It cannot have been St. Ninian himself under whom St. Finnian studied at the Candida Casa, which was founded at least a hundred years before the date of this visit. In some of the lives his teacher is called Nennio,[204] in others Mugentius (see Colgan, page 633). It seems, certain, however, that young Finnian, thirsty for sacred knowledge, begged permission from St. Mochae to accompany the visitors on their return to the White House. The permission was readily granted; so, gliding southward in their boats between the multitudinous islands of Lough Cuan, they were carried out to sea through its narrow mouth by the swiftly receding tide, and then spreading every sail to catch the western breeze a few hours would bring them across the narrow channel that separates the Ards of Down from the Mull of Galloway. At the southern extremity of the inner promontory of Wigtown, there is a very small island which still bears the name of the Isle of Whithern. On this island are the ruins of an old church, which is probably all that now remains of the Candida Casa--a spot like Aran, Glastonbury, and Iona, to be ever venerated as one of the cradles of Celtic Christianity. How long Finnian remained at Candida Casa cannot be exactly ascertained; but it was at least long enough to acquire the learning and discipline of the place in which, according to some accounts, he succeeded so well as to incur the bitter jealousy of his master. The original founder of the Candida Casa had been educated at Rome, and no doubt the thoughts of its inmates were from time to time turned to the school of their great founder. Finnian, at least, resolved to go to the fountain head, and so, putting on his wallet and grasping his pilgrim staff, he set out upon his long journey. It was much more difficult and dangerous then to go to Rome than it is now, but these heroic Christian men despised dangers and hardships. Their life was a warfare for Christ; so they cared little when or where they fell in their Master's cause. Besides, they were never refused hospitality at the religious houses where they called, and even the rude mariners welcomed on board their vessels a holy man whose prayers were strong to calm the wrath of tempestuous seas. Finnian spent three months at Rome "learning the Apostolical customs and the Ecclesiastical Laws," and then resolved to return to his native land. But he bore with him from Rome a priceless treasure, or, as the _Martyrology of Ængus_ calls it "yellow gold from over the sea;" not, however, yellow gold from the mine, but what our Celtic fathers valued more, the pure red gold of the Gospel corrected by the great St. Jerome and formally sanctioned by the Pope as the authentic text. The Vulgate, as we now have it, is substantially the work of St. Jerome to this extent, that he corrected the New Testament of the Old Vulgate; he translated from the Hebrew the proto-canonical books of the Old Testament; and moreover