ake your
repair to Clonmacnois, to the place where your ghostly father and
friend Saint Ciaran is buried: and there to put a little of the earth
of his grave or of himself in your ears, which is the medicine which I
think to be most available to help you.' The king having received the
said instructions of Saint Colum, took his journey immediately to
Clonmacnois; and finding Oenna maccu Laigsi, who was abbot of the
place after Saint Ciaran, absent, he spoke to Lugaid, then parish
priest of Clonmacnois, and told him of Saint Colum's instructions unto
him. Whereupon priest Lugaid and king Diarmait fasted and watched that
night in the Little Church where Saint Ciaran was buried, and the next
morning the priest took the bell that he had, named then the White
Bell,[28] and mingled part of the clay of Saint Ciaran therein with
holy water, and put the same in the king's ears, and immediately the
king had as good hearing as any in the kingdom, and the whole sickness
and troubles of his brains ceased at that instant, which made the king
to say, _Is feartach an ni do ni an clog orainn_, which is as much as
to say in English, 'The bell did do us a miraculous turn.' Which bell
Saint Lugna conveyed with him to the church of Fore, where he remained
afterwards. King Diarmait bestowed great gifts of lands on Clonmacnois
in honour of Saint Ciaran, for the recovery of his health."

The bell, called the _boban_ of Coemgen, reappears much later in
history as a relic on which oaths were taken (_Annals of Clonmacnois_,
anno 1139; _Four Masters_, anno 1143). It was doubtless a relic
preserved at Glendaloch, in which the people of Clonmacnois rightly or
wrongly claimed a part-proprietorship. The name is obscure: it means,
according to O'Davoren's Glossary, a calf or little cow: and Plummer
(VSH, i, p. clxxvii) suggests that this name may be an allusion to its
small size. But why "calf"? Is it an allusion to the original use of
the type of bells used for ecclesiastical purposes in Ireland, as
cow-bells?

Angels were seen by Saint Colman to fill the space between heaven and
earth to receive the soul of Pope Gregory (VSH, i, 264).

LI. THE EARTH OF CIARAN'S TOMB DELIVERS COLUM CILLE FROM A WHIRLPOOL
(LA, LB)

This is perhaps an imitation of the tale of the Empress Helena, who,
when returning after her discovery of the True Cross, was delivered
from a storm by casting one of the Nails into the sea. Colum Cille was
saved from the whirlpool of