Imbas Forosnai
by Nora K. Chadwick
Scottish Gaelic Studies, vol 4, part 2 Oxford University Press (1935)

Imbas Forosnai is the subject of an entry in Cormac’s Glossary. This entry is of special interest for two reasons. In the first place, it purports to give us a recipe of the means employed by the ancient Irish poets (filid) to obtain inspiration. In the second place, in an interesting colophon, it claims to tell us something specific of Saint Patrick’s attitude to the filid and to poetry. This attitude is represented as highly judicial. Certain elements in the file’s art and practice are commended, others are condemned. In the following brief study an attempt is made to interpret this interesting entry in the light of some allusions to similar mantic practices contained in other early Irish texts. It is hoped that it may be possible by this method to come to a clearer understanding of the sources or the milieu from which the author of the entry derives his material. In saying this, however, I am well aware that I cannot hope to solve more than a modicum of the obscurities of the entry by this method. But where so much is veiled perhaps any effort to penetrate the obscurity may not be wholly unwelcome.

It need hardly be stated at the outset that the entry is both difficult and obscure. Indeed, the following translation by Stokes is offered rather as a basis to work from-a kind of schedule of our terms of reference-than an authoritative interpretation of the text. The concluding portions of the passage in particular are obscure in the extreme, and it is chiefly in the hopes of approximating more closely to an understanding of them that I have put together these brief notes on certain aspects of Irish mantic tradition. In doing so I am aware that any results which we may obtain can have only a partial value since I am not qualified to deal with the philological evidence, and must therefore leave this to others. In the following brief study it is proposed, first of all, to note some of the occurrences of these same difficult phrases in other contexts, more especially in the Irish technical treatises on learned and mantic literature published by Professor Thurneyson, to and refer to one or two actual examples of the types of poetry which are cited under these names in such treatises. We will then turn to the sagas to see how Irish tradition represents the mantic practice in actual operation. And, finally, we will consider the results of this examination in relation to some parallel evidence relating to similar phenomena in Celtic Britain.

The passage on Imbas forosnai in Cormac’s Glossary (Sanas Cormaic) was edited and translated by the late Whitley Stokes several times. First we may mention the text and translation of Laud 610, fol.79A, in his edition and translation of the Tripartite Life of St Patrick, Part II. (Rolls Series, 1887), p. 568f. Before this he had given a translation of the first part of the passage from the Lebor Brecc and the Book of Leinster in his introduction to Three Irish Glossaries (London, 1862), p. xxxvi. Finally, in 1894, he published the text and translation of the fragment of Cormac’s Glossary in the Bodleian Library at Oxford in the Transactions of the Philological Society (1891-4). The translation of our passage occurs on p. 156f. As this series is not easily accessible to the general reader, I will give Stokes rendering of our passage from the Bodleian fragment in full.

“Imbas Forosna, ‘Manifestation that enlightens’: (it) discovers what thing soever the poet likes and which he desires to reveal. Thus then is that done. The poet chews a piece of the red flesh of a pig, or a dog, or a cat, and puts it then on a flagstone behind the door-valve, and chants an incantation over it, and offers it to idol gods, and calls them to him, and leaves them not on the morrow, and then chants over his two palms, and calls again idol gods to him, that his sleep may not be disturbed. Then he puts his two palms on his two cheeks and sleeps. And men are watching him that he may not turn over and that no one may disturb him. And then it is revealed to him that for which he was (engaged) till the end of a nómad (three days and nights), or two or three for the long or the short (time?) that he may judge himself (to be) at the offering. And therefore it is called Imm-bas, to wit, a palm (bas) on this side and a palm on that around his head. Patrick banished that and the Tenm láida ‘illumination of song,’ and declared that no one who shall do that shall belong to heaven or earth, for it is a denial of baptism.

“Dichetal do chennaib, extempore incantation, however, that was left, in right of art, for it is science that causes it, and no offering to devils is necessary, but a declaration from the ends of his bones at once.”

A translation of the first part of the entry was also made by K. Meyer, and published in the Archaeological Review, Vol. I, 1888, p. 303, footnote. As this translation differs in some details from Stokes’s, and as it is also somewhat inaccessible, I quote it below for purposes of comparison.

“The Imbas Forosnai sets forth whatever seems good to the seer (file) and what he desires to make known. It is done thus. The seer chews a piece of the red flesh of a pig, or a dog, or a cat, and then places it on a flagstone behind the door. He sings an incantation over it, offers it to the false gods, and then calls them to him. And he leaves them not on the next day, and chants then on his two hands, and again calls his false gods to him, lest they should disturb his sleep. And he puts his two hands over his two cheeks till he falls asleep. And they watch by him lest no one overturn him and disturb him till everything he wants to know is revealed to him, to the end of nine days, or of twice or thrice that time, or, however long he was judged at the offering.”

Stoke’s rendering of the latter part of our passage is not altogether happy, and, indeed, Stokes himself remarked (p. 156) in a note on the entry, ‘my translation of this difficult article is merely tentative.’ Meyer does not venture to translate this latter portion. In regard to the main portion of the entry, however, Stokes and Meyer appear to be in substantial agreement, the only important differences being (1) that the passage in which, according to Stokes’s translation of the Bodleian text, the seer ‘calls the idol gods to him that his sleep may not be disturbed’ (i.e. presumably by others) is rendered by Meyer, ‘he calls his false gods to him lest they should disturb his sleep’ (i.e., presumably the gods themselves); and (2) that according to Stokes’s translation of the Bodleian text the seer is watched in order to prevent him from turning over (i.e., by his own volition); whereas Meyer’s translation seems to imply that it is the false gods who watch by him lest someone overturn him. Minor divergences between the various texts also occur; but the general sense of the passage appears to remain fairly constant.

Starting, then, with these renderings by Stokes and Meyer as a basis, we may ask: What is the nature of the imbas which St Patrick is said to have condemned, and what is the difference between the imbas and the sous ? The latter seems generally to have reference to scientific, overt art and knowledge, as opposed to the occult art of manticism. Sous is acquired by legitimate means, generally by Christian learning, but Christian revelation is not excluded. Imbas is clearly opposed to sous, and seems to have reference, if we may judge from the text before us, to occult art and knowledge, acquired through mantic revelation.

The etymology of the words has been discussed recently by Professor Thurneysen, who cites an early gloss in the Introduction to the Senchas Mor, where it is stated that the word imbas is a compositional form with fius(s), ‘knowledge,’ or with the neuter fess, just as so-us, so-as, literally, ‘good knowledge,’ often with reference to poetry. The words of the gloss are as follows:

.i. in sui fili dafursannand no dafáillsigend imad a sofesa (.i. dofuarascaib a soas).

In this derivation- Thurneysen points out- the glossator is right, imbas being derived from *imb-fiuss or *imb-fess. The gloss is interesting, so Thurneyson holds, in that it is quite independent of the influence of the passage in Cormac’s Glossary ; cf. however p. 129 below,

Thurneysen emphasises the absurdity of the derivation of the term imbas in the passage in Cormac, and in a later gloss to the Introduction to the Senchas Mor,reference to which will be made later. He argues further that the whole entry inthe Glossary is a fabric of the author’s imagination, built up on this spurious etymology, and points to several instances in which the expression imbas forosnai occurs in sagas without an accompanying description of the mantic technique. He casts doubt on the value of the reference to St Patrick, regarding the statement that the saint banished certain mantic practices as a conjecture of the author of Cormac’s Glossary, who was, perhaps, influenced by the fact that the examples of imbas forosnai and tenm laida cited in the sagas all relate to pre-Christian times.

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