Amra

Amra is the name of certain ancient Irish elegies or panegyrics on native saints. The best known is Amra Coluimb Chille (the song of Columbkille).

This article is about the name of certain ancient elegies or panegyrics on native saints. For the fruit known as the hog plum, see Spondias mombin. For the ancient Roman site in modern Jordan, see Qusayr 'Amra.

Amra Coluim Chille

According to the traditional account the Amra Coluim Chille was composed about the year 575 by Dallán Forgaill, the Chief Ollam of Ireland of that time, in gratitude for the services of St. Columba in saving the bards from expulsion at the great assembly of Druim Cetta in that year.

"The Amra is not", says Stokes, "as Professor Atkinson supposed, a fragment which indicates great antiquity." Strachan, however, on linguistic grounds, assigns it in its present form to about the year 800 (Rev. Celt., XVII, 14).

Stokes, too, seems to favour this view (ibid., XX, 16). But Strachan adds "perhaps something more may be learned from a prolonged study of this and other such as the Amra Senain and the Amra Conroi." Dallan was the author of the former, "held in great repute", says Colgan, "on account of its gracefulness", and also of another Amra on St. Conall Cael of Inishkeel in Donegal, with whom he was buried in one grave.

Editions

The Amra Coluim Chille was printed with a translation by O'Beirne Crowe in 1871 from the imperfect text in the Lebor na hUidre; also in his edition of the "Liber Hymnorum" by Professor Atkinson, and in his "Goidelica" by Whitley Stokes,[1] from an imperfect text in Trinity College, Dublin.

These editions may, however, be considered as superseded by the Bodleian text (Rawlinson B. 502) edited, with a translation, for the first time (Rev. Celt., vols. XX-XXI) by Stokes.

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References
  1. Goidelica. Old and Early-Middle-Irish Glosses, Prose and Verse. Edited by Whitley Stokes. 2nd ed., London, 1872 (Google Books)

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Amra". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

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