ABOUT fourteen years before the date at which we write, there occurred during the spring a very great and long-continued drought in these marshy regions, in so much that the threat denounced against sinners in the Book of Leviticus seemed to impend over the people: ‘I will give to you the heaven above as iron, and the earth as brass. Your labour shall be spent in vain, the ground shall not bring forth her increase, nor the trees their fruit,’ etc. We therefore, reading these words, and fearing the impending calamity, took counsel together, and resolved that some of the senior members of the community should walk round a newly ploughed and sowed field, taking with them the white tunic of St. Columba, and some books written in his own hand, that they should raise in the air, and shake three times the tunic which the saint wore at the hour of his death; and that they then should open the books and read them on the little hill of the angels (now called Sithean Mor), where the citizens of the heavenly country were occasionally seen to descend at the bidding of the blessed man. When these directions had been executed in the manner prescribed, then, strange to relate, the sky, which during the preceding months of March and April had been cloudless, was suddenly covered with dense vapours that arose from the sea with extraordinary rapidity; copious rain fell day and night, and the parched earth being sufficiently moistened, produced its fruits in good season, and yielded the same year a most abundant harvest. And thus the invocation of the very name of the blessed man, by the exhibition of his tunic and books, obtained seasonable relief at the same time for many places and much people.