I have found no parallel to this most remarkable story. It displays
the following noteworthy points--
1. It belongs to the Ciaran-tradition which places the home of the
family in Cenel Fiachach.
2. It preserves what has every appearance of being an authentic
tradition of a prohibition against the presence of males, even of
tender years, when dyeing was being carried on.[12]
3. Most likely the saint's curse--indeed, the whole association of
the tale with Ciaran--is a late importation into the story: it was
probably originally a [Pagan] tale, told as a warning of what would
happen if males were allowed to be present at the mystery. The
different colours which the garments assumed are perhaps not without
significance; Sullivan, in his introduction to O'Curry's _Manners
and Customs_ (i, p. 405), says "the two failures ... are simply
the failures which result from imperfect fermentation and
over-fermentation of the woad-vat."
4. There is an intentionally droll touch given to the end of the
_Märchen_.
5. The independence of parental control which the youthful Ciaran
displays will not escape notice.
_The Stanza._--This is written in a peculiar metre; two seven-syllable
lines, with trisyllabic rhymes, followed by two rhyming couplets of
five-syllable lines with monosyllabic rhymes.
_Iarcain_ is a word of uncertain meaning: it probably denotes the
waste stuff left behind in the vat.
IX. HOW CIARAN RESTORED A CALF WHICH A WOLF HAD DEVOURED (LA, LB, LC,
VG)
_Parallels._--Practically the same story is told of Abban (VSH, i, 24;
CS, 508) and of Colman (CS, 828). A similar story is told of Saint
Patrick (LL, 91), but it is not quite identical, inasmuch as here the
wolf voluntarily restored a sheep which it had carried off. Something
like this, however, is indicated in the Latin verse rendering of the
story (No. 2 of the Latin verse fragments at the end of LB). More
nearly parallel is the tale of Brigit (LL, 1250; CS, 19) who gave
bacon which she was cooking to a hungry dog; it was miraculously
replaced. A converse of this miracle is to be found in the Life
of Ailbe, who first restored two horses killed by lions, and then
miraculously provided a hundred horses for the lions to devour (CS,
239). Aed gave eight wethers to as many starving wolves, and they were
miraculously restored to save him from the indignation of his maternal
aunt (VSH, ii, 296). It is obvious, but hypercritical, to complain
that in these artless tales the kindness shown to the beasts is
illogically one-sided!
_The Process of Resuscitation._--The important point in the tale,
though the versions do not all recognise this, is the collection of
the bones of the calf. VG preserves the essential command to the wolf
not to break these. Colum Cille reconstituted an ox from its bones
(LL, 1055). Coemgen gave away to wayfarers the dinner prepared for
the monastic harvestmen, and when the latter naturally protested, he
collected the bones and re-clothed them with flesh, at the same time
turning water to wine (VSH, i, 238). Aed performed a similar miracle
in the nunnery at Clonmacnois, replacing Ciaran's dinner which he
himself had eaten (VSH, i, 39). There is here no mention of the bones,
but very likely this has become lost in the process of transmission.
By all these tales we are reminded of the boar Sæhrimnir, on whose
flesh the blessed ones in Valhalla feast daily--sodden every evening
and reconstituted from its bones every morning.[13] In a Breton
folk-tale, _La princesse Troïol_, the hero has been burnt by the wiles
of his enemy, but his sorceress fiancée seeks among the ashes till
at last she finds a tiny splinter of bone. With this she is able to
restore her betrothed; without it she would have been powerless.[14]
Very probably the practice of "secondary interment" of human bones,
which we find so far back as the later stages of the Palaeolithic age,
is based upon the same belief; that if the bones are preserved, their
owner has a chance of a fresh lease of life.
There is a curious variant of the story in the Life of Coemgen.
Here the cow is driven home, and Coemgen, called upon to soothe its
lamentations, fetches, not the bones of the eaten calf, but the
culprit wolf, which comes and plays the part of the calf to the
satisfaction of all concerned (VSH, i, 239). It is evident that
in this case there is another element of belief indicated: the
personality of the calf has passed into the wolf which has devoured
it--in fact, the wolf _is_ the calf re-incarnate.
_Resurrection of Beasts._--Calling dead animals back to life is a not
infrequent incident in the lives of Irish saints. We have already seen
Ciaran resuscitating a horse. Mo-Chua restored twelve stags (VSH, ii,
188); but perhaps the most remarkable feat was that of Moling, who,
having watched a wren eating a fly, and a kestrel eating the wren,
revived first the wren and then the fly (VSH, ii, 200). Saint
Brynach's cow having been slain by a tyrannical king, was restored to
life by the saint (_Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 11, 297).
_The Stanza in VG._--The metre is _ae freslige_. The rendering in the
text is close to the literal sense.
_The Ejaculation "Mercy on us"_--or, more literally, "mercy come to
us." The sentence recording this habitual ejaculation, in VG, breaks
so awkwardly into the sense of the passage in which it is found, that
it must be regarded as a marginal gloss which has become incorporated
with the text. It has dislodged a sentence that must have legitimately
belonged to the text, restored in the foregoing translation by
conjecture. Probably the lost sentence, like the intrusive one, ended
with the word _trocuire_, "mercy," which, indeed, may have suggested
the interpolation; this might easily have caused the scribe's eye
to wander. An habitual expletive is also attributed to St. Patrick
(_modébroth_, apparently "My God of Judgment!").
Here, again, the versions in LB and LC are very closely akin.