a great famine raged during the first four months of his administration, and brigandage beset his community, even undertaken by noblemen. in the early thirteenth-century "life of st. lorcán", it was said that lorcán protected his community from brigandage through his solemn prayer, fasting, and miraculous curse. he was well regarded by both the community in glendalough and its secular neighbours for sanctity and charity to the poor.