give one of these stories, because it introduces us to the founder of the school of Lismore, the last of the great Irish seminaries which we shall notice in this place. Though said to be of noble extraction, Mochuda was employed by a chief in the humble capacity of swineherd. One day as he tended his herd by the banks of the river Mang, he was rapt out of himself by a sight and a sound of beauty altogether new to him. It was the holy bishop St. Carthag the elder, accompanied by a procession of his clergy, who as they went along made the hills of Kerry re-echo to the Psalm-tones, ever ancient and ever new, of the Gregorian chant. St. Augustine has confessed to their power over his heart, and the poor Irish swineherd was not less enraptured by their beauty than the African rhetorician had been. Drawn along, as it were, by the charm of the melody, he left his herd in the fields and followed the singers to their monastery. All night he remained outside the gates, catching at intervals the distant sound of the night office, till when morning dawned he was found there by his master Moelthuili, who desired to know why he had not returned home in the evening as was usual. “Because I was charmed with the holy songs of the servants of God,” replied Mochuda, “and I desire nothing else on earth than that I also may learn to sing those songs.” Moelthuili, who loved the boy, made him large promises of favour if he would remain in his service, but finding his words unheeded, he at last took him to the bishop and begged him to receive the youth among his disciples. St. Carthag bestowed his own name upon him, and admitted him among his scholars, and in process of time the fame of the pupil surpassed even that of his master. In 630 St. Carthag the younger, as he is called, became the founder of Lismore, the fame of whose schools extended into Italy. “One-half of this holy city,” says an ancient writer, “is a sanctuary into which no woman may enter; it is full of cells and monasteries, and religious men resort thither from all parts of Ireland and England.”[45] One of the most famous masters of Lismore was St. Cathal or Cataldus, the patron saint of Tarentum in Italy, and his numerous biographies in prose and verse never fail to commemorate the glories of his Alma Mater.