308 



be permitted to hope, will be thereby increased to the student or the 

 writer on Irish Archseologj^ 



*^ I have the honour to remain, Sir, 



Your obedient servant, 



" George Y. Du ]N"oyee. 



" To the Eev. William Reeves^ D. D,, Secretary^ 

 " Royal Irish Academy.^' 



Eead the following Paper, from the notes of the late Dr. Siegfeied, 

 Professor of Sanscrit in the University of Dublin. 



On the Gaulish Inscription of Poitiers, containing a Charm against 



THE DEMOIT DONTAURTOS. ProM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE Dr. Ei7- 



DOLPH Thomas Siegfried, arranged by Carl Priedrtch Lottner. 

 (Plate XXIII.) 



In the year 1858 there was found at Poitiers, on occasion of some 

 digging for building purposes, a small silver plate, with an inscription, 

 which was immediately laid before the Societe des Antiquaires de 

 r Quest. One of the members of this Society, M. deLonguemar, pub- 

 lished a short treatise on this inscription, together with an engraving 

 of it, reproduced before the present essay. Prom this writing, which 

 appeared with the title, Rapport sur une inscription tracee sur ime 

 lame argent et decouverte a Poitiers en 1858," we learn that the silver 

 plate was originally enclosed in a kind of case, which unfortunately 

 was destroyed by the workman who found it, in his eagerness to get 

 hold of its contents. This circumstance is not without some importance 

 for the interpretation of the inscription on the plate. Por the natural 

 inference would seem to be that the inscription was intended to be car- 

 ried about on the body of some person, which again renders it very 

 probable that it contained a charm, and that the plate was a kind of 

 amulet or talisman. The inscription itself is in Latin characters, such 

 as, according to M. de Longuemar, were employed in public documents 

 of the Merovingian or Gallo-Roman times. The nearest approach to 

 them, according to the same scholar, is found in the alphabet of two 

 documents of the 6th century — one a chart of the year 565, the other a 

 sermon of St. Hilarius, written at about 570. This would not, however, 

 necessitate the assumption that the inscription on the plate must be of 

 the same century, but it might belong to a date somewhat more remote. 



Owing to the very careless way in which the letters are traced, it 

 was not easy to read them correctly. The only part which was clear at 

 once were the concluding words, Justina quem peperit Sarra, which are 

 evidently Latin. By a comparison with two of the incantations of Mar- 

 cellus Burdigalensis, M. de Longuemar showed that the formula, illius 

 quem peperit ilia," is pecaliar to charms, the intention being thereby 

 to make sure of the person for whom the spell was written, and to pre- 

 vent its taking effect on anybody else. So much, then, was clear, 

 that the inscription contained a charm. Put, except the last sentence, 

 scarcely anything could be made of it. Thrice the Latin word his re- 

 curred, which also went to prove that one had to do with some incan- 



