. 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 _men_, _taken_). The stanza before us is in _debide scailte_,
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 ge