_The Presbyter Daniel._--For the presence here of a Welsh or British
priest, see the remarks in Plummer, VSH, i, p. cxxiv. But it is
probable that in the original form of the story the presbyter Daniel
was a fictitious ecclesiastic, perhaps the Evil One disguised. We may
compare the two false bishops that came to expel Colum Cille from Iona
(LL, 1007). Biblical names were sometimes used in the early Irish
Church, though native names were preferred. There is actually the
monument of a person called Daniel at Clonmacnois; it is a slab,
bearing an engraved cross and inscription, probably of the ninth or
tenth century.
_The Gift._--This is said in VG to have been a cup adorned with birds.
Such forms of decoration seem to have been common, and are sometimes
referred to in Irish romances, though few, if any, examples that may
be compared with the descriptions have come down to us. In LA a word
_antilum_ is used, which does not appear to occur anywhere else, and
is unknown to our lexicographers. It is possibly a corruption for
_an(n)ulum_, "a ring." Naturally this tale of the gift must be a later
accretion to the story, if it had the origin just suggested.
Note, in the long eulogy of the saint which the author of LB gives us
here, that the writer has not hesitated to introduce reminiscences of
Phil, ii, 7, 8, thus hinting at the general _Tendenz_ of the Lives of
Saint Ciaran. The rest of the eulogy is a free paraphrase of Rom. xii,
9 ff. There is extant a metrical "Monastic Rule" attributed to Saint
Ciaran, which was edited by the late Prof. Strachan in _Eriu_ (The
journal of the Dublin "School of Irish Learning") vol. ii, p. 227.
The subject-matter of this composition is a series of regulations
on morality and mortification of the flesh, but the language is so
obscure, and the text of the single MS. which alone contains it is so
corrupt, that even the pre-eminent Celtist who edited the poem would
not venture on a translation.