THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Prom the collection of 
 James Collins , 
 Drumcondra, Ireland. 
 PurchaS ed , 1918 . 
 
 5 
 
 C 7 Z(> m 
 
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LATELY PUBLLSHED. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE MONKS OF THE WEST, 
 
 FROM ST BENEDICT TO ST BERNARD. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT. 
 
 5 vols. 8vo, £ 2 , 12s. 6d. 
 
 “We must, however, say a word of praise for the anonymous trans- 
 lator, who has done his work throughout in a very creditable manner. 
 — Spectator. 
 
 “ If this version had reached us earlier it might have saved us some 
 trouble, as, on a comparison of our own extracts with the corresponding 
 passages, we have found it to be, in general, both faithful and spirited, 
 so that we should have been glad for the most part to make use of the 
 translator’s words instead of doing the work for ourselves.” Quarterly 
 Reviezu. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT. 
 
 3 vols. 8vo, £ 1 , ns. 6d. 
 
 . (Forming Vols. III., IV., and V. of the ‘ Monks of the West.’) 
 
 “ It is, indeed, a volume of peculiar interest to Englishmen, as deal- 
 ing with the religious history of the British Isles ; while it is not inferior 
 to its predecessors in vividness and eloquence of picturesque delineation, 
 or in their occasional touches of pathos. . . . On the whole, the 
 
 intellectual interest of the Count’s ‘ Monks of the West’ rests mainly on 
 this, that it is the work of a brilliant and accomplished layman and man 
 of the world, dealing with a class of characters who have generally been 
 left to the arid professional handling of ecclesiastical writers. Monta- 
 lembert sees their life as a whole, and a human whole ; and, with all his 
 zeal as an amateur hagiographer, he cannot but view them with some of 
 the independence of a mind trained to letters and politics .” — Pall Mall 
 Gazette. 
 
 W. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 
 
SAINT COLUMBA 
 
 APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA 
 
 C\\ar\e^ Va 
 
 Kevv/ d tBY THE 
 
 i \e-v\e 
 
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT 
 
 ^ II V 
 
 OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY 
 
 FIDE AC VERITATE 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXVIII 
 
The Narrative now given to the public is 
 taken from the Third Volume of the ‘ Monks 
 of the West,’ the first of the three volumes of 
 that work which are dedicated to the con- 
 version of the British Isles by the Celtic and 
 Romish Missionaries. It has appeared to some 
 that the life of St Columba — one of the most 
 heroic and the least remembered of the com- 
 batants in that great conflict — might, without 
 inconvenience, be detached from the rest of 
 the work, and would not on that account be 
 found less wanting in serious and original 
 interest. In accordance with their desire the 
 following pages are published. It is of im- 
 portance to bear in mind that everything in 
 this narrative is borne out by the best known 
 
 435039 
 
VI 
 
 Preface. 
 
 records of Irish hagiography. The Author 
 has not written one word which cannot be 
 justified or explained by documents the value 
 of which is proved or discussed in the notes 
 to his larger work. These notes it has been 
 necessary for the most part to exclude from 
 the present reprint, to avoid unnecessarily ex- 
 tending its bulk. But any curious or scep- 
 tical reader will do well to consult them in 
 the text of ‘ The Monks of the West/ before 
 forming his judgment of the men and trans- 
 actions of the sixth century in Ireland and 
 Scotland. 
 
 I 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE YOUTH OF COLUMBA, AND HIS MONASTIC 
 LIFE IN IRELAND. 
 
 The biographers of Columba. — His different names — 
 His royal origin. — The supreme kings of Ireland : 
 the O’Neills and O’Donnells ; Red Hugh.— Birth of 
 Columba ; vision of his mother— His monastic edu- 
 cation; jealousy of his comrades; Kieran; the two 
 Finnians; the school of Clonard. — Vision of the 
 guardian angel and the three brides. — The assassin 
 of a virgin struck by death at the prayer of Columba. 
 — His youthful influence in Ireland ; his monastic 
 foundations, especially at Durrow and at Derry ; his 
 song in honour of Derry. — His love for poetry; his 
 connection with the travelling bards. — He was him- 
 self a poet, a great traveller, and of a quarrelsome 
 disposition. — His passion for manuscripts. — Longa- 
 rad of the hairy legs and his bag of books. — Dispute 
 about the Psalter of Finnian; judgment of King 
 Diarmid, founder of Clonmacnoise. — Protest of Co- 
 lumba; he takes to flight, chanting the Hymn of 
 Confide7ice> and raises a civil war. — Battle of Cul- 
 
via 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Dreimlme; the Cathac or Psalter of battle. — Synod 
 of Teltown ; Columba is excommunicated. — St Bren- 
 dan takes part with Columba, who consults several 
 hermits, and among others Abban, in the Cell of 
 Tears. — The last of his advisers, Molaise, condemns 
 him to exile. — Twelve of his disciples follow him; 
 devotion of the young Mochonna. — Contradictory re- 
 ports concerning the first forty years of his life, . I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 COLUMBA AN EMIGRANT IN CALEDONIA — THE 
 HOLY ISLE OF IONA. 
 
