Translated by R.A. Stewart MacAlister.
would block the way for the fuller treatment which the subject well deserves. The materials collected for this part of the work have therefore been reserved for the present: it is hoped that their publication will not be long delayed.
[Footnote 1: The name is pronounced as a dissyllable, something like Kyee-raun, with a stress on the second syllable.]
[Footnote 2: The Bollandists long ago remarked as the special characteristics of Irish Saints' Lives, their doubtful historicity, their late date, and their continual repetition of stock incidents. (At priusquam id agam, lectorem duo uniuersim monitum uelim; primum est, quod Hibernorum sanctorum acta passim dubia sint fidei, et a scriptoribus minime accuratis ac aetate longe posterioribus conscripta; alterum est, quod in iisdem frequens occurrat rerum simillimarum narratio, quas uariis sanctis adscribunt, ita ut nescias cui tuto adscribi possint.--Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. iii, p. 372).]
[Footnote 3: Even the date of
