Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/448

 4o6 Reviews.

coarse pleasantry of the leper and spectre incidents, his associa- tion with the Gobban saer (the typical pagan architect and builder of Irish imagination), who reappears in every successive age with the same joyous vitality, and the evident delight taken in Molling's sharp practice in his efforts to gain the remission of the Leinster tribute, all tend to show that he impersonates some traditional figure of the Til Eulenspiegel type. We note that Adamnan's name is not mentioned in the Latin Life, where the protesting opponent of St. Molling's tricky conduct is simply called saiictiis magus, just as the Gobban saer appears in the same story as an ingeniosus artifex unnamed, which shows a creditable caution on the part of the clerical compiler.

A close study of these saints' lives in their various recensions, Latin and Irish, would form an instructive study in the develop- ment of the religious biography out of the popular folk-tale.

There is great diversity in the Lives, and a comparison with the corresponding Irish life is often interesting. As a rule the Irish Lives are simpler and more full of local and characteristic touches. They show a less fully developed sense of what is and what is not proper and dignified for a saint to do, and we thus get nearer to the actual daily life of the subjects of the biography. For instance, the Latin Life of Ciaran of Clonmacnois here printed offers suggestive points of comparison with the Irish Life printed by Whitley Stokes from the Book of Lismore. Even where the same incidents are retained, their arrangement is often different, and most of the more precise details are omitted. Such are the friendly participation of the youthful Prince Dermot, the then exiled heir to the throne of Tara, in the founding of Ciaran's monastery of Clonmacnois, or the charming story of the boy Ninnid begging a loan of the copy of St. Matthew's Gospel from which Ciaran was studying when both were students in the monastic school of Clonard. We would note the difficulty experienced by both compilers in fitting in the account of the arrival of merchants with "wine of Gaul," when the Saint stood in need of refreshment for his guests, with the necessity they also felt of obliging him to work a miracle for the purpose. Both had evidently found the realistic explanation in some earlier and more simple copy, and they fit it into different parts of their narrative.