Balin

The record of Balin is a martyrology entry and a genealogical notice attached to his brother's Life, and this Life is accordingly brief. The Martyrologies of Marianus O'Gorman, of Cathal Maguire, and of Donegal record the festival of "St. Balan or Balloin" — so O'Hanlon, who treats him at September 3, and who notes that in Todd and Reeves's edition of the Martyrology of Donegal the entry was accidentally omitted from its place but is supplied in the appended table. The tradition of his origin comes from the Life of his brother St Gerald of Mayo (†732, commemorated March 13), published by Colgan: he came from England to Ireland with his brothers Gerald, Berikert and Hubritan after the middle of the seventh century, and lived at a place called Tech-Saxan, "the House of the Saxons" — so named, O'Hanlon judges, because it was founded or occupied by himself, his brothers, or the countrymen who accompanied them. The place is stated to have been in the parish of Athenry, diocese of Tuam, County Galway; a house of Franciscans of the Third Order stood there in Colgan's day. Castellan places "St. Balo" in Connaught, with his feast noted by the Bollandists.

The historical setting of the migration is the one Bede describes: after the Synod of Whitby (664), Colman of Lindisfarne withdrew with his Irish and English monks to Ireland, where the English were settled at Mayo — "Mayo of the Saxons." The modern notices place Balin and his brothers in that movement: Orthodox England has the four sons of an English noble accompanying Colman to Iona and then settling in Connaught, and the Benedictine Book of Saints makes them sons of an Anglo-Saxon king. O'Hanlon's account, resting on Colgan, says neither; the parentage — noble or royal — is transmitted only in these later summaries, and no early source for it was found. No date of death is transmitted.