Texts
Story of Mo Chóe and the angel
Incoming data
The catalogue entry for this text has not been published as yet. Until then, a selection of data is made available below.
A short story in which Mo Chóe (Caelán), while building his church at Nendrum, is approached by an angel in the form of a magnificent bird. Two versions of it are known, one of which is found in the entry for the saint's feast-day in the Martyrology of Donegal.
Manuscript witnesses
MS
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 72.1.6/ff. 12-13
incipit: Mocae Naendroma la hUlta luig fechta n-aill
f. 13rb.7–
Text
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 72.1.6/ff. 12-13
incipit: Mocae Naendroma la hUlta luig ina caill
f. 13rb
Sources
Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.
[ed.] [tr.] Grosjean, Paul, “S. Caelani cum ave colloquium”, Analecta Bollandiana 47 (1929): 39–43.
Edited from the Edinburgh manuscript, with a translation into Latin.
Secondary sources (select)
Ó Riain, Pádraig, A dictionary of Irish saints, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011.
Scarcely a parish in Ireland is without one or more dedications to saints, in the form of churches in ruins, holy wells or other ecclesiastical monuments. This book is a guide to the (mainly documentary) sources of information on the saints named in these dedications, for those who have an interest in them, scholarly or otherwise. The need for a summary biographical dictionary of Irish saints, containing information on such matters as feastdays, localisations, chronology, and genealogies, although stressed over sixty years ago by the eminent Jesuit and Bollandist scholar, Paul Grosjean, has never before been satisfied. Professor Ó Riain has been working in the field of Irish hagiography for upwards of forty years, and the material for the over 1,000 entries in his Dictionary has come from a variety of sources, including Lives of the saints, martyrologies, genealogies of the saints, shorter tracts on the saints (some of them accessible only in manuscripts), annals, annates, collections of folklore, Ordnance Survey letters, and other documents. Running to almost 700 pages, the body of the Dictionary is preceded by a preface, list of sources and introduction, and is followed by comprehensive indices of parishes, other places (mainly townlands), alternate (mainly anglicised) names, subjects, and feastdays.
[‘Caolán’]