 Aspect of the Hebridean archipelago. — Columba first 
 lands at Oronsay, but leaves it because Ireland is 
 visible from its shores. — Description of Iona. — First 
 buildings of the new monastery. — What remains of 
 it. — Enthusiasm of Johnson on landing there in the 
 eighteenth century. — Columba bitterly regrets his 
 country. — Passionate elegies on the pains of exile. — 
 Note upon the poem of Altus . — Proofs in his bio- 
 graphy of the continuance of that patriotic regret. — 
 
 The stork comes from Ireland to Iona, . .31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE APOSTOLATE OF COLUMBA AMONG THE 
 SCOTS AND PICTS. 
 
 Moral transformation of Columba. — His progress in 
 spiritual life. — His humility. — His charity. — His 
 preaching by tears. — The hut which formed his 
 abbatial palace at Iona. — Plis prayers ; his work of 
 transcription. — His crowd of visitors. — His severity 
 
 
Contents . 
 
 IX 
 
 in the examination of monastic vocations. A’idus 
 the Black, the murderer of Columba’s enemy King 
 Diarmid, rejected by the community. —Penance of 
 Libran of the Rushes.— Columba encourages the 
 despairing and unmasks the hypocrites.— Monastic 
 propaganda of Iona ; Columba’s fifty-three founda- 
 tions in Scotland.— His relations with the people 
 of Caledonia : First with the colony of Dalriadians 
 from Ireland, whose king was his relative ; he en- 
 lightens and confirms their imperfect Christianity.— 
 Ambushes laid for his chastity.- His connection 
 with the Piets, who occupied the north of Britain.— 
 The dorsum Britannia .— Columba their first mis- 
 sionary.— The fortress gates of their king Brudus 
 open before him.— He struggles with the Druids m 
 their last refuge. — He preaches by an interpreter. 
 His respect for natural virtue.— Baptism of two old 
 Pictish chiefs. — Columba’s humanity : he redeems 
 an Irish captive. — Frequent journeys among the 
 Piets, whose conversion he accomplishes before he 
 dies . — His fellow- workers, Malruve and Drostan ; 
 the Monastery of Tears, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 COLUMBA CONSECRATES THE KING OF THE SCOTS.— 
 HE GOES TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF IRE- 
 LAND, DEFENDS THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE 
 HIBERNIO-SCOTIC COLONY, AND SAVES THE COR- 
 PORATION OF BARDS. 
 
 Passionate solicitude of Columba for his relatives and 
 countrymen.— He protects King Aldan in his strug- 
 gle with the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria.— The 
 same king is crowned by Columba at Iona ; the first 
 example of a Christian consecration of kings.— The 
 Stone of Destiny: The descendants of Aldan.— 
 
X 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Synod or Parliament of Drumceitt in Ireland. — 
 Aedh, king of Ireland, and A'idan, king of the Irish 
 colonists in Scotland. — The independence of the 
 new Scottish kingdom is recognised through the in- 
 fluence of Columba. — He interposes in favour of the 
 bards, whom the king had proposed to outlaw. — 
 Power and excesses of that corporation. — By means 
 of Columba, the good grain is not burned with the 
 weeds. — The bards’ song of gratitude in honour of 
 their saviour. — Columba, reproved by his disciple, 
 desires that this song should not be repeated during 
 his life. — Superstitious regard attached to it after his 
 ! death. — Intimate union between music, poetry, and 
 religion in Ireland. — The bards, transformed into 
 minstrels, are the first champions of national inde- 
 pendence and Catholic faith against the English con- 
 quest. — Fiercely assailed, they yet continue to exist 
 up to our own day. — Moore’s Irish Melodies . — The 
 Celtic muse at the service of the vanquished in the 
 Highlands of Scotland as in Ireland, . . 6S 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COLUMBA’s RELATIONS WITH IRELAND — CONTINUED. 
 
 Cordial intercourse of Columba with the Irish princes. 
 
 — Prophecy upon the future of their sons. — Domnall, 
 the king’s son, obtains the privilege of dying in his 
 bed. — Columba visits the Irish monasteries. — Pop- 
 ular enthusiasm. — Vocation of the young idiot after- 
 wards known as St Ernan. — Solicitude of Columba 
 for the distant monasteries and monks. — He protects 
 them from excessive labours and accidents. — He 
 exercises authority over laymen. — Baithen, his cou- 
 sin-german and principal assistant. — The respect 
 shown to both in an assembly of learned men, . 87 
 
Contents . 
 
 xi 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 COLUMBA, THE PROTECTOR OF SAILORS AND AGRI- 
 CULTURISTS, THE FRIEND OF LAYMEN, AND THE 
 AVENGER OF THE OPPRESSED. 
 
