A Grain of Justice, a Grain of Truth: An Analysis of Obscurity in an Early Medieval Irish Text

Immacallam in Dá Thuarad or The Colloquy of the Two Sages is a ninth - century text preserved in whole or part in eleven manuscripts dating between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries (Carey, 2014, p. 630), in which two poets Néde and Ferchertne engage in a verbal sparring contest which is often obscure, in an attempt to define their iden tity and status and exact the claim of head poet. This paper focuses on §236, Neglect of Crops; i.e., without cultivating them, or without their growing although they are cultivated; or [neglect] of judgements, and §237, Perjuries (2014, p. 637), from John Carey’s edition of the eschatological section of Ferchertne’s speech. It seeks to demonstrate how these phrases illustrate the complexity of the learning of the medieval Irish poet who delivers an eschatological vision of last days, informed by metaphoric and allegorical references which were employed by a ‘small intellectual elite’ (Boyle, 2016, p. 13), and derived from a combination of poetic, historical, legal, and exegetical erudition