a single MS. only. This is M. 23, 50, R.I.A., in
the handwriting of John Murphy, "na Raheenach." Murphy was a Co. Cork
schoolmaster, scribe, and poet, of whom a biographical sketch will be
found prefixed by Mr. R. A. Foley to a collection of Murphy's poems that
he has edited. The sobriquet, "na Raheenach," is really a kind of
tribal designation. The "Life" is very full but is in its present form
a comparatively late production; it was transcribed by Murphy between
1740 and 1750. It is much to be regretted that the scribe tells us
nothing of his original. Murphy, but the way, seems to have specialised
to some extent in saint's Lives and to have imbued his disciples with
something of the same taste. One of his pupils was Maurice O'Connor, a
scribe and shipwright of Cove, to whom we owe the Life of St. Ciaran of
Saighir printed in "Silva Gadelica." The reasons of choice for
publication here of the present Life are avowedly non-philological; the
motive for preference is that it is the longest of the three Lives and
for historical purposes the most important.

The Life presents considerable evidence of historical reliability; its
geography is detailed and correct; its references to contemporaries of
Mochuda are accurate on the whole and there are few inconsistencies or
none. Moreover it sheds some new light on that chronic puzzle--
organisation of the Celtic Church of Ireland. Mochuda, head of a great
monastery at Rahen, is likewise a kind of pluralist Parish Priest with a
parish in Kerry, administered in his name by deputed ecclesiastics, and
other parishes similarly administered in Kerrycurrihy, Rostellan, West
Muskerry, and Spike Island, Co. Cork. When a chief parishioner lies
seriously ill in distant Corca Duibhne, Mochuda himself comes all the
way from the centre of Ireland to administer the last rites to the dying
man, and so on.

The relations of the people to the Church and its ministers are in many
respects not at all easy to understand. Oblations, for instance, of
themselves and their territory, &c., by chieftains are frequent.
Oblations of monasteries are made in a similar way. Probably this
signifies no more than that the chief region or monastery put itself
under the saint's jurisdiction or rule or both. That there were other
churches too than the purely monastic appears from offerings to Mochuda
of already existing churches, v.g. from the Clanna Ruadhan in Decies,
&c.

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