The ordinary dress consisted of a _cuculla_ or habit of coarse undyed wool with a hood, and a tunic or short underneath garment. Sandals were sometimes worn when travelling, but rarely at home. There is no mention made of any covering for the head but the cowl or hood, which was sometimes thrown over it. No doubt a leathern or hempen girdle was worn round the loins. The monk slept in his clothes on a pallet of straw in his cell. He had a straw pillow under his head, and probably some kind of a rug for a coverlet in severe weather. St. Columba himself slept on the bare stone, which was covered only with a skin, and this practice seems not to have been unusual. IV.--THE DAILY LABOUR OF THE MONASTERY. St. Columbanus tersely describes the daily work of every monastery when he says--"Ergo quotidie jejunandum est, sicut quotidie orandum est, quotidie laborandum, quotidieque est legendum."[117] Fasting and prayer, labour and study, are the daily task of the monks in every monastery. How patiently and unselfishly that toil was performed the history of Europe tells. The monks made roads, cleared the forests, and fertilized the desert. Their monasteries in Ireland were the sites of our cities. To this day the land about a monastery is well known to be the greenest and best in the district; and it was made fertile by the labour of the monks. They preserved for us the literary treasures of antiquity; they multiplied copies of all the best and newest works; they illuminated them with the most loving care. They taught the children of the rich and the poor alike; they built the church and the palace; they were the greatest authors, painters, architects, since the decline of the Roman Empire. They were the physicians of the poor when there were no dispensary doctors; they served the sick in their hospitals and at their homes. And when the day's work was done in the fields or in the study, they praised God, and prayed for men who were unable or unwilling to pray for themselves. Ignorant and prejudiced men have spoken of them as an idle and useless race. They were in reality the greatest toilers, and the greatest benefactors of humanity that the world has ever seen.