[21] Pronounced "Keevin," not "Kĕvin." The Irish form is Caoimh-[= keev, "aoi" being in Irish always pronounced like ee, and "mh" like v] ghinn, the "g" being aspirated is scarcely pronounced.
[22] The celebrated Evangelistarium, or Book of Moling, was, with its case or cover, deposited in Trinity College, Dublin, in the last century by the Kavanaghs of Borris. Giraldus Cambrensis classes Moling as a prophet with Merlin, and as a saint with Patrick and Columba. One of the prophecies assigned to him is given by O'Curry, MS. Mat., p. 427. The oldest copy of any of Moling's poems is in the monastery of St. Paul in Carinthia, contained in a MS. originally brought from Augia Dives, or Reichenau. It is in the most perfect metre, and runs:—
"Is en immo niada sás
Is nau tholl diant eslinn guas,
Is lestar fás, is crann crín
Nach digni toil ind rig tuas."
("He is a bird round which a trap closes,
He is a leaky bark in weakness of peril,
He is an empty vessel, he is a withered tree
Who doth not do the will of the King above.")
I.e., "Is eán um a n-iadhann sás / is nau (long) thollta darb' éislinn guais. Is leastar fas (folamh) is crann crion, [an te] nach ndeanann toil an righ shuas."
The poem is also given in the Book of Leinster, and contains eight verses. One would perhaps have expected the third line to run, "is crann crín is lestar fás." The St. Paul MS., which is of the eighth century, contains two of Molling's poems, and they scarcely differ in wording or orthography from copies in MSS. six hundred years later.
[23] Patrick, Columcille, and Berchan of Clonsast, are the others. Even the English settlers had heard of their fame. Baron Finglas, writing in Henry VIII.'s reign, says, "The four saints, St. Patrick, St. Columb, St. Braghane [i.e., Berchan], and St. Moling, which many hundred years agone made prophecy that Englishmen should have conquered Ireland, and said that the said Englishmen should keep their owne laws, and as soon as they should leave, and fall to Irish order, then they should decay, the experience whereof is proved true." (From Ryan's "History and Antiquities of the co. Carlow," p. 93.) A still more curious allusion to the four Irish prophets is one in the Book of Howth, a small vellum folio of the sixteenth century, written in thirteen different hands, published in the Calendar of State Papers. "Men say," recounts the anonymous writer, "that the Irishmen had four prophets in their time, Patrick, Marten [sic], Brahen [i.e., Berchan], and Collumkill. Whosoever hath books in Irish written every of them speak of the fight of this conquest, and saith that long strife and oft fighting shall be for this land, and the land shall be harried and stained with great slaughter of men, but the Englishmen fully shall have the mastery a little before doomsday, and that land shall be from sea to sea i-castled and fully won, but the Englishmen shall be after that well feeble in the land and disdained; so Barcan [Berchan] saith: that through a king shall come out of the wild mountains of St. Patrick's, that much people shall slew and afterwards break a castle in the wooden of Affayle, with that the Englishmen of Ireland shall be destroyed by that." The prophecy that the Englishmen fully shall have the mastery a little before Doomsday is amusingly equivocal!
[24] Described in O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 375, but I do not know where the original is.
[25] Quoted in O'Halloran's "History of Ireland," bk. ix. chap. 4. "Celeres vastissima Rheni / jam vada Teutonici, jam deseruere Sicambri; / Mittit ab extremo gelidos Aquilone Boemos / Albis et Arvenni cöeunt, Batavi-que frequentes, / Et quicunque colunt alta sub rupe Gehennas. / ... Certatim hi properunt diverso tramite ad urbem / Lesmoriam [Lismore] juvenis primos ubi transigit annos." See also corroborative proof of the numbers of Gauls, Teutons, Swiss, and Italians visiting Lismore about the year 700 in Ussher's "Antiquities," Works, vi., p. 303.
[26] Reprinted by Windisch in his "Irische Texte," Heft 1., p. 5. The first verse runs—