 His universal solicitude and charity during all his mis- 
 sionary life. — The sailor-monks : seventy monks of 
 Iona form the crew of the monastic fleet ; their boats 
 made of osiers covered with hides. — Their boldness 
 at sea : the whirlpool of Corryvreckan.— Columba’s 
 prayer protects them against sea-monsters. — Their 
 love of solitude leads them into unknown seas, 
 where they discover St Kilda, Iceland, and the Faroe 
 Isles. — Cormac in Orkney, and in the icy ocean.— 
 Columba often accompanies them : his voyages among 
 the Hebrides.— The wild boar of Skye.— He subdues 
 tempests by his prayer : he invokes his friend St 
 Kenneth. — He is himself invoked during life, and 
 after his death, as the arbiter of winds. — Filial com- 
 plaints of the monks when their prayers are not 
 granted. — The benefits which he conferred on the 
 agricultural population disentangled from the maze of 
 fables : Columba discovers fountains, regulates irri- 
 gations and fisheries, shows how to graft fruit-trees, 
 obtains early harvests, interferes to stop epidemics, 
 cures diseases, and procures tools for the peasants. 
 His special solicitude for the monkish labourers : he 
 blesses the milk when it is brought from the cow : his 
 breath refreshes them on their return from harvest.— 
 The blacksmith carried to heaven by his alms —His 
 relations with the layman whose hospitality he claims : 
 prophecy touching the rich miser who shuts his door 
 upon him. — The five cows of his Lochaber host.— 
 The poacher’s spear.— He pacifies and consoles all 
 whom he meets.— His prophetic threats against the 
 felons and rievers. — Punishment inflicted upon the 
 assassin of an exile. — Brigands of royal blood put 
 
Contents. 
 
 • •• 
 
 XU 
 
 down by Columba at the risk of his life. — He enters 
 into the sea up to his knees to arrest the pirate who 
 had pillaged his friend. — The standard-bearer of 
 Caesar and the old missionary, . . .96 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COLUMBA’S LAST YEARS — HIS DEATH — HIS CHARACTER. 
 
 Columba the confidant of the joys and consoler of the 
 sorrows of domestic life. — He blesses little Hector 
 with the fair locks.— He prays for a woman in her 
 delivery; he reconciles the wife of a pilot to her 
 husband. — Vision of the saved wife who receives 
 her husband in heaven. — He continues his missions 
 to the end of his life. — Visions before death. — The 
 Angels’ Hill. — Increase of austerities. — Nettle-soup 
 his sole food. — A supernatural light surrounds him 
 during his nightly work and prayers. — His death is 
 retarded for four years by the prayers of the com- 
 munity. — When this respite has expired, he takes 
 leave of the monks at their work ; he visits and 
 blesses the granaries of the monastery. — He an- 
 nounces his death to his attendant Diarmid. — His 
 farewell to his old white horse. — Last benediction to 
 the isle of Iona ; last work of transcription ; last 
 message to his community. — He dies in the church. 
 
 — Review of his life and character, . . .122 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPIRITUAL DESCENDANTS OF ST COLUMBA. 
 
 His posthumous glory : miraculous visions on the night 
 of his death : rapid extension of his worship. — His 
 solitary funeral and tomb at Iona. — His translation 
 
Contents . 
 
 xui 
 
 to Ireland, where he rests between St Patrick and St 
 Bridget.— He is, like Bridget, feared by the Anglo- 
 Norman conquerors. — John de Courcy and Richard 
 Strongbow. — The Vengeance of Columba. Suprem- 
 acy of Iona over the Celtic churches of Caledonia 
 and the north of Ireland.— Singular privilege and 
 primacy of the abbot of Iona in respect to bishops. 
 The ecclesiastical organisation of Celtic countries ex- 
 clusively monastic. — Moderation and respect of Co- 
 lumba for the episcopal rank. — He left behind him 
 no special rule. — That which he followed differed in 
 no respect from the usual customs of the monastic 
 order, which proves the exact observance of all the 
 precepts of the Church, and the chimerical nature of 
 all speculations upon the primitive Protestantism of 
 the Celtic Church.— But he founded an order, which 
 lasted several centuries under the title of the Family 
 of Columb-kill. — The clan and family spirit was the 
 governing principle of Scottish monasticism. — Baithen 
 and the eleven first successors of Columba at Iona 
 were all members of the same race. — The two lines, 
 lay and ecclesiastical, of the great founders.— The 
 headquarters of the order transferred from Iona to 
 Kells, one of Columba’ s foundations in Ireland. — The 
 Coarbs . — Posthumous influence of Columba upon 
 the Church of Ireland .— Lex Columcille. —Monastic 
 Ireland in the seventh century the principal centre of 
 Christian knowledge and piety.— Each monastery a 
 school. — The transcription of manuscripts, which 
 had been one of Columba’s favourite occupations, 
 continued and extended by his family even upon the 
 continent.— Historic annals. — The Festiloge of Angus 
 the Culdee.— The Culdees. — Propagation of Irish 
 monasticism abroad. — Irish saints and monasteries 
 in France, Germany, and Italy.— The Irish saint 
 Cathal venerated in Calabria under the name of San 
 Cataldo . — Monastic university of Lismore : crowd 
 of foreign students, especially of Anglo-Saxons, in 
 
XIV 
 
 Contents. 
 
