sixty couples had gone, though unwillingly. So they turned righthandwise and the wind wafted them northwestwards.12

Sec. 2. After three days, great thirst seized the clerics but Christ took pity and brought them to a stream "well tasting like new milk," which satisfied them. They decided to leave the direction of their voyage to God.18

Sec. 3. The clerics reached an island with a fence of silver over the midst of it and a fish-weir therein and a plank of silver. Huge salmon were leaping against the weir, each bigger than a bull calf. The voyagers ate their fill.14

Sec. 4. They reached an island with many warriors with heads of cats upon them. One Gaelic champion appeared and said he was the last of a boat's company who came there. The rest had suffered martyrdom at the hands of the heathen inhabitants of the island. He placed food in their boat and they exchanged blessings.1

15

Sec. 5. The wind blew the voyagers to an island whereon was a great tree with beautiful birds. Atop the tree was a great bird with a head of gold and wings of silver. He recounted the whole biblical story. When he told of doomsday the birds beat their sides with their wings so that showers of blood issued from their sides. "Communion and creature was that blood." The great bird gave the clerics a leaf from the tree. It was as large as the hide of a large ox. The bird told them to place it on Colum cille's altar. "So that is Colum cille's flabellum (cuilfaid) today. In Kells it is." The birds were the birds of the plain of heaven, making melodious music a-singing psalms and canticles, praising the Lord.16

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12 Poem: Lacking. Prose B, M, S: The two clerics were entertained by Donnchad until spring. They then set out for Iona but were driven out of their course northwestwards by a wind.

13 Poem: takes up story at this point (Sts. 4-8). Prose B, M, S: The milk-like water stream is definitely described as on an island, where no inhabitants are seen.

14 Prose B, M, S: The clerics felt safe in eating of the salmon because they were sure it was God's household abiding in the isle. [Account more detailed]

15 Poem, Prose B, M, S: The voyagers feared the catheads and skirted the coast till they saw the lone Gael, who appeared as a young Irish cleric. He told them (except in Poem) how he and his companions won half the island from the catheads. [No mention of putting food in boat.] 16 Poem: The leaf and cuilfaid not identified. Reference to Kells lacking. But St. 31 says of the leaf, "It was on the altar of Colum cille." Prose B, M, S: More detailed account of the song of the bird. At its close the clerics were charmed to sleep by the melody of the music (Prose B adds that on the leaf was inscribed the story of the household of heaven and of the angelic stations and of hell). The island mysteriously disap

Sec. 6. Dog-headed men with manes of cattle (ceatra) were found on the next island, but a cleric, at God's command, came from the island and gave the voyagers food.17

Sec. 7. The voyagers reached the isle of the swine-headed men, they were reaping corn in midsummer." 18

"and

Sec. 8. A multitude of Gaelic folk appeared on the next isle. The women were singing a sianan and invited the clerics to the house of the king of the island. These people were the sixty couples of the Men of Ross who had been set adrift. The king revealed himself as the slayer of Fiacha. The company had reached the earthly paradise. Elijah and Enoch were on this island. There were two lakes, one of water and one of fire, which long ago would have come over Ireland had not Martin and Patrick been praying. The clerics were told that they could not see Enoch. [It is not made clear that Elijah appeared, although the request of the clerics to see Enoch doubtless reflects the situation as given in Poem, which the author of Prose A perhaps did not fully understand.] 1o Sec. 9. A lofty isle with a holy king and a prophet, dwelling in an ideal monastery was reached. There were an hundred doors and an altar

19

peared. At this point Prose B interpolates the long passage from the Fis Adamnáin. The souls of the clerics are substituted for the soul of Adamnan.

17 Poem: manes of horses (eachaha). So Prose B and S. M, S: Description of luxuriant vegetation on the isle. The clerics skirted the shore till they found berries and fruit, and met the old cleric. Prose B: resuming tale after the vision passage, places the dogheads on one island, the old cleric on another.

18 Poem: Transitional passage and midsummer detail lacking. Prose B, M, S: The swineheads pelted the clerics with stones (Prose B, seaacorns") and warned them not to approach. They said they were of the race of Ham, or Cain (Prose B: Ham, or Cain the accursed"; M: "of wicked Cain "; S: "of shrewish Ham "). Their dwelling was in the sea and they cultivated the land.

