Notes sur quelques mots vieux-bretons du manuscrit Angers 477, f. 36r

The manuscript of Bede's scientific writings, Angers, Bibliothfeque municipale no 477, offers the largest body of Old Breton glosses ever found. The Old Breton words on f° 36r°, however, are not exactly glosses: these Old Breton words translate a number of labels placed at the head of several columns containing Roman numerals. This table of numerals gives the age of the moon on the date of the main mobile feasts of the liturgical year. The heavily abbreviated head words of columns are in Latin or Old Irish. L6on Fleuriot correctly interpreted most of the Breton words, but did not understand what the table's purpose was. We explain this table, which occurs also, more or less developed, in other Irish or Breton manuscripts. K(a)l(ann) guiam "Winter calends" (meaning, All Hallows) is a mistranslation, the abbreviated sam- being wrongly understood as standing for Irish Samuin "First of November", obviously not a mobile feast, instead oisam-chdsc "Summer-Easter", the sixth Sunday after Whit Sunday, the date which terminated the Second Lent in the Irish monastic year. In addition, ceplit, the first term of the list, is different from caplit "Holy Thursday", and may be explained as a borrowing from Latin capitula "chapters", or rather capitulationes "heads of chapters, of columns".