Page:Writings of Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.djvu/127

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Notes.
121

[1][2][3][4]

    According to the story set forth in the Rolls Tripartite Life (p. 48), Patrick, with eight young clerics and Benén, his faithful servant or gillie, sometimes called his 'foster-son' (Tripartite, p. 144), passed safely through all the men who were lying in wait for them on the occasion of his visit to Tara. The persons lying in ambush saw only eight deer running away, and a fawn after them, which was Benén.

  1. 'The first word of this hymn Atomriug was mistaken by Dr. Petrie and Dr. O'Donovan for an obsolete form of the dative of Temur, Temoria or Tara, and was by them translated "At Tara." We cannot now regret this error, as to it we owe the publication of this curious poem in the Essay on Tara. But it is certainly a mistake, and was acknowledged as such by Dr. O'Donovan before his death. The word is a verb; ad-domriug, i.e., ad-riug, adjungo, with the infixed pronoun dom, "to me" (see Zeuss, Gram. Celt. p. 336); the verb riug, which occurs in the forms ad-riug, con-riug, signifies "to join."' (Dr. Todd's St. Patrick, p. 426.) The true analysis of the word was first pointed out by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Saturday Review, September 5, 1857, p. 225.
  2. 'Drs. O'Donovan and Petrie translate the original word togairm, invoco, but it is a substantive, not a verb.' (Todd, p. 46.)
  3. Dr. Todd thought cretim in this line was a noun, but it is obviously the common verb, i.e., the Latin credo. The word for 'Threeness' is different from that for 'Trinity,' hence we have followed Dr. Whitley Stokes' new version. The sense is the same as that given in our former edition, 'the faith of the Trinity in Unity,' only fuller in expression. Fóisin in this line was rendered by Petrie 'under the.' But the correct reading is fóisitin, the instrumental sing. 'with the confession.' (See the Rolls Tripartite Life, pp. 48, 650.)
  4. The original is dail, genitive sing. of dal, 'judgment,' 'doom,' as in dal bâis, 'doom of death,' Leber na hUidre, p. 118 b., not dúile, 'elements,' as generally given. (See the Rolls Tripartite, pp. 566, 645.) Patrick seems to have had in mind the passage in Isaiah xlv. 7, where the words 'I make peace and create evil' [Vulg. et creans malu,] are used of God as 'the Creator of judgment.' Comp. Amos iii. 6. The expression in the Hymn 'the Creator of Judgment' or 'Creator of Doom,' appears to afford an undesigned evidence of the Patrician authorship of the poem. 'God of Judgment' (dar moDla mbratha—Lebar Brecc in the Rolls Tripartite, p. 460) was a favourite expression of Patrick