SELIM05.pdf Andrew Breeze, Selim 5 (1996): 132—137 MIDDLE ENGLISH SNESS ‘CLUSTER’: MIDDLE IRISH POPP ‘SHOOT, TENDRIL’ MIDDLE English bobbe ‘bunch, cluster’ is quoted by OED from three north- ern texts Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the prose Life of Alexander, and the Wakefield Pageants. In the first the bobe (line 206) is carried by the Green Knight hlmself: But in his on honde he hade a holyn bobbe, ? at is grattest in grene when greuez ar bare.1 This holly bob is probably a peace-token, rather than evidence for the Knight’s ancestry as an ‘old vegetation god’.2 It contrasts with the wondere grete bobbls of grapes (almost too heavy for a man to carry) of the prose Life of Alexander in the fifteenth-century ‘Thornton Manuscript’ (in the library of Lincoln Cathedral), mentioned amongst the marvels Alexander sees in the East.3 In the Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play, the ‘bob of cherys’ offered to the child at Bethlehem is a marvel of another kind, an instance of midwin ter fertility corre sponding to the miraculous birth of Christ.4 Though OED gives no etymology for bob, it compares it with Irish baban ‘tassel, cluster’, Gaelic baban, babag. This Celtic parallel is ignored by later writers: Gollancz, Cawley, Onions, Davls, Hoad, and Brown merely describe 1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1967), 6-7. 2 J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1965), 16- 17; A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet (Cambridge, 1970), 179 3 On this text, see J. E. Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English (New Haven, 1916), 105; H. S. Bennett, Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1947), 314; The Oxford Book of Late Medieval Verse and Prose, ed. Douglas Gray (Oxford, 1985), 462. 4 The Wakefield Pageants, ed. A. C. Cawley (Manchester, 1958), 62, 113. Andrew Breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 138 bob as of unknown origin.1 Yet a Celtic etymology for bob is not to be dis - missed out of hand, even though enquiry should not start with Modern Irish babán, bobán ‘tuft, bob’, it self probably influenced by English bob.2 We should look instead at Mlddle Irish papp, popp ‘shoot, tendril’, which (like bob) is used of plants, especially vines, and which is described by Vendryes a ‘terme technique, qui se rattache evidemment au latin pampinus «tige de la vigne», mais qui a du subir l’ influence d’un mot enfaAntin du type lat. pappa «bout de sein, mamelon», papula «bouton, pustule»’.3 The earliest citation of Irish popp in the Royal Irish Academy dic tionary is from The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, a ninth-century saga surviving in the Book of the Dun Cow, of c. 1100. The reference is to a warning vision of three men in green cloaks, a bowl by the mouth of each, and a sprig of cress (popp do birur) in each bowl.4 A ‘homily addressed to kings’, perhaps of the late eleventh century, in Dublin, Royal Irish Academy. MS 23. P. 16. the ‘Speckled Book’ written c. 1410 in the Tipperary region, mentions pappe agus blatha na finemna, the ‘shoots and flowers’ of the vine.5 A pseudo-biblical history in the same manuscript mentions deis cruithnechta na pupu oen- choire dofhinemain, a portent of wheat growing on springs of vines, resem- bling man geseah hwætes eare weaxen on treowum in the Old English Martyrology.6 Amongst later citations of popp in the RIA dictionary is one on the form and shoots of the vine (fuath fínemna … cona papib) in the medieval Irish history of Alexander and Philip of Macedon; the context for 1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Israel Gollancz, EETS o.s. 210 (London, 1940), 137; Cawley, 137; The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. C. T. Onions (Oxford, 1966), 103; Tolkien and Gordon, 167; The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. T. F. Hoad (Oxford, 1986), 44; The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ed. Lesley Brown (Oxford, 1993), 251. 2 Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, ed. Niall O Donald (Baíle Átha Cúath, 1977), 73, 117. 3 Joseph Vendryes, Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien: Lettres M N O P. (Paris, 1960), P-4. 4 Dictionary of the Irish Language (Dublin, 1913-76); Lebor na húidre, ed. R. I. Best & O. J. Bergin (Dublin, 1929), 239; Togail Bruidne Da Derga, ed. Eleanor Knott (Dublin, 1936), 41. 5 The Passions and the Homilies from Leabhar Breac, ed. Robert Atkinson (Dublin, 1887), 159; J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (New York, 1929), 739-40 6 J. E. Cross, Portents and Events at Christ’s Birth: Comments on Vercelli V and VI and the Old English Martyrology, Anglo-Saxon England, ii (1973), 209-20, at 218; Martin McNamara, She Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin, 1975), 18. Middle English Sness, Middle Irish Popp ____________________________________________________________________ 139 popp here thus resembles that of bobbis in the Thornton Manuscript Life of Alexander.1 There seems no semantic reason why Middle Irish popp ‘sprig, shoot, tendril’ should not give Middle English bobbe ‘bunch, cluster’. As regards phonology, it should be noted that primitive Old Irish had no p, and in loan words substituted c for it. Hence Old Irish casc ‘Pascha, Easter’, corcur ‘purpura’, etc. Even when b + h > p in native Irish words, so p in loanwords could be retained, its pronunciation still caused some difficulty, so that in ini- tial position it was not clearly distinguished from b-. Thus we