The young student Brandan was awakened in the morning by the crowing of
the cock in the great Irish abbey where he dwelt; he rose, washed his face
and hands and dressed himself, then passed into the chapel, where he
prayed and sang until the dawn of the day. "With song comes courage" was
the motto of the abbey. It was one of those institutions like great
colonies,--church, library, farm, workshop, college, all in one,--of which
Ireland in the sixth century was full, and which existed also elsewhere.
Their extent is best seen by the modern traveller in the remains of the
vast buildings at Tintern in England, scattered over a wide extent of
country, where you keep coming upon walls and fragments of buildings which
once formed a part of a single great institution, in which all the life of
the community was organized, as was the case in the Spanish missions of
California. At the abbey of Bangor in Wales, for instance, there were two
thousand four hundred men,--all under the direction of a comparatively
small body of monks, who were trained to an amount of organizing skill
like that now needed for a great railway system. Some of these men were
occupied, in various mechanic arts, some in mining, but most of them in
agriculture, which they carried on with their own hands, without the aid
of animals, and in total silence.

Having thus labored in the fields until noonday, Brandan then returned
that he might work in the library, transcribing ancient manuscripts or
illustrating books of prayer. Having to observe silence, he wrote the name
of the book to give to the librarian, and if it were a Christian work, he
stretched out his hand, making motions with his fingers as if turning over
the leaves; but if it were by a pagan author, the monk who asked for it
was required to scratch his ear as a dog does, to show his contempt,
because, the regulations said, an unbeliever might well be compared to
that animal[1]. Taking the book, he copied it in the Scriptorium or
library, or took it to his cell, where he wrote all winter without a fire.