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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The battle of Cenn Abrat forms part of the story known as The Battle of Mag Mucrama and is told in §§ 10-14 of Stokes' edition (RC 13, 440). It is recorded in the Annals of Tigernach (RC 17, 10) and by the Four Masters, A.D. 186. There is, however, a longer account which appears as a separate story and is preserved in two manuscripts, The Book of Lecan (15th century) and RIA C i 2 (15th-16th centuries.) The occasion of the battle is not mentioned here, but according to the tradition of the Battle of Mag Mucrama, a dispute arose between Lugaid Mac Con and his foster brother Éogan son of Oilill Ólom, king of Munster, about a fairy musician they had found, each of them claiming the musician for himself. The king decided in favour of Éogan, and Lugaid said that it was a false judgement.
1 mus&c, MS; musc, C.
2 Nidruibe, C.
3 in mbreitheamnus iar sin, C.
4 seacha, MS; seoca, C.
5 longsur, MS; longport, C.
6 drai, MS and C.
7 druad, MS; druag, C.
8 added above; C reads: gur teamloisc a cinn an colpa.
1 Mac Con was a foster son of Ailill Ólom, and we are told in the Battle of Mag Mucrama that he and Éogan were nursed on the same knee and at the same breast. Perhaps Cáeth-máel was a person in the king's household specially charged with the care of the boy. The nursing and care of a king's fosterlings would be entrusted to subordinates.
2 lit. ‘as the men are.‘
3 They did not wish to kill him themselves as he was Éogan's foster brother. But the part played by Corpre Músc is not explained. For some reason he was allied with Ailill against Mac Con. According to the account of the Battle of Mag Mucrama, Éogan had no scruple about killing Mac Con, and did in fact kill Da Dera and wound Mac Con, as Corpre does here.
4 So also in The Battle of Mag Mucrama proper, loc. cit. 454 §48, and in The Feast of Dún na nGéd, ed. O'Donovan (glas i cengal itir cech ndis, 86.2), and p. 176 of the same volume in the account of the Battle of Moira.
5 nitrub is obscure to me, and the reading of C does not help. I suppose an adjective *trub, or some form here so corrupted, and would read: ní trub (?) latsa. I hesitate to suggest a borrowing from ME trow, truwe, which one would expect to have survived in Modern Irish. None of the dictionaries of Middle Irish has yet reached TR.
6 One of the five legally recognized processes of judgement, s. Thurneysen, ‘Coíc Conara Fugill’ 8 (APAW 1925. Phil.-Hist. Kl. 7).
7 Apparently a proverb meaning that you can always tell a king by some quality of his leg. The motif recurs in the account in The Battle of Mag Mucrama, and we are told that Éogan saw Mac Con's legs through the host like the snow of one night on account of their brightness (loc. cit. 440 §13). The point is perhaps simply that the mens' legs were bare, and those of the common soldiers weatherbeaten and dirty.
The word sugut (sucad) (= W. hygad ‘warlike‘) is interesting. It is known to me elsewhere only as one of the names of St. Patrick, e.g. in Fiacc's Hymn (Thes. Pal. ii 308.18).
8 Here the text is obscure, and the reading of C seems corrupt. The corresponding passage in RC 13,440.25 does not help. If I have divided correctly, the form dém (the accent is in the MS) is a pret. sg. 3, and idlos a compound of id ‘ring, band’ and los ‘tail, end, handle’; cf. déimh no demhal díoghbhail sin, Metr. Gl. D 61 (Trans. Phil. Soc. 1891-94, 30, 59); cuil deim de éot, cuil deim de formut, ACC 105, where the meaning is obscure, but the glossator interprets deim .i. ondí as demo digbaim ‘from the word demo “I take away”’; condemeth cī, fer isin gaimriuth, Lec. fcs. 132a31 (Todd, Ir. Nenn. Ixxii.21 = condemheth an fér, FM i 54.8), where I should translate ‘so that the winter grass was taken away’ (‘which covered the grass in winter,’ Todd; ‘which blackened the grass,’ O'Donovan).