The real facts of the case are these. So popular were the works of ‘Master Gerald,’ as Mr. Dimock observed, that they survive, not only in many MSS., but in several early translations. The pedigree of these translations has not been properly worked out. At Trinity College, Dublin, we have two in E. 3, 31, and F. 4, 4, while at Lambeth we have the so-called ‘Conquest of Ireland’ by Bray—published by Messrs. Brewer and Bullen, with the Book of Howth—and in the latter (pp. 36–117) there is included another and more modernized version. Of these the one assigned to Bray was held by Professor Brewer to have been written about the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century, and to be “so interesting and curious a specimen of English as spoken in the Pale” that he decided to print it in full and to retain the original orthography. But E. 3, 31 was, he admitted, “a still earlier version.” Yet this latter MS., when submitted by Mr. Dimock to so competent an authority as Mr. Earle, was pronounced by him to be “a truly interesting specimen of fifteenth (sic) century Hibernian English.” He added that it well deserved publication, in which remark I certainly concur, its language being most curious. Professor Brewer (p. xxiii.) declared it “an error” of Mr. Dimock and others to term this MS. a translation of Giraldus, but the real error, we shall find, was his own. The other Dublin MS. (F. 4, 4), to which he does not allude, is assigned by Mr. Dimock to “the sixteenth century” (p. lxxvii.), and declared to be “a transcript from the earlier E. 3, 31,” a description which, unfortunately, misses the point. The solution, I believe, of the whole mystery is that there was a very early and exceedingly free translation of Gerald’s ‘Expugnatio,’ which, after the mediæval fashion, spoke of him at times in the third person, and thus assumed, in places, a quasi-original form. This original translation, which seems to be now lost, was copied both by the writer of E. 3, 31 and by Bray in his ‘Conquest of Ireland,’ the latter only modernizing somewhat the language. Then come the two other MSS., both of the latter part of the 16th century. Of these the distinctive feature is that while still copying, though further modernizing, the original translation—for internal evidence seems to prove that the Book of Howth at least was derived from neither of the above copies—they interlard it with certain passages taken from another and distinct source. This discovery, which corrects Mr. Dimock and overthrows the conclusions of Professor Brewer, is based on collation of the essential passage in the Book of Howth with its parallel passage in the Dublin MS. F. 4, 4 as given in Hardy’s ‘Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to the History of Great Britain,’ on the authority of Mr. W. M. Hennessy:
| Book of Howth. | Trin. Coll. MS. F. 4, 4. |
| This much Cameransse left out in his book aforesaid with other things, more for displeasure than any truth to tell, the cause afore doth testifie. God forgive them all. This much that is in this book more than Camerans did write of was translated by the Primate Doudall in the year of our Lord 1551 out of a Latin book into English, which was found with O’Nell in Armaghe. | This much Camerans left out of his book ... with other things more for displeasure than any truth to tell, the cause before do testifie, God forgive them all. This much that is in this book more than Camerans did writ of was translated by the Primet Dowdall in the yere of or Lord God 1551 out of a Latin book into English, which was found with O’Neil in Armaghe. |
Nothing can be more clear than this reference to the interlarded portions, which can all, I may add, be identified and separated from the ‘Giraldus’ portion. But Carew carelessly wrote, in the margin on fo. 6, that the whole narrative “was translated out of an old book of O’Neale’s written in Latin, and put into English by Dowdall, Primate of Ardmaghe, beginning in anno 1167.” Though Professor Brewer had the words of the original before him, and though he could not but admit that Bray “follows closely the footsteps of Giraldus,” yet he was so misled by Carew’s unlucky slip as to assert that the MS. E. 3, 31 was “nothing more than a translation of the Latin chronicle once in O’Neil’s possession, which Carew calls ‘the Conquest of Ireland, written by Thomas Bray’” (p. xxiii.). These, on the contrary, are precisely the versions which have no interpolations from that source. The Armagh book was devoted to the deeds of John de Courcy, Conqueror of Ulster, though, by a crowning error, Professor Brewer was careful to distinguish it from “A Chronicle of the Gests or Doings of John de Courcey, Earl of Ulster.” Apart from the interest of its contents, the “book” has a special importance from a significant allusion by Giraldus, when closing his chapter on John, who was never, by the way, “Earl of Ulster”:
Sed hæc de Johanne summatim, et quasi sub epilogo commemorantes, grandiaque ejusdem gesta suis explicanda scriptoribus relinquentes, etc., etc.
Having now cleared up all this confusion, I need not dwell on Professor Brewer’s further failure to detect the share taken by Christopher lord of Howth in the compilation of the book that bears the name of his house, but will resume our discussion of the Anglo-Norman poem.
Although, as I have said, the nature of the materials supplied to this 13th century trouvère must remain as yet conjectural, the question is of some literary interest in its bearing on the relation of the ‘Carmen Ambrosii’ to the ‘Itinerarium Peregrinorum,’ if not to the chronicle of Richard of Devizes, in which cases, by a converse process, we find a French poem utilized by a Latin chronicler. It is the plausible suggestion of M. Paul Meyer that the trouvère to whom we owe this poem composed it by desire of the countess of Pembroke, daughter of the earl, and granddaughter of Dermot, just as the great ‘Marshal’ poem, now in course of publication, was written for the glorification of her husband’s family.[344] That the writer was a Pembrokeshire man is rendered extremely probable by his evidently close acquaintance with that district, and his recognition of the Flemish element in ‘little England beyond Wales.’ A curious test of his accuracy is afforded by his mention of the king’s departure for Ireland:
Li rei henri, quant eskipa,
A la croiz en mer entra.
It is a warning to the critical school of historians that Miss Norgate very naturally supposed the poet to have here mistaken Crook, in Waterford harbour, where Henry disembarked, for the place where he took ship. Mr. Orpen has shown conclusively, from records, that the ‘croix’ was the usual place of embarkation for those leaving Pembroke for Ireland. We have thus a peculiar feature of the poem in its combination of the Irish knowledge possessed by the original informant with the acquaintance of its later versifier with men and places in that district from which the adventurers had so largely come.
Among the points on which this poem gives us special information we may note its mention of a man who played no small part in the royal administration of Ireland.[345] We read that, on the coming of king Henry,—