250 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



for this reason, afterwards passed into the text of a number of transcripts, 

 in some as a substitute for the older reading, in others as an addition to it. 

 It matters little, however, whether we suppose an older reading iuxta siluam 

 Uirgulti, Uoluti or iuxta Siluam Uoluti. In one case the words Uirgulti 

 Uoluti, in the other the words Siluam Uoluti, would represent St. Patrick's 

 way of writing a particular place-name. I propose to reject ueluti, because 

 Focluti could hardly have arisen from it, and might well have arisen from 

 uoluti through an intermediary reading uocluti — the Irish change from' initial 

 U (V) to F must have been familiar to every scribe of the seventh and eighth 

 centuries. Though ueluti is sufficiently inept in the context, its substitution 

 for an unintelligible uoluti is much more likely than the converse process. 



We shall then, I think, agree with the Armagh version in regarding 

 Siluam Uoluti as the partly latinized name of a particular place. It was 

 doubtless knowledge of St. Patrick's later association with "Fochloth," near 

 Killala, where he founded the church of Domnach Mor (Book of Armagh, 

 10b, 14b), that caused this scribe or some authority followed by him to adopt 

 the name Focluti, and thus to set others, down to our time, wondering and 

 seeking to explain how the name of a place on the west coast of Ireland 

 could have arisen to St. Patrick's mind at a time when, according to all that 

 is known or told of him, he had never been within a hundred miles of that 

 place. Professor Bury, holding that St. Patrick's narrative above quoted 

 evidently implies that the place named therein and the place of the captivity 

 were in one neighbourhood, has boldly — his own word is " frankly " — rejected 

 the traditions of Sliabh Mis and transferred the captivity to a western forest, 

 which would have joined in one local association Killala and Croaghpatrick.^ 



Dr. Newport White, in "St. Patrick, his Writings and Life," pp. 6-11, 

 puts aside Bury's theory and proposes an alternative explanation, based on 

 the view, wliich is certainly no longer tenable, that St. Patrick wrote Focluti. 



All the Mss. agree in making the word or the two words following siluam 

 end in -ti. My thesis is that the original reading was siluam Uluti, possibly 

 but less probably sihmm Uirgulti Uluti — for, if Uluti be accepted, the likeli- 

 hood that uirgulti came in by way of attempted emendation is obviously 

 increased. I take siluam Uluti to denote the district later known as 

 an Choill Ultach, " Killultagh," meaning the woody district of the Ulaidh. 

 This name was formerly given to a district of much wider extent than it 

 now denotes, which lay on the eastern side of Lough Neagh, in the southern 

 part of the county of Antrim. 



' "Life of St. Patrick " : for the various points at which the argument recurs, see 

 the index, s.v. Fochlad. 



