Chapter XXIV: The Story of the MILL and the Bailiff's Daughter (lb, Vg)

The full details of this narrative have evidently been offensive to the author of LB, who has heroically bowdlerised it. It is obviously an independent _Märchen_, which has become incorporated in the traditions of Ciaran.

_The Famine._--Famines are frequently recorded in the Irish Annals: and it is noteworthy that they were usually accompanied by an epidemic of raids on monasteries. The wealth of the country was largely concentrated in these establishments, so that they presented a strong temptation to a starving community. The beginning of the story is thus quite true to nature and to history, though I have found no record of a famine at the time when we may suppose Ciaran to have been at Clonard.

_Transformation of Oats to Wheat, and of other Food to Flour._--Such transformations are common in the saints' Lives. We read of swine turned to sheep (CS, 879), snow to curds (LL, 127), sweat to gold (TT, 398) flesh to bread (CS, 368). The later peculiarities of the food--bread or some other commonplace material having the taste of more recondite dainties, and possessing curative properties--are not infrequently met with in folk-lore. Saint Illtyd placed fish and water before a king, who found therein the taste of bread and salt, wine and mead, in addition to their proper savours (_Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 165, 474).

_The Resistance of the Saint to amorous Advances._--The reader may be referred to Whitley Stokes's note _ad loc._, in LL. We may recall the well-known story of Coemgen (Kevin) at Glendaloch: though it must be added that the version of the tale popularised by Moore, in which the saint pushed his importunate pursuer into the lake and drowned her, has no ancient authority. On the rather delicate subject of the arrangement made between Ciaran and the maiden's family, consult the article _Subintroductae_ in Smith and Cheetham's _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_. This feature of the story is enough to show its unhistorical character, at least so far as Ciaran is concerned: for Ciaran did not belong to the _Primus Ordo_ of Irish saints, who _mulierum administrationem et consortia non respuebant, quia super petram Christum fundati ventum temptationis non timebant_, but to the _Secundus Ordo_, who _mulierum consortia et administrationes fugiebant, atque a monasteriis suis eas excludebant_ (CS, 161, 162). The description of Ciaran as transcending his contemporaries in beauty is probably suggested by Ps. xlv, 2, and is another illustration of the _Tendenz_ already referred to.

_The Eavesdropper and the Crane._--This incident reappears in the Life of Flannan (CS, 647). Wonder-workers do not like to be spied upon by unauthorised persons. This is especially true in the Fairy mythology surviving to modern times. Compare a tale in the Life of Aed (VSH, ii, 308). A quantity of wood had been cut for building a church, but there was no available labour. Angels undertook the work of transportation on condition that no one should spy upon them. One man, however, played the inevitable "Peeping Tom," and the work ceased immediately. The reader may be referred for further instances to the essay on "Fairy Births and Human Midwives" in E.S. Hartland's _Science of Fairy Tales_.

There is a touch of intentional drollery at the end of the story where the brethren are shown as having so thoroughly enjoyed the feast miraculously provided for them that their observance of the canonical hours was disjointed. For other instances of intoxication as resulting from saints' miracles see VSH, i, p. ci.

_The Stanzas in VG._--These are in _ae freslige_ metre, so that they are probably another fragment of the poem already met with. The translation in the text reproduces the sense with sufficient literalness.

On the whole the impression which this unusually long and very confused incident makes on the reader is that originally it was an _anti-Christian_ narrative concocted in a Pagan circle, which has somehow become superficially Christianised.