Trees and Tradition in Early Ireland

Abstract

Old and Middle Irish nature poetry has long been appreciated for the vividness of its description of the natural world. In this paper, we will show that the inventory of trees and bushes upon which poets drew was based less upon direct observation of nature than upon a traditional taxonomy found in a completely different genre, the law tracts dating back to the seventh century, notably the tree list edited by Fergus Kelly in 1976 from Bretha Comaithchesa ‘Judgments Concerning Neighborhood Law’. Thus, the economic and aesthetic value of trees and bushes as discussed in law tracts and nature poetry were part of a single continuous tradition of taxonomy and silviculture stretching over at least 500 years. We will end by discussing the relationship between this tradition and the Ogam letter names (McManus 1997).

Full text

Trees and Tradition in Early Ireland1
LIONEL S. JOSEPH
William James College (Ret.)
BRIAN DRAYTON
TERC, Cambridge, MA
Old and Middle Irish nature poetry has long been appreciated for the vividness
of its description of the natural world. In this paper, we will show that the
inventory of trees and bushes upon which poets drew was based less upon
direct observation of nature than upon a traditional taxonomy found in
a completely different genre, the law tracts dating back to the seventh century,
notably the tree list edited by Fergus Kelly in 1976 from Bretha Comaithchesa
‘Judgments Concerning Neighborhood Law’. Thus, the economic and aesthetic
value of trees and bushes as discussed in law tracts and nature poetry were part
of a single continuous tradition of taxonomy and silviculture stretching over at
least 500 years. We will end by discussing the relationship between this tradition
and the Ogam letter names (McManus 1997).
Keywords: Irish nature poetry; Old Irish tree list; Ogam letter names
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate continuity and inuence in early Irish
nature writing2 between two genres widely separated in time and style: the Old
Irish law tracts of the seventh century and Middle Irish nature poetry in such
texts as Buile Ṡuibhne, ‘The Inspired Vision of Sweeney’. In what follows we
will focus exclusively on trees and bushes because of their importance in the
legal literature (Binchy 1971; Kelly 1976), in nature poetry, and in the Ogam
letter names (McManus 1986, 1988, 1997). In addition to the Old Irish tree list in
1 LSJ presented a preliminary version of this paper at the Seventh Annual Harvard
Celtic Colloquium, 1–2 May 1987. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the valuable
discussions and cor respondence that he has had while rening it over the years: with
the late Anders Ahlqvist and with John Armstrong, Fred Biggs, Liam Breatnach,
Brian Frykenberg, Thomas Hill, Jay Jasanoff, Fergus Kelly, Proinsias Mac Cana,
Damian McManus (especially a letter of 21 April 1988), and William Mahon.
We are happy to thank LSJ’s son, Daniel F. O. Joseph, who took time off from his
editing and translating of Japanese to edit this paper. We are also grateful to the two
anonymous reviewers for Studia Celtica Fennica and to our outstanding editor Sarah
Waidler and her colleague Silva Nurmio. Their valuable comments made this paper
stronger.
2 For a detailed analysis of the creation of the myth of the Celts as supremely ‘natural’
in the writings of Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold, see Sims-Williams (1996).
Lionel S. Joseph, Brian Drayton
Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021), 54–73, eISSN 2242-4261 © 2020 Joseph, Drayton
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).

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Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
Bretha Comaithchesa ‘Judgments Concerning Neighborhood Law’ (Kelly 1976),
to which we will return below, there are four passages in early Irish featuring
extensive references to trees:
1. The early legal poem Ma be rí rofesser (‘If you are a king, you should
know’) edited by Binchy in Celtica 9, which shows that tree law, including
a tree list, was already in existence in the seventh century
2. The Middle Irish text Buile Ṡuibhne
3. A second Middle Irish text, Aided Fergusa Maic Léiti
4. The ninth-century poem ‘King and Hermit’
That some version of the Bretha Comaithchesa tree list was current in the
seventh century is clear from the reference to neighborhood law in Ma be rí
rofesser:
Slán cach comaithches
cuirther gellaib
‘Valid is every neighbour-law
that is contracted by pledges’ (Binchy 1971: 157, ll. 23–24)
The text goes on to list penalties for cutting dnemid ‘sacred trees’ (ll. 37–
38; cutting can be less or more serious: lopping a limb; cutting the stem). The
dnemid are explicitly connected with the airig fedo ‘nobles of the woods’ of the
Old Irish tree list in the following line of the poem (l. 39).
The rst tree to be named is the hazel:
Briugid caille,
Coll eidnech
‘The hospitallers of the forest,
the ivied hazel’ (ll. 34–35)
The hazel is the second of the ‘nobles of the woods’ in the Old Irish tree list.
The rst is the oak, which appears next (l. 51), then the yew (l. 54), then the holly
(l. 55), the hazel again (l. 56), and the apple (l. 57). The rst ve trees mentioned
are all ‘nobles of the woods’ (the only ones that are missing are uinnius ‘ash’ and
ochtach ‘Scots pine’, about which more below).
The poem then lists eight more trees and plants: beithe ‘birch’ (l. 61), fern
‘alder’ (l. 62), sail ‘willow’ (l. 63), scéith ‘whitethorn/hawthorn’ (l. 65), draigen
‘blackthorn’ (l. 66), raith ‘bracken’ (l. 68), rait ‘bog-myrtle’ (l. 69), and aín
‘rushes’ (l. 69). The rst four are aithig fedo ‘commoners of the woods’; draigen
is the rst of the fodla fedo ‘lower divisions of the woods’; raith and rait are losa
fedo ‘bushes of the woods’; and aín is the only plant of the thir teen that does not
appear in the Old Irish tree list. Not only are twelve out of thirteen plants on that
list, but they appear in order of their four categories: rst the nobles, then the

