Page:Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie Vol. 5.djvu/37

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THE LIFE OF COLUMB CILLE.
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had not previously died. And they told that it was they were there, and everything that befell them and the purpose for which they had come. Then C. c. told them and everybody that the respite they enjoyed from dying again was only while he should be giving them absolution and fortifying them with the sanction of the church. That proved true as C. c. had said, for he gave them absolution upon the spot and they died immediately. And he ordered that they should be buried with the greatest honours, and that a little chapel of a temple should be built over them. And 'the Temple of the seven' is its name from that day to this. And as often as the daughter of the king of India was buried with her brothers her body used to be found above ground again. When C. c. saw that, he blessed and consecrated a special place for herself outside the Temple, a little away from it, at the western side; and she was buried there, and her body did not rise over ground from that out. And many is the wonder and miracle wrought by the clay of that grave in which she was buried ever since. And C. c. revealed to everybody that the reason why the body of that woman saint did not rest in the same tomb with the bodies of her brothers was that as she had disliked the conversation of men while alive she did not wish to have her body in the same place with her brothers as an example of that. 'It is easy for us to see' said C. c. 'when that woman saint disliked so much to have her body in the same tomb with those holy brothers of hers, how much women and men who desire to preserve their virginity ought to shun the conversation of each other in this world.'

114. Once of a time as C. c. was saying his office and prayers beside the sea at Port Toraige in the north in the country of cinel Conaill there came a great thirst and drought upon a young cleric, a fosterling of his, who was with him at the time, viz. Fíonán of grace, and there was no water near them at the time. And C. c. seeing Fíonán in danger of death for the greatness of his thirst, Struck three blows with his crozier upon the front of a rock of stone which was before him, and there sprang three streams of water out of it, so that Fínán slacked his thirst and his drought with that water. And those streams are coming out of that rock to-day as they were the first day; and that water works many wonders and miracles every day from that time hither. And the name of God and