By her Murtogh is said to have had, as sons, Constantine and Gaedhil Ficht, who remained to reign in Britain, and especially over the Cornish Britons, after Murtogh returned to Ireland.

The Irish Annals give us these dates :

Murtogh Mac Erca was fighting along with Illand and Ailil, sons of Dunlaing, against Aengus Mac Nadfraich, king of Leinster, and slew him and his wife in 489.

Then we hear no more of him till 497 (498), when he was fighting his former confederate Illand.

In 508 or 509 he was engaged in war with Duach, king of Connaught, and defeated and killed him.

From 508 to 513 were years of anarchy in Ireland, but in the latter year Murtogh Mac Erca was chosen king, and he reigned till 533.

Erca, mother of Murtogh, in her old age felt qualms of conscience at her past conduct, and she came to S. Cairnech, her stepson, in penitence, kneeling at every second ridge on her way, so it is said, till the blood oozed from her finger ends. Cairnech received her with these words: "I hail thee, O Erca, and thou shalt go to heaven; and one of every two worthy kings who shall reign over Ireland shall be of thy seed; the best women and the best clerks shall be theirs; success in battle shall be theirs also."

From her eight sons she had received an extensive tract of land in fee-simple in Tir-Connell. She had also possession of Drumleen in Raphoe. All this territory she gave in atonement for her sins to S. Cairnech. Soon after she died, and S. Cairnech blessed the spot, and called it Kill-Erca, and placed S. Croidan, a bishop, in charge there.

Murtogh Mac Erca was married to Duiseach, daughter of the King of Connaught, but he fell under the fascination of a beautiful girl called Sin. In 524 he had fought the men of Leinster, and in the battle had killed Sigh, son of Dian and his sons; but the daughter of Sigh, Sin, he took to himself, and she employed all her blandishments to gain his love. She was successful, and he banished his wife, who took refuge with S. Cairnech, and was joined by the Hy Conaill and the Hy Eoghain. But Murtogh, by a cession of a church in his fortress, and by making confession and receiving communion, appeased Cairnech.

Soon after, at night, Sin, who all this while had nursed her hatred of the man into whose arms she had cast herself, had quietly waited her opportunity, which occurred on Samhain, All Hallow E'en, a time of great revelry. The king was at Cletty on the Boyne. Sin made. him dead drunk, and summoned to her aid Tuathal Maelgarb, greatgrandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, who surrounded the hall, and set it on fire. Murtogh was aroused when the fire had caught his

garments, and in an agony of pain plunged into a vat of wine to extinguish the flames, and so perished.

Cairnech now came to the burned fortress to carry off the body of Murtogh and bury it. The story says at Dulane, but this is because the two saints are confounded; or it may have been that the clerics of Dulane took away the body, and this has been attributed to the other Cairnech, whose church was not at Tuilen or Dulane but at Drumleen on Lough Foyle-far away in the North. Sin seems also to have been burnt, for she had only time to make her confession before she died.

great care for Muirchertach's soul, Howbeit he composed the prayer

"Touching Cairnech, he showed but he did not bring it out of hell. which from its beginning is named Parce mihi Domine, etc., and he repeated it continually for the sake of the soul of the king, so that at last the soul was given to him out of hell."

The hymn Parce Domine is attributed to S. Meugant. This may have been different. It has not been preserved in the Liber Hymnorum.1

The rest of the story in the Book of Ballymote is a farrago of nonsense. A great synod assembled at Tours, consisting of 337 bishops "with the coarb of Peter," to meet Cairnech, Bishop of Tours and Britain-Corun, or Cornwall, and of all the British; "and the chieftainship of the martyrs of the world was given to Cairnech, because martyrdom was his own choice."

The mention of the Pope at Tours was suggested to the writer by the presence of Urban II at the Council of Tours in 1096, or by that of Alexander III at Tours in 1163.

After the Council, Cairnech, attended by thrice fifty bishops, goes off on pilgrimage to Lyons, " for the sake of Mac Erca and Murtogh." The story goes on to say that Cairnech was the first Bishop of the Clan Niall and of Temhar (Tara) and the first martyr of Erin. But it gives no details whatever.

S. Cairnech's day is March 28; he is given as a bishop on this day in the Martyrology of Tallagh, and in that of Marianus O'Gorman, and that of Donegal. In none of these is the place named where he was bishop.

Colgan supposed that Cairnech died about the year 530, and this he attempts to establish by showing that Fergus, son of Murtogh, possessed Cruachan's farm after Cairnech had been dead twenty

1 All the portion of the story that concerns the death of Murtogh Mac Erca is from the tale in the Yellow Book of Lecan.

VOL. II.

F

years. Now Fergus died in 561, according to the Annals of the Four Masters.

Under the name of Carnocus Episcopus Culdæus he is given by David Camerarius on June 15, and he had a church on the Haugh of Laithers opposite the Boat of Magie in the parish of Turriff in Aberdeenshire, now in complete ruin.