 Irish monasteries. — Confusion of temporal affairs in 
 Ireland. — Civil wars and massacres. — Notes upon 
 king-monks. — Patriotic intervention of the monks. — 
 Adamnan, biographer and ninth successor of Colum- 
 ba, and his Law of the Innocents. — They are driven 
 from their cloisters by the English. — Influence of 
 Columba in Scotland. — Traces of the ancient Cale- 
 donian Church in the Hebrides. — Apostolical mission 
 of Kentigern in the country between the Clyde and 
 the Mersey. — His meeting with Columba His con- 
 
 nection with the king and queen of Strathclyde. — 
 Legend of the queen’s ring. — Neither Columba nor 
 Kentigern acted upon the Anglo-Saxons, who con- 
 tinued pagans, and maintained a threatening attitude. 
 
 — The last bishops of conquered Britain desert their 
 churches, . . . . . .138 
 
 3 
 
ST COLUMBA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Zty ¥outf) of ©olumfm an?) jjtss JHonagttc ffitfe 
 tn Irelant). 
 
 T COLUMBA, the apostle and monas- 
 tic hero of Caledonia, has had the 
 good fortune to have his history writ- 
 ten by another monk, almost a con- 
 temporary of his own, whose biography of him is as 
 delightful as it is edifying. This biographer, Adam- 
 nan, was the ninth successor of Columba as abbot 
 of his principal establishment at Iona, and in addi- 
 tion was related to him. Born only a quarter of a 
 century later, he had seen in his childhood the 
 actual companions of Columba and those who had 
 received his last breath. He wrote at the very 
 fountainhead, on the spot where his glorious prede- 
 
2 
 
 His various Names. 
 
 cessor had dictated his last words, surrounded by 
 scenes and recollections which still bore the trace 
 of his presence, or were connected with the inci- 
 dents of his life. A still earlier narrative written by 
 another abbot of Iona, and reproduced almost word 
 for word by Adamnan, forms the basis of his work, 
 which he has completed by a multitude of anec- 
 dotes and testimonies collected with scrupulous 
 care, and which altogether, though unfortunately 
 without chronological order, forms one of the most 
 living, attractive, and authentic relics of Christian 
 history.* 
 
 Like twenty other saints of the Irish calendar, 
 Columba bore a symbolical name borrowed from 
 the Latin, a name which signified the dove of the 
 Holy Ghost, and which was soon to be rendered 
 illustrious by his countryman Columbanus, the cele- 
 brated founder of Luxeuil, with whom many modern 
 historians have confounded him. To distinguish 
 the one from the other, and to indicate specially the 
 greatest Celtic missionary of the British Isles, we 
 shall adopt, from the different versions of his name, 
 that of Columba. His countrymen have almost 
 always named him Columb-kiU or cille, that is to 
 say, the dove of the cell , thus adding to his primitive 
 
 * Adamnan, who was born in 624, must have written the 
 biography of St Columba between 690 and 703, a period at 
 which he gave up the liturgical traditions of the Scots and 
 the direction of the Monastery of Iona to settle near the 
 Anglo-Saxon king of Northumbria, Aldfrid. 
 
Race from which descended . 3 . 
 
 name a special designation, intended to recall either 
 the essentially monastic character of the saint, or 
 the great number of communities founded and 
 governed by him. He was a scion of one of those 
 great Irish races, of whom it is literally true to say 
 that they lose themselves in the night of ages, but 
 which have retained to our own day, thanks to the 
 tenacious attachment of the Irish people to their 
 national recollections, through all the vicissitudes of 
 conquest, persecution, and exile, a rank more patri- 
 otic and popular than that of mere nobility or aris- 
 tocratic lineage. This was the great race of the 
 Nialls or O’Donnells ( clan Domhnaill ), which, 
 native to and master of all the north-western part 
 of the island (the modern counties of Tyrconnell, 
 Tyrone, and Donegal), held sovereign sway in Hi- 
 bernia and Caledonia, over the two shores of the 
 Scottish sea, during the sixth century. Almost 
 without interruption, up to 1168, kings, springing 
 from its different branches, exercised in Ireland the 
 supreme monarchy — that is to say, a sort of primacy 
 over the provincial kings, which has been compared 
 to that of metropolitan over bishops, but which 
 rather recalls the feudal sovereignty of the Salic 
 emperors, or of the kings of the family of Capet 
 over the great vassals of Germany and France, in 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Nothing could 
 be more unsettled or stormy than the exercise of 
 this sovereignty. It was incessantly disputed by 
 some vassal king, who generally succeeded by force 
 
4 
 
 The O' Neills and O' Donnells. 
 
 of arms in robbing the supreme monarch of his 
 crown and his life, and replacing him upon the 
 throne of Tara, with a tolerable certainty of being 
 himself similarly treated by the son of the dethroned 
 prince. Besides, the right of succession in Ireland 
 was not regulated by the law of primogeniture. 
 According to the custom known under the name 
 of Tanistry , the eldest blood -relation succeeded 
 every deceased prince or chief, and the brother 
 in consequence preceded the son in the order of 
 succession. 
 
