Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/81

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1920 LIFE OF ST. MONENNA 73 that his speech might come to him.^ And this was the first thing he said, i. e. nin nin. Hence the nun was called Mo-ninne, and the poet Ninme eces. Moninne quasi Monanna, the nuns used to call her . . . Nine score years . . . was Moninne's age . . . Moninne, daughter of Mochta son of Lilach, son of Lugaid, son of Ross, son of Imchath, son of Feidlimid, son of Cass, son of Fiacha Araide. From this we learn that she was also called Darerca, but this name is not found in Conchubran. The Annals of Ulster ^ record the death of St. Darerca at 517 or 519. In the well-known Codex Salmanticensis (Brussels MS. 7672-74), £f. 79a-82 6 we find a Vita Sanctae Darercae seu Monynnae ^ which opens with the words, Virgo venerabilis, nomine Darerca, cognomento Mo- nynne. A comparison of this Vita (we shall call it Vita Brux.) with Conchubran shows that the latter has incorporated its narrative, practically in its entirety and to a large extent verbatim, into his Vita. The concordance is indicated in the following table : Brux. Conch. Brux. Conch. Brux. Conch. 1 i. 2 14,15 ii. 1, 15, 16 26 ii. 13 2 i.3 16,17 ii. 16 27 iii. 5 3 i.5 18 i. 6 28 iii. 6 4,5 ii. 2 19,20 iii. 1 29,30 iii. 9 6,7 ii. 3, 14 21 iii. 2 31 iii. 9 8,9 ii.4 22 ii. 10 32 iii. 10 10 ii. 5, 6 23 ii. 11 33 iii. 12 11 ii. 6 24 ii. 12 34 iii. 13 12, 13 ii. 7 25 om. Chapter 25 of Brux. has alone been omitted by Conchubran, and there is indeed a reminiscence of it in iii. 7. The order of the incidents has been altered, for Conchubran interpolated into his narrative large extracts from other sources with which we shall deal presently. He confesses himself that he has altered the order of sequence when he says, ii. 1 ' Nunc ad narrationis {narrationem MS.) ordinem, iam secundo incipiente libello, reuertamur '. Conchubran, however, was not copying from the Brussels Vita as we have it now, but the two Vitae are derived from • This incident is not related in Vita Brux. In the index of chapters prefixed to book iii of Conchubran's Vita (p. 228) the last is ' De muti lingua per sancta Monenna [«ic] soluta ', but the chapter does not occur in the text. The story appears to be told in Geoffrey of Burton's Vita, for in John of Tynemouth's epitome (ed. Horstman, Nova Legenda Anglie, ii. 206, 29) we read, ' et nee multo post muto loquelam reddidit '. ° Index, vol. iv, p. Ill (MacCarthy's corrected chronology). 3 Ed. by De Smedt and De Backer, 1888, cols. 165-88 ; cf. Zimmer, Gott. gel. Avz., 1891, i. 158, 160, 166.