Part 17 (1/2)

'Song of the Sea.'--Text and translation in _Otia Merseiana_ (the publication of the Arts Faculty, University College, Liverpool), vol. ii.

p. 76 ff. Though the poem is ascribed to the celebrated poet Rumann, who died in 748, its language points to the eleventh century.

'Summer has come.'--Text and translation in my _Four Songs of Summer and Winter_ (D. Nutt, 1903), p. 20 ff. The piece probably dates from the tenth century.

'Song of Summer.'--_Ibid._, p. 8 ff., and _eriu_, the Journal of the School of Irish Learning, i. p. 186. The date is the ninth century, I think.

'Summer is gone.'--_Ibid._, p. 14. Ninth century.

'A Song of Winter.'--From the story called 'The Hiding of the Hill of Howth,' first printed and translated by me in _Revue Celtique_, xi. p. 125 ff. Probably tenth century.

'Arran.'--Taken from the thirteenth-century prose tale called _Agallamh na Senorach_, edited and translated by S.H. O'Grady in _Silva Gadelica_. The poem refers to the island in the Firth of Clyde.

'The Song of Crede, daughter of Guare.'--See text and translation in _eriu_, ii. p. 15 ff. Probably tenth century.

'Liadin and Curithir.'--First published and translated by me under that t.i.tle with Messrs. D. Nutt, 1902. It belongs to the ninth century.

'The Deer's Cry.'--For the text and translation see Stokes and Strachan, _Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus_ (University Press, Cambridge), vol. ii. p.

354. I have adopted the translation there given except in some details.

The hymn in the form in which it has come down to us cannot be earlier than the eighth century.

'An Evening Song.'--Printed in my _Selections from Old-Irish Poetry_, p.

1. Though ascribed to Patrick, the piece cannot be older than the tenth century.

'Patrick's Blessing on Munster.'--Taken from the _Tripart.i.te Life of Patrick_, edited by Whitley Stokes (Rolls Series, London, 1887), p. 216.

Not earlier than the ninth century.

'The Hermit's Song.'--See _eriu_, vol. i. p. 39, where the Irish text will be found. The poem dates from the ninth century.

'A Prayer to the Virgin.'--See Strachan's edition of the original in _eriu_, i. p. 122. There is another copy in the Bodleian MS. Laud 615, p.

91, from which I have taken some better readings. The poem is hardly earlier than the tenth century.

'Eve's Lament.'--See _eriu_, iii. p. 148. The date is probably the late tenth or early eleventh century.

'On the Flightiness of Thought.'--See _eriu_, iii. p. 13. Tenth century.

'To Crinog.'--The Irish text was published by me in the _Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie_, vol. vi. p. 257. The date of the poem is the tenth century. Crinog was evidently what is known in the literature of early Christianity as [Greek: iagapete], _virgo subintroducta_ ([Greek: syneisaktos]) or _conhospita_, _i.e._ a nun who lived with a priest, monk, or hermit like a sister or 'spiritual wife' (_uxor spiritualis_). This practice, which was early suppressed and abandoned everywhere else, seems to have survived in the Irish Church till the tenth century. See on the whole subject H. Achelis, _Virgines Subintroductae_, ein Beitrag zu i., Kor. vii. (Leipzig, 1902).