462 COENISH DEDICATIONS. 



some time, and then said, ''A blessing light on thee for thy 

 melody, and may Heaven be thy due." Then he refilled his ears 

 with wax. The harper urged that he might continue to play. 

 " No," said Brendan, " Seven years ago I was in a church after 

 preaching, and after mass, and I was alone, and having gone to 

 Christ's Body, there came on me an ineffable longing to be with 

 my Lord. And as I was in this ecstasy, trembling and afraid, 

 I saw a pretty bird on the window sill, and it flew in and lighted 

 on the altar — and there sang, and his song was as the music of 

 heaven, and after that I have cared no more to hear the strains 

 of earth." 



Feeling his end approach, he visited his sister and told her 

 that he was about to die. She was full of grief, but he was 

 now very old, in his ninety-sixth year. On the following Sunday 

 he stood at the altar, and turning said to all present: "I commend 

 my death to your prayers." " But," said his sister, " What do 

 you fear?" "I fear," he replied, "dying alone, I fear the 

 dreadful way of darkness, I fear the unwonted land, the face of 

 the King, and the sentence of the Judge." Then he bade the 

 brothers take his body to Clonfert, and after he had kissed his 

 sister and the rest, he said, '' Salute all my kinsfolk for me, and 

 tell them to keep their tongues from blasphemous talk. For 

 evil talkers are sons of perdition." 



That same day he died, May 16, 577. 



A curious entry in Leland's Collectanea is that in 1199, at 

 Ludlow, in Shropshire, whilst enlarging the parish church, a 

 tumulus was opened that contained three cists, in which bodies 

 were found, and with them an inscription to the effect that they 

 were the bodies of S. Ferco (Finloga), the father of S. Brendan, 

 of S. Aurona his mother, the aunt of S. Columba, and of S. Cochel 

 his cousin. That the cists and skeletons were found is likely 

 enough, the inscriptions were interested forgeries, a thing not 

 unknown at a period when there was an appetite for relics. 

 The bodies were taken up and enshrined in the church (Collect, 

 iii. 4U7). 



Dedication to S. Brendan — the church of Brendon (Devon) . 

 At Langonnet in Morbihan is a chapel dedicated to him, and he 

 is patrou of a parish iu 8. Brieuc. 



