Editorial note — INDEX

[Footnote 1: For brevity we shall refer to certain books, frequently quoted in these Annotations, by the following symbols— LL. Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. Stokes. CS. Codex Salmaticensis (Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae), ed. de Smedt and de Backer. VTP. Vita Tripartita Patricii, ed. Stokes. VSH. Plummer's Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. TT. Trias Thaumaturga (Colgan's collection of the lives of SS. Patrick, Brigid, and Colum Cille).]

[Footnote 2: There is a different version, which need not be given here, in the Martyrology of Oengus (Henry Bradshaw Society edition, p. 204).]

[Footnote 3: Mentioned in Annals of Ulster, anno 1166, Annals of Loch Cé, anno 1189, Annals of the Four Masters, annis 1121, 1166.]

[Footnote 4: A collection (in Irish) of the traditions of this person will be found in Targaireacht Bhriain ruaidh uí Chearbháin, by Micheál ó Tiomhánaidhe (Dublin, 1906).]

[Footnote 5: The passage would then read thus—Rothircan Bec mac De condebairt andsin—

"A maic in tsaeir, cot clasaib, cot coraib, It casair chaeim, cot cairpthib, cot ceolaib."

The transposition has probably been caused by the error of some scribe who copied first the parts of the two lines preceding the caesura.]

[Footnote 6: The roll of the Kings of Tara was evolved from various sources by the Irish historians of the early Christian Period. Tigernmas was properly a pagan culture-hero, to whom was traditionally attributed the introduction of gold-smelting and of other arts, and who was said to have perished, apparently as a human sacrifice, at some great religious assembly.]

[Footnote 7: This is certainly the reading, curiously misread in LL p. 356, (Irish text), and in VSH i, p. li, note 3.]

[Footnote 8: Ossianic Society's Transactions, vol. v, p. 84 ff.]

[Footnote 9: Edited by Dr. Hyde in Celtic Review, vol. x, p. 116 ff.]

[Footnote 10: On this whole subject see Chapter IV of MacNeill's Phases of Irish History, a book which may be unreservedly recommended as giving a clear and accurate view of the early history of the country.]

[Footnote 11: It may be noted for the benefit of the reader unaccustomed to Irish nomenclature, that persons are named in one of the following formulae: "A mac B" (mac, genitive mic, in syntactic relation mhic [pronounced vic] = son): "A ó B" (ô or ua, genitive ui = grandson or descendant): and "A maccu B" (maccu = descendant, denoting B as the name of a remote ancestor). Of course the name B will in every case be in the genitive.]

[Footnote 12: For division of labour between the sexes, see Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii, 129. For prohibitions of the presence of males when specifically female work was being transacted, Plummer quotes Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Eng. Trans., iv, 1778 ("Men shall not stay in the house while women are stuffing feathers in the beds, otherwise the feathers will prick through the bed-ticking"). O'Curry (Manners and Customs, iii, p. 121), commenting on this story, refers to times and seasons deemed unlucky for dyeing, at the time when he wrote; but the prohibition of the presence of males was forgotten.]

[Footnote 13: Vafthrudnismál 41; Grimnismál 18. (Edda, ed. Hafn, 1787, vol. i, pp. 24, 48.)]

[Footnote 14: F.M. Luzel, Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1887), vol. i, p. 219 ff. Some other parallels are quoted by Plummer, VSH, i, p. cxliii, note 5.]

[Footnote 15: There is evidence from various literary sources that cattle thus peculiarly coloured were accounted sacred in ancient Ireland.]

[Footnote 16: There should be no hypermetric syllables, but I have been unable to avoid them.]

[Footnote 17: Horae Hebraicae in Evangel. Matt., xv, 36, following the tract Berakoth.]

[Footnote 18: O'Donnell's Life of St. Columba, ed. O'Kelleher, p. 120.]

[Footnote 19: For the story of Coirpre, see Lismore Lives, ed. Stokes, preface p. xvi; Revue celtique, xxvi, 368. For the story of Ambacuc, see Silua Gadelica, no. xxxi; Eriu, vol. vi, p. 159.]

[Footnote 20: A fully illustrated description of this relic by Mr. E.C.R. Armstrong will be found in Journal, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. xlix, p. 132.]

[Footnote 21: Book of the Dun Cow, printed in Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, iii, 218.]

[Footnote 22: Féilire Oengusso, Henry Bradshaw Society edition, p. 12.]

[Footnote 23: Revue celtique, xv, at p. 491.]

[Footnote 24: I should here have quoted as a parallel the oft-described Indian rope-trick, which is alleged to be a hypnotic feat, had I not been recently assured by a relative who knows India well that no one has yet been discovered who has actually seen this trick performed, and that it is probably nothing more than a piece of folk-lore.]

[Footnote 25: See his important series of papers, Ueber directe Handelsverbindungen Westgalliens mit Irland im Altertum und früher Mittelalter, published in Sitzungsberichte der königliche preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1909, vol. i.]

[Footnote 26: Life of Colman mac Luachain, Todd Lectures Series, Royal Irish Academy, vol. xvii, p. 86.]

[Footnote 27: Bede's Life of Cuthbert, § xxxix.]

[Footnote 28: This is evidently a mistranslation of bóbán, the translator having in mind the word bán, "white."]

[Footnote 29: Henry Bradshaw Society edition, vol. i, p. 157.]

[Footnote 30: Although the sense appears to run continuously from one stanza to the next in their present collocation.]

[Footnote 31: MS. illegible.]