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xxxii
Description of the MSS.

sixty-nine collects for use at the canonical hours; seventeen collects on behalf of special persons or for use on special occasions; seventy anthems and versicles; the Creed; and the Pater noster. The evidence as to the birthplace and date of the MS. is contained in three hymns: a hymn (f. 15v) to the first abbot S. Comgell, entitled Ymnum sancti Comgilli, a hymn (f. 30) entitled Versiculi familiae Benchuir,—and containing the line Munther[1] Benchuir beata, and a hymn on f. 36b, which we have printed infra (p. 282) as preserving the names of the first fifteen abbots and as proving that the MS. was written during the lifetime of Cronan. There is also in f. 34r an Irish rubric—Common oroit dún[2]—over a prayer beginning ‘Custodi nos Domine ut pupillam occuli.’ The MS. formerly belonged to the Irish monastery at Bobbio in the Apennines, and is now in the Ambrosian library at Milan, where its press-mark is C. 5. inf.[3]

24. Old-Irish Inscriptions.

The inscriptions in this collection, most of which were copied by the distinguished antiquary Dr Geo. Petrie, and redrawn by Miss Margaret Stokes, are of very different dates. The most interesting linguistically are lie Luguaedon macci Menueh (p. 288 l. 35) and in loc so tanimmairni Ternohc mac Geran bic er cul Peter (p. 289 l. 18)[4]. The eclipsis of the c of Ciarain in the comparatively late Orait ar Gilla Giarain may also be noted.

25. Codex Sancti Pauli[5].

This codex is preserved in the monastery of St Paul in Carinthia, where it is numbered sec. xxv. d. 86. It consists of four leaves, before which has been fastened a smaller leaf, written on one side, of a manuscript of the

  1. Cf. molthu infra p. 353.
  2. ‘an orate common for us,’ d’Arbois de Jubainville, Rev. Celt. xv. 137.
  3. The MS. was first printed with many omissions and inaccuracies by Muratori in his Anecdota Ambrosiana, Padua, 1713, tom. iv. pp. 119–159. Reprinted without alteration in his Opera Omnia, Arezzo, 1770, tom. xi. pars iii. pp. 217–225, in Migne’s Patrologia Curs. Lat. tom. lxxii. coll. 579–608, and somewhat more fully in O’Laverty’s Historical Account of the Diocese of Down and Connor, Dublin, 1884, vol. ii. Appendix, pp. ix.–xlv. A photographic edition of the whole MS. was excellently edited in 1892 by the Rev. F. E. Warren for the Henry Bradshaw Society; and from his introduction we have drawn the greater part of this description. The hymn beginning with Precamur Patrem (no. 3 in the Antiphonary) is called Immund na n‑Apstal in Adamnán’s Second Vision, Rev. Celt. xii. 432. The hymn printed infra, p. 782, has been edited with more or less inaccuracy by Peyron (Ciceronis Oratt. Fragmenta inedita, Stuttgard, 1824, pp. 225–6) and by Zeuss-Ebel (Grammatica Celtica, p. 944). Dr MacCarthy (Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxvii. p. 239) undertook to correct Muratori’s and Peyron’s misreadings of this hymn, and not only misprinted Congillum, Fintendnum, Boetaenus, Noster and Cumineus for Comgillum, Fintenanum, Berachus, Notus uir and Cumenenus, but read a hole in the parchment (f. 30 v.) as corde, ‘the only instance of picture-writing that I have found in Irish MSS.’
  4. Ternóc died 716 a.d.
  5. Ed. W. S., Goidelica, 175 sq. (in part); Windisch, Irische Texte, i. 312 sqq.; Zimmer, Glossae Hibernicae, 267 sqq., cf. Supplementum, 14 sq.