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commoners, then the lower division, and nally the bushes. The categories are
strictly observed.
1. Buile Ṡuibhne
Let us turn now to our second example: the poem which is spoken by the man of
nature par excellence, mad King Suibne of Dál nAraide in north-eastern Ireland.
Most of what we know about Suibne’s career comes from three twelfth-century
tales about the events surrounding the Battle of Mag Rath (modern Moira,
Co. Down), which took place in 627, and especially from Buile Ṡuibhne, edited by
J. G. O’Keeffe in 1931. This text includes the prose tale and a number of Middle
Irish verses, including a list of trees. James Carney summarized the story in
Studies in Early Irish Literature and History (1955: 131):
Suibne, king of Dál nAraide, offended St. Rónán, and slew one of his clerics.
As a result of the saint’s curse, Suibne became a gelt, or madman, at the battle
of Mag Roth. After this he lived in the woods, grew feathers, could jump from
tree to tree, and from mountain-top to mountain-top. He utters poems, some
in praise of the wild life, others bemoaning its hardships. He is befriended by
St. Molling. The curse of Rónán works in full when Suibne suffers at the
hands of Mongán, Molling’s swineherd, the same death that he had inicted
on Rónán’s cleric.
The Irish valued Suibne’s inspired verses very highly, and his condition was
called one of the three búada or ‘triumphs’ of the Battle of Mag Rath. The story is
told in the introduction to Bretha Éitgit (formerly called the Book of Aicill):
Teora buada in catha-sin: maidm ar congal claen ina anr re domnall ina
rinne, 7 suibne geilt do dul ar geltacht, 7 a incinn dermait do buain a cind cind
faelad; 7 nocan ed-sin is buaid ann suibni do dul ar geltacht, acht ar facaib do
scelaib 7 do laidib dia eis i neirind. (CIH: 250.36ff.)3
Three were the triumphs of that battle: the defeat of Congal Claen in his falsehood
by Domnall in his truth, and Suibne Geilt having become mad, and Cennfaelad’s
brain of forgetfulness having been taken from his head. And Suibne Geilt having
become mad is not a reason why the battle is a triumph but it is because of the
stories and poems he left after him in Ireland. (O’Keeffe 193: iv)
The Suibne story has been the object of many studies: of its British afnities
(with the Welsh Myrddin and the Scottish Lailoken; Frykenberg 1984); of the motif
of the threefold death, which Celtic shares with Germanic and other traditions (in
Celtic it is usually some combination of burning, hanging, stabbing and drowning;
Frykenberg 1984: 115, n. 26; Jackson 1940; Ó Concheanainn 1973; Ó Cuív 1973;
Radner 1983; A. & B. Rees 1961); of Suibne as a shaman (Beneš 1960/61), and so
3 There is a variant version at CIH: 926.1ff.

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on. But let us concentrate on part of a poem that Suibne utters to eulogize the trees
of Ireland (O’Keeffe 1931: 64–66, §40), which Gerard Murphy edited in his Early
Irish Lyrics (1956: 46). The trees and plants that Suibne names are:
§3 dair oak
§4 fern alder
§5 draignén blackthorn
birar cress
§6 suib strawberry
§7 aball apple tree
cáerthann rowan
§8 driseóc blackberry
§9 ibar yew
eidenn ivy
§10 cuilenn holly
uinnes ash
§11 beithe birch
§12 crithach aspen
§13 dair oak (= §3)
The nal line thus returns to the term with which we started, in good dúnad
style.4 Two of these plants have special associations with Suibne: birar ‘cress’,
which is his staple food5 (and is the food of hermits and ascetics generally in Irish
tradition); and suib ‘strawberry’, which is an encoding of Suibne’s own name.
4 The repetition of the adjective duilledach ‘lea fy’ rei nforces the dúnad, and shows t hat
this part of the poem is a unit. There are other plant names scattered throughout the
rest of the poem:
§19 eidnech ivied
§26 birar cress
fothlacht water-parsnip
§27 eidnech ivied
sail willow
ibar yew
beithe birch
§38 eidnech ivied
§63 raithnech brackened
but they are not organized into a distinct section or catalogue. Still, of these, only
birar and fothlacht do not occur in the Old Irish tree list.
5 See the pathetic dialogue between Suibne and his former queen Éorann, who has
marr ied another man, in Early Irish Lyrics 45.7–8 and 47.8:
45.7 Córa duit serc ocus grád
don fhuir ‘gá taí th’áenarán
iná do geilt gairb gortaig
úathaig omnaig urnochtaig.

