man.

The foregoing charges may, or must, be admitted partially or in full,
but such admission implies no denial of the historical value of the
Lives. All archaic literature, be it remembered, is in a greater or
less degree uncritical, and it must be read in the light of the writer's
times and surroundings. That imagination should sometimes run riot and
the pen be carried beyond the boundary line of the strictly literal is
perhaps nothing much to be marvelled at in the case of the supernatural
minded Celt with religion for his theme. Did the scribe believe what he
wrote when he recounted the multiplied marvels of his holy patron's
life? Doubtless he did--and why not! To the unsophisticated monastic
and mediaeval mind, as to the mind of primitive man, the marvellous and
supernatural is almost as real and near as the commonplace and natural.
If anyone doubts this let him study the mind of the modern Irish
peasant; let him get beneath its surface and inside its guardian ring of
shrinking reserve; there he will find the same material exactly as
composed the mind of the tenth century biographers of Declan and
Mochuda. Dreamers and visionaries were of as frequent occurrence in Erin
of ages ago as they are to-day. Then as now the supernatural and
marvellous had a wondrous fascination for the Celtic mind. Sometimes the
attraction becomes so strong as seemingly to overbalance the faculty of
distinguishing fact from fancy. Of St. Bridget we are gravely told that
to dry her wet cloak she hung in out on a sunbeam! Another Saint sailed
away to a foreign land on a sod from his native hillside! More than
once we find a flagstone turned into a raft to bear a missionary band
beyond the seas! St. Fursey exchanged diseases with his friend
Magnentius, and, stranger still, the exchange was arranged and effected
by correspondence! To the saints moreover are ascribed lives of
incredible duration--to Mochta, Ibar, Seachnal, and Brendan, for