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19 Poem: Elias spoke to the clerics of the part he was to play at the last judgment in the conflict with Antichrist (St. 58, cf. ZCP, vi, 234). He uttered the prophecy about the lakes and explained to the clerics that they could not see Enoch because he was in a secret place of honor, awaiting the day of the battle with Antichrist. Prose B, M, S: The king seems to make the prophecy about the lakes. He said that Elijah and Enoch were on the island awaiting the war with Antichrist, but the clerics were not permitted to see either. In Prose B and S, but not in M, the clerics before departure bathed in a well at the entrance to the island, the water of which was warm or cold, according to desire. [The author of the original of the long versions seems to be trying to rectify the ambiguity of Prose A by having the clerics ask to see both Enoch and Elijah, a fact which suggests that he did not have Poem before him.]

and a priest offering Christ's body at each door.

The king told the clerics to tell the men of Ireland that a great vengeance was about to befall them. Foreigners would come and inhabit half the isle. This vengeance was to come because the Irish had neglected God's teaching. He also prophesied that the clerics would arrive home safely after a year and a month at sea. They are to tell their tidings to the men of Ireland.30

On linguistic and other evidence the composition of the earlier forms, Prose A and Poem, is placed in the ninth or tenth century, Poem being older than Prose A.21 The prophecy of the impending

20 Prose B: Follows Prose A, though not literally. This section is by the second scribe in YBL. M: No mention of king and no prophecy. When the clerics entered the house a golden cowl was let down upon the floor before them and given to the clerics of Colum cille. One week after their departure they reached Iona and related to Colum cille their adventures. "And that leaf and hood still remain on the altar of Colum cille." (Book of Fermoy says only that the leaf is still in existence.) S: No king, no prophecy. "Two hundred" doors. The ending is distinctive: Then the clerics were in sadness and heaviness, thinking on Colum cille, and as they said these words, there came a blast of wind right cold and bleak against them and drove them to Iona." Colum cille met them in person and heard their tidings, "and the cowl and leaf were given him. And they still exist, the leaf in Iona. And they wrote down the story."

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21 Zimmer, ZDA, xxxIII, 218, suggested late ninth or tenth century for the imram (Poem-Prose A). Thurneysen favored tenth century, Zwei Vers., p. 6. Cf. Kuno Meyer, ZCP, x1, 148 ff.

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A literal interpretation of Stanza 31 of Poem would necessitate accepting a much later date, ca. 1100. Prose A says (Sec. 6) that the great bird gave the clerics a leaf and told them to place it on the altar of Colum cille, so that is Colum cille's flabellum today. In Kells it is" (conid hi cuilfaid Coluim cille andiu: a Cenandus ata-side). For speculations on the meaning of flabellum, see Thomas Olden, Proc. R. I. A., Sec. Ser., Vol. п, Polite Lit. and Antiq., Dublin, 1879-88, p. 356; and cf. O'Curry, Ms. Mat., p. 332 and Reeves, Adamnan (The Life of St. Columba, Dublin, 1857), pp. 321 ff. Poem, which does not mention cuilfaid or Kells, says of the leaf (St. 31): boi for altoir colaim cille, “it was on the altar of Colum cille." The Annals of Tigernach at 1090 says, "Colomb cille's reliquaries, to wit, The Bell of the King's (clog na Righ) and the Flabellum (cuilebaidh), and the two gospels were brought out of Tyrconnell, together with seven score ounces of silver and Oengus Húa Domnallain was he who brought them from the North." (R. C., XVIII, 12.) This Aengus died, according to FM, in 1109. These facts would seem to point to a date after 1090. O'Curry, and Thurneysen at first (Sagen, p. 127), accepted this conclusion. But Zimmer (ZDA, XXXIII, 219, note), and Thurneysen later (Zwei Vers., p. 7) were unwilling to accept so late a date, preferring the hypothesis

invasion of Ireland by foreigners was presumably inspired by the Norse occupation of the ninth century.22 Of the later, longer versions, Merugud is probably the oldest.23

Poem places the events in the reign of Donnchad, son of Domnall. Prose A and all the later forms say Donnchad son of Domnall son of Aed son of Ainmire. This Domnall ruled Ireland from 628-42. So far as known he had no son Donnchad and no son Fiacha. The annalists indicate some uncertainty as to his successor, the evidence favoring a joint reign by Conall Cael and Cellach, sons of Maelchobo, Domnall's brother. Another king Domnall Domnall Mac Murchado, was high king of Ireland in the eighth century (died 763). This Domnall did have a son Donnchad who himself became king six years after his father's death, ruling from 769-797. There was no Fiacha connected with this family so far as known. In all the prose versions, and possibly by implication in Poem, Donnchad resorts for advice to Colum cille of Iona, who died in 597.