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2.Old Irish Tree List
To understand where the rest of the terms come from, however, we must go back
four or five hundred years to the Old Irish legal tracts. In the eighth-century tract
Bretha Comaithchesa ‘Judgments Concerning Neighborhood Law’ there is a list
of four groups of seven trees each, which Fergus Kelly discussed in a model study
in Celtica 11 (1976). The choice of seven in each category clearly copies the seven
grades of nobles in the tract on social status, Críth Gablach ‘Branched Purchase’
(Binchy 1941), and the seven ecclesiastical ofces of the Irish Church (Críth
Gablach: 98–99). The four sevens are called airig fedo ‘nobles of the woods’,
aithig fedo ‘commoners of the woods’, fodla fedo ‘lower divisions of the woods’,
and losa fedo ‘bushes of the woods’.6
The reason that the tree list has been preserved at all, and in Bretha
Comaithchesa, is that different trees had differing status under early Irish law.7
Thus we are told that ‘the class into which a tree or shrub is placed [in the tree
list] depends upon its economic importance’ (Kelly 1976: 108).8 For example, the
oak is put rst among the ‘nobles of the woods’ because of a mes 7 a ṡaíre ‘its
mast and its rank’. The class or rank to which a tree belonged was important
45.8 Dá tuchta mo roga dam
d’ fheruib Éirenn is Alban
ferr lem it chommaid gan chol
ar uisce ocus ar birar.
Suibne: It were better for you to give love and affection
to the husband who has you as his one wife
than to a n uncouth famished d readf ul
fear-inspiring wholly-naked madman.
Éorann: Were my choice given me
of the men of Ireland and Scotland
I should prefer to live blamelessly with you
on water and on cress.
(Murphy 1956: 121, with minor changes)
47.8 Dúairc in betha beith gan tech;
is trúag in betha, a Chríst cain:
sásad birair barrglais búain;
deog uisce úair a glais glain…
Gloomy is the life of one who has no house;
it is a wretched life, good Christ:
everlasting green-topped cress for food;
cold water from a clear stream for drink…
(Murphy 1956: 141)
6 This last is something of a catch-all in several manuscripts. It has eight rather than
seven members, with three manuscripts agreeing upon eidenn ‘ivy’ as the eighth.
7 For detailed identications of which trees and bushes these are, see Kelly (1999).
8 The anony mous Studia Celtica Fennica reviewer points out to us that both economic
and cultural importance may play a role in this ranking.

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because if a trespasser damaged a tree or cut off its branches, or worst of all, cut
it down altogether, the brithem had to know how heavy a compensation to assess.
Cutting down an oak, the noblest of the airig fedo, carried the penalty of ve sét’s
(Kelly 1976: 108); cutting down an alder, or any other aithech fedo, demanded
the compensation of two sét’s (= one milch cow); the extirpation of a blackthorn
carried the penalty of a dairt (a yearling heifer; Kelly 1976: 116); and one could
uproot bracken for only one sheep (according to one family of manuscripts). The
other manuscript tradition is even more lenient, and says that cutting a single stem
of one of the losa fedo is exempt from penalty, and only the destr uction of a whole
stand of bushes calls for the compensation of one dairt (Kelly 1976: 120).9 10 11 12
Table 1: The ‘canonical’ Old Irish tree list
A. ‘nobles of the woods’
1daur/dair oak
2coll hazel
3cuilenn holly9
4ibar yew
5uinnius ash
6ochtach Scots pine
7aball apple tree
B. ‘commoners of the woods’
1fern alder
2sail willow
3scé[i]th haw thorn/whitethorn10
4cáerthann rowan11
5beithe birch
6lem elm
7idath wild cherry (?)12
C. ‘lower divisions of the woods’
1draigen blackthorn
2trom elder
9 Ogam xxi MAQUI-COLINE Mac Cuilinn. All references to particular Ogam
inscriptions follow the numbering of Macalister’s Corpus (1945) or McManus’ Guide
(1997) depending on the date of their discovery.
10 The manuscripts agree on the oblique form instead of the expected nominative scé.
11 Ogam 40 MAQI-CAIRATINI Ma c Caírthinn, a sixth-centu ry king of Leinster killed at
the Battle of Mag Femen (Devane 2005). Mac Caírthinn (d. 506) was also the name of
a companion of St. Patrick, who became a saint himself and the rst Bishop of Clogher.
12 This may be an invented word like idad ‘yew’ (McManus 1988: 164, 168 n. 62).

