establishment. It is not necessary, by the way, to assume that the
Church in Ireland as Patrick left it, was formally monastic. The clergy
lived in community, it is true, but it was under a somewhat elastic
rule, which was really rather a series of Christian and Religious
counsels. A more formal monasticism had developed by the time of
Mochuda; this was evidently influenced by the spread of St. Benedict's
Rule, as Patrick's quasi-monasticism, nearly two centuries previously,
had been influenced by Pachomius and St. Basil, through Lerins. The
real peculiarity in Ireland was that when the community-missionary-
system was no longer necessary it was not abandoned as in other lands
but was rather developed and emphasised.



II.--ST. DECLAN.


"If thou hast the right, O Erin,
to a champion of battle to aid thee
thou hast the head of a hundred
thousand, Declan of Ardmore."
(Martyrology of Oengus).


Five miles or less to the east of Youghal Harbour, on the southern
Irish coast, a short, rocky and rather elevated promontory juts, with a
south-easterly trend, into the ocean. Maps and admiralty charts call it
Ram Head, but the real name is Ceann-a-Rama and popularly it is often
styled Ardmore Head. The material of this inhospitable coast is a hard
metamorphic schist which bids defiance to time and weather. Landwards