The following legend is preserved, so far as I am aware, only in two MSS., one, the so-called Liber Flavus Fergussiorum, a vellum now in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, Part I, ff. 13a–15a: the other in the Brussels MS. 4190–4200, ff. 43a–65b.1 The Liber Flavus was written at the end of the fourteenth, or the beginning of the fifteenth century.2 The Brussels MS., which is on paper, was written by Michael O'Clery (one of the compilers of the Annals of the Four Masters) in the years 1628 and 1629. He transcribed the legend from a MS. which he calls Leabhar Tighe Molling, the Book of Timulling, now, apparently, lost. Notwithstanding its greater antiquity, the copy in the Liber Flavus is far inferior to that in the Brussels MS. For instance, in the account of the Gobbán Saer's inversion of the oratory (infra, paragraph 47), the Brussels MS. has ‘Dobeir Gobban tra trelamh & acfaing fair’, ‘so Gobban puts tackle and apparatus upon it,’ while the elder codex has ‘Dobeir Goban trath etre a lám & a moing fair,’
A fragment corresponding closely with paragraphs 38, 39 of the following edition, exists in the Franciscan MS. A (9), p. 17, where it is entitled, in the margin, ‘de St. Molingo.’ The statement in the Fourth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 601, that this codex contains a Life of Moling, is erroneous. For a careful copy of this fragment, by Mr. J. G. O Keeffe, I am indebted to Mr. R. I. Best, the Hon. Secretary of the School of Irish Learning. An older copy is, apparently, in Brussels MS. 2324–2340, p. 67, entitled in the table of contents ‘S. Molingo Jesus Christus apparuit in forma Leprosi.’
The legend is noteworthy, first, for the pathetic story of St. Moling's birth (paragraphs 5–8), and, secondly, for the light which it throws on the manners, beliefs and morality of the ancient Irish. See, for instance, the description of the young saint begging, like a Buddhist monk (paragraph 14); his interviews with the wicked spectres (paragraphs 16–21) and with his guilty but repentant mother (paragraphs 26, 27); the trace of tree-worship in the mention of the Yew of Ross (paragraph 34); the magical effects of a spell (epaid) and a prayer (paragraphs 35, 37); the wanton insolence of Irish lepers (paragraph 38); the fondling of the boy Jesus (paragraph 39); the story of Gobbán Saer and his wife (paragraphs 41–47). freely rendered by O' Curry3; the miracle by which an oratory was filled with rye (paragraph 50); the treachery practised upon the saint by two kings (paragraph 52); the livelihood earned by needlework (paragraph 53); the use of horseflesh as food (paragraph 53); the shameful equivocation by
Many long vowels not marked as such in the MS. are here denoted by a flat stroke (á, é, etc.).
The prose of the following text and the first lines of the poems were published in the Revue Celtique, t. 27, pp. 260–304, but with so many mistakes, both typographical and editorial, as to render a revised edition desirable. The verses are, with one exception,6 now printed in extenso. They are often obscure and sometimes obviously corrupt.
The rarer words and grammatical forms found in this legend are collected in the Glossarial Index.7
In the footnotes and the Index, B denotes the Brussels MS. 4190–4200, F the Franciscan fragment, and L the copy in the Liber Flavus Fergussiorum.
For many corrections and useful suggestions, I am indebted to Professors Strachan and Meyer, Mr. O. J. Bergin, Father Henebry, and the Rev. Charles Plummer. To the last-named scholar I also owe the extracts from the unpublished Latin Life of St. Moling, printed infra in the note to paragraph 72.