Whither he went we do not know, for all the story of his expedition to Rome and ordination by Pope Celestine must be dismissed as unhistorical. Probably he visited Cornwall and Armorica, whither, apparently, many Ossorians had fled when Aengus devastated Magh Feimhin, and gave it up to the Deisi If we are to believe the author of the Irish Life, Ciaran was aged fifty when he returned to Ireland. He is spoken of as a disciple of S. Finnian of Clonard, Finnian died in 548, and Clonard was founded in 464. If Ciaran were at any time with him, he cannot have spent so many as twenty years on the Continent, or cannot have been so old as thirty when he went abroad. Probably Ciaran returned to Ireland in 474,1 and went first to his native island of Inis Cliar, for a church and cross are shown there that bear his name, or he may have attempted to settle at Rath Ciaran in Kilkenny, as this place bears his name. But he was very quickly summoned to the presence of Aengus MacNadfraich, King of Munster. A son of Erc MacDuach, one of his own kinsmen, perhaps the son of Erc his uncle, son of Ruman Duach, and therefore his first cousin, had maliciously killed a horse belonging to S. Patrick, whilst the Saint was visiting Aengus. The king, not sorry for an excuse to deal sharply with one of the family of the Hy Duach, obtained his arrest, and declared his intention of putting him to death. Ciaran interceded for his kinsman, and undertook to pay the eric or legal fine for the horse. When, however, he endeavoured to raise the money, he found it impossible to collect the sum required. He was happily succoured by accident. Aengus caught a chill that settled in his eyes, producing acute inflammation. He at once concluded that Ciaran had “ill-wished" him, and in a panic sent for him, made peace, released the man who had killed the horse, and remitted the fine.2 However, Aengus would not suffer Ciaran to settle and make a foundation in the land of his fathers, and the saint wandered off to a place just beyond the confines of the intrusive Cucraidh. It was a spot near the centre of Ireland, on the boundary between the northern and southern divisions of Ireland, but on the Munster side. This, Seir-Ciaran or Saighir, is now a small village in the barony of Ballybritt, in King's County, not far from the north-western extremity of the Slieve Bloom Mountains. 1 This is the date as near as can be determined of the meeting of S. Patrick and Aengus, and the conversion and baptism of the latter. Shearman, Loca Patriciana, 1882, p. 453. 2 Vita in Cod. Sal., coll. 810-1; Life in Colgan, p. 460. In the legend, as afterwards elaborated, it was a spot to which Patrick, whom he had met abroad, had bidden him repair, and where was the well of Uaran, probably one to which sanctity attached in pagan times. According to the story, Ciaran began by occupying a cell in the midst of a wood, living as a hermit, and his first disciples were a boar, a fox, a badger, a wolf and a doe. Happily we are able to unravel this fable. One of his pupils was S. Sinnach, of the clan of the Hy Sinnach, or the Foxes, in Teffia, near Saighir. Another may have been a member of the Broc tribe in Munster. Os (doe) was unquestionably an Ossorian disciple. S. Ciaran's wolf was none other than his uncle Laighniadh Faeladh. But faeladh has a double meaning, it is "hospitable," as well as wolfish." There is a Kiltorcan, which must have been founded by a Torc (boar), another pupil. By this we can see how marvels were developed out of simple facts.1 S. Ciaran induced his mother, Liadhain, to found a religious house for women at Killeen, not far from Saighir. A maiden came to Ciaran, and he made her a Christian, and a true servant of God; and Ciaran constructed for her a little honourable cell near to the monastery, and he gathered other holy virgins around her." Who this damsel was we are not informed in the text, but it would seem to have been Liadhain, a namesake of his mother, and a granddaughter of Cucraidh, who afterwards became abbess. Saighir, the name of Ciaran's monastery, is explained in the gloss on the Festilogium of Oengus as "nomen fontis"; and there can be little doubt that such was the ancient orthography, Saig being the proper name, and uar, cool, the descriptive epithet. The injunction. already referred to, given by Patrick to Ciaran, when they met on the Continent, was— Saig the Cold, Erect a city on its brink, At the end of thirty revolving years The same inference may be drawn from the words of the first Latin Life of the saint printed by Colgan, "Adi fontem qui vocatur Fuaran"; whilst the immediate import of the word is fixed in the Tripartite Life, "Huaran enim, sive Fuaran, idem Hibernis sonat quod Fons vivus, sive viva vel frigida aqua e terra scaturiens." The cell erected by Ciaran was of the humblest materials; its walls of wicker-work, its roof of dried grass,3 1 Hogan, Life of S. Ciaran, pp. 124-6. 2 Tripartite Life, i, p. 77. 3 The boar collects for the Saint virgas et fenum ad materiam cellæ construendæ." Rapidly, however, the monastery grew in size, as disciples came to Ciaran from every quarter. In the treasury was a miraculous bell bestowed by S. Patrick on Ciaran, and which the apostle of Ireland had prophesied should remain mute until the latter arrived at the place designated as the site of his future resurrection. This bell, which was called " Bardan Kierani," had been made under the inspection of Germanus, the Gallican instructor of Patrick. It was extant, and held in high veneration at Saighir, when the first Life of Ciaran was written; it was also universally honoured throughout Ossory, being carried to the treaties of princes, sworn on for the defence of the poor, and used to sanction the collection of the tribute due to the monastery by the people of Ossory. The Paschal fire was lighted every Easter and kept burning during the entire year. Ciaran was given a pupil, Carthach, son, or more probably grandson, of Aengus MacNadfraich, and who succeeded Ciaran as abbot. