cētamus: a tuistidi remib; § 2,5 in mūtti immurgu: a tustide ina ndegaid do ṡuidib. ‘The semivowels first: their “parentative vowels” precede them, § 2,5 the mutes, however: their “parentative vowels” come after them’.

It might first be noted that § 2,1 and § 2,3 follow the logical progression of the beginning of Donatus’s De littera:

Litterarum aliae sunt uocales, aliae consonantes. Consonantium aliae sunt semi- uocales, aliae mutae (GL vol. IV: 355–402; Holtz 1981: 603.6–7).

‘Some of the letters are vowels, others consonants. Some of the consonants are semivowels, others are mutes.’

The text of Auraic. na nÉces up to this point reads like Donatus interspersed with Irish reflections. §§ 2,4–2,5 function as a succinct alternative to the definition in Donatus,

132 To me this seems a relatively strong indication of the independence of D and M from the rest of the witnesses, but most of all of the interrelatedness of the others. 133 In Y we find guta also here (2757). 107 and rather draws on Priscian (later cited in the commentary): the letters whose names ‘begin in e- and end in themselves’ (ab ‘e’ incipientes et in se terminantes) are classified as semivowels (GL vol. II: 8.11), while the mutes are distinguished by the reverse behaviour (GL vol. II: 8.20–22).134 Donatus’s definitions are then quoted in the commentary on mutes and semivowels respectively.

The commentary on these statements continues in much the same way as for §§ 2,1– 2,2. The introductory di ernail is commented upon, not in the Isidorian fashion as we saw above, but with regard to the linguistic doctrine on the two types of consonants current in Latin grammatical thought, viz. mutes and semivowels, which terms are both discussed subsequently. As this is their first occurrence in the text, they are thoroughly etymologized. The term Laitneoir is heavily commented on in Y. This is not the case in B, which is curious, given the general importance of the term as part of the rhetorical opposition between Latinate and Irish learning in the text of all the manuscripts. Both Donatus (Holtz 1981: 603.8; 604.15) and Priscian (GL vol. II: 9.19; GL vol. II: 9.25; the citation at B 454–55 is not verbatim; see discussion in Poppe 2002) are cited in the commentary on semivowels and mutes. (See separate discussion on the quotation quicquid asperum dicitur auditus expellit at B 464–65 in Chapter 6 for a possible source or parallel that has not been identified before.)

134 This definition is later applied to the acrostic letter names of the Ogam alphabet, with the result that no semivowels are recognized. The aurally based definitions of semivowels that were inherited from Greek grammatical thought and that were current in late-antique Latin grammars, including Priscian, were not taken into account. Compare e.g. Dionysius Thrax: Τούτων ἡμίφωνα μήν ἐστιν ὀκτώ· ζ ξ ψ λ μ ν ρ ς.

ἡμίφωνα δὲ λέγεται, ὅτι παρ’ ὅσον ἧττον τῶν φωνηέντων εὔφωνα καϑέστηκεν ἔν τε τοῖς μυγμοῖς καὶ σιγμοῖς

(Uhlig 1883: 11–12). ‘There are eight semivowels: “ζ ”, “ξ ”, “ψ”, “λ”, “μ”, “ν”, “ρ”, “ς”. These are called “semivowels” because they are less well-sounding than the vowels and consist of moaning and hissing.’ Priscian: Semivocales sunt, ut plerisque Latinorum placuit, septem: f l m n r s x; [...] hae ergo [hoc est semivocales] quantum vincuntur a vocalibus, tantum superant mutas. [...]. ‘Semivocales’ autem sunt appelatae, quae plenam vocem non habent, ut ‘semideos’ et ʻsemiviros’ appellamus, non qui dimidiam partem habent deorum vel virorum, sed qui pleni dii vel viri non sunt (GL vol. II: 9). ‘The semivowels are, according to the opinion of the majority of the Latin [grammarians], seven: “f”, “l”, “m”, “n”, “r”, “s”, “x”; [...] these are so much superior to the mutes as they are superseded by the vowels [...] They are called “semivowels” because they do not have full sound (vox); as we call “half-gods” or “half-men” not those who have half a share of gods or men [i.e. are half-gods or half-men] but those who are not fully gods or men.’ 108

The various attempts at breaking down the term mútti ‘mutae’ into constituent parts are highly interesting as they merge Latin grammatical theory with vernacular etymological derivation.135 The word is treated as if it were an Irish compound, such as mí-ḟothai ‘bad foundations’, with the pejorative prefix, obviously referring to the idea that the mutes might not in themselves make up a syllable (see the text of Ars maior in Holtz 1981: 604.15, quoted at B 476–77).

The term tuistid with the meaning ‘supporting vowel’ is not found in the glosses and is to the extent of my knowledge confined to Auraic. na nÉces,136 but interestingly only when referring to the Latin ‘supporting vowels’ in the letter names (i.e. be, ce, de against ef, el, em and so on)—not on the vernacular alphabet. This might indicate that the use of the term precedes this text, as it would make little sense to invent a term only to discard it immediately. In any event the following paragraphs question the applicability of the term on Irish (see also Ahlqvist 1983: 41):

§ 2,6 Nirbu immaircide sōn lasin nGoīdel § 2,7 armbad aicned dōib dīb līnaib: a nguth remib ⁊ ina ndegaid, § 2,8 air is ed robo immaircide la suide § 2,9 combad a toīsech do·airesedar lais ⁊ a ndēidenach do chur ūad, § 2,10 conat mūtti uili in beithe-luis-nin ind oguim acht feda nammā.

‘To the Irishman that was not appropriate, § 2,7 that it should be the nature of both of them to have their vowels before them and after them, § 2,8 as to him it was appropriate § 2,9 that their beginning should remain with them and that their ending should be removed from them, § 2,10 so that they [i.e. the letters] are mutes in the BLN of the Ogam, except the vowels only.’

135 This derivation is based on an -i-stem (possibly derived from an adjective múit, see eDIL s.v. mút), with a plural nom./acc. ending in -i. The term for ‘mute’ in the Sankt Gallen glosses is an -ā-stem, compare fri mūta at 6a19. 136 Note also the use of the term tuistiudh with the meaning ‘parentative’ (so Calder 1917), for genitive of origin (B 1892). 109

The ‘Irishman’ (Goídel) is employed in opposition to the ‘Latinist’.137 The argument laid out in these paragraphs138 is dependent on one of Priscian’s definitions of the mutes and semivowels respectively (GL vol. II: 7.1 and 8.10), which takes into account only one of the accidents of the letters, namely their names (nomina). A somewhat loose variant of the definition has been rendered into Irish in §§ 2,4–2,5 above. These paragraphs therefore prepare the ground for the statements of §§ 2,6–2,10. Interestingly, however, the text gives no hint as to why the distinction would have been inappropriate to Irish (consider the opposition Latinist/Irish and the term immaircide, which in the Milan and Würzburg glosses is used to render Latin terms as iustum and opportūnus; see eDIL s.v. immaircide). This is explained in the following commentary. In my view, the content of the lines B 512–17 might possibly belong to the same stratum as §§ 2,6–2,10. These read:

Cid armad fearr leis-sium a mbith comtis muiti huili quam a mbeith leathguta ⁊ muiti amal robatar ocon Laitneoir? Ni ansa. Ar sechem Grec, ar ni filet lethgutai la suidibh ⁊ roba do Grecaib do Feinius (B 512–17/Y2981–85).

‘Why would he prefer that they should all be mutes rather than being semivowels and mutes as they were according to the Latinist? That is not difficult: In order to follow the Greeks, because they have no semivowels, and Fénius was a Greek.’

The reading of M (fol. 139vb4–5) is slightly different (and closer to the wording of § 2,6):

Cid arnarbo imarcaidi lasin nGoedel ani sin? Nī. Ar seichem nGrec, ar ropo do Grecaib do Fenius.

‘Why would this not be appropriate according to the Irishman? That is not difficult: In order to follow the Greeks, because Fénius was a Greek.’

137 Y (2962) identifies Goídel in § 2,6 with the eponymous Goídel mac Etheoir, who thereby becomes a pseudo-historical grammarian. This identification is not carried out in the commentary, but in text that is written with larger script size in BEL (Y 2961–66; commentary begins at 2966) and which is therefore included in the standard edition (cited above). Through this innovation the opposition Irish/Latin grammarian becomes an historical rather than rhetorical tool. So also T. The general use of the definite article in the phrase lasin nGoídel makes the equation doubtful. 138 I find Ahlqvist’s division here somewhat excessive as it breaks up the sense of the statement and does not reflect the manuscripts. 110

The different wording of M is not diagnostic as to whether this text formed part of an early copy of the text, but nevertheless suggests that the content was present in the archetype. B 512–17 is not marked with a larger script size and these lines have therefore not been included in the standard edition. The fact that its text therefore seems incomplete is not commented upon by the editor in the introduction or elsewhere.

The use of a question-and-answer form is generally found also in the text of the standard edition. Without these complementary lines that explain the rationale behind the comparison, §§ 2,6–2,10 become little more than an ingenuous semi-linguistic observation based on a very eclectic and biased reading of Latin grammatical literature. It might of course be argued that the claim that the Greeks had no semivowels makes it all even less lucid, but at least this is the logical and inevitable result of the consistent application of one of Priscian’s definitions (obviously intended just for the letters of the Latin alphabet) across the board which gives the letters of the vernacular Irish alphabet the privilege of resembling those of the Greek alphabet (both name their letters exclusively through the acrostic principle—at least if we follow the Late Antique grammarians and except variants of Byzantine Greek letter names that circulated in for instance post-Carolingian manuscripts, such as episimon for digamma).139 The Greek language was evidently held in high esteem in both the Insular and Continental spheres during the Early Middle Ages, and although the Irish language, following the logic of Auraic. na nÉces, was superior also to Greek, the explicit rivalry with Latin could have rendered such a parallel with another prestigious language into a powerful rhetorical tool. The reference to the Greek ancestry of Fénius Farrsaid anchors this parallel in pseudo-history.

The Greek origins of the Irish is a topos that is explored more extensively outside Auraic. na nÉces. The idea has presumably been present from at least the inception of the eighth century (see Moran 2019) and its likely presence in the older layer of the text is therefore not diagnostic with regard to the precise dating of the latter. I believe it is safe to state that the content of §§ 2,6–2,10 must build on the idea of a resemblance between the

139 We might here have an indication that the paragraphs under discussion were composed before the material connected with the alphabet tables entered the tradition of Auraic. na nÉces. At any rate access to such tables does not seem to have directly informed these paragraphs or their commentary. The diagnostic value of this observation is uncertain, due to the range of topics covered by the text.

111

Irish and Greek letter names and (for the medieval grammarian) consequently also between the languages. The acrostic principle is the key to the equation, and grammarians of the day were aware of two alphabets with letters whose names followed this principle: Hebrew and Greek. Hebrew is not used to bolster the position of Irish in Auraic. na nÉces, whereas Greek serves this function here as well as in DOSL.

Against this backdrop it becomes a relatively powerful assertion of a feature that supposedly distinguishes Irish from Latin. This is corroborated, I believe, by the Greek origin of Goídel mac Etheoir (§ 1,11), which is part of a presumably old section of text (§§ 1,2–1,17; see separate discussion). Although the basic framework for the various doctrines that are presented in Auraic. na nÉces is undoubtedly Latin, the fact that precisely features that distinguish the two languages are highlighted is a caveat against the assumption that the early Irish linguists would by default be searching for similarities between the two. It must be stressed, however, that so far no observation on the Irish language that is not developed from Latin precepts has been made explicitly in the text.

The following curiosity must be mentioned. Y supports the text reproduced above from the standard edition, but also contains a duplicate of the passage at lines 3403–27. Here the lack of semivowels is noted also for the Hebrew alphabet (Ephraide ⁊ Gregda) and the Irish are said to have followed the Hebrew model as well as the Greek. Further- more the Greek alphabet is, on the authority of Scripture as well as ‘experts in theological literature’ (ughdair in leighind), derived from the Hebrew alphabet and this, although of course not mentioned by such authorities, is the case also for the BLN of the Ogam (Y 3421–24). This assertion is supported by naming the first letter of all four alphabets.

This text from Y is a fairly developed version of the account of α, which is found at Y 2981–3005.

I have not been able to make sense of the Latin quotation at B 517 (= Y 2986–87; translated into Irish at B 518–19 = Y 2987–89) in the context of the pronunciation of the letters. The source for the quotation has not been identified.

Summary on §§ 2,1–2,10 A few remarks might be made on the paragraphs discussed so far. First of all, it is noteworthy that the topic under discussion is not the Irish language per se, or even its orthography as it would be known to the contemporary learned, but rather the vernacular alphabet. This is analysed with relatively basic Latin grammatical precepts and no attention whatsoever is devoted to the orthography of contemporary Insular 112 script in which the treatise was undoubtedly written, which would obviously have had significant impact on its arguments and might have led to important observations on Irish phonology.140 The methodology followed in this section of Auraic. na nÉces has, expectedly, not resulted in anything of the sort, but we should not assume that such was the intention of the author.

Second, the pseudo-historical connection of parts of the doctrine presented in this part of Auraic. na nÉces is important. In reading §§ 2,1–10 with commentary, it is difficult to overcome the feeling that the Latin grammarians have been used for the sake of bolstering the argument rather than to create an efficient explanation of phenomena in the Irish language. The argument for the excellence of Irish seems quite inefficient if the pseudo-historical background is ignored, and I therefore suggest that this must have been part of the treatise throughout its written history and that no methodologically justifiable reason to exclude text such as B 512–17, discussed above, from an edition of the older stratum has been presented. In this instance, we are probably dealing with the main text, rather than with commentary.

The commentary on §§ 3,1–3,11 §§ 3,1–3,14 represent a watershed in the preserved text of the manuscripts, which can be seen very clearly in the text of B in Calder’s edition (1917: pp. 40–42). The mode of presentation here changes and more substantial pericopes are presented concurrently, so that these paragraphs have not been divided by intervening commentary. The commentary that follows (B 571–638) treats individual words. The following paragraphs merit a closer discussion:

§ 3,8 Fedair ēm ferinsce for baninsci intan as·mberar in banmac-sa. § 3,9 Fedair dano baninsce for ferinsci intan as·mberar is sī in gabar.141 § 3,10 Fedair dano deminsce for ferinsci no baninsci intan as·mberar is ed a cenn sech is cenn fir ōn no mnā. § 3,11 Fedair dano baninsce for deminsci intan as·mberar is sī in chloch.

140 This in stark contrast to the First Grammatical Treatise from mid-12th century Iceland (ed. Hreinn Benediktsson 1972), with which Auraic. na nÉces has occasionally been compared, but which in many ways is a very different production (see further ‘Germanic Comparanda’ in Chapter 8). 141 The word gabor is a feminine noun and is declined like an -o-stem but takes the fem. pronoun according to the IGT (see eDIL s.v. gabor 2), or like an -i-stem. 113

‘§ 3,8 Now a masculine may be applied to a feminine, when one says “he is the female child”. § 3,9 A feminine, then, is applied to a masculine when one says “she is the horse”. § 3,10 A neuter then, is applied to a masculine, or a feminine, when one says “it is the head”. § 3,11 A feminine, then, is applied to a neuter when one says “she is the stone”.’

The examples in §§ 3,8–3,11 have in the manuscripts (e.g. B 524–63) been illustrated by poetic quotations. These are found in all witnesses, although their order is not uniform. The sense of the passage in question is greatly diminished if these examples are left out, and it might be a possibility that the passage was conceived of as an explanation of the poetic usage in these stanzas.

The commentary on §§ 4,1–4,9 Thurneysen believed this passage to be of more recent vintage than the preceding one due to the presence of the plural form do·cuisnet as opposed to the impersonal do(/di)·cuisin (1928: 282) that is employed in relative constructions in legal literature and in the gloss corpora (e.g. arnab uilib cumactib di·choissin i nim et talam, Wb. 21a13; see further eDIL s.v. do·coissin and Th. Gr.: § 782). Ahlqvist, on the other hand, is able to cite the impersonal form from D in § 4,1, and this to my mind effectively changes the premises for Thurneysen’s argument. The impersonal form would be susceptible to replacement by the analogical form that agrees with the plural subject and which is found in all other manuscripts, bearing in mind that the replacement need not have happened more than twice (β and M). The pressure on this form must have been all the greater given the fact that the plural subject precedes the verbal form in this instance. This passage then, ex hypothesi, belongs to the same stratum as the preceding passages.142 If this be the case, however, important innovations have been carried out early in the transmission in § 4,4, § 4,6 and § 4,7–9.

§ 4,1 Secht n-etargaire trā do·chuisin .i. a ngrād condeilg lasin Laitneoir is etargaire a n-ainm lasin filid. ‘There are seven distinctions, then, i.e. the comparative degree according to the Latinist, the name/term is “distinction” according to the poet.’

142 Note e.g. the neuter gender of etargaire N and the possible preservation of the neuter article in a n-ainm in § 4,1. 114

Of paragraphs §§ 4,1–9, only § 4,1 is subjected to systematically arranged (linear) commentary (B 660–79). Various points of interest are then discussed in a more sporadic manner at B 680–734. Note the use of lasin filid rather than lasin nGoídel.

The commentary on § 5 The manuscripts agree on attributing this part of Auraic. na nÉces to the so-called ‘Book of Ferchertne’, which, on the authority of all manuscript witnesses, in the archetype must have explicitly followed the ‘first book’ of the treatise (finit primus liber). In its own pseudo-historical framework then (see general considerations above), this section is understood to be older than the preceding material, being attributed to the time of Conchobuir mac Nessa.

§ 5 Sechta frise·toimister Gōedelg .i. fid ⁊ deach, rēim ⁊ forbaid, alt ⁊ insce ⁊ etargaire. ‘The heptad by which the Irish language may be analysed: that is, letter and syllable, declension and accent, juncture, gender and distinction.’

The verbal form frise·toimister is not glossed as such but has been replaced in the commentary by the (etymologically related) noun tomus ‘analysis’ (glossed as Latin mensura).143 This is a marked difference from the approach in the commentary to § 1,1 and §§ 2,1–2,5, where the forms are analyzed as they stand in the pericopes. The heptad also occurs in the Treḟocal Tract (Calder 1917: 5274–79; Breatnach 2017: 48).

The commentary on §§ 6,1–6,2 The following part of the text is somewhat complex from a text-critical point of view. The text of Ahlqvist’s edition, which is taken from B and is cited below, is synoptic in the extreme, and from comparison with Y it becomes clear that §§ 6,1–6,2 of the edition do not build on text on which these two branches agree. B 962ff. agrees in rough outline with Y 3882ff., while the edition is based on B 943–61, which gives only a mere outline of the information on which the branches agree. M is cited below, and the cumulative evidence of these three manuscript witnesses is sufficient to show that a somewhat more comprehensive approach to the terminology was found in the archetype at the latest (see the stemma codicum).

143 See Th. Gr.: § 492 on the form frise- (So EgY; frisi D) for frisa- of the preposition with relative particle. Also eDIL s.v. fri. 115

§ 6,1 Catte tomus fri fid? ‘What is analysis with respect to letter(s)?’144

§ 6,2 Ni ansae: co·feisser a llīn ⁊ a n-ūati, a mēt ⁊ a lagat, a cumang ⁊ a n-ēccumang, a nert ⁊ a n-aimnert. ‘Not difficult: that you may know their maximum number and their minimum number, their size and smallness, their force and weakness and their function and lack of function.’

§ 6,2 gives an adequate response to § 6,1, but only two of the various items highlighted in § 6,2 are provided with further clarification in the remainder of the text of the standard edition, namely ‘number’ (lín) at § 6,2 and ‘force’ (cumang) at § 8.145

The remaining terms are, however, discussed in B 962ff./Y 3882ff., and this discussion is necessary for our understanding of the text of § 6,2, which is not as clear a reflection of the description by e.g. Donatus as the division of the alphabet into vowels and consonants. The three accidents of the letter are not dealt with as such in Auraic. na nÉces. Still, traces of them are found in its theoretical foundation, as will be demonstrated below.

The standard edition seems here to be rather dependent on the sequence of items in B and a provisional edition of this passage established on the basis of consensus between BMY146 gives a more coherent text. Several of the terms discussed are used with the sense outlined below only in this text and the passage is therefore important for their significance.147

144 Note the (possibly) plural fid (as opposed to expected feda ) here as well as the 3rd pl. possessive pronouns in the following paragraphs, which might indicate that the word is treated as a neuter here (see notes in Ahlqvist 1983: 61, 62), although I do not find it necessary that the word be read as a plural in § 6,1 as Ahlqvist suggests (even though the possessives in the following paragraph are unambiguously plural). See pp. 124–25 for a discussion of this terminological unit. 145 Ahlqvist gives an explanation for the fact that only one of these terms are discussed in the text he edited, but I am not quite able to follow his argument (1983: 45.9–13) or to understand the relevance of Virgilius Maro in this context (op.cit. 45n19). 146 Building on B 943–61 and 962–82; Y 3883–918 and M fol. 141rb27–40. 147 So e.g. cumang (-o-, vn. of con·icc ‘is able’) in the Sankt Gallen glosses is used for the function or force of nouns and verbs (expressed with genitives at Sg. 39a26 and 148b5 respectively), but is not used with regard to letters, i.e. it does not translate the Latin term potestās (at 6b30 cumachtae ‘power’ is used for this purpose). If the part of the text above that is not edited in Ahlqvist 1983 be seen as commentary to § 6,2, we cannot ascertain what the distinction between cumang and nert would be in its original context. In Ahlqvist’s text there are no examples or definitions of this terminology. 116

Catte tomus fri fid? Ni ansae. Co·fesser a llīn ⁊ a n-ūaiti ⁊ a mēt ⁊ a llaiget ⁊ a cumang ⁊ a n-ēccumang ⁊ a nert ⁊ a n-amnert. Is ed a llīn: cōic aicmi ogaim ⁊ cōicer cacha aicme. A n-ūaiti .i. ōen (Y .i. ōenaicme). A mēt .i. cōic flesca ⁊ a llaiget .i. ōenḟlesc. Catte deochair etir a cumang ⁊ a nert? Ni ansae. Cumang cetamus: In tan do·gnīat guth a n-ōenur .i. ‘a’ nō ‘o’ nō ‘u’. A nert immorro in tan do-s·bere148 (BEL prīm-)ṡuidiugud i sillaib (BY amal atā ‘bais’ nō ‘lais’). Catte deochair etir a n- ēccumang ⁊ a n-amnert? Ni ansae. Ēccumang cetamus:149 In tan bite150 fo niallus ut ‘quoniam’, ‘quidem’ lasin Laitneoir nō in tan bite tri guthaighe i n-ōenṡillaib lasin nGoīdel, ut ‘Briain’, ‘gliaid’, ‘feoil’, ‘beoir’151. Amnert in tan bite fo consonacht, ut ‘seruus’, ‘uulgus’ lasin Latneoir, ut ‘iarum’, ‘cian’ ⁊ ‘ciar’ ⁊ ‘uull’ ⁊ ‘aball’ lasin nGoīdel.

‘What is analysis with respect to letter? Not difficult. That you may know their number and their lack of number and their size and lack of size and their force and lack of force and their function and lack of function. This is their number: five groups of Ogam letters and five units in each group. Their lack of number, i.e. one [group Y]. Their size i.e. five staves; and their lack of size, i.e. one stave. What is the difference between their force/value and their function? Not difficult. Their force/value first: when they make sound on their own i.e. “a” or “o” or “u”. Their function when a primary position brings them into a syllable (BY as “bais” or “lais”). What is the difference between their lack of force and their lack of

148 Read in tan do-s·bera with the 3rd sg. pres. subj. act. (?) with prims͘uidiugud as the subject and translate ‘when a primary position brings them into a syllable’ (see Calder 1917: 73). Final -a is not supported by the manuscripts, which show either -i or -e (for which see Breatnach 1994: 309), or, in the case of D, just the 3rd sg. pres. ind. act. do-s·beir. 149 Note that this has been transposed in B from 969 (where another response is found) to 977. The same has happened in Y and so the version on which there is manuscript consensus (see text above) is introduced (BY) as ‘another version’ (gné aile) at 3909. This is not the case in M. 150 Old Irish 3rd pl. consuetudinal pres. ind. rel. bīte following in tan. This form is likewise found in SR (albeit only once; see Breatnach 1994: 296). The manuscripts do not support in tan mbete with a nasalizing relative clause (likewise in tan do·gnīat; cf. e.g. Sg. 220b1). 151 This loanword (see Marstrander 1915: 79–80; 117), from Old Norse bjórr must be attributed to the archetype of Auraic. na nÉces. Its earliest occurrence is in BB (Marstrander cites 323b9). Marstrander notes that the loan cannot be later than the tenth century (op.cit.: 80). It could, for historical reasons, not be much earlier than the mid-ninth century either. Marstrander further notes that the form in the dialect of Donegal (béoil) has been formed after feoil—incidentally the word that precedes it in the passage from Auraic. na nÉces reproduced above. 117

function? Not difficult. Their lack of force first: when they stand under nullity, as quoniam, quidem with the Latinist, or when there are three vowels in one syllable with the Irishman, as “Briain”, “gliaid” [“battle”], “feoil” [“meat”], “beoir” [“beer”]. Lack of function when they are consonants, as servus, vulgus with the Latinist, as “iarum”, “cian” [“distant”] and “ciar” [“murky”] and “uull” [“apple”] and “aball” [“apple tree”] with the Irishman.’

In this extract cumang does show affinity with potestās as defined by Priscian (being the ʻpronunciation itself’), while nert is associated with internal rhyme in stressed syllables. Behind this we perhaps see two sources of authority: pseudo-history and poetics.

Another way of expressing the value of the letters is found in the expression x gabus greim (+ genitive) ‘x which takes the effect of ... (gen.)’ which is used several times in the commentary (e.g. B 106–08). This is reminiscent of the Latin expression x transit in y and might be seen as another reflex of the Latinate tripartite division. The following question introduces a section where this principle is investigated, first with respect to the vowels, then with respect to the consonants:

Conadar didiu isin bethi-luis-nin: Caidi in fid gabus greim taebomna ⁊ in fid gabus

greim da tæbomna ⁊ in fid gabus greim focail ⁊ in fid na geibh greim taebomna na feda na focail? (B 1375–78).

‘It is demanded, too, in the BLN: What is the vowel that takes the force of a consonant, and the vowel that takes the effect of two consonants, and the vowel that takes the effect of a word, and the vowel that does not take the effect of a consonant, vowel, or word?’ (ibid.).

It is striking that the three attributes of the letter did not make a greater impression on the Irish; that the presence of this part of traditional grammatical teaching has to be inferred. The Irish fondness for enumeration in triads as an epistemological tool is otherwise well attested.

The commentary on §§ 7,1–7,2 The text and commentary related to paragraphs §§ 7,1–7,2 on the Greek, Hebrew and Latin alphabets are discussed in Chapter 9 on the alphabet tables.

The commentary on § 8 This paragraph should, on the authority of the sequence in all manuscripts, have been placed before § 7. The order of these paragraphs has been altered on uncertain grounds

118 by Ahlqvist. In the standard edition it looks like the question regards the letters of the sacred alphabets, whereas it is obviously related to the letters of the vernacular Irish alphabet in the manuscripts, being thematically linked to the content of § 6. It deals with the cumang of the Ogam letters, a term which renders the Latin concept of potestās or the phonetic ‘value’ of the graphemes.152 A discussion of this part of Auraic. na nÉces on the basis of Ahlqvist’s edition is impractical.

5.3. The Paradigms The section on the paradigms is of interest to the textual history of Auraic. na nÉces. Ahlqvist himself suggests that the section on the declensions originally formed an independent tract which was later associated with Auraic. na nÉces proper (Ahlqvist 1983: 18, 29). He further suggests that the paradigms might represent an old attempt at the application of the Latin declensional patterns to Irish, as well as an attempt at developing the Latin system into a system that could suit the Irish language (op. cit.: 29).

The paradigms should perhaps be seen against a Latin backdrop. They might for instance have been entirely Latin-based at first but accompanied by Irish translations. Then at some point the object of study shifted. There is no direct evidence of this, but we have an analogous development in Ælfric’s grammar of Latin (ed. Julius Zupitza 1880), which, even if it is written in the vernacular, is fully focused on the explanation of Latin phenomena. A further analogy is found in corresponding Icelandic paradigms, although these are related to Ælfric. I should stress here that in Ahlqvist’s edition all the Irish paradigms are accompanied by Latin translations (p. 53), but these were made by the editor, who used Latin rather than English for convenience’ sake. Although paradigms of Latin nouns must have provided the inspiration for the rendition of the Irish declensions, such have not been preserved in Auraic. na nÉces.

The transmission of the material that pertains to the paradigms is of an overly complex nature and only some observations are due here. Hayden has directed attention towards the various manuscript copies that contain similar material (some of which have been listed in Ahlqvist 1983 as fragments) which may be of great significance for a proper understanding of the transmission and possibly even of the origin of this section.

152 Ahlqvist states (1983: 62) that this paragraph is possible evidence of the -o-stem cumang being a neuter, with reference to Th. Gr.: § 448, but it is not clear to me why this would be so. It is not treated as a neuter in e.g. Sg. 39a26. 119

Ahlqvist’s edition of the paradigms (1983: 52–53) is synoptic and does not represent the state of the manuscripts.

A point of departure is offered by Thurneysen’s division of the preserved Auraic. na nÉces into various smaller sections. A few remarks on the transmission of the material and its organization are due at this point, beginning with the material in B.

B contains four main sections on the inflexional paradigms. These are located at lines 1515–29, 1637–74, 1759–1879, and 1880–92 (cf. Ahlqvist 1983: 31). They are all variations on an older attempt at establishing a paradigm for the masculine noun fer on the basis of the Latin case system (Thurneysen 1928: 286). Thurneysen opines that the section B 1880–92 resembles the original most closely (ibid.)—although as it stands it is only found in this recension—and moreover that the first section 1515–29 is dependent on and repeats most of the second (1637–74), as most of it is not present in Y (except text corresponding to B 1600–1636 at Y 4680–4725).153 The first and second reiterations are preceded by the header Coic filltigthi fichet hi remim (B 1515, 1637) ‘Twenty-five inflexions in declension’. The twenty-five ‘inflexions’ are divided into two groups (B 1637–38), viz. twenty artificial species and five inflexions ‘for full consideration of the poets’, being the cases of the Irish language. 154

The iterations of the paradigms follow one another only interrupted by shorter items on topics such as the accentuation of Irish words and poetic diction (e.g. the interruption of alliterating words by unstressed words). At least some of these items have been included in all three sections and cause some repetition. It might be noted that the degree of augmentation through the addition of examples from the poetic corpus differs.

The example at B 1602–05 (beginning Cia leth gu brath iar cuairt cros; only the first line is quoted at Y 4682) is defunct as it stands (as the subsequent commentary shows), and it is clear that the commentator is referring to stanzas L32–L33 in the Treḟocal Tract (ed. from LL in Breatnach 2017: 38–44). These yield the order: [...] lond. Ced leth [...], where ced (B 1602 cia) is analysed as a dialt n-etarléime ‘intervening monosyllable’, interposed between two alliterating staves. The examples have been picked from the poem In roghsa,

153 Thurneysen notes that the dat. pl. feraib must have fallen out of the language of the scribe at this point—‘war also für ihn anscheinend nicht mehr vorhanden’ (1928: 287), which would have to be the scribe of the common source of BEL. 154 The deverbal noun filltech is derived from fillid ‘bends’, ‘inclines’ (see eDIL s.vv. fillid, fillte, filltech ). In Sg. the related term filliud is used to gloss Latin declinatio (Sg. 157b1; 158b6). 120 a Ri na run, which has been attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennáin (see Breatnach 2017: 32, 50), and in which all stanzas are linked through alliteration (fidrad freccomail). According to Breatnach (2017: 11), the borrowing could be in either direction— Auraic. na nÉces must at an earlier point in its transmission have contained a version of the stanza more similar to that preserved in LL. This version provided the basis for the preserved commentary. Stanza L41 of Breatnach’s edition (2017: 44) has been preserved in Auraic. na nÉces, which gives superior readings to those of LL (see Breatnach 2017: 35, 50; Hayden 2012a)—compare the edition of M in Appendix 2 (fol. 140ra, p. 281).

The third iteration of the paradigms (B 1759–1879) is introduced by a short piece on the historical origins of the declensions (do bhunadhaibh na remend) at B 1759–69 = Y 4961– 71,155 that is in line with the narrative on the origin of the Irish language as told at §§ 1,2–1,17, which it supplements. At § 1,13 it is stated that: Is and [ocin Tur Nemruaid] íarum ro·ríaglad a mbérla-sa (Ahlqvist 1983: 48) ‘It was there [i.e. at Nimrod’s tower], then, that this language was regulated’. The paragraphs §§ 1,13–1,17 then elaborate on this.

B 1759–1879 supplements the paradigm of fer (as in B 1880–92) with the paradigms of ben and nem. This material is shared with Y and a couple of common errors must have originated in the archetype or at an earlier stage.156 The preservation of the accusative singular in mbein in these paradigms suggests that they were put together at an early period (the beginning of the eighth century or earlier).

The integrity of the order of the items preceding the second section on the paradigms in B is backed up by agreement with Y, so that B 1577–1636 corresponds to Y 4653–4727. The agreement between B and Y on the contents and order of the items in the paradigms themselves is not very precise and varies between the individual sections within the recensions. The readings of the manuscripts generally confuse the Old Irish usage of the accusative and dative cases after prepositions that can govern the one or the other. This does not, however, mean that the section dates to a period after this confusion had taken

155 The text of B is here markedly superior to that of Y, due to e.g. the preservation of the distinction between the prepositions di/do (B 1760 in tiasca di fedaibh ... with a partitive sense), the use of the accusative after la (B 1762 la filedu; see Breatnach 1994: 249 on the spelling with final -u in the accusative plural) and the disyllabic article at B 1762 (ina scuili). 156 Thurneysen (1928: 287) mentions the mistakes dialt for diall ‘declinatio’ (see e.g. B 783, 1918 for this meaning) and airditen for airdiden ‘productio’. 121 place, as the distinction is explicitly recognized at B 1651–68 and is reflected in the terminological units that accompany the examples.157

The forms that make up the paradigms are heterogeneous and might be divided into four groups: 1) case forms; 2) preposition + noun, which is understood as one unit; 3) other proclitic words + noun; and 4) forms that have undergone a phonetical transformation.

Ahlqvist (1983: 29–31) provides a useful, albeit somewhat biased (as will appear below) model for understanding the process of accretion. The first step according to his model consisted of the adaptation of the pattern of Latin declension to Irish nouns and was importantly carried out before the loss of the neuter gender in Irish.158 The second step consisted of the incorporation of prepositional phrases such as ó ḟir, which formed one accentual entity in the Irish language and could be written as one unit.159 I find Ahlqvist’s remarks on this phase and its relative date in respect to the first phase somewhat confusing (1983: 30.20–25). His third phase included the items in the third group suggested above.

The fourth group, that has no sound linguistic basis, has been silently omitted from Ahlqvist’s synoptic tables. This to some extent undermines the model of the development of the paradigms, which does not take into account the fact that many of the forms seem to belong to poetical theory and show affinity with the poetical devices listed and exemplified in the tract on vices in poetry known as the Treḟocal Tract (ed. Calder 1917: 258–69; see also Breatnach 2017). The inclusion of such forms might be a secondary phenomenon but is characteristic of the whole section as it is preserved in the manuscripts. These forms provide a corrective to the projection of modern linguistic thought into the medieval period. A form such as feer (leg. feër with hiatus) is neither archaic nor is it used in verse. Whilst it might indicate an awareness of hiatus as a

157 Compare ‘i fer ’ a inotacht (B 1651–52) ‘i fer its ingressive’ against ‘i fiur ’ a aitreibh (B 1664) ‘i fiur its locative’. 158 The choice of the word nem ‘heaven’ to illustrate the neuter in Irish is probably due to the frequent use of caelum for similar purposes in Latin grammars from the period. This is therefore in itself not sufficient evidence for the existence of the neuter gender in Irish at the time of composition. 159 It might be of importance that such prepositional phrases could correspond to independent use of the Latin cases (e.g. the ablative uirō) and could therefore have been incorporated in an (hypothetical) original Latin paradigm that was then turned into a paradigm of vernacular case-forms. 122 phenomenon in poetry, this is importantly understood as poetical usage rather than as an archaism.

Understandably, the editor does not attempt to relate the paradigms to the text of Auraic. na nÉces proper but he does note the use of paradigms in the section on etargaire (‘distinction’; at §§ 4,1–4,9).160 There is no terminological overlap between these, and the comparison with Latin is not preserved in the more independent paradigms.161

The idea that the noun paradigms might be older than or as old as the text of Auraic. na nÉces is entirely plausible. As there is no firm connection between the two, linguistic evidence in the one has no significance for the date of the other. Partly they belong to the morphological system of Old Irish.

Excursus: categories of analysis in B 1893–1925 The section B 1893–1925 (beg. Incipit do ernailibh in imchomairc) follows the noun paradigms and is only preserved in BET, as well as D3.162 The section is, according to Calder (1917: 144n) based on Priscian’s Partitiones duodecim uersuum Aeneidos principalium (GL vol. III: 459–515; see further remarks in Hayden 2017: 76), which is a detailed analysis of each single word of the first line of each of the twelve books that make up Vergil’s Aeneid—not unlike the method followed in the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces.163 The commentary discusses the meter of the poem and scans each line (realised visually in the Carolingian manuscripts through artificial word-division) before examining the single words. The Latin term partitio corresponds to the Greek

ἐπιμερισμὀς. Priscian’s text provided a model for this kind of analysis and importantly also for its presentation in dialogical form in the Carolingian period. The earliest

160 The term etargaire ‘inflection’ seems to be unattested in the gloss corpora (Ahlqvist 2016: 107). 161 An attempt at adapting the Greek-Latin accentual system to Irish, which is here represented by Ogam, possibly with a general sense of ‘written Irish’ as in the later Bardic grammars (see Hayden 2014: 54n89) and in the preface to the Irish New Testament (1602), dedicated to King James the 5th, by Uilliam O’Domhnaill, Archbishop of Tuam, who ordered a part of the Bible to be written ‘according to the Ogum and propriety of the Irish tongue’ (cited from Toland 1747: 38), provides one of the intervening items between the reiterations of the paradigms in B (1544–76). In Y it is found e.g. at 4767–806. 162 Hayden (2017: 72) has further identified two additional witnesses to this short tract: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (pp. 207–8) and Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337 (pp. 420–2), both from the 16th century. 163 Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek MS 60 (580) pp. 87–191 contains a tenth-century copy of the Partitiones written in Einsiedeln. 123 manuscripts are from northern France164 and the text was not known to the pre- Carolingian grammarians (Law 2003: 86–87, 148).

The section is a distillate of some of the contents of Priscian and contains a few features that link its discourse to other parts of Auraic. na nÉces. Most marked is perhaps the use of the prepositional phrase lasin Laitneoir ‘according to the Latinist’. This is not contrasted with the phrase lasin nGoídel as it is in other parts of the text.

164 E.g. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. Lat. MS 1649 from north-eastern France, possibly Lorsch, from the first half of the ninth century (Bischoff 1989). The Partitiones occupy all of this manuscript but fol. 36v. 124

6. Fontes et testimonia This chapter presents a possible parallel to the early grammar Ars Ambrosiana and re- evaluates the evidence concerning the influence of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus on our text. The second part of the chapter discusses Irish sources and parallels to Auraicept na nÉces with a view towards establishing a relative chronology.

6.1. Hiberno-Latin Grammatical Literature No comprehensive discussion of the sources of Auraic. na nÉces is in existence. The best overview is still Erich Poppe’s article on the “Latin Quotations in Auraicept na nÉces” (2002: 296–312) which identifies parallels to the various citations from Latin grammatical texts. This discussion is limited to the recension represented by B and thus leaves out a number of interesting quotations in the longer text of e.g. Y. The introductions to the two editions (Calder 1917 and Ahlqvist 1983) are not very satisfactory from the point of view of Quellenforschung. The main reason for this is the fact that the editing of the relevant Hiberno-Latin grammatical texts had not proceeded very far by the date of their publication.

The linguistic description of the Irish language in the text is carried out on the basis of rudimentary Latin grammatical doctrine of the sort that could have been appropriated from any introductory work from Late Antiquity onwards. Hence it is difficult to pinpoint the exact period of composition by relating the text to the larger development of linguistic thought in the Middle Ages. Some indications towards its place in linguistic history were identified by Poppe in the article cited above, where he addresses content that is shared with the Hiberno-Latin commentaries. He concludes that Auraic. na nÉces shows ‘significant parallels’ with the chronologically later group, which consists of the ninth-century commentaries by Murethach (ed. Holtz 1977), Sedulius Scottus (ed. Löfstedt 1977), the anonymous Ars Laureshamensis (ed. Löfstedt 1977) and Ars Brugensis (unedited). These commentaries go back to a common source which might be dated to the first quarter of that century (Holtz 1973; 1977: lvi–lix). The parallels between this Hiberno-Latin branch of grammatical commentary and Auraic. na nÉces, although sometimes verbatim, are by Poppe assigned to a shared intellectual background and cognate scholarly interests, as opposed to direct intertextuality, which he rules out due to the Continental provenance and transmission of the Insular grammarians and the exclusively Irish transmission of Auraic. na nÉces. No geographical constraints remain, however, if we suppose a line of borrowing from the common source of the Latin commentaries (or a source prior to this) and the vernacular text—admitting that the 125 precise mechanics are difficult to assess when we are dealing exclusively with the prehistory of the preserved texts.165 This is in no way implausible, since what must have been a rich corpus of Latin texts in Ireland has all but disappeared just like the vernacular texts. Furthermore, this is the only likely scenario that explains the spread and specificity of the parallels. I therefore find it highly plausible, and this would give a terminus post quem in the second quarter of the ninth century.

A possibly important addition to Poppe’s identifications is the following. Poppe gives no source or parallel for his quotation 4.2. (2002: 309): Quicquid asperum dicitur auditus expellit (B 464–65 = Y 2929–30). I have found a rather close parallel in the section on the ablative case in two Donatan commentaries, namely Sergius’s Commentarium de oratione et de octo partibus orationis artis secundae Donati (ed. Stock 2005),166 a commentary on the second book of Ars maior, and in Ars Ambrosiana, from which many citations in Sergius derive (see discussion in Stock 2005: 23–25). The correspondence between the reading in these two commentaries is very close: quia dictu asperum, auditus expellit (Löfstedt 1982: 65.358–61) against quia dictu asperum est, auditus expellit (Stock 2005: 78.17–18; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France MS Latin 7530, fol. 195bisr26– 27).167 The use of Ars Ambrosiana by the Irish is evidenced by an Old Irish gloss on appellativa, which has been integrated into the main text at fol. 8r in the only extant manuscript copy, viz. Milano, Bibliotheca Ambrosiana MS L 22 sup. (dated palaeographically by Bischoff to the third quarter of the ninth century). Thurneysen confidently dates this gloss to the seventh century or about c. 700 (in a letter reproduced

165 In addition to actual textual overlap, Poppe notes the similarity in approach between Auraic. na nÉces and these Hiberno-Latin exegetical grammars, so termed by Vivien Law. To this it should be added that the looser structure of Auraic. na nÉces resembles that of grammatical florilegia such as the mid-ninth century Donatus Ortigraphus (ed. Chittenden 1982), which is a compilation of a great bulk of the material that would be available in later Carolingian schools. 166 This commentary has also wrongly been attributed to Cassiodorus (ed. PL vol. 70: 1219–40). It is preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Lat. 7530 (fols. 183v21–221r18), a manuscript produced at Montecassino towards the very end of the eighth century. 167 The remark regards the forms vāsōrum (gen. pl.) and vāsīs (dat./abl. pl.) of the heteroclite second/third- declension noun vāsum, the irregularity of which Sergius ascribes to euphony. The remark is not found in the commentaries by Murethach and Sedulius, in Ars Brugensis (I have consulted the 11th-/12th-century Kassel, Universitätsbibliothek 4˚ Philol. MS 1, from Fulda—see fol. 71r23ff.) or in Ars Laureshamensis. In Auraic. na nÉces the quotation is taken out of context and is cited (B 464–65 = Y 2929–30) with reference to the semivowels. 126 in Löfstedt 1982: xvii).168 Löfstedt believes that the commentary itself might date to roughly the same period (cf. Richter 2008: 150n55) and that Bobbio is the most likely place of origin, due to citations from a range of sources that would have been unavailable to most monasteries (Löfstedt 1982: vii). It is one of the oldest sources to the Hiberno- Latin tradition of Donatan commentaries, building on familiarity with important texts such as Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (probably older than the Ars Malsachani), Ars Malsachani (dated to c. 700) and the works of Virgilius Maro (see Richter 2008: 148).169 The Irish gloss in Milano, Bibliotheca Ambrosiana MS L 22 sup. has been of significant value to the dating of the text of the archetype of this tradition. Similarly, Irish glosses have been found in the two manuscript witnesses to the grammatical work of Malsachanus, viz. Napoli, Biblioteca nazionale MS Lat. IV A 34 (fols. 235v–56v) probably from Luxeuil (so Bischoff, cf. Beeson 1947: 82ff.), and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale MS Latin 13026 (ff. 161r–181v) from the vicinity of Paris, both from the ninth century. The glosses go back to the archetype also in this tradition (Löfstedt 1965: 31) and have been edited and commented upon by Thurneysen (1938: 280ff.; see also Löfstedt 1965: 25n1, who mentions the existence of an additional two glosses in the Neapolitan manuscript). Thurneysen dates them linguistically to roughly 700 (1938: 281). This must, on the strength of the text-critical arguments presented by Löfstedt, also be the rough date of the common exemplar of the two surviving manuscripts of Ars Malsachani.

The relationship to Insular grammatical texts suggests that the ninth century was a formative period for the early development of the linguistic commentary that is part of

168 The main criteria, it would seem, are the preservation of the distinction of vowel quality in unstressed non-final syllables (agaldemathacha with -e- for later -a-), which was lost early in the Old Irish period (see Stifter 2013: 177ff.), together with the non-syncopated form commedes (= com-bedes; see Th. Gr.: 94, § 152) for later comtis. Note that Thurneysen’s reading differs slightly from Löfstedt’s. See also Bischoff 1966: 198. 169 No citation from this text has so far been identified in Auraic. na nÉces, although Poppe (2002: 306) includes a reading which corresponds closely to B 88–90, but which has a close parallel also in Sedulius (Löfstedt 1977: 228.76–77). Law (1982: 97) has reservations about the ‘Insular background’ of the Ars Ambrosiana but does not consider the orthographical features (for which see Löfstedt 1982: viii–xvi). These, taken together with the provenance and, most importantly, the Irish gloss, provide decisive evidence of Irish engagement with the text irrespective of its ultimate origin. The fact that the gloss is far from contemporaneous with the only surviving manuscript witness suggests continued interaction with the text on the part of Irish-speaking scribes. 127 the preserved Auraic. na nÉces. The presence of a quotation from Ars Ambrosiana or a related text (which then remains chronologically indeterminate as it could be either a source or a derivate) suggests that the range of sources available to the vernacular grammarians was more extensive than is suggested by Poppe (2002: 311–12), possibly including material belonging to the early group of Irish grammatical texts (see Chittenden 1982: xxxiv). The details of transmission are admittedly far from limpid. Given the unspecific nature of the quotation and the fact that it occurs in two independent contexts, it remains a possibility that the direct source was a grammatical compilation or florilegium drawing on the Ars Ambrosiana or a similar text, rather than on these texts themselves.

Calder was of the opinion that Virgilius Maro Grammaticus had exerted a profound influence on the (later) Auraic. na nÉces (1917: xxx–xxxi). To my mind, none of the parallels that Calder suggested between the works of Virgilius Maro and Auraic. na nÉces (in which we may include the commentary) has any diagnostic value (see Calder 1917: xl–xlv). Some of them are also taken from other texts and by and large Calder’s conclusions on Virgilian influence on Auraic. na nÉces are confused. Indirect influence remains possible, but some parallels or near-parallels that have been assumed to be due to a common background in oral instruction (Hayden 2010: 83n219) are entirely Latinate in character and this makes such assumptions redundant. The argument thought by Calder to be most important, namely the statement b cum aspiratione pro p ponitur (B 433), is probably taken from Priscian and not from Virgilius Maro (see discussion in Poppe 2002: 304–05). To me the passage seems to deal with the relationship between the sound-values of the two letters rather than Ogam orthography, as was thought by both Calder and Thurneysen (1928: 282). Poppe has identified a related discussion in Donatus Ortigraphus (2002: 304–05). The division of a sentence into groups of letters (Y 3501–03) has been convincingly explained by Hayden (2017) and no connection to Virgilius Maro need be sustained.

The use of Virgilius Maro was common in Hiberno-Latin grammatical writings, with the important exception of Ars Ambrosiana (Bischoff 1957: 126). Löfstedt (1965: 20) makes the observation that ‘nicht nur ist die ganze handschriftliche Überlieferung dieses eigenartigen Grammatikers durch irische Hände gegangen, sondern er wird auch besonders oft von irischen Gelehrten benutzt’ (loc. cit.), citing Auraic. na nÉces as an example (op. cit.: 20n2) due to the misleading information in Calder’s preface to the first edition of this text. 128

In addition to Donatus and Priscian, AEgGP(T)Y mention several additional grammarians, namely Agroecius (GL vol. VII: 113–25), Consentius (GL vol. V: 1–79; 386–404) and Pompeius (GL vol. V: 81–312). Consentius, a fifth-century grammarian, was in frequent use in the Carolingian period and is cited on the ascription of gender at Y 3240–42. Preceding this quote, at Y 3235–39, is a quote ascribed to Pompeius. Consentius and Pompeius were among the chief sources for the eighth-century Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (Zetzel 2019: 356). Agroecius, who was the bishop of Sens, authored a work on orthography in mid-fifth century Gaul (see Holtz 1981: 232–33). To him (Y Ogricus) is attributed a quotation at Y 2840–41 (not found in Agroecius’s De orthographia at GL vol. VII: 113–25, but perhaps reflecting a tradition otherwise lost). Occasionally the names of the grammarians are corrupted due to their having been abbreviated.

The most important conclusion of this survey is that Auraic. na nÉces in all likelihood drew on the common ancestor of the four Donatan commentaries, providing a terminus post quem in the second quarter of the ninth century. A new parallel suggests that the author had access also to some earlier material from the Insular grammatical tradition. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, there are no clear indications that the author drew on Virgilius Maro Grammaticus, in spite of the claims of earlier scholarship.

129

6.2. The Irish Tradition Sanas Cormaic A notable feature of Auraicept na nÉces is the rhetorical opposition between the ‘Irishman’ (Goídel) and the ‘Latinist’ (Laitneóir). This would seem to belong to an early chronological layer of the text and is applied in the discussions of the phonetic constituents of Irish and Latin as well as in the representation of these in their respective alphabets (Ahlqvist 1983: §§ 1,14–2,10). Moreover, this opposition is also applied with respect to other features of the languages, viz. gender (§§ 3,1–13), vocabulary (§ 1,17), and ‘distinctions’ (§§ 4,1–9). In the remaining paragraphs of Ahlqvist’s canonical text, the approach is less comparative and more focused on the specifically Irish. When it comes to the outcome of intellectual pursuits in the vernacular in the Old Irish period, our synchronic sources are chiefly the major Irish manuscripts that have been preserved in Continental libraries (Thes. Pal. vols. I–II). These documents are manifestly the result of sentiments opposite from those which have informed the discursive technique of Auraic. na nÉces, although this text itself operates on the interface between the vernacular and Latin languages and, from a methodological point of view, suggests that the fusion of the rhetorical adversaries has already taken place. The term Laitnorib (dative plural) is found at Sg. 4a1; Thes. Pal. vol. II: 52) as a superlinear gloss on Priscian’s quibus nos utimur, but here there is no sign of a contrast being made between different scholarly profiles on the basis of language as in the vernacular texts. Such a contrast is found in the glossary conventionally referred to as Sanas Cormaic (SC) or Cormac’s Glossary.

SC is preserved in seven manuscripts and is ascribed to Cormac mac Cuilennáin (ob. 908), who was the king-bishop of Cashel (in today’s County Tipperary, Munster) in the tenth century. Cormac mac Cuilennáin may also have compiled the Psalter of Cashel and possibly a collection of genealogies of Ireland (see Carney 2005: 486). The copies of this glossary in the Yellow Book of Lecan and in the Book of Uí Mhaine contain a couple of parallels to Auraic. na nÉces. I give the text of the edition at the Early Irish Glossaries Database (Russell et al.; see Bibliography), but with added length-marks and some normalization. For ease of reference only the readings of Y (Yellow Book of Lecan) and M (Book of Uí Maine) are included.

130

The Irish learned vs. the Latinist in SC:

1. [...] amail as·berar lasin Laitneōir: ūnus nōn est numerus sed ab eō crescunt numerī [...] ocht ndeich trā at·rīmet filid na Goīdilce (Y col. 31; lemma: deach).

A curtailed form of the Latin quotation above is found at B 688–89 = Y 3318 (omitting sed ab eō crescunt numerī).

2. Deme .i. cech neutur lasin Laitneōir is deme lasin filid nGoīdelach (Y col. 32; M fol. 179va).

This second quotation corresponds quite closely to one of the analyses of deiminsce ‘neuter gender’ in Auraic. na nÉces: no demhoe cech neotar lasin Laitneoir is deime laisin bfilid nGaoidelach (Y 3077–79; M 140ra8–9; D p. 7b; om. BEL). The following passage is not found in Auraic. na nÉces:

3. ‘Fíne’ ab eō quod est uínea ar is gnāth ind .u. consain lasin Laitneōir is fern lasin Goīdeilg ut est ‘uir’ .i. fer. uīsio .i. ‘fiss’. uīta .i. ‘fit’. uirtūs .i. ‘firt’ quamuīs hōc nōn per singula currat (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 16, p. 267a).

Variants from the Yellow Book of Lecan and the Book of Uí Mhaine: fine ab eo] fine .i. on finemuin ab eo Y; ind u consain] ind comsamhla sin M; hoc non] hoc nomen M

SC is an open text in the sense that additions could in principle have been made at any time during its manuscript life, the only safe terminus ante quem being provided by the date of the individual manuscripts. The same is to a significant extent true for Auraic. na nÉces. This makes it a difficult task to evaluate inter-textual phenomena, especially given the fact that both texts occur in the same manuscripts.

The Leinster poems Three early alliterative poems trace the genealogy of well-known Irish kings backwards to Adam through the common European ancestor Japheth (see McCone 1990: 66ff.). These genealogical poems have been edited by Kuno Meyer (1913: 26–58). Poems I–II of his edition are attributed to the pseudo-historical poet Ladcenn macc Bairchedo.170

170 The poems are introduced in the Laud Genealogies (ed. Meyer 1912) as so-called fursundud (verbal noun derived from the verb for·osna ‘illuminate’, ‘elucidate’)—poems meant to ‘exalt the princes of a certain dynasty’ (see eDIL s.v. fursundud). 131

Meyer dates them to the seventh century on linguistic grounds (op. cit.: 16), which leaves open the possibility that the traditional attribution is correct. Poem III is attributed to Find fili mac Rossa Ruaid and IV to Luccreth moccu Chiara. All of these poems are stanzaic, with four verses per stanza, and are also rhythmic and display end-rhyme (see discussion in Meyer 1913c: 6ff.).

Poems II and IV include a list of the nations of the world that is also found in Auraic. na nÉces as well as in both prose and verse in LG (see synoptic tables of all the textual traditions in Macalister 1939: 150–52). The list of nations has been extrapolated from Isidore’s geographical description of the world (Etymologiae XIV) and the many differences between the various Irish versions of it is an indication that it became detached from the Isidorian tradition early on—detached in the sense that corruptions were not corrected by reference to the source.171 The total number of nations is 56 in II and 64 in IV, but Meyer notes that this section of IV is derivate of II, despite the Munster origin of IV and the Leinster origin of II. The total was probably 72 at some point in the tradition.172 McCone (1990: 66) assumes that IV was composed during the reign of the Munster king Cú cen Máthair, who represents the focal point of the genealogical exposition in the poem. This dates the poem roughly to the mid-seventh century. However, Carney (1989: 49) notes that the compilers of the Munster genealogies made use of older Leinster poetry and this pivotal event in the transmission of the poems he cautiously assigns to the tenth or eleventh centuries.173 These are obviously two incompatible scenarios: imitation and composition during the seventh century or adaptation in the tenth/eleventh centuries. Meyer remarks that ‘eine eingehendere Untersuchung zeigt, daß [...] IV von Strophe 1–13 eine direkte

171 This may be compared with Moran’s observations on the compilation of DOSL (see below). Scowcroft (1988: 19n48) notes that some of the information thought to have been taken from Isidore could in theory have been extrapolated from earlier sources such as Jerome’s Liber quaestionum Hebraicarum in Genesim, but Isidore’s popularity among the Irish makes his work a very probable giver. 172 Pace Macalister (1939: 149). The number 72 is commonplace and must be assumed to have been the aim, although the Irish list of nations was probably not intended to be attached to the Babelian story at the outset. The B witness to Auraic. na nÉces does list 72 nations, but note with Calder (1917: 18, app. cr.) that several of the ‘nations’ are actually descriptive adjectives that have been re-interpreted. Such adjectives were part of the verse rendering of the list, the primacy of which is thereby confirmed. 173 Carney’s dating of the Leinster poetry, on the other hand, is less cautious. See criticism in Ó Corráin 1997. 132

Nachahmung und von da an bis zum Schluß eine Entlehnung aus II ist’ (1913: 51). He ends on the notion that IV must be a Middle Irish composition due to the presence of forms foreign to Old Irish (ibid.). This fits well with Carney’s suggestion and it follows that the poem can hardly have been composed by Luccreth moccu Chiara during the mid-seventh-century reign of the Munster king Cú cen Máthair (pace McCone 1990: 66). That the first section of IV is to some extent an imitation of II could be explained within this scenario, and as far as the section on the various nations is concerned, I find it improbable that it should have been subjected to a separate strand of ‘imitative’ poetry transmitted through the centuries as such. The second solution therefore strikes me as the more likely one. Stanza § 14 corresponds to stanza § 32 in poem II, although Éremón has been replaced by Éber in the course of adaptation to a Munster context.174

Meyer lists three distinct procedures by which the Irish linked their national branch onto the Biblical ancestral tree (op. cit.: 26). All approaches follow Isidore’s equation between Japheth and Europe. The first approach was to introduce Ibath as the son of Javan son of Japheth as the common ancestor for the Irish and British. This is probably the oldest solution and is found also in the Historia Brittonum. Meyer suggests that this provided the Irish with a common ancestor with the Greeks (ibid.; see also Etymologiae IX, II, 28). The second method is to attach the Irish onto Riphath, one of the three sons of Gomer, himself one of the seven sons of Japheth. This approach is the one we find in poems II–IV in Meyer’s edition.175 The third approach is to attribute the two sons Baath and Ibath to Magog, who has no named sons in the Biblical version. This procedure is followed in Sex Aetates Mundi (SAM; ed. Ó Cróinín 1983: 74, § 25).176 Meyer draws attention to the fact that Isidore suggests that Magog is the ancestor of the Scythians as well as the Goths (Etymologiae IX, II, 27). This is the version that is presented in Historia Brittonum (included in van Hamel 1932: 8, § 5) and in SAM (Ó Cróinín 1983: loc. cit.).

