Chapter VII: Ciaran and the Fox

7. Then there came a fox to Ciaran from out the wood, and behaved tamely with him. It would often visit him, so that he bade it do him a service, namely, to carry his book of Psalms between him and his teacher, deacon Uis. For when he would say in Fidharta, "Say this in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," Ciaran would hear in Raith Cremthainn, from that on to the end of the lesson; and the fox would be awaiting the lesson obediently till its writing on wax was completed, and thereafter he would carry it with him to Ciaran.[11]

Once on a time his natural treacherousness broke forth in the fox, and he began to eat the book: for he was greedy for the leather that was bound around the book outside. While he was eating the book, there came Oengus son of Cremthann with kernes and with hounds, so that they chased him, and he found no sanctuary till he came under the cloak of Ciaran. The name of God and Ciaran's were magnified by the rescue of the book from the fox and by the rescue of the fox from the hounds. The book is what is now called the "Tablet of Ciaran."

Most consonant with these things is it for evil men who are near to the Church, and who profit by the advantages of the Church--communion, and baptism, and food, and teaching--and withal stay not from persecuting the Church, until there come upon themselves the persecution of some king, or mortality, or a disease unknown: and then they needs must flee under the protection of the Church, as the fox went under the cloak of Ciaran![12]