cepóc: O'Curry (Man. and Cust., iii. p. 371) quotes the following passage in illustration of the meaning of this word: ‘Aidbsi ainm in chiúil, no in cronáin do gnidis urmhor bhfer n-Erenn in tan sin; ocus Cepóg a ainm ac feraib Alban, amail atpert in file Albanach:— ‘Ferr moladh righ Lóicce, Do denum ar Chepóicce.’’ ‘Aidbsi’ was the name of the music or cronán which the greater part of the men of Erin used to perform at this time; and cepóc is its name with the men of Alba, as the Alban poet said:—‘Better to praise the King of Lóc, By performing our Cepóc.’ Elsewhere the word is glossed focal Albannach, ‘a Scottish Gaelic word’. The verb ceapaim, ceap, is common both in I.G. and S.G. In the former the usual meaning is ‘catch’, ‘think’, ‘fancy’; in the latter, ‘catch in the air’, and is not improbably a loan from that language. Ceapag is used in S.G. to denote, not a kind of music, but ‘a catch’, ‘a quatrain’, ‘an impromptu’ in verse. The term is so used by Rob Donn, the Sutherland poet, and by his editor, Dr. Mackay (v. pp. 200, 344, ed. 1829). And in the lines quotes above by O'Curry, denum ar chepóicce, as in Bricne's phrase here, do rigni ar cepóig, the meaning is not to sing to a cepóc air, but to compose in cepóc manner. In the tale of Tochmarc Luaine (Rc. xxiv. 282, 284), cepóc occurs, but in a different construction: ro haghadh a cepoc, dogen a cepóic sunna (not ar cepoig). Whitley Stokes translates ‘death-chant’. It would thus appear that the word was used to denote a certain kind of music as well as a certain kind of verse. In Tochmarc Luaine, the cepóc was in honour of the dead. But such was not always the case. Cf. the tale of MacDáthó's Pig (Irische Texte, i. p. 106), where Ferloga asks to be taken to Emain Macha, in order that the women and maidens of Ulster shall sing their cepóc around him every evening, and say, ‘Ferloga my darling’.