174 Consider e.g.: Hibernia insola inter duos filios principales Militis, id est, Herimon ⁊ Eber, in duas partes diuisa est. Eber autem australem partem Hiberniae accepit, Herimon quidem septimtrionalem partem cum monarcia accepit (Meyer 1912: 291). 175 According to Meyer this indicates that the Irish counted themselves as Gauls (1913: 26), drawing on Isidor’s Gomer, ex quo Galatae, id est Galli (Etymologiae IX, II, 26). 176 SAM then states that Fénius Farrsaid is the son of Baath and the ancestor of both the Scythians and the Goths (Ó Cróinín: 74, § 25). The other son of Magog, namely Ibath, is then counted as the ancestor of the Lombards, Franks and British, among others. The Gauls on the other hand go back to Gomer and are therefore placed at one further remove from the Irish (see previous note). 133

The list of nations follows the alliterative pattern that characterizes the whole of poem II and, less strictly so, poem IV. The pattern might be illustrated with the two first stanzas of the list of nations in II (Meyer 1913c: 30, § 41): Bethin, Scithin, Scuit, Scill, | Scarthaig, Grēic, Gothia, Gaill, | Germāin, Point, Pampil, mūaid, | Moraind luind, Lugdōin ūaig. All words (except for the opening word of the poem) are connected to another through alliteration. Two or more words may be so connected, after which the alliterating consonant changes. McCone states that poems II, III, and IV may be used to trace the role of Goídel as eponymous ancestor of the Irish ‘right back into the seventh century’ (1990: 67–68), but poems II and IV do not actually contain the name—they only contain the epithet Glas that is usually associated with him, which in both cases (Meyer 1913c: 30, § 35 and 54, § 16) might arguably be read in conjunction with the name preceding it (Éber and Febal respectively—a certain (F)ebri Glass is also mentioned at Macalister 1939: 22, §§ 113–14, in the LG m and R1/a, and at Macalister 1939: 76, § 161, in R3/c). This is a strong argument against McCone, as the lack of attestation of the proper name in these sources renders any notion of eponymy altogether redundant. Poems II and IV should therefore be rejected as evidence for the early occurrence of this name, which is also at variance with the commonly accepted notion that the ethnonym Goídel ‘Irish’ was borrowed from Welsh gwyddel. The developments within the Welsh phonetic system, i.e. velarization of the fortis initial [w] to [gw] by the late eighth century (Jackson 1953: 388; 390–91) and diphthongization of close /e:/ to /oï/ provide a rough terminus post quem for this loan that is compatible with the obit of Goídel of Cluain Iraird in 775 = 776 in the Annals of Ulster (ed. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill 1983). The word goes back to *wēdu < PIE *weidh-. The zero-grade of this root (*widhu-) is reflected in Old Irish fid.177

177 See further John T. Koch 2000: 3–16 on the origin of this term and the term Goídelc ‘Irish’ (with the Brittonic suffix -ec /eg/), but note that the evidence he adduced for the absorption of the term in written literature is susceptible to the criticism presented here. DOSL contains the derivation Goídelg .i. ó Goídiul (§ 667; see Moran 2019: 218, 489), but the problem of dating individual items in open texts presents itself here (consider in this regard the etymology taken from Auraic. na nÉces at § 12—see Moran 2019: 129, 288). To my mind a very short timespan between the British sound-changes and the occurrence of the term in Irish texts seems implausible. Koch’s argument otherwise shows how important it is to distinguish the various strata of Auraic. na nÉces. Stemmatic considerations challenge the fundament for his interesting ‘Neo-Brittonic complex’ (Koch 2000: 5) of loanwords as far as our text is concerned. 134

Poem III, attributed to Find fili mac Rossa Rúaid, on the other hand, does mention Goídel Glass at § 42, where this name stands in apposition to the phrase án géin Glunḟind ‘the splendid son of G.’:

Nōenal, Fāibur, Gōedel Glass ōengno, āngein Glūnḟind, Lāmḟind, Etheoir ōebdo.178

Meyer (1913: 38) believes this to be the oldest of the four poems in his edition. The poem is preserved only in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 502 (saec. xi ex./xii in.), at fol. 64ra19–c26, as part of a tract on the Laigin. Ó Corráin saw the disagreement between II and III as the ‘variants of a broad historical construct in the making in the monastic schools, in the late seventh century’ (1998: 177–208). It seems reasonable to take the inconsistencies in detail as an indication that the narrative was being framed in this period (but see McCone 1991: 67–68), though it must be stressed that the poems are somewhat deficient in narrative content and further that their loose structure means that the content might conceivably have been developed in the course of transmission.

Poem II is preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 502 (c. 1125–1150) and mentions neither Goídel nor Fénius explicitly, but one manuscript copy (Meyer’s R) has added Nél and Fénius to the text of § 36 (Meyer 1913c: 36). This has to be a later reworking, according to Meyer, as poem IV (being derivative of II) agrees with the other witness against R.

Macalister (1939: 149) is probably justified in assuming that the list of nations was originally compiled as a study aid and that it was not intended to be attached to the story of the dispersal of the nations. Neither was it originally strictly connected to the languages of the world, and so its use in Auraic. na nÉces must be seen as a later adaptation. The Leinster poems, if their early date is accepted, suggest that the list must have been compiled shortly after Isidore had been made available in Ireland. Another Leinster poem (ed. Campanile 1988; see O’Brien 1962), also from the genealogies contained in the Rawlinson B 502, mentions f(h)laithi Goédel. Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae (ed. O’Brien 1962), the base text of which is taken from Rawlinson B 502,

178 ‘Noenal, Faebur, Goedel Glass, einzig schön; ein herrlicher Sproß war Glunḟind, Lamfind; schöner war Etheoir’ (Meyer 1913c: 42, 45).

135 contains one genealogical poem (fursundud) that is attributed to Find fili mac Rossa Rúaid that gives the ancestry of Nuadu Necht, working backwards to Adam.

Genesis as background to the Irish pseudo-history The historical sections of Auraic. na nÉces have close parallels in the larger and more synthetic historical or mythographic work Lebor Gabála Érenn (ed. Macalister 1938–56; henceforth LG), which among other things narrates the Irish exodus and the subsequent wanderings which eventually take the Irish to Ireland. Michael Clarke argues (2015: 441–80) that the mythographic work in the grand scheme of LG was carried out in a Carolingian and post-Carolingian context and that the Irish story was framed with a view towards other national histories that were manufactured in the same period and he further suggests that the ‘logic of the Irish origin legend’ took shape against the background of comparison and confrontation between various origin legends in an international Carolingian environment (op. cit.: 446). The intertextual connections between Auraic. na nÉces and LG, ranging from transposed passages to explicit references and discussions on doctrine, therefore have implications for our understanding of the likely cultural and historical context for their composition and subsequent reworkings.179

Genesis places the origin of language in Eden and establishes a one-to-one relationship between each thing and the word which denotes it (see Law 2003: 107 on vox/verbum). Here quoted in the Latin Vulgate (Weber-Gryson 1994):

19 Formatis igitur Dominus Deus de humo cunctis animantibus terrae et universis volatilibus caeli adduxit ea ad Adam ut videret quid vocaret ea. Omne enim quod vocavit Adam animae viventis ipsum est nomen eius. 20 Appellavitque Adam nominibus suis cuncta animantia et universa volatilia caeli et omnes bestias terrae. Adam vero non inveniebatur adiutor similis eius (Genesis 2: 19–20).

‘19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20

179 Aside from being connected by their intertextuality, Auraic. na nÉces and LG share a significant portion of narrative topics. This common ground, however, (compare for instance Ahlqvist 1983: §§ 1,1–1,12 with Macalister 1939: 44, § 134ff.) is constantly negotiated in the sources themselves, which sometimes (Macalister 1939: 50, § 139) results in explicit critique. 136

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him’ (KJV).180

Adam was the principal name-giver.181 Humanity was, however, deprived of linguistic unity at Babel. The original Adamic language was irretrievably lost and replaced by a multitude of languages:

7 venite igitur descendamus et confundamus ibi linguam eorum ut non audiat unusquisque vocem proximi sui. 8 Atque ita divisit eos Dominus ex illo loco in universas terras et cessaverunt aedificare civitatem. 9 Et idcirco vocatum est nomen eius Babel quia ibi confusum est labium universae terrae et inde dispersit eos Dominus super faciem cunctarum regionum (Genesis 11: 7–9).

‘7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth’ (KJV).

To Saint Augustine this passage represented the tragedy which befell mankind as a result of arrogance. He contrasted it with the story of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles

180 The King James’ Version is a translation of the Greek text, and not of the Latin Vulgate. 181 In the first of the Classical Modern Irish grammatical treatises it is said, alluding to Genesis 2: 19–20, that Fénius Farrsaid gave names to ʻevery concrete thing which eye can see and hand can grasp (but cf. Ahlqvist 1979–80: 12): [...] ⁊ as é Fē[i]nius Farsaidh féin tug ainm ar gac[h] ní subsdainnteac[h] do-chí súil ⁊ ghlacus lámh (‘[...] and it is Fénius Farsaidh himself who named ...’) (Mac Cárthaigh 2014: ll. 131–132). This extract is picked from a passage which draws heavily on material derived from Auraic. na nÉces and its commentary (Mac Cárthaigh 2014: 188), although the remark itself must either be original or stem from other sources. What stands out is a conscious wish to liken the situation after the fall of the Tower of Babel to a more original state of affairs, where the correspondence between each thing and the word which denoted it was absolute. The parallel between the origin of Irish and the origin of the Adamic language (arguably Hebrew) is obvious given the general Old Testament setting of the story. This passage explicitly states what is only implicitly said in the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces. Fénius Farsaid is given the same role as Adam once had. His role as a polyglot is repeatedly underscored also in LG (Macalister 1939; see e.g. § 149). 137

(2: 1–11) (Law 2003: 104–105) and the humility, spurred by faith, which at that occasion caused mutual understanding across language boundaries.

A great deal of the narrative sections in Auraic. na nÉces is concerned with the origin of the Irish language. Irish mythography equipped the vernacular language with a provenance within the framework of Genesis by claiming it to be a response to the dispersal and confusion of tongues at Babel. The plot is a rhetorical achievement in and of itself and the story must be counted among the most remarkable characteristics of Auraic. na nÉces. It reverberates through the accompanying commentary and receives various expressions. The principal idea (Ahlqvist 1983: 48, § 1,13) is that the Irish language is a synthetic language fashioned from the finest parts of the other vernaculars as well as the three sacred languages.182 This idea reverses the logic of more standard expositions of the events at Babel, such as represented by the following passage from Alcuin’s Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesin (Inter. 151):

Si Deus requievit ab omnibus operibus suis in die septimo, unde subito tanta apparuit diversitas linguarum? Non in hac divisione linguarum novum quid condere Creatorem æstimatur, sed dicendi modos et formas in diversis loquelarum generibus divisit. Unde easdem syllabas et ejusdem potestatis litteras, [licet] aliter conjunctas, in diversis gentium linguis inveniemus; sæpe etiam [et] eadem nomina vel verba aliud quid significantia in alia lingua, atque aliud in alia. Ubi dicimus in

Psalmo: In virga ferrea (Psalm II, 9), in Græco habetur ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ, igitur in Latino ‘sidera’ non ‘ferrea’ significat, sicut in Græco, sed ‘astra’ (Patrologia Latina vol. 100: col. 534).

‘If God rested from all his works on the seventh day, from where did the diversity of the languages suddenly appear? It is not believed that the Creator made anything new in this division of languages (linguarum), but that the modes and forms of expression (dicendi modos) were divided into various kinds of speech (loquelarum). For which reason we find the same syllables and letters of the same value, combined in different ways in the languages of the various nations [lit. in the various languages of ...]. Often also the same nouns or verbs have one meaning in one language and another meaning in another [language]. When we say in the

182 The total is 72 vernaculars plus Greek, Hebrew and Latin. 138

psalm: “with a rod of iron (ferrea)”, we have ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ in Greek. Latin

“sidera” does not mean “iron” [σιδηρᾷ is the Greek dative singular], but “stars”.’

This passage is re-echoed in a version of Glossa Ordinaria which before the 20th century was misattributed to Walahfrid Strabo.183 The passage stresses the fact that God did not actually create anything new when he caused the linguistic diversity in order to sanction humanity because of the construction of the Tower of Babel. By comparison with the phrase in virga ferrea ‘with a rod of Iron’ (KJV) in the Latin and Greek translation of the Psalms, Alcuin notes that the same word sidera is found in both languages, but with different meanings. The point of this passage is that the raw material of language had already been created and that the various vernaculars resulted from the scrambling of the components of the Adamic language. The adaptation in Auraic. na nÉces does not challenge the theologically important notion of non-creation after the first six days of the world. The procedure leading to the formation of Irish is the opposite of the one that caused the shattering of linguistic unity. Seen against this theological scenery, it does not lead to the creation of a ‘new’ language, but rather to the reconfiguration of already extant linguistic items. The fact that this is executed by an assemblage of pseudo- historical men of learning underscores the scholarly ambitions of the narrative. By stating that Irish was created from the finest parts of the other languages, Auraic. na nÉces suggests a recreation of something like the Adamic language, where sound corresponded to meaning. A backdrop of Biblical commentary reinforces the notion of the Irish language as an approximation to the language that existed before the linguistic confusion.184 Such an approach is different from the one that is followed in DOSL, where the connection between the Irish and the Greek languages is stressed (see

183 In hac divisione linguarum nihil novum fecit Deus, sed dicendi modos et formas loquelarum diversis gentibus divisit. Unde easdem syllabas et ejusdem potestatis litteras aliter conjunctas in diversis linguis invenimus, et sæpe eadem nomina vel verba aliud significantia (PL vol. 113: col. 115; cf. the translation of Alcuin above). 184 On this note, see also Inter. 147: Fecit ergo superbia diversitates linguarum [humilitas Christi congregavit diversitates linguarum] et quos turris dissociaverat, Ecclesia collegit (PL vol. 100: col. 533). ‘So pride caused the diversity of languages (the humility of Christ has unified the diversity of languages) and the Church has put together that which the Tower had separated.’ If inspired by such notions, namely the restoration of linguistic and ethnic unity through the humility of Christ and the workings of the Church, the Irish account could have had theological aspirations in addition to its more mundane vernacular bias. The ethnic unity claimed for Irish could not be claimed for Latin. Cf. also the Glossa Ordinaria on Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles (2: 1–11) (PL vol. 114: cols. 430–31). 139

Moran 2015: 481–512; 2019). The Greek hypothesis is less concerned with theology (although the preface to DOSL mentions that the compilators of the text drew on Jerome’s Hebrew Names and other religious authorities—see Moran 2015: 482). The Irish glossaries categorize Greek, Hebrew, and Latin words (or words imagined to be of such origin) as loanwords in Irish, which is rendered possible by the synthetic theory of the origin of the Irish language.

This could have been intended to legitimize the use of Irish as an instrument for intellectual pursuits and, perhaps more importantly, to justify the methodological plausibility of subjecting Irish to etymological analysis. Since the relatively solid position of the vernacular written language appears to be a precondition for the composition of a work of this nature, and since Irish etymology had been practised from a very early period, this justification must be understood as retrospective.

The pseudo-Biblical pedigree of Auraic. na nÉces fits in well with one of its main preoccupations, which is the demonstration of the superiority of Irish over the three sacred languages (Greek, Hebrew and especially Latin) together with their alphabets. If we think in terms of a Latin antecedent, Isidore includes information on for instance the origin of the Latin alphabet in the first book of his Etymologiae, while his ninth book contains a great deal of the Biblical narrative that inspired the customized account in Auraic. na nÉces. Some preserved texts, such as Donatus Ortigraphus, provide us with an idea of what kind of text may reasonably have inspired much of the content of Auraic. na nÉces, but no known text is likely to be a direct precursor. This stands to reason, as Auraic. na nÉces is the first known apology of a Western vernacular.

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The first paragraph of The Early Irish Linguist (Ahlqvist’s § 1,1) The opening lines of Auraic. na nÉces as it has been edited and translated by Ahlqvist (1983: 47, § 1,1) read as follows (cited with macrons supplied for acute accents and minor changes in punctuation):

As·berat trā augtair na nGoídel combad sī tucait airic in bērla Fēne gnīm n-ingnad n-indligthech for·chaemnacair isin domun .i. cumtach in tuir Nemruaid.

‘Now the authors of the Irish say that the cause for the invention of the language of the Féni [Irish] was a strange, wonderful deed that took place in the world, i.e. the construction of Nimrod’s tower.’

The phrase gním n-ingnad n-indligthech in the opening section of Auraic. na nÉces (B 100– 101; Y 2380–81) is highlighted as part of the canonical text by some manuscripts (B 171rb, L 151va) and is consequently treated as such by Ahlqvist (see 1983: 47, § 1,1). Ahlqvist provides (op. cit.: 56) a very short discussion of the phrase in question due to the presence of nasalization after the headword gním, which in Old Irish is a masculine -u-stem (see eDIL s.v. gním).185 Ahlqvist considers the nasalization to be an intrusive Middle Irish feature, which is quite possible, at least in theory, and further examples of nasalization after non-neuter nouns in the nominative case have been provided by Strachan in his 1905 article “Contributions to the History of Middle Irish Declensions”, to which Ahlqvist refers. Interesting for the present investigation is the use of n- in chevilles (op. cit.: 207). According to Strachan, this could be employed irrespective of the gender of the preceding noun in the Saltair na Rann (henceforth SR; ed. Stokes 1883). It was possibly a stylistic feature adopted due to the frequency of certain neuter nouns in chevilles. Several of the instances quoted by Strachan involve the word gním and one of the examples even includes the phrase gním n-ingnad (SR 4089). This example does not, however, occur in a cheville, but as the subject (nominative) of the verb do·adbat (with the passive sense: ‘is shown’, ‘is revealed’, ‘appears’).186

185 Georges Dottin cites gnim n-ingnad ‘une action merveilleuse’ in his Manuel d’irlandais moyen as an accusative singular (1913: 42), where nasalization would be expected in Old Irish irrespective of the gender of the preceding noun. As the nom./acc. sg. forms of both noun and adjective are formally identical and as Dottin does not quote the source for this example, his interpretation is of no value here.

186 Doarfas gnim n-in͘gnad doib | i sleib Sína fochétoir, | fiadgnuis int ṡlúaig, torom ṅgle, | daig derg dermor teintide (Stokes 1883: 4089–4092). 141

As noted by Meroney (1945: 18), the phrase in question is also found in the

LG R3 (Macalister)/c (Scowcroft):

Is amlaid imorro bai an talam an tan sin, ⁊ áen berla inand ag na huilib dainib ra batar fair, ⁊ Goirthigern a ainm, .i. an berla Ebraidhi, no cor scailed na berlada ag an Tur. Is amlaid so adcaemnacair sin dia ndernad gnim n-ingnad n-indligteach isin domun an tan sin dorisi (Macalister 1938: 140, § 83).187

‘Now the earth was in this wise at that time, all men that were upon it having one and the same language, and Gorthigern was its name, i.e. the Hebrew language, until the languages were separated at the Tower. That came to pass in this manner, when a wonderful deed was done in the world at that time once again’ (op. cit.: 141).

The only manuscript that preserves this passage is the 14th-century Dublin, Trinity College MS H 2.15a/1316 (Macalister’s H) (see Scowcroft 1987: 141). Meroney suggested that the phrase originated in LG and was adopted by the commentary to Auraic. na nÉces (1945: 18–19). The argument he presents in support of his assumption is that the style of the passage fits better as part of the ‘inflated rhetoric’ of the Genesis fragment, while it is unmatched in Auraic. na nÉces. I find this stylistic argument unconvincing (for one thing it is circular), but there are stronger arguments in favour of Meroney’s scenario.

One could perhaps imagine that the phrasing had currency specifically in the depiction of the Babel scene. In favour of this is Macalister’s observation that the story of the Tower of Babel as narrated by H is ‘very diffuse’ and that it ‘departs widely, in its language at least, from the Biblical text’ (Macalister 1938: 247), which could be taken as an indication of independent circulation and retelling in an Irish setting, but this scenario seems to me far less likely than direct textual borrowing from one source to the other, given the exact correspondence of the phrase.

This issue strikes at the very core of the reconstructed text of Auraic. na nÉces, if we therefore accept that gnim n-ingnad n-indligthech isin domun (to which we might add the choice of compounds of the verb ·cumaing, used in both LG and Auraic. na nÉces) is

187 Macalister notes (1938: 140n84a) that the word ng ̅nad is probably written over an earlier error in the text. The passage is only preserved in H. 142 unlikely to be polygenetic and therefore necessitates direct textual contact between LG and Auraic. na nÉces.

Ahlqvist provides (1983: 56) a very short discussion of the phrase in question and notices that gním is not recorded as a neuter noun in the Old Irish corpus, and thus that the following nasalization must be considered Middle Irish, with reference to Strachan’s 1905 article mentioned above.

It should be noted that the phrase is very well documented in the manuscript record of

Auraic. na nÉces and that it must be attributed to α. The fact that nasalization is not expected after gním, which is a masculine noun, makes it worthwhile to search for corresponding phrases elsewhere in the corpus.

Since the phrase ‘gním n-ingnad n-indligteach’ conforms with the inflated ‘rhetoric’ of the Genesis fragment, yet has no counterpart in the style of Auraicept, the point of origin was probably the Biblical rendering. Unable to believe that this paraphrase dates from the seventh century, I question whether Cindfáelad wrote the very passage which Auraicept scribes cite and magnify as his. Since this does away with the supposedly basic text of the first tract, we must look elsewhere for primitive matter (Meroney 1945: 18–19).

In addition to this shared phrase, the content of Auraic. na nÉces and LG is thematically related. This occasioned the explicit comparison between the teachings of the two texts, which is the subject of the following section.

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Auraicept na nÉces and Lebor Gabála Érenn The following section is preserved in LG R2/b and in a few of the manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces.188 The text below is taken from Macalister (1938: 36–38, § 17) and the reader is referred to his edition for variants from the textual tradition of LG.189 I have provided the text with significant variants from all copies of Auraic. na nÉces that contain the section, viz. BD(marg.)GLY.

LG R2/b: Dā bliadain sescat ō scāiliud in Tuir co flaith Nin meic Peil. Ceithre bliadna dēc ar trib fichtib ar ocht cētaib ō thūs flatha Nin co deirid flatha Tutanes, rīg in domain. Fria lind-side ro toglad Trōe din thogail dēdenaig. Secht mbliadna īarsin thogail sin, co tuc Aenias mac Anaciss Lauinia ingen Latin meic Puin: conid trī bliadna cethrachat ar nōi cētaib ō scāiliud in Tuir co tuc Aeniass ingen Latin, ⁊ Latin dorōne a cuir friss.

Is follus as sin conach cert-tiaghait lucht ind Auraiccepta, combad hē Laitin is seissed prīmthōisech ind Tuir, ⁊ a fot anūass etorro cethracha bliadan, o scāiliud in Tuir co tānic Foenius Farsaidh atūaidh asin Scithia cona scoil, do iarraidh na mbērla: ar do-rumenatar fosgebtais and, ar bīth as ass ro scāilit. Dā bliadain īar tiachtain do Fēnius atūaid corice Nin (Macalister 1938: 36–38, § 17).190

188 B fol. 175vb22ff.; D p. 12 marg.; G p. 197b21ff.; L fol. 158ra21ff.; Y col. 532.37ff.; om. EgEMPT. The text is included in a marginal entry in D at the place where the gloss is incorporated into the text in B—but note that D also has another marginal entry (Brec dano a rad so ...) that is not found in B. On the other hand, this has been incorporated into the text of P (p. 107, 3) and Y (4031ff.). B and L have essentially the same text with important common errors, which must be attributed to their exemplar, notwithstanding the omission of the text in E. GY introduce the text with comaimserad andso sis and share several minor errors. Some of these are omissions that have been reintroduced at a later stage in the interlinear space in G, in accordance with the readings of BL and LG. The corrections must have been based on the consultation of a source different from the exemplar of G. 189 I have compared the text of the edition with Dublin, NLI MS G 10 (dated to the 16th century). 190 Macalister’s edition is close to the text found in the LG R2 manuscript RIA LS D v 1, presumably from the 14th century (ISOS): LS D v 1: f. 1va IS follus as sin connach cert tiagh ait lucht ind aur | aiccepta com bad he laitin in seiseacht pri mtoisech ind | tuir ⁊ a fot anuass etur ru xl bliadan o scailiud in tuir co | tanic foenius farsaidh a tuaid asin scithia con a scoil do | iaraidh na mber la ar dorumenatar fosgebtais and ar 1vb arbith as ass roscailit .ii. bliadain iar tiactain do fenius | atuaid corice nin.

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‘There were sixty-two years from the dispersal of the Tower until the reign of Ninus son of Peil. There were eight hundred and seventy-four years from the beginning of the reign of Ninus to the end of the reign of Tautanes, king of the world. It is during his reign Troy was sacked for the last time. There were seven years after that sacking until Aeneas son of Anchises took Lavinia daughter of Latinus son of Faunus: so that there were nine hundred and forty-three years from the dispersal of the Tower until Aeneas took the daughter of Latinus and Latinus made his marriage-contract with him.

For this reason it is clear that the people of the Auraicept [sc. na nÉces] are not proceeding properly when they state that Latinus was one of the eight primary chieftains of the Tower of Nimrod, considering the above length of time between them, from the dispersal at the tower until Fénius Farsaid came from the north out of Scythia with his school, in search for the languages: for they thought that they would find them there, because it was from there they were dispersed. Two years after Fénius came from the north until Ninus.’

Variants from Auraic. na nÉces (B 1119–1128; Y 4038–48; D p. 12 marg.; om. M): sescat] coecat BGLY; flaith] flaithius BGLY; Peil] Bel a do coecat a righi add. BL, Peil a do coicat ropoi a righe add. GY; ocht] uii BGLY; o thus flatha Nin] o fhlaithius Nin mic Bel BL; o flaithius Nion GY; flatha] flaithiusa BGLY; Fria lind-side] is re linn BGLY; din thogail dedenaig] fo dheoidh BGLY; iarsin thogail sin co tuc Aenias mac Anaciss] om. BL; iarsin thogail sin] iarsin GY; mac Anaciss] om. GY; Lauinia] om. BGLY; tri bliadna cethrachat ar noi cetaib] sic BL; ocht mbliadna ar ochtmhad ar ocht cetaib G; deich mbliadna ar ochtmogaid ar oucht cetaiph Y; co tuc Aeniass] sic BL; add. G marg.; om. Y; ingen Latin] Lauina BGLY; Latin] Laitin fein BGLY;191 cuir] caingen BGLY; lucht] oes D marg. GY; ind Auraiccepta] in Uraicepta-sa B; co mbad he Laitin is seissed primthoisech ind Tuir] co mbad e Laidin in sechtmadh primthuiseach BLD; conabou he laidin in sescatmadh primhtoiseach an tuir G; co na bou in sescatmad primhtoisech an tuir Y; ind Tuir] an tuir nemruaid D; ⁊ a fot ... atuaid corice Nin] om. BD(marg.)LY

The presence of this passage in e.g. BGLY of Auraic. na nÉces, together with the presence of common innovations in these against the witnesses to LG R2/b, suggests either that it was included in the commentary in β (absent in M and added in the margin of D from a source

191 The addition of féin (insignificant) is also found within the LG tradition in Dublin, Trinity College MS 1433 (E 3.5; Macalister’s E) (1938: 38, app. cr.). TCD MS 1433 is a composite manuscript, dated to the 15th century (Macalister 1938: xv). The scribe of the section that contains LG was named Torna Ó Maoil Chonaire (ob. 1532) (Breatnach 2005: 4; Scowcroft 1987: 86). 145 derived from γ or δ), or that it has been included in one of the groups of manuscripts and afterwards has been introduced into the other(s) through contamination. Scowcroft’s analysis of the relationship between the recensions of LG reveals that R2/b must have been compiled after 1114 (Scowcroft 1987: 97), which is later than the date assigned to the split between B and Y by Thurneysen.

The above passage does not occur in R1/a or R3/c. It has, however, found its way into the R3/c fragment TCD MS 1316 (H), which was written in the 14th century or earlier (possibly about 1237; see Abbott and Gwynn 1921: 340–41; cf. Macalister 1938: xxi). Here it is derivative of the section in R2/b and does therefore not provide evidence of the existence of the passage in

Scowcroft’s β (see Scowcroft 1987: 100). There is therefore no secure terminus ante quem for the passage, whose earliest occurrence is in R2/b with 1114 AD as terminus post quem. H has arbitrarily divided the passage into two sections and gives these in the opposite order (see comment in Macalister 1939: 140). The inference that the passage was found in both γ and δ of Auraic. na nÉces shows that, although the R2/b as a whole has a terminus post quem at 1114, text unique to this recension might still be older. The text of Auraic. na nÉces in δ must, based on what is probably a mention of one Muirchertach ua Cairill, airchinnech Duin [Patraic], sui brethemnachta ⁊ senchais (ob. 1083), ‘etwa gegen Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts im wesentlichen ihre jetzige Gestalt erhalten haben wird’ (Thurneysen 1928: 283).

The following passage is an example of the critical approach of the literati:

Ceatra bliadna dég ⁊ tri fichit ⁊ ocht cet o thús flaithiusa Nín co deired flaithiusa Tútaneis, ri an domain. Is ria lind-sidi ro tóglad Tráe din togail deidenaig. Secht mbliadna iarsan togail co tug Aeniass mac Anicis Lauina ingen Laidin meic Puin: conad tri bliadna cetrachad ar nói cetaib o scailead an Tuir co tug Aenias ingen Laidín ⁊ Ladín doroine a cuir friss. Is follus assin conach cert-thiagait lucht ind Auraiccepta comad hé Laidín an t-ochtmad prim-thuiseach an Tuir Nemruaid ⁊ a ḟod anúass eturru (Macalister 1939: 50, § 139).

‘There were eight hundred and seventy-four years from the beginning of the reign of Ninus to the end of the reign of Tautanes, king of the world. It is during his reign Troy was sacked for the last time. There were seven years after that sacking until Aeneas son of Anchises took Lavinia daughter of Latinus son of Faunus: so that there were nine hundred and forty-three years from the dispersal of the Tower until Aeneas took the daughter of Latinus and Latinus made his marriage-contract

146

with him. For this reason it is clear that the people of Auraicept [sc. na nÉces] are not proceeding properly when they state that Latinus was one of the eight primary chieftain of the Tower of Nimrod, considering the above length of time between them.’

Following the accessus to the book according to Fénius Farsaid, Iar mac Nema and Goídel mac Etheoir, there is a passage which is highly interesting when juxtaposed to the above extract from TCD MS 1316. It obviously derives from a witness of LG and has entered the transmission of Auraic. na nÉces before the split between γ and δ, as it is preserved in both Calder’s BEL and Y et alia. The passage is omitted in E but is present in both B and L. Parts of it are present also in Y, but are significantly not found in the same environment, that is, between the accessus and the list of all the characters of the three sacred languages. The text below is taken from B and Y. D is represented in the apparatus to one of the passages. The text in D is found in the right margin on p. 12 and has readings that correspond both to B and to Y. Parts of the text are difficult to read from the digital facsimile because it extends towards the sewing of the quire. The variants from the LG fragment H are included in the apparatus.

B 1116–19/Y 4026–30: Se primthaisigh lasi ndernad in tor, .i. Eper mac Saile ⁊ Gregus mac Gomer, otait Greic, ⁊ Laitin mac Puin, otait Laitinda, Riabad Scot mac Gomer ⁊ Nemruadh mac Cuis ⁊ Fenius Farrsaidh.192

Se primthaisigh] Is e primthoissech Y; Riabad Scot] Riabad Scot otat Scuit Y; mac Cuis] mac Cuis meic Caim meic Nai Y; ⁊ Fenius Farrsaidh] F. F. Y; Fenius Farsaidh ⁊rl T; Feinius f(arsaid) tra m(ac) eogaín meic glunfind meic laimfind meic ethiuir meic thau [...] M (see p. 293)

Y (4031–4038) (om. B): Brec dano a rad so .i. Greccus mac Gomer do beith agin tour, ut est in parabulamb genilogia .i. leapair geinelaige na nEapraidi .i. ni rabatar

acht tri meic ag Gomer, Aisc, Necus, ⁊ Rifath a n-anmanda ⁊ Togarma iarsin go rogenair Greccus o n-ainmnigtir Greicc. Ni raibi immorro ingra .i. ingar go mad mac do Gouimer Grecus, co nnach raipe ic cumdach an tuir amlaid sin. Coumaimsirad andso sis.

a rad] om. D; agin tour] ag cumdach in tuir D; genilogia] om. D; .i.] ar D; go rogenair] co rogein[...] D; an tuir] inti D

192 See also B 1249–53 and Y 4147–52, where the passage is reiterated. 147

B 1119–28/Y 4038–47: Da bliadain coecat o scailed in tuir co flaithius Nin mic Bel, a do coecat [a] righi. Ceithir bliadhna deac ar tri fichtib ar secht cetaib o fhlaithius Nin mic Bel [a do coicait dopoi a righe. Cethri bliadna dec ar tri fichit ar secht cetaiph o flaithius Nion] co deredh flaithiusa Tutaines righ in domain. Is re linn rotoghladh in Trae fo dheoidh. Secht mbliadna [iarsin co dtug Ænias] ingen Laitin mic Puin, conad tri bliadna cethorchat ar noi cetaibh o scaileadh in tuir co tuc Aeneas Lauina ⁊ Laitin fen doroine a caingen fris. Is follus as sin co nach certtiaghait lucht in Uraicepta-sa co mbad e Laidin in sechtmadh primthuiseach in tuir.

do coecat [a] righi] do coicat ropoi a righe Y; ar tri fichtib ar secht cetaib] ⁊ tri fichit ⁊ ocht cet H; o fhlaithius] o thús flaithiusa H; a do coicat ... flaithius Nion] om. B H; is re linn] is ria lind-sidi H; in trae] trae H; fo dheoidh] din togail deidenaig H; iarsin co dtug Ænias] iarsin togail co tug Aeniass mac Anicis H; om. B; ingen Laitin mic Puin] Lauina ingen Laidin meic Puin H; conad tri bliadna cethorchat ar noi cetaibh o scaileadh in tuir] conid deich mbliadna ar ochtmogaid ar oucht cetaiph o sgailiud an tuir Y; co tuc Aeneas] om. Y; Lauina] ingen Laidín H; fein] om. H; a caingen] a cuir H; lucht] B H; oes Y D; co mbad e Laidin in sechtmadh primthuiseach] B D; co na bou in sescatmad primhtoisech an tuir Y; in Uraicepta- sa] ind Auraiccepta H; in sechtmadh] an t-ochtmad H; in tuir] an tuir nemruaid ⁊ a ḟod anúass eturru H

H provides readings which seem independent of the innovations in B and Y and its text reads better than that of the others. Note for instance: Secht mbliadna iarsin togail co tug Aeniass mac Anicis Lauina ingen Laitin meic Puin (H). This sentence would seem to have been corrupted in all the recensions of Auraic. na nÉces.

Naturally, we would expect the passage to have originated outside Auraic. na nÉces due to the critical remark at its end. When appropriated to the discourse in Auraic. na nÉces, lucht ind Auraicceapta is (in B) altered to lucht in Uraicepta-sa (Y has oes ind Uiraicepto) with the enclitic demonstrative pronoun.

Summary on the Irish tradition Irish historiography starts at the very beginning. The first words of LG (Macalister 1938: 16, 24, 40) are taken from the opening of Genesis. The Biblical narrative provides a major thread in the longue durée of Irish history, a history that was crafted in an attempt at securing a place for the Irish in an international historical scene, but which importantly also brought the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern spheres into an Irish setting. LG draws on a wide range of sources in order to achieve these ends. The majority of these sources were written in the vernacular. Apart from the Bible, the most significant 148 extraneous sources were Isidore’s encyclopedic Etymologiae (early seventh century) and Paulus Orosius’s Historiae adversus Paganos (early fifth century; ed. Zangemeister 1889). Their importance to the Irish historical scheme stands in sharp contrast to the very limited attention that they actually devoted to Ireland in their works. This importance owes partly to the fact that they furnished the reader with historiographical method as well as historical information. Thus equipped, the Irish composed a national history that takes the reader ‘from Noah to the Norman conquests’ (Scowcroft 1988: 1) and that has left its imprint on an array of literary sources—mainly in Irish, but with occasional reflexes also in Latin. Notable examples occur in hagiography, such as in the 10th-/11th- century Vita Cadroe (ed. Ó Riain 2009; discussion in Clarke 2015: 469–75), composed in Metz, which includes a narrative on the origin of the Irish that must have originated in an external source (Clarke 2015: 469).

The medieval Irish have thus left us with a substantial record of historical writing. The continuous recasting of material from the inherited literary record is one of the hallmarks of the medieval and early modern Irish manuscript tradition, which for this reason is frequently perceived as conservative or even antiquarian. Both terms might convey rather anachronous shades of meaning and they must therefore be used with care. Although the vernacular textual corpus for various reasons enjoyed a continuous chirographical transmission well into the 18th century and in this way rendered developments in contemporary attitudes towards the textual inheritance evasive, there are clear signs of a changing intellectual framework. Sometimes this is made explicit. A work such as Ó Cléirigh’s Glossary from the 1640s (ed. Miller 1879–80, 1881–83) is highly traditional in the sense that great parts of it equals for instance the Lecan Glossary, but the author’s preface clearly shows that a great deal has changed in the meantime and that the two glossaries simply do not belong to the same period of intellectual or cultural history, although, to all outward appearances, their shared features convey such an impression.193

193 Consider e.g. [...] ler bhe an míniughadh na seangháoidheilge (Miller 1879–80: 351); ar ar chuirsead na sean ughdair gluais mhínighthe (op. cit.: 354); vetustioris linguæ patriæ (Miller 1880–83: 65); ex vetustis eiusdem linguæ dictionibus (ibid.); collatione facta cum peritorum nostræ linguæ Antiquariorum glossematibus. Note that Ó Cléirigh mentions items such as ‘an old paper book’ (seinleabhar paipéir) among his sources. ‘Old Irish’ in this sense seems to cover a wide stretch of time. 149

In this chapter, we have seen that the direction of loan between Auraic. na nÉces and SC seems impossible to decide with certainty at the present stage of inquiry and may also differ from one item to the other; further, that the Leinster poems probably represent an earlier stage in the development of Irish pseudo-history than does Auraic. na nÉces— a characteristic which is retained even if the poems may have been subjected to later adaptations. McCone’s arguments relating to the tradition regarding Goídel Glass, the eponymous ancestor of the Irish and of the Irish language, have no substantial basis in the sources.

We have also noted the intertextual relationship to LG. In the case of the passage containing the phrase gním n-ingnad n-indligthech, its archetypal character obscures the direction of borrowing, but it allows us to conclude that Auraic. na nÉces was part of the pseudo-historical discourse, its grammatical nature notwithstanding. This is also evident in the post-archetypal but presumably pre-Norman interpolations into Auraic. na nÉces from LG.

In conclusion, we might state that the relation of Auraic. na nÉces to other Irish texts has some bearing on its date, its place in Irish intellectual developments, and its position in the larger literary landscape.

150

7. §§ 1,2–1,17 of Anders Ahlqvist’s Edition The passage §§ 1,2–1,17 (B 1034–57/Y 3989–4013) escapes the editorial criticism rehearsed in the first chapter of the present thesis. Unlike much of the remainder of the text found in Ahlqvist’s edition, the passage §§ 1,2–1,17 is in fact transmitted as a continuous section in all manuscripts and has not been broken up into lemmata with surrounding commentary.194 This is of great interest, as there is consensus of the relative primacy and hence relative age of this passage (Calder 1917: xxvi; Ahlqvist 1983: 33), although it should be mentioned that no thorough study of the language in Auraic. na nÉces has been carried out. The primacy of §§ 1,2-1,17 in relation to other text is indicated by quotations from this passage elsewhere in Auraic. na nÉces (e.g. B 236–38, 241ff.), where it is referred to as the ‘main part of the book’. The wording in the quotations does not match that of the core text. This mismatch (even within the single manuscript witness) shows that the ‘main part’ is an historical, as opposed to synchronic, entity. Ahlqvist’s text is reproduced in this chapter (pp. 154-155) with some corrections, indicated in the notes. His translation is likewise reproduced with minor changes.

§§ 1,2–1,17 sketch out the mythical and scholastic origin of the Irish language. Through comparison with the Greek language and alphabet, the sections establish a contrast between Irish and Latin. Calder suggested that the passage is ‘of earlier date and language than the general run of the tract’ and that ‘in substance it is an alternative prologue’ (1917: xxvi). ‘Alternative’ because none of the manuscripts places it towards the beginning of the text. The early date assigned to this passage by Calder, and later by Ahlqvist, would make it the oldest preserved articulation of the origin myth for the Irish language in this configuration. Thurneysen (1928: 285) observed that a later form such as ro·aitreabh (B 1042) is preserved as the earlier ad·rothreabh (as in Wb. 27a12 and Ml. 51d28) in a citation from this section elsewhere (B 175)—which indicates that some of the younger forms in the section might be due to scribal modernization. Several obstacles stand in the way of this interpretation, however. Those that relate to the textual constitution will be presented here, while the ones that relate to the narrative contents and their relation to other texts have been presented in the previous chapters.

194 A 56v; B 173va3–25; D p. 12a17–53; E 23rb32–47; G p. 197a23–b3; L 157rb19–157vb1; M 141va29–b1; P pp. 105–106.9; T p. 189.6–23; Y col. 532.7–28; om. Eg. 151

The passage is preserved by all manuscripts with the exception of Eg. BEL all give a relatively homogeneous text (see Appendix 1). An important exception is the omission in E of Ahlqvist’s §§ 1,11–1,12. Apart from that important variant, the differences between these three manuscripts are first and foremost orthographical or at any rate relatively minor—they are confined to for instance verbal forms and the rendering of unstressed vowels. Accordingly, they do not affect syntax or the larger structure of the passage. A comparison of the text of G with that of Y yields no significant variation— the only differences are found in the orthography and in minor variants due to diplography and the inclusion in Y of an explanatory gloss (Y no torothlaig). Some of the glosses that have been incorporated into the text in GY are intralinear in P, such as e.g. P p. 106.6: .i. in etorgna; 106.7: .i. i ciall. GPY share a lacuna at §§ 1,3–1,5.195 P, on the other hand, contains a few readings that are superior to those in GY, in the sense that they are confirmed by manuscripts at a further remove, and the text of P must consequently have been transmitted independently of GY. AGPY (against BDELMT) share the addition: (⁊ ba ē an fer sin Goīdel mac Aingin) uair is ē mō do·rothlaig ⁊ as ē rop ferr dīb. The differences between the text of D and the text of M are difficult to explain in terms of Ahlqvist’s group DM (‘a’). M shares many readings with Y against BEL (e.g. ⁊ ba hand roalt), but is obviously independent, as it also confirms readings from BEL against Y (e.g. cind x mbliadnai iar scailiud on tur). T is relatively close to BEL. T significantly agrees with D on several important points that at the same time distinguish D from M. DT agree on the reading scol mór do Grécaib (D p. 12; T p. 189). This is followed by their agreeing on the reading gusan saoi do greguibh (cited from T). In general, these two manuscripts agree on all readings in §§ 1,2-1,17 (excepting a few readings with no diagnostic value), but this agreement ceases after the illustration of the Ogam signs.

I have noted above that P gives a few glosses in between the lines which in GY have entered the running text. Apart from this, §§ 1,2-1,17 are preserved in all manuscripts as continuous text. This observation leads us to recognize a problem that has not been

195 Thus, these three copies leave out: [...] Nemruaid, cinn deich mblíadnae íar scaíliud ón Tur ⁊ is cach combérlaid do·chuaid a suidiu dochum a chríche ⁊ ni cach comcheniúil, amal ro·gab Cai Caínbrethach, dalta Féniusa Farrsaid (cited from Ahlqvist 1983: 47). ‘... of Nimrod, at the end of ten years after the dispersal at the Tower and it was every one speaking the same language that went from him to his territory, and not every one of the same kindred, as for instance Cai Cainbrethach, the foster-son of F. F.’ 152 noticed by the editors: that this passage not been subjected to glossing or interlinear commentary as have the other parts of the supposedly older stratum of the text.196

As it stands, the commentary we have preserved in §§ 1,2-1,17 is far more autonomous and detached from its object text than is the case elsewhere. Thus, for instance, the commentary at B 236–38 (Is cach comberlaid dochuaid and ...) refers to the ‘main part of the text’ at B 1037–38, and the commentary at B 241ff. (A cind deich mbliadan ...) in the same way refers to B 1036ff. This arrangement is the same as we find in Y. Note, however, that while the commentary at Y 2480 corresponds to the main text at Y 3996ff., this group of manuscripts (δ) has lost the sentence in the main text (⁊ is cach comberlaid ...) that is alluded to at Y 2551. Such reference to an older version of the text than the one actually preserved in the manuscript(s) underlines the fact that the ‘main part’ of the received text is an historical as opposed to a synchronic entity, although this somewhat peculiar relationship between subject text and object text obviously has undergone changes. Besides, reference to defunct material hints towards the respect the literati had for the tradition and stresses the unlikelihood that active collation of manuscripts is a factor to be reckoned with. These considerations suggest that the composite, inherited text was subjected to widely different treatment by the individual scholars that were involved in its transmission. The antiquity of the language in the passage is not uniform, as the passage contains several younger linguistic features. These could naturally be ascribed to scribal modernization, as Thurneysen (1928: 285) suggested.

It is worth mentioning that putting together the citations in the Prologue does not yield a text corresponding entirely to B 1034–57. This is therefore a case where we are able (though with important reservations) to control the relationship between fragmentarily transmitted excerpts from an older text and that text itself. The correspondence is clear, but importantly not all quotations from the passage are preserved in the continuously transmitted text and vice versa. The replacement of §§ 1,2–1,17 is the most important editorial conjecture made by Ahlqvist. Ahlqvist assigns the passage to the canonical Auraic. na nÉces on the basis of linguistic criteria (not specified) and content. His relocation of the section in the edition is made because it appears out of context in the

196 Consider Thurneysen’s remark: ‘Nach einem einleitenden Satz, wonach der Turmbau zu Babel den Anlaß zur (Schaffung der) Sprache der Fēni gewesen ist–dies hat die Erklärer weit mehr interessiert als die Sprachlehre selber, wie der lange Kommentar zeigt’ (Thurneysen 1928: 281–82). 153 manuscripts. The layout in L suggests that it was perceived as a part of the older text, as the passage is written in a larger hand (fol. 157rb) and is placed after the accessus to the so- called Book of Amairgin. This is not, however, paralleled elsewhere and must be seen as a graphical innovation in L.197

§ 1,2 Cīa ar·rānic a mbērla Fēne 198 ⁊ cīa airm i·n-airnecht199 ⁊ cissi aimser ar·īcht200? § 1,3 Ni ansae: ar-a·rānic Fēnius Farrsaid ocin tur Nemruaid cinn deich mblīadnae īar scaīliud ōn tur § 1,4 ⁊ is cach combērlaid do·chuaid a suidiu dochum a chrīche ⁊ ni cach comchenēl, § 1,5 amal ro·gab201 Cai Caīnbrethach, dalta Fēniusa Farrsaid,

197 In the margin of P, there is a small drawing of a hand that points towards this passage (p. 105). This is an obvious sign that the passage was found to be of interest. 198 BL have a mberla-sa. E is very difficult to decipher but seems to support that reading. The remaining manuscripts have bērla Fēne. See Ahlqvist (1983: 22–23) for manuscript abbreviations. 199 Following Roe’s suggestion (1987–88: 337). Ahlqvist’s reading a-n-ar·n-ícht, assuming that the temporal conjunction a N, introducing a nasalizing relative clause, had acquired a ‘local sense’ in this particular case (1983: 56) is less straightforward than reading i·n-airnecht, with the preposition i N followed by the prototonic 3rd sg. pret. pass. form of the verb ar ·icc, given that confusion between i/a became very frequent in the manuscripts after the reduction of these unstressed vowels to /ə/ during the Middle Irish period (note that BEL share the reading i). On the other hand, i N could be used as a temporal conjunction, cf. Roider’s remark that: ‘In der älteren irischen Dichtung wird in “in”, “worin”, auch als temporale Konjunktion verwendet’ (1979: 106), with reference to a line in a poem preserved in De Chophur in da Muccida (ed. Roider 1979: 85ff.). See further Félire Óengusso (Stokes 1905: 174) for a closely corresponding construction to that in Auraic. na nÉces: i n-airecht ... corpán soér Stefáni ‘in which was found ... the noble body of Stephen’. The younger form ·airnecht (see Th. Gr.: 440, § 711) is preferred to the older ·airecht in the edition above, as the manuscript evidence is uniform both here (§ 1,2) and at Ahlqvist’s § 1,14, where also he adopts it—there is simply no manuscript evidence for the prototonic form ·airecht. Note the tendency towards replacement of ·airecht by the younger ·airnecht also in the manuscript witnesses cited in Stokes 1905: 174n11). 200 Orthographical variation aside, BEL all agree on i ·n-arnecht also here, which reading is supported by G and M. All other manuscripts give a variant of the deuterotonic ar ·ícht. Ahlqvist (1983: 56) notes that choosing i ·n-arnecht leaves unexplained how the other manuscripts independently could restitute the historically correct form–we would expect the reverse to be the case. The form ar ·ícht is hence adopted, following Ahlqvist, who draws attention to Th. Gr.: § 505 on the lack of a nasalizing relative clause here. See previous note. 201 Note that this construction, where the perfect of gaibid with a 3rd sg. infixed neuter pronoun is used to periphrase the present indicative of the substantive verb, in Old Irish is used exclusively where syntax demands a nasalizing relative clause (Th. Gr.: 267, § 424; 479, § 781), such as after the conjunction amal ‘as’, i.e. amal ron (d)·gab (see eDIL s.v gaibid, III, for examples). This is not preserved in any manuscript and has not been restituted in Ahlqvist’s text. 154

in dara descipul sechtmogat na scole: § 1,6 ba do Ebraib a bunadus ⁊ ba co Ēigipt ro·foīded § 1,7 ⁊ is and ro·an Fēnius feissin ocin tur ⁊ is and ad·rothreb § 1,8 conid and-sin con·atgetar cuici in scol bērla do thepiu dōib asna202 ilbērlaib § 1,9 acht combad leo a n-ōenur no·beth no la nech fo·glennad leo. § 1,10 Is and-sin do·reped a mbēlra asna ilbērlaib ⁊ do·aiselbad do ōen dīb, conid a ainm-side for·tā a mbēlra- sa, § 1,11 conid Goīdelc de-ṡin ō Goīdiul mac Angin mic Glūnḟind mic Lāimḟind mic Agnumain do Grēcaib. § 1,12 Inunn trā Goīdel mac Aingin ⁊ Goīdel mac Etheoir .i. dā n-ainm203 bātar fora athair .i. Aingin ⁊ Etheoir. § 1,13 Is and īarum ro·rīaglad a mbērla-sa: a mba ferr īarum do cach bērlu ⁊ a mba leithiu ⁊ a mba caīmiu, is ed do·reped isin nGoīdilc (Ahlqvist 1983: 47–48, §§ 1,2–1,13, cited with corrections).204

The Irish language was invented by extracting or selecting the finest parts from the multitude of other languages that came into existence during the dispersal at the Tower of Babel. This was done by Fénius Farrsaid at the request from his school and with the assistance of 72 students (the 72 disciples of Christ in Luke 10 come to mind), one for

202 The dative plural ending -aib is not supported by the manuscripts. 203 Historically justified nasalization after dá before a neuter noun (ainm(m) is an Old Irish neuter -n-stem) is found in both D and T, but has not been adopted by Ahlqvist. 204 ‘§ 1,2 Who has invented the language of the Féni [i.e. Irish] and in what place was it invented and at what time was it invented? § 1,3 Not difficult: Fénius Farrsaid invented it at Nimrod’s tower at the end of ten years after the dispersion from the tower § 1,4 and it is every one speaking the same language that went from there to his territory and not every one of the same kindred, § 1,5 as for instance Cai Caínbrethach, one of the 72 students of the school, § 1,6 he was of the Hebrews and it was to Egypt that he was sent § 1,7 and it is there Fénius himself stayed, at the tower, and it is there he lived, § 1,8 until the school asked him to extract a language out of the many languages § 1,9 such that they only would speak it or anyone who might learn it from them. § 1,10 It is there that the language was cut out of the many languages and it was assigned to one of them, so that it is his name by which the language is called, § 1,11 so that Goídelc [Irish] is hence from Góedel son of Angin son of Glunḟind son of Lamḟind son of Agnuman of the Greeks. § 1,12 Now Goídel son of Angin is identical to Goídel son of Etheoir, that is, his father had two names: Aingen and Etheoir. § 1,13 It is there then that this language was given its rules: what was best then of every language and what was widest and finest was cut out into Irish’ (cited with minor changes from Ahlqvist 1983: 47–48). Cf. Poli’s translation (1986–89: 183): ‘E ognuno si cercava il territorio ove si parlasse la stessa lingua e non dove fosse la propria stirpe [...] egli era della stirpe d’Israele, ma si recò in Egitto.’ This, to my view, renders the sense, if not the precise wording, of § 1,4 better than the English translation above. 155 each of the new vernaculars.205 Fénius assigned the language to Goídel, one of the scholars and the eponym of the Irish and their language, which is termed Goídelc. Irish is thus a synthetic language with learned origins. The choice of terminology could be significant—ar·icc (*air-icc-) ‘finds’, ‘comes upon’ also has the meaning ‘devises’, ‘composes’ and corresponds approximately to Latin invenīre. The lack of an actual act of creation is important. In the context of linguistic thought, it is also interesting to note the use of the denominative verb ríaglaid (-ā-, derived from the noun ríagal -ā- from Latin rēgula)—the noun is frequently employed in the Irish glosses in the Sankt Gallen Priscian with reference to grammatical rules.206 The importance of the use of this kind of terminology lies in the fact that vernacular languages were routinely held to lack ‘grammatical rules’, unlike the classical languages.207 This was true in the sense that they lacked formal descriptions, such as were available through the ancient and late-antique grammarians. The remark in § 1,13 is therefore fitting in an attempt to rival the languages that were regulated and this comment might to some extent have served as a justification of the linguistic description of Irish.208

Due to the inclusion of this passage in the reconstructed text it has been customary to assume that the essentials of the origin legend might be dated to at least the turn of the

205 According to In Lebor Ollaman, a separate commentary on Auraic. na nÉces (unedited–see e.g. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 fol. 163va), 72 was significant because it was the number of Adam’s daughters, of the counsellors at the Tower, or—and this is probably most important for the interpretation of this passage—of the disciples that were sent out to preach by Christ. 206 Consider for instance: cia for ·co mam-ni riagoil sen-g rec hi scríbunt i n da carac tar isnaib co nsonaib ucut [...] (‘although we preserve the rule of the ancient Greeks in writing the two characters in these consonants [...]’) at p. 9a22. Text and translation are cited from the digital edition St Gall Priscian Glosses. URL: http://www.stgallpriscian.ie (visited on February 18th, 2019). 207 Consider for instance Dante’s opposition between the ‘artificial’ Latin and the ‘natural’ vernacular in De vulgari eloquentia (ed. Tavoni 2015). Otfrid von Weißenburg’s apology and introduction to his Evangelienbuch offers highly relevant comparanda from the third quarter of the ninth century (p. 180ff). 208 See further Mikael Males (2019): The Poetic Genesis of Old Icelandic Literature, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde–Ergänzungsbände 113, Degruyter. A short passage in B 1760–63 (Y 4961– 65) suggests that also the poetical potential of Irish was the result of a similar procedure: In tiasca di fedaibh ⁊ deachaibh ⁊ remendaibh ⁊ furbhthi (Y forbaidhib) ⁊ altaibh ⁊ inscibh ⁊ etargairib amal rosuidigthi la filedu ina scuili cetna robhadar la Fenius Farsaidh iar tebiu na Gaedelge asna di berlaibh sechtmogat. ‘The beginnings of letters, verse-feet, declensions, accents, intervals, genders, and comparisons as they were established by poets of the same school in which they dwelt, and by Fénius Farsaid after the selection of Irish out of the 72 languages’ (Calder 1917: 137, with minor changes). 156 eighth century (e.g. Carey 1990; Clarke 2015). The issue has usually been addressed from the perspective of the later LG. Bart Jaski has noted that our understanding of the development of the Irish origin legend is hampered by the fact that key tracts such as Auraic. na nÉces resist secure dating. Jaski in fact suggested that the Irish origin legend as represented by Auraic. na nÉces belongs to a later stage of its development rather than to its inception (Jaski 2003: 46; see also van Hamel 1915: 126, 144–45). Arno Borst, who wrote his major study Der Turmbau von Babel before the appearance of Ahlqvist’s edition, describes the narrative account in Auraic. na nÉces as: ‘das Endprodukt einer mindestens dreihundertjährigen gelehrten Bemühung’, which, building on material pertaining to LG, ‘wählte sich zum Mittel- und Angelpunkt nicht die Genealogie, sondern die Sprache; und von hier aus gewann das Bild tatsächlich Form und Farbe’ (1957–63: 611).209

Borst’s view is strongly at odds with the mainstream of research on the origin legend as far as chronology is concerned, but his assumptions about the chronological development is supported by Jaski’s article and by the fact that reflexes of the legend are pervasive in the Middle Irish and Early Modern Irish periods, but not in sources that are securely dated to the early period, such as the lives of Saint Patrick in the Book of Armagh (see below). Borst points to an important mechanism in the appropriation of the material, namely that the different configurations of the narrative are caused by chain reactions due to the shift of focal points. The image to which the sources give form and colour, to stick to Borst’s metaphor, is a mosaic with too many pieces. The medieval scholars tried to cluster the pieces together in different ways in order to strengthen the authority of one version or the other. In this way, the focus on language in Auraic. na nÉces enhances the importance of the Babel narrative and prompts the introduction of the protagonists of the Irish language into this juncture in linguistic history.