 After the English conquest, the warlike and 
 powerful race of Nialls was able to maintain, by 
 dint of dauntless perseverance, a sort of indepen- 
 dent sovereignty in the north-west of Ireland. The 
 names of the O’Neills and O’Donnells, chiefs of its 
 two principal branches, and too often at war with 
 each other, are to be found on every page of the 
 annals of unhappy Ireland. After the Reformation, 
 when religious persecution had come in to aggra- 
 vate all the evils of the conquest, these two houses 
 supplied their indignant and unsubdued country 
 with a succession of heroic soldiers who struggled 
 to the death against the perfidious and sanguinary 
 despotism of the Tudors and Stuarts. Ten cen- 
 turies passed in such desperate struggles have not 
 weakened the traditions which link the saint whose 
 history we are about to tell to those champions of 
 an ancient faith and an outraged country. Even 
 under the reign of Elizabeth, the vassals of young 
 
5 
 
 Parentage of the Saint . 
 
 Hugh O’Donnell, called Red Hugh, so renowned 
 in the poetical records and popular traditions of 
 Erin, and the most dangerous antagonist of English 
 tyranny, recognised in him the hero indicated in 
 the prophetic songs of Columb-kill, and thus placed 
 his glory and that of his ancestors under the wing 
 of the Dove of the cells , as under a patronage at once 
 domestic and celestial. 
 
 The father of Columba was descended from one 
 of the eight sons of the great king Niall, of the 
 Nine Hostages, who was supreme monarch of all 
 
 Ireland from 379 to 4°5> at the P eriod when 
 Patrick was brought to the island as a slave. 
 Consequently he sprang from a race which had 
 reigned in Ireland for six centuries ; and in virtue 
 of the ordinary law of succession, might himself 
 have been called to the throne. His mother be- 
 longed to a reigning family in Leinster, one of the 
 four subordinate kingdoms of the island. He was 
 born at Gartan, in one of the wildest districts of 
 the present county of Donegal — where the slab of 
 stone upon which his mother lay at the moment of 
 his birth is still shown. He who passes a night 
 upon that stone is cured for ever from the pangs of 
 nostalgia, and will never be consumed, while absent 
 or in exile, by a too passionate love for his country. 
 Such at least is the belief of the poor Irish emi- 
 grants, who flock thither at the moment when they 
 are about to abandon the confiscated and ravaged 
 soil of their country to seek their living in America, 
 
6 Prophetic Dream . 
 
 moved by a touching recollection of the great mis- 
 sionary who gave up his native land for the love of 
 God and human souls. 
 
 Before his birth, his mother had a dream, which 
 posterity has accepted as a graceful and poetical 
 symbol of her son’s career. An angel appeared to 
 her, bringing her a veil covered with flowers of 
 wonderful beauty, and the sweetest variety of 
 colours ; immediately after she saw the veil carried 
 away by the wind, and rolling out as it fled over 
 plains, woods, and mountains : then the angel said 
 to her, “ Thou art about to become the mother of 
 a son, who shall blossom for heaven, who shall be 
 reckoned among the prophets of God, and who 
 shall lead numberless souls to the heavenly coun- 
 try.” This spiritual power, this privilege of leading 
 souls to heaven, was recognised by the Irish people, 
 converted by St Patrick, as the greatest glory which 
 its princes and great men could gain. 
 
 The Irish legends, which are always distinguished, 
 even amidst the wildest vagaries of fancy, by a high 
 and pure morality, linger lovingly upon the child- 
 hood and youth of the predestined saint. They 
 tell us how, confided in the first place to the care 
 of the priest who had baptised him, and who gave 
 him the first rudiments of literary education, he was 
 accustomed from his earliest years to the heavenly 
 visions which were to occupy so large a place in 
 his life. His guardian angel often appeared to 
 him ; and the child asked if all the angels in heaven 
 
 j. 
 
7 
 
 Legends of his Youth . 
 
 were as young and shining as he. A little later 
 Columba was invited by the same angel to choose 
 among all the virtues those which he would like / 
 best to possess. “ I choose,” said the youth, “ chas- 
 tity and wisdom;” and immediately three young 
 girls of wonderful beauty, but foreign air, appeared 
 to him, and threw themselves on his neck to 
 embrace him. The pious youth frowned, and re- 
 pulsed them with indignation. “ What !” they said ; 
 te then thou dost not know us?” “No, not the 
 least in the world.” “ We are three sisters whom 
 our father gives to thee to be thy brides.” “ Who, 
 then, is your father ? ” “ Our father is God, he is 
 
 Jesus Christ, the Lord and Saviour of the world.” 
 
 “ Ah, you have indeed an illustrious father. But 
 what are your names ?” “ Our names are Virginity, 
 Wisdom, and Prophecy; and we come to leave 
 thee no more, to love thee with an incorruptible 
 love.” 
 
