of Charlemagne, for instance. In the present case it seems most doubtful whether any means exist for determining what, if any, basis of fact underlies the narrative, but having regard to the attention paid by the Irish writers to the record of past and contemporary events—which by no means implies the strict accuracy of the record—it seems improbable that the recorded acts, in matters of great public interest, of such notable characters as Árd-Rí Finnachta and St. Adamnán should not represent, in substance, the parts which they actually played in the public life of their time.

About this time another cause of discord is said to have put a further strain upon the relations subsisting between the Saint and the Árd-Rí. Finnachta having excluded the lands belonging to the Order of St. Colm Cille from the privileges accorded to the foundations of SS. Patrick, Finian, and Ciaran, Adamnán again provoked, and this time apparently with better reason, by this fresh infringement of the dignity of Ulad, put a curse upon the king, and foretold that his life should be short, that he should fall by a fratricidal stroke, and that the kingdom should pass from his race for ever; which triple prophecy was fulfilled when Finnachta and his son Bresal were slain by a cousin in the year 693-4.

A few years after these events, according to the annals, Adamnán acquired a more honourable distinction by means of the ecclesiastical legislation embodied in his ‘Canons,’ and by the more famous law, or code of laws, known as the Cáin Adamnáin. Each of these was promulgated at a Mórdáil—‘Great Assembly’—the Diet or States-General of Ireland. According to the more general account, both were passed at a Mórdáil held in 697 at Tara, or, according to others, at Ballyshannon, Derry, or Raphoe. Probably Tara was assumed inadvertently to have been the place of meeting by some chronicler who, bearing in mind the ancient custom, had forgotten that Tara had been abandoned since the cursing of it by St. Ruadán. According to the Four Masters and Tigernach, the last Feis of Tara was held in the year 554 A.D. Or, possibly, there is a confusion between the general Mórdáil of Éire and an ecclesiastical Synod which appears to have been held at Tara about the time in question. In this uncertainty as to which of the several Synods and Mórdála, held towards the close of the seventh century, was the scene of Adamnán’s legislation, Canon O’Hanlon suggests that the Synod of 694-5 would be the most likely occasion of the enactment of the Canons, if it were certain that Adamnán was present (op. cit. ix. 508 and 512), and that the Cáin was passed at the Mórdáil of 696-7, in the reign of Árd-Rí Loingseach mac Oengusa, according to the general account; this likewise agrees with the treatise about to be mentioned, which, however, gives Birr as the place of assembly. The most important article of the Cáin was the renewal of a law passed by St. Colm Cille at the Mórdáil of Druimceatt in 590, but since fallen into desuetude, whereby women were exempted from military service. The Cáin Adamnáin is an Old Irish treatise, probably of the tenth century, according to Professor Kuno Meyer, who has published an edition of it, with notes, in Anecdota Oxoniensia (Mediæval and Modern Series, pt. viii.). It is not the work of Adamnán himself, but merely purports to give an account of the laws which he passed, and the circumstances of his doing so. It is clearly compounded of various elements, and it is worked up into a complete story by dint of the employment of a number of fictitious details. It opens with a melancholy picture of the status of women in Ireland in Adamnán’s day, their home life being depicted as a state of abject slavery, while they were further liable to military service. These descriptions can only be accepted with very great limitations, for the laws, the Church literature, and the romances of Ireland contain abundant evidence to prove that the state of things here depicted, if it existed at all, was not generally prevalent, the picture drawn in the Cáin being greatly exaggerated for the greater honour and glory of Adamnán. At the same time there is no need to go to the opposite extreme, and assume that the position accorded to women in ancient Ireland realised in practice the theories of chivalry. It does not follow that the author of the Cáin invented the circumstances he describes; indeed, there is evidence that a similar state of things existed in Ireland so late as Tudor times at least, while parallels might be found in the great cities of a much more recent date. But it is the wont of those who treat of social and moral evils, whether as reformers or satirists, or in a less worthy capacity—from Juvenal to Zola, and from Salvian to Father Bernard Vaughan—to represent the sporadic and occasional evils of society as its habitual condition. As regards the military service of women, it appears certain that women did, and probably were required to, serve in the wars to some extent. Nevertheless, neither the annals nor the romances warrant the conclusion that great troops of women swelled the Irish armies. It seems probable that in the varied and complicated system of the Irish land tenure, female tenants may have been obliged to render military service ratione tenurae, instances of which practice occur in other parts of Europe.

Whatever the nature or extent of the evil, it was greatly taken to heart by Adamnán’s mother Ronat, and dutiful as her son was to her, she counted his service as nought until he should effect the emancipation of women. One day, as they were on a journey—Adamnán, after his usual custom, carrying his mother on his back—they came to a battlefield, where so great had been the slaughter that the women lay, the soles of one touching the neck of another; but the most piteous sight of all was a woman with her head in one place and her body in another, and her baby lying on the breast of the corpse, with a stream of milk on one cheek, and a stream of blood on the other. At his mother’s bidding, Adamnán set the woman’s head upon the trunk, made the sign of the cross with his staff, and she arose and related her experiences in the next world between her death and resuscitation. Ronat, still further confirmed in her purpose, imposed incredible austerities upon Adamnán in order to coerce him into compliance. At the end of four years an angel came to him and bade him rise, but he refused to do so until he received a promise that women should be emancipated. He then came forward with his proposals of reform, which offended several of the lay princes, so that they combined to put Adamnán to death. At length terms were agreed upon, and all parties pledged themselves that in future women should be exempted from military service, and that no women should be slain by men without full legal penalties being exacted. This compact was solemnly sworn to by the contracting parties; the formula of the oath was founded upon that whereby the kings in pagan times had been wont to bind themselves in matters of great moment, and which survived, with necessary modifications, for some centuries after the introduction of Christianity. They took to witness the sun and moon, and all the other elements of God; the Apostles, Gregory, the two Patricks, and other Irish saints. The terms of the oath explain the form of St. Patrick’s famous hymn.

The construction of the treatise is extremely loose; the form, in many places, is that of the ecclesiastical legend, and the present redaction was evidently made in the clerical interest. As a further instance of its composite character, in c. 33 it makes a fresh start with the words Incipit sententia angeli Adamnano, and