_Parallels._--Maignenn never would look on a woman, "lest he should
see her guardian devil" (_Silua Gadelica_, i, 37). The story has some
affinity with the curious _Märchen_ of the Mill and the Bailiff's
Daughter (incident XXIV). Cuimmin of Connor, in his poem on the
characters of the different Irish saints, spoke thus of Ciaran,
doubtless in reference to this incident: "Holy Ciaran of Clonmacnois
loved humility that he did not abandon rashly; he never spoke a word
that was untrue, he never looked at a woman from the time when he was
born."
_The Stanza in VG._--Metre _ae freslige_. Literally thus: "With Ciaran
read / a girl who was stately with treasures // and he saw not / her
form or her shape or her make."
In LA the father of the maiden is king in Tara: in VG he is king of
Cualu, the strip of territory between the mountains and the sea from
Dublin southward to Arklow.