at Rahen, for Colman, assisted by angels, was in the habit
of consecrating cemeteries and God gave him the privilege that no one
should go to hell who was interred in a grave consecrated by him.
Colman said to him:--"Return home and on the fifth day from now I shall
follow." Mochuda returned home, where he remained till the fifth day,
when, seeing that Colman had not arrived he came again to the latter.
"Father," said he, "why have you not kept your promise?" To which
Colman replied, "I came and an angel with me that day and consecrated
your cemetery. Return now and you will find it marked (consecrated) on
the south side of your own cell. Lay it out as it is there indicated
and think not that its area is too small, because a larger will be
consecrated for you later, by the angels, in the southern part of Erin,
namely--in Lismore." Mochuda returned and found the cemetery duly marked
as Colman had indicated.
About the same time clerics came across Slieve Luachra in the territory
of Kerry to the church of Ita, honoured [abbess] of Conall Gabhra. They
had with them a child upon seeing whom Ita wept bitterly. The clerics
demanded why she cried at seeing them. "Blessed," she answered, "is the
hour in which that youth in your company was born, for no one shall ever
go to hell from the cemetery in which he will be buried, but, alas, for
me, that I cannot be buried therein." The clerics asked what cemetery
it was in which he should be buried. "In Mochuda's cemetery," said she,
"which though it be as yet unconsecrated will be honoured and famous in
times to come." This all came to pass, for the youth afterwards became
a monk under Mochuda and he is buried in the monastic cemetery of
Lismore as Ita had foretold.
A child on another occasion fell off the bridge of Rahen into the river
and was drowned. The body was a day and a night in the water before it
was recovered. Then it was brought to Mochuda who, moved with
compassion for the father in his loss of an only son, restored the boy
to life. Moreover he himself fostered the child for a considerable time
afterwards and when the youth had grown up, he sent him back to his own
country of Delbhna. Mochuda's foster son begat sons and daughters and he
gave himself and them, as well as his inheritance, to God and Mochuda,
and his descendants are to this day servile tenants of the monastery.
Once as Mochuda, with large offerings, was returning from Kerry to Rahen
he p
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