Whereas the proportion of manufactured as opposed to inherited mythological elements in the grand scheme of LG might be debated, the mythological content of Auraic. na nÉces is sufficiently dependent both on the framework provided by the Biblical narrative and on eponymous characters that it cannot meaningfully preserve

209 The intricacies of the material are manifold. LG cites Auraic. na nÉces and vice versa–such reciprocal references, among other things, make it very difficult to draw up a general scheme of the development of the material through time. 157 inherited mythological elements. The myth is patently fabricated, and focus might therefore be directed towards the intention behind it.

Although the aetiological myth is not strictly speaking dependent on them, the use of eponymous characters must have been a very efficient tool which, especially in an intellectual climate obsessed with etymology (for which see the discussion in Rekdal 2018: 169–190), was capable of charging the narrative with significance. Thus, important concepts were associated with the protagonists of the myth. By this means, some junctures in the (mainly Biblical) history of the world became closely associated in the Irish historical edifice, although they in reality were separated by long stretches of time, such as the building of the Tower of Babel and the Israelites’ Exodus. The conceptual importance of these events or motifs is corroborated by the ascription of the composition of Auraic. na nÉces to such moments in world or national history through its attribution to pseudo-historical authors (e.g. B 1102ff.). Both motifs, Babel and the Exodus, proved crucial to the Irish synthesis. The aetiological myth of Babel became the nucleus of the story about the invention of the Irish language, while Exodus provided a framework for and a parallel to the narrative explanation of how the Irish came to Ireland. The continuous cross-mapping of Irish events with Biblical episodes provided an authoritative, global account. As a consequence of this working method, there is a marked tendency in the sources to associate eponymous characters with decisive historical events or motifs. The Bible provided the canonical background for describing language invention and Exodus for the journey to the promised land. When eponymous characters were grafted onto this scheme (Fénius for the Féni/Irish, Goídel for the Goídil/Irish) they gave linguistic ‘proof’ of the link between the Biblical narrative and Irish linguistic and national history.

The cumulative nature of this process is evidenced by the fact that the sources frequently disagree on narrative detail. Especially interesting in this regard is the striking lack of agreement between different texts on Goídel Glas’s place in the genealogical records and on his role in the creation of the Irish language. The lack of harmony between the sources testifies to an origin legend in constant development. This consideration has a direct bearing upon Auraic. na nÉces, which remarks that the father of Goídel has two names, namely Angin and Etheoir, in what should probably be seen as an attempt to merge two different and incompatible traditions regarding his ancestry. If this passage (i.e. Ahlqvist’s §§ 1,2–17) should indeed be attributed to an early stage of the text’s history (as suggested already by Calder and Ahlqvist 1983), this is a stage where the genealogical 158 record has already developed several alternative varieties which were then subjected to comparison and revision.210 Consequently, that passage cannot be the first formulation of this account. The existence of alternative variations suggests a certain circulation. It therefore remains a problem for the early dating of Auraic. na nÉces that the Irish Babel story and the related complex of invasion stories do not seem to have influenced the securely dated sources. The so-called Additamenta in the Book of Armagh (ed. Bieler 1979: 166–79) contain a well-known apology for the use of Irish as a narrative vehicle (see fol. 18v; Bieler 1979: 178, § 17; also Thes. Pal. vol. II: 238–43). These are dated to the second half of the eighth century (Bieler 1979: 49), while the Patrician biographies by Muirchú and Tírechán are dated to approximately the second half of the seventh century and contain old forms of Irish placenames and personal names that fit this date (see Fergus Kelly’s discussion in Bieler 1979: 242ff.). These texts contain nothing of the sort we see in §§ 1,2-1,17 and were certainly the products of a different mind-set than the one that argues for the superiority of the Irish word-hoard over that of Latin.

The so-called Fiacc’s Hymn is a Patrician biography in verse that has been dated to c. 800 and is preserved as part of the Irish Liber Hymnorum in two manuscripts roughly dated to the late 11th or the early 12th century (see Thes. Pal. vol. II: xxxiv). The content of the verses corresponds rather closely to the biographies of Saint Patrick in the Book of Armagh. The text in the late 11th- or early 12th-century Dublin, University College Franciscan MS A 2, the Liber Hymnorum, has been furnished with a more extensive bilingual gloss commentary that contains stories that illustrate various features of the text and the vocabulary in it. Stokes and Strachan note that the ‘various stories narrated to illustrate the text [...] may represent forms of the legends long subsequent to the composition of the poems’ (Thes. Pal. vol. II: xxxvi). Although some triggers are indeed present in the glossed verses of Fiacc’s Hymn, it is fair to say that the story as it is enacted in the margins reaches a degree of elaboration that is relatively independent of the object text and clearly reveals that the glossator was preoccupied with a set of questions that was not strictly speaking warranted by the material. For present purposes, the glosses that relate pseudo-historical narrative material akin to that in LG stand out.

210 Calder (1917: xxvi) states of this passage that ‘in substance it is an alternative prologue’. 159

A marginal annotation at p. 37 contains a retelling of the Irish Babel story in Latin. It is a gloss on the ethnonym in the sentence Patraic pridchais do Scottaib (‘Patrick preached to the Irish’) of verse 35:

.i. ‘Do scottaib’. Ó Scotta ingen Foraind rig Egipt nominantur, ocus is asso ro·ásdetar [leg. ro·ássatar] .i. Nél mac Goedil Glais meic Feniusa Farsaid, fer foglama he, uoluit scire lingas. Venit a Scithis ad Campum Sennar ubi sunt diuisæ lingæ; ⁊ ita uenit .i. cum .lxx. duobus uiris, ⁊ missit eos sub regiones mundi ut discerent lingas; unum ad unam misit, et postea uenerunt ad eum cum peritia omnium lingarum ⁊ habitauit in Campo Sennar ⁊ docuit ibi lingas. Et audiuit Farao rex Egipti illum studiosum esse, et uocauit eum ad se ut doceret Egiptios circa lingas ⁊ dedit ei filiam suam ⁊ honorem maximum ⁊ ab illa ‘Scotti’ nominati sunt. ‘Góidil’ immorro do rad dib o Goediul Glas, mac Feniusa Farrsaid patre Niuil (p. 37, marg.; cited from Thes. Pal. vol. II: 316; see also van Hamel 1915: 124).

‘.i. “to the Irish (scuit)”. They (the Irish) are called after Scota the daughter of the Pharao, king of Egypt, and from this they grew, i.e. Nél son of Goídel Glass son of Fénius Farsaid, a man of learning. He wanted to know the languages. He came from Scythia to the field of Sennar where the languages had been divided and thus he came, i.e. with 72 men, and he sent them out into the regions of the world so that they could learn the languages. He sent one to each (region), and after this they came to him with knowledge of all the languages and he lived in the field of Sennar and taught languages there. And the Pharao king of Egypt heard that he was learned, and called him to himself so that he might teach the Egyptians about languages and gave him his daughter and the highest honour and the Irish (Scotti) are named after him. They are called Goídil after Goídel Glas, the son of Fénius Farsaid, father of Nél.’

A. G. van Hamel (1915: 124) observed that this annotation represents a ‘different tradition’ and that there is therefore ‘no fixed tradition concerning the three eponymous ancestors of the Goidels’. Such lack of fixation is evident even within the gloss itself, which gives the other variant at the end (‘... from G.G. son of F. F., the father of Nél’). The divergences could be due to the two ethnonyms being explained in independent stories, later merged into a single, but not always coherent, narrative. The above, according to van Hamel, is an early vestige of the story (dating to shortly before the production of the Book of Leinster), but the later date of the manuscripts that carry other versions provides no guarantee for the chronological primacy of this account. The 160 glosses on Fiacc’s Hymn refer to material related to LG at several points (see also Thes. Pal. vol. II: 317, 3).

The aetiological myth is of central importance to the integrity of Auraic. na nÉces in all its manuscript configurations. A question which has received insufficient treatment is whether the mytho-grammatical profile of Auraic. na nÉces is representative of an original structure with authorial intention or whether it is the result of the mechanics of textual transmission—myth being channelled into the text through glossing or merger between originally separate compositions? Pádraic Moran made the following observation on DOSL, which may incorporate some of the oldest material in the Irish glossary tradition that also Cormac’s Glossary is part of:

[...] whether linguistic speculation gave rise to genealogical tradition or vice versa is impossible to prove, but it must be noted that in both traditions [i.e. Irish and Latin] the linguistic texts are among the earliest extant sources, and so the possibility of language enquiry stimulating origin legend must remain open (Moran 2015: 507).

I think this observation is highly applicable to Auraic. na nÉces, where arguments relating to myth are used in linguistic explanations, but where we also find the converse. Myth and grammar are fused in the exegetical approach of the commentators, but to what extent this was an integrated feature already in the core text has not been properly dealt with in previous research. The aetiological myth was clearly part of the text of the archetype.

7.1. The Building Blocks of the Tower of Babel The following discussion is primarily intended to clarify a misunderstanding that has won some currency in scholarly literature. It is relevant for understanding the overall characteristics of Auraic. na nÉces since it shows that the text does not launch into very daring metaphors. It also presents an example of textual displacement, undoubtedly due to incorporation of a marginal gloss. Unlike the preceding section, however, it is not of crucial importance for understanding the conception of Auraic. na nÉces as a whole.

Several modern scholars have been struck by the end of the commentary to the first ‘canonical’ pericope (As·berat trá ...) in Auraic. na nÉces, in which the intersection of linguistic and symbolic thinking about language becomes particularly prominent. This is found at B 261–311, immediately before the commented extracts begin to deal with the twofold division of the Latin alphabet into vowels and consonant, that is, before the 161 shift of focus from the historical backdrop towards the rudimentary, but for its time highly innovative, comparative analysis of Irish and Latin. A section that has made a great impression in secondary literature is the following:

B 293–303: Asberat araili immorro is noi n-adhbair nama badar isin tur .i. cre ⁊ uisgi, oland ⁊ fuil, ros ⁊ æl ⁊ sechim ⁊ lin ⁊ bitumain, de quibus dicitur: [...]. .i. ainm ⁊ pronomen ⁊ briathar ⁊ doibriathar ⁊ ranngabthach ⁊ comfhocul ⁊ reimshuidhiughudh ⁊ interiacht a n-anmanda-seo: nomen, pronomen, uerbum, aduerbium, participium, coniunctio, prepositio, interiectio [...].

‘Others say, however, that only nine materials were in the Tower, to wit, clay and water, wool and blood, wood and lime, acacias, flax thread, and bitumen, de quibus dicitur: [...]. i.e. noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition, and interjection are their names: nomen, pronomen, uerbum, aduerbium, participium, coniunctio, prepositio, interiectio’ (Calder 1917: 23, with minor changes).

This furnishes an alternative description of the building materials of the Tower of Babel, which in the preceding passage is said to consist of 72 building materials—corresponding to the number of peoples and of languages in the world, amongst other things (see B 261ff.). The phrase de quibus dicitur in the quotation above introduces a quatrain that supports the preceding statement and which in its turn is followed by a gloss that enumerates the parts of speech. This gloss has caused some confusion in modern research. Interpreted as it stands (in BEL) it lists the parts of speech as the building materials of the tower—‘Der Turm von Babel besteht also aus 8 Redeteilen!’ (Borst 1957–63: 612). This is extraordinary even within the vast range of sources covered by Borst’s more than 2000 pages long survey. In another important study, La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, Umberto Eco (in the belief that the section belongs to the seventh century) argues the following:

Ed ecco che, prima ancora che appaiono i primi documenti scritti delle lingue romanze e germaniche, nel VII secolo troviamo una prima traccia del nostro tema. [...] ci si rifà alle strutture compositive della Torre di Babele [...]. Tralasciando lo scarto tra le nove parti della torre e le otto parti del discorso, si comprende che la struttura della lingua è paragonata alla costruzione della torre perché si ritiene che la lingua gaelica costituisca il primo e unico esempio di superamento della confusione delle lingue (Eco 1996: 22–23).

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Eco’s primary source was an article by Diego Poli (1986–89), in which the author stresses the function of the Tower of Babel as symbol of the construction of the world, which he bases on the existence in various Indo-European domains of cosmogonic narratives where the world is made out of eight components.211 This is not a plausible reading, not only because the explicit Biblical framework makes it redundant, but more importantly because the gloss is found at this place only in BEL and therefore does not go back to a common tradition of commentary. The only logical connector between the list of the nine building materials of the tower and the eight (NB) parts of speech is the abbreviation .i. ‘i.e.’, which typically introduces a gloss or comment. The exact same gloss is reiterated at B 316–21 in response to a far more relevant question, and its occurrence there is supported by Y (in the section 2653–76) et alia.212 Hence, the most likely scenario is that the gloss has simply been misplaced at B 300ff. The inclusion of the paradigm for sum/ataim immediately after the eight parts of speech supports this view, as it is irrelevant to the discussion of the Tower of Babel (even if it be the case that the metaphor is intended), but fits nicely into the following section, where it is reiterated (B 323–27 = Y 2672–76) in an excursus on the verbal form attaat (B 312 = Y 2645). This could easily have happened if the original gloss was placed in between two columns in the exemplar and then entered the running text when that exemplar was copied. The fact that BEL all include the gloss twice suggests that the process was slightly more complex, but the precise manner in which this came about is irrelevant to the argument. The metaphorical reading triggered by the transposed or misplaced gloss could alternatively be intentional, but in this case the scribe has ignored the blatant mismatch between the numbers (nine building materials vs. eight parts of speech) and the metaphor must in any case be assigned to a rather late stage of the textual history.

211 ‘I compilatori dell’Aur. na n-Éces, e in questo consiste la loro innovazione, hanno assunto la Torre a simbolo della costruzione del mondo, e i suoi specifici materiali ad allegoria del nuovo ordinamento, di cui la grammatica fornisce la metafora’ (Poli 1986–1989: 187). Borst too takes this gloss as an indication of the importance of the Tower as a symbol of human language (1957–63: 612).

212 This gloss contains the Latin eight parts of speech together with their Irish equivalents. Of these, some are found also in the Sankt Gallen glosses on Priscian (viz. ainm, pronomen, briathar, dobriathar, interiacht, rems͘uidigud), while eDIL has no further examples of ranngabthach used elsewhere than in Auraic. na nÉces. The term comḟocal is found also in e.g. the IGT. 163

Also important to note is the fact that Auraic. na nÉces (including Y et alia) cites a poem on the ‘definite numbers of Nimrod’s Tower’ (airme cinnteacha tuir Nemruaidh) where the building materials are said to be 72, equal to the number of languages after the dispersal. The idea of the fusion of native Irish cosmogony with the Old Testament, alluded to by Poli, has no sound basis in the text.

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8. Excursus: Early Insular Manuscript Culture and the Continent Bernhard Bischoff’s seminal Paläographie des römischen Altertums und des abendländischen Mittelalters (1979; transl. 1990)213 traces the history of Latin script in Ireland to the fifth- century conversion of the Irish and their inclusion in the Latin church during the late patristic period (Bischoff 1990: 83–90).214 This first expansion of Latin beyond the earlier confines of the Roman empire is testified by a few surviving documents written by Irish scribes from approximately the end of the sixth century. These are the wax tablets from Springmount bog (CLA S/1684); the Codex Usserianus I (CLA 2/271)215, containing the Old Latin gospels; a manuscript of Orosius from Bobbio (CLA 3/328), dated to c. 614—the year after the monastery was founded by Columbanus (ob. 615); the so-called Cathach, the psalter of Saint Columba (CLA 2/266); the fragment of Isidore in Sankt Gallen (CLA 7/995); fragments of the gospels in Durham A II 10 (CLA 2/149); and the Munich palimpsest sacramentary (CLA 9/1298) (op.cit.: 83–84).216 The contents of the manuscripts in this list as well as their provenience testify to the degree to which the Irish were involved in the mainstream of Latin learning in the period, on the Continent as well as in Ireland and Britain. In many cases, we do not know precisely where the most distinguished representatives of Insular learning attained their knowledge. By way of example, Bischoff was of the view that Columbanus became acquainted with classic and late-antique poetry first and foremost upon reaching the Continent, as expressed in a response to Julian Brown’s paper on the use of classical

213 The book was reissued in a revised second edition in 1986 that served as the basis for Ó Cróinín and Ganz’ translation into English in 1990. References are to this translation. 214 The conversion of Ireland had been accomplished by the second half of the sixth century (so Charles- Edwards 2000: 240). 215 This manuscript confirms the study of Jerome’s Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum (Moran 2010: 4). 216 The numeration in E. A. Lowe’s Codices Latini Antiquiores (CLA ) has been preserved in the digital catalogue by The Earlier Latin Manuscripts Project by Dr. Mark Stansbury at the Department of Classics at National University of Ireland Galway (URL: https://elmss.nuigalway.ie). The shelfmarks are listed in the relevant entries. Julian Brown offers a more detailed discussion of these early Irish manuscripts in his article “The Oldest Irish Manuscripts and their Late Antique Background” (1984: 311–27; repr. 1993: 221–41). See also the convenient list of early Irish manuscripts in Richter 1999: 170–84. 165 authors in the British Isles from the fifth to the 11th centuries at a conference held in Spoleto in 1974:

Ferner halte ich es, im Gegensatz zu meinem Freund Ludwig Bieler, für wahrscheinlich, dass Columbanus das meiste an Kenntnis klassischer und spätantiker Poesie erst auf dem Festland erward, ebenso wie die eigene Übung in metrischer Dichtung. Mit dem Eifer, mit dem er sich, ungeachtet seines aszetischen Wandels—neue Möglichkeiten literarischen Ausdrucks aneignete, erscheint er mir gerade als ein typischer Vertreter des Irentums, das, wissenshungrig und bereit Fremdes aufzunehmen, in selbständiger Weise das geistige Leben bereicherte (Brown 1993: 177).217

Among the foremost expressions of a degree of analytical independence and intellectual zeal among the Irish during this period was the reduction of the vernacular language to writing. As a result of this accomplishment, Ireland ‘boasts the oldest vernacular literature in western Europe’ (Ó Cróinín 1995: 169).218 Although no direct sources exist, we must assume that Irish, like Old English, was written with the Latin alphabet by

600 AD (Ó Cróinín 1995: 189, 194) or at least before the middle of the seventh century (McCone 1996: 31). A relatively uniform orthography was developed early on and, with some reservation owing to the methodological difficulties involved—such as the

217 The contrast between Columbanus’s own remarkable level of Latin and his impact on the cultural life of Europe on the one hand and his recorded views on monastic life on the other is thought-provoking (but perhaps not more so than the striking contrast between Benedict’s rule and the important role played by the Benedictine foundations in the preservation of classical Latin literature). Richter argues, against Bischoff, that Columbanus must have acquired his Latin mostly prior to his departure from Ireland (2008: 25). Columbanus’s sermon on monasticism is the earliest detailed treatment of monastic matters and divine office that has survived from medieval Ireland (ed. Walker 1957). No Irish monastic rule has been preserved (Ó Corráin 2017: 10). 218 Some signs of the recording of literature in other vernaculars are found in an early period. So for instance, King Æthelberht, who with his death in 616 became the first Englishman to enter the kingdom of Heaven, according to Bede, had laws written in the English vernacular: Qui [i.e. Aedilberct] inter cetera bona, quae genti suae consulendo conferebat, etiam decreta illi iudiciorum, iuxta exempla Romanorum, cum consilio sapientium constituit ; quae conscripta Anglorum sermone hactenus habentur, et obseruantur ab ea (Historia Ecclesiastica II, 5). ‘Who (Aedilberct), among other good things which he did, consulting his people, also put together decrees of his own judgements with the council of wise men, according to the example of the Romans. These have been conserved until this day in the English language and are still observed by them (the English).’ 166 possibility of confusing diatopic and chronological change—no dialectal traits seem to feature (Th. Gr.: 12, § 16).219 This is in itself remarkable–not least due to the fact that this was a politically fragmented era in the history of Ireland.220 The written appearance of Irish had various orthographical characteristics that demonstrate the influence of British Latin pronunciation (ibid.; Jackson 1953: 73; Charles-Edwards 2013: 625–50) and that corroborate the evidence offered by the British Latin loanwords in Irish (on which the classic statement is Jackson 1953: 122–48; see also the important revisions in McManus 1983: 21–71) regarding the importance of the British Church to nascent Irish Christianity.221 Charles-Edwards (2000: 177) interestingly remarks that the British (later also the Irish) carried out in praxis what Augustine proposed in De doctrina Christiana. The argument is based on the education of Gildas and Columbanus.

While Ireland maintained ecclesiastical contact with Gaul (see e.g. Ó Néill 2006: 78n35 on the Psalms in the Springmount wax tablets and the Old Latin Gospels in Codex Usserianus Primus and their Gallican affinities) and Rome (Bischoff 1990: 198), the connection between and parallel development of the British and the Irish monastic movements is a defining factor from the conversion of Ireland onwards into the sixth century.222 Christianity was a dominant political force in Britain by the fifth century (see

219 Mac Neill (1931) was of the opinion that the manuscript orthography represented a complete departure from that of the epigraphic record written in Ogam. His views have been challenged by e.g. McManus (1986; 1991) and some examples of epigraphic orthography are found in the oldest examples of Irish on parchment (see McManus 1986: 12–13). Anthony Harvey’s article on the geminate consonant symbols in the inscriptions (1987: 45–71) and his somewhat later article on selected features of early ‘Insular Celtic’ orthography (1989: 56–66) might be consulted. So also Sims-Williams 1993: 133–80 on the origin of the Ogam script and the interpretations of a few controversial letters with references to the Continental manuscripts Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207 (ninth century) from Fleury-sur-Loire and Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Reg. Lat. 1308. 220 Thurneysen (Th. Gr.: 12, § 16) suggests that the linguistic demography of the monastic communities themselves might have aided in homogenization of the spoken language, as people were drawn from various places of the country. See also Ó Cróinín 1995: 190–91. 221 Parkes (1991: 4–5) notes the grouping of words around a single stress (in e.g. Wb.), the use of acute accents (apices) to denote phonemic length and the use of the punctum delens to mark the lenition-products of /s/ and /f/. The latter two features are found from the beginning of the ninth century. 222 This is the traditional view. Lawrence (2015: 38–39) suggests that the semi-eremitical establishment of Saint Martin of Tours (316/336–397) might have provided a pattern for the Irish monastic settlements (see also Snyder 2003: 125), but no monastic rule has been preserved that is attributable to him. This does not greatly diminish the importance of the British, however, as also Lawrence observes. As noted above, 167

Charles-Edwards 2000: 185) and the monastic movement in Britain was important in framing the same in Ireland in this period (Jackson 1953: 122; Bischoff 1954: 195)— a fact that was remembered by Christian writers in the Irish tradition (Snyder 2003: 134). As an institution, the monastery became a key player in the production of literature after it came to prominence in the second half of the sixth century, first in Latin and then in the vernacular. Just one single manuscript dating to the period before the Carolingian renaissance has survived from Wales, viz. the Llandeilo Fawr Gospels in Lichfield, Cathedral Library MS 1 (CLA 2/159) (saec. vii ante med.; Bischoff 1963; transl. 1994: 11–12).223

Irish monasticism came to be a dynamic force in framing the intellectual life of Europe, which in its turn resonated in Ireland due to the establishing of conduits of intellectual exchange.224 Irish missionary activity from Iona in the northern part of the Anglo-Saxon regions established channels of influence that were important for the development of both traditions. This is testified by both Bede (672/3–735) and Aldhelm (c. 639–709) (Brown 1993: 150). Saint Aidan from Iona (founded by Columba in 563) founded the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria by c. 634. The axis Iona-Lindisfarne had tremendous influence on the spread of Christianity in the North of England. Anglo- Saxon England until 669 was, perhaps with a hint of exaggeration, ‘a cultural province of Ireland’ (ibid.) and the advances made by the Irish in the main disciplines of their learned activity in the period, namely computus, exegesis and grammar, attracted large numbers of students from the other side of the Irish sea. The cultural proximity of the Irish and northern Anglo-Saxon spheres and the concomitant Hiberno-Saxon tradition of calligraphy and manuscript decoration hence occasionally presents difficulties for

this is supported by strong and ample evidence in the form of loanwords, orthographical influence, and narrative traditions. The first bishop of the Irish, Palladius, was sent from Gaul in 430/431 (so Bede) and Saint Patrick might have been inspired by Gaulish monasticism during his visit to Auxerre or Tours (see Snyder 2003: 119–20). Palladius’s mission was ordered by Pope Celestine I and was recorded by Palladius’s contemporary Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390–c. 455), who was the first to continue Jerome’s Chronicon, and by Bede as well. 223 This manuscript preserves marginal glosses in Old Welsh. This constitutes the basis for assuming that Wales was the place of origin, and some caution is therefore due. The manuscript is clearly related stylistically to the other significant Insular Gospel books of the same period (see note below). 224 ‘Tutto ciò che gli Irlandesi apportarono al continente nel campo culturale, venne senza dubbio preparato nei monasteri dell’isola’ (Bischoff 1966: 195).

168 determining the place of origin for literary compositions or manuscripts (see Bieler 1949: 282).225 A discussion of the import of books from Ireland to England in the period from the fifth to the ninth century is found in Richard Sharpe (2010: 1–55).

Aldhelm received his first education at Malmesbury and became abbot of that monastery after the death of his teacher Máeldub (ob. c. 675). He was also educated for some time at the school established by Theodore (ob. 690) and Hadrian (ob. 710) at Canterbury. Aldhelm thus personifies a change of orientation in the intellectual climate in the period that followed the Synod of Whitby in 664.226 Theodore had brought with him a knowledge of Greek and we might conjecture that he brought Greek manuscripts as well (Brown 1993: 151). Contacts with Rome were strengthened in the seventh century and the Roman episcopal organization was introduced in Britain by the Synod of Whitby, which aligned the Northumbrian church with Roman practice—including the calculation of Easter, a concern that caused major controversy until the beginning of the ninth century—and weakened the influence of the Irish foundation Lindisfarne. For roughly one generation this foundation had been led and supported from Iona (Sharpe 2010: 5) with a formative and lasting effect on Anglo-Saxon manuscript production.227

225 The disagreement between Law (1982: 87–90) and Bischoff-Löfstedt (1992) on the provenance of the grammatical commentary Anonymus ad Cuimnanum is a case in point. This text survives only in Lavanttal, St Paul Stiftsbibliothek MS 2/1 (25.2.16) (fols. 21va–42rb) (ed. Löfstedt 1992), written in the first half of the eighth century. Law (1982: 87) argues that this manuscript was written in England but is met with harsh criticism in Löfstedt’s review of her monograph. 226 The first four chapters of Bischoff and Lapidge 1994 (pp. 1–189) provide detailed discussions of the Canterbury school and its founders, which brings into the picture the evidence of the Canterbury Biblical commentaries edited and introduced in the same volume. The authors note (1994: 5, 82) that Bede had been the main source for our knowledge of the lives of Theodore and Hadrian until the discovery of these commentaries. 227 The Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D. IV) provide a striking example of the magnitude of the Irish influence and shows that the Hiberno-Saxon style of book production survived the shift in orientation that came with the official preference for Roman Christianity–indeed that it flourished in the period from the late seventh till the early ninth century. The manuscript was produced in the years 715–20. Aldred’s Old English interlinear gloss (and colophon) was added at Chester-le-Street in the late tenth century (roughly two and a half centuries after the production of the book itself). The Durham Gospels (Durham, Cathedral Library MSS A. II. 10, C. III. 13 and C. III. 20; saec. vii ex) and the Echternach Gospels (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale MS Lat. 9389; saec. vii ex) are other important examples of this Insular group of illuminated gospel manuscripts. They were written by one scribe. It is not known where they were written, but possible candidates are the abbeys at Iona and 169

The Benedictine double monastery Wearmouth (673) and Jarrow (681) was founded by Benedict Biscop in this early period of the ‘strongly Romanizing phase in the intellectual life of Anglo-Saxon England’ (Brown 1993: 207). These monasteries, as well as Canterbury, were furnished with books from Rome, some of which were Biblical manuscripts that had come from the library of Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus’s Vivarium (founded c. 544 near Squillace by the Ionian Sea).228 The main text of the psalter preserved as London, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian A I (saec. vii 2/4), that belonged to the Augustinian monastery at Canterbury and contains the earliest preserved example of Jerome’s translation of the Psalms, as well as a later Old English gloss from the second quarter of the ninth century—the oldest extant English translation of Biblical text, is written in Roman Rustic capitals (Thompson 1912: 384). This script had little influence on the further development of writing in England.

Adomnán was born about 624 in south Donegal and became the ninth abbot of Iona in the period 679–704 (Meehan 1983: 2–3). He had contacts with Aldfrith, the king of Northumbria from 685–704/05—a period which stands out in the history of that kingdom not least due to its extensive production of lavish manuscripts (see note 227). Adomnán’s education, of sufficiently high quality as to make an impression on Bede, appears to have been ‘exclusively native’ (ibid.). Adomnán’s outspoken stance on the vernacular language is strikingly harsh and contrasts sharply with the attitude of various vernacular works that are believed to be roughly contemporary. His Vita Sancti Columbae (ed. Anderson and Anderson 1961) is prefaced by apologetic remarks regarding the inclusion of ‘unfamiliar words of the Irish tongue’ (obscura ... vocabula), Irish being ‘a poor language’ (scoticae vilis videlicet linguae) and held by Adomnán to be ‘of no value,

Lindisfarne (suggested in Bischoff and Lapidge 1994: 116). The Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College MS 57; saec. vii post med.) and the Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College MS A. I.; saec. viiex/viiiin) are other important examples that were presumably written on Irish soil in monastic communities with close affiliation with Iona, although there is no consensus as to the precise locations of their production– monasteries such as Durrow (founded by Saint Columba in the 550s), Iona, Dunkeld and Lindisfarne are possibilities. The Book of Durrow is thought to be the earliest of these manuscripts. 228 The library of Vivarium was possibly moved to the Lateran Palace some time after the death of Cassiodorus (which roughly coincided with the Lombard invasion of Italy), and some of its manuscripts were then brought to France and England (Pierre Courcelle as reported by Bischoff 1963; transl. 1994: 7). No book-inventories from the period prior to the Norman conquest have been preserved from monasteries such as Canterbury or Monkwearmouth-Jarrow (Lapidge 2006: 57). A total of 13 such inventories have been preserved from Anglo-Saxon England (op. cit.: 53). 170 among other different tongues of foreign peoples’ (Anderson and Anderson 1961: 178– 79). Although he wrote in Latin, Adomnán provides important information about the Irish language towards the very end of the seventh century (the Life being written between 688 and 704 and probably before 692—see Anderson and Anderson 1961: 92; see furthermore the brief discussion in Stifter 2013: 199). Nothing in Adomnán’s description of the Irish language from the end of the seventh century is reminiscent of Auraic. na nÉces, which has traditionally been dated to this period.

The apologetic stance of the author of the so-called Additamenta in the Book of Armagh (see Bieler 1979: 178, § 17), which the editor dates to the period c. 750–800, employs a rhetorical style that is more similar to that of Adomnán. The Additamenta were written in Irish, according to the author due to the myriad Irish names occurring in the narrative material. To me it seems plausible that Adomnán directed these remarks at an international audience (but cf. Charles-Edwards 2000). This could to a certain extent serve as an explanation of his critical attitude, and Adomnán’s close links with King Aldfrith who had received his education on Irish soil as a result of the ecclesiastical links between Ireland and England in the seventh century offers support for this view. Adomnán visited Northumbria and Aldfrith in 686 and provided the king with a copy of his De locis sanctis (Meehan 1983: 3), which was among the sources used by Bede.

The lack of esteem for the vernacular expressed by an important abbot such as Adomnán, and its continuing presence, evidenced by the Book of Armagh, represents a challenge to the assessment of the developments that led to the glorification of the local tongue in Auraic. na nÉces and elsewhere. The inconsistency, however, need not be due exclusively to geographical or chronological variation, as the Cáin Adomnáin ‘The Law of Adomnán’ (ed. Meyer 1905), parts of which may be dated to 697 (the ‘Cáin proper’ begins at Meyer’s § 34; see discussion of the structure and language of the text in Stifter 2013: 199–204), is written in Irish and hence testifies to the same kind of ambivalent approach to the Latin/Irish issue. Although hagiography and legislation surely represent different genres, it is difficult to see the two texts as the products of one common ethos. Adomnán’s attitude towards vernacular literature is portrayed in a strikingly different manner in a later Middle Irish narrative, dated to the tenth or early 11th century (see Stifter 2013: 200, with references), that accompanies the older law text.229 These

229 Adomnān Iæ, inmain cāch, rolēgh libru Gāidel [n]gnáth ‘Adomnán of Hi, beloved of all, has read the books of the Gael’ (Meyer 1905: 14, § 27). 171 observations suggest that attitudes towards the vernacular were complex and to some extent dictated by genre or discourse. We should thus not attempt to find a moment in time when such attitudes had uniformly progressed to a stage that might be conducive to the composition of Auraic. na nÉces. Rather, we should look for crucial intellectual preconditions, while also acknowledging the fact that other, perhaps partly opposing, intellectual strands might simultaneously have been present.

8.1. Insular Influence on Continental Monasteries and Scriptoria The Insular minuscule was developed from a type of half-uncial with some uncial letter forms (see Bischoff 1990: 83–90; Brown 1993: 201–20) that must have come from either Britain or Gaul. The evidence offered by palaeography supports the testimony of Patrician hagiography regarding the period and manner of the conversion of the Irish (Lowe 1926: 209; cited in Ó Cróinín 1995: 171). The use of the inherited scriptio continua was discontinued and spaces were inserted between words, according to the morphological criteria found in the Latin grammatical canon (so Parkes 1991: 4). This process might be seen in Milano, Bibliotheca Ambrosiana MS C.F. inf. (CLA 3/311), the so-called Bangor Antiphonary from the end of the seventh century, as well as in the Iona manuscript of Adomnán’s Vita Columbae that is catalogued as Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek MS Gen. 1 (CLA 7/998) (ibid.).

In general, Insular manuscripts, whether written in Ireland, Britain or on the Continent, show variation in between them, but often share basic characteristics that distinguish them from Continental manuscripts. Brown sees this against the background of the Irish dependency on the British Church in the fifth and sixth centuries (Brown 1993: 221). Kelly (1988: 4–5) stresses the mobility of clergy, poets, and lawyers (due to the ‘fairly uniform nature of early Irish law’) across the plethora of political boundaries in early Irish society. Irish was the language of the whole island. This rendered Ireland a cohesive unit, which facilitated the mobility of those who earned their living from dealing with the spoken word (see Charles-Edward 2000: 103).

The spread of Christianity and Latin literary culture in the British Isles has been eloquently summarized by Charles-Edwards:

This [i.e. Christianity and patristic Latin scholarship] came as two great circular movements of men, books and ideas. The first was a clockwise movement from post-Roman Britain to Ireland, from Ireland proper to the Irish settlements in western Scotland and to the Picts, and, finally, from Iona to the English. By this

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circular movement British Christianity was introduced to lands never ruled by Rome and was reintroduced to areas of northern and midland Britain conquered by the English. The second, anticlockwise, movement [...] took Irishmen, themselves pupils of the Britons, to Gaul; from monasteries founded by Irishmen and their pupils in Gaul a further impetus was given to, among others, the English mission (2000: 290).

Irish influence on the Continent began in the late sixth century with the foundation of the influential monasteries Luxeuil (590s) and Bobbio (613) by Saint Columbanus.230 This Irish engagement had a profound impact on the religious life in Merovingian Gaul (Lawrence 2015: 38) and reached its climax when the emigration of intellectuals from Ireland increased in the ninth century (Bischoff 1966: 202; see also Brown 1975: pp. 237–99). Bobbio, as one of two monasteries in northern Italy (the other being Nonantola, established in 752), took part in the revival of classical learning (Bischoff 1994: 151) and is famous for having accommodated one of the most extensive libraries in the West by the end of the ninth century with a large repository of grammatical literature (Richter 2008: 147), some of which is older than the monastery itself (Bischoff 1994: 9). The sustained connection between Ireland and this monastic community in Val Trebbia is proven by the fact that some of the grammars of that collection were authored by Irish writers and passed through Irish hands.231 Another monastic settlement which kept the contact with Ireland was Péronne in the Pas de Calais in North France (Brown 1993: 148) founded in the second half of the seventh century and also known as

230 Columbanus (543–615) is believed to have studied at Cluain Inis in Lough Erne and later, according to his biographer Jonas of Susa, under Saint Comgall and Mo-Sinu moccu Min at Bangor (founded in the 550s). 231 The Old Irish gloss in the text of Ars Ambrosiana is a case in point. The gloss is dated to the turn of the eighth century and has been discussed in some detail above. Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C. 301 inf. (CLA 3/326), the Milan glosses on the Psalms, passed through Bobbio before ending up in the Ambrosiana, but is for several reasons thought to have originated in Ireland. We do not know when this important corpus of Old Irish glosses entered Bobbio, and the significance of this fact is therefore difficult to assess. See Richter 2008: 183–85 for a list of other manuscripts with Old Irish content that for some reason or other has been associated with Bobbio and note especially the conclusion that ‘[...] Bobbio does not emerge as a centre where the Irish language was much written in the eighth century’ (p. 185). On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that important manuscripts from Ireland have passed through Bobbio, another example being the Bangor Antiphonary (saec. vii ex.), now shelfmarked as Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C. 5 inf. (CLA 3/311). 173

Perrona Scottorum.232 This was an important centre for book production (Bischoff 1981: 41). It is further possible that the well-known Cambrai Homily passed through Perrona on its way to Cambrai (loc. cit.; also Traube 1900). From a palaeographical point of view, it has long been known that the scripts of the various foundations gradually lost their distinctive Insular character (see e.g. Thompson 1912: 384).

While the manuscripts of Irish origin from the early period have been preserved almost exclusively in Continental libraries, the older Hiberno-Latin literature, a diverse corpus consisting of classical and patristic texts as well as computus, exegetical works, and grammatical commentary, has to a large extent been preserved only in Carolingian copies (Bischoff 1990: 13, 199).233 This means that many valuable sources to the development of Irish script and Insular script in general have been lost, presumably to a great extent owing to a lack of institutional continuity.234 Indirect testimony in the form of errors (‘Insular symptoms’) that arose during the act of copying into an apograph in Carolingian minuscule testify to their erstwhile existence.235

The layout of the exemplars of the Insular Donatan commentaries could have offered valuable information as to the layout of contemporary vernacular texts if they had survived. The hiatus in the physical record is important and might have consequences for the way we think about the texts that were presumably composed in this period but have been preserved in younger manuscripts. Could we imagine, for instance, that an

232 See especially Ludwig Traube’s “Perrona Scottorum: Ein Beitrag zur Ueberlieferungsgeschichte und zur Palaeographie des Mittelalters” (1900). 233 This is furthermore true for the majority (roughly ¾) of the late-antique and early medieval grammatical texts (Bischoff 1994: 99). Bischoff notes the fact that most of the preserved manuscripts (north of the Alps) come from an area that might be delineated by drawing a line from ‘Werden to Fulda, then to Regensburg, south to Salzburg, across to Lyons, up to Tours, then to St Omer and finally back to Werden again’ (1994: 53). The almost complete loss of manuscripts from early medieval Ireland is well-known, but we might note, with Bischoff, that hundreds of monasteries within that huge area have left us no written records. The loss of material is a general issue to be reckoned with when dealing with this period. 234 See Sharpe (2010: 14–16) for some notes on the preservation of Irish manuscripts. Political turmoil and Viking invasions have often been invoked as an explanation, but Sharpe notes that this is not necessary (see also the interesting thought experiment at 2010: 55n186). 235 A discussion of such errors from a palaeographical viewpoint might be found in Brown 1993: 167–72. See also critical remarks in Sharpe (2010: 40–42), who traces the approach back to Louis Duvau in a work on Lucretius from the late 19th century and notes that Ludwig Traube’s works served to corroborate the assumptions and methodology involved. 174 earlier version of Auraic. na nÉces was written in an Insular minuscule related to the script of the Old Irish glosses we find e.g. in Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 904 (saec ix. med.), the Sankt Gallen Priscian manuscript? Would main text and gloss-commentary be distinguished by differences in the grades of script (for instance set minuscule against cursive minuscule236 or even half-uncial) and not only by their relative size? At present, I have not identified any scribal errors that might be used to assess such questions profitably and will not venture into further speculation.237 Suffice it to say that the script of the manuscripts in which the Auraic. na nÉces is preserved (usually referred to as Gaelic National Minuscule)238 is presumably not that in which it was first written and that in the preserved record a visual hierarchy on the page is, as a general rule (exceptions occur), achieved solely by means of the relative size of the letters and not by their shape.239 Between the period of composition and the date of the preserved manuscripts lies the gap in the material record (possibly due to discontinuity of production) of the 13th century,240 which adds to the difficulties of tracing the evolution of the script and related features such as layout. The tools at our disposal are inferences from the preserved record and generalizations based on it. Palaeographical arguments in the present dissertation are therefore few and have been limited to cases where external sources are held to be involved.241

Bernhard Bischoff’s article “Panorama der Handschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Großen”, published in 1965 (transl. 1994: 20–56), provides a survey of the

236 See Brown (1993) for a division of Insular minuscule into phase I (pre-700) and phase II (ca. 700–850) as well as definitions of the various grades of phase-II Insular minuscule (hybrid, set, cursive and current). 237 It might be important here that the alphabet tables in all manuscripts share an error that must presumably have been committed by someone who copied from an antigraph written in a variety of Insular minuscule. This is discussed at length in the next chapter. 238 See some general remarks on this script in Duncan 2015: 46–47. In her unpublished doctoral dissertation (non vidi), Duncan argues that big scribal changes took place in Ireland during the 11th–12th centuries. 239 Amongst exceptions to the rule might be mentioned the different shapes of e.g. ⟨a⟩ and ⟨r⟩ (the latter with and without descender) in the commentary/text of the first folios of B (Y also occasionally employs two different allographs, though there is no agreement between B and Y on these matters) and of course the frequently zoomorphic initials. The initials are part of the decorative programme of the individual manuscripts and do not interact with the contents of the text. The extent of their use varies greatly. 240 Compare the remarks on the manuscript record of Auraic. na nÉces (pp. 52-54). 241 Further remarks on the production of Irish manuscripts are found in Chapter 2.5. 175 manuscript transmission during the time of the Carolingian Renaissance, classifying the preserved record by the use of the useful palaeographical term ‘writing province’.242 Although this concept is based on palaeographical considerations, it is inevitably linked up with broader cultural factors which are of importance for understanding the intellectual environments at hand as well as the interaction between monastic milieux. The Anglo-Saxon foundations on the Continent, for instance, were part of a network that included the court libraries of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious (Brown 1975; repr. 1993: 172).243 Bischoff therefore offers a powerful tool for relating the physical record preserved in Continental libraries to cultural and intellectual developments in Carolingian and post-Carolingian Europe.

It is an infortunate fact that the results of an application of this concept and the method underlying it must by necessity be more modest in the Irish case due to the loss of evidence. Twelve manuscripts survive which have been dated to the period before

AD 1000 (Ó Néill 2006: 72), all of which are missals or copies of the Gospels and Psalms. More than fifty manuscripts or fragments from the same period have been preserved on the Continent (op. cit.: 73). In the period AD 1000–1200 these numbers are 10 and about 30 respectively (ibid.).244 Many aspects of the monastic foundations in Ireland remain obscure—we do not even know with certainty where the most important preserved glossed manuscripts (Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek MS M. p. th. f. 12; Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C 301 inf.; Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 904) were produced, and so relating the use of the vernacular to specific communities is a difficult task. The same observation is true also for the manuscripts that date to

AD 1000–1200. The Book of Armagh (Dublin, Trinity College MS 52; saec. ix in.) is a fortunate exception to the rule. Local prestige is in focus in several of the texts contained in the dossier with seventh-century Patrician biographies in that manuscript. The general tenor leaves us wondering what kindred productions from other monasteries might have looked like at the time. Attempts at establishing the networks between various monasteries build on for instance hagiographical (e.g. Jonas of Susa)

242 A similar term Schreibprovinz was earlier used by Bischoff’s teacher Paul Lehmann (1918; repr. 1941: 10). Note also his term Schriftinseln (ibid.) with reference to the Insular writing provinces on the Continent. 243 See Bischoff 1965 and 1976 (transl. 1994: 56–76 and 76–93 respectively) on the court library. 244 These numbers might be compared with the numbers from pre-Conquest England: About 640 manuscripts survive in English libraries and some 250 are kept on the Continent (Ganz 2006: 94). 176 and historiographical (e.g. Bede) literature and not on the critical examination of a physical record. As a general rule, we have no means for efficiently attributing early vernacular works, preserved in late manuscripts, to any specific monastic community. The attempt at charting the monasteries which could plausibly have contained significant collection of books through an evaluation of indirect evidence in Ó Néill 2006 (75ff.) is a useful contribution with an attempt at an historical sketch of the development in Ireland (77ff.).

The notion that a Germanic-Insular writing province ensued from Saint Boniface’s (c. 675–754) missionary work in the Frankish empire in the eighth century (Bischoff 1994: 42–44) is an interesting example of the results that have been achieved through the careful investigation of the physical record largely initiated by Traube. Traces of Anglo-Saxon influence are found until the mid-ninth century (Bischoff 1963; repr. 1994: 18–19), e.g. in manuscripts from the important seventh-century foundation Echternach in Luxembourg that was established by the Northumbrian missionary Willibrord, the ‘Apostle der Friesen’. Other important monasteries to employ the Anglo-Saxon script were Mainz, Hersfeld, and Würzburg. The very codex that Boniface used to protect himself when he was murdered has been preserved to this day in the Hessische Landesbibliothek in Fulda as MS Bonifat. 2 (CLA 8/1197). This manuscript is written in the script of Luxeuil and contains a collection of dogmatic texts which it shares with another (uncial) manuscript that had been at Nonantola. Fulda (founded by Boniface’s student Saint Sturm in 744 close to Boniface’s outpost Fritzlar) was the main centre of the Germanic-Insular writing province as it is delimited by Bischoff and was furnished with books from England, as were other monasteries with Anglo-Saxon connections such as Würzburg and Mainz and, in the region of Hessen-Thüringen, Hersfeld, Amorbach, Weißenburg, and Tauberbischofsheim (Lapidge 2006: 77–78).245 An important line of influence goes back to Alcuin of York through his student Hrabanus Maurus, who had the main responsibility for the abbey school at Fulda from 803 until he became abbot of that same monastery in 822. Hrabanus became archbishop

245 Also Fritzlar—where a Benedictine monastery was established (724) by Wihtberht, who had studied at the Anglo-Saxon foundation Rath Melsigi in Ireland—and Werden, both important places of writing with Anglo-Saxon connections, might be mentioned in addition to these (see Lehmann 1941: 9–10). The school at Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire), which had been established by Theodulf of Orléans during the reign of Charlemagne, was later reformed and led by St. Abbo of Fleury who had studied in England. 177 of Mainz in 847 and was the teacher of influential ninth-century scholars such as Walahfrid Strabo (c. 808–849), Servatus Lupus of Ferrières (c. 805–862) and Otfrid von Weißenburg (c. 800–870).

Fulda preserves a catalogue from some time before 800 that evidences the presence of Biblical codices, patristic works, writings in the hagiographical genre, and a chronicle in Old High German (Bischoff 1994: 96), which confirms that the vernacular language was used at least to some extent in writing in this community before the turn of the ninth century. The ninth-century production of Otfrid is otherwise famous as the first known poetry in the German vernacular. The scriptorium in Fulda used the Anglo-Saxon script until the second quarter of the ninth century (Bischoff 1994: 118), from which point it was gradually replaced ‘mit Reibungen unter gegenseitigen Zugeständnissen’ by the Continental minuscule (Lehmann 1941: 8, 10). From the ninth century onwards, this monastery played an important role in the preservation of classical Latin literature, as did other German centres such as Hersfeld, Cologne, Lorsch (founded in 764), Reichenau, and Sankt Gallen.246 This was recognized by the Italian humanists of the 15th century, as is evinced by a list that was compiled by Niccolò Niccoli for the papal legates Niccolò Albergati and Giuliano Cesarini, who brought it on their journey to collect manuscripts in Germany in 1431 (Bischoff 1994: 134). Classical authors such as Aulius

246 Lorsch was closely connected to the Carolingian court (note that the court and its scriptorium were not located at Aachen to begin with but was probably located between the upper Rhine and the Moselle) and preserves a catalogue from the mid-ninth century with several classical texts. The Lorsch manuscripts have been treated in depth in Bischoff’s monograph Die Abtei Lorsch im Spiegel ihrer Handschriften (1989). A catalogue has also been preserved from Reichenau from 821–22, that testifies to a rich collection of grammatical literature, among which we find an important manuscript of Martianus Capella. In Reichenau was also discovered the Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek MS Generalia 1 (697 x 713) (CLA 7/998), the almost contemporary manuscript of Adomnán’s Life of St Columba. The abbott of Reichenau, Walahfrid Strabo, had been educated at Fulda, where he attained knowledge of authors such as Lucretius and Horace. To him is attributed the miscellaneous manuscript Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 878, which is of interest to the present thesis due to its incorporation of alphabet tables, including a runic alphabet. For the Celtic scholar, the library of Sankt Gallen is known first and foremost due to its MS 904 (the Sankt Gallen Priscian) with its rich collection of Old Irish glosses, but this manuscript was presumably written in Ireland (it is not known where; the most comprehensive discussion to date favours Nendrum). Sankt Gallen became an important centre of humanistic culture in the ninth and tenth centuries (under Notker I Balbulus and Notker III) and a rich collection of manuscripts has survived there to this day. 178

Gellius (copied from an exemplar owned by Einhard in Seligenstadt, who was in contact with Lupus of Ferrières), Curtius Rufus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Apicius, and Columella were copied at Fulda in Anglo-Saxon minuscule. In Caroline minuscule we have copies of Valerius Flaccus, Marcellus, Eutropius, Tacitus, and Pliny, all produced in the same period. The knowledge of Tacitus’s Germania in Fulda in the ninth century is interesting to note. That work would have furnished a rich repository of lore pertaining to Germanic identity in an earlier period and was known among others to Einhard of Seligenstadt.247 Some of the exemplars of the classical texts were furnished by monastic foundations in the vicinity (Hersfeld, Seligenstadt), from the same writing province, as it were. A couple (Apicius, Columella) was known further away: in North- Eastern France (Corbie) and the Loire region (Tours). From this, Bischoff deduces (if I interpret him correctly) that the court library may have been the source of the exemplars from which the Fulda copies of such authors were made (1994: 150). The significance of Fulda in the present context builds on the hypothesis that a text containing tables of the three sacred alphabets and other varieties was authored there by Hrabanus Maurus.248 This is dealt with in the next chapter as it is relevant to the assessment of a related section in Auraic. na nÉces.

247 See further F. Haverfeld (1916: 196–201) on the engagement with Tacitus in the Middle Ages. 248 See criticism of this position in Derolez 1954. 179

8.2. Reducing the Vernacular to Writing: Germanic Comparanda Whereas the British origin of Irish Christianity became an important part of national history through the development in Armagh of a nexus of stories concerning the national Saint Patrick and his mission, the importance played by British Latin on Irish orthographical practice (first in Latin) and related matters has left no imprint in the literature, as far as I am aware. Indeed, theoretical discussion of the origin of various Latin-derived orthographical systems are rare in the Middle Ages, and, in the few cases that have been preserved, is clearly posterior to the act of adaptation itself and sheds little or no light on the various processes involved in the framing of the systems that actually carry the literary record. The so-called First Grammatical Treatise from Iceland (ed. Hreinn Benediktsson 1972), which is preserved only in Copenhagen, the Arnamagnean Institute MS AM 242 fol. from the mid-14th century, but has been securely dated to 1125–75, is a case in point. This is a highly informative and pragmatic text that proposes various changes to an already existing orthographical system (which should not be understood as an orthographical standard), but these, although extraordinarily well motivated for the time, were not generally accepted. The vernacular runic alphabet is dismissed by the First Grammarian, as it is seen as too imprecise for the successful and unambiguous rendering of the Icelandic language in script. This contrasts sharply with the view taken by Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskáld, the author of the Third Grammatical Treatise (ed. Björn M. Ólsen 1883) in the mid-13th century, who structures his discussion of the letters around the runic alphabet. This text in many ways offers the closest parallel to Auraic. na nÉces that is preserved from the western Middle Ages.249

Otfrid von Weißenburg (c. 800–870), whose hand is associated with a manuscript copy of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae with both Latin and Old High German glosses, discusses a couple of points on vernacular orthography in Ad Liudbertum epistula, an apologetic introduction to his vernacular Evangelienbuch. This is an important exception to the general absence of documentation of the learned discourses that must have accompanied the task of reducing the vernaculars to writing. Otfrid’s letter discusses the necessity of adapting the orthographical norms of Latin in order to render German in script, and similarly treats issues of translation, including the match between the gender of Latin and German words and numbers, the variance in the use of negation, poetical

249 A comparative discussion of these two texts focused on their use of the vernacular alphabets is found in my unpublished dissertation for the MA-degree at the University of Oslo (see N. E. Engesland 2016). 180 devices such as rhyme, and the omission of vowel letters (‘in the manner of the Hebrew language’). The attitude shown towards the vernacular is somewhat ambivalent and the author emphasizes the lack of grammatical rules in the German language (compare § 1,13 of Auraic. na nÉces: Is and īarum ro·rīaglad a mbērla-sa, for which see the discussion above at p. 156), which he interestingly attributes to its lack of cultivation.250 No hint of this idea is found in the Irish grammatical corpus, although elsewhere it seems to have had currency, a prominent example being Dante Alighieri’s De vulgari eloquentia from the 13th century.

The thoroughly Latinate theoretical premises of Otfrid’s work should be noted, as well as the fact that the author assumes that grammatical rules and statements on phonology made by the Latin grammarians are in principle applicable to the vernacular. This results in a certain tension between idiomatic use of the vernacular on the one hand and respect of Latin usage as codified in grammatical literature on the other, in addition to a certain reluctance to adopt graphemes that are not used or used only sparingly in Latin. Such might have been the premises also for the composition of the grammar patrii sermonis that was allegedly initiated by Charlemagne, on the authority of his biographer Einhard (c. 775–840), but, as no trace remains of this text, this is mere conjecture. Otfrid was probably taught in Fulda by Hrabanus Maurus.

