Page:Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry - Meyer.djvu/135

 'The Hermit's Song.'—See Ériu, 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 Ériu, 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 Ériu, iii. p. 148. The date is probably the late tenth or early eleventh century.

'On the Flightiness of Thought.'—See Ériu, iii. p. 13. Tenth century.

'To Crinog.'—The Irish text was published by me in the Zeitschrift für 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 ἀγαπητή, virgo subintroducta (συνεισάκτος) 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).

'The Devil's Tribute to Moling.'—For text and translation see Whitley Stokes's Goidelica, 2nd ed., p. 180, and his edition of Félire Oingusso, p. 154 ff. I have in the main followed Stokes's rendering.

'Maelisu's Hymn to the Archangel Michael.'—Text and translation in the Gaelic Journal, vol. iv. p. 56. Maelísu ua Brolcháin was a writer of religious poetry both in Irish and Latin, who died in 1056.

'The Mothers' Lament at the Slaughter of the Innocents.'—See text and translation in the Gaelic Journal, iv. p. 89. The piece probably belongs to the eleventh century.

'Colum Cille's Greeting to Ireland.'—From Reeves' edition of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, p. 285. The poem, like most of those ascribed to this saint, is late, belonging probably to the twelfth century.

'The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare.'—Text and translation in Otia Merseiana, i. p. 119 ff. The language of the poem points to the late tenth century. H