Lawlor — The Ancient List of the Courbs of Patrick. 333 



Before making a somewliat minute examination of the List it is desirable 

 to call attention to an important note in L, appended to no. .'36. It begins 

 thus: — "Three erenachs here who took the abbacy by force, who are not 

 mentioned at Mass." This note is of liturgical interest, inasmuch as it 

 corroborates the evidence— suflicient, no doubt, but rather scanty — for the 

 reading of the Diptychs of the Dead at Mass in Ireland.^ Moreover, we 

 learn from it that at Armagh, and, as we may infer, elsewhere also, the 

 diptychs included a list of the heads of the religious community.^ The 

 purpose of the note is obviously to explain the exclusion from the diptychs 

 of certain names which might have been expected to occur in such a list. It 

 asserts, in effect, that the excluded persons were abbots de facto, but not 

 de jure. Finally, the note gives ground for believing that our List was 

 actually based on the diptychs. That is the only hypothesis on which the 

 note is relevant in its present position. 



The writer (or the scribe of the Book of Leinster) omits one of the three 

 names which he declares to have been absent from the Mass List; but it 

 will be observed that the two which remain are also absent from the List of 

 coarbs.' 



A further reason for holding that the List of coarbs was copied from 

 the diptychs may be found in 0. The last coarb mentioned in that manu- 

 script is Mael Muire (no. 50). But his name is followed, without break, by 

 those of three other persons, who were not abbots, Mael Duin mac Aedha 

 Bennan, Artri mac Cathail, and Tnuthgal. The first of these was a king of 

 lar Luachair, who died in 786 ; the second became king of Munster in 793 ; 

 the third may have been Tnuthgal, whose son Faelgus died in 783, but of 

 whom nothing more seems to be known. In the diptychs, as will be shown 

 immediately, we might expect to find the names of a few lay benefactors of 

 Armagh following those of the abbots. The appearance of these three names 

 in can, therefore, be understood on the supposition that the list of coarbs 

 which it contains is to be traced back to the diptychs of the church.* 



' See F. E. Warren, Liturgy and Bitnal of the Geltic Church, 1881, p. 105. The 

 diptychs, it seems, were usually read after the Ofl'ertory, and were fullowed by the 

 Gollectio post nomina, but in the Stowe Missal they are in a difl'ereut position. L. 

 Duchesne, Ovigines du Gulte Chretien, 1898, p. 199 ff. ; G. F. Warner, Stmoe Missal, ii, 

 14 f . ; Warren, p. 262, note 88. 



^ There is no such list in the Stowe diptychs ; but that is explained if the Missal was 

 written at Tallaght, soon after the death of the founder, Mael Ruain (cp. Warner, ii, 

 p. xxxiii). 



■* Fland Roi and Gormgal. Was the third dc facto abbot Suibne (Sitilme mac Farnig, 

 at end of note, being omitted by honmeuteleiiton) ? See no. .'io, and AU, at no. .'Ki. 



•■ Professor John MacNeill {Zeitsch. f. Celt. Phil, x, 02) ihink.s that the.se throe names 

 are a misplaced fragment of a list of kings of Cashel ; but this seems very doubtful. 



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