The lack of written evidence of the process of orthographical adaptation is significant because the technicalities involved were lost to subsequent generations of scholars and the field left open for speculation. But such speculation is conspicuous by its absence and it seems likely that the use of the Latin letters also for the vernacular (both in Iceland

250 Contrast for instance the following remarks: 1) Hujus enim linguae barbaries, ut est inculta et indisciplinabilis atque insueta capi regulari freno grammaticae artis, sic etiam in multis dictis scriptio est propter litterarum aut congeriem aut incognitam sonoritatem difficilis (Erdmann 1882: 5.58–61). ‘Wie nun allerdings diese unkultivierte Sprache insgesamt baürisch ist und ungebildet, nicht gewöhnt, sich dem lenkende Zügel der Grammatik zu fügen, so ist auch bei vielen Wörtern die Schreibung schwierig, sei es wegen der Häufung von Buchstaben, sei es wegen ihrer ungewöhnlichen lautend’ (Vollmann-Profe 1987: 21); 2) Res mira, tam magnos viros, prudentia deditos, cautela praecipuos, agilitate suffultos, sapientia latos, sanctitate praeclaros cuncta haec in alienae linguæ gloriam transferre et usum scripturae in propria lingua non habere (Erdmann 1882: 7.113–17). ‘Es ist erstaunlich, daß so bedeutende Männer, eifrige Anhänger der Wissenschaft, Männer von außerordentlichem Abwägungsvermögen und voller geistiger Frömmigkeit, alle diese Fähigkeiten zum Ruhm einer fremden Sprache einsetzen und im Schreiben der eigenen keine Übung haben’ (Vollmann-Profe 1987: 25). 181 and in Ireland, among others) was taken for granted to the extent that the origin of this practice was not explored further.251

The emergence of the written word in Ireland played an important part in mythography, however, but this mythography is divorced from the actual historical processes as far as these may be reconstructed through the extant record. The role of Saint Patrick in the spread of basic literacy is for instance a recurrent topos in the Latin lives by Muirchú and especially Tírechán (both ed. Bieler 1979) from the late seventh century, but the further significance of this—the British origin of literary culture—is not explored in the vernacular corpus.252 The theme is not developed in texts that concern themselves with the vernacular language and so the secondary nature of Irish orthography in relation to Latin is consigned to oblivion. The development of local Latin scripts in the seventh century, the Insular half-uncial and minuscule, is not discussed, but attention is rather focused on the redundant native writing system.

8.3. Notes on the Ogam Alphabet The vernacular alphabet—Ogam—is relevant to the general development of Irish literacy, but also to Auraic. na nÉces specifically, which champions this native script. I here provide a general discussion to serve as the backdrop for the analysis of the alphabets in the next chapter. Although a functional orthography is a requirement for the reduction of speech to writing, systematic linguistic thought is no prerequisite for a fully developed literature. The first sign of linguistic analysis from Ireland that has survived is the monumental script known as Ogam, which dates at least as far back as the fifth century. Formal aspects of the script, such as the realization of graphemes through position- marking, constitute a clear departure from any alphabetic precursor (probably Latin, though there is no consensus of the precise mechanisms involved, see Pedersen 1924: 212–13; Vgl. Gr. vol. I: § 4 and McManus 1991). Ogam is alphabetic in the sense that it is based on the idea of a close graphophonological correspondence, tailored to fit the vernacular in the stage that we refer to as Primitive Irish. This fact in itself makes independent creation a highly implausible possibility, and one which is difficult to

251 Although the question of which alphabet to use—runes or Latin letters—is addressed by the Icelandic First Grammarian (see p. 180). 252 Various opinions on the meaning of abgitoria and elimenta, issued by Saint Patrick when he founded churches and consecrated bishops in his lives by Muirchú and Tírechán, have been put forward (see discussion in Sims-Williams 2007: 174–77). 182 harmonize with the fact that the period of the cultural exchange between Ireland and Britain, encouraged by the ongoing conversion of Ireland, and the preserved monumental corpus overlap.253 McManus (1991: 3) sees Ogam as the result of ‘stimulus diffusion’, an independent expression of borrowed theoretical premises. There are some possible signs that the creation of Ogam depends on the circulation of Latinate grammatical doctrine on the fringe of the Roman world.

The idiosyncratic graphic realization of the graphemes has stimulated various theories in modern (and medieval) scholarship. The theory that the system originated as a form of cryptography has been put forward both in medieval and modern times but remains unlikely, due to the simple fact that Ogam was a monumental script. In its medieval guise, this theory merits some discussion, however, as it was an important part of the thinking about language in the period.

The Irish language at the beginning of the Ogam period (fourth century AD) would have consisted of the following phonemes (following McCone 1996: 24–26; cf. Sims- Williams 2007: 80): the voiceless stops /t/, /k/, and /kw/; the voiced stops /b/, /d/, /g/, and /gw/; the sibilants /s/ and /st/; the nasals /m/ and /n/; the liquids /l/ and /r/; the semivowels /w/ and /y/; a symmetric vowel system /a(:)/, /e(:)/, /i(:)/, /o(:)/, and /u(:)/; as well as the diphthongs /ai/ and /oi/. Before the mid-sixth century the two long vowels /ε:/ and /ɔ:/ became part of the system (McCone 1994: 85). The inventory of graphemes in the Ogam alphabet contained a sufficient number of units for the unambiguous denotation of the above phonemes, with the exception of the distinctive feature ± LENGTH in the vowel system. Characteristic features of the Old Irish language such as lenition and palatalization had only allophonic status at this point (McCone 1996: 24). These were not recognized by the orthographical system when they later became distinctive features and were indeed only partially recognized even in early manuscript orthography.

Different values are assigned to the graphemes in the manuscript tradition. This is in part the result of language change that affected the anlaut of the acrophonic letter names (e.g. fern /f/ < Proto-Irish *wernā /w/, cognate with Middle Welsh gwern), in part the result of scholastic reworking. Reworking was required as some symbols became

253 Note that Primitive Irish distinguished seven long vowel phonemes, denoted by only five Ogam graphemes (see Sims-Williams 2007: 80). 183 redundant because their values were dictated by the first sound in their names and hence were susceptible to mergers (see further McManus 1988: 150ff.; 1991: 39). The Old Irish phonemic inventory is the result of considerable changes to the language in the period after its first written appearance.254

Between the linguistic period that is covered by epigraphy and the first manuscript evidence, the Irish language underwent various important changes (see McCone 1994: 61–221 and 1996: 105–125) that led to the linguistic system that is documented in the gloss corpora and presented in the reference grammars from the early 20th century, notably in the still standard grammar by Thurneysen. After these linguistic changes had taken place, Ogam found its way into the manuscript record and the signary also re- sponded to manuscript literacy through the adoption of additional letters and manuscript conventions. The earliest keys to the alphabet are found in the Continental manuscripts Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207 (fol. 257r), which is the earliest grammatical manuscript from Fleury (end of eighth / beginning of ninth century), and Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana MS Reg. Lat. 1308 (fol. 62v) (McManus 1991: 135). The earliest relevant manuscripts of Irish provenance are from the 14th century; in addition to Auraic. na nÉces, they contain the texts Dúil Feda na Forḟid and Dúil Feda ind Ogaim. Accepting the suggested date and origin of the manuscript Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207, we therefore have evidence of the existence of the additional letters (albeit with values differing from the ones assigned to them in Auraic. na nÉces) in an Irish milieu on the Continent at the turn of the ninth century. At this stage we also get explicit discussions of the vernacular alphabet, which, however, played an insignificant role as a vehicle for written text. As a monumental script it fell into decline in the seventh century (McManus 1991: 128).

254 The consonant inventory has been notably increased and contains the following phonemes: the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/; the voiceless fricatives /f/, /θ/, and /x/; the voiced stops /b/, /d/, and /g/; the voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, and /ɣ/; the sibilant /s/; the nasals /m/, //, /N/, and /n/; as well as the liquids /R/, /r/, /L/, and /l/; all occurring ± PALATALIZATION (e.g. /pj/, /tj/, and /kj/ etc.), in addition to /h/. The vowel inventory consists of /(a(:)/, /e(:)/, /i(:)/, /o(:)/, and /u(:)/; together with a greatly increased number of diphthongs: /ai/, /oi/, /ui/, /a(:)u/, /e(:)u/, /i(:)u/, /(o(:)u)/, and /ia/, /ua/. The four short diphthongs /au/, /eu/, /iu/, and /(ou)/ are not included in Thurneysen’s system, but this solution might be seen as more efficient than postulating the existence of u-quality in the consonant system (McCone 1996: 27), although a development such as dat. sg. */wiru:/ > */wiruu/ (Old Irish fiur) could be seen as parallel to gen. sg. */wiri:/ > */wirji/ (Old Irish fir). 184

A certain degree of continuity in the actual use of the vernacular alphabet might be envisioned and has been suggested by McManus (1991). Nevertheless, the use of Ogam as a tool for linguistic analysis in the manner we see in Auraic. na nÉces would seem to represent a fresh beginning and a departure from whatever linguistic theory may have accompanied the signary at an earlier stage. The analysis of the Auraic. na nÉces does not seem to have entered the mainstream in its entirety—in the Bardic grammatical treatises several key concepts endorsed in our text have been abandoned altogether. Equally important, it does not seem to have parallels in the roughly contemporary vernacular gloss corpus. The ideas forwarded by McManus (1991) on the original values of the Ogam letters challenge the account in Ahlqvist (1983: 7–10).

185

9. The Alphabet Tables in Auraicept na nÉces

9.1. The Sources of Auraicept na nÉces: New Parameters In the introduction to his edition, Ahlqvist stated that:

The Latin-inspired material in the Auraicept is not a good pointer to the age of the text, again because of the simplicity and the common-place nature of what is dealt with: this naturally makes it crop up in most Latin grammars. The most important direct borrowing (text 3,12 below) can be traced as far back as Varro and is therefore not very useful in this connection (Ahlqvist 1983: 18).255

255 The relevant passage (preserved in Pseudo-Sergius’s Explanationes in artes Donati; see GL vol. IV: 492.37–493.3) reads:

Nunc de generibus dicamus. Varro dicit ‘genera dicta a generando. Quicquid enim gignit aut gignitur, hoc potest genus dici et genus facere.’ Quod si verum est, nulla potest res integrum genus habere nisi masculinum et femininum (Kent 1951: 602–04, Fr. 7a).

‘Now let us speak of genders. Varro says: “Genera ‘gender’ are named from generare ‘to generate’. For whatever gignit ‘begets’ or gignitur ‘is begotten’, that can be called a genus and can produce a genus.” If this is true, then the genus that a thing has is not perfect unless it is masculine or feminine’ (op. cit.: 603–05).

Varro’s work on the Latin language survives as continuous text only in the incomplete witness Florence, Bibliotheca Mediceo-Laurenziana MS Laurentianus 51. 10, which was produced at Montecassino in the 11th century. There is no reason to assume direct acquaintance with Varro on the part of the author. See Ahlqvist 1983: 42n5 for a list of works in which Varro’s statement can be found (albeit without the attribution that we have in Pseudo-Sergius), to which Julian of Toledo (GL vol. V: 318.17–319.2) should be added. The Explanationes were a source for the commentary by Pompeius, with which they circulated in Visigothic Spain, being available to Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) and Julian of Toledo (c. 642–90), as well as in Ireland (Holtz 1981: 234, 429). The oldest witness to the Explanationes has been identified in the scriptio inferior of the double palimpsest London, British Library Add. MS 17212 (De Paolis 2000). The copy in this codex ter scriptus was probably made in the north of Italy in the sixth century (further details in De Paolis 2000; see also Zetzel 2019: 322). Another witness is the Frankish manuscript Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz MS Diezianus B Sant. 66 (CLA 8/1044) from c. 776– 800, probably written at Charlemagne’s court (Bischoff 1994: 69). This manuscript is well-known as it contains one of the oldest surviving book-catalogues from the Middle Ages. The text in GL is edited from St. Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek MS 2/1. See also the quotation from Pompeius (GL vol. V: 159.23– 26) in Fragment 7b (Kent 1951: 604) and note the fact that the quotation at Y 3235–39 (also in DT and possibly in the exemplar of M–see the edition in Appendix 2) is attributed to Pompeius, although this attribution would seem to be erroneous (Thurneysen 1928: 278). As Ahlqvist’s list (referenced above) contains the Hiberno-Latin Donatan commentaries by Murethach etc., the most economical solution 186

To date, the chief exceptions to this remark have been the quotations from the Hiberno- Latin tradition of Donatan commentary that were utilized by Poppe in his 2002 article.256 These do, in fact, provide a secure terminus post quem in the first quarter of the ninth century for significant parts of the text of α. Poppe is rather cautious when it comes to the implications of his find, and I would like to suggest the following two hypotheses that in my view enhance the importance of Poppe’s study, namely:

- The Latin quotations in Auraic. na nÉces that have verbatim parallels in the Insular Donatan commentaries owe to direct textual influence from that tradition. - The plausible source for these quotations is the lost exemplar of the four surviving commentaries, as identified by Poppe.257 Access to this exemplar or a copy of it is the most efficient explanation of the parallels between the archetype of Auraic. na nÉces and the Donatan commentaries, covering nearly all the relevant quotations.258

The article has been discussed in Chapter 6, where I also suggest an additional parallel or source. Further parallels in Latin grammatical literature (not in γ, thus not covered by Poppe, who only analyzes B) are provided in the notes to my edition of the text from the Book of Uí Mhaine in Appendix 2. The most significant of the quotations in M is possibly text correctly attributed to the Gaulish fifth-century grammarian Consentius. Consentius was the contemporary of Agroecius, who is quoted in Y (see p. 283n482), although I have not succeeded in finding a close match to the quotation in the work that

would be to posit that Auraic. na nÉces drew on the common source of these, the use of which is already evidenced by the presence of Latin quotations from that tradition, viable alternatives being appropriation from Isidore or Priscian. 256 Both Ahlqvist and Poppe see these quotations as part of the commentary and not of the ‘canonical’ text, but some measure of doubt is called for. In Chapter 5 I have sought to show that the distinction is often less than clear-cut and that the meaning of the text of the standard edition is occasionally dependent on text that has been excluded from it. 257 Similar principles completely rule out the direct influence of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus on Auraic. na nÉces (with one exception in the copies of δ, namely the glosses on the Latin letter names based on Virgilian material that postdates the archetype) that has been assumed to have been significant ever since the publication of the first edition, if only for the commentary (pace Calder 1917; pace van Hamel 1946: 5). 258 One exception is Poppe’s 3.1.1., which he has identified only in Donatus Ortigraphus 155.952–53, with close verbal correspondence. 187 has been preserved of this author. M and δ (AEgGPY) might preserve a trace of an otherwise lost strand of transmission. Consentius and Agroecius are found in the French manuscript Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 432 (saec. ix med.; Bischoff 1972). Furthermore, an Irish version of Donatus’s Ars maior, interpolated with substantial additions from Consentius, was exported to the Continent in the ninth century (Zetzel 2019: 296)— both authors were evidently available in ninth-century Ireland. The corollaries of these observations show that Ahlqvist’s remark might have been overly pessimistic, and, turning from the Hiberno-Latin grammatical commentaries and the grammatical literature in the narrow sense, I will in the present chapter seek to demonstrate that the alphabet tables in Auraic. na nÉces similarly provide useful information that enriches our knowledge of the sources and rough time of composition of the text.

I have included photos of the relevant section from all manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, and Trinity College Dublin in Appendix 3 (Plates 1–12), as many details are difficult to describe without recourse to the manuscripts themselves.259

The Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabet tables as a tertium comparationis The tables of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets in Auraic. na nÉces are a useful feature for the contextualization of the text in that they offer a point of comparison with an external (mostly Continental) corpus of similar tables that is datable to the timespan from the eighth to the 11th century and that is generally found in manuscript contexts that are independent of other relevant grammatical text such as Donatan commentaries. These tables also contain material that does not seem to have been transmitted as such in grammatical texts—although various pieces of information sometimes were added in the margins of copies of grammatical texts (see e.g. GL vol. II: 12, app. cr. for some examples in the margins of copies of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae). Conclusions based on the reflexes of this material in our text are therefore independent of the evidence presented above and in Chapter 6.

259 Eg, kept in the British Library, has not been included. 188

Ahlqvist’s excluded the tables of the three sacred alphabets from his edition (1983) against the evidence of all the manuscripts.260 The reason for this omission is mainly typographical (op. cit.: 45), although the editor remarks that E does not treat this part of the text as canonical (i.e. the introductory question/answer is not written in larger script size), and that it therefore ‘remains possible that it represents a later addition’ (op. cit.: 46).261 This observation does not stand up to scrutiny, as it would leave unexplained the presence of the passage in all manuscript copies of the text (see the stemma codicum in Chapter 2.7), as well as several features that will be discussed subsequently. In fact, the only two manuscripts that do mark the passage in larger script size are B and L. While script size thus appears to be moot for the relative dating of this passage (the lack of such distinction is not by default a significant error)262, another feature is not: the passage is preceded by commentary in which it is cited.263 This, to my view, is a strong criterion of its relative primacy. More specifically, the close relationship between B and E’s respective copies of this section (see below)—one with the introductory question in large script, the other in normal script—also diminishes the value of E in the case of agreement between B and L. Furthermore, this section as a whole must have been mediated through the archetype due to errors common to all manuscripts but foreign to Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337/1 (p. 35), which stands outside the textual tradition of Auraic. na nÉces.264 The section, then, was by all appearances an integral part of Auraic. na nÉces

260 A 57r1–57v; B 1129–46ff.; D p. 12r32–65ff.; E fol. 23va22–35ff.; Eg 71rb20–va19ff.; G pp. 198b31–199a; L fol. 158ra34–b12ff.; M fol. 141vb17–28ff.; P pp. 111.3–113.7ff; T p. 190.15–35ff.; Y 4153–219ff. See Appendix 3 for illustrations of this section from all manuscripts except Eg. 261 The preceding passage (B 1116–28; L 158ra21–33) is lacking in E. This passage has been taken over from LG and is also found at Y 4147–52. 262 Criticism presented in McLaughlin 2009. She notes the presence of the disyllabic form inna of the article at B 1132 (following the three sacred alphabets), as well as the historically justified form cethēora preserved in AEgGPY. McLaughlin also lists T, but without noting that the reading (p. 190.32) of this copy is abbreviated (⟨r⟩ with suspension stroke) and of no diagnostic value. The use of these forms was discontinued during the Middle Irish period—the latter form is also found at B 628, 1629 (also teōra ) and 1715, discussing the grammatical term airlann (used of pronouns and adjectival numerals agreeing with the gender of the following noun, possibly a compound of air- and slond ‘signification’—see eDIL s.v. airlann; Vgl. Gr. vol. I: § 238; also Ahlqvist 1989: 3–4 and Hayden 2014: 49), in a passage that also includes explicit discussion of the neuter gender with historically justified observations (such as B 1716–1717/Y 4907–08). 263 E.g. B 1111: amal asbeir: Cat iat aib [g ]itri? ⁊rl. (also at Y 4145–46) ‘What are the alphabets? etc.’ 264 The existence of a copy of the alphabet tables in the composite manuscript TCD MS 1337/1 (saec. xv– xvi) means that the possibility of contamination must be taken into consideration as far as individual items 189 prior to the existence of the present branches of the transmission. In a paper held at the Département de Recherches Linguistiques, Université Paris-VII in 1983 (published in edited form in the same year), Ahlqvist adheres to the idea that the alphabet tables belong to the older stratum (1983: 9).

A copy of the Greek alphabet that follows In Lebor Ogaim in Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337/1 (p. 35) also includes Greek numerals (spelt out with Latin letters), such as we find after the copy of De inventione litterarum in e.g. Paris MS 5239. It also gives Hebrew numerals and a couple of exotic alphabets that are also included in the Book of Ballymote witness to In Lebor Ogaim. The exotic alphabets provide a strong link between the Irish and the Continental material, as observed by Derolez (1951: 1–19). This is based on other criteria than those set forth in the present work. As Derolez points out (1951: 15), the unlikelihood of a medieval scribe having access to alternative texts on the exotic alphabets in case of doubt makes the similarities and differences between the various preserved alphabets significant—given how many confounding factors regarding the ordering of the letters, their values, names, and symbols could possibly present themselves. The copy of the Greek alphabet is free from several, but not all, errors that are shared by the individual branches of Auraic. na nÉces and the alphabet must therefore be independent of this tradition. See discussion below.

Ahlqvist notes that this section ‘has many echoes in Latin manuscripts of roughly the same period’ (op. cit.: 45), but provides no discussion, leaving the matter more or less untouched. The relevance of this observation for the contextualization of the text has not hitherto been investigated.265 The run-of-the-mill nature of the section enables comparison with external sources and thus the contextualization of other features of the text which are not commonplace. It therefore seems likely that the importance of the alphabet tables for the textual history of Auraic. na nÉces has been underestimated in previous scholarship. Here follows an attempt at a closer examination of their re- lationship to the Continental material and an evaluation of their implications for our

are concerned. This will be discussed further in the course of the present argument. TCD MS 1337 contains inter alia a copy of the Lecan Glossary, In Lebor Ollaman, and a copy of In Lebor Ogaim. 265 I presented some of my preliminary observations to this effect at the ICCS XVI in Bangor (July 25th, 2019) and at a conference on Germano-Celtic Learned Culture c. 600–1100 at Det Norske Videnskaps- Akademi in Oslo (hosted by the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo), February 27th–28th, 2020). 190 knowledge of what kind of linguistic material was available to the author, but to some extent also during the various stages of the Irish medieval period at large. The rationale for carrying out such an investigation is simple: the tables of the three alphabets have not been taken from any of the sources that have been recognized so far (listed in e.g. van Hamel 1946: 5).

These observations allow for a study of the alphabet section of Auraic. na nÉces, both with regard to its relation to the structure of the text by internal comparison between the manuscript copies as well as its indebtedness to external sources. The latter is made possible by the fact that the content of the section has near parallels in Continental manuscripts, providing a tertium comparationis that enables direct comparison to a degree which is impossible for any other coherent portion of the Irish text due to the rather rudimentary character of the Latinate material and the innovative quality of its vernacular reflex.

9.2. The Transmission of the Hebrew and Greek Alphabets A number of manuscripts from the Carolingian period onwards contain relatively minor sections that are devoted to the graphemic inventories of the three sacred alphabets together with various vernacular varieties. These manuscripts are often miscellaneous and contain a diversity of texts, but a central component is regularly constituted by computistical works, such as Bede’s influential De temporum ratione or ‘The Reckoning of Time’ from 725 (ed. Jones 1975–80, vol. II). The scribes who were responsible for such small alphabetic compendia seem to have drawn on a variety of sources and not on any single authoritative text. This means that the knowledge that is presented in relation to each alphabet has been taken out of its original context, and the result is a certain lack of symmetry in the alphabet lists.

Bernhard Bischoff (1951) has remarked that the Greek alphabet was transmitted through two of the most common handbooks during the period from the ninth to the eleventh or twelfth centuries, namely Isidore’s Etymologiae from the early seventh century and Bede’s text on computus mentioned in the previous paragraph. Hence, basic knowledge about the letters would have been available to the generally educated. The Greek alphabet had been transmitted with numerical values which were useful in a computistical setting and these have generally been included together with the names of the letters and the characters themselves. The computistical context of many copies of the Greek alphabet makes this feature quite relevant, but it might be noted that such information is also

191 included for instance in the first folios of London, British Library Royal MS 15 B XXII from the first half of the 11th century, where it precedes a copy of Ælfric’s grammar (ed. Zupitza 1880).

The use of the Greek letters for computistical purposes is discussed by Bede, who also provides a corresponding inventory of letters. Letters which were no longer in use in contemporary Greek writing were transmitted as part of the alphabetic inventory due to their numerical values.

The Hebrew letters were not used for this purpose. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263–339) provided Greek interpretations of the Hebrew letter names in the tenth book of his Preparatio evangelica. The works of Ambrosius (ob. 397) and especially Jerome (c. 347– 420) served to channel the interpretations of the Hebrew letter names into the mainstream of Latin learning. Jerome’s epistle on Psalm 118 (Epistola XXX ad Paulam de alphabeto Hebraico Psalmi CXVIII) (PL vol 22.: col. 441ff.) contains the Latin equivalents of Eusebius’s interpretations. It should be noted, however, that the interpretations are not found in Isidore’s work (Thiel 1973: 88). Their lack of currency in the late patristic period means that the later engagement with them is due to direct appropriation from authors such as Jerome. Jerome’s interpretations are found in

AEgGPY and must have been included in δ.

An anonymous text on the alphabets from early ninth-century France mentions the absence of such interpretations in the case of the Greek and Latin alphabets (see below, pp. 223-24), and according to Bischoff, these interpretations first start to accompany the Greek letters around the year 900, probably in imitation of the Hebrew (1967: 33). An example is preserved in the composite manuscript London, British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A 12, which has been dated to the late 11th and the late 12th centuries. This manuscript contains a short tract on the pronunciation of the Latin letters entitled De vocibus litterarum, which is followed by a mixed list of Greek and Hebrew letters with their interpretations.

The Continental alphabet tables thus typically provide an idiosyncratic synopsis of knowledge that seems to reflect the heterogeneous transmission of the material prior to its presentation in parallel. Various alphabet lists that display the features mentioned in these paragraphs are part of the transmission of a text that is known as De inventione linguarum, or De inventione litterarum following Derolez.

192

Hayden (2016: 35–64) has seen the section on the Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets in Auraic. na nÉces (mainly as it appears in Y and Eg) in light of medieval doctrine on cryptography as it plays out in the NLI MSS G2 and G3 (first half of the 14th century), attributed to Ádhamh Ó Cianáin (ob. 1373), who had studied under Seán Mór Ó Dubhagáin.266 Her article discusses earlier material such as the ninth-century De inventione linguarum/litterarum attributed to Hrabanus Maurus.267

In the following, I first present relevant aspects of Carolingian alphabet tables, and then proceed to a comparison between these and the Irish tradition, which is first and foremost represented by Auraic. na nÉces.

9.3. Carolingian Alphabet Tables The following discussion will draw on a selection of manuscripts that are today found in various libraries on the Continent. The main contention of the present argument is that a source akin to these must have been available to the vernacular Irish grammarian at one or several stages during the transmission of Auraic. na nÉces, although the precise source, having either been written in Ireland or brought there from the Continent, is in all probability lost. The ambition of this section is therefore to identify the features that make up the material in the Irish text and relate these to the external material in an attempt to narrow down the scope. The argument will rest on logical inferences based on the available material record and will represent a modest extension of the methodology of textual criticism in order to establish a possible line of transmission.

The following primary sources form the foundation for the argument:

- Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 5239 (fols. 235r–36r) (saec. x med.) - Strasbourg, Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire MS 326 (fols. 109v–110r) (saec x med.) - Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207 (fols. 1av–1br) (saec. viii ex./ix in.) - Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 878 (pp. 320–21)

266 The contents denoted with these two sigla originally formed part of a larger codex. See the catalogue entry by Ní Shéaghdha in NLI Fasc. I. Folios 52r–77v contain various text of grammatical relevance, such as a tract on vowels and consonants, a tract on metrical faults, a tract on Ogam and MV-IV. 267 I use Derolez’ title in referring to the tract (1954: 285), seeing that the traditional title has no basis in the sources and is somewhat vague. 193

The discussion is furthermore informed by Derolez’ major and comprehensive study on the use of runes in manuscripts published as Runica Manuscripta. The English Tradition (1954).268 The richness of detail in this work is such that its usefulness for the investigation of related topics is considerable. The four manuscripts listed above, supplemented with Derolez’ study, provide a solid basis for the comparative study that will be presented in this chapter, for reasons that will become apparent when the material is duly introduced. Derolez does not include Greek or Hebrew specimens of what he refers to as ‘stray alphabets’, namely alphabets that have been transmitted independently of the framework of De inventione. In the present context precisely this framework is of some importance.

Hrabanus Maurus, Fulda and De inventione litterarum De inventione litterarum is traditionally attributed to Hrabanus Maurus (c. 780–856). It is preserved in several manuscripts (see a comprehensive list and discussion of each manuscript in Derolez 1954: 283ff.; 290ff.). Although no precise lines of transmission will emerge in the following, due to what is presumably a lost manuscript trail, it may be noted that scholars such as Hrabanus Maurus and Otfrid von Weißenburg represent initiatives that could have facilitated a transfer of alphabet lore to the Irish (see also p. 178). The hand of Otfrid is associated with a manuscript copy of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae with both Latin and OHG glosses. Lupus of Ferrières was likewise heavily engaged with the study of Priscian’s text. His own exemplar of the Institutiones grammaticae is regarded as a very valuable witness to that work (see further Porter 2002: 16). To Walahfrid Strabo are attributed Vita sancti Galli, Vita sancti Blaitmaici abbatis hiiensis et martyris, Biblical commentaries, as well as a range of other works.269 It should in this context be remembered that the Irish Würzburg glosses (CLA 9/1403), probably written in Ireland, were brought to the monastery at Würzburg in the Southern German network of monasteries (possibly by Clemens Scottus, who died after c. 826—see Bischoff 1966–81, vol. 3: 42), not far from Hrabanus’s school at Fulda and his later episcopal see at Mainz. There is evidence of Irish continuity at Würzburg.

268 In a review of the book, C. E. Wright (1956: 160–63) notes that no manuscript of importance had been overlooked by Derolez. See also the review by Ralph W. V. Elliott (1956: 61–63). 269 See the recent study by Wesley M. Stephens (2018) on Strabo’s work. 194

Hrabanus Maurus was himself the student of Alcuin (c. 735–804) from York, Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon background of De inventione is furthermore suggested by the following historical remark on the notae Sancti Bonifacii:

Fertur quod sanctus Bonifatius archiepiscopus et martyr, ab Angulsaxis veniens, hoc antecessoribus nostris demonstrarit (PL vol. 112: 1581–82).270

‘It is reported that Saint Boniface, archbishop and martyr, had shown these [the notae Bonifacii] to our ancestors upon coming from England.’

The antecessores might well have been abbots or monks at Fulda. Saint Boniface (c. 675– 754), born Wynfrith, was the archbishop of Mainz and was the teacher of Saint Sturm, who founded the monastery of Fulda in 744—where Boniface was buried (see also previous chapter). Sturm became the first abbot of the monastery after having studied at Montecassino, which had been re-established by Petronax under Pope Gregorius II (ob. 731). The scriptorium of Fulda figures prominently in Bischoff’s ‘Germanic- Insular writing province’. Derolez has criticized the attribution of De inventione to Hrabanus Maurus (Derolez 1954: 374ff.), but the citation from that text reproduced above shows that it must be relatively precise, even if some measure of doubt may remain. The author may have been active in the same milieux and at roughly the same time as Hrabanus Maurus.

Two main groups of manuscripts have been distinguished (Derolez 1954: 345ff.), which go back to two hyparchetypes, one (A) circulating in Germany and the other (B) in France (op. cit.: 348). The following discussion builds mainly on Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 5239 (fols. 235r–36r) in order to anchor the discussion in a concrete document.271 This manuscript contains various computistical material and was probably produced at Limoges towards the middle of the 10th century. Paris MS 5239 and the closely related Strasbourg, Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire MS 326 both go back to (B). Reference will occasionally be made to (A), as edited by Derolez (1954: 279–378).

270 See Hayden 2016 on the notae Bonifacii and a discussion of their occurrence in EgY. 271 This manuscript is digitally available at BnF Gallica at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (URL: https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc64174w) (last visited on the 16th of October 2020). Strasbourg MS 326 is available at URL: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10224563x/f115.double (last visited the 19th of October 2020). 195

The text is a brief treatise on the origin of the three sacred alphabets (Hebrew, Greek and Latin) as well as the artificial alphabet of Aethicus Ister and a runic alphabet. It gives the accidents of the letters (nomina, potestates and figurae) which, in the case of Greek, are supplemented with numerical values.272 The runic inventory of 23 letters is given in an alphabetical order, probably for the purpose of mapping it onto the Latin equivalent. This material, the shapes and the names of the letters, is of largely English provenance, albeit with some Scandinavian elements. It also includes OHG rune names, which fact stands in marked contrast to the introductory text that precedes the list, where the runes are attributed to the Northmanni, from which those who speak German descend (a quibus originem qui Theodiscam loquuntur linguam trahunt) (see discussion in Derolez 1954: 371ff.). The Anglo-Saxon link is conspicuous and might possibly be traceable to the influence of Alcuin, or else to English influence in the monastic milieux of Southern Germany. The treatise was doubtless written in Germany on the evidence of the rune names (Derolez 1954: 374). It is possible that the compiler of the treatise was aware of Tacitus’s reference to notae divinationis in his Germania and associated these with the runic letters (op. cit.: 280; see also p. 179 in the previous chapter).

The alphabet of Aethicus Ister is taken from an eighth-century cosmography and travelogue attributed to Saint Jerome (ed. Herren 2011; see pp. 214–16 and especially the following facsimile from Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheken, Voss. Lat. F. 113, fol. 30r, dated to the late eighth century). The reason for the inclusion of this invented alphabet is not immediately obvious and its presence in De inventione underlines the miscellaneous character of the treatise as it is preserved.273

The so-called Vademecum of Walahfrid Strabo (Cod. Sang. 878) from the first half of the ninth century contains the Hebrew and Greek alphabets together with Anguliscum (Anglo-Saxon runes) and abecedarium Nordmannicum (pp. 320–21). The alphabets are preserved in the third part of the manuscript (see description by Bischoff 1967: 34–51;

272 There is some variation between the individual manuscripts. For instance, not all copies include all accidents for each alphabet. Thus Paris MS 5239 lacks the values (i.e. Latin-letter transcriptions) of the letters of the Greek alphabet, but provides numerical values for the Latin letters. 273 But note the remark (with reference to Saint Jerome) that et eius litteras [i.e. the letters of Aethicus Ister] maluit promulgare (PL vol. 112: 1579–80). It therefore perhaps follows that the inclusion of the alphabet of Aethicus Ister is in accordance with Jerome’s intention. This might have opened for the inclusion of the runic letters, which were of local interest. A similar progression from the universal to the local sphere is seen also in the ciphers (Caesar–Boniface). 196 on the Anglo-Saxon runes in this manuscript, see Derolez 1954: 73–83) and are appended to excerpts from De litteris of Isidore’s Etymologiae (I, III, 4–IV, 1). It might not be a coincidence that they are found here, rather than in the first part / codicological unit of the manuscript that contains Bede’s De arte metrica (ed. Jones 1975) or Donatus’s Ars maior. Isidore’s account is not focused on the strictly functional aspect of the letters, but ventures into myth and history in an attempt at explaining the origin of the different alphabets. Isidore’s encyclopedic and historical outlook together with his lack of concern for the relevant ethnicities (Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, Irish) could be among the plausible triggers both for the development of national historiography and comparative analysis of cultural phenomena such as writing systems.274 In general, the topic of the invention of the letters of the various alphabets is not foreign to Hiberno-Latin grammatical discourse. Both Ars Laureshamensis and Murethach’s commentary include Isidorian

274 Clarke (2015) has directed attention towards parallel composition of ethnogenetic pseudo-histories in a Carolingian and post-Carolingian context. Such histories can be seen as important products of international milieux. The tabulation of alphabets is in a way reminiscent of the exposition of world history in parallel columns, as promoted by Eusebius-Jerome and reflected also in the 15th-century Laud Syncronisms. This composite manuscript is catalogued as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 610. The synchronisms (ed. Meyer 1913d: 471–85) begin at fol. 112r. Note for instance the parallel list of Assyrian, Judaean, and Irish kings beginning at fol. 113r. The idea of the three sacred languages is characteristic of Hiberno-Latin learning. Already Columbanus (ob. 615) provides his name in the three languages (op. cit.: 30n1; ed. Walker 1957: 54–55), as does his biographer Adomnán (ob. 704). The theme is also reflected in Auraic. na nÉces (see Bischoff 1951: 29). The trilingual inscription on the Cross (Luke 23: 38; John 19: 19–20) was often referred to (so e.g. Etymologiae IX, I, 3; PL vol. 114: col. 421; also in Auraic. na nÉces at B 162–65) and before or during the ninth century attempts were even made to reconstruct the precise wording of the inscription in all three languages: ‘Aus irischen Kreisen und spätestens aus dem 9. Jh. stammt der Versuch, den Kreuztitulus selbst, der für diese sprachlichen Bemühungen so bedeutungsvoll gewesen ist, mit Hilfe der “Interpretationes” des Hieronymus und griechisch-lateinischer Glossen zu rekonstruieren’ (Bischoff 1951: 30). A remarkable miniature that portrays the crucifixion with a reconstructed cross title, where Anglo-Saxon runes replace the Hebrew letters, is found in a psalter from Hastières (mid-11th century) that is catalogued as München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 13067, f. 17v (see discussion in Longland 1969: 420ff). Placing vernacular alphabets together with the classical ones in depictions of the cross could be seen as another reflex of the same phenomenon and possibly its culmination. 197 material in the section de littera (Löfstedt 1977a: 150–51; Holtz 1977: 8–9).275 De inventione litterarum itself shares a great deal of the text of Isidore’s discussion on the letters (I, III, 4) (see also Derolez 1954: 376ff. on Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 878). Some remarks regarding the heterogeneous origin of the various components of the treatise will be made below, where these are discussed in relation to the Irish material.

9.4. The Alphabet Tables and the Grouping of the Manuscripts The diagnostic value of the alphabet tables and of De inventione litterarum, with Continental transmission, is partly dependent on the currency of the material in the relevant periods. Regarding knowledge of the Greek alphabet, Bischoff observes that:

In der ganzen lateinischen Welt verbreitet war das griechische Alphabet, und wenigstens vom 9. bis zum 11. oder 12. Jh. darf man seine Kenntnis geradezu als allgemeinen Besitz unter den lateinisch Gebildeten ansehen. Es war in zwei der vornehmsten Hilfs- und Handbücher dieser Zeit, in den ‘Etymologiae’ Isidors und in Bedas ‘De temporum ratione’ enthalten (1951: 32).

In a seminal study of the Greek element in the Latin West, Griechisch-Lateinisches Mittelalter (1980), Walter Berschin further notes the relatively frequent occurrence of the Greek alphabet in sections of manuscripts that are independent of these works (op. cit.: 41), although it might be observed that they are often found in proximity to them or to cognate matter. Berschin sums up the variation in the following words:

Das Spektrum der Möglichkeiten reicht von der einfachen Buchstabenreihe bis zur Alphabettafel mit Schreibvarianten, phonetischer Umschrift, lateinischen Äquivalent und Zahlenwert der griechischen Buchstaben (1980: 41).

Despite the wide dissemination of basic knowledge about the three alphabets through Isidore and others, the transmission of material pertaining to De inventione litterarum shows that errors could easily be introduced into the material and stand uncorrected in subsequent copies, and that the material thus, at least to some extent, enjoyed a transmission separate from possible sources and analogues.276 Importantly, it would

275 The two commentaries read paene ad litteram in parts of this section. The historical material, not included in Sedulius’s commentary, has been taken from Isidore (Etymologiae I, III, 5), a fact that is recognized in Murethach (Holtz 1977: 9.68–69). 276 Thiel notes this general trend in the transmission of material pertaining to the Hebrew alphabet during the Middle Ages in a passage that is reproduced here in full: ‘Die ausführliche Beschäftigung mit der 198 appear that significant errors from Continental lists of the three sacred alphabets have made it into the manuscript tradition of Auraic. na nÉces and have been widely distributed there. This suggests that Auraic. na nÉces itself became the main source of that material to later scholars, despite Bischoff’s general considerations (vide supra). Cor- ruptions were unlikely to be corrected once they had entered the line of transmission, with the result that this section of Auraic. na nÉces contains copious variants of text- critical importance. These have not been evaluated before.

Some observations to this effect will be made here. In order to review the evidence provided by them, a comparison with Paris MS 5239 and Strasbourg MS 326 is informative. In the following synopsis of the contents of the treatise, I employ the numbers 1–3 to denote: 1) Hebrew, 2) Greek, and 3) Latin; as well as the letters a–e to distinguish: a) a narrative account on the origin of the alphabet, b) nomina, c) figurae, d) potestates, and e) numerical values. Paris MS 5239 provides the following information:

(1) Hebrew: (1a) A narrative account of the origin of the Hebrew alphabet (1b) The Hebrew letter names (nomina) (1c) The Hebrew letter shapes (figurae) (1d) Latin transliteration (potestates) (1e) N/A

(2) Greek: (2a) A narrative account of the origin of the Greek alphabet (2b) The Greek letter names (nomina)

Ueberlieferung dieses Alphabets zeigte immerhin zweierlei deutlich: Einmal in welchem Grade in der mittelalterlichen handschriftlichen Ueberlieferung Fehlerquellen enthalten sind, besonders wenn dem Kopisten das philologische Verständnis für seine Vorlage fehlte. Vor allem aber, was hier besonders interessiert, wie wenig oft das Mittelalter des wenigen ständig weitertradierten fremdsprachlichen Gutes wirklich mächtig war: keiner der von uns festgestellten an der Weitergabe dieser Liste [i.e. a list from the 14th century treated in the preceding pages] Beteiligten besass eine gedächtnismässige Beherrschung des hebräischen Alphabets, da er entweder selber Fehler in die Liste brachte oder nicht imstande war, eingedrungene Fehler zu verbessern. Man muss auch vor der Vermutung warnen, wenn in Handschriften auf freien Blättern hebräische Dinge begegnen, das lasse auf ein besonderes Interesse des Schreibers daran schliessen; der Schreiber hatte in der Regel schon eine ähnlich geartete Vorlage vor sich; solche Dinge wurden zum festen “archivalischen” Bestand bestimmter Handschriften’ (1973: 116). These remarks are equally true of that material which entered the realm of vernacular texts. The possible amplification of the material in Auraic. na nÉces (δ) might be a sign of actual interest in the material, however. 199

(2c) The Greek letter shapes (figurae) (2d) N/A277 (2e) Numerical values (3) Latin: (3a) A narrative account of the origin of the Latin alphabet (3b) N/A (3c) The Latin letter shapes (figurae) (3d) N/A (3e) Numerical values

Then follows the alphabet of Aethicus Ister and the runic alphabet. These alphabets do not occur in Auraic. na nÉces and will therefore be excluded from the following investigation. Sankt Gallen MS 878, which, according to Derolez (1954: 290), illustrates a possible stage in the prehistory of De inventione, does not include the alphabet of Aethicus. Derolez’ edition (1954: 349–54) is based on the other branch of the transmission (A) of the treatise and gives Latin transliteration also of the Greek characters (p. 351) but excludes the numerical values which have been assigned to the Latin letters in Paris MS 5239 (p. 352).

The fact that the information provided for each alphabet is not entirely symmetrical probably owes to the heterogeneous origin of the material—alphabetic lists as such were not a commonplace and the appearance of various alphabets side by side is a reframing of the original purposes of such information, notably exegesis in the case of the Hebrew letters (although the shapes of the letters themselves played no important role in this period, as opposed to in the High and Late Middle Ages) and computistics in the case of the Greek (on which more below). Attention will now be directed towards the reflexes of this material in the various manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces.

In response to a question which asks for the letters of the three principal languages with ‘both name and character’ (B 1129–30: eter ainmnigud ⁊ charechtair), our text gives the following information:

(1–3a): desunt—no manuscript includes the origin stories for any of the three sacred alphabets (1–2b): ABDEEgGLMPTY (omnibus codd.)

(1c): BEL(γ), D, EgGPY; om. A, M, T (1d): deest

277 Derolez’ group A includes Latin transliteration also of the Greek letters (1954: 351). 200

(2c): BEL(γ), D, EgGPY; om. A, M, T

(2e): AEgGPY (δ); om. BEL(γ), D, M, T (3c): ABDEEgGLMPTY (omnibus codd.) (3e): deest

This is the distribution in the manuscript record of Auraic. na nÉces of features that are all found in the manuscript tradition of De inventione litterarum. It might be noted that some features are not found at all. These are (1–3a), (1d) and (3e). All manuscripts share the content denoted by (1b), (2b), and (3c). The distribution of (1c) and (2c) are identical, which indicates that the letter shapes (both Hebrew and Greek) were intentionally omitted in A, M and T (and consequently has no sound diagnostic value concerning the reading of the archetype)278, while (2e) is confined to those copies that Calder assigned to his second family (here δ).

In addition to the above material that is shared between the Irish and Continental traditions, some manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces add interpretations of the Hebrew and Latin letter names, henceforth items (1f) and (3f) (on which more below). These are AEgGPY, and the distribution of these interpretations is thus the same as for the Greek numerical values (2e).

The previous paragraphs provide a rough outline of the preservation and development of the material. A few conclusions on the relationship between the copies of Auraic. na nÉces may be drawn from the above considerations:

- The distribution of item (2c) challenges Ahlqvists grouping of manuscripts D and M. - The distribution of (2e), on the other hand, challenges the inclusion of T in the group AEgGPY, despite the fact that it must be acknowledged that agreement on the inclusion or exclusion of these items respectively is not a secure criterion from a stemmatic point of view.

Further clues to the development of the tradition are offered by a more minute investigation of individual items.

278 See the stemma codicum. The corrupted state of the list in δ (judging from the preserved descendants) might be the explanation for the absence of the figurae in A. 201

The Hebrew letter names in Auraicept na nÉces The following list will provide the manuscript readings from all the copies of the Hebrew alphabet in Auraic. na nÉces. I have omitted TCD MS 1289, being a transcript of B, but notes are included in a few cases where this copy aids in the interpretation of B. The names of the Hebrew letters in the leftmost column have been taken from Thiel (1973: 90–93). I have supplied the modern letter shapes in the left column for convenience, while the reader is referred to Plates 1–12 in Appendix 3 for the shapes as they appear in the manuscripts.

The basic structure is FIGURA + NOMEN. Quite often, however, the initial letter of the latter component has been replaced by the figure. The parentheses in the overview on the following pages enclose such letters, e.g. ‘(S) ameth’, which is the garbled form of an sameth’. The original structure is preserved to a certain degree in all ס‘ original structure manuscripts that contain both components.

202

B E L M D T A Eg G P Y

Aleph aleph aleṗ aleph aleṗ aleph aleph alep aleṗ alep alep aleṗ א

Beth beth beth beth beth beth beth beth beth beth beth beth ב

Gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel gemel ג

Deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth deleth ד

He, Hae hee hee he he he hee hee hee hee hee hee ה

hee279

Vau, Vav uuau uan (sic) uau uau uau uau uau uau uau uau uau ו

Zai(n) saín zain zain ut ai280 zain zai zain zai zai(n)281 zai zai ז

Heth, Eth heth eth (?) heth heth eth heth heth heth (c)heth heth heth ח

Teth theth teth teth teth teth teth teth teth teth teth teth ט

279 sic (diplography) 280 sic (?). The letter names in M are generally separated by a dot, but these two components are treated as one, even if separated by a space. 281 The final letter is very faint and might have been added later. See also the faint letter name written above with the same ink. Ioth, Iod oth282 ioth ioth ioth ioth iot ioth ioth ioth ioth ioth י

Caph caph kaph caph caṗ caph − cap cap cap cap cap כ

Lamed(/-th) iamfeċ lamoch lamiaċ laimeth lamiaċ lamet lamiaċ lamiach lamhach283 laimiach lamiach ל

Mem mem mem mem mē mem mem mem mem [ ]em mem [ ]em מ

Nun nun nun nun nun nun nun nun (N)un (N)un nun (N)un נ

Samech (/-th) sameċ samech samet͘ phameth sameth sameth samet͘ (S)amet (S)amedh samet͘ (S)ameth ס

(A)ith (A)ith aith (A)ith

Ain, Ahin hain hain ain ain ain ain ain (A)in (A)in ain (A)in ע

Phe phe phe phe phe ṗe fhe phe fe fe fe fe ף

Sade sade sade sade sade saḋe sade sade sade sade sade sade צ

282 The initial letter has been interpreted as part of the symbol preceding it. 283 The letter name ⟨lamed⟩ is added in the line belov (see also the note on zain above). Coph coph coph coph caṗ coph caṗ coṗ coph coph coph cop ק

Res res res res re reis res re res res res res ר

Sin, Sen sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sen sin sen ש

Thau thau tau tau thau tau thau thau tau tau tau tau ת

[.i.] signa

The Hebrew letter names are in general relatively well preserved in all the manuscripts— in some contrast to the Greek letter names (see below). There are a few exceptions to this rule that might all be explained from basic palaeographical considerations. The first BEL show some confusion ,(ו) five letter names offer no significant variation. For uau with regard to the last letter ⟨u⟩, interpreted either as ⟨ll⟩ (in BL) or ⟨n⟩ (in E).

In my view, the names given for each of the letters are related in such a way that all divergence might be explained by the dynamics of transmission, that is, without presuming that material was incorporated from various sources. It is interesting to note that a couple of variant forms are also found in the Latin manuscripts, such as zai against zain and sameth against samech. The diagnostic value of such forms is unfortunately diminished somewhat by the fact that a final -n (nasal stroke) could easily disappear during transmission, whereas ⟨c⟩ is not infrequently confused with ⟨t⟩ due to the similar shapes of the letters.

The process of the merger of FIGURA and NOMEN discussed above seems to have involved a tendency towards gradual convergence of the Hebrew figure and the Latin in B and Y and (ם) letter in the anlaut of the name, compare e.g. the figures of samech their names. The phenomenon is most easily appreciated in the manuscripts themselves, and the reader is referred to Appendix 3 for examples.

Further observations:

- The form Lamech is also found in Interpretationes nominum Hebraicorum by Pseudo-Bede (Thiel 1973: 91). The variant could be trivial given that it corresponds to a Biblical name in the Old Testament—as noted, in a linguistic context, in Chapter 3—and could be a lectio facilior. - The Hebrew list in G is almost identical to that of Y with respect to: the shapes of the letters, which are all identical; the interpretations (only very minor insignificant variation); the way in which the letter names mem, nun, sameth and ain have to be read in conjunction with their symbol; as well as the layout of the list in general. The lists are so similar and have so many common variants (this also goes for the list of the Greek letters) that I would

207 like to suggest that at least this section of G (in the hand of Dubhaltach Mór Mac Fhirbhisigh; 17th century) is a transcript of Y (1560s).284

One variant is very significant: T does not provide any of the interpretations of the letters, with the sole exception that after thau it has included the interpretation of this letter as if it were the name of a following letter. This is a clear indication that the exemplar of T included the interpretations and conceivably that the scribe of T thought this last interpretation to be a letter name. Significantly, the interpretation signa (plural) goes back to Jerome’s letter and thus corroborates the testimony of AEgGPY on the presence of the interpretations in β (against the evidence of γ).

The Greek letter names in Auraicept na nÉces The Greek alphabet in TCD MS 1337 (p. 35) is a good point of reference for the following tables, as it is clearly legible and less corrupted than the copies that have been transmitted as part of Auraic. na nÉces, although it shares two important innovations with them. These are:

- the spelling l(a)uta for labda (λάμβδα); - the omission of the last letter-numeral chile.

The first of these two is furthermore found in Derolez’ group A and in the so-called Salzburg Alcuin-manuscript Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 795 (saec. ix in.) at f. 19r, which also omits chile.285

284 Eg cannot be the antigraph of G; cf. the absence of §§ 1,2–1,17 in Eg. 285 This manuscript, mainly a collection of writings attributed to Alcuin (see the list in Derolez 1954: 54– 55), has been connected to Arn, who was the abbot of the Abbey of Sankt Amand and later the archbishop of Salzburg. Folio 19r is reproduced in Berschin 1980. 208 5239 1337 B E L M D T A Eg G286 P Y

alfa alfha alpha alpha alpha alṗa alpha alṗa alṗa alpa alpa alpa alpa

beta beta (Β)eta (Β)eta beta beta beatha beta beta beta beta beta beta

gamma gamma (Γ)āma (Γ)āma gama gāma gamma gama gama gama gama gama gama

delta delda delba della dealla della dealla della dellta della della della della

e breuis e ee ee − e e − − − − − −

erisenon erissenon erisīon erisīō erisīon erisinon erisiō287 erisinon erisinon erision ersion288 erisinon ersion

zetha zeta zeta zeta steta zeta steta steta zeta steta steta steta steta

286 The later part of the list in G (also Y) is very hard to decipher and the following representation is somewhat simplified and necessarily involves some degree of interpretation on the basis of comparison with the other witnesses. See Appendix 3. 287 The arrangement in D would seem to imply that erisinon is interpreted as the name of e breuis (the two letters have merged so that the shape, which here follows the name, is that of e breuis). 288 The ⟨r⟩ has later been corrected to ⟨p⟩, which appears to have been written above another correction, namely the addition of an ⟨i⟩. There appears to be a superscript ⟨m⟩ above this word. Taken together these corrections would produce the correct form episimon. etha eta heta eta eta eta eta eta eta eta eta eta eta

tetha theta theta theta theta theta teta teta teta teta teta teta teta

iotha iota iota iota iota iota iota iota iota iota iota iota iota

cappa kappa capa capa kapa kapa kapa caṗa kapa kapa kapa kapa kapa

labda289 lauta luta luta luta luta luta luta luta luta luta luta (l)uta

mi290 moi moi moi moy mon (sic) moy moy moi moy moy moy ị moy

ni291 noi noi noi noy noi noy oy (sic) noi no(y) (N) o(y)292 no(y)293 no(y) ny

xi csi chsi chsi csi csi si (?) csi cius csi csi csi csi

289 Derolez’ group A has lauta (1954: 351). 290 Derolez’ group A has moy (1954: 351). 291 Derolez’ group A has noy (1954: 351). 292 These puncta delentia are present in the manuscript.

293 The shape of ⟨y⟩ at the end of noy and the shape of the following letter xi (ξῖ) have been confused here and in Y. o breuis o o o −294 o (o)295 o (o) (o)296 (o)o (o)o o (o)o297

pi pio phe phe pi pi pi (?) phi phi phi phi phi phi

cope kaphe cope cophe capi copi copi cofi cophi co(F)i co (F)i cofi co298 fi

ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro r299 o

simma simma sīma sīma sīma sima sima sima sima sima sima sima sima

tau tau thau thau tau thau thau − tau tau tai tau tau

ui ui uiuu300 ııııııı301 uiuu − − uu − uu uu uu uui

294 The value ‘o’ is lost, but the symbol has been preserved and placed before pi (πῖ).

295 The three letters omicron (ο), xi (ξ), pi (π) and their names have caused some confusion in D, with the repetition of the symbol for o breuis before both si and pi. 296 This value precedes phi in the line below (is therefore strictly speaking omitted through confusion) and the scribe could seem to have misinterpreted the latter as ophi. 297 Preceded by a symbol with the function of cenn fo eitte on the following line. 298 The first element co has been separated from the last element -fi by the device cenn fo eitte. 299 See previous note for explanation (r, -o). 300 sic (?). Following Calder 1917: 86. His reading is supported by L. 301 The correct reading here is very uncertain due to an imperfection in the photocopy. It is clear that a letter shape and its name are present, but the lower part of the minims are lost and it is therefore not possible to ascertain which minims connect with each other. There are seven minims, which corresponds to the readings in BL. fi phi phi phi phi phi phi phi phi ?302 − phi −

xi chi chi chi chi c[ ]303 chi chi chi chi chi chi chi

psi psi psi psi psi psi si − pius − psi psi psi

o longam oo oo oo − oo − − oo oo oo oo −

304 enachos ennacose eacosse eacose ennacose ennacosse eacoisi − ennacosse − − − −

chile − − − − − − − − − − − −

302 Illegible due to wear. The symbol ⟨φ⟩ is still visible. 303 Followed by a letter that I am unable to interpret. 304 Derolez’ group A has ennacose (1954: 351). - Not all the characters of the Greek alphabet in Paris MS 5239 (which here agrees with the list in Derolez 1954: 351) are found in Auraic. na nÉces. - Only a couple of the copies of Auraic. na nÉces seem to include the letter called

‘o longa’ (ω) (viz. AM—A has the correct value ‘800’ as well), while none has

the numeral chile (χῑλι ́ οι, m = ‘1000’) that appears towards the end of the Continental lists (though not in Sankt Gallen MS 878). Although there is a

possibility that χῑλι ́ οι (m, ‘1000’) was removed from the list at an early stage due to its being recognized as a numeral and not an alphabetic letter stricto

sensu, the inclusion of ἐπίσημον and κόππα/ϙόππα (value ‘90’) suggests to me that this is unlikely: the composite character of the list was not necessarily recognized, and its varying degree of preservation seems to owe mainly to incidents connected to its transmission. Material such as this must have been particularly prone to corruptions of various kinds. BE have all the

letters/numerals (27) except chile/χῑλι ́ οι. This numeral is also omitted in Derolez’ group A (e.g. Sankt Gallen MS 876).

- Some witnesses include ennacose (Greek ἐνακόσια/ἐννιακόσια ‘nine hundred’) with the numerical value dcccc = 900 (so ABDELM).305 The inclusion of ‘ennacose’ therefore has no synchronic justification, being unmotivated in a list of letters in the narrow sense—it has probably been reinterpreted as a letter. The composite character of the Greek alphabet list was apparently not recognized by the compilers of the manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces. The actual shape of this symbol has not been preserved in our text and only its name remains. - None of the manuscript has delta as the name for the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. The names given are variants over della/delba. - All manuscripts share the following innovation/deviation: e breuis is rendered simply with e/ee. This causes confusion for instance in L, where erisinon is

given as the name of ε and so the loss of breuis from the list is likely to be the cause of the loss of the fifth letter (AEgGPTY) or merger between the fifth and sixth (DL, possibly M) in some of the manuscripts.

305 The sign for ennacose is only included in BE. In E it is exactly similar to the sign in Paris MS 5239. - Regarding the form luta for Greek λάμδα in Auraic. na nÉces, note that Versus cuiusdam Scotti de alphabeto (ed. and trans. Howlett 2010: 136–50) has a verse on this letter which plays on the meaning of Latin lauta ‘clean’ (p. 141). Paris MS 5239 has labda, while Derolez’ group A (for instance Sankt Gallen MS 876, p. 279) and Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 795 has lauta.

