Lecale was soon filled with religious settlements and schools. Lying at the entrance to Lough Cuan of the hundred islands, now Lough Strangford, where a busy population tilled the fertile slopes, and sent out innumerable boats for the celebrated salmon-fishing, or for traffic, Lecale was as it were the guardian of their sanctuaries. Close to Downpatrick lies Crannach Dún-leth-glaisse, “the wooded island of Dún-leth-glaisse,” now known as Cranny island; there Mochuaróc maccu Min Semon, whom the Romans called the “doctor” of the whole world, lived early in the seventh century, and wrote down the calculus which his master Sinlan, Abbot of Bangor (+610), had first among the Irish learned from a certain wise Greek. Farther north, some twelve or fifteen miles from Ardglass, lies Inis-Mahee, where behind the boulder-strewn shore and the heavy seaweed thrown up by the waters on meadows and ploughed land over which sea-birds love to hover, past the harbour and the rude boat-shelter cut in the rock, we enter on a retreat where the light seems more translucent than elsewhere, the silence more penetrating and peace more profound, the colour as that of an everlasting spring--a space of wild wood, resonant with the song of birds, where the flowers spring thicker than the grass. There St. Mochaoi (Mahee) raised his wooden church about 450 A.D., first abbot and bishop. Legend told that as he was cutting wattles for his building, he heard a bright bird, more beautiful than the birds of the world, singing on the blackthorn near him, and asked who it was that made such a song. “A man of the people of my Lord,” answered the bird. “Hail,” said Mochaoi, “and for why that, oh bird that is an angel?” “I am come by command to encourage you in your good work, and because of the love that is in your heart to amuse you for a time with my sweet singing.” “I am glad of that,” said Mochaoi. One hundred and fifty years passed as a moment while he listened to the heavenly song; and when the bird vanished and he lifted up his bundle of wattles to carry home, a stone church stood there before him, and strange monks. They made him abbot once more; and there at last “a sleep without decay of the body Mochaoi slept.” The foundations of the little church with walls over three feet thick, the remnant of the round tower, the traces of other buildings on the west of the island hill, the well closed in, the triple ring of earthen entrenchments faced with stone that encircled the slopes of the island like a cashel, the port with its rough stone work into which “ships from Britain” sailed--these still tell of the days when Inis-Mahee was a school of religion and learning for all the district, where the famous St. Finian of Moville came to study. From the round tower the whole lough could be seen as far as Lecale and the passage to the sea. There must have been then, as there was later, much intercourse between the sea-going people of Mahee and Ardglass.