of men were interrupted." The great event held nature "breathless with adoration": her course was unexpectedly arrested into the incessant activity and change of the world without there entered a sudden calm. A similar pause in the outward scene accompanied (so ran the later story) the birth of Christ. Every one knows that an early church tradition located the event in a cave.97 While it was occupied by the blessed Mary it was full of light," more splendid than the light of the sun." The child was born without pain to the mother; angels surrounded him; and, as soon as he came forth, he stood upon his feet, like Apollo and the future Buddha, and received the homage of the heavenly visitants.100 These are contributions from the common store. So probably is the remarkable description of what Joseph saw when he went out to seek for help near Bethlehem: "I looked up into the sky and saw the sky astonished; and I looked up to the pole of the heavens and saw it standing, and the birds of the air keeping still." On the earth also everything became stationary. The sheep suddenly stood still, and the hand of the shepherd raised to strike them, remained up in the air. The water of the stream ceased to flow, and the mouths of the kids rested on it without drinking: "everything which was being impelled forward was intercepted in its course." 101 Van Eysinga finds here the influence of the Indian tale.102 This is of course possible, but it is not necessary. The idea is as old as the Homeric story of Athena's birth. When the goddess sprang in full panoply from the holy head of Zeus, the world below showed every sign of agitation and sympathy: "the earth rang

97 So Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 78, and the Protevangelium of James, chapter 18. Mithras, too, was born out of the rock, and Hermes in a cave on Mount Cyllene; Justin, op. cit., 70; Meyer in Hennecke's Handbuch zu den neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, p. 126 (1904). Bauer, Das Leben Jesu im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, p. 66 (1909), supposes that Mary's retirement was for purposes of secrecy, and had no special mythological implication. Very curious is the late Chinese legend of the birth of Confucius, which seems to be touched with Buddhist influence. His mother goes to a cave to be confined. Two dragons come and keep watch outside on the hill, and two spirit ladies pour out fragrant odors within; a spring of clear warm water bubbles up from the floor, which dries up when the babe has been washed. Legge, Chinese Classics, 1. 59 (2d ed., 1893). 98 Pseudo-Matthew, xiii. 99 Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, iii. 101 Protevangelium of James, xviii.

100 Pseudo-Matthew, xiii.
108 Indische Einflüsse auf Evangelische Erzählungen, p. 78 (2d ed., 1909).

terribly around, and the sea boiled with dark waves and broke forth suddenly with foam." But the majestic wonder of heaven expressed itself differently. "The glorious son of Hyperion checked for long his swift steeds." 103 In other words, the sun stood still in the sky.

One final witness may be heard. Ishodad of Merv, about 850 A.D., commenting on the story of the Baptism in Matthew iii. observes:

Straightway, as the Diatessaron testifies, light shone forth, and over the Jordan was spread a veil of white clouds, and there appeared many hosts of spiritual beings who were praising God in the air. And quietly Jordan stood still from its flowing, its waters being at rest, and a sweet odor was wafted from thence." 104

Five separate items meet us here: (1) a great light; (2) white clouds over the river; (3) a multitude of spirits; (4) the arrest of the stream; (5) the heavenly odors. The burst of light belonged to early tradition, as it appears in the fragments of the Gospel of the Ebionites.105 Scent, according to Dr. Harris, is elsewhere connected with the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It is not necessary to argue on the line of the well-known reading of D in Luke iii. 22, that we have here to do with the real birthday of the Messiah as Son of God, so that we have phenomena analogous to those of the Buddha's nativity. The parallel to the Baptism when Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to have become "God's Anointed" through the unction of the Holy Spirit is found in that hour of Enlightenment when Gotama attained the knowledge which would make him the teacher of gods and men. It was fitting that the Thirty-two Good Omens should be then repeated. The shining light, the heavenly choir, the stationary waters, the celestial scents, correspond in both stories. One item remains unexplained, -the white clouds. It is noticeable that they are mentioned just before the singers from the sky: may it not be conjectured that it was in this form that the holy companies

10 Hom. Hymn, xxvii.

104 Dr. Rendell Harris, Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon the Diatessaron, p. 43 (1895).

105 Preuschen, Antilegomena, p. 11, l. 13 (2d ed., 1905). In Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 18, fire breaks out upon the water.

became visible? In a Chinese version of the Buddha-carita of Açvaghosha we read, "Countless devas delighting in religion like clouds assembled." 106

It is quite possible that there is some direct contact here. But was Ishodad right in attributing all these details to the Diatessaron; and, if so, where and how were they inserted ? Such decorations may easily have been added in the further East, under suggestion from a faith containing so many similar motives. But they may also be derived from that vast fund of imaginative material which lies beneath all historic forms deep in the consciousness of whole peoples, ready to be called into light by the stimulus of great ideas. In ages when the different national cultures were much more nearly on the same intellectual levels than they are now, it would seem more possible for such a picture-language to be widely diffused from land to land. The means of its transmission it is no longer in our power to trace. Conquest and deportation on the one hand and commerce on the other were no doubt among the chief agencies. It must be enough for the student, seeking to make his way among the speculations of the past, if he can discover such occasional parallels as may imply a common outlook upon life, a common hope for human welfare, a common reverence for the 'fair and good.'