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3féorus spindletree
4n[d]choll whitebeam13
5caithne arbutus
6crithach aspen
7crann r juniper (?)
D. ‘bushes of the woods’
1raith bracken
2rait bog-myrtle
3aiten gorse
4dris blackberry
5fráech heather
6gilcach broom (?)
7spin wild rose (?)
[8 eidend ivy]
Now let us look back at the list drawn from the Suibne poem. With the
exceptions of birar ‘cress’ and suib ‘strawberry’, whose inclusion was explained
above, all of the trees and shrubs that Suibne names are found in the Old Irish tree
list, and what is more, Suibne’s list, which is only fteen items long, includes all
but one of the seven airig fedo, the ‘nobles of the woods’. 13
The missing member is A6 ochtach, the Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, and there
is a very curious fact about this tree. The word ochtach14 survives into Middle and
Modern Irish in the meanings ‘bedpost’ and ‘ridge-pole’, which were presumably
made from the wood of the Scots pine at one time; the original meaning ‘pine’ was
already passing out of use in the Old Irish period. Until recently, botanists were
divided upon the question of exactly when the Scots pine nally became extinct
in Ireland; it has survived to this day in Scotland, whence its name (Kelly 1976:
111–112). However, a relic population has been discovered in the Burren, and
a study of local pollen proles provides strong evidence that it is a survival rather
than a reintroduction (Roche, Mitchell, Waldren & Stefanini 2018). Now the Old
Irish tree list was compiled in the seventh or eighth century, but the ochtach
had become very uncommon by the time the Suibne poem was composed in the
twelfth. We would suggest that the poet either knew the Old Irish tree list by
heart, or else had it in front of him, and included all of the airig fedo in his poem
except for the one with which he was unfamiliar.
13 Literally, ‘white hazel’, although the whitebeam, Sorbus aria, is a member of the rose
family and is related to the rowan, whereas the hazel is related to the birches.
14 See now Sims-Williams (2018), who reconstructs *puk
tākā, following NIL 553; cf.
Gk. πεύκη, OHG. ohta ‘pine’. We thank the anonymous Studia Celtica Fennica
reviewer for this reference.

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3. Aided Fergusa Maic Léiti
We can conrm the impression that Middle Irish literati like the author of the
Suibne poem drew upon the Old Irish tree list by looking at our third example,
another Middle Irish poem, from the later version of Aided Fergusa Maic Léiti
(O’Grady 1892: 1. 245). O’Grady’s edition contains many silent emendations
and a few inaccuracies, so it may be useful to give a fresh transcription of the
sole manuscript, London, British Library, MS Egerton 1782, f.32, and a literal
translation of the verses.
Do bí Fer Deedh .i. in gilla tened ac fadōgh tened hi adhnuisi Iubdáin 7 do
chuir fēthlend fo chrand uirri ‘maille cinél gacho crainn eli 7 atbert Iubdán:
nā loiscc rígh na gorann, ar sé, uair ní dleghar a lloscud 7 a Fir Diaedh, dá
ndernta mo chomair[le]aid beth gābud maro nó tīri ort 7 atbert in láid ann:
1 A r fadōs tene15
ac Fergus na edh
ar muir nó ar tír
nā loiscc rígh na feadh.
2 Airdrīg fedha Fáil
im nach gnáth sreth slūaig
nī fann in feidm rígh
sním im gach crand cruaidh.
3 Dā loisce in dh fann
budh mana gréch nglonn
[ro sia]16 gābadh rend
nó bádhugh trén tond.
4 Ná loisc aball án
na ngéc faroll fāen
d [man] gnáth bláth bán
lam cháich ‘na cend chāem.
5 Deōradh draigen dūr
dh nach loiscend sāer
[gáirid] ealta én
trena chorp cidh cáel.
6 Nā loiscc sailig saīr
dh demin na dūan
15 Tene is not a good acc. sg., and the line is one syllable too long: the metre is
lethrannaigecht mór (51 51 51 51) (Murphy 1961: 57). We suggest restoring *te[i]n,
the shor t variant of the accusative (originally proper only to the dative; see McCone
1978). Cf. the parallel construction: rígh loiscfes ten in the Annals of Tigernach 532
(Stokes 1896: 133); see also Saltair na Rann (Greene: 54, l. 1475) and the Met rical
Dindsenchas (Gwynn 1913 iii: 50, l. 31). Te n will also consonate with ed and fed,
perfectly if we allow for a variant with a broad n, and only imperfectly if we believe
that the n was always slender in th is form. Imperfect consonance is also found in §§6,
10 and 15, and it is always the rst line of the stanza which disagrees in quality with
the others; this may have been permitted (Murphy 1961: 36 n.).
16 Visible to O’Grady, but not from the microlm copy. Same for man §4.3, gáirid §5.3,
and -asc §8.3.

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beich ‘na bláth ac deōl
mian cáich in crō cāem.
7 Caert[h]ann dh na ndrúadh
loisc cāemchrand na gcāer
sechain in dh fann
nā loisc in call cāem.
8 Uinnsenn dorcha a dath
d luáiti na ndroch
echl[asc] lām lucht ech
a cruth ac clādh chath.
9 Crumm fedha déin dris17
loiscc fēin in géir nglais
fendaigh gerraidh cois
srengaid nech ar ais.
10 Bruth feda dair úr
ō nach gnāth nach sēim
tinn cend tís o dúil
tinn súil o grís ghéir.
11 <Na>18 fern úr badb fedha
in crand is teó I nglīaidh
lo[i]sc go derb do[d] deōin
in fern is in sciáigh.
12 [Q]uilenn loiscc a úr
quilenn loiscc a crín
gach crann ar bith becht
cuilenn is dech dib.
13 [T]romm dana rúsc rúadh
crann fīrghona iar fīr
loisc co mbeith ‘na gúal
eich na sluag a sídh.
14 Fidh ‘na far[r]adh fāen
bethi ba bladh būan
loisc go deimin derb
cainnli na mbalg mbūan.
15 [L]ēig sīs madat maith
crithach rūadh na rith
loisc co mall co moch
crand ‘s a barr ar crith.
16 [S]innser fedha fois
ibar na edh s
dēna ris innois
dabcha donna dis.
17 Dā ndernta mo thoil
a r daeeda dil
dot anam dot chorp
nī budh olcc a r. A r. f.t.
17 Cf. Corann líath lethet baisi/ rolas oc losgud drisi (Strachan 1905: 229, §1).
18 Since na is hypermetrical and does not make sense syntactically, we have deleted it.

