there were scores of Colmans, Finians, &c., and hence perhaps the
confusion and some of the apparent inconsistencies. There was certainly
a second Declan, a disciple of St. Virgilius, to whom the latter
committed care of a church in Austria where he died towards close of
eighth century. Again we find mention of a St. Declan who was a foster
son of Mogue of Ferns, and so on. It is too much, as Delehaye ("Legendes
Hagiographiques") remarks, to expect the populace to distinguish between
namesakes. Great men are so rare! Is it likely there should have lived
two saints of the same name in the same country!

The latest commentators on the question of St. Declan's period--and they
happen to be amongst the most weighty--argue strongly in favour of the
pre-Patrician mission (Cfr. Prof. Kuno Meyer, "Learning Ireland in the
Fifth Century"). Discussing the way in which letters first reached our
distant island of the west and the causes which led to the proficiency of
sixth-century Ireland in classical learning Zimmer and Meyer contend that
the seeds of that literary culture, which flourished in Ireland of the
sixth century, had been sown therein in the first and second decades of
the preceding century by Gaulish scholars who had fled from their own
country owing to invasion of the latter by Goths and other barbarians.
The fact that these scholars, who were mostly Christians, sought asylum
in Ireland indicates that Christianity had already penetrated thither, or
at any rate that it was known and tolerated there. Dr. Meyer answers the
objection that if so large and so important an invasion of scholars took
place we ought have some reference to the fact in the Irish annals. The
annals, he replies, are of local origin and they rarely refer in their
oldest parts to national events: moreover they are very meagre in their
information about the fifth century. One Irish reference to the Gaulish
scholars is, however, adduced in corroboration; it occurs in that well
known passage in St. Patrick's "Confessio" where the saint cries out