A few years after these events, according to the annals, Adamnán acquired a more honourable distinction by means of the ecclesiastical legislation embodied in his ‘Canons,’ and by the more famous law, or code of laws, known as the _Cáin Adamnáin_. Each of these was promulgated at a _Mórdáil_--‘Great Assembly’--the Diet or States-General of Ireland. According to the more general account, both were passed at a Mórdáil held in 697 at Tara, or, according to others, at Ballyshannon, Derry, or Raphoe. Probably Tara was assumed inadvertently to have been the place of meeting by some chronicler who, bearing in mind the ancient custom, had forgotten that Tara had been abandoned since the cursing of it by St. Ruadán. According to the Four Masters and Tigernach, the last Feis of Tara was held in the year 554 A.D. Or, possibly, there is a confusion between the general Mórdáil of Éire and an ecclesiastical Synod which appears to have been held at Tara about the time in question. In this uncertainty as to which of the several Synods and Mórdála, held towards the close of the seventh century, was the scene of Adamnán’s legislation, Canon O’Hanlon suggests that the Synod of 694-5 would be the most likely occasion of the enactment of the Canons, if it were certain that Adamnán was present (_op. cit._ ix. 508 and 512), and that the _Cáin_ was passed at the Mórdáil of 696-7, in the reign of Árd-Rí Loingseach mac Oengusa, according to the general account; this likewise agrees with the treatise about to be mentioned, which, however, gives Birr as the place of assembly. The most important article of the _Cáin_ was the renewal of a law passed by St. Colm Cille at the Mórdáil of Druimceatt in 590, but since fallen into desuetude, whereby women were exempted from military service. The _Cáin Adamnáin_ is an Old Irish treatise, probably of the tenth century, according to Professor Kuno Meyer, who has published an edition of it, with notes, in _Anecdota Oxoniensia_ (_Mediæval and Modern Series_, pt. viii.). It is not the work of Adamnán himself, but merely purports to give an account of the laws which he passed, and the circumstances of his doing so. It is clearly compounded of various elements, and it is worked up into a complete story by dint of the employment of a number of fictitious details. It opens with a melancholy picture of the status of women in Ireland in Adamnán’s day, their home life being depicted as a state of abject slavery, while they were further liable to military service. These descriptions can only be accepted with very great limitations, for the laws, the Church literature, and the romances of Ireland contain abundant evidence to prove that the state of things here depicted, if it existed at all, was not generally prevalent, the picture drawn in the _Cáin_ being greatly exaggerated for the greater honour and glory of Adamnán. At the same time there is no need to go to the opposite extreme, and assume that the position accorded to women in ancient