Varia I.

Abstract

VARIA I 1. DE DUODECIM ABUSIVIS SAECULI IN MEDIAEVAL IRELAND De Duodecim Abusivis Saeculi ‘On the twelve afflictions of the world’, is a well-known seventh-century Hiberno-Latin treatise on moral and political matters.1 As is the case with most Latin texts produced in Ireland in the pre-Norman period, all surviving MS copies of De Duodecim Abusivis Saeculi are found outside Ireland.2 There is, however, evidence that the text was still available in Ireland in the Middle Irish period, the most substantial being the text Sermo ad Reges ‘A sermon to kings’, a bilingual Latin and MidIr text preserved in the Leabhar Breac.3 As has been shown by Miles (2014), one of the main sources drawn on in this text is the section of De Duodecim on the rex iniquus ‘the wicked king’. The short poem printed below for the first time is evidence at least for knowledge of the preface to De Duodecim Abusivis Saeculi in mediaeval Ireland.4 The only copy known to me is in the composite MS, TCD H 2. 16 (1318), known as the Yellow Book of Lecan.5 It is found on column 248.208 (facsimile p. 420), which belongs to section 5 of the MS; this is dated by a scribal note at the bottom of the same column to 1465.6 The whole column is badly worn, and many words are difficult to read. In 4b the reading nocthigernn, apart from the final ernn, is doubtful, and in 4c ac cosnum can just barely be made out. I give the text as in the MS, but with the addition of punctuation, capitalisation and macrons over long vowels. Unambiguous abbreviations (spiritus asper for h, etc.) are not indicated. As the ascription Mughrōn cecinit provides no details other than the first name, it is impossible to determine who this Mugrón might be. In the notes to his edition of the poem Cros Chrı́st tarsin ngnúis-se, Murphy (1956, 186 7) comments that the ascription in one of the MSS, Mugron comharba Choluim Cille cecinit, that is, to the successor of Colum Cille who died in AD 980, ‘is linguistically probable, and as Mugrón is not a person to whom Irish scribes frequently attribute poems it may be taken to be based on genuine tradition’. He refers to Kenney (1929, 7267) where three other ascriptions to Mugrón are noticed; in two of these cases the author is DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3318/ERIU.2014.64.205 Ériu LXIV (2014) 205211 # Royal Irish Academy 1 Edited by Hellmann (1909); see Lapidge and Sharpe (1985, 967), and Breen (2002). 2 See Sharpe (2010) and Ó Corráin (201112). 3 Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 16 (1230) pp 35b2640a25. The edition in Atkinson (1887), where the MidIr passages are printed on pp 15162 and the Latin passages are extracted and a version of them is printed separately on pp 41418, is a travesty of the MS original; cf. the comments in Miles (2014, 1412, 157). 4 As Flower (1926, 489) notes, the Latin preface also circulated independently of the rest of the text. 5 The title, of course, properly applies only to part of the MS; see, for example, Best (1950) and Ó Concheanainn (1987). 6 See Abbott and Gwynn (1921, 344). specified as comarba Coluim Chille,7 whereas the third ascription, the heading to a poem of three verses on Colum Cille (Meyer, 1915, 340), has simply Mughrón cecinit. To these can be added the ascription of a poem of five verses on the death in AD 956 of Congalach mac Maı́l Mithig, in British Library MS Additional 30512 f. 40Vb4, to Mugron comarba Coluim Chille, for which see Flower (1926, 492). Mugrón Tuama dá Gualann8 is doubtless a different person to the successor of ColumCille. Henameshimselfastheauthorinthelastverseofapoemofsix verses on the sons of Adam beginning Dā mac ar chāecait co mbroit in the Book of Lecan version of Sex Aetates Mundi. The verse is cited in Ó Cróinı́n (1983, 19 n16), who also notes a verse in...