[ ^54 ] 



X. 



THE SIGNS OF DOOMSDAY IN THE SALTAIE NA EANN. 

 By ST. JOHN D. SEYMOUE, B.D, Litt.D. 



[Read Noyembeu 30, 1922. Published Jakuauv 26, 1923.] 



It was held in medieval times that the coming of the Day of Doom would 

 be announced to mankind by a series of awe-inspiring portents, " wonders in 

 the heavens and in the earth," on the fifteen days preceding the Dies Irae. 

 This belief was widespread throughout Europe. Miss L. T. Smith, in her 

 Commonplace Book (the Book of Brome), p. 70, says that " a Greek acrostic, 

 which was embodied by Lactantius in his Divina InsfAtxitio, and translated 

 by St. Augustine into Latin hexameters, seems to be the original source of 

 the, narration of the fifteen definite signs of Doom." Frequently these signs 

 are attributed to St. Jerome, who is said to have found them in the "Annals 

 of the Hebrews." Lists of these signs are to be found in numerous 

 manuscripts. Mr. J. E. Wells, in his most helpful Manual of Middle-English 

 Writings (Oxford and Yale, 1916), p. 328, distinguishes six groups, which he 

 terras: — Augustinian-acrostic (IMigne, P. L. xli, col. 579); Bede (P. L. xciv, 

 col. 555) ; Comestor (P. L. cxcviii, col. 1611) ; Aquinas (St. Thomas Aquinas, 

 Liber Sententiarum (Venetiis, 1586), lib. iv, dist. 48, quaest. 1, art. 4) ; Old 

 French ; Miscellaneous. Of these the Augustiuian is the least important, 

 except in so far as it is supposed to be the fons et origo of all the others. 

 Bede and Comestor are closely related. The Old French group, which is 

 said by Wells to go back to a twelfth-century French poem, difiers con- 

 siderably from these, and is much fuller. An example of it may be found 

 in the fourteenth-century Northumbrian poem Cursor Mundi (ed. E. Morris, 

 Early English Texts Sec, p. 1283). Aquinas seems to stand midway between 

 the Bede-Comestor groups and the Old French. Of the group which Wells 

 terms " Miscellaneous " he does not give an example. 



But there is another group of signs, seven in number, to which we must 

 now turn our attention, for it is of extreme importance to us, as an example 

 of it occurs in early Irish religious literature, namely, in the Saltair na Hann. 

 That poem properly consists of 150 cantos, in imitation of the Biblical Psalter. 

 But added on to the end of it are twelve additional cantos, in a different 



