Analecta Hiberniae, Fasciculus VI
On the Making and Disposal of a Vessel at Mag Tuired, with Notes on a Damaged Verse
The fragment below was identified by the present editor among miscellaneous end-leaves appended to a psalter at Cluain Mhic Nóis, the hand consistent with that scriptorium's output in the ninth or tenth century, though the text it preserves is certainly older. The cauldron motif places it in clear relation to the well-attested Coire Ansic tradition, and the piece may be of interest to scholars concerned with the cultic treatment of bronze vessels in pre-Christian ritual practice. The marginal annotation is in a student hand and of limited scholarly value. The verse, partially damaged by water, has not been restored.
Found among the end-leaves of a psalter at Cluain Mhic Nóis, with a title in a later hand: Creidhne agus Coire an Fholúis. The hand of the main text is old. A second hand has written in the margin. What stood above the first line has been cut away, and the cut is not recent.
Creidhne was of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He was the worker in metal. His hands had made the rivets for the spears of Lugh Lámhfhada and the sword-hilts of the great battle and the shield-bosses of the dead. Of his father, nothing is agreed. Some say Brigid was his mother. Others say this is confusion with another Creidhne. The question was not settled in his time and has not been settled since.
After the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, when Lugh had driven the eye of Balor back through his own skull and the Fomorians had gone into the sea, Creidhne sat at his forge at the edge of the plain. The plain was still. He did not work for nine days. On the tenth day, he began.
He made the cauldron from what lay on the plain. He used the handles of broken things and the bent iron of spear-shafts and the hollow of a shield that had not saved its man. He worked through three nights. He did not ask Brigid's blessing on the fire.
He put one loaf into the cauldron. A hundred loaves came out. Those who ate of them rose from the table as men who had not eaten.
He put one song into the cauldron. A hundred songs came out. The musicians played what came from it. When they finished, the night was as it had been before they began.
He brought it to the Dagda at his hall on the hill above the plain. In the hall behind the Dagda stood the Coire Ansic, which had come from the city of Murias before the world was divided. The Dagda looked at Creidhne's cauldron for a long time. He did not bring the two vessels near each other.
What does it lack, said Creidhne.
The Dagda said:
Ithfit ocus ní sásfaiter.
Dogénat ocus ní m[...]it.
Labr[...] ocus ní cluinter.
He went back into his hall.
Creidhne carried the cauldron to Brigid. She was at a fire that gave no smoke. She looked at the cauldron and did not speak. Then she took a coal from the fire and pressed words into the iron:
Ná déan gan anam.
She told him to put it in the ground. He carried it north from Mag Tuired and west along the ridge above the plain of Connacht, and on the third day, he came to a pool on the high ground and dropped it in. The pool had no name before that day. It is called Poll an Fholúis now. It is in the territory of the Uí Maine. Some maps do not mark it.
Haec de Creidhne fabro et vase inani. Rogavi abbatem quid significaret vas sine anima. Dixit: opus sine oratione. Sed non hoc solum intellego. Heri scriptorium plenum erat et omnes scribebant et membrana plena erat et tamen vacui surreximus. Fecimus et vacui sumus. Nescio quid aliud scribam. Intellego. — manus incerta
Footnote. The marginal annotation, in a hand the editor judges to be somewhat later than the main text, reads in translation as follows:
This concerning Creidhne the craftsman and the empty vessel. I asked the abbot what a vessel without a soul signified. He said: Work, done without prayer. But it is not only this that I understand. Yesterday, the scriptorium was full, and all were writing and the vellum was full and yet we rose empty. We made and we are empty. I do not know what else to write. I understand.
The annotator's reference to the scriptorium likely reflects a commonplace monastic anxiety about the labour of copying divorced from contemplation, a tension well-documented in the period. His use of anima to render what appears to be a pre-Christian concept of craft-virtue is a characteristic conflation of theological and technical vocabulary and should not be pressed. The damaged verse lines are consistent with water damage along the lower margin, and the editor has not attempted their restoration.
The inscription Ná déan gan anam — do not make without soul — is an imperative construction in Modern rather than Old Irish and may represent a later interpolation into the text, or the copyist's own summary of a passage now lost.