An impedance cylinder covered by a metamaterial layer is considered. The 2D problem of excita tion of the cylinder by a magnetic current filament is analyzed. High Q surface wave resonances formed in cylinders of small (as compared to the wavelength) dimensions are investigated. The effect of degeneration of oscillations with different indices m in the law cos(mϕ), which describes the azimuthal dependence of reso nance fields, is discovered. The spatial and frequency characteristics of degenerate oscillations are numeri cally investigated on the basis of rigorous methods.