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Fer Déed, the re-lad, was kindling a re in Iubdán’s presence, and he put
honeysuckle wrapped around a branch on it together with a ‘kind’ of every
other tree [that is, one of each]. And Iubdán said, ‘Do not burn the king of
the trees,’ said he, ‘since it is not right to burn it. And Fer Déed, if you would
follow my advice, you will not suffer danger at sea or on land.’ And he recited
this poem:
1 O man who kindles re near Fergus of the feasts,
At sea or on land, do not burn the king of woods.19
2 High king of the wood of Fál, around whom/which a battle-line is not
usually found,
Not weak the kingly action: twisting around every hard tree.
3 If you burn the weak wood, it will be a portent of screamings of erce deeds,
Danger of weapons will come, or mighty drowning waves.20
4 Do not burn the bright apple tree of the great sloping branches,
A tree which usually bears white blossoms; everyone’s hand reaches
towards its fair head.
5 Obstinate blackthorn is a wanderer, a wood which the wright does not burn;
Flocks of birds chatter throughout its body, slender though it is.
6 Do not burn the noble willow, true wood of the poems;
Bees drink from its blossoms,21 the delight of all is the fair stand.
7 Rowan, wood of the druids,22 burn the fair tree of the berries.
Shun the weak wood, do not burn the fair hazel.
8 Ash whose color is dark, the wood which moves wheels;
A switch for hands but a burden for horses,23 its form turns the tide of battles.
9 Blackberry is a crooked one among fast [-growing] woods; denitely burn
the sharp green one.
It ays, it wounds the foot, it drags a person back.
10 Green oak is molten metal among woods; no one may be at ease with it.
Headache which comes from wanting it, and eyestrain from its intense
embers.
19 Féithlenn ‘honeysuckle’, according to the prose text which immediately precedes this
poem. For honeysuckle as a substitute for C5 caithne ‘arbutus’ in the Dublin, Trinity
College MS 1337 (H.3.18) version of the Old Irish tree list, see the discussion of ‘King
and Hermit’ below. As we see in the next stanza, the honeysuckle is kingly because it
can twist around every tree.
20 In the context of burning, references to death by weapons and drowning would probably
have suggested the theme of the ‘threefold death’ to the poet and his audience.
21 In Bríatharogam Maic ind Óc, the Old Irish kenning on S sail ‘willow’ is lúth bech
‘sustenance of bees’ (McManus 1997: 42–43).
22 In what is admittedly a late source, Keating (ii: 348–350) tells us that the druids
spread the raw hides of sacricial bulls over hurdles of rowan in order to obtain
visions. Similarly, in the Irish Life of St. Berach, the druids go to their rowan hurdles
(ar a ccliathaibh cáerthainn, Plummer 1922 i: 34; O’Rahilly 1946: 324).
23 Compare the Old Irish kenning on O onn ‘ash’ from Bríatharogam Morainn mic
Moín: congnaid ech ‘wounder of horses’ (McManus 1997: 42–43). The rst author is
indebted to John Armstrong for pointing out to him that echlasc lám and lucht ech are
parallel constructions.

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11 Green alder, Badb of wood, the tree which is hottest in battle,24
Burn certainly, at your will, the alder and the hawthorn.
12 Holly, burn when green, holly, burn when dry,
Of every tree in the known world, holly is the best of them all.
13 Elder which has strong bark, tree of true wounding,
Burn it so that it may become charcoal, the horses of the hosts from the síd.
14 A wood sloping beside it, birch of lasting fame,
Be sure to burn the ‘candles’ [strobiles] of the lasting buds.
15 Lay down [onto the re], if it seems good to you, the strong aspen of the
courses;
Burn late or early the tree whose crown quakes.
16 Eldest25 of enduring trees, yew of the feasts of knowledge,
Make from it now little dark vats.
17 If you were to do my will, O dear Fer Déed,
For your soul and for your body it would not be bad, O man.
If we extract the tree names from this poem, we get the following list:
Table 2: Trees from Aided Fergusa Maic Léiti
Name of tree or shrub Placement on the Old Irish tree list
aball apple tree A7
draigen blackthorn C1
sail willow B2
caerthann rowan B4
call hazel A2
uinnsenn ash A5
dris blackberry D4
dair oak A1
fern alder B1
sciaig hawthorn B3
q/cuilenn holly A3
tromm elder C2
24 Cf. Cad Goddeu (Haycock 2007: 177, l. 75), where the alder is listed rst among the
warr ior trees: Guern blaen llin/ A want gysseuin ‘Alder, foremost in lineage, wielded
a weapon in the forefront.’
25 The yew is also characterized as the eldest of trees in the Auraicept (Calder 1917:
282, ll. 5593–5594): is do ibar as ainm siniu fedaib ‘it is to yew that the name “eldest
of trees” belongs’. This is botanically accurate today: ‘All our oldest trees are yews’
(Johnson 2011: 162). However, the picture is complicated by the use of I idad in the
Ogam letter names. The kennings in both Bríatharogam Morainn mic Moín: sinem
fedo ‘oldest tree’ and Bríatharogam Maic ind Óc: caínem sen ‘fairest of the old’
(McManus 1997: 42–43) are consistent with ibar. The Irish were well aware of this:
idedh .i. iobhar, see in the Auraicept (Calder 1917: 234, l. 4299).

