Finnian of Clonard

Finnian of Clonard was born in Myshall, County Carlow, about 470 to an Ulsterman nobleman and a Leinster woman, then spent thirty years learning in Wales before returning to found a monastery beside the river Boyne. An angel warned him not to dig his well on one spot but to leave it as a cemetery, so he moved the monastery to Church Hill and dug a new well whose water is still sought for healing. His school grew so large that thirty pupils at once became the Twelve Apostles of Erin, and his own life ended in fever about 548, leaving Clonard as the heart of Meath and his name as the Teacher of the Irish Saints.