instead of going back to their abbot, as of course they would have done if vows of obedience were then in force, 'determined to go of their own will on a wandering pilgrimage,' and eventually followed the fortunes of the castaways, who had landed safely on an island.[1]
A very remarkable 'soul friend' was Maelsuthain O'Carroll, who lived in the early years of the eleventh century. He was himself a chief, and for a great part of his life had lived as an ordinary petty king. In his later years, however, he was an inmate of the abbey at Innisfallen, in one of the Lakes of Killarney, and became soul friend to the famous Brian Boru. The Four Masters tell us that he was chief doctor of the Western world in his time, and that he died after a good life. His handwriting is still to be seen in the Book of Armagh. He was manifestly a very learned man, and seems to have been employed as scribe and historian by Brian Boru. Being a man of the world, he may well also have been adviser as to matters of state. But with regard to the good life with which the Annalists credit him, the evidence seems to be all the other way. His immoralities were notorious—so much so, that it is difficult to see how he could have been soul friend with spiritual advantage to any one.
In many ways there is considerable resemblance between the soul friends and some of the prophets of whom we read in the Old Testament. They were, it is true, quite unlike such men as Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah, but they were consulted much in the same way as Nathan was consulted by David and Micaiah by Ahab and Jehoshaphat. Like Samuel, they sometimes suggested that a war should be
- ↑ O'Curry, MS. Materials of Anc. Irish Hist., p. 333.
