instance, three hundred years each; St. Mochaemog is credited with a
life of four hundred and thirteen years, and so on!

Clan, or tribe, rivalry was doubtless one of the things which made for
the invention and multiplication of miracles. If the patron of the
Decies is credited with a miracle, the tribesmen of Ossory must go one
better and attribute to their tribal saint a marvel more striking still.
The hagiographers of Decies retort for their patron by a claim of yet
another miracle and so on. It is to be feared too that occasionally a
less worthy motive than tribal honour prompted the imagination of our
Irish hagiographers--the desire to exploit the saint and his honour for
worldly gain.

The "Lives" of the Irish Saints contain an immense quantity of material
of first rate importance for the historian of the Celtic church.
Underneath the later concoction of fable is a solid substratum of fact
which no serious student can ignore. Even where the narrative is
otherwise plainly myth or fiction it sheds many a useful sidelight on
ancient manners, customs and laws as well as on the curious and often
intricate operations of the Celtic mind.

By "Lives" are here meant the old MS. biographies which have come down
to us from ages before the invention of printing. Sometimes these
"Lives" are styled "Acts." Generally we have only one standard "Life"
of a saint and of this there are usually several copies, scattered in
various libraries and collections. Occasionally a second Life is found
differing essentially from the first, but, as a rule, the different
copies are only recensions of a single original. Some of the MSS. are
parchment but the majority are in paper; some Lives again are merely
fragments and no doubt scores if not hundreds of others have been