The Ancient Hymn-Charms of h^eland. ^i^j
fafnina}^ a long piece written in that artificial and pom- pous style of Latin which seems to have been cultivated in Irish monasteries, or monasteries having in them a strong Irish element, in the seventh and eight centuries. Zimmer places its use even earlier, and this opinion seems to be borne out by the occurrence of similar words in these early Loricas.
The question of their archaic and singular linguistics, however, is not one which concerns us here, unless it could be proved that these bizarre forms were of the same kind and had arisen out of the same causes which tend in charms generally to preserve words whose meaning is forgotten, or which have become corrupted through their usage by persons who did not understand their meaning. In any case we know that in Ireland there existed one or more special and artificial kinds of the native tongue called bearla feint or berla iia filed (" poet's speech ") employed only by poets and brehons, and it is possible that similar vagaries of language ma}^ have been thought by the students of the cloisters to be specially suitable to certain kinds of composition. So far as is at present known, the existing examples of it are confined to one long prose treatise, the Hispcrica famina itself, chiefly occupied with a description of natural objects, the heavens, fire, the sea, the firmament, the winds, etc., subjects
^^ The Hisperica famina was first published by A. Mai in the fifth vol. of Classici Auctores, pp. 479-500, from Cod. Vat. {Reg. Ixxxi. ); see also Migne, Pat. Lat., vol. xc, pp. 1187-96. The latest edition is that of F. J. Jenkinson {1908). It is of unknown authorship. Mai and Thurneysen consider that the examples all hail from Irish sources. Zimmer believes that they were written in some S.W. British or Armorican monastery that had a strong Irish element in it. For a discussion of the whole subject see Zimmer's Nennius Vindicatus (App. , pp. 291-342); Thurneysen, Revue Celtiqtte, vol. xi., pp. 89-90, and " Gloses Bretonnes," ibid., p. 86. The St. Omer poem was published by Bethmann in Zeitschrift fUr Deutsches Alterthum, vol. v. (1845), p. 206. See also Stowasser's Wiener Studien, pp. 9., 309-322, and his " Incerta auctores Hisp. Fam. denuo edidit et explanavit," Vindob. 1887 (Programm des Franz-Joseph's Gymnasiums, 1888- 1889). Thurneysen's edition (above) gives Stowasser's readings of the poem and the Breton glosses.
