Three-score psalm-singing seniors Were his household, royal the number; Without tillage, reaping, or kiln-drying, Without work, except reading.[127] There was then a class of working brethren who were occupied in the labours of the field, and from these were chosen too those required for mechanical work in the monastery. When Columba visited the monastery of Clonmacnois, some of the monks, we are told, were at their little grange farms near the monastery, and others within it.[128] An important occupation, too, was the training of the young, and those under instruction were termed ‘juniores’ or ‘alumni,’ and were said to be ‘learning wisdom.’[129] These formed the congregation of the monastery. [Sidenote: Island monasteries.] The larger monasteries were usually situated on the mainland; but the small islands round the coast, or in the inland lochs, appear to have possessed an irresistible attraction for the founders of these monasteries, probably from the security against danger and the protection from intrusion which they afforded, and on them the smaller communities probably were settled. Of the islands round the coast of Ireland, the three Aran isles, which lie off the coast of Galway, seem to have at once attracted these settlements. Among the class of saints who were trained to the monastic life in the monastery of Whithern, while Finnian founded the great monastery and seminary of _Maghbile_ or Moville in Ulster, Enda at once directed his steps to these islands, and we are told in his Acts that, having received a grant of the island of Aran from King Angus of Munster, he collected a company of disciples, and divided the island into ten parts, in which he constructed ten monasteries, placing in each one superior, as father, and another as second in power who should succeed the first on his death. He directed that the seniors should be buried with the rest, but that the bishops who succeeded them should be interred in their own proper cemeteries, and he founded his own monastery at the east end of the island, which is still called the Cell of St. Enda.[130] This island is now known as _Ara na Navach_, or Aran of the Saints. Tory Island, off the north-west coast; Rachra, off the north-east; Rechra, or Lambay, in the Irish Channel, and other small islands, became likewise the seats of similar foundations. Of the twelve apostles of Ireland, we find that three—Molaisse of Devenish, Senell of Cluaininnis, and Ninnidh of Inismacsaint, founded their chief monasteries on three small islands in Lough Erne; and on two other islands in the same lake there were also monasteries. In Lough Ree, a lake formed by the Shannon, there were five; and in Lough Corrib and Lough Derg, both also formed by the Shannon, there were, in the former, three, and in the latter two monasteries. Wherever the river Shannon in its course formed a small