By the middle of the sixth century Ireland had been honeycombed from shore to shore with schools, monasteries, colleges, and foundations of all kinds belonging to the Christian community, and books had multiplied to a marvellous extent. At the same time the professional bards flourished in such numbers that Keating says that "nearly a third of the men of Ireland belonged, about that period, to the poetic order." Omitting for the present the consideration of the bards and the non-Christian literature of poem and saga--mostly anonymous--which they produced, we must, take a rapid survey of some of the most important of the Christian schools, whose pious professors, whose number, and whose learning, secured for Ireland the title of the Island of Saints. We have already seen how the three patron saints of Ireland established their schools in Armagh, Kildare, and Iona, and their example was followed by hundreds. St. Enda, the son of a king of Oriel, after having studied at some school in Great Britain (probably with St. Ninian--who is said to have been himself an Irishman--at his noble monastery of Candida Casa in Galloway, built about the year 400), and after travelling through various parts of Ireland, settled down finally about the year 483 in the rocky and inaccessible island of Aran Mór, and was the first of those holy men who have won for it the appellation of Aran of the Saints. "One hundred and twenty-seven saints sleep in the little square yard around Killeany Church"[2] alone, and we are told that the countless numbers of saints who have mingled their clay with the holy soil of Aran will never be known until the day of Judgment. Here most of the saints of the second Order repaired sooner or later, to be instructed by, or to hold converse with St. Enda; amongst them Brendan the Voyager, whose wanderings, under the title of _Navigatio Brendani_, became so well known in later ages to all mediæval Europe. To him also came St. Finnian of Clonard, who was himself celebrated in later days as the "Tutor of the Saints of Erin." From the remote north came Finnian of Moville, Columcille's first teacher, and Ciaran, the carpenter's son, the illustrious founder of Clonmacnois. St. Jarlath of Tuam was there too, with St. Carthach the elder, of Lismore, and with St. Keevin of Glendalough. St. Columcille[3] himself was amongst Enda's visitors, and tore himself away with the utmost difficulty, solacing himself by recourse to the Irish muse as was his wont-- "Farewell from me to Ara's Isle, Her smile is at my heart no more, No more to me the boon is given With hosts of heaven to walk her shore. How far, alas! how far, alas! Have I to pass from Ara's view, To mix with men from Mona's fen, With men from Alba's mountains blue. Bright orb of Ara, Ara's sun, Ah! softly run through Ara's sky, To rest beneath thy beam were sweeter Than lie where Paul and Peter lie.