recognised it as the burial-place of a man of God. He deposited the
relics which he was bearing back from Rome, for the night, in the
hollow elm; but he found in the morning that the tree had closed upon
them, and that they could not be recovered. In sorrow for their loss,
he related the event to Patrick, and for his comfort he was told that
a Son of Life--to wit Ciaran, son of the wright--was destined to come
thither, and that he would need the relics. These relics are mentioned
in VG 41, though "Benen and Cumlach" [the leper] are there said to
have left them, not Muinis. From this reference we learn that they
were attributed to Saints Peter and Paul.

It is quite clear that this curious story has reached us in a
fragmentary and expurgated form, and that if we had the whole
narrative before us it would afford us an indication that Clonmacnois
was the site of an earlier, Pagan, sanctuary. It will most probably be
found to be an invariable rule that the early Christian establishments
in Ireland occupy the sites of Pagan sanctuaries; the monastery having
been founded to re-consecrate the holy place to the True Faith. The
hollow elm was doubtless a sacred tree; the well which miraculously
burst forth was a sacred well: the buried leper may have been a
foundation sacrifice, like Oran on Iona. The old pre-Christian name of
the site is suggestive--_Ard Tiprat_, "the high place of the [holy]
well." By no stretch of language can the site of Clonmacnois be called
physically high; as in the stanza quoted in VG 30, the word _Ard_ must
be used in the sense of distinguished, eminent, or sacred.

Of the prophecy attributed to Brigit there appears to be no record in
any of her numerous _Lives_: nor can I identify with certainty the
story of "the fire and the angel." There were "Crosses of Brigit" at
Armagh;[3] but as there were probably many other crosses throughout
the country dedicated to this popular saint we cannot infer that
Armagh was the scene of the prophecy.

Becc mac De was chief soothsayer to King Diarmait mac Cerrbeil. Very
little is certainly known of him; most of the traditions relating
to him consist of tales of his remarkable gift of foretelling the
future--tales similar to those related of the Covenanter Alexander
Peden in Scotland, or of the seventeenth-century Mayo peasant Red
Brian Carabine.[4] He died in or about the year A.D. 555 (the
annalists waver between 552 and 557); and the _Annals of Clonmacnois_
tell