 From the house of the priest, Columba passed 
 into the great monastic schools, which were not 
 only a nursery for the clergy of the Irish Church, 
 but where also young laymen of all conditions were 
 educated. Columba, like many others, there 
 learned to make his first steps in that monastic life 
 to which he had been drawn by the call of God. 
 He devoted himself not only to study and prayer, 
 but also to the manual toil then inseparable, in 
 Ireland and everywhere else, from a religious pro- 
 fession. Like all his young companions, he had to 
 
8 
 
 His early Training. 
 
 grind overnight the com for the next day’s food : 
 but when his turn came, it was so well and quickly 
 done that his companions suspected him of having 
 been assisted by an angel. The royal birth of 
 Columba procured him several distinctions in the 
 schools which were not always to the satisfaction 
 of his comrades. One of the latter, named Kieran, 
 who was also destined to fill a great place in Scotic 
 legend, became indignant at the ascendancy of 
 Columba : but while the two students disputed, 
 a celestial messenger came to Kieran and placed 
 before him an auger, a plane, and an axe, saying, 
 “ Look at these tools, and recollect that these are 
 all thou hast sacrificed for God, since thy father was 
 only a carpenter; but Columba has sacrificed the 
 sceptre of Ireland, which might have come to him 
 by right of his birth and the grandeur of his race.” 
 We learn from authentic documents that Columba 
 completed his monastic life under the direction of 
 two holy abbots, both bearing the name of Finnian. 
 The first, who was also a bishop, ordained him 
 deacon, but seems to have had him for a shorter 
 time under his authority than the second Finnian, 
 who, himself trained by a disciple of St Patrick, 
 had long lived in Cambria, near St David. Co- 
 lumba’s first steps in life are thus connected with 
 the two great monastic apostles of Ireland and 
 Cambria, the patriarchs of the two Celtic races 
 which up to this time had shown the most entire 
 fidelity to the Christian faith, and the greatest 
 
The Abbot Finnian. 
 
 9 
 
 predilection for monastic life. The Abbot Finnian, 
 who ordained Columba priest, ruled at Clonard the 
 monastery which he had founded, and of which we 
 have already spoken— one of those immense con- 
 ventual establishments which were to be found 
 nowhere but among the Celts, and which recalled 
 to recollection the monastic towns of the Theba'id. 
 He had made of his monastery one great school, 
 which was filled with the Irish youth, then, as 
 always, consumed by a thirst for religious instruc- 
 tion ; and we again find here the favourite number, 
 so often repeated by Celtic tradition, of three thou- 
 sand pupils, all eager to receive the instructions of 
 him who was called the Master of Saints. 
 
 While Columba studied at Clonard, being still 
 only a deacon, an incident took place which has 
 been proved by authentic testimony, and which 
 fixed the general attention upon him by giving a 
 first evidence of his supernatural and prophetic in- 
 tuition. An old Christian bard (the bards were 
 not all Christians), named Gemmain, had come to 
 live near the Abbot Finnian, asking from him, m 
 exchange for his poetry, the secret of fertilising the 
 soil. Columba, who continued all his life a passion- 
 ate admirer of the traditionary poetry of his nation, 
 determined to join the school of the bard, and to 
 share his labours and studies. The two were read- 
 ing together out of doors, at a little distance from 
 each other, when a young girl appeared in the dis- 
 tance pursued by a robber. At the sight of the 
 
io Death of a Murderer . 
 
 old man the young fugitive made for him with all 
 her remaining strength, hoping, no doubt, to find 
 safety in the authority exercised throughout Ire- 
 land by the national poets. Gemmain, in great 
 trouble, called his pupil to his aid to defend the 
 unfortunate child, who was trying to hide herself 
 under their long robes, when her pursuer reached 
 the spot. Without taking any notice of her 
 defenders, he struck her in the neck with his lance, 
 and was making off, leaving her dead at their feet. 
 The horrified old man turned to Columba. “ How 
 long,” he said, “will God leave unpunished this 
 crime which dishonours us ? ” “ For this moment 
 
 only,” said Columba, “not longer: at this very 
 hour, when the soul of this innocent creature 
 ascends to heaven, the soul of the murderer shall 
 go down to hell.” At the instant, like Ananias at 
 the words of Peter, the assassin fell dead. The 
 news of this sudden punishment, the story goes, 
 went over all Ireland, and spread the fame of the 
 young Columba far and wide. 
 
 It is easy to perceive, by the importance of the 
 monastic establishments which he had brought into 
 being even before he had attained the age of man- 
 hood, that his influence must have been as precoci- 
 ous as it was considerable. Apart from the virtues 
 of which his after life afforded so many examples, 
 it may be supposed that his royal birth gave him 
 an irresistible ascendancy in a country where, since 
 the introduction of Christianity, all the early saints, j 
 
Monasteries founded by the Saint . 1 i 
 
 like the principal abbots, belonged to reigning 
 families, and where the influence of blood and the 
 worship of genealogy continue, even to this day, to 
 a degree unknown in other lands. Springing, as 
 has been said, from the same race as the monarch 
 of all Ireland, and consequently himself eligible for 
 the same high office, which was more frequently 
 obtained by election or usurpation than inheritance 
 — nephew or near cousin of the seven monarchs 
 who successively wielded the supreme authority 
 during his life — he was also related by ties of blood 
 to almost all the provincial kings. Thus we see 
 him, during his whole career, treated on a footing 
 of perfect intimacy and equality by all the princes 
 of Ireland and of Caledonia, and exercising a sort 
 of spiritual sway equal or superior to the authority 
 of secular sovereigns. 
 
