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XXXII. 



THREE POEMS IN MIDDLE-IRISH, RELATING TO THE 

 BATTLE OE MUCRAMA. WITH ENGLISH TRANSLA- 

 TION AND NOTES, AND A SHORT YOCABTJLARY. By 

 JOHN MAC NEILL, B.A. 



[Read June 11, 1894.] ' 



(commijkicated by key. edmund hogan, s.j.) 



Inteodtjctoey Note. 



1. Summary of the Story of the Battle of Mucrama.^ — Sadb, 

 daugMer of Conn of the Hundred Battles, had, by Mac Niad, a son 

 Lugaid, also called Mac Con. She became wife of Ailill Olom, king 

 of Munster. Eogan Mor, her son by Ailill, had a dispute with 

 Mac Con, and drove him out of Ireland. Mac Con returned with an 

 army of Scottish, British, and Saxon auxiliaries, and took a stand at 

 Mag Mucrama, near the eastern shore of Galway Bay. Art, son of 

 Conn, then ard-r'i, came against him, bringing seven of the sons of 

 Ailill, including Eogan, as allies. Mac Con was victorious, and became 

 ard-rt, Art and the seven sons of Ailill having fallen on the field. The 

 night before the battle. Art stayed at the house of 01c Acha, a smith, 

 and the smith's daughter became by him the mother of a posthumous 

 son, Cormac, called Mac Airt. To Eogan Mor also was born a posthu- 

 mous son, Eiachu, by Moncha, daughter of Dil maccii Chreca, a druid. 

 So far the story as given in the Book of Leinster, and edited by Mr. S. 

 H. O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, p. 310. The prose preface to the poem 

 marked A below states that, according to some, the episode of the 

 vision and prophecy took place on the day before Art marched against 

 Mac Con. This episode, a Christian interpolation, is found, with a 

 very corrupt version of the accompanying poem, in all the modernized 

 copies of the tale that I have examined. These copies are therefore 

 derived from a source known to the LU. writer as existing in his day. 



1 "About A. D. 195," MS. Mat., p. 43. The story must have been popular. 

 Comh marbh le hArt is still the equivalent of "as dead as Julius Caesar" or 

 "as dead as Queen Anne." 



2 N 2 



