The two institutions--nuns and monks--planted by St. Brigit continued long to flourish side by side, and Kildare is the only religious establishment in Ireland, says Dr. Healy, which down to a comparatively recent period preserved the double line of succession, of abbot-bishops and of abbesses. The annalists always took care to record the names of the abbesses with the same accuracy as those of the abbots, and to the last the abbesses as successors of St. Brigit, were credited with, in public opinion, and probably enjoyed in fact, a certain supremacy over the bishops of Kildare themselves. Amongst other occupations the monks and scholars of Kildare seem to have given themselves up to decorative art, and a school of metal work under the supervision of Brigit's first bishop soon sprang into existence, producing all kinds of artistically decorated chalices, bells, patens, and shrines; and the impulse given thus early to artistic work and to beautiful creations seems to have long propagated itself in Kildare, as the description of the church by Cogitosus shows, and as we may still conjecture from the exquisite round tower with its unusually ornamented doorway and its great height of over 130 feet, the loftiest tower of the kind in Ireland. No doubt several attributes of the pagan Brigit,[6] who, as we have seen, was accounted by the ancient Irish to have been the goddess of poets, passed over to her Christian namesake, who was also credited with being the patroness of men of learning. On this, her life in the Book of Lismore contains the following significant and rather obscure passage: "Brigit was once with her sheep on the Curragh, and she saw running past her a son of reading,[7] to wit Nindid the scholar was he. "'What makes thee unsedate, O son of reading?' saith Brigit, 'and what seekest thou in that wise?' "'O nun,' saith the scholar, 'I am going to heaven.' "'The Virgin's son knoweth,' said Brigit, 'happy is he that goeth that journey, and for God's sake make prayer with me that it may be easy for me to go.' "'O nun,' said the scholar, 'I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now and I fear they may be shut against me. Or, if thou art hindering me pray the Lord that it may be easy for me to go to heaven, and I will pray the Lord for thee, that it may be easy for thee, and that thou mayest bring many thousands with thee, into heaven.' "Brigit recited a paternoster with him. And he was pious thenceforward, and it is he that gave her communion and sacrifice when she was dying. _Wherefore thence it came to pass that the comradeship of the world's softs of reading is with Brigit, and the Lord gives them through Brigit every perfect good they ask._"[8]