Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Life of St. Declan of Ardmore (Author: Patrick Power)

chapter 38

On another day there came a woman to Declan's monastery not far from the city where she dwelt. She committed a theft that day in Declan's monastery as she had often done previously, and this is the thing she stole—a habellum; she departed homewards taking it with her and there met her a group of people on the highway, and the earth, in their presence, swallowed her up, and she cast out the tabellum from her bosom and it was quickly turned into a stone which the wayfarers took and brought with them to Declan. Declan himself had in supernatural vision seen all that happened to the woman in punishment of her theft, and the name


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of Declan was magnified owing to those marvels so that fear took possession of all-those present and those absent. The stone in question remains still in Declan's graveyard in his own town of Ardmore-Declain, where it stands on an elevated place in memory of this miracle.