Colgu (d. 796) grandson of Duinechaid, lector of Clonmacnoise and, according to some sources, author of a devotional litany known as ‘Scuap Chrábaid’, may be the same Colcu with whom the English scholar Alcuin corresponded concerning the victories of Charlemagne, addressing him as ‘Master Colcu’. But he is almost certainly not the addressee of a letter written to one Colgu in Ireland by four Irishmen on the Continent relating to what is known as the ‘Bamberg cryptogram’, composed by Dubthach (qv) (d. p. 869) son of Máel-tuile at the court of Merfyn Frych (d. 844) in the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd. His feast-day is given in the martyrologies as 20 February.
Sources
Mart. Tall.; Mart. Don.; C. Plummer, Irish litanies (1925, repr. 1995), pp xvii–xix, 30–45, 111–12; Kenney, Sources, no. 580 (‘Scuab Chrábaid’), no. 363 and p. 534 (correspondence with Colgu); ODNB (Meath, saints of)