Analecta Hiberniae, Fasciculus XII
On a Fragment Concerning the Mustering of Cattle Before a Royal Feast, Attributed to a Connacht Source, with Commentary on an Appended Marginal Note
The following fragment, recovered from a damaged leaf in a late eighth-century hand and tentatively associated with the scriptorium at Clonfert, describes the practical preparations preceding a royal feast in the Connacht tradition. The text presents no particular difficulty of interpretation, its subject being the logistical obligations of hospitality incumbent upon petty kings of the period, documented at some length in the brehon law tracts and examined by Professor Meyer in his commentary on the Críth Gablach. The present fragment may be regarded as a literary illustration of those obligations, of moderate antiquarian interest. The detail of the borrowed drinking-vessels calls to mind, if dimly, the elaborate preparations described before Tantalus's great feast for the Olympians, though the register here is, appropriately for so practical a matter, without theological dimension. The place-name in the final sentence, Áth in Áirimh, has not been identified by the present writer in any other source. The scribe's marginal note, translated in the footnote below, is an example of the personal annotation common to manuscripts of this provenance.
The text is preserved on a single damaged leaf from a gathering now separated from its parent manuscript. The hand is consistent with Clonfert, though an earlier exemplar is implied by the material. The rosc in the second section is partially illegible; the scribe's own note marks it as damaged in his source. The lower margin is water-stained throughout.
Guaire sent his man Donn to the cattle-lord of the Uí Maine seven days before the Samhain feast. He told Donn what cattle he required and what cattle he would return and when. Donn came back with forty cattle and with the cattle-lord's man, whose name was Ailill Find, to count them.
Guaire's own cattle were eleven.
He did not say this to the men from the north when they came to see the herd. He walked them along the fence and spoke of the cattle's quality. Ailill Find stood behind him and did not speak.
The cloth came from a merchant at Cruachu on the promise of next year's tribute. Guaire had pledged the drinking-cups to his sister's husband in the matter of the bride-price three years before, and he sent for them now with a letter saying he would replace them before Beltaine. His sister's husband sent them.
The guests arrived on the third day before Samhain. They came from the north and from the east and some came from the sea. They came with their retinues and the retinues required feeding and the feeding required what Guaire had prepared.
He stood at the gate. His steward Murchad stood behind him. Murchad's face held something Guaire did not look at.
The table was laid and the table was full. Guaire sat at the head and the guests sat along both sides and they praised what was before them. They praised the cattle and they praised the cloth and a man from the north said: it is true what is said of Guaire's house. Another man said: there is no house in all Connacht that sets such a table.
Guaire said: you are welcome here.
He watched them drink from the pledged cups. The fire was good. The rushes were fresh. The candles were lit along the hall. There was nothing in the hall that was not right.
At dawn he walked to the ford where Ailill Find had brought the cattle across. It had no name before that morning.
Ithid flaith a fhléd. Is brecc in tabhartach. Mol— [the remainder of this line is illegible in the exemplar; the scribe marks it as damaged]
Post completorium scripsi, in frigore, die Sancti Fionnbarra. Membrana hic laesa — exemplar antiquius deterius erat. Homo hic donum quod non habet distribuit. Quod non tenet, donat. Et manet in mensa, et laudes recipit, et tacet. Domine — scio hunc hominem. Nomen eius non scribo. Intellego.
(Unsigned. The hand appears to the present writer consistent with that of the marginalia in the Ros Cré fragment, though this identification remains uncertain.)
Footnote: The marginal note, in a hand somewhat later than the main text and in the debased Latin characteristic of Hiberno-Latin manuscripts of this provenance, may be rendered approximately as follows:
After Compline I wrote this, in the cold, on the feast of Saint Finnbar. The parchment is damaged here — the earlier exemplar was in worse condition still. This man distributes a gift he does not possess. What he does not hold, he gives. And he remains at table, and receives the praises, and is silent. Lord — I know this man. I will not write his name. I understand.
The scribe's remark about the damaged exemplar is of some interest in suggesting the present text is a copy of a copy, which would account for the lacunae in the rosc above. His use of intellego in isolation is an affectation occasionally encountered in manuscripts associated with the Munster scriptoria.
The first line of the rosc may be translated as approximately the lord eats his feast or, the Irish construction being ambiguous, the feast eats its lord; the latter reading has been proposed by Professor Stokes in a comparable context, though the present writer finds the former preferable on metrical grounds. The second line is the giver is false, or possibly the gift is false, depending on the referent. The fragment Mol—, which the scribe marks as damaged in his exemplar, most probably continued as Molaid an flaith — They praise the lord — or a similar completion; several parallels exist in the later bardic tradition.