of 360 years,1 which was indeed a liberal and quite unnecessary allow

ance.

In order to understand the history of S. Ciaran, it is necessary for us briefly to consider the limits and condition of the old kingdom of Ossory. This kingdom anciently occupied the entire tract of land between the Suire, the Barrow and the Slieve Bloom Mountains. The name signifies the land between the waters. The Nore flows through it, and all three rivers unite in Waterford Harbour.

It is a district that comprises three extensive plains, separated from each other by ranges of mountains. Northernmost is the Magh (plain) Airget Ros, extending approximately through the present Queen's County. The second plain is Magh Reighna, bounded in the north by the Thornback range, and in the south by the Dundergh mountains. It is roughly represented by the county of Kilkenny. This communicates by the "Wind Gap" with Magh Feimhin in Tipperary, a wide plain in which rises the Rock of Cashel.

From a century before the Christian era the kings of Munster claimed a fine from the kings of Leinster, called the Eric of Eidersceal, to be levied annually on the two southern plains of Ossory. The enforcement of this fine proved a fruitful source of feuds down to the end of the tenth century.

The Ossorians attempted to shake off the burden in the second century. They were assisted by Lughaid Laoghis, from Leinster; but, as a price for his aid, were forced to surrender a portion of the northern plain between the Nore and the Barrow, which was formed into the little kingdom of Leix, under the suzerainty of Leinster.

Another cession of land took place later, when a slice was yielded up to the Hy Bairrche.

Next, Corc, King of Munster, abandoned the old royal seat at Knock Grafton, and seized on the Rock of Cashel in Magh Feimhin, commanding the whole plain. At the same time he re-demanded the payment of the hated tax. At this time Ruman Duach was king of Ossory, and he was founder of the Hy Duach, a sub-clan of the royal race of the Hy Connla.

Corc of Munster, who died in 420, was succeeded by his grandson, Aengus MacNadfraich, who was converted to the faith by S. Patrick about fifty years later.

Before 470 a struggle had been undertaken by the Ossorians to free their country from subjection to Munster; but with the most disastrous effects. From Cashel Aengus poured his forces over Magh Feimhin

1 Todd, Life of S. Patrick, 1864, pp. 198–221.

at the same time that his kinsman Cucraidh burst into the two other plains and overran them. A series of battles ensued. The Ossorians were driven out of one plain after another, and Aengus constituted of the two plains, Magh Airget Ros and Magh Reighna, an Ossorian kingdom which he gave up to Cucraidh, to be held under the overlordship of Munster; and he swept all the Ossorians out of Magh Feimhin and delivered it over to the Southern Deisi of Waterford, to repeople and to hold as their own.1

The date of this high-handed proceeding is given in the Chronicon Scottorum as 445.

Most of the royal race of Ossory were slaughtered, but Lughaidh, grandson of Ruman Duach, was spared, and sent among the Corca Laoighe, his wife's family, in the south, on the sea-board of the present county of Cork from Cork to Bantry Bay. It was precisely from this district that Cucraidh, the usurper of Ossory, came. Lughaidh could be safely kept and watched among the people of Cucraidh's own clan, the Corca Laoighe. His brothers were forced to embrace the ecclesiastical profession, so as to incapacitate them from becoming claimants for the confiscated crown. They were suffered for a while to have churches in the Hy Duach (Odagh) country.

In exile, Lughaidh lived with his wife Liadhain, daughter of Maine Cerr, related to Aengus and to Cucraidh, and it was due to this that his life was spared. He seems to have been sent to Inis Cliar, now Clear Island, the southernmost point of Ireland, as a further precaution against his giving trouble. Here Ciaran was born, and was given to be nursed by an exile, Cuach of the Clan Cliu, and she was a Christian; she formed his young mind, and instilled into his heart the love and fear of God. We are hardly wrong in attributing to her the giving of direction to Ciaran's whole after life (see S. CIWA).

Cuach returned with her tribe from exile in 458 or thereabouts. Ciaran's birth cannot be fixed with certainty. It might have taken place as early as 438, when the Clan Cliu were exiled, or it may have taken place somewhat later.

We are told in his Life that Ciaran did not leave Ireland till thirty years old, and he was not then baptized; and we are informed that he remained twenty years abroad.2

1 The Expulsion of the Dessi, by Prof. Kuno Meyer; in Y Cymmrodor, xiv (1901); O'Flaherty, Ogygia, ii, p. 243; Hogan, S. Ciaran; Keating, History of Ireland, etc.

2 "

Permansit itaque ibidem per annos xxti.," Vita in Cod. Sal., col. 806. In this Life his age before leaving Ireland is not given. The Irish Life says: Thirty years did Ciaran spend in Erin . . . before he was baptized,” Life, ed. Mulcahy, p. 31.

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 war, 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

Then shall I and thou meet.2

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."