try it for, say, fifteen minutes. Regarding recitation of the Divine
Office it was of counsel, and probably of precept, that is should not be
from memory merely, but that the psalms should all be read. For this a
good reason was given by Maelruin, i.e. that the recitation might engage
the eye as well as the tongue and thought. An Irish homily refers to
the mortification of the saints and religious of the time as martyrdom,
of which it distinguishes three kinds--red, white, and blue. Red
martyrdom was death for the faith; white martyrdom was the discipline of
fasting, labour and bodily austerities; while blue martyrdom was
abnegation of the will and heartfelt sorrow for sin.

One of the puzzles of Irish hagiology is the great age attributed to
certain saints--periods of two hundred, three hundred, and even four
hundred years. Did the original compilers of the Life intend this?
Whatever the full explanation be the writers of the Lives were clearly
animated by a desire to make their saint cotemporary and, if possible, a
disciple, of one or other of the great monastic founders, or at any rate
to prove him a pupil of one of the great schools of Erin. There was
special anxiety to connect the saint with Bangor or Clonard. To effect
the connection in question it was sometimes necessary to carry the life
backwards, at other times to carry it forwards, and occasionally to
lengthen it both backwards and forwards. Dr. Chas. O'Connor gives a not
very convincing explanation of the three-hundred-year "Lives," scil.:--
that the saint lived in three centuries--during the whole of one century
and in the end and beginning respectively of the preceding and
succeeding centuries. This explanation, even if satisfactory for the
three-hundred-year Lives, would not help at all towards the Lives of
four hundred years. A common explanation is that the scribe mistook
numerals in the MS. before him and wrote the wrong figures. There is no
doubt that copying is a fruitful source of error as regards numerals.