O'Curry, with only the short YBL version (Poem and Prose A) before him, by a misreading or misrendering of the text, made it appear that not Colum cille, but a successor of his, was appealed to by Donnchad. This misinterpretation served to obviate all the chronological difficulties so far as the versions then in question were concerned. Zimmer pointed out the error.24

of a scribal alteration. Thurneysen pointed out that Poem does not certainly identify the leaf and the cuilfaid and does not indicate with certainty that the leaf was ever in Iona. He thought the preterit form boi suspicious. The late versions say nothing of cuilfaid or Kells. M and S mention two relics, a leaf and a cowl. S says that both still exist, the leaf at Iona. The BM manuscript of M says that both leaf and cowl remain on the altar of Colum cille, the Book of Fermoy text saying only that the leaf is still in existence (Meyer Miscellany, pp. 320, 324).

22 Stokes at first (R. C., IX, 25, n. 2) thought the Anglo-Norman invasion was meant, but later (R. C., XXVI, 131, 167, n. 1) referred it to the Norse invasion as did Zimmer (ZDA, XXXIII, 218, n. 2) and Thurneysen (Sagen, pp. 126-27; Zwei Vers., p. 6). On the chronology and phases of the Norse invasions, see Eoin Mac Neill, Phases of Irish History (1920), Ch. IX.

23 Ó Máile thinks the prose of the BM мs. may be as late as the fourteenth century, the Book of Fermoy version being somewhat older (op. cit., pp. 311-312).

24 O'Curry, Ms. Mat., p. 333; Zimmer, ZDA, xxxIII, 215-216.

The two most important studies of the legend are those of Zimmer 25 and Thurneysen,26 although important comments have been made by O'Curry,2 Stokes,28 and Ó Máille.29 The earliest work of Stokes as well as the studies of O'Curry and Zimmer, were based on the Prose A-Poem version only, while Thurneysen's published studies are limited to this form and to Prose B.

In his first study Zimmer attributed the participation of Colum cille to the author's knowledge of the part the great saint played in the famous council of Druim Ceta, held by Aed son of Ainmire in 575 A. D. This Aed must have been the grandfather of the Donnchad and Fiacha of the story. This chronological confusion, Zimmer notes, argues a date of composition much later than the time of the historical persons named and confirms other evidence that the tale was written in the ninth or tenth century.

Zimmer advanced a striking interpretation of the story, read in the light of conditions prevailing in Ireland during the Norse occupation: The author was a pious, patriotic Irishman and his purpose was to exhort his countrymen to observe better God's teachings so that the punishment of God, the presence of the Norse conquerors, might be taken from them (note prophecy in Sec. 9). The cat-headed, dog-headed, and swine-headed islanders are the pagan Norse inhabiting the Faroes. The descriptions are not to be taken literally: they are contemptuous comparisons for the different physiognomy of another race.30 That they are unbelievers

25 Loc. cit. and a second paper, "Ueber die frühesten Berührungen der Iren mit den Nordgermanen," Sitz. der kgl. preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Vol. XVI (1891), pp. 295-99.

26 Sagen, pp. 126-127; Zwei Vers., pp. 1-8, 26-30.

27 Loc. cit., and Manners and Customs, ш (Dublin, 1873), p. 385.

28 R. Č., IX (1888), 14 ff.; xXVI (1905), 130 ff.

29 Meyer Miscellany, pp. 307-12.

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30 Zimmer here recalls that in the Irish Annals King Cairbre has a nickname Cinncait, Catheaded," and that the Norse Amlaib (Olaf) is called Cenncairech, Sheepheaded." Cairbre, who was of course an Irish, not a Norse king, is mentioned in FM at 10 and 14 A. D. Keating, History of Ireland, Vol. II (Irish Texts Society, Vol. vш), pp. 237, 239, quotes an old stanza to explain the epithet:

Thus was Cairbre the hardy,

Who rules Ireland south and north:

Two cat's ears on his fair head,

Cat's fur upon his ears.