OXFORD,

July, 1910.

108 Sacred Books, 19. 6.

SATIRISTS AND ENCHANTERS IN EARLY

IRISH LITERATURE

FRED NORRIS ROBINSON

Harvard University

Ir would appear from various references in Elizabethan writers that the feature of Irish literature which most impressed Englishmen of the time was the supposed power of Irish poets to work destruction with their verse. Sidney, at the end of his Defense of Poesy, in his parting curse upon the disdainer of the art, will not wish him "the ass's ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a Poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself, nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland." Again, in Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, it is said that Irishmen, speaking of their witches, "will not stick to affirm that they can rhyme either man or beast to death." 2 And a number of writers refer to the destruction of rats by means of such potent verses. In the Epilogue to Ben Jonson's Poetaster, the author declares that he will

Rhyme them to death, as they do Irish rats,
In drumming tunes;

and Rosalind, in As You Like It, humorously compares Orlando's rhymes to those which had released her soul from a lower existence and helped it to achieve its transmigration. "I was never so berhymed," she declares, “since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember." 4

'Sidney's Works, ed. 1724, 3. 52.

3 Jonson's Works, ed. Gifford (1875), 5. 518.

Ed. 1665, p. 35.

As You Like It, act iii, Scene 2. Other references to the subject, some of them of considerably later date, will be found in Ben Jonson's Staple of News, act iv,

6

The story of the destruction or expulsion of rats or mice is told of a number of Irishmen in different periods. In fact Eugene O'Curry, who made a report on the subject in 1855, for the Royal Irish Academy, remarks that he once tried to perform the feat himself, but failed, perhaps because his words were too hard for the vermin to understand! The most famous early instance, probably, is that of the poet Senchan, who lived in the seventh century. According to the Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution (Imtheacht na Tromdhaimhe), a tale of the Middle Irish period, an egg which had been saved for Senchan's meal was eaten up by the "nimble race," namely, the mice. "That was not proper for them," said Senchan; "nevertheless there is not a king or chief, be he ever so great, but these mice would wish to leave the traces of their own teeth in his food; and in that they err, for food should not be used by any person after (the print of) their teeth; and I will satirize them." Then follow stanzas in which Senchan threatens the mice with death, and they beg him to accept compensation instead. As a result of his verses, ten mice

Scene 1 (Gifford's ed., 5. 271); Randolph's Jealous Lovers, act v, Scene 1; Rhymes against Martin Marprelate, cited by Nares from Herbert's Typographical Antiquities, p. 1689 (the whole poem printed in D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors, 2. 255-263); Sir William Temple's Essay on Poetry, in his works (ed. 1757), 3. 418; Swift's Advice to a Young Poet (ed. Scott, 9. 407); and Pope's version of Donne's Second Satire, line 23. Most of these passages were cited in Nares' Glossary, under Rats Rimed to Death; for further discussion see an article by Todd, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 1855, pp. 355 ff.

'O'Curry's materials were presented in Dr. Todd's paper in the Proceedings for 1855. He mentions one instance of rat-rhyming in 1776, and another about 1820. Cases of the same sort among the Highland Gaels are cited by the Rev. Alexander Stewart in Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe (Edinburgh, 1885). A long spell said to have been composed and successfully used by a farmer on the Island of Lismore is given by Stewart on pp. 4 ff. Somewhat different from these stories of rat-rhymers is the case related by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gemma Ecclesiastica, Rolls Series, 161) of St. Yvor the bishop, who by his curse expelled the rats (majores mures, qui vulgariter rati vocantur) from an Irish province because they had gnawed his books. This was conceived by Giraldus as a Christian miracle, and is cited, along with the story of St. Patrick and the snakes, to illustrate the fearful effects of excommunication. Still another method of disposing of rats is familiar to everybody in the legend of the Piper of Hamelin.

Edited and translated by O. Connellan in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, vol. 5, Dublin, 1860. The Irish title means simply the Circuit of the Burdensome Company, but the tale is usually referred to in English by Connellan's rendering, as given above.