An Irish precursor of Dante : $b a study on the Vision of Heaven and Hell ascribed to the eighth-century Irish saint Adamnán, with translation of the Irish text
Dante Alighieri · en
At the warrior’s bidding, the man kindled a fire
with the log, killed the pig, and put him in a caldron on the fire to
boil. After a while the damsel bade him turn the pig, but he replied
that it was useless, for that pig would never be done until a truth had
been told for every quarter. Thereupon each one told some truth; the
man how he had obtained the log and the pig, the properties of which
were such that after the log had been burnt out at night, and the pig
eaten, the pig would be found alive in the morning, and the log whole;
and one quarter of the pig was cooked. The warrior told how there was
a field outside the lios, which was found, at ploughing time, to be
ready ploughed, harrowed, and sown with wheat; at harvest time, ready
stacked, and so on, and they had been eating of that wheat ever since,
and it none the less; and another quarter was done. The girl said that
she had a herd of seven cows, whose milk sufficed for all the people of
the Tír Tairngire, and seven sheep whose wool furnished the garments of
them; and the third quarter was cooked. Then Cormac related the reason
of his coming, and the pig was cooked entirely. When Cormac’s portion
was set before him, he said that he never ate unless there were fifty
men in his company. Then the warrior sang a strain which sent him to
sleep, and on waking he beheld fifty men, and with them his wife, son,
and daughter. So they set to upon the food and ale in all mirth and
gladness. And a silver cup was placed in the warrior’s hand, who, as
Cormac admired the workmanship of it, told him that there was something
yet more wonderful about it, for when three lies were told under it
it would break into three pieces, while the utterance of three truths
would make it whole again. He then told three lies, and the cup broke,
even as he had said; then, to restore it, he declared that neither
had Cormac’s wife nor daughter seen a man, nor his son a woman, since
they had left him, and in proof that his words were true, the cup came
together, perfect as before. So Cormac received again his wife and son
and daughter; and with them the cup, that he might discern between
truth and falsehood in his judgments, and the bell-branch for music and
delight. And the warrior declared that he was Manannán Mac Lír, who
had allured Conn to the Tír Tairngire that he might behold the wonder
of it. And the men who had brought the wings to complete the thatch of
the house were ‘the men of art in Ireland, collecting cattle and wealth
which passed away into nothing’; the man burning oak-trees was a young
lord, paying out of his own husbandry for all that he consumed; the
fountain was the Fountain of Knowledge, and the five streams issuing
thereout the five senses, ‘And no man will have knowledge who drinketh
not a draught out of the fountain itself, and out of the streams. The
folk of many arts are those who drink of them both’ (W. S. _loc. cit._).