Hence Mochuda travelled to Molua Mac Coinche’s monastery of Clonfert [Kyle], on the confines of Leinster and Munster.  He found Molua in the harvest field in the midst of a ‘meitheal’ [team] of reapers.  Before setting out on this present journey of his Mochuda had, with one exception, dismissed all his disciples to their various homes for he, but with a single companion, did not wish to enter the strange land ostentatiously.  The single follower whom Mochuda had retained wishing to remain at Clonfert, said to St. Molua:  “Holy father, I should wish to remain here with you.”  Molua answered:—­“I shall permit you, brother, if your pious master consents.”  Mochuda, having dismissed so many, would not make any difficulty about an individual, and so he gave the monk his freedom.  Mochuda thereupon set out alone, which, Molua’s monks observing, they remark:—­“It were time for that aged man to remain in some monastery, for it is unbecoming such a (senior) monk to wander about alone.”  They did not know that he, of whom they spoke, was Mochuda, for it was not the custom of the latter to make himself known to many.  “Say not so,” said Molua (to the censorious brethren), “for the day will come when our community and city will seem but insignificant beside his—­though now he goes alone; you do not know that he is Mochuda whom many obey and whom many more will obey in times to come.”

As Mochuda went on his lonely way he met two monks who asked him whither he was bound.  “To Colman Elo,” he answered.  Then said one of them to him:—­“Take us with you as monks and subjects,” for they judged him from his countenance to be a holy man.  Mochuda accepted the monks and they journeyed on together till they came to Colman’s monastery [Lynally].  Mochuda said to Colman:  “Father I would remain here with you.”  “Not so,” replied Colman, “but go you to a place called Rahen in this vicinity; that is the place ordained by God for your dwelling and you shall have there a large community in the service of God and from that place you will get your first name—­Mochuda of Rahen.”  Having said farewell to Colman and obtained his blessing Mochuda, with his two monks, set out for the place indicated and there in the beginning he built a small cell and Colman and he often afterwards exchanged visits.

Colman had in the beginning—­some time previous to Mochuda’s advent—­ contemplated establishing himself at Rahen and he had left there two or three [bundles] of rods remarking to his disciples that another should come after him for whom and not for himself God had destined this place.  It was with this material that Mochuda commenced to build his cell as Colman had foretold in the first instance.  He erected later a great monastery in which he lived forty years and had eight hundred and eighty seven religious under his guidance and rule.