The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran by Anonymous (recommended reading txt) 📖

flings grain into the breast of the poor man, where it turns into gold: and we may suppose that the pointless re-transformation of the gold to grain did not take place. A similar tale is told of Saint Aed (VSH, ii, 308). The weird story of the jester who stopped the funeral of Guaire, king of Connacht, famous for his abounding liberality, and demanded a gift of the dead man, is of the same type; we are told that the dead king scooped up some earth with his hand, and flung it into the jester's lap, where it became pure gold.[21]


XXXVI. THE REMOVAL OF THE LAKE (LA, LB, VG)

The island in the lake was probably a crannog, or artificial fortified island, such as are common on the lakes of Ireland. Fundamentally the story is an evident aetiological myth, intended to account for the existence of some curious swampy hollow. In its present form it is obviously suggested by Matt, xvii, 20. Note that VG does not seem to contemplate the wholesale removal of the lake.

Parallels are not wanting. Findian dried up a lake by prayer (CS, 192); and houses were shifted from the west side to the east side of a flood for the convenience of Colum Cille (LL, 858). Saint Cainnech, finding the excessive singing of birds on a certain island to be an interruption to his devotions, compelled them to keep silence (CS, 376; VSH, i, 161).


XXXVII. CIARAN DEPARTS FROM ISEL (LA, VG)

Parallels. -The nuns of Brigit made a similar complaint against the excessive charity of their abbess (LL, 1598). For the stag compare incident XXI; also the tale of how Brenainn was on one occasion guided by a hound (CS, 116). Ruadan, having given in alms his chariot-horses to lepers, found two stags to take their place (CS, 328).

The Stanza in VG. -The metre is one of the numerous forms of
debide , seven-syllable lines with echo-rhymes in which the rhyme-syllable is stressed in the first line, unstressed in the second (as mén , táken ). The stanza before us is in debide scáilte , where the two couplets of the stanza are not linked by any form of sound assonance. The literal translation is: "Although it be low it would have been high / had not the murmuring come // the murmuring, had it not come / it would have been high though it be low."

The Geographical Names in LA. -Loch Rii (properly Loch Rib) is Loch Ree on the Shannon, above Athlone. The island called Inis Aingin has now the name of Hare Island; it is at the south end of the lake near the outlet of the river. There are some scanty remains of a monastic establishment to be seen upon it.


XXXVIII. CIARAN IN INIS AINGIN (LA, LB, VG)

The Presbyter Daniel. -For the presence here of a Welsh or British priest, see the remarks in Plummer, VSH, i, p. cxxiv. But it is probable that in the original form of the story the presbyter Daniel was a fictitious ecclesiastic, perhaps the Evil One disguised. We may compare the two false bishops that came to expel Colum Cille from Iona (LL, 1007). Biblical names were sometimes used in the early Irish Church, though native names were preferred. There is actually the monument of a person called Daniel at Clonmacnois; it is a slab, bearing an engraved cross and inscription, probably of the ninth or tenth century.

The Gift. -This is said in VG to have been a cup adorned with birds. Such forms of decoration seem to have been common, and are sometimes referred to in Irish romances, though few, if any, examples that may be compared with the descriptions have come down to us. In LA a word
antilum is used, which does not appear to occur anywhere else, and is unknown to our lexicographers. It is possibly a corruption for
an(n)ulum , "a ring." Naturally this tale of the gift must be a later accretion to the story, if it had the origin just suggested.

Note, in the long eulogy of the saint which the author of LB gives us here, that the writer has not hesitated to introduce reminiscences of Phil, ii, 7, 8, thus hinting at the general Tendenz of the Lives of Saint Ciaran. The rest of the eulogy is a free paraphrase of Rom. xii, 9 ff. There is extant a metrical "Monastic Rule" attributed to Saint Ciaran, which was edited by the late Prof. Strachan in Eriu (The journal of the Dublin "School of Irish Learning") vol. ii, p. 227. The subject-matter of this composition is a series of regulations on morality and mortification of the flesh, but the language is so obscure, and the text of the single MS. which alone contains it is so corrupt, that even the pre-eminent Celtist who edited the poem would not venture on a translation.


XXXIX. THE COMING OF OENNA (LA, LB, VG)

Parallels. -As Ciaran recognised Oenna by his voice, so Colman picked out by his voice one of a number of soldiers destined for a religious life (VSH, i, 261). With the incident of the consecration, as successor, of an unprepossessing intruder, compare the tale of Findian consecrating for the same purpose a raider whom he caught hiding in the furnace-chamber of his kiln (LL, 2628 ff.; CS, 198). The version in LB conveys the impression that Oenna's learning was imparted to him miraculously, as Oengus the Culdee inspired an idle boy with a miraculous knowledge of his neglected lesson.[22]

