‘Ab Fίréanda Fada Ó Shin’: a Detached Apologue?

Abstract

Abstract:AbstractThis paper offers an edition of a short narrative poem which may originally have been an apologue in a longer poem. Earlier versions of the motifs of the story are discussed, and it is demonstrated that the story is a version of a legend which constitutes the second part of the Middle English Erkenwald poem and which was related to other texts arising from the medieval theological discussion of the possibility of ‘baptism by tears’.