guardian devil" (_Silua Gadelica_, i, 37). The story has some
affinity with the curious _Maerchen_ 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.

XX. HOW CIARAN HEALED THE LEPERS (VG)

Leprosy, or at least a severe cutaneous disease so called, was common
in ancient Ireland; and there are numerous stories, some of them
extremely disagreeable, that tell how the saints associated with its
victims as an act of self-abasement. We have already seen how Patrick
was said to have kept a leper. Brigit also healed lepers by washing
(LL, 1620), and Ruadan cleansed lepers with the water of a spring
that he opened miraculously (VSH, ii, 249). Contrariwise, Munnu never
washed except at Easter after contracting leprosy (VSH, ii, 237).
The miraculous opening of a spring is a common incident in Irish
hagiography; we have already seen an example, in the annotations to
incident I.

Whitley Stokes points out (LL, note _ad loc._) that the "three waves"
poured over the lepers are suggested by the triple immersion in
baptism.

XXI. CIARAN AND THE STAG (VG)

_Parallels._--We have already noted the use of wild animals by Irish
saints. Findian yoked stags to draw wood (LL, 2552). Patrick kept a
tame stag (TT, p. 28, cap. lxxxii, etc.). In incident XXXVII, Ciaran
is again served by a stag. Cainnech, like Ciaran, made a book-rest of
the horns of a stag (CS, 383), and books which Colum Cille had lost
were restored to him by a stag (TT, _Quinta Vita_, p. 407). In the
life of Saint Cadoc we read an incident which combines docile stags
drawing timber and a forgotten book untouched by rain (_Cambro-British
Saints_, pp. 38, 329).

For Ciaran's prompt obedience to the summoning sound of the bell,
compare what is told of Cainnech, who happened to be summoned by the
head of the monastic s