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65
Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
beithe birch B5
crithach aspen C6
ibar yew A4
Again, apart from the trivial replacement of the Middle Irish form uinnsenn
for uinnius ‘ash’, all fteen of the trees names in the poem appear in the Old Irish
tree list. More signicantly, it can hardly be an accident that all of the airig feda
appear except A6 ochtach, which was already (becoming) unknown in Ireland
when this poem was written.
4. ‘King and Hermit’
The only other catalogue of trees in an early literary text which we have found
is in the ninth-century verse dialogue called ‘King and Hermit’ (Murphy 1956:
8), a dialogue between Gúaire, a historical king of Connacht (d. 663 or 666), and
the hermit Marbán, who is supposed to have been his half-brother. This poem
involves us in an interesting textual problem: there turns out to be more than
one version of the Old Irish tree list in the legal manuscripts. The ‘canonical’ list
which we have been using is that established by Kelly (1976); it is based on four
manuscripts: Rawlinson B 487; Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1433 (E.3.5); Dublin,
Trinity College, MS 1336 (H.3.17) and Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1387 (H.5.15).
But the list we can extract from ‘King and Hermit’ agrees better with another
manuscript tradition (represented in Dublin, Trinity College MS 1337 (H 3.18)
and E.3.5 Commentary, which we will call the ‘alternative’ list) in one interesting
detail: both substitute féith(lenn)/e(i)dlenn ‘honeysuckle’ for C5 caithne ‘arbutus’
(cf. the reference to fēthlend in Aided Fergusa Maic Léiti, above).26
26 Fergus Kelly kindly pointed out to the rst author (in a letter of 5 September 1986)
that the honeysuckle is a much more common plant than the arbutus in Ireland, which
may explain t he substit ution:
E(i)dlenn ‘honeysuckle’ and eiden ‘ivy’ are so similar in spelling that one might
expect them to be confused. However, both manuscripts of the ‘alternative’ list
have lecla ‘rushes’ as item D8 (where eidenn sits in the ‘canonical’ list). E(i)
dlenn is kept distinct, and is the replacement of C5 caithne ‘arbutus’ (Kelly
1976: 119). E(i)dlenn and eiden are associated in only one text, ‘Traigṡruth
Firirchertne’ (Meyer 1910 iii: 43, l. 18): glaisem gelta .i. edlenn nó edhend
‘greenest of pastures, that is honeysuckle or ivy’. Cf. Auraicept (Calder 1917: 92,
l. 1189): glaisiu geltaibh gort .i. edind ‘greener than pastures is gort, that is ivy.
For the variant forms féith(lenn)/e(i)dlenn, see DIL s.vv., and for a propos ed etymology,
Marstrander (1910: 410). The legal tracts have the spelling without f-: eidlenn (CIH:
582 .18) = eidleann (CIH: 202.30) (item 6 in the fodla feda), while the Auraicept has
the spelling with f-: fedlend (Calder 1917: 90, l. 1156) = feithlend (232, l. 4250) (item
5 in the fodla feda).

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Trees and Tradition in Early Ireland
Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
Table 3: ‘King and Hermit’ and the ‘alternative’ Old Irish tree list 27 28 29
‘King and Hermit’ The ‘alternative’ tree list
dair (gen. darach) 1327 A: dair oak
coll 8, 14, 22, 26 coll hazel
uinnius 8 cuilenn holly
ibar 13, 15 uindius ash
ochtgach 1 ibar yew
aball 14 ochtach Scots pine
aball apple tree
B: fern alder
sail willow
bethe birch
lem elm
dat28 15 crithach aspen
idad (un ce r tain)
cáerthann 19 caerthann rowan
C: sci hawthorn
draigen 19 draigen blackthorn
trom elder
feorus spindletree
(crann) r 15 crann r juniper
féith eidlenn honeysuckle
ndcholl whitebeam
dristen 22 D: dris blackberry
aiten(d) gorse
fráech 9, 27 fraech heather
spin wild rose
gilcach broom
rait(h) bracken
lecla rushes
ailm 30 ‘pine’29
27 The numbers refer to stanzas in Murphy (1956: 11–19).
28 Pedersen (1913 ii: 47) derived dot ‘aspen’ from *widu-ntā, and cited examples from
Germanic and Balto-Slavic in suppor t of his idea that words for ‘aspen’ and ‘tree’
were related in these languages.
29 Ailm, not aball, represented the Ogam letter A (McManus 1997: 38). This rare word
is only attested here, in the Bríatharogaim, and in other letter name lists (McManus
1988: 161).