 Before he had reached the age of twenty-five he 
 had presided over the creation of a crowd of mon- 
 asteries. As many as thirty-seven in Ireland alone 
 recognised him as their founder. The most an- 
 cient and important of these foundations were situ- 
 ated, as was formerly that of St Bridget at Kildare, 
 in vast oak-forests, from which they took their 
 name. The first Durrow ( Dair-mack , Roboreti cam- 
 pus), where a cross and well bearing the name of 
 Columba are still to be seen, was erected in the 
 central region called the umbilical ’ or sacred middle 
 of Ireland. The other, Derry (. Doire-chalgaich Ro- 
 boretum Calgachi), is situated in the northern part 
 
12 Monastery of Derry . 
 
 of the island, in Columba’s native province, in the 
 hollow of a bay of that sea which separates Ireland 
 from Scotland. After having long been the seat of 
 a great and rich Catholic bishopric, it became, un- 
 der its modern name of Londonderry, one of the 
 principal centres of English colonisation, and was, 
 in 1690, the bulwark of the Protestant conquest 
 against the powerless efforts of the last of the 
 Stuart kings. But nothing then indicated the pos- 
 sibility of those lamentable changes, nor of the 
 miserable triumphs of inhuman force and wicked 
 persecution. 
 
 The young Columba was specially attached to 
 Derry, where he habitually lived. He superin- 
 tended with care not only the discipline and 
 studies of his community, but external matters, 
 even so far as to watch over the preservation of the 
 neighbouring forest. He would never permit an 
 oak to be cut down. Those which fell by natural 
 decay, or were struck down by the wind, were alone 
 made use of for the fire which was lighted on the 
 arrival of strangers, or distributed to the neighbour- 
 ing poor. The poor had a first right, in Ireland, as 
 everywhere else, to the goods of the monks ; and 
 the Monastery of Derry fed a hundred applicants 
 every day with methodical regularity. 
 
 At a more advanced age our saint gave vent to 
 his tenderness for his monastic creations in songs, 
 an echo of which has come down to us. The text 
 of these songs, such as has been preserved, is pro-j 
 
13 
 
 His affection for it . 
 
 bably later than Columba; but it is written in the 
 oldest Irish dialect, and it expresses, naturally 
 enough, the sentiments of the founder and his 
 disciples : — 
 
 “ Were all the tribute of Scotia * mine, 
 
 From its midland to its borders, 
 
 I would give all for one little cell 
 In my beautiful Derry. 
 
 For its peace and for its purity, 
 
 For the white angels that go 
 In crowds from one end to the other, 
 
 I love my beautiful Derry. 
 
 For its quietness and its purity, 
 
 For heaven’s angels that come and go 
 Under every leaf of the oaks, 
 
 I love my beautiful Derry. 
 
 My Derry, my fair oak grove, 
 
 My dear little cell and dwelling, 
 
 O God in the heavens above ! 
 
 Let him who profanes it be cursed. 
 
 Beloved are Durrow and Derry, 
 
 Beloved is Raphoe the pure, 
 
 * Let us repeat here that the names of Scotia, Scotti , when 
 they occur in works of the seventh to the twelfth century, are 
 almost exclusively applied to Ireland and the Irish, and were 
 extended later to Scotland proper, the north and west of which 
 were peopled by a colony of Irish Scots, only at a later period. 
 From thence comes the name of Erse, Erysche, or Irish , re- 
 tained up to our own day, by the Irish dialect, otherwise 
 called Gaelic. In Adamnan, as in Bede, Scotia means Ire- 
 land, and modern Scotland is comprehended m the general 
 title of Britannia. At a later period the name of Scotia dis- 
 appeared in Ireland, and became identified with the country 
 conquered and colonised by the Scots in Scotland, like that of 
 Anglia in Britain, and Francia in Gaul. 
 
14 The Saint as a Minstrel. 
 
 Beloved the fertile Drumhome, 
 
 Beloved are Sords and Kells ! 
 
 But sweeter and fairer to me 
 The salt sea where the sea-gulls cry 
 When I come to Derry from far, 
 
 It is sweeter and dearer to me— 
 
 Sweeter to me. ” 
 
 Nor was it only his own foundations which he 
 thus celebrated : another poem has been preserved 
 which is attributed to him, and which is dedicated 
 to the glory of the monastic isle of Arran, situated 
 upon the western coast of Ireland, where he had 
 gone to venerate the inhabitants and the sanctua- 
 ries : — 
 
 “O Arran, my sun; my heart is in the west with thee. 
 To sleep on thy pure soil is as good as to be buried in the 
 land of St Peter and St Paul. To live within the sound of 
 thy bells is to live in joy. O Arran, my sun, my love is in 
 the west with thee. ” 
 
 These poetic effusions reveal Columba to us 
 under one of his most attractive aspects, as one of 
 the minstrels of the national poetry of Ireland, the 
 intimate union of which with the Catholic faith, and 
 its unconquerable empire over the souls of that 
 generous people, can scarcely be exaggerated. Co- 
 lumba was not only himself a poet, but lived always 
 in great and affectionate sympathy with the bards 
 who, at that time, occupied so high a place in the 
 social and political institutions of Ireland, and who 
 were to be met with everywhere, in the palaces and 
 monasteries, as on the public roads. What he did 
 
The Irish Bards . 
 
