Note 15 — Chapter XIII

In Irish he is usually called Son of Alprann or Alplann, the C of Calpornus being evidently taken as belonging to the Mac, thus Mac Calprainn became Mac Alprainn. In the Brussels Codex of Muirchu Maccu Machteni's life, however, he is called Alforni filius, and the place of his birth is called Ban navem thabur indecha, supposed to be Killpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, which is evidently a corruption of his own Bannaven Taberniæ, which seems to mean River-head Tavern; it may be from the two words navem thabur that St. Fiacc's hymn says that he was born in nemthur. Patrick himself only gives us two generations of his ancestry, and it is very significant of Irish ways to find Flann of Monasterboice, running it up to fourteen!