"The chapel where no organ's peal Invests the stern and naked prayer!-- With penitential cries they kneel And wrestle; rising then with bare And white uplifted faces stand, Passing the Host from hand to hand." --_Arnold._ I.--THE SCHOOL OF NOENDRUM. There were a few other early monastic schools founded during the lifetime of St. Patrick to which reference must be made here, before we pass to the more celebrated schools of the sixth century. Although St. Patrick could not attend in person to the government and organization of these seminaries, he gave every encouragement to his disciples in carrying on that necessary and excellent work. It was specially for this purpose, as we have already seen, that he placed St. Benignus over his own school at Armagh. With the same purpose in view, he chose the youthful Mochae, or Mochay, of Noendrum first to be his own disciple, and afterwards to be the guide and teacher of others in their preparation for the sacred ministry. Mochae was one of St. Patrick's earliest converts in Ireland. Like St. Benignus, he seems to have been a mere boy, when he first believed and was baptized, before St. Patrick had yet met King Laeghaire on the royal Hill of Tara. It is thus narrated in the _Tripartite_:--"Now whilst Patrick was going on his journey from Saul (near Downpatrick) he saw a tender youth herding swine. Mochae was his name. Patrick preached to him and baptized him and tonsured him, and gave him a Gospel and Mass-chalice. And he gave him also later on a crozier, that had been bestowed on them by God, to wit, it fell from heaven with its head in Patrick's bosom, and its foot in Mochae's bosom, and this is the _Etech_ of Mochae of Noendrum. And Mochae promised a shaven pig every year to Patrick (that is, to his Church), and this is still offered."[136]