Saint Kevin (modern Irish ; Old Irish , ; latinized ; 498 (reputedly)–3 June 618) is an Irish saint, known as the founder and first abbot of Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland. His feast day is 3 June. Early life Kevin's life is not well-documented because no contemporaneous material survives. There is a late-medieval Latin Vita, preserved among the records of the Franciscan Convent in Dublin, edited by John Colgan as part of the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae. According to that account, Kevin (like St. Columba) was of noble birth, the son of Coemlog and Coemell of Leinster. It says he was born in 498 AD at the Fort of the White Fountain and baptized by Saint Cronan of Roscrea. His given name Coemgen (anglicized Kevin) means "fair-begotten", or "of noble birth". A tradition cited in the 17th century makes Kevin the pupil of Saint Petroc of Cornwall, who had come to Leinster about 492. That claim is not found in the extant late-medieval and early-modern hagiography of the saint, and appears to be based in a Vita breviora which the Bollandist editors obtained from Henry Fitzsimon, but which is no longer extant. The Vita also contains a number of legends which, according to Colgan's co-editor Francis Baert, are of "doubtful veracity", but were kept in the 17th-century edition because they were assumed to date to the medieval period. For example, the text includes an infancy legend involving a white cow, said to have come to his parents' house every morning and evening, which supplied the milk for the baby. Glendalough Glendalough, or the Glen of two Lakes, is one of the most important sites of monastic ruins in Ireland. Before the arrival of St. Kevin this glen would have been desolate and remote and would have been ideal for a secluded retreat. Hermitage Kevin was ordained by Bishop Lugidus and, following his ordination, he moved on to Glendalough in order to avoid the company of his followers. He lived as a hermit in a partially man made cave (sometimes incorrectly described as a Bronze age tomb) now known as St. Kevin's Bed, to which he was led, in the account of the Vita, by an angel. St. Kevin's Bed can best be described as a man-made cave cut in the rock face very close to the edge of the mountain. It overlooks the upper lake from a height of about