to see Gildas the Wise, who was bewailing the woes of his native land on
the shores of the Morbihan. He ultimately returned to the Western
Islands, and there succeeded at last in founding two monastic
settlements, one in Tiree, at a place which the writers call Bledua, and
one in an island called Ailech, which it seems to me may possibly mean
Islay. Then he went back to Ireland, and started another monastery in a
desert island in Loch Oisbsen, which was given to him by Aedh, the son
of Ethdach. Hence, however, he again moved in 559, and founded the great
monastery of Clonfert, an act which is the principal achievement of his
life.

He was friendly with the principal persons of his own race, time, and
class. He seems, as I have said, to have possessed the peculiar
temperament, which some call sensitive and others mediumistic, and which
leads to the phenomenon generally known as second-sight, for, putting
aside all other records about him which point in the same direction, it
is recorded of him, not only by Adamnan, but also by Cuimine the Fair,
that on one occasion when he came over, along with Comgall of Benchor,
Kenneth of Aghaboe, and Cormac o' Leathain of Durrow, to visit Columba,
who was then staying in Himba (Eilean na Naoimh, one of the Garveloch
islands, lying between Scarba and Mull), and Columba at their request
celebrated before them on the Sunday, he afterwards told Comgall and
Kenneth that during part of the ceremony Columba had seemed to him to be
standing at the bottom of a pillar of fire streaming heavenwards.

He lived to an extreme old age, and was in his 96th year when the end
came. When he felt that it was at hand, he went to see his sister Briga,
and I quote the sentences which follow, on account of the quaint
naturalism which inspires them. 'Among other things, he taught her
concerning the place of her resurrection. "Not here," saith he unto her,