- L, P, and T conserve a special shape for ⟨y⟩ in the names for mu (μῦ) and nu

(νῦ) which supports the idea of a Latin exemplar. This is possibly also the cause for the corruption ⟨mon⟩ in M. - All manuscripts that include the final letter of the Greek alphabet render

ὦ μέγα as simply oo, although B also gives the letter shape. These two letters therefore interrupt the structure of the list in the various copies (FIGURA + NOMEN, or simply NOMEN—transliterations being absent in the Continental manuscripts and in principle also in Auraic. na nÉces). - Two of the final letters, namely psi and omega, have been placed before the heading [alphabetum] grecorum. Exactly the same arrangement is found in E,

which is a strong indication of the existence of ε (√BE) (against Ahlqvist 1983: 26)—unless E is a transcript of B, keeping in mind that various omissions in E (against BL) forbid the equation E = √B.306 - L lacks epsilon, omega, and omicron, as well as the numeral chile.

- The reduplication of the shape of xi (ξῖ) in PY and its corollaries (loss of -y in noy) is a significant error that offers strong evidence of the genetic relationship between these manuscripts. - The two letters epsilon and omicron have caused some confusion in several

of the copies of the alphabet. The shape ⟨O⟩ and value ‘o’ of omicron are very similar, and the names of both letters have been omitted already in the tables of the archetype. That the configuration in the archetype was similar to that in TCD MS 1337 is suggested from the spelling ⟨oo⟩ in T. In D, the shape and the value of omicron have been spread over the lines belonging to xi

306 The arrangement of the opening of the section 63–78, with cenn fo eitte at 62–63 (B 171ra, E 20va) is not identical in B and E, but sufficiently similar that the arrangement might depend on the exemplar. L is different. This offers independent evidence for ε as a node uniting B and E. 214

and pi (πῖ). The lack of a name for o (breuis) has occasioned a ‘merger’ of the shape of this letter with the name of pi in some manuscript copies (M, presumably also L). In L and D (not in M), the exact same procedure has merged the shape of epsilon and the name erisinon, so that this is not a monogenetic innovation. - Traces of the letter shapes are found in manuscripts that in principle exclude them. So T includes the shape of xi, but not of the other letters. This, taken together with the interpretation signa (see the discussion on the Hebrew letter names above at p. 208) is evidence that the scribe of T had access to a manuscript with both the shapes of the Greek letters and the interpretations of the Hebrew letters.

- Some copies employ a variant of a minuscule ⟨z⟩ in the name for zeta (ζῆτα) (e.g. BT), while others give the value ⟨st⟩. - The presentation of the last part of the Greek alphabet in Y is so confused that this can hardly have served as the source of any copy of the alphabet except G. It is still possible to recognize the same elements that we find in the most closely related copies (P). - TCD MS 1289 is the only manuscript to give the names epsilon, sigma, and upsilon, but as this is an apograph (thus not reproduced above, but see Appendix 3: 11), the correct forms must draw on an independent source. It might be noted that the readings have been very faithfully reproduced from B (with corrections in superscript), although the layout of the alphabet tables has been thoroughly altered.

The shapes of the Greek letters Berschin (1980: 42) notes that the Greek majuscule transmitted in the West displays a few features that are important to consider. The two letter shapes Σ and Ω were reintroduced into the alphabet in the modern period and were represented with the lunate sigma and the minuscule omega respectively, while Ε and Ξ have the uncial forms in our sources.307 These features correspond to the developments within the Byzantine Empire. In late-antique Christian schools in Syria, a special sign was used to denote

307 These are not reproduced here due to typographical issues. See Berschin (1980: 42) or consult the illustrations in Appendix 3. 215

μαϑητἠς ‘pupil’, ‘disciple’, and this sign was taken into use in the West simply to denote ⟨M⟩ (in early medieval England also magister). This ‘abendländisches M’ (Bischoff) is a symptom of the western origin of any occurrence of Greek script. Its shape can be clearly seen in the Greek alphabet preserved in the copy of Auraic. na nÉces in the Book of Ballymote (reproduced in Calder 1917: p. 86; see Appendix 3: 3).

The numerical values of the Greek letters De inventione litterarum furnishes each letter of the Greek alphabet with a numerical value. This practice is discussed in the first book of Bede’s De temporum ratione (see e.g. Paris MS 5239, fol. 42v; PL vol. 90: col. 298) and is applied in practice in various tables (see e.g. fol. 233v).308 The very fact that numerical values had been mapped onto the letters seems to be a main reason for transmitting the Greek alphabet as such. The graphemic inventory presented in this list is therefore composite: Ionic numeration required 27 letters and therefore three letters from the archaic Greek alphabet, namely digamma (δίγαμμα), koppa (κόππα/ϙόππα), and sampi (σαμπί) were transmitted as part of the alphabet, but solely with numerical values.309

The names epsilon (ἒ ψῑλόν) and ypsilon (ὖ ψῑλόν) mean ‘simple e’ and ‘simple y’ respectively and were coined at a time when the diphthongs represented by the digraphs

αι and οι had merged with the monophthongs /e/ and /i/ and a need for disambiguation arose.310

AEgGPY all include the numerical values of the Greek letters. These witnesses also have in common the loss of the fifth letter e breuis from the list (so also DLT). The quiescent sixth letter, (vav)311 episēmon (βαυ ἐπίσημον), still part of the Greek signary for its

308 The topic is also discussed in Hrabanus Maurus’s Liber de computo (PL vol. 107: col. 675), which gives approximately the same information as we find in Bede. Versus cuiusdam Scotti de alphabeto (dated to before c. 900) requires knowledge of the numerical values of the letters in order to be properly understood (see Howlett 2010: 150)–a pointer towards the extent of the dissemination of this material. 309 A discussion of the system of numeration might be found in H.W. Smyth (1956: 102–104; see esp. § 348A). The older acrophonic notation was replaced by the alphabetic system in the Hellenistic period

(approximately fifth century BC), which required 27 letters, nine letters for the numbers 1–9, nine for the tens (10, 20, 30 ... 90), and nine for the hundreds (100, 200, 300 ... 900). 310 See Smyth (1956: § 1b). 311 So rendered by e.g. Cassiodorus in his De orthographia (GL vol. VII: 148). 216 numerical value, received the value ‘5’ rather than ‘6’ and the values for each letter until the ninth/tenth letter iota (ἰώτα) were similarly shifted as a consequence of the omission of epsilon/e breuis. This is strong evidence of the dependency of all these manuscripts on a common exemplar to which this omission and the resulting transposition might be ascribed.312 Consultation of an independent source would in all likelihood have removed the error, which must have been made in an environment unacquainted with the information transmitted in texts such as De temporum ratione. The interdependency of the manuscript witnesses makes it impossible to say whether the error was committed at the point when the numerical values entered the manuscript tradition of Auraic. na nÉces or at a later stage—but it is common to all the manuscripts copies that contain them and it is shared by DLT as well. BE and M still include epsilon with the ‘name’ ee (BE) or simply e (M)—none of the manuscript preserves the name e breuis for this letter as it is found in Paris MS 5239. It is possible that the omission of the name in the archetype might have caused the confusion and loss in δ.

The following scenario might explain the relationship between the manuscripts. In BEL (and TCD MS 1289, dependent on B), the Greek letter shapes usually precede their letter names, such as e.g. ‘Α alpha’ , ‘Δ delba’ (sic for ‘delta’) and so on. Sometimes, however, they appear as the initials of the letter names, thus ‘Β eta’ and ‘Γ amma’, in a similar manner as we have seen for the Hebrew letter names above. The fifth letter epsilon appears as ‘ε ee’ in BE, and is followed by ‘Ϛ erisinon’.313 In L, these two letters seem to have merged, so that the reading is ‘e ε erisinon’, with the letter shape in superscript. It seems probably that α lacked the name (e) breuis.

A copy of the Greek alphabet in Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337 (vol 3; p. 35) gives the numerals and has escaped the error in AEgGPY, as epsilon is still present and appears as

‘ε ee’, as in BE. The name for delta is given as ⟨delda⟩ and is therefore superior to the reading in the copies in Auraic. na nÉces. Otherwise, the alphabet in TCD MS 1337 is clearly genetically linked to the alphabet that is preserved in Auraic. na nÉces, which is

312 Note that also L omits e breuis. 313 The actual shape of this sixth letter varies widely in the manuscripts of Auraic. na nÉces, but seems to be based on the Byzantine stigma, a ligature of sigma and tau used as a numeral in place of digamma, due to conflation with the cursive form of the latter. 217 evident from common errors such as erissenon and the two errors mentioned in the beginning of this chapter.314

BEM are the only manuscript copies that clearly include epsilon with its Latin transcription ‘e(e)’ (excepting TCD MS 1289, which is a copy of B). The ‘ee’ of the transcription seems to be due to a merger. The reading of L is confused: usually it gives the name of the letters with a larger initial and the Greek letter shape in superscript. The fifth and sixth letters seem to have been mixed together as the name erisinon is preceded by a large ‘e’.

The numerical values have for the most part been lost in Auraic. na nÉces or were alternatively included at a later stage of transmission (AEgGPY have them). It seems most likely that the numerical values were lost in one or several branches of transmission and that they were not introduced at a later stage, as neither the Hebrew or the Latin alphabets appear with numerical values. Their addition to the Greek alphabet would therefore not be conditioned by e.g. a desire to add symmetry to the transmitted material. It is also obvious from other considerations that the transmitted text itself would be the main or only source to this material, so that informed scribal correction of minutiae remains an unlikely possibility, as does the reintroduction of lost information.315

314 This copy of the Greek alphabet is appended to In Lebor Ogaim and is found side by side with an ‘Egyptian’ and ‘African’ alphabet, thus in a slightly different context. Note the presence in this manuscript (upper part of p. 35) of Greek and Hebrew numerals spelt out with Latin letters, which is otherwise not found in copies of In Lebor Ogaim. 315 But cf. Hayden (1016: 48). Derolez (1954: 286–87) observes that material included in De inventione litterarum must have been very current and that it could have been reproduced independently without written exemplars and without giving widely differing results. This observation, however, is based on an eighth- and ninth-century Continental context and has no bearing on 14th-century Ireland and Seán Ó Dubhagáin’s school, as hinted at by Hayden, who still, on a sounder basis, argues in favour of the possibility that influence from De inventione litterarum on Irish grammatical doctrine was probably early and had ‘a long history before the surviving copies associated with Ó Dubhagáin’s school were produced’. That the contents of De inventione litterarum could not be reproduced in Ireland in any great detail without reference to written exemplars is demonstrated above, as are pointers towards direct contact between the two traditions. 218

βαυ ἐπίσημον

The transliteration of (βαυ) ἐπίσημον in the alphabet lists is in itself of interest. Derolez’ group A (1954: 351) has episinon, representing itacism, viz. /ɛ:/ > /i(:)/ (see also Moran

2011: 50), and the faulty transliteration ⟨n⟩ for ⟨μ⟩ (that is not found in Auraic. na nÉces).316 In general, it is important to note that De inventione and related material uses the more or less contemporary Vulgar Greek forms rather than the Classical ones.317 Note Moran’s remark that ‘The most notable feature of the transliteration in the glossaries is the treatment of the long vowel η, which retained a conservative pronunciation in the face of prevailing Byzantine itacism’ (Moran 2011: 56–57). This is further proof that the names of the Greek letters in the alphabet tables in Auraic. na nÉces came through computistical material and accordingly were independent of the material transmitted in the glossaries.

9.5. An Insular Error in Paris MS 5239 and in Auraicept na nÉces

The letter digamma (δίγαμμα) was called ἐπίσημον (epísēmon) during the Byzantine era. The form of the letter (both in Paris MS 5239 and in e.g. EgPY) is the Byzantine one which descends from a cursive shape that was employed in numerical contexts already in Antiquity.318 A corruption of the name of the letter is found in Paris MS 5239 and Strasbourg MS 326, which read ⟨erisenon⟩ with confusion of ⟨p⟩ with (Insular) ⟨r⟩ (Derolez 1954: 335).319 This, as Derolez observed (op. cit.: 339), points to an Insular prototype for these two manuscript copies.320 Both manuscripts have been connected to

316 So also in Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 795 (fol. 19r), from about 800 (Berschin 1980: 41; a photocopy of the leaf is reproduced between pp. 12 and 13) and in an Irish manuscript preserved as Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek MS th. f. 61 (eighth century; insert 29r). See Thes. Pal. vol. II: 285.

317 On this note it is striking that the glosses in the Sankt Gallen Priscian do not give any hint of knowledge about the name ἐπίσημον/episimon for Priscian’s digamma (discussed at Thes. Pal. vol. II: 55). For a more comprehensive discussion of the pronunciation of Greek in early medieval Ireland, see Moran 2011: 29– 57. 318 The ligature ⟨st⟩ (‘stigma’) was also used to denote the value ‘6’. The realization of the letter in Auraic. na nÉces varies somewhat–compare BEL on the one hand and DEgGPY on the other, where the latter group agrees with Paris MS 5239. 319 On the relationship between these two manuscripts, see Derolez (1954: 333). 320 In a discussion on the provenance and date of Asper minor, Holtz (1981: 272) lists a series of characteristics that indicate an Irish origin of the work. He observes that ‘pour prouver l’origine irlandaise 219 the Abbaie Saint-Martial (founded in the mid-ninth century under Charles the Bald) at Limoges in Nouvelle-Aquitaine and were produced in the mid-tenth century.

It seems clear that the error of the exemplar of Paris MS 5239 and Strasbourg MS 326 cannot be the result of confusion of Greek ⟨Ρ⟩ with Latin ⟨P⟩, as the source is unlikely to have employed Greek letters in this case. All preserved manuscripts in this tradition give the names of the letters in Latin transliteration. Confusion of ⟨p⟩ with Insular ⟨r⟩ is otherwise quite frequent in the sources.

This error is shared by all manuscript copies of Auraic. na nÉces.321 Although the material that belongs to the list in the vernacular text is not quite equivalent to the Continental material, the considerations of the currency of the material, rehearsed above, in my view strongly supports the idea of a connection between the two traditions. Derolez’ Insular prototype would have to be a copy with the composition of De inventione (not securely dated) as its terminus post quem and the two apographs as its terminus ante quem. This means that it belongs to the period ranging from the middle to late ninth century to the early to mid-tenth century.

de cette “édition” de Donat, les arguments ne manquent pas’. Among the linguistic arguments, he mentions ‘la présence de formes hiberno-latines typiques’ with the example erisenon for epicoenon. The word epicoenon is used by Donatus in Ars minor (ed. Holtz 1981: 586, 7) and in Ars maior (ed. Holtz 1981: 629, 15) to denote words that have a fixed grammatical gender but that may have either a male or female referent, such as the words passer ‘sparrow’ and aquila ‘eagle’. The term is inherited from the Greek γένος

ἐπίκοινον ‘common gender’, which is found in Dionysius Thrax’s Τέχνη γραμματική. The form erisenon is reached through various corruptions owing to the confusion of Greek and Latin letters (see the critical apparatus), and does not seem to be a typical Hiberno-Latin error, as suggested by Holtz. The mistake here does not owe to confusion of ⟨p⟩ and ⟨r⟩, as appears to be the case in Paris MS 5239 and Strasbourg

MS 326, but rather to confusion of Greek ⟨Ρ⟩ with Latin ⟨P⟩ (denoting the phonemes /r/ and /p/ respectively). It seems likely that confusion between the two alphabets at an earlier stage of transmission is also responsible for the reading erisenon in Asper minor. The term is at any rate historically and contextually unrelated to the name of the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In Ars maior, the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet is called by its Ancient Greek name digammon (Holtz 1981: 604, 6).

321 A: erisinon; B: erisin on; D: erisin on; E: erisinon; Eg: erisin on; G: ersion; L: erisinon; M: erisinon; P: erisinon; T: erisinon (or: erismon); Y: ersion. See e.g. BB f. 175vb44 and 49 for the difference between ⟨p⟩ in alpha and ⟨r⟩ in erisinon, keeping in mind that the various scribal hands that carry Auraic. na nÉces obviously are not representative of the script in which the confusion between the two graphemes originated. 220

An Irish manuscript preserved as Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek MS th. f. 61 (eighth century; insert 29r) provides the correct forms of episinon and ennacosse (see Thes. Pal. vol. II: 285). This shows that also the correct form was in circulation, which strengthens the case for the notion that the Insular error discussed in the present chapter is in fact significant. On this note, we might observe that Paris MS 5239 includes various computational tables in the section that contains De inventione litterarum. A table on fol. 233v contains Greek letters (hęc figura gręcis litteris et numeris computatur). As part of De temporum ratione, a Greek alphabet is preserved on fol. 42v, which corresponds to that given at 235r, albeit without the names of the characters. The gloss episimon and the explanation of ennacosse (enna id est nouem cosse id est centum) in the bottom left margin of fol. 42v importantly shows that the mistake at fol. 235r in the text of De inventione goes back to the exemplar of this manuscript—the correct form episimon evidently being available in the sources for Paris MS 5239.

9.6. The Interpretations of the Hebrew Letters Grundlagen und Gestalt der Hebräischkenntnisse des frühen Mittelalters (1973) by Matthias Thiel is the authoritative study on the extent of knowledge of Hebrew in the early medieval West.322 It is a book-length study inspired by Bernhard Bischoff’s article “Das griechische Element in der abendländischen Bildung des Mittelalters”, which was published in Byzantinische Zeitschrift XLIV (1951; repr. 1967: 246–75). Hebrew lexical items in Irish glossaries have been treated in a more recent article by Moran (2010). Such words were mostly drawn from Jerome’s Liber de nominibus Hebraicis (op. cit.: 17).

The Irish had access to Jerome’s Liber de nominibus Hebraicis already in the seventh century, which is evidenced in the Codex Usserianus Primus (Dublin, Trinity College MS 55; CLA 2/271) from an Irish centre during the first quarter of that century.323

upper left ,ל א ה) With the exception of the marginal gloss in the Book of Ballymote margin of fol. 171r; see Calder 1917: 4n44), as well as two examples of pseudo-Hebrew 324 words,323F the extent of Hebrew knowledge demonstrated in Auraic. na nÉces is to the best of my knowledge limited to the inclusion of the Hebrew letters and their names

322 The following discussion draws especially on chapters II. A. 3. ‘Die Etymologien der hebräischen Buchstabennamen’ (Thiel 1973: 84–118) and II. A. 4. ‘Kenntnis der hebräischen Schrift’ (pp. 118–27). 323 Further examples are given in Moran 2010: 4. 324 These are 1) the pseudo-Hebrew name of the Irish language (Ticalod) at Y 2284 (also found in LG) and 2) the pseudo-Hebrew translation of incipit as a be ce dybum (sic B 353; apexe de deubam Y 2722–23). 221

(in the longer recension also their Latin interpretations) together with the Greek and Latin letters.325

For the most part, the interpretations which are reproduced in Auraic. na nÉces have exact correspondences in the tradition that goes back to Jerome. The list is complete and corresponds very closely to that given in Thiel (1973: 90–94). An exception is the interpretation of the sixth letter (Vau), which Jerome renders as et (Epistle 30) or et ipse (psalm commentary) and Y as prinncess .i. ‘tigerna’ (4161).326 Many of the interpretations (such as e.g. 12–13) point to Jerome’s epistle rather than the psalm commentary.327 This was also the main source of an Irish poem on the subject from the ninth century.328

The Hebrew letter forms were, unlike their names, not transmitted with the patristic authors. They did not, for instance, accompany Jerome’s etymologies. In consequence, the origin of the two strands of letter shapes that reached Western manuscripts in the Middle Ages is not known (Thiel 1973: 118–121). According to Jerome, the Israelites and Samaritans shared one alphabet until the period of Babylonian captivity, after which Esdras invented new letters for the Hebrew.329 I have not been able to identify the letters in the copies of Auraic. na nÉces with any of these two strands with any degree of certainty.

The addition of the interpretations of the Hebrew letters to the alphabet tables is not a feature of the Carolingian alphabet lists or of the computistical texts dealt with so far, but is an innovation within the Insular tradition. London, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A 12 contains (45r) the Greek and Hebrew alphabet mixed together, with interpretations of all letters. The Latin interpretations of the Greek letters first appear around 900, probably in imitation of the Hebrew interpretations (Bischoff 1967: 33). The Hebrew letter names with their interpretations are clearly sourced in patristic

325 See Thiel (1973: 84–118) on the Latin interpretations of the Hebrew letters. 326 This is part of the second connexio which consists of letters 5–8: ista et haec vita (see Thiel 1973: 85). 327 Calder repeatedly (e.g. Y 4167, 4172) resolves ⟨ s̅⟩ as sum, but this should here be resolved as sive ‘or’, and the accompanying Irish translations confirm that the abbreviation was in fact understood in this way. 328 Note that the author of the poem also had access to the Ambrosian tradition (Expositio in Psalmum CXVIII), most probably intermediated by the abbot of Corbie, Paschasius Radbertus, who was the first to unite the two traditions and to introduced the textual innovation consummavit > consummatio, which is reproduced in the Irish poem (Thiel 1973: 99). I have so far noticed no trace of the Ambrosian tradition in any copy of Auraic. na nÉces. 329 In the so-called Prologus Galeatus (cited in Thiel 1973: 120). 222 writings, but the etymologies or interpretations of the Latin letters have no clear antecedent in this function. Although the ultimate source for the Hebrew interpretations in Auraic. na nÉces is Jerome, the more immediate source is not clear.330

Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 417 is a manuscript from the region of Loire (possibly Tours) that has been dated to the first quarter of the ninth century (Holtz 1981: 393). A section of seven folios (fols. 94r–100r) contains various anonymous texts on the alphabets and their origins. The text that begins on fol. 94r is of great interest here and is reproduced from the edition by Hagen (1870: lii–liii):331

In quo similes aut in quo dissimiles? In potestatibus sunt, quia quae explicat ‘aleph’ apud Hebr(a)eos et apud Gr(a)ecos, hoc explicat ‘a’ apud Latinos. Similiter et aliae linguae gentium. Sed apud Latinos paene (cod. poene) similis est nomen et potestas illarum. Apud Gr(a)ecos namque et apud Hebraeos tale est nomen litterarum, quam potestas illarum.

In quo dissimiles? In nominibus (in omnibus cod.) siue in numero. Sed litterae Hebr(a)eorum de nominibus rerum factae sunt et habent interpretationem et connexionem aleph et reliqua. Gr(a)ecorum autem litterae et Latinorum nec interpretationem nec connexionem habent, sed de solo numero fact(a)e sunt et noua nomina eis (cod. eius) inposuerunt, sicut et nostris. Ideo non inuenitur in eis interpretatio uel connexio (Hagen 1870: lii–liii).

‘In what respect are they similar or in what are they different? They are (similar) in their values, because what “aleph” signifies among the Hebrew and the Greeks, “a” signifies among the Latins. So also the other languages of the peoples/nations. But among the Latins the name (nomen) and value (potestas) of the letters is almost similar. Among the Greeks and the Hebrew, in fact, the name of the letters is like their value.332

In what respect are they different? In the names or in their number. But the letters of the Hebrew are made from the names of things and have interpretations and connectiones (“aleph” etc.). The letters of the Greeks and the Latins have neither

330 Cf. the Icelandic manuscript København, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling MS 732b 4⁰ (6v) (dated to the 14th century), which contains a digest of Jerome’s letter. 331 The foliation given by Hagen (1870) is incorrect and has been updated in Holtz 1981: 393. 332 The text is either corrupt or it describes the acrophonic principle. 223

interpretations nor connectiones, but are only made from a single number and they imposed new names on them, as [they did] also on our letters. For this reason interpretation and connectio are not found in them.’

This passage shows that the interpretations of the letters and especially the connectiones were thought of as a specifically Hebrew phenomenon. This may be taken as a conceptual starting point for a number of developments that were necessary in order to reach the pseudo-historical significance and semantic fullness attributed to the alphabets in Auraic. na nÉces.

Virgilius Maro Grammaticus The interpretations of the Latin letters, on the other hand, have no model that is known to me, although several of the meanings occur in Virgilius Maro’s Epitoma XII de catalogo grammaticorum (Löfstedt 2003: 241.43–53) in a passage that describes the work of a presumably fictitious Virgilius Assianus, to whom is ascribed a book on the ‘twelve Latinities’. The passage on the fifth Latinity has defied coherent interpretation (but see attempts in Herren 1979: 54–55 and Law 1995: 89–90). A direct or indirect connection must be posited as the interpretations occur in the same order in both Virgilius and Auraic. na nÉces. Our text includes the two letters y and z with the interpretations id est aurum .i. ‘or’ and ed on presiositas .i. ‘loghmaireacht’ respectively (Y 4222–23).

Ahlqvist (1983: 25) sees this as a connection between the two works. There are no direct citations of Virgilius Maro in Auraic. na nÉces, however, and as the use into which the texts put the shared material differs widely, such matter could simply have been appropriated from a common source. Virgilius Maro might have been the ultimate source of a single quotation (Poppe 2002: 310), which is found also in the Donatan commentary by Sedulius.

Ahlqvist’s view is supported by the fact that the glosses on the Latin letters in Auraic. na nÉces correspond to and are given in the same order as the interpretations at ll. 43–53 of Epitoma XII by Virgilius Maro (compare Y 4211–23 and Löfstedt 2003: 241.43–53). Yet Virgilius Maro does not provide these as interpretations of or glosses on the Latin letters. That being so, this might be an innovation on the part of the compilers of this version of Auraic. na nÉces (δ). Some of the glossed items in Epitoma XII, e.g. sade, correspond to Hebrew letter names and ultimately go back to Jerome, and are glossed as in Y 4174 (sade .i. iusticia).

224

9.7. Xenography in Codex Bernensis 207 and the Book of Ballymote Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207 (ninth century) from Fleury-sur-Loire contains a mixed alphabet consisting of letters with heterogeneous origins. This mixed alphabet has a close correspondence in the Book of Ballymote, preserved as a section of In Lebor Ogaim, which precedes the Auraic. na nÉces in that manuscript. The mixed alphabet in the Book of Ballymote is evidence of Continental influence that is entirely independent of the evidence put forward in the present chapter (see further Derolez 1951: 3–19).

The alphabets in Codex Bernensis 207 and In Lebor Ogaim are examples of an interest in local alphabets and xenography of which the earliest preserved trace is found in London, British Library Cotton MS Domit. A. IX from the second half of the eighth century. This manuscript contains runes and ‘Chaldean’ letters. The xenographic additions to Continental manuscripts are not always integrated into the surrounding context (Roland 1991: 78).

The earliest manuscripts containing Ogam letters have been conserved in libraries on the Continent. This in itself might not be significant, but one should note the manuscript contexts in which Ogam is found:

- First, in lists of different alphabets (Codex Bernensis 207 fol. 257r; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Reg. Lat. 1308 fol. 62v). - Second, as sporadic marginal glosses to for instance Institutiones grammaticae (Codex Sangallensis 904) (see also McManus 1991: 132–37).

Biblioteca Vaticana MS Reg. Lat. 1308 is dated to the ninth century, but the alphabets on fol. 62v have been dated to the 12th century (see McManus 1991: 137, 181). The gloss marcomanni provides a link between this manuscript and De inventione litterarum.

9.8. Summary of Chapter The discussion above might be summarized with the following hypotheses:

- TCD MS 1337 represents a copy of the Greek alphabet that goes back to the same archetype as the copies in Auraic. na nÉces and which therefore has independent value, which equals that of all the witnesses to Auraic. na nÉces, for the reconstruction of that list. It is thus of major importance for the comparison of the purely Irish transmission with the other sources. Whether

this archetype was a) a copy of Auraic. na nÉces anterior to the archetype (α) of the preserved copies of that text, b) an independent copy of several 225

alphabet tables, or c) simply a copy of the Greek alphabet, is not possible to determine. - Auraic. na nÉces shows a genetical relationship to texts that can be connected to Derolez’ group B of De inventione. These are Paris MS 5239 and Strasbourg MS 326, which both go back to a common copy. The exact details of the transmission of the material cannot be reconstructed at the present stage of inquiry, but the indications are sufficiently strong and the character of the texts sufficiently clear that we might reconstruct the overarching method—we can for instance see how Virgilius Maro Grammaticus was probably used as a tool in order to reinforce the semantics of the tables. - The connection to group B is interesting also from another point of view. In the Vatican manuscript we find the word Marcomanni together with the three sacred alphabets and runic letters. This shows that also this manuscript is dependent on De inventione. This is followed by the Ogam alphabet. The Vatican manuscript is therefore an early witness to the meeting between the vernacular Irish alphabet and the textual tradition of De inventione. This manuscript may not be directly connected with Auraic. na nÉces but shows how an early stage of the integration of Ogam in the discourse on alphabets could have been—a simple expansion of De inventione. Auraic. na nÉces represents a more integrated and complex stage in this process than the Vatican manuscript, and it is difficult to see how such a development might have happened before the second half of the ninth century.

226

10. Conclusions This study has investigated the medieval Irish grammatical tract Auraicept na nÉces from a mainly diachronic point of view. In Chapter 2 on the manuscript record, I propose a new analysis of the stemmatical relationship between the witnesses of Auraic. na nÉces. The results are presented in a provisional stemma codicum in section 2.7 and differ on several points from previous research. Two important conclusions are:

- Thurneysen’s arguments for the date of the archetype were made before the independence of M from BY was suggested by Ahlqvist. The arguments made for the terminus ante quem for Thurneysen’s archetype are therefore

valid for β in the stemma that I propose. This gives β a terminus ante quem in

the 11th century, while α must be somewhat older. - M and D do not derive from a common hyparchetype and Ahlqvist’s group a

is therefore abandoned. Instead, I introduce β to account for the relationship of M and D to the other manuscripts, through reanalysis of the evidence put forward by Ahlqvist.

Chapter 3 gives a discussion of the linguistic arguments that have been presented for an Early Old Irish date for the core text of Auraic. na nÉces. These are found to be unsatisfactory, with the possible exception of the accusative singular bein. If this is indeed an Early Old Irish form, however, it is probably derived from an independent list of paradigms going back to that period, wherefore it has little bearing on Auraic. na nÉces as a synthetic text. A few observations on the language of the text as it has been edited by Calder (1917) are presented at pp. 68-73, but these do not alter the analysis presented in Ahlqvist 1983. Significant challenges to the early date are presented in Chapter 6 on sources and references in the Irish corpus. Two main points in this respect:

- The occurrence of the eponym Goídel and especially an already complicated tradition regarding his ancestry in a text from c. 700 is unlikely, since this word probably entered Irish from Welsh no earlier than c. 750.

- The opening of the text of Ahlqvist’s edition has likely been culled from LG. It contains a case of Middle Irish confusion regarding the neuter gender, or perhaps a hypercorrection based on the same premise, that is supported by all manuscripts.

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Chapter 5 presents an analysis of important sections of the text as it has been preserved in the manuscripts with a view towards a comparison with the standard edition. Serious issues pertaining to the inner coherency of the text are presented and it is suggested that parts of the gloss-commentary can be seen as the result of campaigns of work—being the result of the literary engagement of a few individuals. This stands in contrast with a common scholarly approach of viewing the commentary as the product of a cumulative process with no defined stages. It is argued that such an approach does not, in fact, describe a likely process, but rather

the impression given by its results. The archetype (α), established on the consensus between the manuscripts, is the obvious point of departure for further study of the coherence of the text.

The first part of Chapter 6 draws on Poppe’s 2002 study in order to posit a terminus post quem in the second quarter of the ninth century for the Latin quotations in Auraic. na nÉces. It also adds a possible parallel from Ars Ambrosiana or a related text to the quotations identified by Poppe (2002). In addition to this, a few of the citations that are not found in B have been identified. The second part of this chapter is devoted to an analysis of the material that Auraic. na nÉces shares with other texts in the Irish corpus, most significantly LG. A passage of criticism of our text preserved in LG is analyzed with a view towards establishing a relative chronology. The late preservation and complex transmission of the two texts presented an obstacle that limits the usefulness of the results of this analysis.

Chapter 7 discusses §§ 1,2–1,17 in Ahlqvist’s edition. This discussion is primarily important for its implications regarding the background of the pseudo-historical narrative in Auraic. na nÉces. While the analysis does not provide an absolute terminus post quem, it shows that the mythical elements are largely invented through a combination of Biblical narrative and etymology. Auraic. na nÉces is thus not embedded in older historical lore, and such logic therefore cannot be used to argue for an early date.

In Chapter 9.5. we have identified a significant error that is shared between Auraic. na nÉces and two French manuscripts from the tenth century. These both, according to Derolez, go back to an exemplar that must date to the period c. 850– 950, with the temporal limits established by the composition of De inventione and the date when these two manuscripts were produced. The main hypothesis

228 presented at pp. 219-221 is that this exemplar stands in a genetical relationship to the tables preserved in Auraic. na nÉces, which suggests a terminus post quem of that part of the text at the end of the ninth century or the beginning of the tenth. This is compatible with Poppe’s observations on the relationship to the Hiberno-Latin Donatan commentaries.

The conclusion would stand on even firmer ground if more errors of a similar kind had been detected. This has been emphasized as a general methodological point by the palaeographer Julian Brown (1975: 168–69). The connection to Continental material is nevertheless guaranteed. Indisputable proof is furnished by the highly monogenetic character of the combined exotic alphabets in the Book of Ballymote (immediately preceding the copy of Auraic. na nÉces) and Codex Bernensis 207 (after the Ogam syllabary at fol. 257r) presented in section 9.7. These exotic alphabets have not been discussed at length in the present thesis as they do not pertain to Auraic. na nÉces proper.

A new and plausible dating of Auraic. na nÉces to the late ninth or tenth century has considerable implications for early Irish intellectual and literary history at large. The traditional dating to c. 700 left Auraic. na nÉces standing as an anomaly defying explanation, both with regard to internal and external developments. The new date allows for a plausible and interesting analysis, where Auraic. na nÉces is perceived as extremely innovative in a number of respects, but nonetheless draws on developments in the Irish tradition and in the Latin learned community at large. This allows for profitable historical exploration of the text and its affinities. Auraic. na nÉces would profit from further study in conjunction with other tenth-century texts that relate to poetics, such as the Treḟocal Tract. Breatnach’s edition of the latter shows that several units of text (stanzas and commentary) benefit from a comparative analysis. The attribution of the basic Auraic. na nÉces to this period and the hypothesis that larger portions of its commentary are the work of a few individuals during the early transmission—rather than many generations of scribes—could further contribute to the studies of the early stage of Irish poetics.

A great amount of work still remains to be done on Auraic. na nÉces. The most pressing issue is the editing of the remaining witnesses—most of all D and T. A proper critical edition has long been a desideratum. This must, however, be preceded by diplomatic editions. In the present thesis, I have sought to show that

229

an edition of Auraic. na nÉces must build on methodologically sound principles and on the careful analysis of the contents of the manuscript witnesses.

❦

The typeface used in this dissertation is Andron Mega Corpus created by Andreas Stötzner and provided by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative. This typeface has been funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and the University of Bergen. The Greek text has been set in Junicode’s Foulis Greek, developed by Peter S. Baker at the University of Virginia. The typeface is based on the Greek Double Pica that was cut by Alexander Wilson (1714–86) and used by the Foulis publishing house in Glasgow. It was used for a renowned edition of Homer’s epics which was printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis in 1756–58. The figures (stemmata codicum) in the dissertation have been designed using the LaTeX document processing system, developed by Leslie Lamport, based on the typesetting system created by Donald Ervin Knuth at Stanford University.

230

Bibliographical References and Abbreviations

Manuscripts Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207

Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Reg. Lat. 1308

P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53

A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738)

M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 (D ii 1)

L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (535)

B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 (536)

Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.)

Dublin, Trinity College MS 1316 (H 2.15a)

G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (H 2. 15b)

Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 (H 2. 16)

Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337

T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 (H 4. 22)

D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 (E 3.3)

E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72. 1. 1. (Gaelic I)

Kassel, Universitätsbibliothek 4 ̊ Philol. MS 1

København, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling MS 732b 4⁰

London, British Library Cotton MS Domit. A. IX

London, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A 12

Eg: London, British Library Egerton MS 88

Milano, Bibliotheca Ambrosiana MS L 22 sup.

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 502

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 5239

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 7530

Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 876

Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 878

Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 904 231

Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire MS 326

Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 795

Facsimiles Atkinson, Robert. (1887): The Book of Ballymote: a Collection of Pieces (Prose and Verse) in the Irish Language Compiled about the Beginning of the Fifteenth Century, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy.

Macalister, R.A.S. (1942): The Book of Uí Maine, otherwise called the Book of the O’Kelly’s, Facsimiles in Collotype of Irish Manuscripts 4, Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission.

Mulchrone, Kathleen. (1937): The Book of Lecan: Leabhar Mór Mhic Fhir Bhisigh Leacáin, with descriptive introduction and indexes by Kathleen Mulchrone, collotype facsimile, Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission. ―――――――

Codices Electronici Sangallenses. (CESG), E-CODICES, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland: URL: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/

Digital Bodleian. Bodleian Libraries. University of Oxford. URL: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Gallica—The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) digital library. URL: https://www.bnf.fr/en/gallica-bnf-digital-library

Irish Script on Screen (ISOS)/Meamram Páipéar Ríomhaire. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin. URL: http://www.isos.dias.ie

Handrit.is: Digital collection of manuscripts from the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum (Reykjavík) and Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, København, run by Landsbókasafn Íslands— Háskólabókasafn, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum and Den Arnamagnæanske samling. URL: http://www.handrit.is

Virtuelle Bibliothek Würzburg—Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg. URL: http://vb.uni-wuerzburg.de/ub/uebervb.html

Editions and Translations Abbate, Michele. (2017). Proclo: Commento al ‘Cratilo’ di Platone, Il pensiero occidentale, Bompiani, Milano.

Ahlqvist, Anders. (1983). The Early Irish Linguist: An Edition of the Canonical part of ‘Auraicept na nÉces’, with Introduction, Commentary and Indices, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fenica.

―――. (1987). “An Irish Text on the Letters of the Alphabet”, in: Studies in Honour of René Derolez, ed. A–M. Simon-Vandenbergen, Seminarie voor Engelse en Oud-Germaanse Taalkunde, Ghent: R.U.G, pp. 3–16.

Anderson, Alan Orr and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson. (1961). Adomnan’s ‘Life of Columba’, Edition with Translation and Notes, London et al.: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.

Auraicept na nÉces–see Ahlqvist (1983); Calder (1917). 232

Auraic. M.: Auraicept Muman. A copy of Auraic. na nÉces from Munster (?) of uncertain content and relation to the preserved Auraic. na nÉces.

Barwick, Karl. (1964). Charisii Artis grammaticae libri V, 2nd edition with addenda by F. Kühnert, Leipzig: B.G. Teubner Verlag.

Bergin, Osborn. (1916–55). Irish Grammatical Tracts, supplements to Ériu, vol. 8 (1916), vol. 9 (1921–23), vol. 10 (1926–28), vol. 14 (1946–47) and vol. 17 (1955).

Best, Richard Irvine, Osborn Bergin (1929). Lebor na hUidre. Book of the Dun Cow, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

――― and M. A. O’Brien and Anne O’Sullivan (1954–83). The Book of Leinster, Formerly Lebar na Núachongbála, 6 vols., Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

Bieler, Ludwig. (1979). The Patrician texts in the Book of Armagh, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 10, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

Binchy, Daniel Anthony. (1941). Críth Gablach, Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series 11, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

―――. (1978). Corpus Iuris Hibernici ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum, 7 vols., Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

Bisagni, Jacopo. (2019). ‘Amrae Coluimb Chille’: a Critical Edition, Early Irish Text Series 1, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

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Björn M. Ólsen (1884). Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske avhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske avhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg, Samfundet til udgivelse af gammel nordisk literatur, Copenhagen.

Breatnach, Liam. (1987). ‘Uraicecht na Ríar’: the Poetic Grades in Early Irish Law, Early Irish Law Series 2, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies.

―――. (2017). “The Treḟocal Tract: an Early Middle Irish Text on Poetics”, in: Ó Riain, Gordon (ed.), Dá dtrian feasa fiafraighidh: Essays on the Irish Grammatical and Metrical Tradition, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies, pp. 1–65.

Calder, George. (1917). ‘Auraicept na n-Éces’. The Scholars’ Primer, Edinburgh: Grant.

Canale, Angelo Valastro. (2014). Isidoro di Siviglia. ‘Etimologie o origini’, 2 vols., Torino: UTET libreria.

Campanile, Enrico. (1988). Die älteste Hofdichtung von Leinster: alliterierende reimlose Strophen, Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 503, Veröffentlichungen der Keltischen Kommission 8, Vienna.

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233

CIH: Corpus Iuris Hibernici, see Binchy 1978.

CIIH: Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum, see Macalister (1945–49).

Comyn, David and Patrick S. Dinneen. (1902–14). ‘Foras Feasa ar Éirinn’: The History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating D. D., 4 vols., Dublin: Irish Texts Society 4, 8, 9 and 15.

De inventione (litterarum/linguarum). ed. Derolez 1954—see also PL vol. 112.

De temporum ratione: see Jones 1975–80 (vol. 2).

DOSL: De Origine Scoticae Linguae (O’Mulconry’s Glossary)—see Moran 2019.

Erdmann, Oskar. (1882). Otfrids ‘Evangelienbuch’, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

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GL: Grammatici Latini—see Keil (1855–80). van Hamel, A. G. (1932). ‘Lebor Bretnach’: the Irish version of the ‘Historia Britonum’ ascribed to Nennius, Dublin: Stationery Office.

Hancock, W. Neilson, et. al. (1865). Ancient Laws of Ireland, 6 vols., vol. 1: Senchus Mor, Dublin: Stationery Office.

Herren, Michael W. (2011). The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister. Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 8, Turnhout: Brepols.

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Holtz, Louis. (1977). Murethach (Muridac). In Donati artem maiorem, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 40, Turnhout: Brepols..

―――. (1981). Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: étude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe–IXe siècle) et édition critique, Documents, études et répertoires publiés par l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, Paris: C.N.R.S.

――― and Bengt Löfstedt and Adele Kibre. (1986). Smaragdus. Liber in partibus Donati, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 68, Turnhout: Brepols.

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In Lebor Ogaim: see Calder 1917: 272–99 with facsimiles.

In Lebor Ollaman: unedited, see list of manuscript copies in McLaughlin 2009.

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Jones, Charles W. (1975–80). Beda Venerabilis: Opera didascalica, 3 vols., Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123:A-C, Turnhout: Brepols.

Keil, H. (1855–80). Grammatici Latini, In aedibus B. G. Teubneri, Lipsiae (Leipzig).

I Keil, Heinrich (1857). Flavii Sosipatri Charisii Artis grammaticae libri V; Diomedis Artis grammaticae libri III; Ex Charisii Arte grammatica excerpta.

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VI Keil, Heinrich. (1874). Scriptores artis metricae: Marius Victorinus, Maximus Victorinus, Caesius Bassus, Atilius Fortunatianus; Terentianus Maurus, Marius Plotius Sacerdos, Rufinus, Mallius Theodorus, Fragmenta et excerpta metrica.

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Kent, Roland G. (1951). Varro on the Latin Language. (‘De Lingua Latina’), with an English translation, Cambridge: Mass., Harvard University Press; London: W. Heinemann.

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Löfstedt, Bengt. (1965). Der hibernolateinische Grammatiker Malsachanus, Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell.

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―――. (2003). Virgilius Maro Grammaticus: Opera omnia, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, Munich, Leipzig: K. G. Saur.

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Appendix 1: Transcripts of the Passage B 1034–57 from all Manuscripts B and Y have been reproduced from Calder’s edition and checked against the manuscripts, the other witnesses have been transcribed from digital photocopies. M is taken from the semi-diplomatic transcription.

B 1034–57 Cia arranic a mberla-sa ⁊ cia airm i narneacht ⁊ cissi aimser i narnecht? Ni ansa. Arranic Fenius Farrsaidh oc tur Nemrua[i]d i cind dech mbliadan iar scailiudh on tur for cach leath, ⁊ is cach comberlaid dochuaidh and dochum a crichi ⁊ ni cach comcheniu[i]l amal rogab Cai Cainbreathach, dalta Feniusa Farr[s]aidh, in dara descipul sechtmogat na scoili. Ba do Ebraibh a bhunadhus ⁊ co Eigipt rofuidhedh. Ocus is and roan Fenius fodhesin ocon tur, ⁊ is and roaitreabh, conid andsin conaitchetar chuice in scol berla tobaidi do theipu doib asna hilberlaibh tucsat leo di muich conna beith oc nach [a]iliu a mberla sain acht occaib-seomh a nænur, no ic neoch nofoglaindfedh leithiu dorisi. Is andsain dorepedh a mbelra asna hilberlaibh, ⁊ rotaiselbad do ænfir dib, conid a ainmsen forta a mbelra-sa. Ba he in fer hisin .i. Goedel mac Angein, conid Gædil de-side o Gædel mac Angin mic Glunfind mic Laimfhindh mic Agnumain do Gregaibh. Inan[d] tra Gædel mac Aingin ⁊ Gædel mac Etheoir .i. da ainm robadar fora athair .i. Aingin ⁊ Etheoir. Is and iaramh doriaghladh in mberlasa. I mba fearr iarum do cach berla ⁊ a nba leithiu ⁊ a mba caemu, is ed darepedh isinn Goedilc; ⁊ cach son do na airnecht cairechtaire isna aipgitribh ailibh ol chena arrichta carechtaire leosumh doibh isin beithi-luis-nin in ogaim, ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

L fol. 157rb19–vb1 Cia rannic a mberlasa ⁊ cia airm inairnecht ⁊ cisi aimser inairnecht Nī. aranic fenius f(arsaid) oc tur nemruaid i cind x mbl(iadan) iar scailed on tur for cach leath ⁊ is cach comberlaid dochuaid and docum a crichi ⁊ ni cach comceniuil amal rogab cai cainbrethach dalta feniusa f(arsaid) in dara deiscipul lxx na scoili ba do ebraib a bunadus ⁊ ba co heigepta rofuidhedh ⁊ is and roan fenius bodesin ocin tur ⁊ is and roaitreab conid and sin conaitcetar cuigi in scol berla tobaidi 157va do thebi doib asna hilberlaib tucsat leo di muich cona beith oc nech ele amberlasin acht ocaibsium a naenur no ic neoch nofoglaimed leithiu dorisi is and sin doreipead amberlu sa asna hilberlaib ⁊ dotaiselbad do aenfir dib conid a ainmsein forta amberlasa ba he in fer hisin gaedel mac angin conid gaeidel de side o gaedel m(a)c anghin mac glunfind mac lamfind mac agnomain do grecaib INand tra gaedel mac

257 angin ⁊ gaedel mac etheoir .i. da ainm robadar fora ath(air)sium .i. angin ⁊ etheoir IS amal iarum doriaglad amberla sa imba ferr iarum de cach berla ⁊ inba leithiu ⁊ inba caemiu ised doreiped isin gaed(ilc) ⁊ cach son dona nairneachtair cairechtaire isna haipgitrib ailib olchena airichta cairechtaire leosum doib isin bethi luis 157vb nin ind og(aim) ut (est): ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

E fol. 23rb32–47 Cia aranic a mberlu [..] ⁊ cia hairm inarnect ⁊ cisi aimsir inaernact. nī. ararainic fenius farsaig [oc]in tur nemruaid hi cind x mbli(adan) iar scailed on tur for cach leth is cach comberlaid docuaid and dochum a crichi ⁊ ni cach comcenel amal rogab cai cainbrȩth(ach) dalta feniusa far(saig) in dara deiscibal lxx at na scoili ba do ebraib a bunadus ⁊ gu hegipt ro faidheadh ⁊ is and roan budesin con tur ⁊ is and roaitrebh conad andsin conadecatar cuicce in scol berla topaide do teipi doib isna hilberlaib tucsat leo di amuth333 cona robeth oc neach aile in berla sin acht occaib sium in aenur no occ neoch nofoglaimfȩd lethu doridisi is and sin dorepad in berlasa isna hilberlaib ⁊ rotaiselbad do aenfir dibh conad anm side forta inberlasa ⁊ ba he in fer hisin .i. goedel mac aingein [ LACUNA ] is and sin iarum roriadlad inberlasa doib anba ferr iarum do cach berla ⁊ anba leithiu ⁊ inba caimiu ised doreped isin goidelg ⁊ cach son do donernacht cairechtair asa aibghidribh eilbh olcȩna arriacta cairech(taire) leosum doib isin beithi luis nin in oguim ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

Y col. 532, ll. 7–28 Ceasc cia rainig in beurla Feine ⁊ cia hairm a n-airrniocht ⁊ cisi haimsir i rriochd? Iss e immorro irrainic Feinius Farrsaidh .i. in persa ocin tour .i. in loug in dara deisgiopul sechtmadad na sgoile. Pa do Ephradaiph a bunadus ⁊ ba go hEceptacta rofaoided fobith iss and batar a tusdige ⁊ pa hand ron-alt. Is and roan Feinius feissin accan tour no go tdourracht a sgoul cuigi as gach aird i cionn deich mbliedan iar sgailed oun tour four gach leth connaitchend cusin sai .i. gou Feinius berla na beith ag nech aile douiph asna hilperlaib achd comad ouca a n-aonur no beith, no ag nech nofouglainnedh leo doridisi. Is andsin doreiped doip in berlu-sa asna hilperlaiph rotaispenadh do aonfer diph ⁊ pa he an fer sin Gaidel mac Aingin uair is he is mo darothlaig no torothlaig ⁊ is he rob ferr diph conad he a ainm-sidhe fordota in berla sin conid Gaidelc deiside o Gaidel mac Aingin meic Glunfind meic Laim[fh]ind meic Eithiur meic Aghnomain do Gregaiph. Inand tra Gaidel mac Aingin ⁊ Gaidel mac Eitheoir .i. da ainm patar four a athair .i. Aingein ⁊

333 sic (?) 258

Eitheoir. Is andsin iarum doreiped in berlasa u mba ferr .i. a n-edargna in gach berla ⁊ u mba caoine .i. fri turgpail ⁊ u mba leithe .i. i gciallugud iss ed doreiped insin Gaidilc. Gach soun do na hairrniocht cairechtairi isna haipgitribh ailibh arnichta cairachtaire leosum doip isin mbethe-luis-nion an ogaim, ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

G p. 197a23–b3 Ceasc cia rainig in berla feine ⁊ cia hairm anairrniocht ⁊ cisi haimsir iriacht isse immorro irrainic feinius farrs(aid) .i. in pers[.] ogin tor .i. an log in dara deisgiopal sechtmodad na sgoile pa do ephradaibh a bunadhus ⁊ ba go heceptacta ro faoided fo bith is ann batar a tusdighe pa hann ronalt. IS ann roan f(einius) feisin agan tor no go torracht a sgol chuige as gach aird i cionn x mbliadan iar sgailedh on tor for gach leth connaitcethar cusin sai .i. go f(einius) berla na beith ag nech aile doibh do teipeth as na hilperlaibh acht comad oca a naonar no beith no ag nech nofoglaimneth leo doridhisi. IS ann sin doreiped doiph in berla as na hilperlaiph rotaispenadh do aonfir diph ⁊ pa he an fir sin gaidel mac aingin uair is he is mo dorothlaigh ⁊ is he rob ferr diph conadh he a ainm sidhe forta in berla sin conid gaidelc deiside o gaidel mac aingin meic glunḟind meic laimfind meic eithur meic aghnomain do gregaiph. inand tra gaidel mac aingin ⁊ gaidel mac eithiuir .i. 2 ainm patar fora athair .i. aingein ⁊ eitheoir. IS and sin iarum doreiped in berlasu umba ferr iarum .i. nedargna in gach berla ⁊ umpa caime .i. fri turgpail ⁊ umpa leithe .i. i gciallugud issed doreiped insin gaidelc. Gach son dona hairniocht cairechtairi isna haipgitrib aili irriachta cairechtaire leosum doiph isin mbethe l. n. a. n. ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

P pp. 105–106, l. 9 Cs̅ cia ranoic in berla fene ⁊ cia hairm inairneacht ⁊ cisi haimsir iricht Nī is e aran(aic) fen(ius) fars(aid) ocon tur Cai cainbrethach in daro descibul seachtmogat na scoile ba do ebraidibh a bunadhus ⁊ ba co heccebtacdai rofaidhed fo bith is ann batar a tuisdige ⁊ ba hann rotnalt IS ann roan fenius fesin ocon tur no co torriacht a scol cuicce as cech aird i ccinn x mbliadan ier scoiled on tor .i. for cec leth Conaitcetor cusin sui .i. co fenius berla na beith ac nech ele do teped doib asna hilberlaib acht comad aca a noeror no beith no ac nȩch no fochclaimned leo doridhisi IS ann sin dorebed doib in berlusa p. 106 IS and sin do reped doibh in berluso as na hilberlaib ⁊ rotaisilbad do aoinfir dibh. ⁊ ba he in fersin gaoidel mac aingen uair is e is mo dorothlaig no is rob ferr dibh Conad e a ainmsidhe fordota in berla sin Conid gaoidelc desin o gaoidel mac angen. Inand tra gaoidel mac. ⁊ gaoidel mac ethiuir .i. da ainm batar fora athair .i. ainghen ⁊ ethiuir IS ann sin ieramh do rebeadh in berlosa .i. in etorgna Imba ferr ieram in gach berlo ⁊ imba caimhe .i. fri turcbail ⁊ imba lete .i. i ciallugud issed do rebed isin gaodelc. Gach son dona hairneacht 259 carrectaire isna haipcitrib ele arriachta carrect(air)i leosim doibh isin mbeite luis nin in ogaim ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

A fol. 56v Cescc cia arranic an berla fene ⁊ cia hairm anairnecht ⁊ cisi haimsir arriacht nī asse immorro [alt. uero] arranic fenius farsaid ocon tur nemruaidh cai cainbrethach ocus araile an dara desciopal lxx na sgoile ba do ebraigib a bunadus ⁊ ba go hecepthacdha ro faidedh fo bith is ann batar a dha [...] ⁊ is ann rodnalt. IS ann ro an fenius feisin og an tor no go ttorracht a sgol cuicce as cȩch ard i cind x mbliadan iar scoiled on tur for cech leth Conaidcetar gus an saoi .i. fenius berla na beth ag neach aile do teped doib as na hilberla acht com[ba] acco a noenor no beth no ic neoch nofoglaimfedh leu IS ann sin do reped doib an mberlasa as na hilberlaibh ⁊ ro

[.] taiselbad da oinfer dib ⁊ ba he an fer sin goidhel mac anghein uair as e as mo do rothlaig ⁊ as e rop fearr dib conad e a ainmside fordota an berla sin conad goidelc de side o goidel mac angen meic gluinfind meic laimfind meic eithiuir meic agnoman do grecoibh. INann dano tra goidel mac angein ⁊ goidel mac ethiuir .i. da ainm robhator for a athair .i. aingin ⁊ etheoir. IS ann sin iaramh doreped an mberlusa. I mba ferr iaramh .i. i netargna in cach mberla ⁊ i mba coime .i. frie turgbail ⁊ i mba lethe .i. a cciallugud issed dona hairnecht carectare is na haipgitribh aile arrichthe carectare leosumh doib isin ngoidilg ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

M fol. 141va29–b1 Cs̄: Cia ar·ranic a mberla Fene ⁊ cia airm i·n-arnacht ⁊ a28 cia aimser ar·richt? Nī. a30 Ar·ranic Fenius F(arsaid) oc Tur N(emruaidh) cind .x. mbl(iadnae) iar scailuid on Tur ⁊ is cach comberlaid do·cuaidh i suidhiu docum a criche ⁊ ni cach comcenel334, amal ro·gab Cae Cainbrethach, dalta Feniusa Far(said), in dara descibul .lxx. na scoile. Ba do Ebrib a bunadas ⁊ bad gho Edeptacdu ro·foidhed fobith is and batar a tustidi ⁊ ba h-and ro·alt. IS and ro·an Feiníus fein ocon Tur no co·thoracht a scol chuchi as cach aird cind .x. mb(liadnae) ⁊ co-n·atgetar cosin suid335 .i. go Feínius berla na·beth oc neoch aile do thepe doib asna ilberlaib acht combad leo a n-aenur no·beth no ac neoch fo·glendad leo. IS ann- sin iarum do·reped doib in berla sin isna ilberlaib. Ro·taiselbadh do oen dib conid a ainm- side for-da·ta in berla-sa, conid Goedelg de-side oc Goediul mac Ainginn, meic Gluinind,

334 MS ⟨comceneƚ⟩ 335 MS ⟨suīd⟩ 260 meic Lamind, meic Etheoír, meic Agnoman do Grecaib. Inund tra Goediul mac Aingin ⁊ Goediul mac Etheoir acht da ainm badar for a athair .i. Aingin ⁊ Etheoir. IS ann-sin iarum ro·riaglad in berla-sa. A mba ferr iarum in cach berla ⁊ a mba caimiu, is (ed) ro·teped isin nGoedelg. Cach son do-na·airnecht carechtair isna aipgitrib ailib ar·ricta carechtairi doib isin Bethe-Luís-Nin ind Og(aim), ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

D p. 12°17–53 Cs̄ cia arainig a mberla feine ⁊ cia airm a naireact agus cia haimsir airrict Nī. arranic fenius farrsaidh ag tur nemhruaidh cind x mbliadan iar sgaeleadh on tor ⁊ is cach comhberlaibh dacuaidh and i suidhiu dochum a criche ⁊ ni gach comhceneol. amal rogabh cai caeinbreathach dalta feiniusa farsaidh in dara deiscipal lxx na sgoile ba deabhraibh a bunadus ⁊ ba gu heigeaptagda rofaeidheadh IS and roan feiníus fodeisin agun tur ⁊ roaitreab IS and sin tainic in sgol mor do gregaib i cind x mbliadan iar sgaeileadh on tur ⁊ conaitcedar gusan suidh da gregaib berla na beath ag neach aile do teipi doib isna hilberlaib acht comadh agaibh a naenar nobeath nó ag neoch nofhogloimead leo. IS annsin iarum doreped doib in berla sin isna ilberlaib. rotaiselbadh do oen dib conid a ainmside fordata inberlasa conid goedelg deside og goediul mac ainginn meic gluinind meic lamind meic etheoír meic agnoman do grecaib inund tra goediul mac aingin ⁊ goediul mac etheoir acht da nainm badar for a athair .i. aingin ⁊ etheoir. IS ann sin iarum roriaglad in berlasa amba ferr iarum in cach berla ⁊ amba caimiu ⁊ a mba leithiu is ed roteped isin ngoedel. Cach son dona airnecht carechtair isna aipgitrib ailib arricta carechtair doib isin bethe luís nin ind ogaim ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

T p. 189, ll. 6–23 [C]es[t] cia rainic a mberlu feni ⁊ cia hairm a nairnecht et cia haimsir arriacht. Nī. arranic fenius fairsaig oc tor nemhruadh a cind x mbliadan iar scoiled on tur et is gach comberla dochuaidh and asuidhe dochum a criche et ni gach comchinel amal dogabh coi caoinbrethach dalta feniusa farrsaig an 2ra deisgibul lxx na scoile Ba do eabraidhibh a bhunadhus et ba huadhuibh gu hegeabta rofaidhedh et is and roan fenius feisen acon tur et is and daitreb et is and sin tangadar cuige an scol mor do greguibh a cind x mbliadan iar scoili on tur et conaitchetar cuige gusan saoi do greguibh Berla na beith ag neach [...] do teibed doib as na hilberla acht cumudh aguibh a naonur nobeith no ag neach [...-] luimedh leo IS and sin doreibed doiph an berlaso asna hilperla et rotaiselbh do aoinfir uadhuibh conidh a ainmsidhe forata in berla sin conidh gaoidelg de side o gaoidhel mac aingin meic glunfind meic lamfind meic ethheoir meic adnumoin do greguibh do sidhe INund tra gaoidel mac aingin ⁊ gaoidel mac eitheoir Da ainm batar fora athair .i. aingin ⁊ 261 eitheoir IS and sin iarum roriaghlad doib an mperla so a mba fearr iarum do gach berlu ⁊ a mbadh caome ⁊ a mba leithe is ed doreibed isin ngaoidhilg cach son dona hairnecht cairechtaire isna haipgitrib ailibh arrichta cairechtaire leosum doibh isin mbeithi luis nin an oghuim ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

Citations from this passage also occur earlier in the commentary. Here marked in italics:

B 230–443: ⁊ ni cach comceniuil dochuaidh and dochum a comcrichi dun fhoglaim sin acht is cach comberlaidh amal rogab Cai Cainbrethach dalta Feniusa in dara descipul sechtmogat na scoli. Ba do Ebraib a bunadhus ⁊ ba co hEgeftagda rofaidhedh fobith is and robatar a tusdidhe ⁊ ba hand rodn-alt ⁊ tuargabat fodesin as [a] ætidh conid desin asbeir-som i curp libair .i. Is cach comberlaib dochuaid and ⁊ ni cach comcheneoil dochum a chriche. Seacht mbliadna tra robatar na descipuil forsin cuairt ⁊ teora bliadna doib ic taispenad a ngresa i fus iar tiachtain comdar a deich samlaidh, conid desin asbeir-som this i curp libhair: A cind deich mbliadan iar scailiud doib on tur for gach leath durebeadh doib am berla-sa.

