40 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



purified [it] ; the trees have all blossomed because Grod has been 

 suspended on the •wood of the cross" ; and the text should have been : 



a nsen terw tiwo . 



39. The following perversion of the sense seems to be due to the 

 misconception of a -word used in a Coptic-Latin lexicon, for otherwise 

 it seems unintelligible [80/3 5] : 



pestauros pe la eroce e 



pesmine la ferma costituzione 



nnejeu etrhot delle navi vantate 



hnwiuntsaie per hellezza. 



What does that mean? "The cross is the firm constitution of the 

 ships vaunted for beauty"! Now, fhot means "to sail", and the 

 ■words meant, "of the ships that are sailing in beauty". But whence 

 came his '^ vantate^ ^ ? Parthey's lexicon has two entries : 



fhot, navigare. 



r h 6 6 1 , jactare (navigantem). 



Did Prof. Eossi take the latter entry, and render it "to boast", 

 vantare ? 



40. When his text is wrong, he sometimes even does not see any 

 defect, [81a4] : 



pestauros pe la croce e 



pehlol la caligine 



nnentausise dei maledici. 



His note says: "literally, of those who were bitter [in speech]". 

 Now, what on earth could be the meaning of such a sentence — " the 

 cross is the darkness of those who were bitter in speech" ? The cross 

 was their siveetening, not their darkness, and the Coptic word was 

 hloc, not hlol. 



41. In the last page of his translation there are a dozen mis- 

 takes, all of which I cannot set down here. The cross is a terrible 

 stumbling-block to him, for he edits [81 a 21] : 



pestauros pe la eroce e 



psobt ettajreu la preparazione salda. 



The meaning is quite wrong : s o b t has nothing to do with 

 sobte, "to prepare"; it means " (city-)^^^", being the regular 

 word to express Ter;)(os, of. Num. xiii. 20 ; 1 Reg. xxv. 16; 2 Eeg. 