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Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
The two lists (‘canonical’ and ‘alternative’) clearly reect a common system
of classication, even though crithach ‘aspen’ and scé/scéith ‘hawthorn’ have
switched classes, and there are differences in the order of the items within each
class.
While the tree list is adapted to each of the literary texts that draw upon it, the
fact that it is used at all shows that at least one aspect of nature was seen by Middle
Irish poets through the lens of a tradition that was many centuries old.
5. Certogam
There is one more early Irish source in which trees are part of a list, and that
is of course the names of the letters in certogam ‘correct Ogam’, the alphabet
upon which all other Ogam alphabets were based. Some scholars (Derolez 1954;
Marstrander 1928; Vendryes 1948) believed that originally, all of the certogam
letters corresponded to tree names.30 However, Howard Meroney (1949)
demonstrated that most of the traditional names associated with the certogam
letters are not tree names at all, but are mostly well-known Irish words with
non-vegetal meanings. He identied only ve out of the twenty certogam let ters
which have the names of trees and shrubs: beithe ‘birch’, the rst letter in the
Ogam system; fern ‘alder’; sail ‘willow’; daur/dair ‘oak’; and coll ‘hazel’. This
is not quite accurate: as McManus showed in his brilliant reassessment of Ogam
(1986), the correspondence Q cert (cognate with W. perth ‘bush’ and ultimately
with L. quercus ‘oak’ (McManus 1997: 37) proves that the correspondence
between at least some Ogam signs and key words was handed down accurately
from the Primitive Irish period, when cert (*QERT) still began with /kw/ (which
later fell together with /k/; ibid.: 33). A ailm may have meant ‘pine’, though it is
such a rare word that this is uncertain (ibid.: 38). That would still leave at least
thirteen out of twenty certogam which are not plant names. McManus agreed
with Meroney that Vendryes’ ‘alphabet végétal’ is a ction (ibid.: 35).
Table 4: certogam letter names which are tree names
Bbeithe ‘birch’ W. bedw < Celt *betui
ā (Schrijver 1995: 326),
Bret. bezv, ‘birch’; OCorn. bedeƿen (with wyn)
‘poplar’ (Graves 1962: #693).
Ffern ‘alder’ Celt. *wernā (EDPC: 414; Schrijver 1995:
65–66; IEW: 1169), W., Bret. gwern, OCorn.
30 Derolez (1954: 147): ‘apparently they were all the names of trees’; Vendryes (1948:
85): ‘C’est un alphabet “vegetal”’ ‘It is an alphabet based on plants’. It was this
mistaken belief that formed the centerpiece of Robert Graves’ remarkable foray into
Celtic studies, The White Goddess (1948).

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Trees and Tradition in Early Ireland
Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
guernen gl. alnus, Romano-Brit. Durovernum
(in the ‘Antonine Itinerary’, see Rivet &
Jackson 1970: 73), Gaul. VERNODUBRUM
(the Verdouble), divine name Vernostonus,
which Delamarre (2017: 194) analyzes as
*ṷerno-sth2-o-no-.31
Ssail ‘willow’ Italo-Celtic *saliks (EDPC: 319–320; IEW:
879), OW. helic, OCorn. heligen, MBret.
haleguenn;32 L. salix ‘willow’ (Schrijver
1995: 259), British Ogam gen. SALICIDUNI
(LHEB: 179).
Ddair ‘oa k’ OW. deruen, MW. derw, Bret. deruenn ‘oa k’,
Gaul. DERVUS, British Derventio ‘the
Derwent’ (for a discussion of the etymology,
see Schrijver 1995: 385; EDPC: 91; IEW: 215;
Friedrich 1970: 140ff.; LHEB: 282).
Ccoll ‘hazel’ Ogam v MAQI-QOLI (for -COLI,33 McManus
1991: 122), OW.+ coll, OCorn. col-widen gl.
corillus ‘hazel-wood’, OBret. limn-collin gl.
tilia ‘linden’; L. corulus < *koselo- (Falileyev
2000: 34; Schrijver 1995: 433).
Qcert W. perth ‘bush’; L. quercus ‘oak’ (as above).
[A ailm if ‘pine’]
31 32 33
31 Wodtko (2003: 24) cites Gaul. Uernogenus = OIr. Fer ngen; OW. Guerngen ‘alder-
born’, appears in the witness lists in Liber Landavensis. We are indebted to the Studia
Celtica Fennica reviewer for the Welsh reference.
32 British forms in -en(n) are singulatives; the contrast is between e.g., ‘oak-woods’ and
‘oak tree’.
33 Mac Cuill is familiar as one of the trio (along with Mac Cécht and Mac Gréne) in
Lebor Gabála (Macalister 1939, iv: §vii, 130). O’Rahilly (1946: 66, 471, 473 n. 2)
noted the variant Mac Guill and connected him with Goll mac Morna. In Muirchú’s
Life of Patrick, Mac Cuill is ‘the champion of paganism’ (Bieler 1978, i 23: 102),
and O’Rahilly drew attention to the description of him in the Tripartite Life as homo
ualde impius, saeuus tyrannus, ut Cyclops nominaretur ‘a most wicked person,
a savage tyrant, so that he might be called a Cyclops’ (Mulchrone 1939: 286). ‘Cyclops’
of course reinforced the connection with Goll. After he lost the magical duel with
St. Patrick, Mac Cuill converted to Christianity and became a missionary to the
Manx. On the Cyclops in Celtic, Germanic and Indo-European, see McCone
(1996).

