GwYNN AND PuRTON — The Monastery of Tallaght. 121 



tuonasteiy. He speaks of its usages as things within his own knowledge ; he 

 is familiar with minute details of its daily routine, and even records a penance 

 inflicted on himself for breach of a rule (§45). It is not clear whether he 

 had known Maelruain : if the text could be trusted, there is one passage which 

 seems to show that he did : in § 5 we have the words asrubart-sai fri Maolruain : 

 this would naturally mean, ' I had said to Maelruain ' (asrubari-sa) ; but it is 

 probable that we should read asrubart-som, "he had said": the same corruption 

 has apparently taken place in § 46, where asriihart-sai cannot well refer to 

 the writer. At all events the document was written after Maelruain's death, 

 as is made clear by the words " in Maelruain's lifetime," § 6 ; besides, the 

 references to Maelruain are in the past tense throughout. The phrase used 

 in § 27, " tins we received (tucsam) from Maelruain," merely implies that 

 Maelruain is the ultimate authority. 



But the author certainly knew Maeldithruib : in § 40 he says expressly, 

 " This I heard from Maeldithruib." All the explicit references to the opinions 

 and customs of Maeldithruib (with one exception) are couched in the present 

 tense: the usual formulae are issed fognilaiseom, "this is his practice"; issed 

 as choir lais, "he thinks it right"; and so forth. The single exception occurs 

 in one of the last paragraphs, § 86 : Maoldithruih in quadragesimis in aqua et 

 pane usque ad nonissimum tempus pro anima patris sui. FohUhin ba de a 

 urnicMe dogres in quadragesima. Here usque ad nouissiTnurii tern-pus seems to 

 mean "to the last, to the end of his life," and this agrees with the tense of ba 

 in the next sentence. The natural interpretation of these facts is that the 

 main part was written during the lifetime of Maeldithruib, and that § 86 was 

 added after his death. The supposition is quite consistent with the disjointed 

 character of the document, which is not a biography, nor yet a Kule, but a 

 collection of memorahilia, probably jotted down from time to time. 



It will be noticed that in a great many cases the writer records sayings 

 and opinions without mentioning by name the person to whom he refers. 

 These references are all (again with one exception) framed in the present 

 tense : the one exception being the verb dognid in § 28 ; but this is a 

 mere slip for dogni : in the same paragraph doleici is present. It is natural 

 to suppose that in all such cases the person referred to is Maeldithruib. If 

 so, the incident recorded in § 45 is proof that the writer had been rmder his 

 rule at Tallaght. 



Who was Maeldithruib ? Although he seems to have been a personage of 

 considerable importance in his own monastery, the references to him in the 

 usual sources of knowledge are curiously scanty; but they are fortimately 

 sufficient to fix his date. On p. 370, colmnn 3, of the Book of Leinster, 

 immediately after the Martyrology of Tallaght (properly so called), there is a 



