romance which passes under that name. According to the Latins, Philip died a peaceful death like John the Evangelist. In Ireland we find traces of a different tradition. The Passion in the Leabhar Breac interpolates the martyrdom into a version of the Latin Acts. The Irish writing called the Evernew Tongue[1] is a kind of apocalypse in which the tongue of the Apostle, cut out nine times by his persecutors, discourses to assembled multitudes. In the life of St Boece is an incident strongly reminiscent of the Greek Acts: a wolf brings a kid to the saint, as a leopard does to the Apostle. In Muirchu's life of St Patrick (not later than 699) is another possible reminiscence. A magician is whirled up into the air and dashed on the ground. It may be a version of the fate of Simon Magus, but it does rather strikingly resemble passages in the Eastern Acts of Philip and of Peter and Andrew[2].
In the life of St Berach there is a story of a druid killed at the window of his cell by the arrow of a hunter. Pilate, in an exclusively Greek legend, meets his end in precisely the same way. The climax of the Greek book known as the Rest of the words of Baruch is that when the Jews have resolved to stone the prophet to death, a stone pillar is made to assume his form, and their attacks are directed against it until Jeremiah has finished his last directions to his disciples. In the Irish life of St Brendan, a follower of the saint is attacked: a stone is made to put on his appearance, and the man escapes. In the Greek Testament of Abraham a striking incident is that a tree utters words of praise to God and prediction of Abraham's death. In the life of St Coemgen a tree sings to him. In the same Testament is the story of a calf, slaughtered at Mamre for the entertainment of the three angels, being restored to life and running to its mother. This miracle figures in several of the Lives, e.g. that of St Ailbe.
Evidence that apocryphal literature unknown to the rest of Europe was read in Ireland is furnished by the Irish Vision of Adamnan, which quotes a form of the story of the death of Mary only found now in Syriac. The same Vision makes use of an apocalypse, as yet not identified, which is also quoted in a (Latin) Reichenau manuscript of Irish connexion now at Carlsruhe. The Irish tale of the Two Sorrows of Heaven is another document based on an apocryphon which it is safe to say belongs to Eastern Christendom. In it Enoch and Elias prophesy to the souls of the blessed, which (as in certain Greek apocalypses) are in the form of birds, the terrors of the end of the world.
Of the writings I have mentioned so far, the literature of the
2 Other traces of reading have been pointed out in Muirchu, which may be mentioned here: an allusion to Abraham's conversion to a belief in the true God, possibly derived from Josephus; and an apparent reminiscence of a line of Valerius Flaccus, as well as clear evidence of a knowledge of Virgil. The occasional use of Greek words ((illegible text)) may be merely "glossarial" learning.
