Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The birth and life of St Mo Ling (Author: [unknown])

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chapter 1

CHAPTER I

1

There was a landholder hundreded,8 wonderful, famous, trophied, in the plains of capacious Luachair,9 with abundance of spoils and kine and droves of cattle. His name was Fáelán the Fair, son of Feradach, son of Odran, son of Dega, son of Findlug, from whom are the Húi Dega of Leinster10 and Ossory. Thrice fifty herdsmen is the number that was keeping his herds and his cattle and his flocks with him. Though many were the herdsmen he had, they could not drive them to their sheds or tend them, because of their multitude. So this is what the herdsmen used to do, put their clothes on their sticks for them (and frighten them), so that they used to go in their running crowds from the smooth plains of the province, towards their sheds and their full cattlefields.

2

Now no worldly wealth was lacking to him or to his wife. One night, then, when they were on the bulwark11 of their fort and their full steading, his wife said to him: ‘Hast thou, O husband, property in (thy) province, or land in fee? and if there were,’ she says, ‘we should fitly go to it, there to spend our vast wealth and build a common guesthouse, so that every one might find his fill with us at our proper place, so that we may have posterity, and that our friends and counsellors may obtain somewhat from us.’


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3

‘Good, my girl,’ quoth Fáelán; ‘may victory and benison attend thee! Good is what thou sayest, and if I knew that it was well for thee (?) we would go. Far from thee it is to our country and our abode.’

4

So then by dint of luck and charm, he proceeded, with plenty of spoils and kine and droves and flocks and herds and cattle, so that his heritage and his own land, to wit, Húi Dega of Leinster and Húi Dega of Ossory, was filled by him with his riches, so that in the district or in the country there was nothing unfilled by him, neither fortress nor fastness nor goodly steading that did not abound with his wealth: wherefore in his time there was no one to reach him as to opulence.