,132 Proceedings of the lioijaJ Irish Aciuiem>i. 



possibly in a Latin form, as may be inferred from the e^•idence of a couple of 

 words in that language. In weaving his narrative he did not adhere- 

 slavishly to his originals, but made use of the one or the other, as it suited his 

 need and his fancy. It is important to note that he has used A to a far 

 cfreater extent than V, in which respect his work forms a marked contrast to 

 the medieval versions, which all follow ~V . As a natural consequence his- 

 production cannot be termed a " translation " of either ; it is really much 

 more of an original piece, as may be seen from the passages translated in 

 Miss Hull's Poem-Booh of the Gael. At the same time he introduced matter- 

 partly from Celtic literature, partly from non-Irish writings, some of which 

 came from the East, as I have endeavoured to show in my notes. 



There appears, indeed, to have been in Ireland at the time a considerable- 

 amount of curious learning, of which our writer has made use with good 

 results. Something of this may be seen in the Lismore version of the Ever- 

 iievj Tongue (Erin, ii, p. 96), which belongs to the tenth or eleventh century, 

 and in which a Latin apocryphon is very thickly overlaid with the most 

 out-of-the-way knowledge. Our writer, too, has dealt with an apocryphal 

 work according to a method which has been practised elsewhere in Irish- 

 literature, i.e., he has not set himself the task of translating, but has rather- 

 compiled a narrative, in which he has taken an original as the core, and thenr 

 added to it, or omitted from it, as he felt inclined. An example of this 

 treatment is found in the Ever-neiu Tongue, just alluded to, and in the- 

 Transitus Mariae (published by me in Jov/nud of Tlicoloijiml Studies for 

 October, 1921), where the writer has altered many details in a well-known 

 story, incorporated considerable portions of a Syriac document, and made use- 

 as well of the Visio Pauli and the Greek Aiwccdypse oftlic Virgin. 



One thing more must be said with respect to S. The earliest mss. used 

 by Meyer are a Paris one (his Class IV) which he dates in the eighth century, 

 and three (his Class I) which are of the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centurie.'j 

 respectively. Now, S may be dated just before the close of the tenth 

 century, which consequently implies a very early knowledge of the Adam- 

 apocrypha in Ireland, and as well throws some interesting light on tlie- 

 foreign literature read in the country at that period.' 



I shall conclude this paper by giving a short apocryphal piece dealing 

 with Adam, which has been translated for me by Miss Byrne for the first 

 time from the poem on Creation in the Book of Lecan : "Adam was a night 



' The CaedraoiiiKii poem Genesis B, -which is by some ascribed to the j'ear 

 1000 A.D., and therefore contemporary with the Saltair na JRana, appears to make some- 

 slight use both of A and V (C. W. Kennedy, The Caedmon Poems, pp. xli-xliii, 33-35). 



