2. It preserves what has every appearance of being an authentic tradition of a prohibition against the presence of males, even of tender years, when dyeing was being carried on.[12]
3. Most likely the saint's curse—indeed, the whole association of the tale with Ciaran—is a late importation into the story: it was probably originally a [Pagan] tale, told as a warning of what would happen if males were allowed to be present at the mystery. The different colours which the garments assumed are perhaps not without significance; Sullivan, in his introduction to O'Curry's Manners and Customs (i, p. 405), says "the two failures … are simply the failures which result from imperfect fermentation and over-fermentation of the woad-vat."
4. There is an intentionally droll touch given to the end of the Märchen.
5. The independence of parental control which the youthful Ciaran displays will not escape notice.
The Stanza.—This is written in a peculiar metre; two seven-syllable lines, with trisyllabic rhymes, followed by two rhyming couplets of five-syllable lines with monosyllabic rhymes.
Iarcain is a word of uncertain meaning: it probably denotes the waste stuff left behind in the vat.
IX. HOW CIARAN RESTORED A CALF WHICH A WOLF HAD DEVOURED (LA, LB, LC, VG)
Parallels.—Practically the same story is told of Abban (VSH, i, 24; CS, 508) and of Colman (CS, 828). A similar story is told of Saint Patrick (LL, 91), but it is not quite identical, inasmuch as here the wolf voluntarily restored a sheep which it had carried off. Something like this, however, is indicated in the Latin verse rendering of the story (No. 2 of the Latin verse fragments at the end of LB). More nearly parallel is the tale of Brigit (LL, 1250; CS, 19) who gave bacon which she was cooking to a hungry dog; it was miraculously replaced. A converse of this miracle is to be found in the Life of Ailbe, who first restored two horses killed by lions, and then miraculously provided a hundred horses for the lions to devour (CS, 239). Aed gave eight wethers to as many starving wolves, and they were miraculously restored to save him from the indignation of his maternal aunt (VSH, ii, 296). It is obvious, but hypercritical, to complain that in these artless tales the kindness shown to the beasts is illogically one-sided!
The Process of Resuscitation.—The important point in the tale, though the versions do not all recognise this, is the collection of the bones of the calf. VG preserves the essential command to the wolf not to break these. Colum Cille reconstituted an ox from its bones (LL, 1055). Coemgen gave away to wayfarers the dinner prepared for the monastic harvestmen, and when the latter naturally protested, he collected the bones and re-clothed them with flesh, at the same time turning water to wine (VSH, i, 238). Aed performed a similar miracle in the nunnery at Clonmacnois, replacing Ciaran's dinner which he himself had eaten (VSH, i, 39). There is here no mention of the bones, but very likely this has become lost in the process of transmission. By all these tales we are reminded of the boar Sæhrimnir, on whose flesh the blessed ones in Valhalla feast daily—sodden every evening and reconstituted from its bones every morning.[13] In a Breton folk-tale, La princesse Troïol, the hero has been burnt by the wiles of his enemy, but his sorceress fiancée seeks among the ashes till at last she finds a tiny splinter of bone. With this she is able to restore her betrothed; without it she would have been powerless.[14]
Very probably the practice of "secondary interment" of human bones, which we find so far back as the later stages of the Palaeolithic age, is based upon the same belief; that if the bones are preserved, their owner has a chance of a fresh lease of life.