Analecta Hiberniae, Fasciculus VII

The fragment presented below, recovered from a damaged gathering within the Psalter of Cluain Iraird, appears to preserve a variant tradition concerning the period preceding the elevation of Bres mac Elatha to the sovereignty of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The passage is of some philological interest and no little antiquarian curiosity as evidence of pre-Christian assembly rites associated with the selection of sacral kings; the gathering of artificers described here may plausibly be read as a ceremonial presentation of craft objects for royal evaluation, the episode recalling in some measure the presentation of divine artefacts in the Hephaestion tradition, though the complete absence of the reciprocal exchange formulaic to such contexts is more readily attributable to the lacunose state of the transmission than to any original peculiarity of the rite. The marginal annotation, in what appears to be a later hand distinct from the main text, is noted below with the observations it warrants.

Recovered from folio 17v of the Psalter of Cluain Iraird, in a minuscule hand of the mid-ninth century. The scribe appears to have been working from an earlier exemplar; the rosc at the close of the fragment is partially illegible and may itself have been copied from a damaged source. One further folio, now lost, is suggested by the quire signature. The hand of the marginalia does not correspond to that of the main text.

Before Bres was made king he came to the plain of Mag Tuired and the craftsmen came. They came from the five territories. Each brought what three years of making had made.

Goibniu was not there. Creidhne was not there. Luchta was not there. But lesser craftsmen were there, men whose names are not given in the old lists, and they spread their work on the grass and waited.

Bres walked among them. He was as bright as a lamp brought into a dark room. The craftsmen turned toward him as grain turns toward the sun and showed him what they had made. He took each thing in his hands. He held it to the light. He looked at it and gave it back.

A man named Íbar Delbgnae came before him last. Íbar was the son of Delbáeth Cró by a woman of no name. He had woven a cloak for seven months. The cloak was the colour of the sea at the hour before the sun is seen. Bres took it and set it across his own shoulders and the craftsmen watched him wear it. He gave it back.

Íbar Delbgnae went home. The loom was there. He sat before it for three days and again for three nights. He did not weave again that season.

This was the nature of Bres. He arrived. He was looked at and he looked at their work and he returned everything. No law named what he had taken. There was no remedy. The craftsmen stood in the field with their work in their hands.

They gathered again the following year. More came. And the year after that.

The plain had no name before that day. It is called Mag Féachaint now.

Bíaid fer álainn cen torad.
Berar uile leis acht a ainm féin.
Is lom in mag i n-díaid a rosc.
[Three further lines follow in the original exemplar but cannot be recovered.]

Post vesperas scripsi; nox friget et membrana tenuis hic. Paganum — Deus miseratur. Hic Bres accipit sine lege et sine nomine; artifices dant et ipse recipit visum suum et sufficiat ei; nescio quid tollatur. Ego ipse scripsi per duodecim annos et magister meus ostendit libros hospitibus ut gloriam suam. Intellego te, Íbar. Scribe nomen tuum nusquam.

— manus altera

_{Footnote. The Latin gloss, in what appears to be a distinct ninth-century insular hand, may be translated as follows: I wrote this after vespers; the night is cold and the parchment is thin here. It is pagan — God have mercy. Here Bres receives without law and without name; craftsmen give and he receives their gaze and let it suffice him; I do not know what is taken. I myself have written for twelve years and my master has shown the books to guests as his own glory. I understand you, Íbar. Write your name nowhere.}

_{The monk's noting of his circumstance — the canonical hour, the temperature, the condition of the parchment — is characteristic of insular scribal practice; Meyer's catalogue of Hiberno-Latin marginalia records numerous parallel instances, of which the present note is entirely representative. The invocation Deus miseratur is a conventional formula accompanying the transcription of pre-Christian material and need not indicate any exceptional degree of scruple on this scribe's part. The monk's interpolation of personal matter in the latter portion of the note is, as observed elsewhere in this series, a characteristic feature of insular marginalia; the comparison he draws between the mythological situation and his own scriptorium, while sympathetically rendered, is of limited scholarly utility. The final imperative — scribe nomen tuum nusquam, write your name nowhere — likely reflects the familiar Benedictine ideal of humble anonymity in scribal labour rather than any more pointed sentiment. That he signs the note only as manus altera, another hand, is entirely consistent with this reading.}

_{The rosc presents considerable difficulty. The first line may be tentatively rendered as There will be a beautiful man without fruit, the second as All things are carried with him except his own name, and the third as The plain is bare after his gaze — though the rosc in this final line carries the additional sense of eye or incantation, a productive ambiguity that the original does not resolve. The three remaining lines noted as present in the exemplar have not survived. The Mag Féachaint named in the prose does not correspond to any known toponym within the Mag Tuired tradition and may represent a local recension or scribal interpolation. The parentage given for Íbar Delbgnae is irreconcilable with the Delbáeth Cró named in the Cath Maige Tuired, where no such son is attested; the contradiction is left unresolved in both texts.}