When the church was halfway up the people held a kind of
meeting one night among themselves, when the saint was asleep in his
bed, to see if they did really believe and no mistake in it.
The leading man got up, and this is what he said: that they should
go down and throw their tools over the cliff, for if there was such
a man as God, and if the saint was as well known to Him as he said,
then he would be as well able to bring up the tools out of the sea
as they were to throw them in.
They went then and threw their tools over the cliff.
When the saint came down to the church in the morning the workmen
were all sitting on the stones and no work doing.
'For what cause are you idle?' asked the saint.
'We have no tools,' said the men, and then they told him the story
of what they had done.
He kneeled down and prayed God that the tools might come up out of
the sea, and after that he prayed that no other people might ever be
as great fools as the people on the middle island, and that God
might preserve theft dark minds of folly to them fill the end of the
world. And that is why no man out of that island can tell you a
whole story without stammering, or bring any work to end without a
fault in it.
I asked him if he had known old Pat Dirane on the middle island, and
heard the fine stories he used to tell.
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