Frrcuson—On a Passage in the “ Confessio Patricii.” 15 
VI.—On a PassacE in THE ‘‘Conressio Parricrt.” (No. Il.) By 
Sre Samvet Ferevson, LL.D., Q.C. 
[Read June 23, 1879. ] 
Procrepine with the passage in which I ventured, at a recent Meet- 
ing of the Academy, to assign a meaning to ‘“‘ exagallias,”’ the writer 
of the ‘‘ Confessio,”’ as we find it in the ‘‘ Book of Armagh,” goes on 
as follows :—‘‘ Et non eram dignus neque talis ut hoc dominus servulo 
suo concederet post erumnas et tantas moles post captivitatem post 
annos multos in gentem illam tantam gratiam mihi donaret quod Ego 
aliquando in juventute mea nunquam sperayi neque cogitavi sed post- 
quam hiberione deveneram Cotidie itaque pecora pascebam et fre- 
quens in die orabam magis et magis accedebat timor dei,” &c. 
Here are two sentences, one conversant with the writer’s state be- 
fore his captivity, the other contrasting with that, his condition after 
his arrival in Ireland (hiberio). 
All the translators so accept them; but all, so far as I know, 
adopt the word “ cogitavi” as the end of the one, and the word ‘‘sed”’ 
as the beginning of the other. In this division, the sense of the 
whole would run thus:—‘‘ Neither was I worthy, nor such a one as 
that the Lord should vouchsafe this to his poor servitor, after hard- 
ships and burthens so great, after captivity, after many years [spent | 
in that nation, should bestow upon me such a grace as I erewhile in 
my youth never hoped for nor thought of. But after I had come into 
Ireland [as] daily ‘‘itaque,” I fed my flocks and often in the day 
prayed, the fear of God did more and more come near to me,” &. I 
have left the ‘‘itaque”’ of the original untranslated; for, whether it 
be rendered ‘‘ therefore,” or ‘‘and so,”’ or ‘‘ however,” the sequence 
of predication, in this division of the paragraph, will be equally em- 
barrassed, and an expression proper to the introduction of a train of 
thought will appear needlessly intruded into the continuation of it. 
Taking ‘‘itaque” in the sense of an initiatory particle, as it is com- 
monly used, it certainly imports a commencement of the sentence at 
‘‘ Cotidie,’’? which would leave ‘‘sed postquam in hiberione deveneram”’ 
to form part of the preceding sentence. The form of the text offers a 
considerable inducement to this division, instead of that adopted by 
the translators. The scribe has used no punctuation; but he fre- 
quently, though not always, distinguishes the commencements of sen- 
tences by the use of capital initials; and ‘‘Cotidie” here is so 
written. In some instances, indeed, he employs the capital out of 
place, and the beginnings of many sentences he leaves undistin- 
guished; but when he does employ the capital, it is so generally 
where it ought to be, that a presumption arises that it was not put 
here without reason. He alsosometimes indicates sentence-division 
by a wider space between the terminal and initial words ; and, in this 
particular case, he has left a noticeable vacancy between ‘‘ devene- 
ram” and ‘ Cotidie.” 