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Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
Oonn ‘ash; pine;
furze’
Celt. *osno-/ā (McManus 1988: 162; EDPC:
300–301; IEW: 782) = OW. onnen, OCorn.,
Bret. onn ‘ash’ (Schrijver 1995: 455); L. ornus
< *osenos.34
McManus (1988) has discussed the late letter names E edad and I idad, both
of which are problematic. The obvious candidate for I would be ibar < *eburo-
(W. efwr ‘cow-parsnip, hogweed’, Bret. evor ‘buckthorn’, Romano-Brit. Eboracum
‘York’, Gaul. EBURO-MAG[OS], Eburones, Eburovices ‘those who ght with
weapons made of eburos wood’; Evans 1967: 346–347; Schrijver 2015), but only
if the letter names had been assigned after vowel affection (which was already
happening during the Primitive Irish period). Before vowel affection, the obvious
match would have been *iwo- (Ogam 259 IVA-GENI = gen. Éogain; OIr. éo,
gen. í). These two words would appear to have referred to two different plants in
Old Irish (Kelly 1976: 110; McManus 1988: 164). After a detailed analysis of Celtic
*eburos, Schrijver (2015: 74) concluded that *iwo- ‘can… stand as the only Proto-
Celtic word for ‘yew’.’ His identication of *eburos as originally meaning ‘rowan’
(replaced in Insular Celtic by OIr. cáerthann, etc.) is persuasive but not certain. 34
All of the Ogam tree names except for cert (which had become opaque) and
the rare word ailm correspond to the airig fedo and the aithig fedo from the Old
Irish tree list.35 If we include the later glosses from the Auraicept, we can add
quert .i. quilenn and ailm .i. aball, both from αβ 26 (the specimen Ogam alphabet
in the Book of Ballymote (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12), f. 312,
and Meroney’s Ib); in that same alphabet we nd onn .i. uin(n)ius. This gives us
no fewer than ve of the airig fedo as Ogam tree names or their glosses; cf. the
preponderance of airig fedo in the Suibne poem discussed above. Given that the
Ogam letter names are probably even older than the Old Irish tree list, they can
hardly be drawn from it. However, it is striking that the Ogam tree names are
always the rst in order (or the only) trees in the Old Irish tree list that begin with
the appropriate letter: thus beithe is the only B, fern comes before féorus, sail
before scéith, dair before draigen, and coll before cuilend or caithne. The same
ordering principle would appear to be at work.
34 Latin thus differs slightly from Celtic, as it does in the word for ‘elm’: L. ulmus <
*l
mos beside Celt. *limo- in OIr. lem. W. llwyf(en) continues the full grade *leimo-
(IEW: 309). Friedrich (1970: 90) resolved this by suggesting that llwyfen originally
meant ‘linden’ and contained an entirely different root (so also Quental 2018: 40). On
Gaul. Lemovices ‘those who ght with weapons made of elm wood’, see most recently
Delamar re (2003: 199). See also James (2010: 77–80) and Sims-Williams (2006:
83–84). Thanks to the anonymous Studia Celtica Fennica reviewer for these last two
references.
35 Similarly, all ve of the ‘venerated trees’ from the Dindshenchas listed by Kelly
(1999: 49) are airig fedo.

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Trees and Tradition in Early Ireland
Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021)
While many questions of detail remain, our examination of the lists of trees
in early Irish has shown that when Middle Irish poet-scholars needed trees,
they drew upon a taxonomy that was rooted in at least ve centuries of learned
tradition.
Abbreviations
Bret. Breton
Cat. Catalan
Celt. Celtic
CIH Corpus Iuris Hibernici (Binchy 1978, 6 vols.)
EDPC Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (Matasović 2009)
Gaul. Gaulish
Gen. genitive
Gk. Greek
gl. glossing
GOI A Grammar of Old Irish (Thurneysen 1946)
IEW Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Pokorny 1959)
Ir. Irish
L. Latin
LEIA Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien (Vendryes et al. 1959–
1996 )
LHEB Language and History in Early Britain (Jackson 1953)
NIL Nomina in indogermanischen Lexikon (Wodtko, Irslinger & Schneider
2008)
OBret. Old Breton
OCorn. Old Cor nish
OHG. Old High German
OW. Old Welsh
Romano -Br it. Romano-British
Sp. Spanish
W. Welsh
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