A few fugitive verses cast off in an idle moment by some Irish student [which] have attracted some attention; and, though they are the merest of trifles, Celtic scholars are not agreed about their interpretation.
Ernest Windisch (September 4, 1844 to October 30, 1918) was one scholarly voice. A German professor, Windisch was a friend of Nietzsche's. Windisch published a new found Celtic text and analyzed it in his serial publication, Irische Texte. He did not discover the text, a librarian at Karlruhle did. But he was the first person in a thousand years to study the four page manuscript.
Windische's commentary was problematic to some.
Heinrich Zimmer argued: "The character with whom [the text]... is concerned ...is Pan Gurban, a Slovak by nation, whose name is equivalent to Dominus Gibber or Monsieur le Bossu...Zimmer's Slovak is a mouse-catcher, [think Pied Piper, or the Orkin Man] and the author of the poem with him is an Irish monk, who jocularly compares his own pursuits with those of the mouse-catcher.
[Windisch, on the other hand, makes the mousecatcher], not a Slovak, but a pet white cat...and writes his name, not Pan Gurban, but Pangur Ban, or White Pangur.
We may even have a picture of Pangur Ban below:
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