"Peace to their souls, the pure Culdees
Were Albyn's earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod!"
[16] This tour de force, which consists of laying stress in the beginning of each succeeding stanza upon the word which ended the last, is common in Irish and is called conachlonn. It is much used by Angus. It seems to be self-evolved in Irish, whose prosody is full of original terms unborrowed from the Latin, which, to my mind, tells strongly in favour of pre-Christian culture. It is curious that Horace who falls into conachlonn in his second ode, never returned to a form so well adapted to lyric purposes:—
"Dextera sacras jaculatus arces
Terruit urbem.
Terruit gentes," etc.
[17] He has edited the text without a translation from the only MS. that contains it—Rawlinson, B 502, in the Bodleian, in the "Anecdota Oxoniensia" Series. Oxford deserves splendidly of Celtic scholars. If only Dublin would follow her example!
[18] "Mo rí-se rí nime náir
Cen huabur cen immarbáig,
Dorósat domun dualach,
Mo rí bith-beo bith-buadach."
[19] "In gel in corcarda glan,
In glass ind uaine allmar,
In buidi in derg, derb dána,
Nisgaib fergg frisodála,
In dub, ind liath ind alad,
In t-emen in chiar chálad,
Ind odar doirchi datha
Nidat soirchi sogabtha."
The hundred and fifty-second poem, which is a beautiful one, again asks what are the colours of the winds. Line 7,948.
[20] A good example of how Irish assimilates foreign words by cutting off their endings:—
"Aquair, Pisc, Ariet, Tauir, Treb,
Geimin choir, ocus Cancer,
Leo Uirgo, Libru, Scoirp scrus,
Sagitair, Capricornus."
Leo is pronounced L'yo as a monosyllable.