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
instance, three hundred years each; St. Mochaemog is credited with a
life of four hundred and thirteen years, and so on!

Clan, or tribe, rivalry was doubtless one of the things which made for
the invention and multiplication of miracles. If the patron of the
Decies is credited with a miracle, the tribesmen of Ossory must go one
better and attribute to their tribal saint a marvel more striking still.
The hagiographers of Decies retort for their patron by a claim of yet
another miracle and so on. It is to be feared too that occasionally a
less worthy motive than tribal honour prompted the imagination of our
Irish hagiographers--the desire to exploit the saint and his honour for
worldly gain.

The "Lives" of the Irish Saints contain an immense quantity of material