1 Z.C.P., xi. 218 ff., 269 f. Two MSS about which Brüning had no detailed information, viz Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 5323, s. XIII, and B.M., Add. 19 726, s. XI¹, have been collated by A. If the latter MS came from Tegernsee (‘der Schrift nach sehr gut möglich, jedenfalls süddeutsch’: B. Bischoff in a letter of 31 May 1953), it might be identical with Hardy’s Tegernsee MS ‘s. XIII’ (see Brüning, p. 224).

2 A third MS, B.M., Cott. Tib. D. III, came to Reeves’s notice when his work was nearly completed; he printed its variants in an appendix.

3 One of these, Munich Clm 22 241 (from Windberg, s. XII²), he knew only from the printed edition of Canisius.

4 A., p. 102, unconvincingly make Dorbbéne a bishop of Iona under abbot Dúnchad.

5 So already Brüning, p. 260, n. 1, and especially A., pp. 103-5.

6 The reference to W. M. Lindsay, Palaeographia Latina, ii. 19, is misleading; Lindsay discusses the apex-sign, but not its use as an italicization mark.

7 For editions, see Kenney, Sources, p. 434.

8 So Kenney, l.c. A., p. 10, assume that William was the scribe. This assumption is not borne out by the text of the poem, see esp. lines 22-25. William, no doubt, had entrusted Simeon with the execution of the king’s order. A monk under authority would hardly say of himself qui dignum duxit arare, but he might have thought it right (duxerat œquum) to conclude his work with a poetical prayer.

9 A. state that all three MSS ‘may be descendants of William’s copy’. This seems to me over-cautious.

10 Its existence had been known to James Ussher: P. Grosjean in Anal. Bolland., lxxiii. 196, note.

11 See Brüning, pp. 260 ff., and, with partly new arguments, Mrs A., pp. 12-17, 124.

12 See A., pp. 6 f., 9 f. — A has a set of capitula only before Book I; it does not include the titles of I. 36 and 37 (possibly inserted by Adomnán at a later date) and is incomplete at the end (‘unfinished’: A. p. 7). The capitula of Book I in B ₂ (B ₁ has none, and the beginning of B ₃ is lost) are those of A.

13 A. think these words are necessary, but the transient character of a simultaneous vision of the entire universe is sufficiently expressed by the words in uno eodemque momento.

14 The hounds are not mentioned elsewhere in the story; there was no reason for adding this detail, but an understandable reason for cutting it out.

15 It was later deleted in A.

16 Cf. Hesychius, in Leuiticum 15, 4: doctrinalem … sermonem.

17 So A., p. 7. Their speculations based on the illogical use of enlarged initials in corresponding places in A and B are, however, far from cogent.

18 The Vita s. Columbae in codice (uolumine) I in Saint Gall catalogues s. IX is the shortened version in MS 555: Bruckner, A., Scriptoria Medii Aevi Helvetica III (1938), p. 44 Google Scholar; Lehmann, P., Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge I (1918), pp. 78, 84Google Scholar.

19 This issue has still to be clarified by a full collation of M and more complete collations of the shorter versions than have so far been made.

20 In the case of Irish or Latinized Irish words the accents, even those in B ₁ and B ₂, have been printed with good reason. A.’s graphic distinction between accents ‘intended to indicate length of vowel’ and those ‘intended to markstress’ (p. 163), however, serves no purpose of documentation.