Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/418

 364 Reviews.

brian prince who passed several years of his life in Ireland and became an accomplished Irish scholar and poet.

Professor Meyer has based his edition upon a survey of all existing MSS. As frequently happens, the oldest MS., the twelfth-century book of Leinster, by no means yields the best text ; indeed, the archaic nature of the language is best exempli- fied in MSS. written several centuries later. But I confess I could have wished for a clear indication of which, among the 800 odd lines of the tract, are actually vouched for by the twelfth- century codex. No kind of composition lends itself so easily to interpolation and pastiche as the gnomic, and Tecosca Cormaic in particular gives the impression of being made up of matter differing greatly in age and prove?iance.

If we compare our text with the only other accessible Irish example — Cuchulainn's instructions to Lugaid (Hull, Cuchullin Saga, pp. 231 et seq.), — we find that the latter is far more truly and definitely a Mirror of Princes, the precepts being of a straight- forward and practical character, and such as might well be addressed to a youthful prince. In Tecosca Cormaic, on the other hand, we have lengthy strings of sayings arranged under headings : the king; his rights; the mutual rights of princes and subjects; the chief and the alehouse-keeper; the qualities of the chief; princely habits ; characteristics and qualities according to age, sex, rank, and temperament ; examples of good and ill behaviour ; what to avoid and to ensue ; weather lore ; etc., etc. There is little attempt at logical or artistic arrangement ; there is much overlapping, and no little inconsistency. So widely is the net cast that no such impression of a definite society with its special rules of behaviour and morality is left on the mind as, for instance, by the Norse Havd-mal. The compiler seems to have aimed at putting down everything he could think of, and he makes his Cormac, the great traditional wise king of early Ireland, to the full as discursive and rambling as the traditional wise king of the Hebrews. But, although I cannot doubt that the Irish compiler had the son of David before his eyes, and would even urge that the parallelism of the Hebrew sentence has left its mark on his style, yet there is practically nothing in common between his work and the Book of Proverbs. If the sources of his wisdom are to