Analecta Hiberniae, Fasciculus I

The following fragment was recovered from the supplementary leaves appended to the psalter the present writer has designated Codex Hibernicus Bodleianus Primus, a bound gathering of nine leaves of fine vellum of uncertain origin, acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1847. The fragment records an otherwise unattested episode in the mythology of Manannán mac Lir – that most singular of the Tuatha Dé Danann, whose dominion over the otherworldly isle of Tír Tairngire and whose functions as psychopomp and keeper of the Feast of Age (Fled Goibhnenn) have been treated at some length by Professor Stokes in his notes to the Revue Celtique, and more recently by Professor Meyer in his edition of the Immrama. Here the god appears not in any of his characteristic capacities but in a condition of marked solitude at a named but unidentifiable shoreline, apparently following some festival or gathering the text describes only as a fled without further specification. The cloak (brat) motif, well documented in Manannán's mythology as a means of effecting concealment or passage between worlds, here appears in what the present writer can only characterise as an unusual domestic usage: the god does not deploy it for concealment or transportation but simply puts it on, as a man puts on a coat. The piece is of considerable antiquarian interest. One may compare the liminal functions ascribed by Hesiod to Poseidon, and in certain funerary aspects to Charon, though the Irish treatment is more domestic in register than the classical parallel will quite account for. The annotating hand, observed throughout in the margins, appears to be the same second hand noted in the preceding leaves.

From the supplementary leaves of the Codex Hibernicus Bodleianus Primus. Two leaves of fine vellum, the second showing some staining to the lower corner but otherwise in good condition. The primary hand is an insular minuscule of probable ninth-century date, written with care and some inconsistency in letter-spacing toward the latter third of the text, possibly indicating fatigue in the copyist. A second, smaller hand appears in the margins throughout. A provenance note in a third hand, possibly thirteenth century, reads only: from the keeping of [monastery name here damaged].

He had been at the feast. The feast was finished and the guests were gone and the hall was what halls become when the noise has left them. He went down to the shore. He had not been asked to do this and he said nothing of where he was going. The shore was called Trácht Déicsin and had been called that longer than any feast had been held there.

He sat on a stone at the water's edge. Sitting was not his habit. He had the cloak with him. He set it down on the stone beside him and it settled as cloth settles when there is no body in it.

There was something on the sand. A small thing, left by someone who had been at the feast or by someone who had come to the shore after, or who had been there long before any feast. He picked it up and looked at it for a time not measured.

He went to the water's edge and put his hands in up to the wrist. He held them there. The cold of the sea was on his hands and then the cold was not there or he could not feel it any longer. He brought his hands up cupped and held the water a moment before it ran through his fingers. He did this three times. The sea received what the sea receives and took no note of the occasion.

He set the small thing at the edge of the water and let the tide have it. The tide took it.

He took the cloak up from the stone and settled it about his shoulders and the mist that lived in it gathered around him as it always did. His face was the face it was. He went back from the shore.

The tide came to the stone where he had sat and the stone was bare. They call the cove Cuan na Gáire now, which is one name for it, and they have always said the name means one thing and it means another.

Ní ibid flaith a deocha féin. [ . . . ceo . . . béim . . . ] Beirid in muir a bretha.

Post completorium scripsi haec, manu tremula non propter frigus sed propter aliud quod non nomino. Membrana bona hic. Iste deus sciuit quod ego scio: grauia in leuibus portantur, aut omnino non perueniunt. Saepe in membranis meis scripsi uerba quae ludicra uidebantur, et in eis uerba grauia latebant. Domine, quid portat ille qui omnia portat? Nescio. Non intellego. Sed–

_{Footnote. The scribe appends a marginal note of the type commonly encountered in manuscripts of this provenance, locating himself by the liturgical hour. The passage translates approximately:}

_{After compline I wrote this, with a hand unsteady not from cold but from something else I do not name. The vellum is good here. This god knew what I know: serious things are carried inside lighter things, or they do not arrive at all. I have often written words in my margins that appeared playful, and within them serious words were hidden. Lord, what does the one who carries everything carry? I do not know. I do not understand. But–}

_{The sentence terminates without conclusion, a feature not uncommon in working notes appended by scribes of this period; the present writer takes it as evidence of interruption, possibly the call to nocturns. The change in the pressure of the pen toward the close is consistent with a tired copyist at day's end, a circumstance hardly requiring further remark.}

_{The rosc presents several difficulties. The first line, Ní ibid flaith a deocha féin – the lord does not drink his own drink – appears to be a proverbial form, though the present writer has not located it in the standard collections, and Professor Meyer, consulted in correspondence, has not encountered it either. The second line is severely damaged in the exemplar; the readings ceo (mist) and possibly béim (stroke, blow) are recoverable, though not their syntax or connection. The third line, Beirid in muir a bretha, admits of two renderings: the sea carries its judgements or the sea carries what it was given, the verbal form beirid supporting both with equal grammatical plausibility. The latter reading would accord with the well-attested chthonic associations of Manannán as a figure at the margin between worlds – the parallel with Charon's transport of the dead is at least suggestive, if necessarily imprecise – though the present writer does not press the comparison further than the evidence warrants.}

_{The place name Cuan na Gáire was noted by O'Donovan in the Survey as of uncertain derivation; he favours the reading laughter for gáir without explanation, though the word admits equally of the sense outcry or cry. The present writer leaves the question open, as the text itself seems to require.}