have ninth- century glosses bóc for póc ‘kiss’ (in the St Gallen Priscian) and bellec for pellec ‘small bag’ (in the Karlsruhe Priscian).2 The RIA dictionary entry for p lists other such confusions between initial b and p in Old and Middle Irish. It also notes this phenomenon in Modern Irish, citing the dictionary of the Clare schoolmaster Peter O’Connell (1746-1826; see DNB), who described p- for b- as a colloquialism. In his account of Goedelic dialects, O’Rahilly described the feature as characteristic of modern Manx and Scottish Gaelic, as also of Ulster and Mayo Irish.3 But if we are to present a convincing case for Irish popp > English bobbe, we must show evidence for p- > b- in medieval Irish. Such evidence exists. One example is bellec < Latin pellicium or pellicia ‘leather bag’.4 In the transferred sense ‘bridle bit’ this occurs in the eighth-century Cattle Raid of Fróech (beilge oir ‘golden bridle -bits’),5 The twelfth-century Colloquy ot the Ancients also mentions bridles of silver with golden bits (co mbéilgibh óir fris).6 Other possible in stances are blae ‘open space, green’ and bláesc ‘shell’. Plae and blae have been derived from Late Latin plagia (in Gregory of Tours), giv ing French plage, Spanish playa ‘beach’. Plae is cited by the RIA dictionary from a ninth-century hymn to St Bridget by Broccan, and the 1 Cf. Robin Flower, The Irish Tradition (Oxford, 1947), 137. 2 Henry Lewis & Holger Pedersen, A Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar (Göttingen, 1937), 62; Rudolf Thurneysen, A Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin, 1946), 570-1; K. H. Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh, 1953), 125-7. 3 T. F. O’Rahilly, Irish Dialects Past and Present, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1972), 148-9. 4 Joseph Vendryes, Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien: Lettre B (Paris, 1981), 30. 5 Táin Bó Fraích, ed. Wolfgang Neid, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1974), 2. 6 Silva Gadelica, ed. S. H. O’Grady (London, 1892), i. 99; cf. ii. 107. Andrew Breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 140 glossary of Cormac, king-bishop of Cashel (d. 908), while blae figures in two texts in the Book of the Dun Cow: The Wooing of Emer, where Cú Chulainn boasts he was not brought up for blaí óerirlainde ‘on the floor of a front yard’ by some peasant, and The Sick Bed of Cú Chulainn, where Fand the fairy sings of how she saw him driving a splendid course in his chariot over the plain (álaind lúadam lúades blaí).1 Although Olmsted has challenged the derivation of blae from plagia, it remains a posslbility.2 Bláesc ‘shell’, compared with Welsh blisc, pilscyn ‘shell (of nut or egg)’, Middle Breton plusquenn ‘rind (of an apple)’, Modern French éplucher ‘to peel’ (from Gaul- ish), is more problematic.3 O’Rahilly saw it as a survival in Irish from Ivernian, a hypothetic pre - Goedelic Brittonic language in Ireland. But Vendryes comments that the dif- ferent forms, ‘exposé à des accidents variés’, allow no sure etymology.4 As regards non-initial p > b, we are on firm ground with the entries in the RIA dictionary for píb < Latin pipa ‘pipe’, the variant pobul < Latin populus ‘people’ (cf. Modern Irish An Phoblacht ‘The Republic’), and the variant puball < Latin papilio ‘tent’. The last figures in the Borders place-name Pee- bles, of Cumbric origin, but first attested in a Gaelic version as Pobull.5 Yet the most conclusive evidence for the existence of *bobb as a variant of popp giving English bobbe is early Irish bobba, a variant of popa (< Latin papa) ‘master, sir’. The RIA dictionary gives two in stances of bobba, in the ‘Tripartite Life’ of St Patrick written c. 900 (where it is used in address to the 1 Best & Bergin, 119, 311; Compert Con Culainn, ed. A. G. van Hamel (Dublin, 1933), 28; Serglige Con Culainn, ed. Myles Dillon (Dublin, 1953), 21; T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover, Ancient Irish Tales, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1969), 158, 191. 2 Vendryes, Lettres M N O P. P-10; Vendryes, Lettre B, 55. 3 The Poetical Works of Dafydd Nanmor, ed. Thomas Roberts (Cardiff, 1923). 190; Delw y Byd, ed. Henry Lewis & P. Diverres (Caerdydd, 1928), 116; Llyfr Blegywryd, ed. S. J. Williams & Enoch Powell (Caerdydd, 1942), 3; Ystorya de Carolo Magno, ed. S. J. Williams. 2nd edn (Caerdydd, 1968), 29; Vendryes, Lettre B. 56. 4 Cf. T. F. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946), 205-7; D. H. Greene, The Making of Insular Celtic, in Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Celtic Studies (Cardiff, 1966), 123-36, at 133-4; Vendryes, Lettre B, 56. 5 W. J. Watson, The Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926), 383; Jackson, 553; Vendryes, Lettres M N O P. P-9, 12, 17; The Names of Towns and Cities in Britain, ed. W. F. H. Nicolaisen (London, 1970), 149; A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 64: G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo- Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980), 33. Middle English Sness, Middle Irish Popp ____________________________________________________________________ 141 saint), and in the t ext of The Cattle Raid of Cooley in Dublin, Trimity College, MS H.2.16, the fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury Yellow Book of Lecan, where Cú Chulainn uses it to his charioteer.1 If bobba for popa existed, it is likely *bobb for popp did too. This would enable us to derive Middle En glish bobbe from popp with confidence. Like malt (