The story of Oenna is told rather differently in the glosses to the
Martyrology of Oengus (Bradshaw edn., pp. 48 ff.). Oenna with two companions was going for military service to the King of Connacht. They came to the embarking-place, not of Inis Aingin, but the larger Inis Clothrann (now sometimes called Quaker Island), where there are extensive ancient monastic remains. Ciaran was at the time in Inis Clothrann. He summoned Oenna to him, and asked him whither he was faring. "To the King of Connacht," answered Oenna. "Were it not better rather to contract with the King of Heaven and earth?" asked Ciaran. "It were better," said Oenna, "if it be right to do so." "It is right," answered Ciaran. Then Oenna was tonsured and began his studies. Here the miraculous insight which recognised in the warrior youth the future abbot is ignored. The tract De Arreis [23] tells us of the penance which Ciaran imposed upon Oenna: briefly stated it was as follows. He was to remain three days and three nights in a darkened room, not breaking his fast save with three sips of water each day. Every day he was to sing the whole Psalter, standing, without a staff to support him, making a genuflexion at the end of each Psalm, reciting Beati after each fifty, and Hymnum dicat after every
Beati in cross-vigil ( i.e. , standing upright with his arms stretched out sideways horizontally). He was not to lie down but only to sit, was to observe the canonical hours, and was to meditate on the Passion of Christ and upon his own sins.

The author of LA betrays his Irish personality by a phrase which he uses of Oenna. Ciaran bids his followers to fetch materiam abbatis uestri -"the makings of your abbot." This is a regular idiom for an heir-apparent, and it shows that if the writer be not actually translating from an Irish document, he is at least thinking in Irish as he writes in Latin.


XL. HOW CIARAN RECOVERED HIS GOSPEL (LA, VG)

There is another story of a gospel recovered from a lake, but without any mention of a cow as the agent for its rescue (CS, 556). The tale may be founded on fact. The "Port of the Gospel" is now forgotten.

Books preserved as relics ( e.g. the gospels belonging to a sainted founder) were kept in metal shrines, and valuable books which were in use were hung in satchels of leather on the walls of the library or scriptorium. Two specimens of such satchels still remain.


XLI. HOW CIARAN WENT FROM INIS AINGHIN TO CLONMACNOIS (LA, LB, VG)

Parallels. -As Ciaran gave up his monastery to Donnan, in like manner Munnu surrendered his settlement to the virgin Emer (CS, 495). The list of equipments delivered by Ciaran to Donnan introduces us to the "human beast of burden," Mael-Odran, a servile functionary occasionally met with in Irish literature. A well-known incident of St. Adamnan introduces him travelling "with his mother on his back" (see Reeves, Vita Columbae , p. 179). As to the bell, it may be worth noting that my friend Mr. Walter Campbell, formerly of Athlone, has informed me that an ancient bronze ecclesiastical bell, found on the lake shore opposite Hare Island, was long preserved, and used as a domestic bell, in the cottage of a man named Quigley. The owner believed that it was the bell of St. Ciaran, possibly that mentioned in VG: this is not impossible, though hardly likely, as a bell of such antiquity would most probably be of iron, and rendered useless by corrosion. Unfortunately, the bell in question is no longer forthcoming: it disappeared one day from Quigley's house, stolen, he believed, by a tourist who chanced to pass by.

Note Donnan's relationship to Senan as set forth in VG. He was brother's-son of Senan, but had the same mother as Senan. Clearly this indicates a ménage such as that indicated by Cæsar as existing among the wilder tribes of Britain; a polyandry in which the husbands were father and sons ( De Bello Gallico , V, xiv). These people were probably pre-Celtic, and this strengthens the arguments already put forward for a pre-Celtic origin for the Protagonist of our narrative.

On the subject of the burial of the chieftains of Ui Neill and the Connachta at Clonmacnois, see Plummer, i, p. cx. Neill is the genitive of Niall.

Ard Manntain is now unknown.

The chronological indications contained in VG are sufficiently close to accuracy to show that they have been calculated, though the computor has made a miscount of a year. The eighth of the calends of February (25th January) in A.D. 548 was actually a Saturday, but it was two days before new moon. The same day in A.D. 549 was the tenth day of the moon, but it fell on a Monday.

Of the companions of Ciaran, Oengus (properly Oenna) succeeded him as abbot, dying in A.D. 569; Mac Nisse, who was an Ultonian, followed him, and died 13 June 584 (aliter 587). The others, however, do not appear to have found a place in the martyrologies. Mo-Beoc is a different person from the famous Mo-Beog of Loch Derg in Co. Donegal.


XLII. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH (LA, VG)

The two versions are independent. But though there are no wizards or druids in the VG version, they appear in another story connecting Diarmait with the foundation of Clonmacnois. This is to the effect that Diarmait was at a place on the Shannon near Clonmacnois, called Snam dá Én, and saw the glow of the first camp-fire lighted on the site of the future monastery by Ciaran and his followers. The druids who were with Diarmait told him that unless that fire were forthwith quenched, it would never be put out. "It shall be quenched immediately," said Diarmait; so with hostile purpose he advanced on Clonmacnois, but instead of doing what he proposed, he suffered