Analecta Hiberniae, Fasciculus II

The present writer presents here the second fragment recovered from the supplementary leaves of the Codex Hibernicus Bodleianus Primus, this one belonging unmistakably to the Ulster Cycle and concerning Macha – that most complex of the sovereignty figures, who appears in the mythological record in at least three distinct personae. The Macha of this fragment is the third: the woman who races the king's horses whilst great with child and afterwards speaks the words that bring the curse of weakness upon the warriors of Ulster for nine generations. The standard account, as preserved in the Lebor na hUidre and several later redactions, records the curse immediately following the race and the birth, typically in a brief and catastrophic passage that moves quickly to the aftermath; what distinguishes the present fragment is its attention to the scene before the curse is fully spoken – to Macha in the presence of the assembled crowd, who appear here with an insistence the standard account does not give them. The crowd's desire for a wider reckoning than the one she provides is treated in this variant as a thing requiring active management, a circumstance for which the present writer finds no precise parallel in the received tradition. Professor Zimmer, whose treatment of analogous material in the Germanic sources is instructive if not precisely applicable, might describe it as a popular tradition's discomfort with limited rather than total punishment – a psychology the present writer finds curious but is not inclined to press further. Her restraint here is, in any case, admirable. One may compare the controlled quality attributed to Nemesis in the classical tradition, or the more measured later manifestations of the Erinyes, though neither parallel is quite exact. The annotating hand appears to be the same second hand noted throughout the preceding leaves.

From the supplementary leaves of the Codex Hibernicus Bodleianus Primus. One leaf of vellum in good condition, the reverse blank. The primary hand is the same insular minuscule as the preceding fragment, and the marginal annotations appear in the same second hand. A scorch mark to the lower left corner of the leaf has obliterated several words of the primary text and one line of marginalia.

The race was run. The child came before she reached the ground. She did not fall.

The crowd was still there. There are always crowds at a race and this crowd had not left when the thing happened that changed what kind of crowd it was. Some of them were calling for the king. Some were calling for blood generally and without direction. Some were calling for names she had not named, wanting a larger field for what had been done here, wanting the reckoning to reach further than she had sent it.

She looked at the king.

She looked at him for a long time. Her face held what it held.

Then she spoke the curse and the words were what they were. Nine months of weakness for nine months of her waiting. The warriors of Ulster, nine generations. Not the king's household. Not the women of Emain Macha. Not the merchants who had laid wagers on the outcome. Not the men at the back who had come late and stayed to watch. The warriors who had been there and had seen and had said nothing and who had the power to have said something. Them. That harm and no other. That exact length.

When she finished, three women came forward from the crowd. The first wanted to know why the king was not in it. The second wanted the court and the quarter-court and the men who had approved the race. The third said more, and did not specify.

She heard them. She looked at the plain where the race had been run.

The plain had her name by then. She left it.

Beirid mallacht a cruth féin. [ . . . ] Ní loscann teine acht a rogha.

In uigilia Sanctae Brigidae scripsi haec, sub luna plena. Hanc feminam non nomino quia– [scorch mark] –Bene intellego differentiam. Maledictio quae omnes tangit tangit nullum. Recordatio quae unum tangit manet. Et ego scripsi recordationes non maledictiones, cum alii maledictiones uoluissent. Domine, rectum fecit.

_{Footnote. The marginal annotation is partly obscured by the scorch damage noted in the provenance, which has removed the crucial completion of one sentence. The legible portions translate approximately:}

_{On the vigil of Saint Brigid I wrote this, under a full moon. I do not name this woman because– [illegible] –I understand the distinction well. A curse that touches all touches no one. A record that touches one endures. I too have written records rather than curses, when others wanted curses. Lord, she did the right thing.}

_{The scribe's reference to an unnamed woman remains opaque; the present writer suggests, without conviction, a figure of personal devotion or a confusion in the exemplar. The observation on the distinction between curse and record is not original to the monk – it echoes a commonplace of early Irish legal thought where maledictio and recordatio are treated as legally distinct acts with distinct legal consequences. The present writer notes in passing that recordatio in Hiberno-Latin usage sometimes carries the specific sense of evidence that cannot be expunged by subsequent settlement, which sits with a certain precision beside the primary text.}

_{The first line of the rosc, Beirid mallacht a cruth féin – a curse carries its own shape – is, so far as the present writer can determine, unattested elsewhere, and may be the hapax legomenon referred to in the present writer's title; the construction is sound, if unusual. The second line is severely damaged in the exemplar and unrecoverable. The third line, Ní loscann teine acht a rogha – fire burns only what it chooses – is presented by the present writer as a probable meteorological metaphor of the type found in several other Ulster Cycle imprecations, where natural phenomena are invoked as figures for the self-limiting character of supernatural action. The crowd scene immediately preceding the curse is treated here as a curious anthropological detail that may reflect an independent strand of popular tradition – one less comfortable than the standard account with the precise and calibrated nature of Macha's response, and demanding of it a less discriminating scope. The present writer regards this variant tradition as the less archaic of the two.}

_{The place name Mag Macha requires no annotation; the present writer notes only that this fragment locates the naming at the moment of departure rather than at the death, which is a divergence from the standard account of sufficient interest to warrant future examination.}