Chapter V: How Ciaran Was Delivered From a Hound (la, Lb, Lc, Vg)

_Parallels._--The same story is told of Saint Patrick, in Colgan's _Tertia Vita_, cap. xxxi, _Septima Vita_, I, cap. xlvii. Patrick likewise quoted the verse _Ne tradas bestiis animus confitentes tibi_ (Ps. lxiv, [Vulgate lxiii] 19).

_The Fate of the Hound._--This varies in the different versions. In the Patrick story just quoted it was struck immovable, as a stone. In LA it thrusts its head _in circo uituli_, which I have rendered conjecturally as the context seems to require, but I can find no information as to the exact nature of this adjunct to the cattle-stall. Du Cange gives _arcus sellae equestris_ as one of the meanings of _circus_.

LB and LC, which have many points of affinity, are in this incident almost word for word identical. They agree in saying that the men setting on the hound were spurred (_uexati_) by an evil spirit. The misplacing of this incident in LB is probably due to a transposition of the leaves of the exemplar from which it was copied.