the famous congregation
consisting of seven hundred and ten persons; an angel
used to address every third man of them."
(Martyrology of Donegal).

In some respects the Life of Mochuda here presented is in sharp contrast
to the corresponding Life of Declan. The former document is in all
essentials a very sober historical narrative--accurate wherever we can
test it, credible and harmonious on the whole. Philologically, to be
sure, it is of little value,--certainly a much less valuable Life than
Declan's; historically, however (and question of the pre-Patrician
mission apart) it is immensely the more important document. On one
point do we feel inclined to quarrel with its author, scil.: that he
has not given us more specifically the motives underlying Mochuda's
expulsion from Rahen--one of the three worst counsels ever given in
Erin. Reading between his lines we spell, jealousy--'invidia
religiosorum.' Another jealousy too is suggested--the mutual distrust
of north and south which has been the canker-worm of Irish political
life for fifteen hundred years, making intelligible if not justifying
the indignation of a certain distinguished Irishman who wanted to know
the man's name, in order to curse its owner, who first divided Ireland
into two provinces.

Three different Lives of Mochuda are known to the present writer. Two of
them are contained in a MS. at Brussels (C/r. Bindon, p. 8, 13) and of
one of these there is a copy in a MS. of Dineen's in the Royal Irish
Academy (Stowe Collection, A. IV, I.) Dineen appears to have been a
Cork or Kerry man and to have worked under the patronage of the rather
noted Franciscan Father Francis Matthew (O'Mahony), who was put to death
at Cork by Inchiquin in 1644. The bald text of Dineen's "Life" was
published a few years since, without translation, in the 'Irish Rosary.'
The corresponding Brussels copy is in Michael O'Clery's familiar hand.
In it occurs the strange pagan-flavoured story of the British Monk
Constantine. O'Clery's copy was made in January, 1627, at the Friary of
Drouish from the Book of Tadhg O'Ceanan and it is immediately followed
by a tract entitled--"Do Macaib Ua Suanac." The bell of Mochuda, by the
way, which the saint rang against Blathmac, was called the 'glassan' of
Hui Suanaig in later times.

The "Life" here printed, which follows the Latin Life so closely that
one seems a late translation of the other, is as far as the editor is
aware, contained in