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The Irish ordeals, Cormac's adventure in the Land of Promise, and the decision as to Cormac's sword (Author: Unknown)

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The Irish Ordeals, Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise, and the Decision as to Cormac's Sword

By Wh. Stokes.

The text of the following tale is taken from the photographic facsimile of the Book of Ballymote, pp. 260b–263b, and from a photograph of columns 889–898 of the Yellow Book of Lecan. The former manuscript belongs to the library of the Royal Irish Academy: the latter to the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Both manuscripts were written towards the end of the fourteenth century, and the mistakes common to the portions now printed shew that they have been derived from the same source. A story corresponding with paragraphs 24–54 of the following text is found in the Book of Fermoy, a fifteenth-century manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy's library, and a modern recension of this story is printed in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. Ill, pp. 212–228, with an English translation by Mr. S. H. O'Grady.

Though the text now published contains many rare words and shines with some imaginative beauty, it is interesting from the juristic, rather than from the philological or literary, point of view. It gives (paragraphs 11–55) the fullest account now extant of the twelve ordeals of the ancient Irish, and it describes (paragraphs 65–78) the procedure in a suit for a moveable. Attention to the account

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of the ordeals was first called by the late W. M. Hennessy, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. X, pp. 34–43, where paragraphs 11, 15–24 are printed with English versions. The paragraphs relating to the lawsuit (paragraphs 65–78) are freely translated by O'Curry in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, vol. II, pp. 322–324. O'Curry has also printed, in his Lectures on the Ms. Materials of Ancient Irish History, pp. 44, 510, the text and translation of paragraphs 1–7. And in 1871 Hennessy transcribed the whole story from the Book of Ballymote. This transcript, which is accompanied by an English version, is now in my possession. The transcript has been useful in deciphering the dim photographic facsimile. The version is full of unlucky guess-work, and has been of little or no assistance.

London: 29 September 1890