in these MSS. has been used
by Plummer in editing LA, and extracts from it are printed in his
footnotes. It has not, however, been previously printed in its
entirety, and a transcript made by myself is therefore added here, in
an Appendix.

The text of the Third Latin Life (LC) is contained in the well-known
Brussels MS., called _Codex Salmaticensis_ from its former sojourn
at Salamanca. It is of the fourteenth century. This was the only
continuous authority at the disposal of the compiler of the Bollandist
life of our saint; he speaks of it in the most contemptuous terms. The
life of Ciaran in this manuscript is a mere fragment, evidently copied
from an imperfect exemplar; there seems to have been a chasm in
the middle, and there is a lacuna at the end, which the scribe
has endeavoured to conceal by adding the words "Finit, Amen." The
translation here given has been prepared from the edition of the
Salamanca MS. by de Smedt and de Backer, cols. 155-160.

The Irish Life (here denoted VG, i.e. _Vita Goedelica_) was edited by
Whitley Stokes from the late fifteenth-century MS. called the _Book of
Lismore._[7] The numerous errors in the Lismore text may be to some
extent corrected by collation with another Brussels MS., written in
the seventeenth century by Micheal o Cleirigh. Stokes has indicated
the more important readings of the Brussels MS. in his edition. The
scribe of the Lismore Text was conscious of the defects of his copy:
for in a note appended to the Life of our saint, he says, "It is not I
who am responsible for the meaningless words in this _Life_, but the
bad manuscript"--_i.e._ the imperfect exemplar of which he was making
a transcript.

There were other Lives of the saint in existence, apparently no longer
extant. Of these, one was in the hands of the hagiographer Sollerius:
for in his edition of the _Martyrologium_ of Usuardus (Antwerp, 1714,
p. 523) he says, _Querani, Kirani, uel Kiriani uitam MS. habemus.
uariaque ad eam annotata, quae suo tempore digerentur_. This promise
he does not appear to have fulfilled; the Bollandist compiler, as we
have just noticed, had no materials but the imperfect Salamanca Life,
and was forced to fill its many gaps as best he could, by diligently
collecting references to Ciaran in the lives of other saints. Another
Life of the saint seems to be referred to in the _Martyrology of
Donegal_; under the 10th May that compilation quotes a certain "Life
of Ciaran of Cluain" (_i