2
This composition has the Munster ceangal appendage written according to the canons of the new system. He also wrote a poem beginning:—
Om sgeol ar árd mhagh Fáil ní chodlaim oidhche
Is do bhreoig go bráth me dála a pobuil dilis
Giodh rófhada atáid na bhfál re brosgar biodhbhad
Fá dheoig gur fhás a lán don chogal triotha,
O'Daly Ms. p. 15. This one of the earliest exemples of the new prosody presents to our view a highly elaborated metric system. It cannot therefore be regarded as new but rather the result of a long period of development which now almost for the first time makes it appearance in the literature. As folk-poetry it, or something akin to it, must have existed from the earliest times but was excluded from Mss. by the ‘conservatism of the scholastic caste, the members whereof alone possessed the power of writing and failed to report it. The classic prosody certainly an inheritance from the period of the tone-accent barely escaped being submerged through the influence of the later stress accent. This, strong enough to effect profound change in the whole structure of the language, made its presence felt also in poetry. Hence the earliest examples of Irish verse we possess are more or less dependent on stress accent. Cf. Ultan’s Hymn W. p. 25.
Ron soéra Brigit | sech drúngu démna —
in chróeb co m-bláthuib | in máthair I’su —
intlácht uasligaib, | ind rígan rigda —
dia ráth ron broena, | ron soéra Brigit.
From a marginal distich in Sg. Z2 953:
Isácher ingáith innócht | fu fúasna fáirrge fíndfholt
ib. Z2 954: ;
huas mo lébrán indlínech | fomchain trírech inna nén.
In later examples, only the second half of the long-line was subject to stress-accent. W. 11.
Genair Patraice in Nemthur | is éd atfét hi scélaib.