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this was due to an arrangement arrived at by Ciaran with the king of Munster and the usurper of Ossory. Aengus agreed to allow Ciaran to organize the religious communities on the Ossorian frontier, on condition that his son or grandson should be made coarb; and that when he had arrived at a suitable age, Ciaran should resign in his favour. In like manner Cucraidh sent his granddaughter to Killeen on the stipulation that she was to succeed there. By this arrangement it was provided. that the headships of the two great ecclesiastical and educational establishments for Ossory should pass ultimately into the hands of scions of the usurpers.. Carthach, who was thrust upon Ciaran, gave him much trouble. He carried on an amour with one of the young pupils of Liadhain's establishment; and when Cuach, Ciaran's nurse, had either succeeded Liadhain at Killeen, or had founded another convent close by, Carthach carried on the same game with one of her damsels. At length the scandal became so flagrant that Ciaran advised Carthach to travel and sow his wild oats at Rome. S. Itha said of this escapade— Carthach will come to you, A man who exalts Faith ; A son will be born to Carthach, Who will do no credit to his parentage.1 A damsel named Bruinech the Slender was with Liadhain at Killeen. She inspired Dioma, chief of the Hy Fiachach tribe in West Meath, with a violent passion, and he carried her off. The story has already been told (see S. BURIENA). 1 Félire of Oengus, ed. Stokes, p. lx. The relation in which Ciaran stood to S. Patrick is uncertain. That the sons of Erc, Ciaran's cousins, did steal his horses, we are told in the Life of S. Patrick, as also that he cursed them for so doing.1 There is, however, no mention in it of the intervention of Ciaran. Why they showed such hostility to the great apostle we are not informed. There exists a popular tradition among the natives of Ossory that Ciaran and Patrick were not on good terms, and that when they met Ciaran refused to salute Patrick. The tradition may be worthless. One thing, however, is clear, the apostle did encounter carping criticism and disparagement of his work on the part of some fellow workers, and his "Confession" was written to disarm this opposition. In the Life of S. Ciaran we read that King Aengus went with S. Patrick to Saighir, twenty years after Ciaran and Patrick had met abroad, and Ciaran slaughtered eight oxen and broached so many casks of wine that it was said he must have turned the water of his well into wine to furnish so much good liquor. Aengus, no doubt, did visit Saighir at some time before 480; and it was between 480 and 490 that Patrick wrote his "Confession." It is possible enough that he may have visited Saighir and have met with a cool reception. There exists jealousy even among the best of men, and Ciaran may have thought that Patrick was taking too much upon him in trying to extend his influence in Munster, Whether on this occasion or on another we do not know, but eight of King Aengus's harpers or bards were laid hold of and concealed in a bog. It is likely that the abduction was committed by some of the Meic Duach, who did not relish hearing the bards sing exaggerated accounts of the achievements of the victor, who had expelled them from the heritage of their fathers. Aengus took the matter in this light, sent for Ciaran, and stormed and threatened. Ciaran was able to appease his resentment only by recovering for him the eight men, who had been kept in concealment in an inaccessible fortress surrounded by morass. In the Life this was developed into a resuscitation of the bards from the dead. In the Irish Life we are told that Aengus consulted Ciaran about his harpers, because, having become a Christian, he did not like to consult a Druid. There is, however, another way of reading this story. The harpers had been actually murdered, and all Ciaran did was to discover their bodies. In the south-west of the county of Kilkenny and on the borders of Munster is the church of Tullaghought, the Cill of the Tomb of the Eight, which may or may not represent the place of the Tripartite Life, i, p. 109. 1 sepulchre of these bards. But against this is the statement in the Life, that the murder took place in Maskerry Tirc, which is close to Saighir.1 One autumn day Ciaran noticed a magnificent bank of blackberries, so large and luscious that, to preserve them from rain and frost, he threw his mantle over it. Now it fell out that Aengus and his wife Ethne Uatach, or Odious," at whose instigation Aengus had expelled the Ossorians and planted the Deisi on their lands, arrived on a visit to Cucraidh, the usurper, in his dun. Ethne was daughter of Crimthan and granddaughter of Enna Cinnselach, who had banished the Clan Cliu, and with it Cuach, Ciaran's nurse. She was the second wife of Aengus, who by this time was an old man, and she was young; had, in fact, been married to him whilst still a girl. A prophecy had been made. to the Deisi, so says legend, that the man who should marry Ethne, who was being fostered among them, would give them wide and fertile. lands to colonise. So they fed her on the flesh of infants to ripen her early. This is the bitter comment of the Ossorians on her conduct in goading on her uxorious husband to invade Magh Feimhin and expel the Ossorians. What is true is that, when she married Aengus, mindful of her obligations to the Deisi of Waterford, she urged her husband to the wanton invasion of Ossory, and the colonizing of the land by the Deisi after he had driven out the natives. When the royal pair arrived at the residence of Cucraidh, they were well received, and Ethne conceived a criminal passion for her host. This put Cucraidh in difficulties. He had no desire to embroil himself with his over-king; and in his dilemma he sent for Ciaran, who arrived, bringing with him a basket of the blackberries he had preserved from the frost, as a present to the queen.3 The legend writer, so as to distort a very ordinary fact into a marvel, pretends that the season was Easter. It is far more probable that it was Samhain, the great feast and visiting time on November 1. Partaking of the fruit served the purpose of cooling the queen's irregular desires, probably by upsetting her stomach, which blackberries out of season are notoriously liable to do; whence the popular saying that blackberries after Michaelmas Day belong to the devil. The incident occurred after Saighir was well established, and probably not before 480. Ethne Uatach and her husband fell in the battle 1 Colgan, from the Kilkenny Book, p. 460; Irish Life, ed. Mulcahy, pp. 40–1. 2 The Courtship of Ethne Uatach, in O'Curry's Lectures on the MS. Materials of Irish History, p. 586. 3 Much the same story is told of S. Cyndeyrn. |