Thereafter Fintán departed to read with the wisest man in the whole of Ireland and Britain who was a strict abbot of a church by the lakes of Erne, and he stayed with him for 19 years, reading the Scripture, and there were nine other young men with him. And they were under a very strict [monastic] rule, such that they were not permitted to sieve the flour, but the flour with its chaff used to be mixed with water in a bowl and cooked over stones heated by fire, and this was their daily meal.