The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore

itents the first brand of gruel was prescribed for light offences, the second kind for sins of ordinary gravity, and the "gruel under water" for extraordinary crimes (vid. Messrs. Gwynne and Purton on the Rule of Maelruin, &c.) The most implicit, exact and prompt obedience was prescribed and observed. An overseer of Mochuda's monastery at Rahen had occasion to order by name a young monk called Colman to do something which involved his wading into a river. Instantly a dozen Colmans plunged into the water. Instances of extraordinary penance abound, beside which the austerities of Simon Stylites almost pale. The Irish saints' love of solitude was also a very marked characteristic. Desert places and solitary islands of the ocean possessed an apparently wonderful fascination for them. The more inaccessible or forbidding the island the more it was in request as a penitential retreat. There is hardly one of the hundred islands around the Irish coast which, one time or another, did not harbour some saint o