(A.D. 665.)
[Authority, a life written in the 12th century, from tradition.
Like so many of these Irish lives which were handed down from
generation to generation, it contains many improbabilities.]
S. Fechin was abbot of Foure, in West Meath, where he governed three
hundred monks. He is said to have pitied the monks engaged in grinding
their corn in querns, he therefore brought water from a marsh to the
monastery, by cutting a tunnel through the rock, and then established a
water mill. Of this Giraldus Cambrensis relates the following:--There is
a mill at Foure, which S. Fechin made most miraculously with his own
hands, in the side of a certain rock. No women are allowed to enter
either this mill or the church of the saint; and the mill is held in as
much reverence by the natives as any of the churches dedicated to
him.[98] The Saint finding a poor leper, full of sores one day, took
him to the Queen, and bade her minister to him as to Christ. She bravely
overcame her repugnance, and tended him with gentle care.[99] Fechin was
the son of Coelcharna, descendant of Eochad Fionn, brother to the famous
king Conn of the Hundred Battles, and his mother Lassair was of the
royal blood of Munster. When fit to be sent to school he was placed
under S. Nathy of Achonry. Having finished his studies he was ordained
priest, and retired to a solitary place at Fore in Westmeath, there to
live as a hermit. But he was followed by many disciples, and Fore became
a monastery of three hundred monks. He also established a religious
house in the island of Immagh, near the coast of Galway. The inhabitants
were then pagans, but Fechin and his monks converted them. His influence
was very great with the kings and princes of his age. He died of a
dreadful pestilence which swept Ireland in A.D. 665.
[Illustration: The Peacock as a Christian Emblem.]