Y 2545–57: Ni cech comchiniuil dono dochuaid and dochum a chriche don foghlaim acht is commberlaig, amal rogabh Cai Cainbrethach, dalta Feniusa Farsaidh, in dara descipul sechtmogat na sgoile, pa do Eaphradaiph a bunad et pa go hEcipta rofaided, fobith ba hand patar a tuisdigi ⁊ pa hand ron-alt ⁊ tuargbad asa aididh, conid aire asper i gcurp lipair: Is cech comberla dochuaid dochum a criche ⁊ ni cech comchineoil. Secht mbliadna robatar na deisgipuil forsin gcuairt sin, ⁊ teora bliadna doiph ag taispenadh a ngresa a bos iar dtiacht comdar a deich samlaidh, conid desin asbertsim tsis i curp lipair: i cind deich mbliadan iar sgailed doiph on tour for gach leth doreibed an berla-sa doib.

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Appendix 2: An Edition of Auraicept na nÉces from the Book of Uí Mhaine (M) The following transcript of Auraicept na nÉces from Dublin, RIA MS D ii 1, or the Book of Uí Mhaine (fols. 138vb55–143ra60), aims at a precise reproduction of the readings, so as to make the evidence provided by this testimony (M) accessible. M was used to some extent by Calder, as is reflected in the variants recorded occasionally in the critical apparatus to the text of B. Calder did not state anything about the relationship of M to BEL, but the relatively limited use of M could be an indication that he recognized that its text does indeed differ significantly from BEL. It is fair to say that neither of the editions published to date does justice to M as an independent witness to Auraic. na nÉces and as a consequence various incorrect assumptions have been made with regard to its text and its relationship to the other manuscripts, notably D. It is the second oldest preserved witness to the text, B being older by a year or two.

The transcript has been made with the aid of the collotype facsimile published in 1942 by R.A.S Macalister as well as the digital facsimile provided by ISOS. The order of the folios in Macalister 1942 is incorrect (as is also his attempt at solving the issue by the aid of alphabetical order in this section) and therefore the folios are here presented according to the foliation given by ISOS. 141r follows 140v: .i. in cet fid airegda bis i foclaib ind im | reagrai ⁊ in taebomna docuirend ... (om. B; cf. Y 3564–54). 142r follows 141v: is o crand rohainm(niged) .i. aball ut clithar boascill quert | .i. aball. muin dano ... (cf. B 1185– 86; Y 4281–82). 143r follows 142v: amal asbert in file i scoil feiniusa ‘iar aill aro ni an[...] | de .i. inis ⁊all [leg. etaill ?] ... (cf. B 1324–25; Y 4641–42).336

No errors in the text have been corrected, with the exception of a couple of missing letters indicated with angle brackets ‘⟨ ⟩’. Where the text of M is obviously faulty or illegible (most often due to wear/darkening of the edges of the folia), readings have been supplied from B or Y in footnotes. These are taken from either recension and are merely

336 The quotation is taken from LG. In B it reads: I [or: et] aill aro ní anfem de (the initial letter has been transcribed as if it were the Tironian sign ‘⁊’ in Calder 1917: 1325 and it was demonstrably understood in this way also by a scribe at an early stage, which is seen from a following gloss on etall. To the extent of my knowledge, etall is a hapax legomenon–unless it be interpreted as ‘Italy’ (as in L and Y). Thurneysen, in an article on the technical term iarmbérla (1892: 267–74), translated the sentence as: ‘nous ne cesserons de ramer avant d’avoir atteint la noble île [i.e. Ireland]’ (op. cit.: 271). The various readings seem to indicate that the citation had been somewhat corrupted already in the archetype. 263 intended as an aid for reading the text, indicating what kind of content might have been corrupted or lost. The loss of legibility is indicated with brackets and dots have been supplied (e.g. ‘[...]’) to indicate how many letters might have been lost. I have occasionally noted superior readings that aid the understanding of the content (e.g. verbal forms). No critical apparatus has been deviced and in general variant readings have not been recorded. A few new parallels and possible sources have been provided in the notes to the transcript.

Abbreviations are indicated with cursive script, with exception for the most frequent where no ambiguity is involved. Contractions have been suspended and are indicated with parentheses. The distinction has been made to enable the reader to judge the kind of abbreviation in question. A couple of abbreviations that occur passim have been left as they are in the manuscript, such as ⟨cs̅⟩ for ceist, introducing a question, and ⟨nī⟩ ní h-ansae, introducing the answer, as well as the very frequent ⟨(⁊)rƚ⟩ ocus araile ‘and so on’. Certain orthographical and palaeographical features, such as the spelling ⟨ıꝗ⟩ for ‘air’ and

⟨ſı⟩ for ‘si’ have not been kept, as they are unambiguous and occur passim. I indicate the expansion of ⟨⟩, on the other hand, as this must be read co, con or com depending on context. I have generally denoted (etymological) /ð/ and /ɣ/ with ⟨d⟩ and ⟨g⟩ in expanding abbreviated verbal forms (e.g. ro·h-ainm(niged)). The orthography of the scribe fluctuates when the forms are written out, as these consonants are also denoted with the mark of lenition (spiritus).

Capitals have been supplied for proper names, a few important Biblical concepts (The Tower of Babel, the Law) and others (e.g. the Latinist) and after full stops. Every now and then the scribe employs two consecutive majuscule letters in the beginning of a new paragraph, as in ⟨IS⟩, ⟨INcipit⟩, which I have preserved in the transcript, as this might be of interest for the comprehension of the medieval understanding of the sections of the text. Otherwise the division into paragraphs in the transcript is editorial. This also goes for punctuation, which has been kept to a minimum. It is mainly intended as a reading aid and to clarify my own understanding of the text. The same goes for the middle-dot, which has been employed as in the standard grammar by Thurneysen and by the standard edition of the core text by Ahlqvist, namely to denote stress in compound verbs. This has the virtue of facilitating the analysis of compounds like e.g. as·berat-som ‘they

(emph.) say’, i.e. verbal complexes with a common structure like e.g. P·(P2–4)VE or

264

337 C·P(P2–4)VE, by allowing for the use of the hyphen to separate enclitic elements. I have not supplied macrons to indicate vowel length. Accents in the manuscripts have been kept, but these are often very faint and difficult to see both in the facsimile and on the photocopies on ISOS. Their absence, though in any case rather insignificant, as they are mostly employed to distinguish ⟨ı⟩ in a series of minims irrespective of the quantity of the vowel (it is rarely found above other vowels in M), must therefore be controlled against the manuscript. Brackets indicate illegible text and a dotted underline indicate uncertain readings–mostly due to wear and miscoloration.

Information on folio, column and line numbers is given in bold type. This has been included for sake of reference and also because of the relatively frequent use of the cenn fo eitte device in the manuscript, which marks the continuation of text from the following line. In this transcript, the natural order of the text is followed, but an impression of the original arrangement might be had from the numeration.338

The manuscript facsimile is within easy reach on the ISOS website and therefore these measures have been taken in order to increase the legibility of the transcription–a fully diplomatic edition is redundant for present purposes. No normalization of orthography has otherwise been carried out, however, so that inconsistency with regard to the marking of e.g. lenition will be found. As a general principle, no changes have been introduced into the text that might not be automatically removed in order to produce an accurate digital edition at a later stage (only the expansion of the abbreviations, always indicated, remains irreversible), following the motto that inspired D. A. Binchy during his monumental transcription of the law texts: ‘Zuerst die Quellen, genau wie sie sind, zugänglich machen’. Indeed the degree of proximity of the following transcript to the text of the manuscript is roughly as in Corpus Iuris Hibernici, with exceptions due to the measures outlined above.

Some errors in transcription and some inconsistencies will inevitably remain and therefore the relevant column and folio of the manuscript have been referenced throughout the text in order to facilitate reference to the manuscript itself. Line numbers are included where the arrangement of the text in the manuscript presents difficulties.

337 Where C = Conjunct particle, P = Preverb, V = Verb and E = Enclitic element. 338 The reason for the heavy use of this device at e.g. fol. 138va has not been explained and it is not obviously caused by issues relating to the layout of the manuscript page. 265

A full translation of the text of M has been deemed redundant due to the proximity of this text to that of B, which is translated in Calder (1917), although it must be acknowledged that Calder’s translation is itself in obvious need of updating. Significant progress has been made in the field of lexicography and in the study of Irish grammatical literature in general after the publication of that edition, for which see the Introduction to the present thesis. The present transcript is offered as a small stepping stone towards more synthetic editorial work in the future, acknowledging that access to accurate transcripts of the manuscript sources themselves is a prerequisite for the preparation of a proper critical edition.

266

138rb55 As·berat tra augtair na nGoedel comat hi [...... ]339 in berla Fene .i. Feniusa .i. gnim n-ingnad [....] daenibh n-indligtech340 .i. i ffiadnaise De for·coemnacair isin doman .i. cumdach Tuir Nemruaid. In Nemruadh hi-sin trenfer side, sil Adaim uili isin n-aim[...]341 .i. Nemruadh mac Cuís meic Caim meic Noe. Ni [...]342 oenri isin domun co h-aimsir 5 Nin meic Peil acht comarlig[...]isigh343 batar gu sin anall. IN ceitrig ro·gab in bith [....]344 a detli ⁊ a dath Nin meic Peil ba bind a guth [.... ]aoind uasin cath. Da comarligh .uii.- mogat [...... ]

138va

345 isin domuin ⁊ ba he in dara comarlig .uii.-mogat Nemruadh. Trenfear iarum in Nęmruadh sin ⁊ fer an oc ṡelg ⁊ oc fiadach ⁊ occ airrcessaib ⁊ oc urindell ⁊ no·bidh 10 socaíde do dainib ica lenmain co naba lia comba nertmaire oldas cach samlaidh.

a6 Gonidh din346 d[o]·rimmart na da fer .uii.-mogat sin in aencomairle a5 la brathair no la h-ua a brathair a athar no a7 la Fallec mac Ragu meic Eber in aralib lebraib la Fallec mac Eber meic Sale meic Arefaxat meic Seimh meic Noe ⁊ ba he side in dara comarligh .lxx. go sin anall. 15 a10 As·beir-seom iarum .i. Nemr(uad) comad aencomarligh ⁊ oenimtuissig do- a9 -ib uile in Fallec a12 at·cota-som dan[o] ind-i sin. As·bert dano iar suidiu combadh a ainm-seom for·beith in gnim sin go brath. Ad·rodmas do-som sin. a14 Treda dano ara·ndernadh la claind Adhaim ar uamun di- 20 a13 -lend mo- a15 -ri doridisi ⁊ do dul doib ina corpaib for nem de thalmain .i. do erdarcugudh a n-anma dara n-eisi. Conad e sin as·bert Ri nime fria muindtir: ‘Uenite ut uideamus ⁊ confundamus lingas eorum’ .i. ‘Tigidh co·faiceam ⁊ co·mbuaidrem a tęngtha’.

339 combad si tugait B 100 340 gnim ningnad nindligtheach B 101 341 trenfhear sil Adaimh uile in[a] aimsir [Y 2385 fein] e B 106 342 ni bai B 107 343 comairlidhe ⁊ toisig B 108–09 344 deest BY; cf. eDIL s. v. détlí, with reference to BB 487a13: in cétrí rogab in bith | glan a detli ⁊ a dath. 345 sic (?); isin aimsir i ndernad in tor B 110–11 346 Conid he dorimtas B 117 Ba mor tra cumachta sil Adhaim ⁊ a nert isin aimsir sin oc denum in Tuir co-na·fetatar 25 co·m-beth cumachtu Ri nime uasu in co-ro·mescad umpu iarum a mberla conar·aithin nęch dib berla araile no co-ro·mescad umpu a n-oenberla ar ni·rabi acht oenberla accu ar tus .i. Gartigern.

a23 IN tan as·bered nec dib fri araile ‘tuc cloith347 dam’ is crand a22 do·bered do.348 Do·la- 30 a24 -tar tra filidh asin Sceithia reib cianaib .i. fada iarsin co·tancadar iarsna gnimaibh- sea da ḟoglaim na mberla ocon Tur349 uair do·ruimnatar magen as ra·fodailtea ⁊ in n-airnechta na h-ilberla do sil Adhaim batar and in comlaithius. a28 Filidh do·radh friu .i. ara·raibi filidecht oscardha accu cen- a27 -co·raba 35 a29 fil(idecht) eladnach no is fil(idecht) eladnach ro·bi acu in tan sin ⁊ iar tain a·richt fil(idecht) oscardha ⁊ is i side do·gníat na filidh Goedelacha. a32 Do·lotar iarum go Magh Senair .i. magh in-ro·cumdacht in Tor a31 u fir .lxx. a lin na fil(ed) .i. i Maigh a33 Ucna no Luchna in tshenrot in iarthar deiscírt Maige Senair .i. fer cacha berla ⁊ tri 40 suidh .i. suidh cacha primberla .i. Ebra ⁊ Grec ⁊ Ladin. Ceitri berla .xx. cona n-athgabail fein as cach berla dib sin issed ro·fodhladh and.350 a37 Fenius F(arrsaid)351 tra a tuisęch, mac Eogain meic Gluinfind meic Laimfind meic a36 Ethoir meic Agnomain a38 meic Cham meic Buidb meic Semhair meic Mair meic Etheac meic Airtecht meic 45 Aboid meic Aoir meic Sera meic Seth meic Sru meic Esru meic Boid meic Riafaid meic

347 sic 348 Cf. In Lebor Ollaman (unedited). Here reproduced from the Book of Ballymote (fol 163va): ‘Tuc cloch damh is crand do·radadh.’ Is e a increachad sin: ar ni do chloich do·ronadh in Tor acht do aol ⁊ araile, ut dicitur: ‘Ael ⁊ olann is fuil, | cre, ucht ⁊ linn lancuir | seicim bitamain co mbuaidh: | ocht n-adhbair Nemhruaidh.’ Secht mili ni comod suaill i lethet in Tuir Nemruaid. .x. cet mili coba tri do milethaibh na airdi no comadh do chlochaibh ⁊ do chnamhaibh do·nithi in Tor [...]. 349 MS ⟨ tꝫ ⟩ 350 McLaughlin observes that Auraic. na nÉces disagrees with In Lebor Ollaman on the reading ceithri berla sechtmogat as gach berla dibsen (B 158–59 = Y 2459–60). But sechtmogat is in both cases just a faulty expansion in Calder’s text of the numeral in B, which should have been fichet. 74 obviously makes no sense, and is, as noted by McLaughlin, only found in E. 351 Cf. In Lebor Ollaman: ‘Fenius Farrsaidh’ do·radh fris ara met ro·bae fis na n-arsanta aigi. ‘Fairiseus’ .i. ‘Farsaid’ focal Grecda, ‘diuisus’ a eterceart Laidni. 268

Gomeir meic Ianen352 meic Iafeth meic Noe meic Laimęch meic Matusalah353 meic Enoc meic Iareth meic Malalel meic Cainen meic Enos meic Set meic Adhaim meic Debi. a43 Ba suid side354 isna tri primberlaib cid riasiu thisad atuaidh a42 asin Sceithia. O na· 50 a44 [..... ]355 iarum Feini[us] comlainius na n-ilberla ocon Tur fo·daile a scola ⁊ a descipul uadh fo cricha ⁊ cendatcha fer talman [...... ]356 o foglaim na n-ilberla ⁊ ro-s·n-othrastar Feinius [...... ]357 cen batar ocon ḟoglaim .i. .uii. mbli(adna) ⁊ tri [...... ]358 a ngressa conad .x. mbl(iadn)a samlaid. [.....]is359 Feinius fein ocon Tur in airet sin co·tancatar cui [...... ]ard360. Conid he sin as·beir-seom i cuirp in liubair: ‘[...... ]361 iar scailiudh doib 55 on Tur362 for cach leth ro·tei[...... ]’363. As·berat ind augdair ni·boi nęch do claind [...... ]364 meic Noe dia ro·genetar Greic ⁊ dia ro·chiu [ ...... ]dach365 in Tuir ⁊ badar sil Noe arcena. a55 B[...... ]366 bai isi[n] domun re cumdach in Tuir .i. a54 berla 60 a56 [...... ] Ebra acht berla Adhaim .i. Gartigernd ⁊ is [...... ] conid e sil la muindtir nime .i. marre367 [...... ] Berla Ebra dano cia o ra·h-ainmniged? Nī.

352 meic Ianen] sic M; deest BY 353 deest BY; The father of Lamech was Methuselah. The reading in M is uncertain. The list in M is longer than that in either B or Y. 354 Pau saoi sidhein Y 2471 355 O na hairnig iarum Y 2472 356 for gach leith do Y 2474–75 357 iet ider biathad et etugud in Y 2476 358 bliadhna in taispenta Y 2478 359 anais Y 2478 360 co torracht a schol ina dochum di cach aird B 171–72 361 i gcionn deich mbliadan Y 2481 362 MS ⟨ tꝫ ⟩ 363 is and doreibed in Gaedelg Y 2482 364 Ionain Y 2483 365 sic M; rochin Fenius a[c] cumdach Y 2484–85 366 Berla nEpraide tantum Y 2488–89 367 sic (?); deest BY 269

138vb Eber ainm in dara comlearda368 .lxx. ro·boi ic denum in Tuir369 ⁊ is aice oenur do·ruaraid in berla do·rorait Dia do Adam. Conid de sin do·gairt(h)er in berla Eb(raide) no Abramda .i. berla nEb(raide) insen.

65 Iar tiachtain tra dona deisciplaib on foglaim ⁊ iar taisbęnadh a ngressa ⁊ a cuarta do Feinius is and sin co·n-atgetar gosin suidh do Grecaibh berla na·bet ac neoch ele do tebe doib as na ilberlaib sin acht comad aco-som a n-aenur no·beth in berla sin. Conid ar sin tra ar·rict doib a mberla tobaide cona fortormaigib .i. berla Fene .i. brethemnas ⁊ iarmberla .i. ‘dano’ ⁊ ‘tra’ ⁊ ‘im(morro)’ ⁊ ‘.i.’ ⁊ berla n-airberta .i. iarmberla nama, ar do·ranic berla n-airberta 70 ut est ‘cim’, ‘uim’, ‘oll’, ‘as’, ‘nuim’, ‘hipuin’, ‘crin’, ‘puinc’, ‘puincre’, ‘degoir’370 ⁊ berla n-etarscartach et(ir) fedaid371 airegdaib ind Oguim .i. ut est ‘ros’ .i. ‘ros lín’, ‘ros u(isce)’, ‘ros caillęd’, amal do·rind372 isin Duil Feada Maír ⁊ berla na filed asa·n-acallad cach dib araile ⁊ a n-gathberla373 fo·gni do chach et(ir) firu ⁊ mna.

b17 Goedel mac Ethoír meic Thoi meic Buidb meic Baracain 75 b16 do Greca- b18 -ib in dara sui ro·bi i comaitecht Feniusa is uadh ro·h-ainmniged Goedelg .i. ‘elg airderc’ insain .i. Goedel ro-s·irdarcaid374. Goedel Glas dano mac Agno(men)375 no Angein meic Gluinfind meic Laimfind meic side brathar athar do Feinius ⁊ ba suide dano conid e do·rathlaigh a mberla go Goedel mac Ethoir conid Goedel m376 o Goedel mac Agnomen 80 ⁊ Goedelg o Goedel mac Etheoir. Berla Fene ar·richt sund ⁊ iarmberla .i. Iar mac Etheoir ar·ranic. Feinius Farsaid tra ⁊ Iar mac Nema ⁊ Goedel mac Etheoir ar·rancatar na berla seo icon luc sainriudach dianadh ainm ‘Athena Ciuitas’ .i. ‘cathair’.

368 sic (?); ainm in toisigh Y 2548 369 Cf. In Lebor Ollaman: Da berla .lxx. lin na mberladh, air is da ingin .lxx. ro·badar ac Adhamh, no ar is da comairlid .lxx. ro·badar ic denum in Tuir no i fidair no da descepul .lxx. ro·bhadar ic Crist. 370 cim ... degoir] sic M (?); BY deest 371 sic 372 sic (?); amal doruirmisim Y 2512 373 sic for gnáthbérla 374 sic MY. From the denominative deponent verb airdircigidir ‘honours’, ‘praises’; cf. ros-irdarcaistar B 205; ros-irdharcaigestair E, roerdarcaigheastar D. The verbal ending in D is the expected Old Irish one. 375 MS ⟨agnō⟩; resolved as Agnomen due to the reading that follows shortly after (l. 79). 376 sic 270

IT e so sis anmand na da cenel .lxx. o ra·foglaintea na h-ilberla .i. Beithin, Sceithin, Scuit, Guit, Gaill, Germain, Point, Poimpil, Moid, Moirnd, Luind, Scill, Luigoin, Oig, Ireair, 85 Cicir, Ciclaid, Cret, Corsic, Sardain, Roid, Ricir, Roman, Mair, Masail, Moair, Macidoin, Morcai, Nan, Niarmus, Norith, Niarmuin, Nombith, Brais, Bretain, Boaid, Mais, Magaig, Munaind, Amais, Gairg, Galaigh, Achaidh, Atham, Tesaldai, Airt, Alltain no Allain, Albain, Orcain, Ocetlail, Espain, Goith, Guau377, Grindi, Sarinind, Frainc, Fesin, Longbard, Lodain, Lacdemoin, Tesaldai, Traic, Troiandai, Dallmec, Dardain, 90 Thiaic, Etheoip, Egept, Indecdai, Brelmindai, Ebrei, Hircain.378

Berla sin tra cacha ciniulda379 dib seo ⁊ fer cacha berla dib ba he lin na scoile ⁊ tri suid ro·faided cach fer fria berla ⁊ ni cacha comceneoil do·cuaidh and dochum 380 a criche don foglaim acht is cach comberlaid, amal ro·gab Cai Cainbre(thach), dalta Feiniusa F(arsaid), in dara deiscipul .lxx. na scoile. Ba do Ebraib a bunadhus ⁊ ba co Egeptacdu ro·faided, 95 fobith is and batar a tusdidi ⁊ ba h-and ro·h-alt. Conid de sin as·bert i corp liubair: ‘Is cach comberl(aid) do·cuaidh and docum a criche ⁊ ni cach comcheneoil’.

Secht mblia(dna) dano ro·batar na descip(uil) oc foglaim ⁊ tri blia(dna) ac taisbeanadh, conad .x. mbliad(na) samlaidh, conid he sin at·bert i curp l(iubair): ‘cind .x. mbliad(an) iar scail(ed) doib on Tur ar cach lęth do·rebed doib a mberlasa’. Bai .u.-ir ar .xx.-it ba uaisli 100 dib. It e na n-anmanna sidhe for·tait fedha toebomna in Ogaim .i. Babel, Loth, Forand, Saliath, Nabcodon, Hiruath, Dauid, Telamon, Cai, Kaliap, Moriath, Gad, nGomer, Stru, Ruben, Achab, Ose, Uriath,

139ra Esu, Iochim, Ethrocius, Oirdinos, Uimelchius381, Iudonius, Effraim. Na .u. fęda airegdai ind fogaeƚ382 is on cuiciur ba h-uaisli dib ro·h-ainmnightea. At·berat dano fairend is 105 morfesiur ro383 uaisle dib ⁊ it .uii. fęda airegda filet and ⁊ it e da fid do·formagar risna

377 Guit Y 2538 378 The list yields 72 nations if all ‘names’ are counted, meaning that what were originally adjectives in apposition were taken as names of nations in the course of transmission. 379 Reading somewhat uncertain. 380 dochum a Y 2546 381 or: ⟨Iumelchıus⟩ 382 sic with expansion sign through the last letter. Cf. ind ogaim Y 2565 and further down at fol. 139ra23. 383 sic 271

coic suas ᚛ᚘᚖ ⁊ it e feda ⁊ toebomna ainmnigter on coiciur ar .xx. ropo uaisliu isin scoil .i. ᚛ᚁ ᚂ ᚃ ᚄ ᚅ ᚆ ᚇ ᚈ ᚉ ᚊ ᚋ ᚌ ᚍ ᚎ ᚏ ᚐ ᚑ ᚒ ᚓ ᚔ ᚕ ᚖ ᚗ ᚘ ᚙ.

Cate loc ⁊ amser, persu ⁊ tucait scribaínd ind Airaciuchta? Nī. Loc do Emain Macha ⁊ i n-aimsir Concobair meic Nesa ar·richt a denam. Tugait dano a denmna .i. do breith aesa 110 faínd for ses. Fercerne384 fíli do-s·rigni. Cęnd Faelad mac Ailella ro·n-athnugestar í nDaire Lurain i n-aímsír Aeda meic Ainmirech imalle la h-irmoir in berlai385.

INcipit Eraiciucht na nEces .i. ‘er’ cach toísech.386 Cid dianid toiseoch son? Nī. Don tobu ro·toibged isin nGoeḷdęlg387 uair is (ed) toisech ar·ríct oc Feinius iar tiachtain don scoil gusna h-ilberlaib amuigh cach son fordorca ro·bai in cach berlai is (ed) do·rathad isin 115 nGoedelg uair is forleithi anda cach berla. Er cach toisęch d(idiu) .i. is sed ro·ba toesechu lasna filedu cach son fordorcha do riachtaín i tosuch .i. Bethe-Luis-Nin ind fOgaím fobith dorchatad.

Cs̄: Cia thugaít ‘berlai tobaide’ don Gaedelg? Nī. Fobith do·robadh ar gach ni do-na·frith ainmnigud isna berlaib ailib, fo·rith doib isin nGoedelg ar a forlethet sęch gach mberla. 120 Cs̄: Ni·raibi in Goedelg resíu do·robad? Ro·baí em. Cade a demnigud? Nī. Ar ní·faigebtar na da berla .lxx.-a chena!388 Cs̄: Cia tír í·rugadh? Nī. I n-Egept. Cs̄: Cia rand saindrad a·rucadh? Nī. Co Mag Acu. Cia h-airm isin tir ata? Nī. Isan rand iarthardescertaigh in tiri. Cs̄: cia don scoil do·chuaidh í suidíu? Nī. Goedel mac Eithoir meic Thoi meic Baracham do Grecaib Scithia. Cs̄: cia meit do·n-ucí di? Nī. A h-uilidetu genmotha an-i

384 sic 385 na sgreaphtra Y 2650 386 As noted in the section on the structure of Auraic. na nÉces, The Lecan Glossary gives the meaning úasal (‘noble’, ‘honourable’) for ér (further eDIL s.v. ér). Read: ‘... for every beginning is noble’. 387 sic, with punctum delens under the ⟨l⟩. 388 I interpret this (end of 139ra39) as a punctus with positura (marking the end of a section). This punctuation mark is not found in the other manuscripts or indeed elsewhere in M (the copy of Auraic. na nÉces). The punctus exclamativus/admirativus, on the other hand, was invented by Iacopo Alpoleio di Urbisaglia (close to Macerata) in the 1360s. It was later used by Coluccio Salutati and reached France and Germany in the beginning of the 15th century. Its presence in an Irish manuscript from the late 14th century (c. 1392–94) seems improbable, although perhaps not to be ruled out completely. It does not have the appearance of being a later addition. Another possibility is that it is the beginning of a letter with a punctum delens below it (but this mark is often fainter in this hand, Macalister’s scribe U, and the following letter is a ⟨C⟩ and thus the stroke would be unmotivated). See the résumé of M. Jean Vezin’s article “Coluccio Salutati et Gasparino Barzizza et l’origine du point d’exclamation et des signes de parenthèse”, in Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (1980: 91). 272

125 do·rormachtar filidh iar tiachtaín go Feinius. Cia berla dona dib berlaib .lxx.-a ro·taisęlbadh do Fenius i tosuch? Nī. Berla Fene .i. Goedelg, fobith is (ed) ro·ba tochu laís don scoil int-i ro·taisbenastar ua(ir) is e do·fuarcaib asa etid ⁊ ua(ir) is e tosęch rucad on tus389 ⁊ is e as forlęthu sęch cach mberla. Is airi-sin do·raisęlbadh390 i tosuch ⁊ ar ro·baí Ebra ⁊ Grec ⁊ Laiten oc Fenius resiu thisad asin Scithia. Is aire nac·richt a les a 130 n-athdeimnigud do ocon Tur. Cs̄: Na·rabe isna berlaib ni badh uaisliu do riachtain i tosiuch ata in Goedelg? Ni·raibi em, uair is i ro·ba chuibdhiu fri rad ar a h-etruma ⁊ ara mine ⁊ ara forlethet. Cid armad forlethu andas gach bescnu? Nī. Fobith is (ed) cetna bescna rucad on Tur. Ba mete comad lethiu andas gach bescna.

Cade loc ⁊ aimsęr, persu ⁊ tugait scribaind don Goedelg? Nī. Loc di Tor Nęmruadh. 135 Aimsir di aimsir cumdaigh in Tuir la claind Adhaim. Persu di Sachar mac Rochiminrumichos391 .i. ainm aili uair is ed ro-do-s·f-uc ⁊ Goedel mac Etheoir meic Thoi meic Baracham do Grecaib Scithia. Tugait scribind di .i. Tor Nęmruadh do cumtuch. As·berat araile conid tugait di Goedel do dul isin tir i·rrucad fo-

139rb

-bith is e toisęch ro-da·scrib i taiblib ⁊ i lleacaib isin luc shenradach dianid ainm 140 Calcanensis no is e Sacab ro-da·scribastar ar tus. At·berat araile combad aenlebur int ule ⁊ conad he-seo annuas a loc-[aimse]rad. At·berat uero fairend connad oenlebar acht libair imdai ⁊ ni h-inand locaimseradh doib392. Is e loc aimser in cetlibair iarsin cetfaid-so .i. loc do Daire Luran ⁊ aimsęr do aimsęr Domnaill meic Aedha meic Ainmirech. Persu Cend Faelud. Tucait a denma .i. a inchind dermait do beim a cind Cind Foelad i Cath Maigi 145 Rath.

At·tat da ernail forsind aipgitir Latindacda .i. guthai ⁊ consonain. Sunt atait a rithinledach393 isin Latin in foc(al) is ‘atat’. A inde dano ‘atat’, da ai i n-ait .i. ai gutha ⁊ ai consonain. A airbert im(morro) do·aidet uait ⁊ do·aitnet uait ⁊ tiagat uait .i. i fedhaib ⁊ i foclaib

389 sic for on Tur 390 The other manuscripts have formations from the Middle Irish simple verb taiselbaid (e.g. ro·taiselbad). The form in M is probably the older one with the preverbal augment in stressed position. See also Ahlqvist (1983: 57–58).

391 Rochemurchos B 40; Ruicimorcus Y 2324 392 adberait araile comad aonleapar int Uraicept uile ⁊ comad he so a log-aimser Y 2331–33 393 sic (the initial f- is missing) 273

⁊ i srethaibh roscad ⁊ airchedail on filidecht, no gomad ‘totus’ a bun(ad) Laitin ind foc(ail) 150 is ‘atat’, ut d(icu)nt alii .i. do·thoit comlain na h-aip[....]394 do·beir frecra ar atait tri h-ernaile for bun(ad) .i. bun(ad) iar fogar tantum ⁊ bun(ad) iar ceill t(antu)m ⁊ bun(ad) iar ceill, fogar bun(ad) iar cosmailius, fog(air) nama di(diu) totus .i. uili din focal is ‘atat’. Da ernail .i. da dul395 fęardha no da dul arda no da erdul .i. da uasaldul no da firnaill no da firinnell no erdedail no da firdual no da erdual. IS iat sin a tri or ⁊ a tri er ⁊ a tri fir in 155 Uiraicęchta .i. lanfogar ⁊ defogar. Is e dual na ngutha lęthgutthas396 ⁊ muti[..] ⁊ tinfed. Is e dual na consain. Aipgitir .i. ond-i is ‘aipgitorium’ .i. in tindscedal no ‘epi-’ no ‘thepi ugtair’ no ‘epi icc duar’ .i. foc(al) no ‘epi ic tur’ .i. ro·icadh ocon Tur no aipgitir air is i aipgiges a bescna do cach no aipg(itir) ond-i .i. as cinniud no cend no tosach no clethe no aipg(itir) .i. ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’ ⁊rl., no is ‘aipg(itir)’ o Gaedeilg, ‘incipit’ a Laten, [..]397 a Greic, 160 ‘abeccedibum’ a hEbra ⁊ is e sin amain in dul coir ar is lor do thaithmiuch gach focal a breith go bunad Latindai .i. o Latin mac Puin meic Pic meic [ ]airnd398. Dicta est Latinitas ⁊ Latindai uaside no Latindai a latitudine .i. on lęthet d(icta) est ar a leithiu .i. na berla Eb(raide) no Grecda, ar is iar Togail Troe ro·boi Laitin [..]399 fada remi-side ro·fodlait na berlai ro·bai Latinitas o sin ille. No Latin .i. ‘luit inne’ .i. ‘luaidit inde’. Ed on .i. ‘ed a oen’ 165 a erniud no ‘ed a oin’ .i. aen eolaig no [..] in so on .i. is e so a fail remum. Gutta .i. ‘gut fothai’ .i. fotha in g(uth) iat no ‘guthfoiti’ .i. iarsini foidit g(uth) treothu no ‘guth-seta’ .i. seta in gotu no ‘gutheta’ .i. iarsinni etait g(uth) a n-oenur, ut Donatus dicit: ‘Uocales dicuntur que per se quidem proferuntur ⁊ per se sillabam faciunt’ .i. ‘guthai aderar gu demin rui400 or do·niat sillad leo fein ⁊ guth’. Et Prisicianus401 d(ixit): ‘Uocales dicuntur 170 que per se uocem .i. guth efficiuntur .i. do·niat uel sine isna necmais quibus sein .i. guth uox litteralis .i. literdai proferri .i. turgabail non p(otes)t’. Consain .i. ‘cumma suin’ no ‘cainsuin’ suin caine no ar is caimiti inn erlabrea fogar na gutha ⁊ na consain inte. Consain ond-i .i. comfograigte[..]ar as consonantes .i. iarsin fo·graigit la gutha do gres.

394 na haipgitre Y 2651 395 Cf. Y’s ernduil (2694), which seems to be represent a form that the following etymologies are based on, extracting the lexeme dúil ‘element’, ‘thing’. 396 sic (?) 397 apix B 253, aipex Y 2714 398 Sadairn Y 2724 399 ⁊ is fada Y 2727 400 sic (?) 401 sic (?) 274

Atat dano da ernail fon Bethe-Luis-Nin ind fOgaim .i. feda ⁊ taebomnai .i. uair is da 175 er(nail) filet forsin aipg(itir) Latin. Da ernail

139va dano for Bethe-Luis-Nin ind Og(aim). Da n-ui insin .i. ue caingen .i. in chaingen reamuinn ⁊ ind ui inar ndiaidh .i. in caingen forsin mBethe-L(uis)-Nin in Oguama no forsin mBethe eolais litterda. D(a)no .i. ‘da nai’ insin .i. in dai remoind ⁊ in dai inar ndiaidh. For Bethe-Luis-Nin .i. for bitheolas litterda ar is ainm Nin do gach littir, no 180 Bethe-Luis-Nín ainm aipgitrech ind Og(aim). Ut d(icitu)r: ‘Aipgitir a, b, c, d’ ⁊rl., ar is is402 do is ainm aipgi(tir) don-ni do·inscain oa. Bethe-Luis-Nin ainm aipg(itir) in Og(aim) ar is o be[...]403 do·inscanand ind Og(am) .i. ind oguama, ar is de uagtir co h-ogh in h-erlabrai no Og(am) .i. ‘ogh uaim’ ina foclaib cid a h-ogh cucum ina litrib no Ogum o Ogma mac Ealadhan meic Delbaith, air is e sidhe ar·rainic litri na Scot gosna 185 h-anmannaib filet forru indiu, ut est in Britania .i. in libro .i. lebar autem isto nomine [ ]n-ainm seo uocatur uel lingua tenga. Feda .i. fid. Atat da gne for fid .i. fid aicnid ⁊ fid fęrda404 saerda. Fid saerda cetomus: Fegthar da bun(ad) aice .i. on bre(ithir) as .i. fundoas .i. fothigim no a nomine ‘fudamentum’405 .i. fotha feda iarum .i. fotha iarsinni as fotha fog(air) isin Goedelg in guth(aigi). A inde im(orro) .i. fo aed .i. is maith a ed isin foc(al) aile as aicentu 190 ar fein fair .i. caill no daire ar ind focal is ‘fid’ in tan bis ic sloind feda aic(enta). Guth(aige) autem no consu406 fair in tan bis ic sloind feda soerdai. Coit(chend) de dano a thabairt fria sloindiud uile etir fidh saerda ⁊ aicenta. Diles do fid saerda, ruidles immorro do fid aic(enta). Inles dano a thabairt for losaib feda in tan is fid aic(enta) .i. fri sloind aitind no ḟraith ⁊rl., no fri lęgthacaibh no for uel n(ialus)407 nihil in tan as f(id) serda [...]ecta408 in 195 secthta409 sin do iarraidh in cach foc(al) Goedelge. Fid aic(enta) immorro fid na caille .i. fo aed i n-airddi no fo aed .i. a thene no for aed .i. a foscud foa bsuth410 .i. [...... ] immorro a

402 sic with diplography 403 o bethe Y 2807 404 Marked with puncta delentia in the manuscript. 405 sic 406 sic 407 no for fonialus Y 2835; in M nialus (if this be correct) is abbreviated ⟨nł⟩. 408 et is techta Y 2835. The beginning of this line in the manuscript as well as the following five lines are damaged, with limited legibility. 409 sic 410 sic; a suth Y 2845 275

inne. Et taebomnai .i. ‘toebuamai’ ai ai411 .i. ond-i as ‘aio’ no do [...... ]na mor biti412 no toebuaimnęca .i. airsan ni·teipter [...... ]al413 essib.

Da ernail dano forsna consonaibh [...... ] .i. lęthgutha ⁊ mute .i. lasin Laidneoir .i. iarsin 200 [...... ]es414 co treorach no iarsinni fores cach ni isin Laitin. [...]etgutha .i. i llęth in gotha fo·certait415 na fogrugudh no luit no luaidit guth. Lęthg(utha) iat ⁊ ni iarsindi comad leth g(uth) no·beth intib acht iarsindi nad·rochet lanfogar, ut P(riscianus) d(ixit): ‘Semidei ⁊ semiuiri non quia dimediam partem uirorum uel deorum h(abent), sed quia pleni dei uel uiri non sunt’ .i. ‘lęthdhee ⁊ lętfir416 acht cia techtait in dara rand deedh no in dara [...fęr] 205 acht ni fir lana ⁊ ni dee lana ⁊ amal in bale [....]417’. ‘Quidquid in duas partes diuid(itur) altera pars dicitur seimis’ .i. ‘cid craed fo·dailter in da rand is semis in dara rand’. Et mute .i. ond-i as muta .i. amlobur ⁊ ni iarsindi batis amlabra do·raith ar ata f[....]418 intibh cid bec ut P(riscianu)s dicit: ‘INformis m(ulier) d(icitur) non quia caret forma sed quia male formata est’ .i. ‘nochon [...... air] aderar419 bęn nemchrutha ria ar gan cruth aicce acht ar 210 olcas a crotha’. Sic d(icuntur) mute .i. ‘as amlai sin raitir na muiti’ ⁊ ni iar nemfogar acht ar terce a fog(air) no muti .i. ‘miati’ no miḟogar. INa lethgutai cetumus: a tustidi remib. INa muti im(orro), a tustidi ina n-diaid do suidib. Cetomus .i. cetomus no cetnaidi iar ses no conabad ecen a thathmech etir ar is ‘o’ quidem ata na tath[..]gt(h)er420 in timorr ‘o’ fil i cluasaibh na muti. A tuistide .i. in lucht o·ta a tuistigud .i. na feda do suidibh .i. dona 215 h-aib edaib .i. dona caing(nib)421 dligthecaibh no do shu[..]id422 .i. doibsen.

Nirba immarcaidid423 son lasin Goe-

411 sic with diplography 412 do thaobaiph na n-oumna mor bit Y 2853–54 413 iarsinni teipiter damna na focul B 414–15; the unexpected reading in M must owe to a slight confusion between word boundaries. 414 iarsinni laithres Y 2911 415 Note the absolute ending (Old Irish fo·cerdat). 416 Uncertain reading. 417 oile Y 2922 418 fogur Y 2937 419 sic (?) 420 thaithmiger Y 2950 421 MS ⟨caıg̅⟩ 422 suidhiph Y 2954 423 sic 276

139vb -del cid armad aicned doib dib linaib a nguth remib ⁊ ina ndiaidh .i. nirbo immarcaidi lasin nGoedel ani sin? Nī. Ar seichem nGrec, ar ropo do Grecaib do Fenius ar ıs̅424 fil acu side tinscetal na consan uaidib fein ⁊ a forba i nguth(agaib)425. Ar ni·filet lęthgutha ic 220 Grecaib fon cuma filet ic Laitin no is ar a n-uaisliu nirbail426 a mbeith ar tus amal atait ocon Laitin. Ut d(icitu)r: ‘Omne uile prius p(onitur)427 omne bonum post p(onitur).’428 Cid armad a͞ıc429 .i. armad dliged togaide no armad aignithe dib lin(aib) .i. dona lęthguth(aib) remib .i. isna lęthg(uthaib) ⁊ ina ndiaidh isna mutib ⁊ nirbo coir on.

Ar is ed ba immarcaidi la suidiu comba da toisęch da·uirised lais ⁊ a ndedenach do cor uadh 225 conid muiti uili in Bethe-Luis-Nin ind Og(aim) acht fęda nama. ‘Lasin suid’ .i. la Goedel mac Ethioir no la in saide .i. comad a[..]430 as tosach .i. in guth ocon Lait(neoir) ⁊ na lethg(utha) fo deoid intib aice .i. commad isin nguth no·beth forba na consan .i. in muit do chor ar tus .i. conid foghnam muti uili .i. ata bitheolas literda ind Og(aim) .i. a tinscedal uaidib fen ⁊ a forba in guth(agaib). Cindas as fír sin, ar ni in guth(aigi) forbanait431 ule, ut 230 ‘fern’, ‘s(ail)’, ‘n(in)’ ⁊rl.? IS edir na mute a tinscedal uadib fein ⁊ a forba in guth(aigi) ⁊ cid uaidib fein tinnscinter. Ni i ṅguth(agaibh)432 forbaiter. Nī. Ni·thabair int ugdar in arim na·fil on guth(aigi) sis etir acht amal bid ‘fern’, ‘s(ail)’, ‘n(in)’ no·beth and, no ni mo ind-i ara·n-apraiter ‘muti’ friu ar ara tinscetal uaithib fen ⁊ ata do litribh ind Og(aim) sin ⁊ ni h-ecen comaisti433 do iarra434 do littrib índ Og(aim) ⁊ do muitib na Laitni ar is i 235 nguth(agaib) forbait-sem435 do gres. Forbaiter im(morro) littri índ Og(aim) i

424 M is corrupt and the manuscript reading has been kept above. Cf. ar ni filet B 515, Y 2984. 425 Cf. the expansion of ⟨gut⟩ as guthagaib in Calder (e.g. Y 3001). 426 sic (?); uird B 516, Y 2985 427 prius ponitur B 517, Y 2987 428 post ponitur B 517, Y 2987 429 Left as in the manuscript. 430 Uncertain reading. Cf. inndi Y 3001 431 forphaighter Y 3011. The verb is for·fen ‘finish’, ‘brings to an end’ (see eDIL s.v. for-fen), treated here (in M) as a simplex forbanaid, with the absolute 3rd pl. ending (this use is found also at e.g. BB fol. 297a47). 432 Ni a nguthag aiph forphaighter Y 3010–11 433 co mad aisdi Y 3015 434 sic (without marks of abbreviation). Cf. Calder’s expansion do ierraidh Y 3016 435 forbaigter-side Y 3017 277

nguth(agaibh), ut: ‘bethe’, ‘tinde’ ⁊rl. ⁊ i muti, ut: ‘huath’, ‘queirt’ ⁊rl. Muti iarum iat, ar is o mutib tindscainit acht feda t(antu)m436 .i. amain armad iat-sen is o guth(agaibh) tindscainit.

INsce tra. Cís lir insci do·cuisín? Nī. [...]437 .i. ferinsci ⁊ baninsci ⁊ deminsci lasin nGoedeilg. Masculin femen ⁊ neutur lasin Laitneoir. INsce—oratio uel scientia a bunad 240 L(aitni) .i. ‘inne scientie’ .i. in fęssa no ‘indi siu’ iar coi .i. iar conair no ‘insci’ .i. coi indisti nęch a inde. Urlabar no rad airbert438. Coit(chend) do don insci .i. a thabairt fri cach n-insce etir ciallaide ⁊ n(eam)ciallaide439 saerda ⁊ aic(enta). Dilius .i. a thabairt fri cach n-insce n-aic(enta) etir fęrinsce ⁊ baninsce. Ruidles a thabairt fri cach ferinsce aic(enta) nama. Ar is fer toisech ro·raidh insci .i. Adam dicens: ‘Ecce os de ossibus meis’ ⁊rl., .i. ‘ac 245 seo cnaim dom cnamaibh’ ⁊rl. INles immorro a thabairt fri h-insi440 saerda r̅441. Tra .i. doroi .i. do iarraidh insci chugaind in ais(neis)442 iar n-inesin443 aipgitre. Cis lir .i. cia lin? Tri imcomarnigh dano filet lasin nGoedel.444 i n-ill(ar)445 ⁊ a tri i n-uath(ad). I n-ill(ar) em .i. ‘cis lir’, ‘citne’, ‘cadiat’. I n-huath(ad) immorro .i. ‘cis’, ‘cuin’, ‘cid’. Do·cuisin .i. ‘do usin’ insce no do·cuisin .i. ‘don choi sin’ .i. don conair sin, no ‘do choi ind-i sin’ no 250 discnaigter .i.446

Cia lin atat na-hi so?447 Ni h-annsa son .i. ni dolig la suid insin no ni h-ansa la suid in son no ni anso sono .i. ni dolig no ni anand sin inso no. A tri .i. iar n-airium. Atat dano tri ernaile for numir .i. numir anforbthi amal atat a tri, ar ni·asat o chotib. Numir448 immorro amal atat a se, ar tairisidh o cortib449 .i. oen a sessed450, a do a trian, a tri a lęth. In t-oen 255 iarum ⁊ na do ⁊ na tri, a se sin. Numir ollforb(thi) amal atat: a .xii., ar is (se)dec astoit

436 acht fedha nama Y 2021 437 The number is illegible due to wear. See Y 3023. 438 A airpert .i. erlapra no rad ⁊rl Y 3031 439 Spelt ⟨n~cıallaıde⟩. 440 sic 441 Left as in the manuscript. 442 MS ⟨aıs̅⟩. Cf. BY. 443 iar n-indisin Y 3040 444 A tri a n-ilar Y 3042; deest M 445 Abbreviated ⟨ıꝉꝉ⟩. 446 Nothing follows ‘.i.’. 447 sic; Cia lion atat na hinnsge Y 3047 448 foirbthi Y 3052; deest M 449 ar tairisigh co cóir o quoitibh Y 3052 450 Cf. Y 3053 278

doib451 .i. oen a aile dec. A do a sesed, a tri a chętramad, a .iii. a trian, a se a leth in t-oen iarum ⁊ numir isin as fuilliu ara bunad tria na quoitidecht is cach a quoitide as ranaide ⁊ ni cach

140ra rannaide as quoitidi. Fęrinsci .i. ferr anda insci na mna no fer(insce) .i. ‘forinsce’ .i. iarsindi 260 fores im dul do lugi no ‘ferrda insci’ in sin no ‘uir insci’ a ‘uiro’. Baninsci .i. ‘boninsci’ .i. insci maith no bo452insci .i. foinsci ind ḟir bis no ban(da)453 .i. incsci banda insin. Deminsci .i. ‘deminsci’ no ‘doeeminsci’454 furri o neoch aile no ‘dibeoinsci’ .i. indsce dimbeoigthe .i. innsce sluindęss do liai455 no an demi fil and is on bre(thir) as .i. digbaim ‘demo’ ata, ar ro·digbait fuirri in deda romaind no demhe cach neotur lasin Lait(neoir) no lasin Fil(id) 265 nGoedel(ach). Deminsci di(diu) .i. insci neotur. Mascul .i. ‘moo a schol’456 no a scol q(uam) an femen.457 Mascul .i. ond-i as ‘masculus’ .i. ferrda masculus ondo as ‘mas’ .i. ‘fęr’. Femen .i. ‘famin’ .i. foḟir no a ‘femore’ uel a ‘femina’458 .i. o mnaa ⁊ a sliasait air is and is bean didhiu in tan fo·gnait(h)er da sliasait is bęn. Noetur .i. ondi as neutrum .i. nemnęchtarda .i. ni mascul no ni feimin. Cs̅: Cade deochair eturru? Nī. No-s·deligidar a 270 tri urlaind insce .i. is e, is i, is ed. Is e in fer, is i in bęn, is ed in nęm. ‘C(eist)’ .i. ‘cia h- aisc’ no is on bre(thir) as ‘ciscor’ .i. imcomarcim. Cade .i. cia h-ait i·tai? Deochair .i. deochrugud eturru .i. etir da ai ro-s·deligidar .i. no-s·dedualaigidar. A tri ur(landa)459 .i. a tri firluind no a tri erlaind no a tri remluind. Cuin as urlond, cuin as insce, cuin as etargaire?

451 oir is he i sé déc fasai t estiph Y 3057 452 There is a little stroke on the right side of the stem of this ⟨b⟩. 453 Following Calder 1917. The abbreviation is a suspension stroke: ⟨ba⟩. 454 Cf. doeim innsge Y 3074 455 sic; do phiu Y 3080 456 Perhaps to be interpreted here as the copula (relative) with lenition, but compare the readings of Y and D. 457 Cf. moo a fis ⁊ a col quam col na mna B 605. The reading in M (also Y, but not Eg) is obviously corrupt. 458 Cf. B 608. Calder (1917: 46, app. cr.) cites Etymologiae XI, 1, 106; 2, 21; 2, 24 as a parallel to this passage. See also the 4th-century grammarian Flavius Sosipater Charisius (ed. Barwick 1964: 31.23ff.; 109.5ff.; 166.25), which offers a closer parallel to the text of B than does Isidore, as well as Priscian (GL vol. II.:238.9ff.; 454.1ff.) and Servius’s In Vergilii Aeneidem comentarii, 10: 344, 788 (ed. Thilo 1883–84: 430, 467). Both Charisius and Priscian have taken this passage from an earlier source (possibly the 2nd century Flavius Caper or Pliny the Elder). I would like to thank Francesca Guido at the Classics Department at NUI Galway for this observation. 459 Cf. Calder’s expansion of the abbreviated form at Y 3098. 279

Is e, is i, is ed. Erlond em in tan do-s·bi fri araill, ut: ‘is e in fer’ ⁊rl. Insce immorro in tan 275 at·berar ‘is e’ nama cen araill fris. Etargaire im(morro) etir femen ⁊ mascul no is etargaire in tan deocraige fri-s·n-aicin aile co n-ainm a athar remrud, ut d(ixit) Mac Lonain cuīce460:

‘Unse chucut in gillucan, mac rerucan. Bidh gach maith and ar a cinucan, 280 a cellucan.’ 461

Urlond riam urlond q(uidem) .i. indi is hi re se462 ⁊ re si ⁊ re sed no ind s(ed)463. Urlond inund etir da urlond iar n-urlond immorro .i. ind e no ind i no ind edh464. Urlond inund etir da urlond nachdat inunda .i. ind s(e)465 indund fil in cach foc(ul). Ata dano deda in cach insce .i. aic(enta) ⁊ eladhu .i. ferinsce aic(enta) ‘is e in fer’. Ferinsce saerda: ‘is e in 285 nem’. Baninsce aic(enta): ‘is i in ben’. Baninsce saerda: ‘is i in cloch’. Deminsce aic(enta): ‘is (ed) in nemh’. Deminsce saerda .i. ‘is (ed) a cend’. Cs̅: Cuin ima·n-airic etir in indsci ⁊ in duil? Nī. In tan fedair a insci coir fuirri in imarcaidi im(morro) etir etarru. In tan fedair insci na dula for araile .i. ferinsce for baninsce, no baninsce for ferinsce no deminsce for nęchtar n-ai. Imarcidi .i. ‘imaric a n-ai’466 .i. etir ind insci ⁊ in duil. Fedair .i. do·fairgit(h)er 290 no fedair .i. ‘fiadair’ .i. aisinter insci coir, ut est:

‘Samail a delba—cen cleth— Elba ingene Indaig467. Fri tor468 ngrene glaine ar gurt, is fris samlaim a caemcucht.’

460 Left as in the MS. 461 In B (705–710) this poem is quoted in another context, without the attribution to (Flann) mac Lonáin, illustrating the difference between the pronoun sé and the form uinnse (of uncertain etymology). In Y, it is quoted twice, at 3463–66 in the same context as in B, at 3110–13 in the same context as in M above. See the abbreviated stanza at fol. 140vb18 below (the context of which corresponds to that of Y 3463–66). 462 iní rie se no rie si no re séudh Y 3116 463 sic (?); MS ⟨s⟩. See previous note. 464 in se no in si no in sedh Y 3117 465 sic (?); see Calder’s expansion at Y 3117. 466 MS ⟨ımarıc|anaı⟩ with a faint vertical stroke to indicate the word-boundary. 467 Fidaidh Y 3155 468 gour Y 3157 280

295 Ni h-imarcaidi .i. ni h-imairc etir da n-ai .i. ind insci ⁊ in duil .i. indisiu aile fair acht a indisiu coir. Fedair emh ferindsce for baninsce in tan is·berar ‘is e in banmac-so’, ut d(icitur):

‘Mad misi bad banmacan ni·carfaínd nach felmacan. 300 Fer na·fintar co·cluinter slanceill ceill duib a muinnter.’

