CULDEES.
rilE
50
work written
ratrick, a
'
entries in the
Annals of the Four
"
but also from two very curious
the source whence they were derived is
blasters,' though
in the first half of the eightli century,
uncertain."
"At
80G, which
A.D.
came
Ceile-dd
Ireland.'
"
"
The
the
across
they state that
'
is
with dry
sea
IVIaenach, a
common
811 of the
Cele-d(5
feet,
came
era,
they relate that
—'in
tliis
year the
without a
across
vessel.'
Again, in the year 919,
the sea westwards to establish laws in
^
close of the eighth century," says
Dr
Reeves,
"
if
we may
credit certain Irish records,
term C(51e-de in a definite sense, and in local connection with a religious
St Maelruain, founder, abbot, and bishop of the church of Tamhlacht,
class or institution.
now Tallaght, near Dublin, gathered round him a fraternity. A religious rule, ascribed to him,
presents to us the
is
preserved in manuscript in the Leabhar Ereac, entitled
"
the Kule of the Cele-nde, from the
^
poem which Maelruain composed."
St Maelruain died a.d. 792, and was succeeded by Aengus, who obtained great celebrity by
his writings, especially his metrical calendar or Felire, and is generally referred to as "Aengus
the Culdee."
The
Colidei or Cele-de remained in
Armagh,
as a capitular body,
down
to at least A.D.
"
1628, in which year a deed was executed by the prior of the cathedral church, on behalf of
the vicars choral and Colidcans of the same, and this corporation and their endowments existed,
though under another name, until the Disestablishment Act."
Loch Erne, they are heard of so late as 1630.
^
At Devenish, an
island on
with the language and
Passing over to Scotland, whither the term had been imported
of the Scotic immigrants,* we learn from documentary evidence that Brude, son of
institutions
and St Serf, and the Culdee
Dergard, the last king of tlie Picts, gave Loch Leven to God
It was, doubtless,
hermits there.* The date of the original entry cannot be determined.
much posterior to the grant itself, but the Gaelic record, in which it was contained, was
the Augustinian priory was formed in the twelfth
Another document, preserved among the archives of the same priory, mentions that
century.
Constantine, son of Aodh, when he resigned the kingdom, became abbot of the Culdees of St
evidently of
unknown
when
antiquity
Andrews."
The
writers of these passages
may
possibly have anticipated the use of the
name
in
bestowing on the monks of Loch Leven and St Andrews, the appellation which was familiar to
themselves in their own day, but it is more probable that tlic Culdees were really known in
Scotland by that
'
'
Reeves,
title
The Culdees
The copy of
from the ninth century.^
of tlie Britislx Islands, as they appear in HLstory, p. 6.
known, from its spelling and grammatical structure, to have been
penned in the twelfth century, hut Dr Reeves considers it may he fairly regarded as a modernised version of a much
earlier document.
'
^
°
Reeves,
this monastic rule still existing is
The Culdees
Innes, Critical Essay, p. 802.
;
Grub, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland,
Reeves,
Scotland, vol.
The Culdees
i,,
p. 229.
vol.
i.,
p.
Ihkl., p. 2.
229.
According to Dr M'Lauohlan, "in the case of Loch Leven we have the
insight into the real character of the ancient Culdees
'
*
of the British Islands, as they appear in History, p. 18.
Regist. Priorat. S. .\ndrea;, p. 113
"
(The Early Scottish Church,
clearest
p. 43C).
of the British Islands, as they appear in History, p. 53
;
Grub, Ecclesiastical History of