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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
the biographer of St. Columcille, yet this was a work per-
formed during the intermittent leisure hours of a life
filled with action. Adamnan belonged to Columcille's
own family and was born twenty-seven years after the
death of his great kinsman. Adamnan, like Columcille,
whose life became a model to the youth of Erin, studied
in a number of Ireland's great seats of learning, then in
the meridian of their fame and influence, and in a bardic
composition embodying a memoir of the High Monarch
Finnachta there is given a story of his student days which
is valuable for the glimpse it gives into the Irish university
life of the period.
Finnachta, altho of the blood royal, was in his youth
quite poor. He had a house and wife but only one ox
and one cow. Now the king of Feara Ross strayed to the
neighborhood of Finnachta's house; and his wife and a
crowd of retainers were with him. Finnachta struck
the ox on the head and the cow on the head and feasted
all the king's people sumptuously, so that no one was
hungry. Then the king and queen of Feara Ross gave
large herds of cattle to the generous Finnachta and made
him a great man. Shortly after this, Finnachta, not
yet king, was coming with a large troop of horse to
his sister's house, and as they rode along they overtook
Adamnan, then a student, traveling the same road with
a vessel full of milk on his back. Anxious to get out of
the way Adamnan stumbled and fell, spilling all the
milk and breaking the jar to pieces. He ran after the
cavalcade and said: "O good man, I have reason to be
sad, for there are three good students in one house and
they have us as two messengers for there is always one
going about seeking food for the five, and it came to my
turn to-day. The gathering I made is scattered and,
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