It will be seen that the spheres of work of Carannog and Cairnech. were totally distinct. The former laboured in Leinster, and the latter in Ulster; the former had his church on the Boyne at Tuilen or Dulane, and the latter on Lough Foyle at Drumleen; they both belonged to the first half of the sixth century; and it was solely due to the late period at which their legends were drawn up that they came to be confounded together.

Cairnech's "Misach," apparently a Calendar, was given by him to be one of the relics to be carried in battle before the warriors of the Clan Conall and Clan Eoghain, descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages,1"That whenever they had not the leadership or the kingship of Ireland, their power should be over every province around them; and that they should have the succession of Ely (in the barony of Inishowen) and Tara and Ulaid (Ulster); and that they should take no wage from anyone, for this is their own inherent right, the kingship of Ireland; and that they should be without fetter or hostage, and that rottenness should befall the hostages when they abscond; and that they should gain victory in battle, if the cause

1 44

The Death of Muirchertach Mac Erca," in Revue Celtique, xxiii (1902), p. 405.

were just; and that they should have three standards, namely, the Cathach and the Bell of Patrick, and the Misach Cairnech, and that the grace of all these reliquaries should be on (any) one of them in battle."

The case of the Misach of Cairnech is now in the College of S. Columba, near Dublin.1

S. CALLWEN, Virgin

IN a South Wales calendar 2 occur SS. Callwen and Gwenfyl, daughters of Brychan, with festival on November 1. The name of neither is met with in any of the saintly pedigrees, but they possibly belonged to the Brychan clan. To the former is dedicated the church of Callwen, otherwise known as Capel Callwen, in Brecknockshire, at one time a chapel in the parish of Devynock, the church of which is dedicated to Brychan's eldest son, Cynog. Edward Lhuyd gives us to understand that the parish church of Cellan, in Cardiganshire, which he writes" Keth-Lhan," is dedicated to her, and that there is a spring there called "Ffynnon Calhwen." All Saints is the dedication now usually given to the church. On one of the mountains in the parish is a cistvaen called Bedd y Forwyn, the Virgin's Grave.

S. CAMMAB

His name occurs only in the alphabetical bonedd in the Myvyrian Archaiology, inserted on the authority of a MS. written between 1578 and 1609. He is said to have been a son of Gwynllyw Filwr, and a brother of S. Cadoc. Nothing is known of him; in fact, the name, as also Cammarch and Cannen, in all probability represents a misreading of the Kemmeu (read Kenmeu) of the bonedd in Peniarth MS. 16, obviously, as Mr. Phillimore points out, a copy of some very old. form of Cynfyw (ab Gwynllyw). See under that name.

Reeves, Columba, pp. 328-9.

2 Denominated S.

3 P. 423.

S. CAMMARCH, Confessor

His name occurs once in the Iolo MSS.1 pedigrees, and in the Myvyrian alphabetical bonedd. He is given as a son of Gwynllyw Filwr. His festival is October 8, which is entered in the calendars in the Iolo MSS. and the Welsh Prymer of 1633, and by Nicolas Roscarrock, as well as in a number of Welsh almanacks, principally of the eighteenth century. He is the accredited patron of Llangammarch, in Brecknockshire, though in Cân Tyssilio, by the twelfth century bard Cynddelw, the church is enumerated among the Tyssilio foundations. The Tyssilio dedication is confirmed by the fact that in the Lives of that saint preserved in Brittany he is said to have spent some time in the region of Buellt, in which cantred Llangammarch is situate. The river Cammarch joins the Irfon close to the church, and the church may, as is often the case, have taken its name from the river. But streams in Wales frequently bear men's names; for instance, the Beuno (or Bennio), Cybi, and Dewi—the last at Mydrim of which the church is dedicated to S. David. See, however, under S. CAMMAB.

The word cammarch, which literally means a crooked horse, has been quite recently introduced into Welsh to signify the camel. S. Cynog ab Brychan, it appears, was nicknamed cammarch, and it is curious that his festival should be also October 8.

S. CANDIDA

In it is the

She is called

She is also

1531), who desired

THE Church of Whitechurch Canonicorum, in Dorsetshire, is named in King Alfred's will, about 900, as Hwitan Cyrcian. shrine of S. White or S. Wita, still containing her bones. Wite in the inscription on her reliquary, and also in the Charter of Sir Robert de Mandevil by which he gave Berehayes to "St. Wita or to the church of Whitechurch" about the year 1220. called "White" in the will of Robert Pyke (April 2, that his body should be buried in the chancell of Whitechurch," and left 6s. 8d. to the church of On the other hand she is called "Candida" by John Belde (1505) and John Towker (1521), both of whom bequeathed their bodies to be buried in " the Church of St. Candida the Virgin." Thus only at the beginning of the sixteenth century was a substitution made of Candida,

Saincte White of

Sancte White."

1 P. 130.

2 Myv. Arch., p. 422.

3 Ibid., p. 179.