_The Eavesdropper and the Crane._--This incident reappears in the Life of Flannan (CS, 647). Wonder-workers do not like to be spied upon by unauthorised persons. This is especially true in the Fairy mythology surviving to modern times. Compare a tale in the Life of Aed (VSH, ii, 308). A quantity of wood had been cut for building a church, but there was no available labour. Angels undertook the work of transportation on condition that no one should spy upon them. One man, however, played the inevitable "Peeping Tom," and the work ceased immediately. The reader may be referred for further instances to the essay on "Fairy Births and Human Midwives" in E.S. Hartland's _Science of Fairy Tales_. There is a touch of intentional drollery at the end of the story where the brethren are shown as having so thoroughly enjoyed the feast miraculously provided for them that their observance of the canonical hours was disjointed. For other instances of intoxication as resulting from saints' miracles see VSH, i, p. ci. _The Stanzas in VG._--These are in _ae freslige_ metre, so that they are probably another fragment of the poem already met with. The translation in the text reproduces the sense with sufficient literalness. On the whole the impression which this unusually long and very confused incident makes on the reader is that originally it was an _anti-Christian_ narrative concocted in a Pagan circle, which has somehow become superficially Christianised. XXV. THE STORY OF CLUAIN (VG) One of the numerous tales told of the danger of crossing the will of a saint. It is possibly suggested by Matt, xxi, 28; but it may also be a pre-Christian folk-tale adapted to the new Faith by substituting a saint for a druid. On the cursing propensities of Irish saints see Plummer, VSH, i, pp. cxxxv, clxxiii. A curse said to have been pronounced by Ciaran on one family remained effective down to the year 1151, where it is recorded by the _Annals of the Four Masters_ (vol. ii, p. 1096). Another curse of the same saint, and its fulfilment, is narrated in Keating's History (Irish Texts Society's edn., iii, 52 ff.), and at greater length in the life of the victim, Cellach (_Silua Gadelica_, no. iv). Note that Ciaran sends a messenger with his rod to revive Cluain. This is probably imitated from Elisha sending Gehazi similarly equipped to raise the Shunammite's son (2 Kings iv, 29). Cluain's thanks at being delivered from the pains of hell may be contrasted with the protest of the monk resurrected by Colman (VSH, i, 260, 265) at being recalled from the joys of heaven--an aspect of resurrection stories frequently overlooked by the narrators. _The Stanza in VG._--The metre is _rannaigecht gairit dialtach_ (a line of three syllables followed by three of seven, with monosyllabic rhymes _aaba_). The literal rendering is "Cluain agreed to come / to me to-day for reaping // for an oppressive disease / caused him living in his house to be dead."