86 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



been violently vintaged, was mixed with the tears of the husbandmen, 

 who were their fathers. And while the eyes of the fathers were 

 blinded by tears, the hearts of the mothers were torn with grief &:c." 

 But so much depends on the correctness of the readings of the 

 legible portion, that the passage is too uncertain. 



160. Concerning his treatment of the next fragment, I have to 

 make the same remark : his conjectural emendation of the words 

 [64 a foot] : 



[hi]tm pa[r]s[in] niiriii[eiowe] 



has nothing to recommend it ; for his translation, ' ' like fountains of 

 water flowing from the source of tears", is literally, according to his 

 emendation, "flowing by the lentil of the tears", because arsin 

 means ^aKo?, "pulse, lentils". Did Prof. Eossi take lente =1° lentils, 

 2° lens (eye-glass), to be the nonnal progression of meaning from 

 ■which arsin , in Coptic, would come to mean "the ball of the eye"? 



161. And how does he get "bosom" out of the word kons 

 [65yl5], which must mean "slaughter", for "bosom" is quite 

 different, viz. kwn, never written kon, — not to speak of the inex- 

 plicable afiix of 3 sg. fem. 



162. But indeed the task becomes drearier, as I go in in these 

 fragments : the editor is naturally helpless when the real difficulties 

 begin, for he misses the most obvious portions. Thus he translates 

 [66 ;8 6] ; "I wished to take away the organ of my tongue from 

 silence." Why, if that meant anything, it should mean, that he 

 wished to speak, whereas the text says : "I wanted to hold the organ 

 of my tongue by [hitii] keeping silence" ; i.e. he wished to be silent; 

 but their conduct would have made the very stones cry out. 



163. Nor is Prof. Bossi to be kept from erring, by what one 

 might consider the irresistible force of analogy : even a simile fails to 

 produce its natural effects. The Coptic writer, at [67 /3], uses an 

 obvious comparison, viz. " fire is quenched by water, but even the 

 abundant fountains of instruction could not prevail to quench envy''\ 

 But how has he rendered it? "The abundant fountains of doctrine 

 cannot be destroyed by envy" ! Yet the writer had been dwelling on 

 this j^re of envy just previously. The very next paragraph carries on 

 the rhetorical antithesis : " iron gives up its rust through the [action 

 of the] hone, but the heart of the Pharisees did not give up the 

 blackness of" [its envious feelings] &c. But I do not want it to be 

 thought that his translation is merely a matter of misunderstood com- 

 parison ; the Coptic words cannot be rendered as he has given them : 



