The child was born in A.D. 589, or 590, for he died in A.D. 661, at the age of seventy-two. Drumdaliter--Marianus O'Gorman tells us--was "the name of his town," and Aedh or Hugh was his "proper name" at first. Shortly after his birth the infant was exposed by his parents, and left at the head of the cross in a small _Cummian_ or basket near St. Ita's Convent of Killeedy, and the holy sisterhood finding the child thus abandoned took charge of the foundling, and called him Cummian, because he was found in the basket. The history of the lady Flann, the mother of Cummian, is very singular. The great misfortune of her life seems to have happened when she was very young, and it may have been greatly, if not entirely, against her own will. It seems, too, that she was very beautiful--in a stanza composed by Cummian himself, she is called Flann the Fair--it is said also that she was four times married, and became the mother of no less than six kings and six bishops. After the death of her fourth husband, Flann, whether tired of the cares of married life, or anxious to do penance for the sin of her youth, consulted her son Cummian as to her future; and he advised her to retire from the world, and spend the rest of her days in prayer and penance. She did so, and died a holy nun at an advanced age. From Killeedy, or perhaps from Killarney, young Cummian was sent to the great school of Cork, founded by St. Finnbarr about the beginning of the seventh century, when Cummian would be twelve or fifteen years of age. Among the teachers in Cork, either then, or a little later on, was Colman Mac O'Cluasaigh, who is called the "tutor" of young Cummian, to whom he became greatly attached. Colman O'Cluasaigh was, it seems, a most accomplished scholar, and had, moreover, an Irishman's love for poetry and song. Dr. Todd[192] has published, in the first volume of the _Liber Hymnorum_, a very beautiful Irish hymn composed by Colman to invoke for himself and his pupils the protection of God and His Saints against the yellow plague, which devastated Ireland between the years A.D. 660-664. He is described in the preface to that hymn as a reader of Cork (_fer-legind_), and is said to have composed it when he was fleeing, with his pupils, from the plague, to take refuge in some island of the sea, because it was thought the contagion could not extend beyond nine waves from the land, which, even from a sanitary point of view, was likely enough. He also composed, about the same time, an elegy on the death of Cummian. Colman inspired his pupil with his own love for poetry; and fortunately we have, in the same Book of Hymns, a Latin poem written by Cummian, which we should reprint if the space at our disposal were not so limited.