Fedar dano baninsce for ferinsce in tan is·berar ‘is i in gabair’, ut d(icitur):

‘IS i in gabair trath is ech. Is e in gabur madh mechlech. 305 Is i in corr cid ler no-s·legh.469 Is e in minta cid banen.’

Fedair deminsci for ferinsci no baninsce in tan as·berar ‘is e a cend’ sech is cend fir-seon no mna. Deminsci for ferinsci q(uidem) ⁊ ut est:

‘Is he daigh derg dirgi dath 310 ris na·gabar cath na cith. Is ed cend is caimiu cruth fil for bruth for braini bith.’470

Deminsci for baninsci immorro, ut est:

‘Cend mna ro·mandair mo mhodh, 315 do-s·farraid dunni delm ndil. Is ed cend as granidiu sin do neoch fail for muin fo ním.’

Fedair dano baninsci ⁊ ferinsci for deminsci in tan as·berar ‘is i

140rb

in cloch’, ‘is e in lia’, ut d(icitur):

469 cid reil nus-reill Y 3171 470 Cf. the copy of the Treḟocal Tract in LL (Calder 1917: 268.5403–05; LL 38a), where this stanza is quoted. 281

320 ‘IS e in lia, lith ro·las, i sręthaibh suadh i senchas. Is ed ond iar n-aicniud ail. Is i in cloch iar saerdataid.’

Ata tra am(laid)471 sin aic(ned) ⁊ saerdatu in cach indsce, ar atait dia modh labartha filed 325 and .i. mod aic(enta) ⁊ mod saerda. Atat dano .iiii. fodhla for saerdataid .i. desf(ir)472 i rrannaide, amal ata ‘is e in banmac-sa’ ⁊ tucait binniusa, amal ata ‘is i in gabair’ ⁊ ilugud labartha, amal ro·gab lim ‘is (ed) a cend’. Cumri raidh, ut d(icitur): ‘rusc ime’ ⁊ ‘criathar arba’ ⁊ ‘lęstar us(ce)’473. Atat dano insci ata coit(chend) and etir ferinsce ⁊ baninsce ut cellach ⁊ buadach ⁊rl. Bit e dano insce cumaisc isin nGoedeilg amal bis in cenel474 330 cumascda isin Laitin, ut d(icitu)r: ‘minta’475 ⁊ ‘truit’ ⁊ ‘corr’ ⁊rl., .i. ‘is e in minta cid b(ainen)476 cid firen’.

Mad iar n-aicniud coir im(morro) na dula niba ainm ferinsce b12 no baninsce b14 do neoch do·fuisim ⁊ o·tusemar acht ba deine a n-aic(ned) ule olchena. Ataid dano 335 da ernail for tusmid .i. tusmid aic(enta) ⁊ tusmid saerd(a)477. Tuismid aic(enta) cetumus .i. gein omnai. Tusmid s(aerda) immorro, fer o thalmain ⁊ lubi, ar is ni don tal(main) fen in fer. Is tusmidi s(aerda) dano ut d(icitu)r: ‘Esba in tal(man) min478 tusmed clanna ⁊ ba deine olchena’ .i. ba sloind neus 479 dicit: ‘Omnium .i. [.....] rerum uocabula incorporalium sexu naturaliter carentium p480 artem g(rammaticam)481 esse ascribimus hoc est ne utrum .i.

471 MS ⟨a⟩. 472 deichfer Y 3205 473 Abbreviated ⟨u⟩ with a suspension stroke above. 474 MS ⟨ceneꝉ⟩. 475 menntan Y 3224 476 See Y 3226. 477 See Y 3231–32. 478 muna tuismed Y 3234 479 sic. The remainder of this sentence is missing in M. Cf. .i. pa sloind neutur int uile aiccenta ar chena, ut est Pompeus dixit Y 3235–36. The quotation is not found in B or indeed in Pompeius’s commentary on Ars maior (GL vol. V: 81–312). 480 leg. per 481 A verbatim parallel (rather: source) to this quotation has not been found. The reference to the Greeks implied by Calder’s majuscule (per arteim Graciam) should otherwise be specific enough to warrant the search for a source with relatively close wording. To me it seems possible that we should prefer an 282

340 nec masculinum nec femininum ut “hec iustitia”, “hec ueritas” ’ ⁊rl. Et Consentius dicit: ‘Quidquid per naturam sexus non assignatur neutrum haberi oportet sed ars cui uoluit gignere seu liquenter seu decenter ascribit482 iar saerdataidh’ .i. ‘cach ni nach·follsigter tra ecusc naturda is egen a beth neotarda acht cid cuidh dar bail483 le h-eledhain tuismitugudh tuarascbalaigidh iar sardataid’.

345 Cid in-ni as aic(enta) raiter sund? Nī. Faillsigud aug484 co·n-abair: ‘Natura est q(uae) nec uariatur per tempora nec mutatur nec seperabilis485 est’ .i. ‘is i is natuir and in-ni nach·ecsamlaigt(h)er tre amseraib ⁊ nach·cloechmot(h)er ⁊ nach sodeligthi’.486

‘Natura non est quidquid motatur ⁊ non sdare uideatur487 ⁊ q(uae)cumq(ue) ex no in trinsecus accid(untur) sed constant in se ut stabilitas in terra, guruitas in lapidibus, 350 humiditas in aqua, claritas in aere, calor in igne’ .i. ‘Is i is natuir and cach ni nach·chechmot(h)er ⁊ nach·faicther gu h-imellach acht a·tairisium inti fen .i. cobsaidecht i tal(main), truma i clochaib, fliuchaidecht i n-uisci, soilli i n-aer, tęs i tenidh’. Do·epenar dano deminsci a ferinsci no a baninsci ⁊ baninsci a deminsci amal ata isna remennaib ⁊ at e insin na deme thepide ⁊ na lanamna demi ⁊ a ngeinside. IT e inso desmírechta ina ndeme 355 tepide isna remennaib .i. ‘cend’, ‘cridi’, ‘fuluch’ a demi tepidi ind fir no lanamain in chind .i. ‘suil’, ‘fiacail’; ‘sreaband’ ⁊ ‘cru’ lanamain in craidi; ‘lurgu’ ⁊ ‘troig’ lan(amna) in fulaig

emendation per artem grammaticam (with ‘grammatical art’ opposed to ‘nature’). M abbreviates the word: ⟨gra⟩. Such a reading might be the cause of various expansions. Pompeius relatively frequently uses the expression per artem, which he distinguishes from per naturam (e.g. GL vol IV: 283.23). Another alternative might be per artium gratiam. 482 This attribution to the late fourth- or early fifth-century Gaulish grammarian Consentius is correct (GL vol. V: 344.1). Both Consentius and Agroecius are found in e.g. the French manuscript Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 432 (saec. ix med.; see Bischoff 1972). An Irish version of Ars maior, interpolated with substantial additions from Consentius, was exported to the Continent in the ninth century (Zetzel 2019: 296 with references). The citation could have entered Auraic. na nÉces at an early stage even though

it is absent in γ. See also p. 129 and 187–88. 483 sic (?) 484 foillsiugisgtair (sic) Y 3243 485 separabitur Y 3245 486 Note the fact that the translation, absent from Y, fits the Latin quotation (which differs slightly from that of Y). 487 Punctum delens above the ⟨a⟩? uidetur Y 3246 283

.i. na coisi.488 Gene dano na lanamna ndeme: .i. ‘abrachtur’489 ⁊ ‘malu’, gene na sula; ‘bun’ ⁊ ‘leithe’, gen ind fiacla; ‘tanaitiecht’ ⁊ ‘dath’, g(ene)490 in tsreb(aind);491 ‘tigi’492 ⁊ ‘dath’ beus .i. ruaidi, g(ene) in cru; ‘tond’ .i. deirgi no baini no glaisi ⁊ ‘lid’, g(ene) na traiged; 360 ‘crocend’, ‘feith’, g(ene) na lurgan.

Secht n-etairgaire tra do·cusnet .i. a ngrad etargaire493 a ainm lasin Fil(id), etargaire n- incoisc494 i persaind, etargaire n-incoisc495 persainde, etargaire persand ngnim496, etar(gaire) p(ersainde) i cesad, etargaire derscaite i nderscugud .i. posit ⁊ comparait ⁊ superlait lasin Laitin. Fothugudh ⁊ forran ⁊ formolad lasin Fil(id). ‘Maith’ ⁊ ‘ferr’, ‘ferr- 365 son’ lasin nGoedel497. Etar(gaire) mete i metugud .i. ‘mor’ ⁊ ‘moo’ ⁊ ‘moo-son’. Etargaire lugaigthe i lugugudh .i. ‘bec’ ⁊ ‘lugu’ ⁊ ‘lugu-son’. Sechdai .i. ‘septem’ a bunadh .i. sechtnai a inne no is oighthe dia·mbe in eolas ⁊ saigthe dia·mbe in eolas i saigte. Etargaire .i. ‘etar-

140va

-coraigthe’ no gair .i. guth. Etargaire dano etarnugud gotha no etargaire .i. etir glethe .i. glend eturru. A ngrad .i. ondi as ‘gradus’ .i. cem on deligthi .i. caindeligthi, ar in connelg 370 ule do·ber, ut d(icitur)r: ‘Pars pro toto ⁊ totum pro parte’ .i. ‘rand ar son toit ⁊ toit ar son raind’. Cid arnach treda lasin Fil(id) ind etargaire amal is treda lasin Laiti(neoir)? In connelc is treda emh lasin Filid .i. incosc ⁊ inne ⁊ in met498. At·berat fairend na fil acht deda nama lasin Laiti(neoir) .i. inde ⁊ met .i. ‘bonus’ ⁊ ‘malus’—isi in inde, ‘magnus’, ‘paruus’—isi in met.

375 Cindas do-som a radh a ngrad connelg lasin Laiti(neoir) is etarg(aire) a ainm lasin Fil(id)? Ar ni·filet acht tri grad connelg lasin Laiti(neoir) ⁊ atait .uii. n-etairgaire ocon Fil(id)? Nī.

488 Lanamna in cind suil ⁊ fiecail, lanamna an cride sreband ⁊ cru, lanamna in fulaing lurcca ⁊ troig Y 3255– 56. The copular sentences in M are reversed. 489 A further testimony to the metathesized form mentioned at eDIL s.v. abrathcor. 490 Word-boundary is marked here with a faint vertical stroke. No mark of suspension is employed. 491 Following Calder 1917 (Y 3258). 492 tanoigecht Y 3258 493 [in] grad conne[i]lg lasin Laitneoir, etargaire a ainm lasin pfilid Y 3261–62 494 In the manuscript with a waved nasal stroke typically representing ⟨m⟩ rather than ⟨n⟩, which is correct here. 495 See previous note. 496 sic. The preposition i is lacking. 497 MS ⟨ngoedeꝉ⟩. 498 sic M; met Y 3288 284

Ni a499 dia cutrumugud etir do-som at·ber se-som sin acht is fir cena a mbeith amlaid. Cid forlethiu chena in etargaire ar in connelg? Ar ní cach etargaire as grad connelg acht etargaire derrscaíges t(antu)m. Is cach gradh connelg immorro as etarg(aire). Fili .i. felsiu 380 no fial siu no fili ondi as ‘philosophus’, ‘felsob’. Ar dlegar don Fil(id) corob fel(samnacht)500 acca no fili .i. ‘fi’ ⁊ ‘li’ .i. fi an-ni aeras ⁊ li an-ni molas. Cid armad grad connelg leseom in posit uair nocho·derscaigh501 do ni? Nī. Ar is i is fotha ⁊ is di a 502 derscaighther, ut d(icitu)r: ‘arim ri unair ⁊ ni arim acht fotha armhi’, ut d(icitu)r: ‘Unus non est numerus acht fundamentum numeri’ .i. ‘ni numir i[n]t oen acht fundamint 385 nuimrȩch’, amal ata dialt ocond i503 Ḟil(id) ⁊ ni deach cid la deacaib ad·rimht(h)er acht ar saerdataidh raid sin.

Cid armad ainm compariti do·berad-som arin connelg? Nī. Posit cet[um]us ni·derscaige[n]d504 do ni. Is superlait dano noco·derscaigther di. Comparait immorro sech derscaigid derscaigt(h)er di conid airi-sin is ainm forriata in connelg uli in comparait. 390 At·berat immorro fairend co-na·derscaigt(h)er de comparait etir acht de posit derscaigit ar aen .i. c(omparait) ⁊ s(uperlait) .i. bec braph beres in comparait ⁊ mor brap beres in superlait.

Cade connelg celli oenson ⁊ connelg suin cen ceill ⁊ connelg suin ⁊ ceille malle. Nī. Connelg ceille cen son cet[um]us .i. ‘bonus’, ‘melior’, ‘optimus’. Ar ropad ‘bonus’, ‘bonior’, 395 ‘bonissimus’ connelg choir dia·mbeth ata im(morro) in ciall ar choir. Connelg im(morro) suin cen cell ut: ‘Uergilius’, ‘Uergilior’, ‘Uergilissimus’. No fetfaide tra sen ar ai suin ni·fil uero connelg ceilli and ar ni·connelgait(h)er anmanna dib-si ⁊ is crutadh fri fosgud sin. Connelg suin ⁊ celle imalle, ut: ‘fort-is’, ‘-or’, ‘fortissimus’ ⁊ is he in connelg tectaide sin. Bid dano maith ⁊ ni·bi derscugud de, ut: ‘bonus deus’. Bid dano connelg ⁊ ni dia inne fein 400 derscaiges, amal ata ocon Laiti(neoir): ‘Mare Ponticum dulcius est quam cetera maria’ .i.

499 sic 500 Cf. Y 3307 501 derrsgugud Y 3316 502 sic (?); airim frie hunair Y 3317 503 sic (leg. ocond ḟilid). 504 ni dersgaig Y 3324 285

‘is [s]omillsiu505 in Muir Pontecda anad na muiri ar chena’ ⁊ ni arsinndi batis [s]omilsi506 na muiri arcena acht is connelg in etechtu insin.

Etargaire n-incoisc i persaind cetomus. ‘Unnse in fer’, ‘unsi in bean’, ‘ondar in nem’. Etargaire n-incoisc persainde: ‘me fein’, ‘se fein’, ‘tu fein’, ‘sindi fadesin’, ‘sibsi fadesin’, 405 ‘siat-som fadesin’. Etargaire persainde i ngnim .i. ‘do·rignius’, ‘do·rignis’, ‘do·rigne’, ‘do·rignisem’, ‘do·rignidsidh’, ‘do·rigniset’. Etargaire persaind i ces(sad) .i. ‘no-m·carthar- sa’, ‘no-t·carthar-su’, ‘no-t·carthar-seom’. Etarg(aire) derscaigthe i nderscugud .i. fothugud .i. fothug(ud) in cetgraid, forran .i. furain fair in graid 140vb tond507 formolad in tres gradh on chem tan(aisdi) ⁊ on cet chem, no formoladh .i. molad, 410 .i. molad forin molad toisech .i. brap for brap remthectach .i. ‘maith’, ‘ferr’ ⁊ ‘ferr-son’ lasin nGoedel coit(chend) i n-ecmais in Fil(ed). Fothug(ud) immorro for rand formolad la side. Etarg(aire) metaige i metugud .i. ‘mor’ ⁊ ‘moo’ ⁊ ‘moo-son’. At·berat araile ni·filet acht .u. etarg(aire) and, ar is amal oenetarg(aire) leo na tri etarg(aire) dedenca ⁊ etarg(aire) derscaigthe i nderscug(ud) ⁊rl. Etarg(aire) lug(aide)508 i lug(ugud) .i. ⁊509 ‘luu’ ⁊ ‘luu-son’, 415 ar ci at·ber-seom etarg(aire) in etarg(aire) i metug(ud) ⁊ laigdig(ud) is inund ⁊ etarg(aire) derscaig(ti)510 i nderscug(ud), ar is derscug(ud) a met ⁊ i laiget fil and beus. Etarg(aire) n-incoisc i persaind .i. isin persaind fen ata a inchosc co-n·etargnaigt(h)er trit. Etarg(aire) incoisc persainde .i. etardefrigud na persand .i. cetpersu, persu thanaisde ⁊ tres persu triana n-incosc doib fein.

420 Cade defir etir ‘is e’ ⁊ ‘undse’? Nī. ‘Undse’ qid511 sluind persainde sainraidchi insin, ut d(icitu)r: ‘Undse uait in fer-sa saindrud’, cona anmum no cona tothuct a anma, ut d(ixit) p(oeta): ‘Undse chugut in gil(luccan)512’ ⁊rl.513 Sloind coit(chend) uatuaslaicthech im(morro) ‘is e in fer’ ar ni·fes cia saindrud acht fer t(antu)m .i. amain sic ‘undsi’ ⁊ ‘ondar’ ⁊ ‘is ed’. Cid do-som narbo leor les ‘me’ nama do radh cenco·n-abrad ‘me faden’? Ni leor

505 MS ⟨ıſomillsıu⟩ 506 See previous note. 507 tanaisi Y 3359 508 Cf. Y 3366. 509 sic M; bec ⁊ Y 3366 510 Cf. Y 3371 511 As in the manuscript; cetomus BY 512 Cf. fol. 140ra27; Y 3463 513 This poem is quoted in full at fol. 140ra26–28 (thus quoted twice in M, as in Y). 286

425 emh, ar is deligthe fria gach persaind, amal at·bert in Lait(neoir): ‘Egomet ipse’ ⁊rl. Ego enim ⁊ non alius .i. in tan as·berar ‘egomet ⁊ non alius’ .i. ‘is me fein ⁊ ni nech aile’.

Finit primus liber .i. in cet lębur.

Tosach ind Airacep(ta) iar Fercertni ann-so. Loc do Emain Maca i n-aimsir Concobaír mic Nessa do sonrud, persu Ferchertne F(ili), tucait a denma do breith aesa faínd for seis.

430 [S]echta fríasa·toimsither Goedelg .i. fid ⁊ deach, rem ⁊ for[b]aid, alt ⁊ ínsci ⁊ etargaire. Sechta, ‘.uii.’514 a bun(ad) Laitni, sechta ai a inne no sechta i n-ain515 .i. sechta do aib and .i. .uii. n-aisti na fil(idechta) ⁊ .uii. n-aisti na bairdi. Airbert .i. a airim ⁊ rl. Coit(chend) do cach airim sechta. Diles da secht diudhib. Ruid(les) don chetarim sechta risa·n-ebrad .i. .uii. laithib na sechtmaine. Inles a tabairt fri arim aile acht fora .uii.. Tomus .i. tomes a 435 inne no tomus .i. to tenga airbert ⁊ mes aire fein. IS fisi in gne no in cenel tomus? Cenel em. Cadeat a gnee? Nī. Tomus fil(ideachta) ⁊ tomus baird ⁊ tomus prosta .i. brith fri sechta cach ae. Cade ruid(les) ⁊ di(les) ⁊ inles i tomus? Nī. Ruid(les) do fil(idecht), dil(es) do bairdne, coit(chend) in les do prois. Goedelg .i. ‘guthelg’ .i. guth Eirend no berla Eirend no Goedelg .i. elg irdairc insin .i. Goe(delg). Ro-d·airdarc(ach)516 acht ni duthchu do 440 Goediul do rer in taithmigi sin, ar do cach ni ro·erdairc517 G(oidel). IN cach Goedelg tomsithir ri sechta? Is ed emh, acht dialt ⁊ cid ed on tomsithir iar saerdataid uair at·cothar a chaindeligugud a comdail amal ata fe fer ⁊ ni cach sechtai do·midter and ar is oensechta. Co·n-agar dano sechtai fo secht i sechtai .i. bun(ad) ⁊ inde ⁊ airbert ⁊ coit(cend) ⁊ diles ⁊ ruidiles ⁊ inles in gach foc(ul) dont sęchta. Fid chet[um]us: ‘fundamentum’ a bun(ad) 445 L(aitne) fo .i. aedh immorro a inne isna focl(aib). Airbert .i. a tri abairt ri .u. fedaib .xx. ind Og(aim) no airbert .i. epert aire .i. litir ⁊ guth(aighi) no consu[ine]518 fair. Coit(chend) doib ule feda do rad friu, diles forfedaib, ruid(les) forfedaib, inles for toebomnaib acht isna focl(aib) ailib int ṡechtai. Fid na filidechta .i. in cetfid airegdha bis i foclaib ind im-

514 leg. septem. 515 sechtai i n-ai Y 3506 516 MS ⟨rodıꝗdꝗc̅ ⟩; rus-oirrdercaich Y 3542 (rohorrderc T) 517 dooirdhercaigh Y 3543 518 MS ⟨su⟩ 287

141ra -reacrai ⁊ in toebomna do·cuirend519 resin fidh sin do thabair ar aird ⁊ corob inand fid 450 airegda bes i tulcubdib520 in raind ⁊ in imrecra na tarmforcend. Fid ind anma prostai dano in cetfid airegdai bias and ⁊ in toebomna do·cuirend resin fidh si. Et deach, di uach in tan is dialt, no dauach521 in tan is recomart, no de uaigther522 int aircetal.

Cade dano bun(ad) ⁊ inne ⁊ airbert ⁊ coit(chend) ⁊ dil(es)s ⁊ ruid(les) ⁊ inles in deachaib? Nī. Bun(ad) ond-i as ‘tectum’ .i. ditin, ar is ditin in dȩch do cach rund. A inde immorro 455 ‘doguach’ no ‘defhuach’. Arbert .i. o dialt co bricht no foc(ul) aile fair .i. sill(ab) ⁊rl. Coit(chend) doib ule dȩch do radh fri cach ae ar dialt do·formaigther fri cach n-ae. Diles iar sun, ruind iar cell ⁊ sun imalle, no ruidles a n-anmand dilsi .i. recomarc ⁊ iarcomarc ⁊rl. Inles i ndeacaibh dialt, ut d(icitu)r: ‘Cen oeb deach fadesin is la deachu ad·rimther’. Dȩch na filidechta .i. in lin dibh bias isin rund. Deach ind anma prostai a lin sill(ab) bis 460 and ⁊ a fir da dȩch de na ocht ndeachaibh do·roich.

Rem .i. re nama ai in tan as fil(idecht), re uaim in tan is bairdni. Ni uaim tomais dlithigh acht tomus re cluais ⁊ coir n-anala. Cs̅: In gne no in cenel rem? Is cenel em. Cadiat a gne? Nī. Rem fil(idechta), rem bairdne, rem prosta. Da gne dano for fil(idecht) ⁊ baird(ne) .i. toebrem rem d’fid for fidh cetu(mus), ut:

465 ‘Coluim caid comachtach’ ⁊rl.

no sian, slen, s(latu)523, s(eiscind)524, ⁊rl. Toebrem im(morro):

‘A ⟨F⟩laind at luam in gaiscid grind go Maistin maill. 470 At glan, at goeth, at garg de rind. Ad laech, a ⟨F⟩laind.’

519 docuirither Y 3564–65. See McCone 1997: 205 on the development and spread of the 3rd sg. conj. pres. ending -enn/-ann. 520 taopcuibdiph Y 3566

521 dagfhuach Y 3570 522 fuaigther Y 3571 523 Cf. Y 3602 524 See previous note. 288

Ceth⟨r⟩i gne im(morro) for prois o rem .i. rem suin, ut ‘fer’, ar is as remnigthir rem celle, ut: ‘Padraic’. Ni·airegar a geintin a rem suin ar is oendelb for anmnigh ⁊ for a genitin. Rem suin ⁊ celle amal ata ‘Fland’, ‘Flaind’. Toebrem prosta .i. ‘me faden’, ar is toebrem 475 cach ni nach lanrem. Treda ara·togarar rem .i. rem as, amal ata ‘fer’, ar is as remnigthir. Rem ind, ut ‘fir’, ar is ind remnigthir rem as ⁊ ind imalle, ut ‘in fer’ .i. anmnigudh ⁊ incoscc and imalle. Rem dano cem a airbert. Cade bun(ad) ⁊ inne ⁊ airbert coit(chend) ⁊ dil(es) ruind ⁊ inles i rem? Nī. Bun(ad) quidem525 ond-i as reb amus comṡuidigthech. Inne dano .i. re ⁊ uaim. Airbert .i. cem. Coit(chend) dona h-uilibh remennaibh rem. Diles a beth i 480 n-uathad, ruind a beth i n-ill(ar) no diles do rem na bairdne, ruind do rem na fil(idechta). Inles do rem na prosi no inles rem uath(aidh) i n-ill(ar), cem at·chotar a il(ar). Et forbaid .i. fairbid .i. forsin focul no forsin rund .i. forsail no arnin no dinin disail, no forbaid .i. forbeoidh in tan is forsail, forbaid in tan as dinin d(isail), no forbuaid in tan as arnin no forbeoidh .i. forfidh i mbeo in tucsin ind anma ara·tabar .i. in forba(idh) no in rand dia 485 breith for sechtai.

Cade bunad ⁊ inne ⁊ airbert ⁊ coit(chend) ⁊ d(iles), r(uidles) ⁊ inles ⁊ forbaid .i. sin foc(ul)? Nī. Bun(ad) ond-i as ‘formarius’, ‘ilgnuis’, sȩch inne .i. forbaid. Coit(chend) dona h-ulib forbtib forb(aid). Dil(es) a beth for fat no for gair no cumair, ruind a rad for forbdingi forb(aid). Inles f⟨or⟩b(aid) uath(ad) for forb(aid) il(ar) u(el) e contra .i. bas ech no forb(aid) 490 fuit for cumair no e contra no inles chena fuath do scribind di. Alt ond-i as ‘altus’ .i. uasal .i. co·feser cia alt archetail bera⟨r⟩ fri sechta .i. in nath ⁊ in anair, in anamain, in laid, in setrad, in senamain. Alt ind anma prosta im(morro) in re n-aimsire bis etir na da sillaib.

Cade bun(ad) ⁊ inne ⁊ airbert ⁊ c(oitchend) ⁊ d(iles), r(uidles) in alt? Nī. Bun(ad) ond-i as ‘altus’, ut diximus .i. adubramar. Inne dano .i. ail fuit no ollait airbert .i. aic(ned) ⁊ saerdatu 495 coitch(end) do cach alt, alt do rad fris. Dil(es) .i. alt saerda ruind .i. alt aic(ned) i n-inad alta saerd(a) u(e)l e contra Et insci

141rb

.i. co·feser in aisti n-airchetal .i. co·fesiur in ‘se’ no in ‘si’ ind aisti bera526 fria sechta amal ro·gabh ‘is e in nath’, ‘is i ind laidh’. Insce ind anma prosta .i. ferinsce ⁊ baninsce ⁊ deminsce.

525 sic (?); MS ⟨ıꝗd⁊⟩ 526 beraid Y 3690 289

500 Cade bun(ad) ⁊ inne ⁊ air(bert) ⁊ c(oitchend) ⁊ d(iles) r(uidles) ⁊ i(n)l(es) in insci? Nī. Bunud tra ond-i is ‘oratio’ in insci immorro a inne .i. coi inisen nech airbert dano .i. aurlabra ⁊rl. Coit(chend) dano do ferinsce ⁊ do baninsce ⁊ do deminsce. Insce do rad friu no insce ar coit(chend) do ferinsce ⁊ do baninsce, ut est ‘cellach’ ⁊ ‘buadhach’ ⁊rl., no coit(chend) dona h-uilibh masculinaibh is e sic ⁊rl. Dil(es) in tan raiter ‘is i sron no suil 505 ind fir’ no ‘is e bel no fiacail na mna’, no diles ‘is e in fer’, ‘is i in ben’. Ruind in tan raiter ‘is e bel no fiacail in fir’ no ruind ‘is e in fȩr-sa’ cona da n-amain arithi. Inl(es) is e do radh resin crand na·tusim527 ni iar n-aic(ned) no in tan fedair insci for aile. Et etarg(aire) .i. co·feser in aisti n-aurdalta .i. in nath noebrechta528 no trebrechta in laid ara·cuir no luibenchosach no in bricht bera fri .uii.-a. Etar(gaire) ind anma prosta im(morro) .i. ‘is e 510 in fer aurdaltai’, ‘is i in ben urdaltai’.

Cade bun(ad) ⁊ inne ⁊ air(bert) ⁊ c(oitchend) ⁊ d(iles) r(uidles) ⁊ in(dles) in etargaire? Nī. Bun(ad) cetus ond-i as etargardiarius529 .i. foruaslaicthech etargnugud gotha a inne ar fit gair .i. guth airbert im(morro) .i. a brith fri tomus no ebert aire .i. deligud ⁊rl. Coit(chend) dona h-ulibh etargairibh etarg(aire) do radh friu. Dil(es) a radh frisna .uii. n-etarg(airib) 515 thuas. Ruind do etarg(aire) in tomais no risna h-etargairib iar ndilsi. Inles .i. etarg(aire) n-inchoisc persainne no a radh fri etargairib ailibh cenmotha in tsectatu tuas.

Cadeat na feadha risna·dentar in tomus? Cs̅: Cade tomus fri fidh? Nī. Co·fessoer a lin ⁊ a n-uate, co·fesser a met ⁊ a laiget, co·fesser a cumang ⁊ a egcumang, co·fesser a nert ⁊ a amnert. A lin quidem .i. a .u., .i. a .u. aicmi a n-uaiti .i. oen a met go .i. .u. fles(caib) a laiget 520 .i. aenflȩsc. Cade deffir etir a cumang ⁊ a nert? Nī. Cumang cetus in tan do·gniat guth a n-aenur .i. a, o, u. [A] nert im(morro) in tan do-s·beri frisind sill(aib). Cade deffir etir a neamcumang ⁊ a n-amnert? Nī. Ecumang cetus in tan bite fo niallus, ut: ‘quoniam’, ‘quidem’ lasin Laitin(eoir), in tan uero bit tri guthaighe i n-oensill(aib) lasin nGoedel, ut: ‘briain’, ‘gliaid’, ‘feoil’, ‘beoir’, ⁊rl. Aimnert uero in tan bite fo consonacht, ut: ‘seruus’, 525 ‘uulgus’ ⁊rl. lasin Lati(neoir), ‘uuull’ ⁊ ‘auuall’, ‘ciar’ ⁊ ‘cian’ ⁊ iarum lasin nGoedel. Lanchumang dano intib ule etir fedha ⁊ toebomna .i. conos·dibdand530 co n-aurba uath. IS ed a lin .i. .u. aicme Og(aim) ⁊ .u. uir cach aicme ⁊ o oen co aa coic cach ae con-da·deligidar a n-airde. IT e a n-airde .i. anccosc .i. desdruim, tuaddruim, lesdruim, tredruim, imdruim. IS

527 sic M; na tuismid Y 3703 528 debrichta Y 3712 529 sic M; e[targra]diamus Y 3716 530 ? 290

amlaidh im·drengar Ogam amal im·drengar i crand .i. saltrad for airem in craind ⁊ da lam 530 des remut ⁊ in lam cle ina diaid iarsain is leis ⁊ is fris ⁊ is trit ⁊ is ime, trit tra na feda imme uero na forfeda ⁊ it e a ndeligthi feda forfeda, ut est: ᚛ᚋᚌᚍᚎᚏᚕᚖᚗᚘᚙ. Cs̅: Cid ara· n-ebrethar feda fri suidhiu? Nī. Fobith do·miter friu ⁊ con·uaigther531 conaib532, ut dicitur: ‘luis ailme’ ⁊ ‘bethe ailme’. Cs̅: Cindas do·miter frisna toebomna amal ḟidu? Nī. Cach da toebomna ar fid i comfot ⁊ i comfidh, cach da comfidh i cubaid, ar is ed a cubaid air is ed 535 a cubaid533 iarum coraped a ḟid cetna bes i focl(aib) ind imrecrai ⁊ corop comlin do toebomnaibh bes indib, ut est: ‘bas’, ‘las’, ‘fras’, ‘bras’, ‘cend’ ⁊ ‘lend’, ‘cornd’ ⁊ ‘dornd’, ‘dond’ ⁊ ‘cond’, ‘nem’ ⁊ ‘cel’ ⁊rl. Cidh ara·n-eberar feda fri suidhib .i. frisna toebomnaibh? Nī.

141va

Amal iaraither fid airegdha ind anma ica breth fri sechta, is amlaidh sin iarraither in 540 toebomnai bias and cach da thoeb[om]na534 ar fidh, ut d(icitu)r:

‘Marcach at·connarc ande etach ume, co ndath cro. A dath is gilidir geis uan tuinde, dath a da o.’

545 .i. c(oll) ⁊ r(uis) i n-aigidh o(nn). ‘Bas’ ⁊ ‘las’—lanchubaidh sin. Toebcubaidh po bras ⁊ las ⁊rl. Deda arecar and .i. oenzadugud535 condeligugud amal ata ‘bas’ ⁊ ‘las’ ⁊ iar comartud

aircetail ata, uair is inund fid airegda fil indib ⁊ is inund toebomna tosech. Cade r(uidles) ⁊ d(iles) ⁊ c(oitchend) do fedaib do thomus friu? Nī. Ruid(les) do fedhaibh airegdaibh, diles do forfedhaibh, coit(chend) do toebomnaibh. Cuin as oenda in Bethe-Luuis-Nin 550 ule? Nī. Nī. Cuin as deda? .i. feda ⁊ toebomna. Cuin as treda? .i. forfedha frisna do romaind. Cuin as chethardha? .i. tri aicme na toebomnai ⁊ na .u. feda airegda. Cuin as .u.-the? .i. sechem in Gregdha frisin ni ro·raidius .i. ᚛ᚕᚖ. Cuin as seda? .i. sechem in

531 See Ahlqvist 1983: 62 on this form and compare eDIL s.v. con·óigi. Calder analysed the form as co·n-uaigiter, with the simplex preceded by co N ‘so that’, but Ahlqvist notes that the compound in well attested. It is e.g. found in Wb. (19a1) and Ml. (99a2). 532 Note the preservation of this form (a hapax legomenon) also in M. 533 sic (diplography) 534 MS ⟨t͘oebna⟩ 535 aentugud B, aontugud Y 291

Goedil frina .u. r(annaib)536 ut est: ᚛ᚗᚘᚙ. Cuin as sectai? .i. na tri force(asta)537 ind Og(aim). Frisna se r(annaib) .i. ut est: ᚛ᚍ ᚍ ᚉ.

555 Co·n-agar dano isin aip(gitir) bun(ad) o oen, airec o dedu ⁊ a cor i treda ⁊ a comuaim ri cetharda, a dluthad ri coicde, a moradh ri sede, a fodhail i sechta, a riaglad ri ochta, ⟨a⟩ aisnis chucut in noede, a fostud i ndechte. IS e tra in t-oen tuas .i. Fenius, in dede m(a)c Etheoir, in tredha mac Aingin, in cethardha Cae, in coicde Amirgin mac Nainde mac Nemid no mac Nenuail m(a)c Eogain, in sedhe Fercerta, in sechta a dalta, in t-ochta Cend 560 Faeladh, in noede a dalta, in dechte Cinaed a fostudh in oen in t-uachtarach.

Tosach ind Airaicecht iarr n-Amirgin inso ⁊ Aimirgin a persu. Loc do: Tocur Inber Moir i crich Ua nEnechlais Chual(and)538 a lloc, i n-amsir Miled do·rig(ned). Persu do Aimirgin G(lungel) .i. mac Mil(ed) do·rothlaig go h-aır̅539. Cs̄: Cia ar·ranic a mberla Fene ⁊ cia airm i·n-arnacht ⁊

565 a28 cia aimser ar·richt? Nī. a30 Ar·ranic Fenius F(arsaid) oc Tur N(emruaidh) cind .x. mbl(iadnae) iar scailuid on Tur ⁊ is cach comberlaid do·cuaidh i suidhiu docum a criche ⁊ ni cach comcenel540, amal ro·gab Cae Cainbrethach, dalta Feniusa Far(said), in dara descibul .lxx. na scoile. Ba do Ebrib a bunadas ⁊ bad gho Edeptacdu ro·foidhed fobith is and batar a tustidi ⁊ ba h-and 570 ro·alt. IS and ro·an Feiníus fein ocon Tur no co·thoracht a scol chuchi as cach aird cind .x. mb(liadnae) ⁊ co-n·atgetar cosin suid541 .i. go Feínius berla na·beth oc neoch aile do thepe doib asna ilberlaib acht combad leo a n-aenur no·beth no ac neoch fo·glendad leo. IS ann- sin iarum do·reped doib in berla sin isna ilberlaib. Ro·taiselbadh do oen dib conid a ainm- side for-da·ta in berla-sa, conid Goedelg de-side oc Goediul mac Ainginn, meic Gluinind, 575 meic Lamind, meic Etheoír, meic Agnoman do Grecaib. Inund tra Goediul mac Aingin ⁊ Goediul mac Etheoir acht da ainm badar for a athair .i. Aingin ⁊ Etheoir. IS ann-sin iarum ro·riaglad in berla-sa. A mba ferr iarum in cach berla ⁊ a mba caimiu, is (ed) ro·teped isin nGoedelg. Cach son do-na·airnecht carechtair isna aipgitrib ailib, ar·ricta carechtairi doib isin Bethe-Luís-Nin ind Og(aim), ut est: ᚛ᚎᚗᚘᚙ.

536 Cf. Y 2876 537 MS ⟨force⟩ with suspension stroke above the final letter. 538 Cf. Y 3987 539 I am not able to expand this form, although it is clearly legible. Cf. go heningen Y 3988. 540 MS ⟨comceneƚ⟩ 541 MS ⟨suīd⟩ 292

580 ‘A mba ferr iarum’ ⁊rl., .i. ferr leo-som int etargna a mbith muti uli ar a mbith muti ⁊ lethguth(ai) amal atat ocon Lait(neoir). ‘A n-as coemiu’ ⁊rl., .i. coemiu les a coic fo fhut. ⁊ a .u. fo lanfogur ⁊ a .u. fo buca ⁊ a .u. fo deogur forfeada ann-sin andas a n-oen cuiciur542 friu ule. ‘A mba lethiu’ .i. ‘galmarium’ ⁊ ‘glinula’ ⁊ ‘glamulum’ no ‘galinulum’ lasin Laiti(neoir), ‘gruth’ ⁊ ‘fascri’ ⁊ ‘grutrach’ lasin nGoedelg. ‘Grus’ uero lasin nGoedel, ni·fil 585 a recra543 lasin Laitin(eoir). ‘Lapis’ ⁊ ‘peth’ ⁊ ‘scropula’ lasin Lati(neoir), ‘lia’ ⁊ ‘ail’ ⁊ ‘carrac’ lasin nGoedel. ‘Cloch’ lasin nGoedel, ni·fil a recra lasin Laiti(neoir). ‘Aqua’ lasin Laiti(neoir), ‘u(isce)’ lasin nG(oedel). ‘Lind’ lasin nGoedel, ni·fil a recra lasin Lait(ineoir) ⁊rl. Ro·laithea iarum a fedha for leth aile co·bail cach dib for lęth o ’ lailiu. Ni·fil lęthguta and amal ni·fil la Grecu acht mutí uli. Cach duil do-na·raba ainmnigud isna berlaib ailib 590 ar·ric-

141vb

-ta ainmnigithi doib .i. sin Goedelg. ut: ‘grus’ ⁊ ‘cloch’ ⁊ ‘lind’.

IS ed tosach in libair ann-so iar Fenius ⁊ iar nGoediul ⁊ iar n-Iar mac Nema ⁊ is i nAichia 544 545 ar·richt isin i n-aimsir i·tangadar mac Israel [..] -gipt ⁊ iar didnacul Recta do Maisi ⁊ iar foglaim do Cai Cain(brethach) oca, conid iarsin ar·richta na h-aipgitri i n-oentabaill 595 amal as·bert: ‘Cadiat [a]ipgitri na tri primberla’ ⁊rl. Cetheora randa na·fodailtea [....]546 .i. da comarlid .lxx. ⁊ da deiscipul .lxx. ⁊ da berla .lxx.-at ⁊ da cenel .lxx.. Se primthoesig lasi·ndernad .i. Eber mac Sale ⁊ Grecius mac Gomeoir o·tat Grec ⁊ Latín mac Puín o·taít Latíndai, Riafeth Scot o·tait Scoit ⁊ Nemruadh mac Cuis, meic Caim, meic Noe. Fenius F(arsaid) tra m(ac) Eogaín, meic Gluinind, meic Laimfind, meic Etheoir, meic Thau, meic 600 Buidhb, meic hṡein Iar meic Iartecht, meic Aboith, meic Ara, meic Sru, meic Esru, meic Bath, meic Riafaith, meic Gomeoir, meic Iafeth, meic Noe. Partholon meic Sairn, meic Sera, meic Sru, cetna fer ro·gab Eirind iar nDilind. Nemędh meic Agnoman, meic Pain, meic Sera, meic Sru, meic Esru ⁊rl.

b17 Cs̅: Cadeat aipgitri na tri primberla eter ainmnigthi ⁊ carec- 605 b16 -dairi. Nī. Aipgitir cetus : aleph, beth, gemel,

542 sic (?); quam aon quig fuithibh uile Y 4068 543 sic for frecra 544 sic 545 a hEgipt BY 546 agin tour Y 4024 293

b18 deleth, he, uau, ut, ain, heth, teh, ioth, caph, laimach, mem, nun, phameth, am, phe, sade, caph, re, sin, thau.

Aipgitir Grecda: alpha, beta, gamma, della, e, erisinon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, siapa, luta, mon, noi, csi, o, phi, copi, ro, sima, thau, phi, ci, psi, oo, ennacosse.

610 Aipgitir Laitin: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, x, y, z.

547 ⁊ IS e in fer cetna tra Fenius F(arsaid) ar·ranic na h-aig(itri) adub(ramar) ⁊ Bethe-Luis- Nin ind Og(aim), ut: ᚛ᚁᚂᚃᚄᚅᚆᚇᚈᚉᚊᚋᚌᚍᚎᚏᚐᚑᚒᚓᚔᚕᚖᚗᚘᚙ᚜. ET arba .u. uir ar .xx. lin na scole, is aire is e lin na aipgi(tir) ind Og(aim) ⁊ at e anmanna for·da in Bethe-Luis-Nin ule ind Og(aim) eter ped ⁊ forfeda ⁊ toebomnai ⁊ morsesiur ba uaisliu 615 dib o-ro·ainmnigthe .uii. fedha airegda ind Og(aim), conid airi sin ro·lathe ⁊ it e anmanna for-da·tat iarum ᚛ᚋᚌᚍᚎᚏᚕᚖ.

At·berat araile is .x. fedha airegda filet and ⁊ at e na tri do·formaiget frisna .uii. thuas ᚛ᚗᚘᚙ. At·berat uero araile connach o dainib eter ro·h-ainmnigthe feda ind Og(aim) acht cencopat aichinti indiu araili craind dib. Ar atait tri ernaili for crannaib .i. airig feda ⁊ 620 athig feda ⁊ losa feda ⁊ is uaidib sin a triur uili ainmnigthir fędha ind Og(aim). Airig feda 548 549 quidem .i. dair, coll, cuilend, aball, unnius , ibar, gius. Aithig fedha: fern, sail, bethe, lem, sce, crithach, cairthend, draigen, trom, feorus, crandfir, edlend, fidat, fincholl. Lossa fedha: edend, fraec, gileach, rait, leclam .i. luacair ⁊rl.

b45 Bethe dano on bethe romaind ro·h-aimnigędh550 ⁊ ara cosmailius fri cois 625 b44 mbethe,ut d(icitu)r: ‘feothchos folt b46 chain Bethe’ ⁊ is aire sin is in bethe ro·scribadh in cet ainm Og(aim) tugadh i nEir(ind) .i. .uii. bethe tucait do Lugh mac Ethlend .i. ‘berthair do ben uait nisi eam custodieris’ .i. ‘acht mina cometa tu hi’. O crand ro·h-ainmniged .i. o chairthuind, uair ‘luis’ don cairthund isin int551 senGoedelg, ut d(icitu)r: ‘li sula luis’ .i. cairthend .i. ar ailli 630 datha a coer . Fern dano is o crand ro·h-ainm(niged), ut d(icitu)r: ‘aire nac finnach fern’ .i. ar is di na sceith. Sail dano is o crund ro·h-ainm(niged), ut d(icitu)r: ‘li ambi sail’ .i. ar a cosmailius a datha fri marb. Nin dano is o crund ro·h-ainm(niged) .i. o uindsind, ut d(icitu)r: ‘cradh si dha’ no ‘cosdu sidha uinius’. i. nin ainm do ginol garmna do·gniter di

547 sic. (leg. na h-aipgitri) 548 Cf. fol. 141ra35 549 uindsiu B 1153 550 rohainmnigeadh B 1158; rohainmnigther Y 4253 551 sic 294

uindsiund, no isin aimsir sidha thocbaither garmna. Uath dano is o crand 635 ro·h(-ainmniged) .i. sce, ut d(icitu)r: ‘Comhdal chuan sce’ .i. huath, no ar is uath mar hi ar a delgib. Duir dano is o crand ro·h(ainmniged) .i. dair, ut d(icitu)r: ‘airdiu dosaib dair’. Tinde dano is o crand ro·h(-ainmiged) .i. culend, ut d(icitu)r: ‘trian roith tinne’ .i. ar is culend in tres fid roith in cairbait. Coll dano is o crand ro·h(-ainmniged), ut: ‘cain carfaid’ .i. coll. Qert dano is o crand ro·h-ainm(niged) .i. aball, ut: ‘clitar bo ascill quert’

142ra

640 .i. aball. Muin dano is o crand ro·h(-ainmniged) .i. finemain. Gort dano, ut ‘glaisiu geltaib gort’ .i. edend. NGetal dano, ut ‘luth lęga ngetal’ .i. gileach no rait. Sraiph dano .i. draigen. Ruis dano .i. trom, ut ‘ruamna ruice ruis’ .i. trom. Ailm .i. octach .i. crand giuis. Ond .i. aiten. Ur .i. fraech. Edadh .i. crand fir no crithach. IO .i. ibar, ut ‘si nem feda io’ .i. ibar. Ebadh .i. critach. Or .i. feorus no edlend. Uillend .i. edlend. IFin .i. spinan ⁊rl. Anmanna 645 fid ule sin tra amal fo·gabar isna Duilib Feda ⁊ is uaidib ainmnigter feda ind Og(aim) ⁊ nocho o dainibh, ut d(icu)nt alii .i. ‘amal aderat araile’.

Cs̅: Cis lir a cumant552? Nī. Lancumang intib ule, etir fedha ⁊ toebomnai, co ndaurba .i. co fribaid uath .i. amal bes a n-aicned, cid mor cid bec e. IS amlaid seo imne indister isin Cin Ollaman553 .i. cetharslict i fedhaibh ⁊ toebomnaibh .i. cumang ⁊ ecumang, lancumang 650 ⁊ lęthcumang. Lancumang i fedaibh, cumang i forfedaib, ecumang i mutib, lęthcumang a lęthguthaigh. At·bert araile is treslicth as coir and .i. lancumang i fedaib ⁊ cumang a forfedaibh, ecumang i mutibh ar ni·fil lęthgutha lasin nGoedel. Treda do·gni uath .i. bogudh ⁊ semigudh ⁊ airdibdudh. Bogudh cetus for toebomnaib ⁊ is ir a ndiaidh do·ecaibh doibh .i. do ‘p’ ⁊ do ‘c’ ⁊ do ‘t’ iarsin Laitin. Bid dano tinfed iar cach toebomnai isin 655 Goedelg. Semigud dano, amal ata ‘Bhatraic’ ar is uath bocas for bethe and, ar ni·bi ‘p’ isin Goedelg. Semigudh imne amal ata ‘a Bhatraic’, ar cia beth uath and is co sem(igud). Airdib(dud) immorro .i. in toebomnai do breith ar uile amal ata sal ⁊ morshal ⁊ feda ⁊ amal ḟidhu, amal fidu dano in cert acht uath do dibdud na f(id)554.

Ar at e teora fuilte ind Airecep(ta) .i. uath, forsail ⁊ airnin. Huath cetus: is (ed) fhuillius 660 ‘b’ co·ngeib grem ‘p’, ar ni bi ‘p’ isin Goedelg, sicut diximus .i. ‘amail adubrumar’. Cade a demningud? Nī. Amal ata ocon Lait(neoir): ‘ “b” cum aspiratione ponitur pro “p” ’ .i.

552 sic for cumang 553 Mentioned twice. See M 674-75. So also in Y (4316, 4385), whereas B only mentions it once (1204). 554 sic (?) 295

‘suidigtir “b” co tinfiudh ar “p” ’. Dicunt alii, .i. ‘aderait daine eile’, conna·bi huath ar oen ri ‘b’ do luc ‘p’ acht is ‘b’ a oenur bis ar ‘p’, ut dicit: ‘Praesens ambo pro ampho, buxus pro puxus’ ⁊ ‘ni “b” co tinfiudh ar “p” ’, ut alii dicunt. Forail dano in tuilliud tan(aise) .i. do·berar 665 for son dia fothugud, ut: ‘sron’, ⁊rl. Airnin dano in tres tuilliudh .i. baile arracar a les da taebomnai gebidh airnin grem in dara n-ai, ut: ‘cend’, ⁊rl. Ar ni·bi enmad in Og(aim). Teora foilcęsta in Og(aim) .i. cert ⁊ ngetal ⁊ sraiph, .i. cach baile bias coll riam ‘u’ is cert scribthar and, ut ‘cuing’. Cach bale dano i·mbia acht ria ‘t’, is zraiph scribthar and, ut ‘stan’, ⁊rl.

670 IS e in cetharlicht forfeadaibh .i. fot aic(enta) ⁊ fot suind i foclaibh fotaib i feadaib airęgdaibh ⁊ gair aic(enta) i focl(aib) gairtib. Fot aic(enta) quidem i forfedaibh ⁊ gair sund .i. gairde iat iar suind focl(aib) fect and fotai fecht aile, ut: ‘cam’ ⁊ ‘cam laig’ ⁊ ‘laig’, ‘coir’ ⁊ ‘coir’, ⁊rl. Cs̅: Cade fot ⁊ gair intib? Nī. Fot i fędaibh ⁊ i forfedaibh ⁊ gair i toebomnaibh .i. gair hsuind .i. ar is lęthamser for toebomnaibh do gress a chorus forfedhaibh. Asin Cin 675 Ollaman tucadh in blog-sa romaind ⁊ ni do churp ind Uraiceptaidi. Cuing dano ⁊ cingit ⁊ uinge ⁊rl. Is e oenda liter Latindai ica scribend .i. ‘n’ ⁊ ‘g’ no da ‘gg’. Ni h-ecen immorro acht ngetal a oenur isin Godelg ar son na da litir sin, ut: ᚛ᚉ ᚗ ᚍ .i. cuing ᚛ᚉ ᚓ ᚌ ᚓ ᚈ .i. cingit ᚛ᚒ ᚌ ᚓ .i. unge.555 Nidat inunda dano sinn frisna cubaid ebadh

142rb

⁊ edhad, ut: ‘set oir’ no ‘set conaire’. Ebadh and-sin set [...] huath edad and-sin sic ‘nem 680 im talmain’ ⁊ ‘nem natrach’. Mind dano, ipin and, min no min ar ba idadh intib sin. Ar deda ara·tuctha forfeda isind aipgitir ind Og(aim) .i. do recra do degur amal at·bert isna Bręthaibh Nemedh556 .i. cenmotha forfedha i fail deogur frisna fedaibh na ngutta ⁊ dano do hsemigud fogur frisna fedaibh, ar is buca fogur bis isna forfedaibh, ut ‘naem’, eber and. Naem immorro, amancoll and, neim in u(isci) immorro, ędhadh and. Forfheda ideo 685 d(icuntu)r .i. ‘is airi raiter’ .i. forithnit na feda im fhot ar is (ed) at·berat araile is c(umri)

555 See facsimile. 556 According to Liam Breatnach (1984; 2005) ‘composed in Munster in roughly the second quarter of the eighth century by three kinsmen called Ui Búirecháin: Forannán, a bishop, Máel Tuili, a poet, and Báethgalach, a judge’ (2005: 190). The reference to Bretha Nemed is shared by BY. Note that Bretha Nemed is mentioned in the MV-II as part of a curriculum in which we also find Auraicept na nÉcsíne, and further that the Bretha Nemed Dedenach is associated with the Treḟocal Tract (Breatnach 2017: 8–9, with reference to CIH 561.32–7). The latter is also supported by Gilla in Choimded Úa Cormaic’s Aimirgin Glúngel tuir tend (op.cit.). 296

fogur fil isna fedhaibh, fot i forfedhaibh, no forfeda i firfedha no forfeda .i. fidh forfid indtib no forfeda .i. fo feda no forfeda ar na sechentais iat, no forna fedaib atat ⁊ ni ar araill. Ebadh .i. edad fodein. Or .i. ond iar fir. Uillend .i. ur uil and. IPhin .i. i dadh fadein. Emancoll .i. amal choll, emnad a fuath. At·berat dano fairend eber ⁊ or, is arna forfedhaibh 690 fotaibh atat. Uillend immorro, is ar ‘y’ ata ⁊ ar ‘u’ in tan bis fo mędondataid557 iphin is ar .i. fo medondataid ata. Emancoll ar ‘x’ fri fomtin na focal nGrecdai no Latinda do thabairt isin Godelg ⁊ is aire raiter emancoll ris, ar is coll in dara toebomnai fil in ‘x’ is ar is c(oll) ro·em(nad) and ⁊ ni sail ar is toesechu co[l] in ‘x’ quam ‘s’.

Co·n-agar dano isin Bethe-Luis-Nin ind Og(aim). Cade in fid geb(ius)558 grem da 695 toebomnai ⁊ in fidh geb(ius) grem foc(ail), fid na·geb grem toebomna559 na feda na foc(ail)? Nī. Is e quidem in fid geb(ius) grem do toebomna .i. fidh a ndiaidh araile .i. fidh bis ar aen re primf(id) ind foc(ail) no ar oen ri deogur in oensill(aib), ut: ‘beoir’, ‘feoil’, ‘brian’ ⁊rl., no fidh tet .i. ‘i’ ⁊ ‘u’ i consonacht. Fid gebes grem do toebomna .i. oenfid freachras i tomus do dib toebomnaib, ut d(icitu)r: cach da toeb(omna) ar fid. Fid geb(ius) grem 700 foc(ail) .i. fid labras a aenur. Fidh na gab560 grem fed(a) na toeb(omna) na foc(ail) .i. u n(ialsa)561, ut d(icitu)r: ‘Nec uocalis nec consonans562 h(ab)entur’ .i. amal aderar ‘nochon agar mar gutta no consonain’ .i. ‘u’ no fid bis a ndiaid araile, ut diximus. Cade dano in toebomnai gebius g(rem) feda ⁊ toeb(omna), ⁊ toeb(omna) gebius grem da fid ⁊ da toebom(na), ⁊ da toebom(na) gabait grem feda, ⁊ toeb(omna) gebius grem .u. 705 toeb(omna)563, ⁊ toeb(omna) gebius grem tri fíd ⁊ .iiii. toeb(omna), ⁊ toeb(omna) gebius grem foc(ail), ⁊ toeb(omna) na·geib grem t(oebomna) na fid na foc(ail)? Nī. Is e in toeb(omna) gebius grem f(eda) ⁊ toeb(omna) .i. cert. Is i dano in toeb(omna) g(ebius) g(rem) t(oebomna) .i. nƚ ⁊ f(eda) .i. c(ert) ⁊ ‘u’564. IN toeb(omna) .iii. g(ebius) g(rem) da

557 medontaig B 1369 558 Cf. Y 4433. The suspension stroke is very faint. 559 This form (ending -a) decides the expansion in my transcript of the abbreviated forms: the Old Irish gen. sg. would have ended in -ai (omna(e) ‘the bole of a tree’ being a neuter -io- stem). In LL it is treated as a feminine dental stem, but I have not come across examples of this when it is part of our compound taeb-omna). Note the preservation of the ending -ai in toebomnai (the ending is somewhat faint) at the very last line (57) of fol. 142rb and at 142vb27, 41. 560 The ⟨b⟩ has a stroke through the stem. 561 MS ⟨nꝉ⟩. Cf. Y 4442 562 MS ⟨ↄsonans⟩ with a dot (erasure?) below the ⟨ↄ⟩. Cf. nec vocales nec consanantes habentur Y 4443. 563 quicc fed ⁊ se dtaopomna Y 4448–49 564 c ⁊ u nihelsa B 1399 297

toeb(omna) ⁊ da f(id) .i. .i. n ⁊ g ngetal. Da toeb(omna) g(ebius) g(rem) f(eda) .i. cach da 710 toeb(omna) ar fidh i tomus. Toeb(omna) .ii. g(ebius) g(rem) .i. .iii. .u. f(id) ⁊ no .u. .iiii. toeb(omna) .i. dur i n-ined dimne565 disail. Ni machtadh in tan g(ebius) g(rem) na .u. feda ⁊ na .ui. toeb(omna), cia no·gab(ad) grem da fidh ⁊ da toeb(omna). Toeb(omna) .iii. g(ebius) g(rem) tri fid ⁊ .iiii. t(oebomna) .i. sail i n-inad forṡail. Toeb(omna) .iiii. g(ebius) g(rem) foc(ail) .i. toeb(omna) con·geib grem forb(aidi)566. Toeb(omna) na·g(eib) g(rem) 715 toeb(omna) na f(id) na foc(ail) .i. oeb(omna) dia tocaib huath conid marb do raith.

