night week, that is to say, five nights and four days, which is given as the length of the Ultonian coavade.[1] This was called cess noinden Ulad, which, if we call noinden a week, would mean '(the) Ulster men's sickness or indisposition of a week,' or, as one would put it in English, 'the Ulster men's week of sickness;' and it was more briefly termed either cess noinden, '(the) sickness of (the) week,' that is to say, '(the) week's sickness,' or noinden Ulad, 'the Ultonians' week'—a term, however, which did not necessarily refer to the couvade.[2] It is not clear to me what the original meaning of the word noinden was, whether a heterogeneous nine consisting of five nights and four days, or a uniform reckoning, say one of nine nights. In the latter case, one might be tempted to regard the word as the Latin nundinæ borrowed;[3] but in any case the Irish could not be said to have borrowed anything beyond the word, inasmuch as the reckoning by nines was clearly more in vogue in Ireland than in Italy as represented in the classics. In fact, the favourite expression for a small number of days in Irish
- ↑ Windisch, ibid. pp. 342, 344, 347, 339, where it is stated that the noinden lasted either five days and four nights, or four days and five nights. The narrator of the first version (Bk. of Leinster, 125b) was in doubt; and that of the other (British Museum MS. Harl. 5280) omitted altogether the right reckoning, namely, four days and five nights. The old account was doubtless five nights and four days; but the later scribes, failing to see why the nights should be mentioned first, may readily be supposed to have introduced the alternative explanation.
- ↑ Noinden Ulad is applied, for instance, to the raiding into the other provinces, which was arranged at a feast given to Conchobar and his braves by one of their number called Bricriu: see Stokes and Windisch'a Irische Texte, pp. 174, 188.
- ↑ Windisch, ibid. p. 330, is inclined to this view.
