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 or solitary upon its rocky bosom.

The testimony of the "Lives" to the saints' love and practice of prayer
is borne out by the evidence of more trustworthy documents. Besides
private prayers, the whole psalter seems to have been recited each day,
in three parts of fifty psalms each. In addition, an immense number of
Pater Nosters was prescribed. The office and prayers were generally
pretty liberally interspersed with genuflexions or prostrations, of
which a certain anchorite performed as many as seven hundred daily.
Another penitential action which accompanied prayer was the
'cros-figul.' This was an extension of the arms in the shape of a
cross; if anyone wants to know how difficult a practice this is let him
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?