Cs̄: Cis lir deich do·cusin? Nī. a .uii.,567 .i. dialt, recomarc ⁊ iarcomarc ⁊ feles ⁊ cloenre ⁊ luibencosach ⁊ cloedebnas ⁊ brict.568 Deach .i. ‘dafuach’ .i. in tain is dialt ar dag .i. maith ⁊ fuach .i. foc(al).569 Danach570 in tain as recomrach dib uaigthir in tan as reth. Cade b(unad) ⁊ inne airbert ⁊ coit(chend) ⁊ dil(es) ⁊ ruid(les) r(uid)les571 isin foc(al) as ‘dech’? 720 Nī. Bun(ad) quidem ond-i as ‘deacus’ .i. grecum nomen .i. ‘ainm grecda’. Degfuach a inde, ut diximus. A airbert .i. troig .i. o dialt co bricht, ut prodiximus .i. ‘amal ro·remraidemar’. In troig lasin Laiti(neoir) is dęch lasin Fil(id). Oenfidh i ndialt, a do i recomrac, a tri i n-iarcomrach, a .iiii. files, a .u. i cloenre, a .ui. i lubencosach, a .uii. i claideb(nas), a .uiii. i mbricht cenmotha toebomnai.

142va

725 .i. .uiii. sill(aba) isin foc(al) as mo isin Goedelg ut est: ‘fianamailairechtagardagecheterdarai’572 ⁊ ‘anrocomrairgnigsimarne’ ⁊rl. Tri sill(aba) dec autem isin foc(al) as mo isin Laitin, ut ‘tenerificabilitutinitatibus’. Cs̄: Cia roich dialt i met ⁊ i llaiget? Nī. Ro·sech i llaiget co enfíd ⁊ is foc(al) son, ut: ‘a’, ‘i’, ‘o’ .i. ‘a’ slebe .i. coƚ. ciƚ. ⁊ ‘i’ .i. inis ⁊ ‘o’ forcinn amal ata a cuis ⁊ a cairtind i Sleib Luachra .i. anmand slebe 730 sainrud, ut d(ixit) M(ac) da Cerd:

565 MS ⟨dīne⟩ with a waved nasal stroke, an error for dinin. 566 Cf. Y 4461 567 sic; a hocht Y 4464 568 Note that M does in fact mention eight units (contrast previous note). 569 focal invenitur Y 4467 570 sic; Daghfuach Y 4467 571 sic with diplography, although the word is abbreviated in two different ways. 572 sic with a surplus of syllables. 298

‘IN dam conaireta .a.573, con·gluase geth gulbanda. Is uallach int arganta re trichait sed .i. elit no ag lurganda.’

735 Ro·saig dano i met co coicc no .iii., ut est: ‘flesc’, ‘tresc’ ⁊ ‘brisc’, ‘scailp’ ⁊ ‘tracht’ ⁊ ‘brucht’ ⁊ ‘drucht’ ⁊rl. Ni·armed(er)574 ‘h’ sin a foc(laib) dedencha ar ni litt(ir) fiado .i. amal at·ber in legend: ‘ “h” non est litt(er)a sed nota aspiratonis’575 .i. ‘ni litt(ir) “h” acht not tinfidh’. Cach dialt iarum ima·tormaig fri araile co cumaing576 cach foc(ail). Deich co ocht i mbricht. Ocus is e meit ⁊ laiget cacha Goedelgi o dialt go bricht co n-athgabail dib linaib 740 iarna thinol deach. Is bricht a mbith .uiii. sill(aba). IS bunad corp inso cacha Goedelgi dialt acht moth ⁊ toth ⁊ treth, armad iat-side is iat fen ata bunadha and ar ni·fil nach foc(al) Goedelgi na·bad indib siut.577 Modh cacha ferda cach ferinsci, toth cach banda cach baninsci, troeth cach neotarda .i. cach neotar.

IS(ed) bun(ad) ⁊rl., ar ni dialt as bunad doib-side, ar ni bun(ad) in rat do fein no nidat 745 bun(ad) G(oedilgi)578 inid acht it bun(ad) cach cen(iuil) .i. modh cach fer(da) .i. cach ball ⁊ cach cumma fer(da). Tod cach banda .i. cach ball b(anda) ⁊ cach cumma b(anda) archena. Troeth cach n(eotar) .i. nach nechtarde .i. cach cumma nemecoscda. Nidat bun(ad) Goedel(ge) iarum m(oth) ⁊ t(oth) ⁊ t(roeth), acht at bun(ada) cenel579, ut diximus, acht atat ar arai sin araile Goedelga diannat bun(ad) .i. modh mo a ed i n-airde no aod .i. a cheol in 750 tan is mas(cal). Tod .i. tai a ed no aod in tan is fem(en). Troeth .i. treth a ed no aod fri fegadh mas(cal) no fem(en) no modh .i. mo oedh i n-airdi in tan is torand no as crand. Tod .i. tai a ed in tan is fota ro·cluine no ro·n-aili is taiu quam a n-aill.580 Troth .i. troethaid a troethas in tan as fet fobith is cailiu ⁊ is cruaidiu quam aile is troeth. As·berat araile comtis anmand aidmi ciuil. Cade a demnigud? Nī. Mod .i. mo a od in tan as cruit. Tod

573 This line is corrupt. Cf. Dam congair iter da a (Y 4534). 574 MS ⟨ꝗmēd⟩. Cf. Y 4545. 575 sic 576 comcumung B 1232 577 Note the interlinear gloss: corp inso (‘this is main text’). 578 MS ⟨gōe.⟩ 579 MS ⟨ceneƚ⟩. We would expect the genitive ceniúil (or the later forms -éil-, -íl-) as in BY. 580 is tai ⁊ is isliu quam a n-aill Y 4579 299

755 .i. tai no aod a ed in tan as buide581 .i. is taiu ⁊ is isliu quam a n-aill. Troeth .i. .i.582 [.....aid]583 an dis aile in tan as tocc584 fobith is airdiu a faidh is airi as troethad. Is e so tra a cumair. Is (ed) b(unad) cena585 G(oedelge) dialt .i. o recomrach co bricht ⁊ ni bun(ad) he do ensill(aib) amal ro·gabh m(oth) ⁊ t(oth) ⁊ t(roeth) ⁊ is ar cach ndialt tucait sen ⁊ is aire ro·gabait-sem sech cach ndialt ar da·cuaidh menma friu comtis recomraic, ar fo·gabar a 760 condail ut diximus.

Dō·midit(er)586 alta uad fri h-alta duine amal dō·midit(er) fri cach a43 insce. a45 Nī.587 Corop cach da ndialt fris·cara araile ⁊ corop cach da recomrac fris·cara araile ⁊rl., ut: ‘tair’, ‘tiar’, ‘tis’, ‘tuas’, ‘aingel’, ‘duini’, ‘lębur’ ⁊rl. Ar is ed a cubaidh in tan is comḟid 765 ⁊ as comdeach.

Coig foilltingithi .xx. i rremum588 .i. a .u.589 co h-ogfedait na fill(id) i fuilluid ree uamma590 na h-ai ocus .xx. gne saerda olchena. Cadeat a n-anmand na n-ined no na infed no na fidh i·mberat cach dib docum a dilsi fein? Nī. xi.591 dib i ndelb ainmneda ⁊ ainsefa ⁊ a tri i ndelb gein(itli)592 ⁊ togerarthada593 ⁊ a .iiii.594 i ndelb toberta ⁊ fox(lada)595 .i. tri filti 770 i n-ill(ar) ⁊ a tri i n-uath(ad) .i. ‘fer’, ‘fir’, ‘ic fir’ i n-uath(ad); ‘na fer’, ‘na fir’, ‘na firu’ i n- ill(ar). Cuic filti .xx. for596 rema for diaull amal ata so sis: ‘fer’, ‘fer’ a anmigh(ud)597, ‘ind

581 sic (?); bindi B 1484 582 sic (diplography) 583 traethaid B 1485 584 sic for as stocc. 585 cacha Y 4596 586 sic (leg. do·mitter, 3rd sg. pres. ind. pass.) 587 The question has been left out in M. Compare: Cindas toimsiter fri cach insci (B 1510); Cesc, cindus domiter fri gach n-indsge? (Y 4604). 588 sic (?); hi remim B 1515 589 leg. .i. a cóic/cúic (the latter form is found at l. 56). 590 sic 591 a nai Y 4730 592 Following Calder (1917) in expanding the abbreviation. MS ⟨geın̅⟩. See Y 4731. 593 sic; MS ⟨tog̅[ ]ꝗt͘ada⟩. See Y 4731. 594 a secht Y 4731 595 Cf Y 4732 596 sic for fri. 597 No mark of contraction in the MS. 300

ḟir’ a hselb(ad), ‘do fi[..]’598 a danad, ‘i ḟiur’599 a atreb, ‘a fir’ a thogairm ‘o ḟir’ a foxal, ‘a fer’ aircell, ‘co fer’ a ascnam, ‘in fer’ a incosc, ‘i fer’ is inann ⁊ a ainmnigud a [...... ]600, ‘sec fer’ a sęchmall, ‘oc fir’ is inand ⁊ a tabartaidh a fuirmiud ‘for fer’ a fortudh, ‘fri fer’ a ⟨f⟩reslige601, ‘fo 775 fiur’ a fothad, ‘de fír’ a digbail, ‘iar f[..]’ a iarmoracht602, ‘la fer’ a toebta, ‘in fer’ a timcęll, ‘tria f(er)’ a treg-

142vb

-dad, ‘dar f(er)’ a tharsce, ‘frisin f(er)’ a thormach, ‘in fer’603 a thuarascbail, ‘re fír’ a remud, ‘ar f(er)’ a fresgab(ail). Fegdair dano i n-ill(ar) fon cumma cetna ut est: ‘fir’ ainmnigud, ‘na fir’ a tuarascbail, ‘it fir’ a n-incosc, ‘na ḟer’ a selb(ad), ‘dona feraibh’ a ndanadh ⁊rl. Fer 780 dano, ebad a ḟid ind anma sin e a gutta dialt a deach .i. son oenchongbalach cen alt etir and. ‘Io’ no ‘iphin’ ina a604 hṡelb(ad) no ina rem in tan as·berar ‘fír’ ar bíth a ndís ina rem, io and amal ata ‘a ḟir’, ‘i fir’, amal ata ‘do ḟiru’. ‘Ío’ amal ata ‘a fír’, ‘i fír’ amal ata ‘o ḟíur’, sic in sequenntibus .i. ‘is amlaid’ n-ar ndheadaídh605.

IS airi dano na h-airim ebadh ina rem cia beth i n-arailib and ut est: ‘co fer’ ⁊rl. Ar ni·fil 785 acht rem celle namma in cach bhaile a marand in fidh bis isin in606 ainmnidh ísna filtib tís idad no iphin autem bís intibh cach bale na·marand conid airi sin at·ber: ‘io’ no ‘iphin’ a fidh ina rem no ina selb(ad) ⁊rl. Dine diṡail a forb(aid) .i. a aicent lasin Laitin. Ar at e teora forb(aidi)607 do·cusin .i. arnin ar·ding defidh, ut ‘glend’ ⁊ ‘glond’, forsail dano for fot fegar, ut ‘srol’ ⁊ ‘mor’, dinin diṡail ar g(air) g(ebid)608, ut ‘bęn’, ‘fer’ ⁊ rl.

790 IN tan dano scribhthair int ainm Og(aim) is and scribthair na forbaidi-so uasa fri relad fuít no chumri no fri tendad, ar ni·tuc faide chena uair amal do·beir in Lait(neoir): ‘A cuit frisna sill(aba) cumrib, ut “pax” ⁊rl., ⁊ circumplex forna sill(aba) fotaib, ut “res”, “sic” ’.

598 do fiur Y 4741 599 sic with lenition mark 600 inotacht Y 4742 601 MS ⟨a reslıge⟩ 602 tiarmoirecht Y 4745 603 is fer BY 604 sic (diplography) 605 sic (?) 606 sic 607 See l. 18 for the expansion of the abbreviation. 608 MS ⟨ꝗ g. g.⟩. Following Calder (1917). Cf. Y 4779. 301

Do·beir in Goedel: ‘Dinin d(iṡail) ar na cumrib, ut “fer”, ⁊ forṡail forna fothaibh, ut “lam” ⁊rl.’, ⁊ amal bis gnim in cach oenepert ilḟoclaigh la609 h-acuit no la circumplex sic bis arnin 795 aroen ri dindi d(iṡail)610 ind oenḟoc(ail), ut ‘cend’ ⁊ ‘sroll’. Arnin iarum ‘erind nin’ no arnin .i. ‘far nin’ .i. ar is nin scribthair ic fuacru na forb(aidi) sin, uair ‘nin’ ainm coit(chend) do cach litt(ir) etir ḟeda ⁊ toebomnai. Forsail dano .i. sail fair air is [s]ail scribthar ic íncosc na forb(aidi)-sin, ar is for fot611 bis forṡail ⁊ is inund n-aimsiri612 do fornin sail no forsail .i. aimser fhurail sęch in cumair. Dinin d(iṡail) .i. di fo diultadh and connach nin ⁊ connach 800 sail acht is dur .i. ar is dur scribtar i tincosc na forb(aidi)-sin .i. ar is digbail n-amsire613 thor(nes)614 dur, amal as tormach tor(maiges)615 sail no dinin d(iṡail) .i. de sin di fuilledh .i. nemfuilledh. At·berat dano araile is airi scribthair dur ar dinin d(iṡail), ar is dur fil ar tus in dinin d(ṡail) fen ⁊ is aire scribtar nin ar arnin, ar nin fil fo deoid and ⁊ is aire scribthar sail ar forsail, ar is [s]ail fil i medon inti, no ut alii dicunt: ‘Ail’ .i. aimser forsail iarum .i. 805 aimser fair .i. aimser furail sęch in cumair.

Dinin .i. ni nin .i. ni fid litt(ir) acht forbaidh. Diṡail .i. ni aimser fota no ni sail nemfuillidh no nemfurail no defidh .i. deiridh na ḟoc(al)616 no dead .i. ni617 ḟid acht is toebomnai no is for(baid). Forsail for fot fedair .i. tairgthir618 fair conid fada .i. sail no forsail .i. ail fair .i. aimser fair. Dine d(iṡail) ar g(air) g(eibid) .i. gebid fair con-id·gairit.

810 IT e tra .u. gnee in berlai thobaidhe berlai Fene fasaige na fil(ed) ⁊ iarmberlai ⁊ berlai n-ętarscarthach619 ⁊ berla fortgidhe na fil(ed) triasa·n-acalladh cach dibh araile. Berlai Fene tra .i. in Fenech(as) indiu no araila berlai ro·boi ic Feinius ar leith. Fasaige .i. ‘fis ogai’ .i.

609 A spiritus asper follows the preposition in the MS, here transcribed as ⟨h⟩. 610 araon re forsail ⁊ re dinin disail Y 4788 611 ar is for fot feghair Y 4794. See also l. 42 below. 612 sic M; i siniud na h-aimsire B; sinedh n-aimsire Y. All lightly corrupted. The noun síned/síniud is masculine and the prefixation of n- in Y is not justified historically. 613 sic. It might be noted that M, here and at l. 798 (see previous note), has n- where B preserves na h-. 614 Expanded with the aid of BY. I interpret the form as the 3rd sg. pres. ind. rel. of the compound verb do·foirndea (*to-fo-rind; see Vgl. Gr. vol. II: 603), with the meaning ‘expresses’, ‘signifies’. 615 Expanded with the aid of B (1569). MS ⟨to̅r̅⟩. 616 sic 617 Very cursive stroke in the manuscript. 618 tairgither Y 619 Corrected from MS ⟨nętꝗscꝗt͘qc͘⟩. 302

dligid fir fortucht no lorga fuach .i. frisnai ⁊ eṡn̅a620 ⁊ trena ⁊ fresn̅a621 sechna firu ⁊rl., ⁊ na deailt n-etarlemme, ut: ‘he’, ‘hen’, ‘in’, ‘co’, ‘to’, ‘tre’, ‘tai’, ‘fe’, ‘fo’, ‘fair’ ⁊rl. Iarmberlai 815 dano .i. .i. run ‘coic’ ⁊ ‘ballorb’ .i. graidh fil(id) ⁊ muirne ⁊rl. Gne n-aill do iarmberlu .i. ‘iarum’ ⁊ ‘atat’ ⁊ ‘cesc’ ⁊ ‘cair’ ⁊ ‘cisne’ ⁊ ‘cadeat’ ⁊ ‘dano’ ⁊ ‘tra’ ⁊ ‘im(morro)’ ⁊rl. IS aire rait(er) iarmberlai de .i. ‘iaru-berla’ ara sechdacht .i. iarn o na·h-etar a thaithmech no iarmberla .i. Iar m(a)c Nema ar·rainic fo deoidh ⁊ ni·etar a thaithmech. Berla n-etarscarthach etir na fedaibh airegdaibh .i. berla triasa·fil deligud na fidh n-airegda isind oenfoc(al) tria na 820 n-inde taithmíg ut est: ros .i. roi uis in tan ros caillia ros .i. roid as in tan as ros usque622 no roḟos ar ni·bi acht ar marbu(isce)623. Ros, roas in tan is ros lin .i. ar a luas ⁊ ar a thigi fasas.

Berlai fortcidhe624 .i. fordorchaide na fil(ed) amal as·bert in file b60 i scoil Feniusa: ‘Iar araill aro ni·anfam

143ra

de’ .i. .i. inis ⁊ all .i. uasal aro .i. imrid .i. ‘ni·anfam din imram co·risam in inis uasail’ .i. 825 Er(e). Et amal ro·gab isind Imacallaib na Sm͘ethrach625 .i. bri briathar ⁊ mon .i. cles ⁊ smethrach .i. ‘smit forrach’ .i. clęsbriathar do·nitis ind ilidh626 ar daigh ecnaigh co·foirgidis nech tre smit a cluaísi do forrach no do tarraing .i. forrach smitta ainm in clessa.

IS e im(morro) in .u.-edh gne in gnath berla fo·gni do chach. As·berat627 araile combad he mberla Fene fasaige na fil(ed) ⁊ conadba berla fo leth. Alt co·feser cia alt dona .iiii.628 830 n-altaib uadh .i. in nath, in anair, in anamain, in laidh, in setradh, in senamain, in dian cona duanaibh. O hsen inonti629 is o deachaibh slont(er)630 alta uadh, arnarop insci cumascda. Nath .i. noith .i. insce anair .i. anaer anomain .i. an somain, laidh .i. laitir no

620 Reproduced with diacritics as they are in the manuscript. Cf. Y 4625. 621 See previous note. 622 MS ⟨usqꝫ⟩ 623 MS ⟨us̅⟩ 624 MS ⟨ft̅cıḋe⟩ 625 To be identified with Immacallam in dá Thuar(ad) or ‘The Colloquy of the Two Sages’ (ed. Stokes 1905b: 4–64). Cf. B (na da Thuar) and Y (in da Suadh). 626 sic M; na filid B 1332, Y 4647 627 There appears to be a superscript ⟨a⟩ between the preverb and the verb in the manuscript. 628 secht BY. The scribe of M must have misinterpreted the numeral (equal minim-count). 629 sic M; anond Y 4655 630 MS ⟨slon̅t̅⟩ 303

luaotir no laid in tan as aer no ondi as laus .i. moladh. Setradh .i. set raidh no rith iar seot. Senamain .i. ‘sannamann’631 risna aístib romaind. Dian .i. di aer no dian .i. adbol an no ni 835 h-oen. O hsein inond .i. ona .uii. primaistibh imach is o deach .i. is ni dena deachaibh for·ricfa ⁊ is uaigib ainmnigudh doib .i. dialt i forbu cacha rainde in duain recomrac i casbairnde ar narop insce cumascda .i. ar nara pis632 amal aisti na n-aerbairdne.

Lorga fuach .i. lorga foc(ail) arrosc rere .i. amal bite lorga i lamaib daine ica innfulang o purt do phurt, ar na·toethsat inta samla. It e inso lorga bite in genaib na fil(ed) oc 840 foscugudh o foc(ul) co foc(al). Lorga f(uach) .i. remṡuidhigthi de sill(aibh) cach bite etir da comuaim da foc(al), ut Corm(a)c Bard eci̅633:

‘Im ba sesach, im ba seng, im ba tresach tuirmib tond, a C[h]r(ist) in cuin·gena lim 845 o thi co techt for lind lond?’

‘im ba’ is e in lorg fuach.634 A dealt n-etarleme .i. oensill(aib) etir na da comuaim, ut ‘idem’, ‘cecinit’ .i. ro·can in fer inand.

‘Cia leth co brath iar cuairt cros, co·sluife mo choblach cres? 850 In sair fan siar, in modh suaíl im ba fo thaidh no im fadhes?’

Cia ín díalt n-et(arleme) ⁊ ata connan635 lorg fuach ⁊ dialt n(-etarleme) isin rund ar medon .i. im ba in l(orga) f(uach) ⁊ ba in d(ialt) n(-etarleme). Fertoth o telcudh noí .i. a thelcudh duine ar is noi in dune, ut d(icitu)r: ‘Dia ndoma noe for tir’ .i. ‘dia ndoma a duine for 855 tír’.636 Do·leci in dune cesudh tet iarum dia fothrucud don abaind co-n[d]o-s·lece637 don

631 sic (?). sain a maine B 1584. 632 sic M; prois BY 633 Transcribed here as in the manuscript. It would seem to be an abbreviation, presumably corrupt, for the Latin 3rd sg. perf. ind. act. cecinit (cănō ‘I sing’). 634 Cf. B 939–42, where the poem is attributed to Colum Cille. 635 sic M; dono lorga fuach Y 4684. 636 The word boundaries as they appear in the manuscript might indicate some degree of reinterpretation of this verse. Note that B (1610) gives the explanation: .i. duleice in duine cessad fair, while MY repeat the verse instead, replacing duine for noe. 637 MS ⟨oslece⟩; dolece B 1611, doleigi Y 4689 304

bhruch sis isin usqe638 toto no in tond foi .i. ainm in tendfogar sin do·gni in tond frisin dune. Tot, ut est: ‘bu’, ‘bu’, ‘go’, ‘ged’ i. amal ata ocon Lait(neoir): ‘nomen de sono factum’ .i. ‘ainm sloindter triana fogar’ .i. stipula caindęl, stip stip a fogar ica loschudh. Anmand forsmachta hṡun639 ⁊ comfog(ar) a ngenemna ro·anmnigthea go go in fogar no bu bu no 860 dano ar feim in dune ima·mbi etach o neoch aile. Is (ed) as·ber-seom640 fertom briathar cesta íni siu, fertoth ara chele fris bria(thar) gnima son.

Aurlond dano ainm dano do aurell gę .i. ind adarc bís fon gae is di ar·sisedar in gae no ar·sisedar cach insce ona tri urlannaib so .i. ‘is e’, ‘is i’, ‘is ed’. It e ínsín urlonda ferínsce ⁊ baninsce ⁊ deminsci ‘hic’ ⁊ ‘hec’ ⁊ ‘hoc’ lasin Laitin(eoir) im·tha samla ar-a·sisedar in indsce 865 ona .x. n-aurlannaib so. Se, da, tri, cethri aurlona ferinsci ínsin .i. ‘is e ín fer’, da .i. ‘da fer’, tri .i. ‘tri fír’, cethri .i. ‘.iiii. fír’. Inunda autem urlonda ferínsci ⁊ baninsci o sen amach is aire nach·sinter sęch a cethaír. Si, di, teora, cetheora urlonna baninsci insin .i. ‘si in bęn’, di .i. ‘din641 mnai’, teora .i. ‘teora mna’, cetheora .i. ‘cetheora mna’. IT e ⁊ atat autem urlonda coit(chenda) etir baninsce ferinsce. IS ed autem urlond deminsce ut d(icitu)r: ‘as 870 (ed) a cend’. Fri h-urlond dano ferínscí oentadhaíges642 deminsci i n-urlonnaib il(air) .i. ‘da nem’, ut d(icitu)r: ‘da ḟer’ no urlond ínsci .i. remiloind643 insce .i. ferinsce no banínsce no demínsce.

Finit.

638 MS ⟨usqꝫ⟩ 639 anmanda forcmachta do soun Y 4697 640 i suidi add. B 641 sic for di 642 aentaigis B, aontaighius Y 643 sic for remslond- 305

Appendix 3: Plates

1. D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 (E 3.3), 12r

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. 2. M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 (D ii 1), fol. 141vb

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

307

3. B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 (536), fol. 175vb

The photo is reproduced with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

308

4. E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72. 1. 1. (Gaelic I), fol. 23v

The photo is reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

309

5. L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (535), fol. 158v

The photo is reproduced with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

310

6. A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738), fol. 57rv

This photo of RIA MS A ii 4 is reproduced with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy. Photography: Nicolai Egjar Engesland.

311

This photo of RIA MS A ii 4 is reproduced with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy. Photography: Nicolai Egjar Engesland.

312

7. G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (H 2. 15b), 198b–199a

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

313

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 314

8. P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53, pp. 113–114

The photo is reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Ireland and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

315

The photo is reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Ireland and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

316

9. T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 (H 4. 22), p. 190

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

317

10. Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 (H 2. 16), cols. 434–435

.

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

318

11. Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.), p. 560

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

319

12. Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337/1, vol. 3, p. 35

The photo is reproduced with the permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin and Irish Script on Screen, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

320

Indices

General Index The Index is selective and avoids excessive overlap with the Table of Contents. Entries for names merely mentioned in the text of the dissertation have in general not been included.

Abecedarium Nordmannicum 197; see Runic Anonymus ad Cuimnanum 96n112, 127, 129; alphabet and Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS provenance of, 169n225 878 Ars Ambrosiana 127n169, 128; Old Irish gloss on, Additamenta 77, 159, 171 126, 174n231; possible parallel in the Auraic. na nÉces, 126, 228; and Sergius’ Commentarium de Adomnán 54, 170–172, 178n246, 197n274 oratione et de octo partibus orationis artis secundae Aethicus Ister, alphabet of, 196, 200 Donati, 126

Agroecius 187–188, attribution of a quotation to Ars Brugensis 125; see also Kassel, A. in the Auraic. na nEces, 129; M: 283n482; see Universitätsbibliothek 4⁰ Philol. MS 1 also Bern Ars Laureshamensis 125, 126n167, 198 Alcuin of York 177, 195–196, 208; and Hrabanus Ars maior, see Donatus Maurus, 195; Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesim, 138–139 Ars Malsachani 28, 57n60, 127

Aldfrith, king of Northumbria, 170–171 Ars minor, see Donatus

Aldhelm of Malmesbury 168–169 Asper minor 219–220n320

Aldred, Old English interlinear gloss of, 170n227 Auraicept Muman 64(n67), 233

Alighieri, Dante, his De vulgari eloquentia, Bangor 29; and Saint Comgall and Mo-Sinu 63n66, 181, opposition between ‘natural’ moccu Min, 173n230 vernacular language and the ‘artificial’ Latin, Bardic grammars (or: grammatical 156n207; honorificabilitudinetatibus, 63n66 tracts/treatises), see Irish Grammatical Tracts Alphabets, see Greek a., Hebrew a. and Latin a.; Bede 166n218, 169n226; Irish missionary also Chapter 9 (passim) activity, 169; De temporum ratione, 191–192, 198, Alpoleio, Iacopo (di Urbisaglia) M: 272n388 216–217, 221; De arte metrica, 197

Aimirgin Glúngel tuir tend, see Gilla in Choimded Bern, Agroecius 283n482; Consentius 283n482, úa Cormaic anonymous text on the Latin alphabet in Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 417, 223; MS 432, Ambrosius 192; no trace of Ambrosian tradition 283n482; MS 522, 63n66 of the interpretationes in the Auraic. na nÉces, 222n328 Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207, 167n219; key to the Ogam alphabet, 184, 194; xenography in, Annals of the Four Masters 13, 58n62 225, 229 Annals of Ulster 134 Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 417, anonymous Columbanus 166–167, 173(n230), 197n274 text on alphabets in, 223 Commentarium de oratione et de octo partibus Bobbio, scriptorium of, 127, 165, 173 orationis artis secundae Donati, see Sergius

Boniface 177; and De inventione litterarum, 195– Connectiones 223–224 196; notae Bonifacii in EgY, 195n270 Consentius 187–188; attribution of a quotation Bretha Éitgid 51; prologue to, 89–90 to C. in the Auraic. na nÉces, 129, 187–188; M: 283, 283n482; see also Bern Bretha Nemed, M: 296n556 Corbie 95n112; scriptorium of, 179; Paschasius Bricín, Saint, see Túaim Drecain Radbertus, 222n328; see also Quae sunt quae Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale MS 679 (the Cormac Bard (Cormac mac Cuilennáin, bishop Cambrai Homily) 79, 79n88, 80, 82; and Perrona and king of Munster, ob. 908), poem attributed Scottorum, 174 to in M: 304.841, another poem attributed to Cáin Adomnáin 171 ‘the same man’ (in fer inand) at M: 304.847

Canterbury, Biblical commentaries, 169–170; Cormac’s Glossary, see Sanas Cormaic furnished with books from Rome, 170; see also Corp (liubair), the ‘main part’ of the Auraic. na Hadrian and Theodore nÉces, 101; quotation from, M: 271.95; term Cassiodorus, Flavius Magnus Aurelius, used as a meta-textual note (intralinear gloss), 126n166, 216n311; and the library of Vivarium, M: 299.740, 299n577 170(n228) Corpus Iuris Hibernici (CIH) 14, 20, 22, 35, 51, Cenn Fáelad (mac Ailella) 13, 44, 103, 104, 144; 60, 80n93, 93n104, 103n121; M: 296n556 authorship of the Auraic. na nÉces rejected, 86– Críth Gablach 66 91; Prologue attributed to, 94ff.; M: 272, 273, 292 Cú cen Máthair 132–133

Charisius, Flavius Sosipater, M: 279n458 Daire Luráin 85–89, 98; M: 272

Cid fo-d·ḟera penuilt ... (= Y 4101–35), as evidence De Chophur in da Muccida 154n199 for AEgGPY or δ, 57n60, 58–59; see also De Duilib Feda 18, M: 295.645 Eutyches and Priscian De inventione litterarum (or: linguarum), Cináed ua hArtacáin, priméices (ob. 975), Chapter 9 (passim), 226, 228; see also Hrabanus mentioned in the archetype of the Auraic. na Maurus nÉces, 90n100 De locis sanctis, see Adomnán Cin Ollaman M: 295.649, 296.674-75 De Origine Scoticae Linguae (DOSL) 28, 112, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica 132n171, 134n177, 139–140, 161 Vaticana Reg. Lat. MS 1308, copy of Ogam De temporum ratione, see Bede inventory in, 167n219; Pal. Lat. MS 1649, a copy of Partitiones duodecim uersuum Aeneidos Donatus, Aelius 51, 87, 95n112; Ars maior, 28, principalium in, 124n164 57n60, 106–109, 116, 188, 197; on vox, 73; Ars minor, 219n320; mentioned in the Auraic. na Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337/1, and In Lebor nÉces, 129; M: 274 Ogaim, 190n264; a copy of the Greek alphabet in TCD MS 1337, 208; and the Auraic. na nÉces Donatus Ortigraphus 126n165, 128, 140, 187n258 ( ), 214, 217; importance for the stemmatic Dublin, National Library of Ireland MSS G 2 analysisα of the alphabet tables in the Auraic. na and 3 (Ó Cianáin’s Miscellany) 41–42, 193 nÉces, 225

Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53 (P) Dublin, Trinity College MS 1339 (the Book of 14, 40, 48; plates of, 315–316 (nr. 8) Leinster) (LL) 18, 41, 66n69, 70, 74, 85, 160; M: 281n470 Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225/D ii 1 (M) 40, 44; transcript of witness of the Auraic. Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 (D) 40, 42, 44, na nÉces in M, 263–305; plate: 307 (nr. 2) 52, etc.; scribal hands D1–3, 43, 51, 62, 93n108; plate: 306 (nr. 1); M: 270n375 Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (A) 14, 25, 47; part of the library of Ó Flaithbheartaigh, Dublin, University College Franciscan MS A 2 40; plates: 311–312 (nr. 6) (Liber Hymnorum) 159

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2 (the Durham, Cathedral Library MSS A. II. 10, C. Great Book of Lecan) 15, 17–18n9, 40, 46, III. 13 and C. III. 20 (the Durham Gospels), 165, 47n46, 54–56, 60; fragment of the Auraic. na 169n227 nÉces (with separate line of transmission) in, 43; Echternach 177; the Echternach Gospels (Paris, plate: 310 (nr. 5); see also Lecan Glossary Bibliothèque nationale MS Latin 9389), 169n227 Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 E 25 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS (Lebor na hUidre) 86(n95); MS 23 P 12 (the 71.1.1. (E) 17n9, 40, 46; plate: 309 (nr. 4) Book of Ballymote) (B) 17–18, 31, 36, 38, 40; exemplar of TCD MS 1289, 41, 49–50; 43, 46– Einhard of Seligenstadt, and classical authors 47, 54–55, 88–89; exotic alphabets in, 191, 225; (Aulius Gellius, Tacitus), 178–179; 216; Hebrew gloss in, 221, M: 268n348; plate: Charlemagne’s grammar patrii sermonis, 181 308 (nr. 3) Epitomae, see Virgilius Maro Grammaticus Dublin, Trinity College MS 52 (the Book of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Adagia, 63n66 Armagh), 54, 77–78, 83, 157, 159, 171, 176, 180 Ernaili in Imchomairc, and the Partitiones Dublin, Trinity College MS 55 (Codex duodecim uersuum Aeneidos principalium, 124 Usserianus Primus) 165, 167, see also Liber de nominibus Hebraicis Etymologiae sive origines, see Isidore of Seville

Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 (G) 14, 40, 42; Eusebius of Caesarea 192, 197n274 and Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh 47–48; Eutyches 57n60 124n162; plates: 313–314 (nr. 7) Explanationes in artes Donati, see Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 (the Yellow (Pseudo-) Sergius; also Lavanttal, Sankt Book of Lecan) (Y) 17, 48; Sanas Cormaic, 130– Paul Stiftsbibliothek MS 2/1 31; plate: 318 (nr. 10) Félire Óengusso 95n111, 154n199 Ferchertne 62n63, 91, 115; authorship of the In Lebor Ollaman 34, 45, 48, 51–52, 96, 100, Auraic. na nÉces, 85; M: 287 156n205, 190n264; M: 268n348, 268n350, 268n351, 270n369 Fer Muman 64n67 Interpretationes (interpretations of the Hebrew Fiacc’s Hymn 159–160 letter names) Chapter 9 (passim); see also Fianna bátar i nÉmain, see Cináed ua hArtacáin Ambrosius, Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome

Find fili mac Rossa Ruaid 131, 135–136 Interpretationes nominum Hebraicorum (Pseudo- Bede) 207 First Grammatical Treatise (Icelandic) 113n140, 180, 182n251 Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesim, see Alcuin of York Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire) 167n219; ... Theodulf of Orléans and Saint Abbo, 177n245, Institutiones grammaticae, see Priscian 184, 225; see also Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 207 Iona, missionary activity 168; and Lindisfarne Fulda, scriptorium of, 126n167, 174n233, 177– 169; its ninth abbot Adomnán, 170–171; 179, 181, 194–195; see also Hrabanus Maurus Adomnán’s Vita Columbae, 172

Germania, see Tacitus Irish Grammatical Tracts 32n32, 34, 114n141, 123n161, 137n181, 185 Gilla in Choimded úa Cormaic, his Aimirgin Glúngel tuir tend, 85, 296n556 Isidore of Seville 17, 86–87, 141, 149, 166, 186n255, 191–192, 197–198(n275); early Glossa Ordinaria 139(n184) dissemination among the Irish, 87; etymological Germanic-Insular writing province 177, 195 technique of, 101n119; the list of nations, 132(n171), 133, 135; M: 279n458; see also Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid 27 Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 1399a and Greek alphabet 95n112, 111–112, Chapter 9 Laon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 447 (passim) Jerome 132n171, 140, 165n215, 168n222, 170; Hadrian, and the school at Canterbury, 169 a reference to J. in the Auraic. na nÉces, 103;

Hebrew alphabet 95n12, 112, Chapter 9 (passim) and the Interpretationes, Chapter 9 (passim); and København, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling Historia Brittonum 133 MS 732b 4⁰, 223n330 Historiae adversus Paganos, see Orosius Kassel, Universitätsbibliothek 4⁰ Philol. MS 1 Hrabanus Maurus 177, 181, 216n308; and De (Ars Brugensis), 126n167 inventione litterarum, 179, 193–195 Keating, Geoffrey 13 (13n1), 86

Huguccio Pisanus, Liber derivationum, 63n66 Ladcenn mac Bairchedo 131(n170)

Immacallam in dá Thuar(ad) M: 303n625 Laitneoir 81, 109; in the phrase lasin/ocon

In Lebor Ogaim 106n131, 190(n264), 218n314, Laitneoir, 58, 107, 109–110, 115, 117, 124, 131; M: 225; see also Dublin, TCD MS 1337 278, 284n493 Laon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 447 Lorsch 124n164, 178(n246) (Isidore’s Etymologiae), 87 Luccreth moccu Chiara 131, 133 Latin alphabet 95n112; origin of (Isidore) 140; Lucretius 174n235; knowledge of L. in Fulda, semivowels, 111; division into vowels and 178n246 consonants, 101, 104, 161; and the Irish vernacular, 166; Chapter 9 (passim) Lupus (Servatus) of Ferrières 178–179; and Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, 194 Laud Genealogies 131n170 Luxeuil 127, 173, 177 Lavanttal, Sankt Paul Stiftsbibliothek MS 2/1 169n225, 186n255; see Anonymus ad Mac Cuilennáin, Cormac 32, 121, 130; revision Cuimnanum and (Pseudo-)Sergius of the Auraic. na nÉces (O’Curry), 87–88

Lebor Bretnach 133 Mac Dá Cerd(a), seventh-century poet, mentioned at M: 298.730 Lebor Gabála Érenn (LG) 13, 20, 28, 60, 132, 134, 136, 137n181, 142–148, 145n191, 157–160 Mac Fhirbhisigh, Dubhaltach 14; and the Auraic. na nÉces (G), 47–48 Lecan Glossary 50, 51; value for interpretation of a lexical item in the Auraic. na nÉces, 95n111; see Mac Fhirbhisigh, Dubhaltach Mór 14, 48 also Dublin, RIA MS 23 P 2 Mac Lonáin (Flann), ninth-century poet Leinster poems 131–136 (ob. 896, according to the Annals of Ulster), poem attributed to mac L. at M: 280.276; Lhuyd, Edward 13n1, 14; and Dublin, TCD MS same poem anonymous in B, 280n461 1363, 48 Mainz 177–178, 195 Liber de nominibus Hebraicis 221; see also Jerome Martianus Capella, mentioned in the Reichenau Liber Hymnorum 159 Catalogue from 821–822, 178n246 Lichfield, Cathedral Library MS 1 (the Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C. 5 (the Llandeilo Fawr Gospels) 168 Bangor Antiphonary) 173n231; MS L 22 sup., Lindisfarne, and Saint Aidan, 168; and the 127 Easter controversy, 169; the Lindisfarne Mittelirische Verslehren, I 45; II 24, 45, 50, 92– Gospels 169(–170)n227 93; M: 296n556; partial translation of I–II into London, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A Norwegian by Carl Marstrander, 238; III 45; IV 12, interpretations of Greek letters in, 192, 222 193n266

London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D. Monkwearmouth-Jarrow 170(n228) IV (the Lindisfarne Gospels), see Lindisfarne Montecassino 126n166, 195; and Varro, 186n255 London, British Library MS Egerton 88 (Eg) Muirchertach ua Cairill, mentioned in the 18n9, 25, 53; and P, 48; cannot be the antigraph Auraic. na nÉces and providing a terminus post of G, 208n284; and notae Bonifacii, 195n270; etc. quem for , 146 London, British Library Royal MS 15 B XXII, Muirchú,δ his Vita Patricii, 77, 159, 182(n252) 192 Murethach, Donatan commentary of, 57n60, Pompeius 27n28, 187n255; attribution of a 125, 126n167, 186n255, 198(n275) quotation to P. in the Auraic. na nÉces, 130; M: 282n479, 282–283(n481) Nendrum 29, 178n246 Priscianus Caesariensis 29, 33, 51–52, 57n60, Niccolò Niccoli, and a list of classical 88, 106, 107, 108(n134), 109–111, 118, 129, 130, manuscripts, 178 187n255; and TCD MS 1289, 52; and the Greek Nonantola 173, 177 and Hebrew alphabets, 189; and his Partitiones duodecim uersuum Aeneidos principalium, 95–96, Ó Cianáin, Ádhamh, miscellany of, 42, 193 124; M: 279n458; see also Sankt Gallen, Ó Cléirigh, Cú Choigcríche 13–14; and NLI Stiftsbibliothek MS 904, Lupus of Ferrières and MS G 53, 48 Otfrid von Weißenburg

Ó Cléirigh, Mícheál 13; Ó Cléirigh’s Glossary, Quae sunt quae, in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale 149(n193) de France, MS Latin 13025 (Corbie, saec. ix), 95(n112) Ó Cuirnín, Adhamh 46, 54, Rabelais, François 63n66 Ó Curry, Eugene 16–17, 86–88 Rath Melsigi 177n245 Ó Flaithbheartaigh (O’Flaherty), Ruaidhrí 13– 15, 47, 86–87, Reichenau 178(n246)

Ogam 18, 39, 42; in curriculum, 92n105; 102, Runic alphabet 178n246, 182n251, 194; ..... 104ff., 167n219, 182–185 dismissed by the Icelandic First Grammarian and approved of by the Third Grammarian, 180; Ó Neachtain, Tadhg Tiorthach 14, 41, 49, 52, in De inventione litterarum, 196(n273), 200, 226; 85n95 see Abecedarium nordmannicum, De inventione Orosius, Paulus 149; Bobbio fragment of, 165 litterarum and Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS

Otfrid von Weißenburg 178–179; his 878

Evangelienbuch and Ad Liudbertum Sachab/Sachar mac Rochemurchos, presented as epistula, 156n207, 180–182; copy of an alternative protagonist of the Irish origin Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, 180, 194 story in the prologue to the Auraic. na nÉces, 97–

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 502, 98; in an accessus, M: 273

135; MS Laud Misc. 610, 73, 197n274 Saltair na Rann (SR) 141(n186)

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Salutati, Coluccio M: 272n388 Latin 5239, Chapter 9 (passim), 226 Sanas Cormaic (SC) 16, 32, 88n97, 130, 161 Patrick, Saint 160, 168n222, 180, Sankt Gallen, the preservation of Classical Latin 182(n252); Latin lives of, 76, 157, 159 literature at, 178; Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek Perrona Scottorum 174 (n232) MS 1399 a 1 (fragment of Isidore’s Etymologiae),

Petrus Grammaticus 63n66 87, 165; MS 876 (De inventione litterarum) 213– 214; MS 878 (Walahfrid Strabo’s Vademecum), 178n246, 194, 198, 200; MS 904 (Old Irish gloss on Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae), 29, 86, Treḟocal Tract 18, 45, 90, 100, 115, 121–123, 229; 108, 109n135, 116n147, 156, 163n212, 176, M: 281n470, 296n556 219n317; see also Walahfrid Strabo Túaim Drecain (monastery), critique of Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek MS Generalia 1 McCone’s argument regarding the veracity of (Adomnán’s Vita Columbae) 172, 178n246 the legend of Cenn Fáelad, 88

Sedulius Scottus, Donatan commentary of, 125, Vademecum, see Walahfrid Strabo and Sankt 126n167, 127n169, 198n275, 224 Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek MS 878

Sergius, Commentarium de oratione et de octo Vallancey, Charles 15, 42, 86 partibus orationis artis secundae Donati, Varro 186, see also Montecassino 126(n167); see also Ars Ambrosiana Vernacular language/alphabet, use of terms in (Pseudo-)Sergius, Explanationes the present thesis, 23n22 in artes Donati, 73, 186n255 Versus cuiusdam Scotti de alphabeto 214, 216n308 Servius, In Vergilii Aeneidem comentarii, M: 279n458 Virgilius Maro Grammaticus 116n145, 125–129; influence on the Auraic. na nÉces rejected, 27n28, Sex Aetates Mundi (SAM) 44, 133(n176) 128–129, 187n257; and the interpretations of the Shakespeare, William 63n66 Latin letters, 224, 226

Sliabh Luchra, in Co. Munster, mentioned in Walahfrid Strabo 139, 178, 194; abbott of M: 298.729, thus mentioned in the three Reichenau, 178n246;Vademecum of, 197; see also recensions represented by B, M, and Y Sankt Gallen MS 878

Snorri Sturluson 91n103 Ware, Sir James 14(n5); owner of a manuscript with Ogam letters, 42 Strasbourg, Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire MS 326, Chapter 9 (passim), 226 Wien, Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek MS 795 (the Salzburg Alcuin-manuscript) 208, 214, Sturm 177, 195 219n316 Tacitus 179; Germania, 179–180; notae Wihtberht, studied at Rath Melsigi, founder of divinationis, 196 Fritzlar and Werden, 177n245 Theodore, and the school at Canterbury, 169 Würzburg, Anglo-Saxon connections of, 177; Theodulf of Orléans, see Fleury part of Southern German scribal province, 194– 195; Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek MS M. Third Grammatical Treatise (Icelandic) 180 p. th. f. 12, Old Irish glosses in, 68n74, 75, 79, Tírechán, his Collectanea, 76–77, 160, 182(n252) 110, 176, 194, 219n316; MS th. f. 61, glosses in, 219n316, 220 Tours 174n233, 179, 223; the establishment of Saint Martin of T., 167(–168)n222 Ælfric, and Icelandic paradigms, 120, 192; see also London, British Library Royal MS 15 B XXII Index verborum

The index verborum contains references to discussions of selected words that are of significance to the argument of the dissertation, but that have not been included in the Table of Contents.

Greek do·raisęlbadh M: 273(n391) ér 95n111; M: 272n386 ἐπίσημον ‘distinguished’, itacism in frithindledach, meaning of, 104, 105(n125) transliteration of, 219 Goídel, the etymology of G. a problem for an Latin early date of the core text of the Circundamus 57n60 Auraic. na nÉces, 134(n177), 227 honorificabilitudinetatibus 63n66; see ·n-airnecht, Ahlqvist’s reading a-n-ar·n-ícht (with N tenerificabilitudinetatibus (M) ‘local sense’ of the temporal conjunction a ) marcomanni 225–226 refuted, 154(n199, n200) tenerificabilitudinetatibus, M: 298.727; see ríaglaid 156 honorificabilitudinetatibus ro·gab, lack of nasalizing relative clause, 154(n201) uinnsiu 66n69, 69; uindsi 50; M: 286 Old and Middle Irish agaldemathacha 127n168 Old Norse ar·icc 156 bjórr 117n151 auraicept 13n1, 83 Welsh commedes 127n168 gwyddel 134; see Goídel under Old and Middle conaib M: 291(n532); see Table of Contents Irish con·óigi M: 291(n531) cumang 117n147, 118–119; Ahlqvist’s evidence for the neuter gender of c. questioned, 120(n152) Index of Verbal Forms in M The order of the forms is generally as in the text. Common forms are not noted more than thrice. References are to the lines in Appendix 2. as·berat (1), for·coemnacair (2), do·rimmart (11), at·cota-som (17), ad·rodmas (18), ara·n-dernadh (19), tigidh (23), co·faiceam (23), co·mbuaidrem (23), co na·fetatar (24), co-nar·aithin (25), co-ro·mescad (26), as·bered (28), do·bered (28), do·latar (29), co·tancadar (30), do·ruimnatar (31), ra·fodailtea (31), do·radh (33), a(r)·richt (35, 565), do·lotar (37), (in)-ro·cumdacht (37), ro·fodladh (41), (riasiu)·thisad (48), na·[...] (49), fo·daile (50), ro-s·n-othrastar (51), co·tancatar (53), ro·tei[...] (55), ro·genetar (56), ro·chiu (56), (o)- ra·h-ainmniged (61), do·ruaraid (62), do·rorait (63), do·gairther (63), co·n-atgetar (66), do·ranic (69), do·rind (?) (72), as-a·n-acallad (72), fo·gni (73), ro·h-ainmniged (76, 628, 630, etc.), ro-s·irdarcaid (77), do·rathlaigh (79), ar·ric(h)t (67, 80, 109, 113, 593), ar·ranic (81, 563, 566, etc.), ar·rancatar (81), (o)- ra·foglaintea (83), ro·faided (92, 94), do·cuaidh (92, 567), ro·gab(h) (93, 327, 498, 568, etc.), ro·h-alt (95), as·bert (95), at·bert (98, 425), do·rebed (99), for·tait (100), ro·h-ainmnight(h)ea (104, 859), at·berat (104), do·formagar (105), ainmnigter (106), ro·n-athnugestar (110), ro·toibged (113), do·rathad (114), do·robadh (118), (do)na·frith (118), fo·[f]rith (119), (resíu) do·robad (120), ni·faigebtar (120), (i)·rugadh (121), (a)·rucadh (122), do·chuaidh (123), do·n-uci (124), do·rormachtar (125), ro·taisęlbadh (126), ro·taisbenastar (127), do·fuarcaib (127), rucad (127), do·raisęlbadh (128), (resiu) thisad (129), nac·richt (129), rucad (133), do-do-s·f-uc (136), i·rrucad (138), ro-da·scrib (139), ro-da·scribastar (140), do·aidet (148), do·aitnet (148), tiagat (148), do·thoit (150), do·beir (150), ro·icadh (157), aipgiges (158), ro·fodlait (163), luaidit (164, 201), foidit (166), etait (167), aderar (168, 209, 701, etc.), do·niat (169), fo·graigit (173), do·inscain (181), do·inscanand (182), uagtir (182), ar·rainic (184), fegthar (187), fothigim (187), ni·teipter (198), for[b]es (200), fo·certait (201), nad·rochet (202), (cia) techtait (204), fo·dailter (206), do·raith (207), rait(ir) (210), da·uirised (224), forbanait (229), tinnscinter (231), forbaiter (231, 235), ni·thabair (231), ara·n-apraiter (233), forbait-sem (235), tindscainit (237), do·cu(i)sin (238, 248, 716, 788), ro·raidh (244), discnaigther (250), ni·asat (253), tairisidh (254), for[b]es (260), sluindęss (263), digbaim (263), ro·digbait (264), fo·gnaither (268), no-s·deligidar (269), imcomarcim (271), ro-s·deligidar (272), no-s·dedualaigidar (272), do- s·bi (274), at·berar (275), deocraige (276), fri-s·n-aicin (276), unse (?) (277), ima·n-airic (286), fedair (287), do·fairgither (289), fedair (290, 296, 302, etc.), fiadair (290), aisinter (290), samlaim (294), ni·carfaind (299), na·fintar (300), co·cluinter (300), no-s·legh (305), as·berar (307, 318), (ris) na·gabar (310), ro·mandair (314), do-s·farraid (315), ro·las (320), do·fuisim (334), (o)·tusemar (334), min·tusmed (337), nach·follsigter (342), tuarascbalaigidh (344), raiter (345, 505, 685, etc.), co·n-abair (345), nach·ecsamlaigther (347), nach·cloechmother (347), nach·chechmother (sic) (351), nach·faicther (351), (a)·tairisium (351), do·epenar (352), do·cusnet (361), do·ber (370), at·ber-sesom (377), derrscaiges (379), dlegar (380), aeras (381), molas (381), nocho·derscaigh[...] (382), derscaigther (382, 389), ad·rimther (385, 458), do·berad-som (387), ni·derscaige[n]d (388), noco·derscaigther (388), derscaigid (389), derscaigit (390), beres (391), fetfaide (396), ni·connelgaither (397), derscaiges (400), ondar (403), do·rignius (405), do·rignis (405), do·rigne (405), do·rigni-sem (406), do·rignisidh (406), do·rigniset (406), no-m·carthar-sa (406), no- t·carthar-su (407), no-t·carthar-seom (407), at·ber-seom (415), co·n-etargnaigther (417), ni·fes (423), cen- co·n-abrad (424), friasa·toimsither (430), risa·n-ebrad (433), ro-d·airdarcach (439), ro·erdairc (440), tomsithir (441), at·cothar (441), do·midther (442), co·n-agar (443, 694), do·cuirend (451), uaigther (452), do·formaigther (456), do·roich (460), remnigthir (472, 475, 476, etc.), ni·airegar (473), ara·togarar (475), at·chotar (481), forbeoidh (484), ara·tabar (484), co·feser (491, 497, 508, etc.), adubramar (494), na·tuisim (507), ara·cuir (508), risna·dentar (517), co·fessoer (517), co·fesser (518), do·gniat (520), do-s·beri (521), conos·dibdand (?) (526), con-da·deligidar (527), im·drengar (529), ara·n-ebrethar (532), do·miter (532, 533), con·uaigther (532), ara·n-eberar (537), iar(r)aither (539), at·connarc (541), arecar (546), ro·raidius (552), co·n-agar (555), do·rigned (562), do·rothlaig (563), (i)·n-arnacht (564), ro·foided (569), ro·alt (570), ro·an (570), co·thoracht (570), co·n-atgetar (571), fo·glendad (572), do·reped (573), ro·taiselbad (573), for-da·ta (574), ro·riaglad (577), ro·teped (577), do-na·airecht (578), ar·ric[h]ta (578, 594), ro·laithea (588), (i)·tangadar (593), na·fodailtea (595), lasi·ndernad (597), (o)·tait (597, 598), (o)-ro·h-ainmnigthe (615), ro·lathe (615), for-da·tat (616), do·formaiget (617), ro·h-ainmnigthe (618), ainmnigthir (620), ro·h- ainmnigędh (624), ro·scribadh (626), berthair (627), mina·cometa (628), do·gniter (633), thocbaither (634), fo·gabar (645), ainmnigter (645), aderat (646), do·gni (652, 856), do·ecaibh (653), co·ngeib (660, 714), adubrumar (660), aderait (662), do·berar (664), arracar (665), gebidh (666), scrib(h)t(h)ar (668, 797), tucadh (675), cingit (675, 678), ara·tuctha (681), forithnit (685), ro·emnad (693), gebius (694, etc.), na·geb (695, etc.), gebes (698, etc.), labras (700), nochon·agar (702), na·ge(i)b (706), uaigthir (718), ro·remraidemar (721), ro·sech (728), con·gluase (732), ro·saig (735), ni·armeder (736), ima·tormaig (738), ro·cluine (752), ro·n-aili (752), troethaid (752), troethas (753), ro·gabait-sem (759), da·cuaidh (759), fo·gabar (759), do·miditer (761), fris·cara (764), (i)·mberat (768), a·marand (785), na·marand (786), ar·ding (788), fegar (788), scrib(h)thair (790, 796), ni·tuc (791), do·beir (791), fedair (808), tairgthir (808), con-id·gairit (809), (triasa)·n-acalladh (811), (o)-na·h-etar (817), ni·etar (818), ni·anfam (824), co·risam (824), do·nitis (826), co·foirgidis (827), fo·gni (828), slonter (831), luaotir (833), for·ricfa (836), cuin·gena (844), co·techt (845), ro·can (847), co·sluife (849), (dia) ndoma (854), do·leci (855), co-ndo-s·lece (855), sloindter (858), ar·sisedar (862, 863), im·tha (864), ar-a·sisedar (864), nach·sinter (867), oentadhaiges (870).

Copula: ba (8, 14, 224 etc.), batar/badar (5, 32, 576, etc.), co naba (10), comba (10, 224), comad (15, 17), conad (22), it (83), ropo (106), cate (108), dianid (112, 139), ata (122), armad (132), gomad (149), is (154, 155, etc.), is/as (193, 194, etc.), batis (207), cid (207, 306, 648, etc.), nirba (216), armad (217, 222), nirbo (217, 223), ropo (218), conid (225), mad(h) (298, 304), bad (298), bit (329), bis (329, 683, 690, etc.), niba (332), nach (347), arnach (371), corop (380, 535), ropad (394), narbo (424), cadeat (436), cade (437, 453), at (2nd sg.) (468, 470), ad (471), coraped (535), (a) mba (577), (a) n-as (581), arba (612), at (3rd pl.) (613, 659), it (615, 839, etc.), connach (618, 799), cencopat (619), bes (648), bid (654), bocas (655), bias (667), ni (675, etc.), nidat (744, 746), diannat (749), comtis (754), arnarop (832), narop (837).

Substantive verb: nο·bidh (9), for·beith (17), co·mbeth (25), ni·rabi (26), ara·raibi (33), cen co·raba (33), ro·bi (35), ni·boi (55), ro·boi (62), na·bet[h] (66, 571), no·beth (67), ro·bi (76), ro·batar (97), ro·bai (114, 120, 128), ro·ba (115, 126, 131), ni·raibi (120, 131), na·rabe (130), at·tat (146), atait (146, 150), (a)·fail (165), atat (174, 186), filet (175, 185, 220, etc.), f(a)il (213, 218, 317, etc.), (o)·ta (214), ni·filet (219, 376), no·beth (227, 232, 572), na·fil (232, 372), bidh (279), filed (324), ataid (334), dia·mbe (367), dia·mbeth (395), bis (448), bes (450), bias (451), bite (522, 524, 838, etc.), co·bail (588), ni·fil (586, 588, etc.), (do)na·raba (589), for·da (613), conna·bi (662), (i)·mbia (668), triasa·fil (819), ima·mbi (860).