Aldfrith's Qualifications as a Patron of Literature 299 



Kindly King, who Liked not Lies, 



Rash to Rise to Fields of Fame, 

 Raven-Black his Brows of Fear, 



Razor-Sharp his Spear of flame. 



... Its beauty depends less upon the intrinsic substance of the 

 thought than the external elegance of the framework.' 



Familiarity with the rules of Irish poetic art must have pre- 

 pared Aldf rith to welcome the extended treatise on Latin prosody, 

 with numerous examples from Virgil and other Latin poets, which 

 Aldhelm sent him in the guise of the second letter referred to 

 above^ : l)ut it must of course also have been necessary to enable 

 him to compose the Irish poem- attributed to him, in which, as 

 Douglas Hyde says, 'he compliments each of the provinces sever- 

 ally, as though he meant to thank the whole nation for their hos- 

 pitality.'' Of this poem there are two principal forms— one of 



^Aldlielm (Giles, pp. 327-8) complacently observes that he is the first 

 person of the Germanic race to prosecute these studies so far (quoting 

 Virgil, G. 3. 11-13), and urges Aldf rith not to let his royal duties render 

 him neglectful of learning. 



' Professor Joseph Dunn, of the Catholic University of America, to whom 

 I am indebted for other kind offices, informs me that the poem is composed 

 in a variety of 'Debide' metre, called 'Debide scailte,' the five laws laid 

 down in Joyce (2. 497) being observed, with the partial exception of (3), 

 the lines ending alternately in a stressed monosyllable and a stressed dissyl- 

 lable. Cf. Thurneysen, Irische Tcxtc, Ser. Ill, p. 147; Kuno Meyer, 

 Primer of Irish Metrics, p. 17. 



^ P. 221. Atkinson remarks in his edition of the Book of Leinster (p. 

 20), where he prints the poem: 'Here, in fair Inisfail [a poetic name for 

 Ireland], he found life so pleasant that his happiness expressed itself in 

 this poem in the language of his adopted country.' The shorter version, 

 somewhat modernized in spelling, may be found in Hardiman, Irish 

 Minstrelsy (London, 1831), pp. 372-5. In Eriu 8 (1916). 64-74 (d- R^"^'- 

 Celt. 38. 94-5), Paul Walsh edits the poem in 96 lines, with a translation. 

 There are three recensions, it appears, of which the second contains only 19 

 stanzas, and the third, which is nearest to that printed above, 15 stanzas. 

 'Possibly the first has modified it least, while the others have omitted 

 particular stanzas, and inserted new ones at will.' 



In a catalogue of the poem's contained in the Leabhar Breac (ed. 1878, 

 p. 2), we are also told of 'a series of moral, reflective sentences beginning, 

 "Woe to the man who loves man, and loves not God," ' introduced by the 

 words. "Fland Fina cecinit.' See also Thurneyson, 'Zu Irischen Hand- 

 schriften und Litteraturdemkmalern' (Abh. der Kon. Ges. dcr Wiss. zu 

 Gottingcii, Phil.-Hist. Klasse 14. 2 (1912). 21-2). 



