Note 973 — Chapter X · LEARNING AND LANGUAGE. (continued 2)

Buidhe Chonaill. See Reeves’s Adamnan, p. 182, note a, for an account of this plague, which was also called Crom Chonaill. The first appearance of the plague occurred in a.d. 550, according to Tighernach’s Annals and the Chronicon Scotorum. Dr. Todd supposed that it was called Buidhe Chonaill, from some eminent person named Conall, who died of it, but of whose memory no other record now remains.—(Obits and Martyrology of Christ Church, pref. p. lxxv.) But the old form of the name being Buidhe Chonnaill, it is more likely that it was derived from Connall (glossed ‘stipula’ in the MS. quoted in Nigra’s Reliq. Celt., p. 38); and that the plague was so called from the hue (Buide Chonnaill, ‘straw-yellow’) which its victims exhibited.