A great number of lesser monastic institutions and schools seem to have existed alongside of these more famous ones, and it is hardly too much to say that during the sixth, seventh, eighth, and perhaps ninth centuries Ireland had caught and held aloft the torch of learning in the lampadia of mankind, and procured for herself the honourable title of the island of saints and scholars. [1] It is a common tradition that Columcille would not allow a cow on Iona, because, said he, "where there is a cow there will be a woman"! This tradition is entirely contradicted, however, by Adamnan's life. [2] Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 169. [3] There is a story of Columcille when in Aran discovering the grave of an "abbot of Jerusalem" who had come to see Enda, and died there, printed by Kuno Meyer from Rawlinson B. 512 in the "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 162. [4] Literally: "Farewell from me to Ara, it is it anguishes my heart not to be in the west among her waves, amid groups of the saints of heaven. It is far, alas! it is far, alas! I have been sent from Ara West, out towards the population of Mona to visit the Albanachs. Ara sun, oh Ara sun, my affection lies buried in her in the west, it is the same to be beneath her pure soil as to be beneath the soil of Paul and Peter. Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her, may he be given for it shortness of life and hell. Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her, may their cattle decay and their children, and be he himself on the other side (of this life) in evil plight. O Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her," etc. [5] See ch. VII, note 1. [6] It has been edited both by a Frenchman, M. Jubinal, and a German, Karl Schroeder, from eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century MSS. preserved in Paris, Leipsic, and Wolfenbuttel, and by Cardinal Moran from, I believe, a ninth-century one in the Vatican. Giraldus Cambrensis alludes to it as well known in his time, "Hæc autem si quis audire gestierit qui de vita Brendani scriptus est libellum legat" ("Top. Hib.," II. ch. 43). There is a copy of Brendan's acts in the so-called Book of Kilkenny in Marsh's Library, Dublin, a MS. of probably the fourteenth century. [7] "Eccles. Hist.," lib. iii. c. 19. He calls him "Furseus, verbo et actibus clarus sedet egregiis insignis virtutibus," and dedicates five pages of Mayer and Lumby's edition to an account of him and his visions.