LA and VG know nothing of the visit to Loch Erne of which this is the
chief incident. Ninned here appears as an abbot, which is scarcely
consistent with his previous appearance as a junior fellow-student of
Ciaran. There is, however, a possible hint at this tradition in the
statement in VG that when Ciaran departed from Clonard he left the Dun
Cow with Ninned. Ninned's island, as we learn from an entry in the
_Martyrology of Donegal_ (18th January) was Inis Muighe Samh, now
spelt Inismacsaint, in Loch Erne. The reading in both MSS. of LB,
_silua_ for _insula_, evidently rests on a false interpretation of a
word or a contraction in the exemplar from which R1 was copied. This
seems to have been hard to read at the incident before us. Later on
there is a word, which the sense shows us must have been _potentes_.
The scribe of R1 could not read it, and left a blank, which
he afterwards tentatively filled in with the meaningless word
_fatentes_--a word which his copyist, the scribe of R2, emended by
guesswork into _fac(i)entes_.
_Parallels._--There are several cases of the restoration to life of
persons who had been decapitated. Coemgen restored two women who had
been thus treated (VSH, i, 239). The famous Welsh holy well of Saint
Winefred in Flintshire is associated with a similar miracle (see Rees'
_Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 17, 304). The story of the three murdered
monks is also told of Saint Aed (VSH, i, 38), but there the blood-mark
round their necks is absent. Ciaran seems to have been less expert
than some of his brethren in replacing severed heads on decapitated
bodies; for according to a tale preserved in the _Book of Lismore_,
there was a certain lord of the region of Ui Maine (the region west of
the Shannon), who was called Coirpre the Crooked, for the following
reason: he was an evil man who did great mischief to every one, in
consequence of which he was murdered and beheaded. But Ciaran had
shriven him, and in order to deliver his soul from demons he restored
him to life, replacing his head--so clumsily, however, that it was
ever afterwards crooked.
A certain man called Ambacuc, having perjured himself on the hand of
Ciaran, his head fell off. He was taken to Clonmacnois, and not only
lived there headless for seven years, but became the father of a
family![19]