 15 
 
 for this powerful corporation, and how, after having 
 been their brother and friend, he became their pro- 
 tector and saviour, will be seen further on. Let us 
 merely state at present that, himself a great traveller, 
 he received the travelling bards in the different 
 communities where he lived ; among others, in that 
 which he had built upon an islet of the lake which the 
 Boyle traverses before it throws itself into the Shan- 
 non. He confided to them the care of arranging 
 the monastic and provincial annals, which were to 
 be afterwards deposited in the charter-chest of the 
 community ; but, above all, he made them sing for 
 his own pleasure and that of his monks ; and the 
 latter reproached him energetically if he permitted 
 one of those wandering poets to depart without 
 having asked to hear some of his chants, accom- 
 panied by his harp. 
 
 The monk Columba was, then, a poet. After 
 Ossian and his glorious compeer of the Vosges, he 
 opens the series of two hundred Irish poets, whose 
 memories and names, in default of their works, 
 have remained dear to Ireland. He wrote his 
 verses not only in Latin, but also and more fre- 
 quently in Irish. Only three of his Latin poems 
 survive ; but two centuries ago eleven of his Irish 
 poems were still in existence, which have not all 
 perished, and the most authentic of which is dedi- 
 cated to the glory of St Bridget, the virgin slave, 
 patroness of Ireland and foundress of female reli- 
 gious life in the Isle of Saints. She was still living 
 
1 6 St Bridget . 
 
 when Columba was born. Through the obscure 
 and halting efforts of this infantine poetry, some 
 tones of sincere and original feeling may yet be 
 disentangled : — 
 
 “ Bridget, the good and the virgin, 
 
 Bridget, our torch and our sun, 
 
 Bridget, radiant and unseen. 
 
 May she lead us to the eternal kingdom ! 
 
 May Bridget defend us 
 Against all the troops of hell, 
 
 And all the adversities of life ; 
 
 May she beat them down before us. 
 
 All the ill movements of the flesh, 
 
 This pure virgin whom we love. 
 
 Worthy of honour without end. 
 
 May she extinguish in us. 
 
 Yes, she shall always be our safeguard. 
 
 Dear saint of Lagenia ; 
 
 After Patrick she comes the first. 
 
 The pillar of the land, 
 
 Glorious among all glories. 
 
 Queen among all queens. 
 
 When old age comes upon us, 
 
 May she be to us as the shirt of hair, 
 
 May she fill us with her grace, 
 
 May Bridget protect us.” 
 
 It seems thus apparent that Columba was as 
 much a bard as a monk during the first part of his 
 life; he had the vagabond inclination, the ardent, 
 agitated, even quarrelsome character of the race. 
 Like most Irish saints and even monks whom 
 history has kept in mind, he had a passionate love 
 for travelling; and to that passion he added an- 
 other which brought him more than one misadven- 
 
i7 
 
 Longarad and his Books . 
 
 ture. Books, which were less rare in Ireland than 
 everywhere else, were nevertheless much sought 
 after, and guarded with jealous care in the monastic 
 libraries, which were their sole depositories. Not 
 only an excessive value was put upon them, but 
 they were even supposed to possess the emotions 
 and almost the passions of living beings. Columba 
 had a passion for fine manuscripts, and one of his 
 biographers attributes to him the laborious feat of 
 having transcribed with his own hand three hun- 
 dred copies of the Gospel or of the Psalter. He 
 went everywhere in search of volumes which he 
 could borrow or copy, often experiencing refusals 
 which he resented bitterly. There was then in 
 Ossory, in the south-west, a holy recluse, very 
 learned, doctor in laws and in philosophy, named 
 Longarad with the white legs , because in walking 
 barefoot his legs, which were covered with white 
 hair, were visible. Columba, having gone to visit 
 him, asked leave to examine his books. The old 
 man gave a direct refusal; then Columba burst 
 forth in denunciations — “ May thy books no longer 
 do thee any good, neither to thee nor to those who 
 come after thee, since thou takest occasion by 
 them to show thy inhospitality.” This curse was 
 heard, according to the legend. As soon as old 
 Longarad died his books became unintelligible. 
 They still exist, says an author of the ninth century, 
 but no man can read them. The legend adds that 
 in all the schools of Ireland, and even in Columba’ s 
 
 B 
 
1 8 The Psalter of Finnian . 
 
 own cell, the leathern satchels in which the monks 
 and students carried their books, unhooked them- 
 selves from the wall and fell to the ground on the 
 day of the old philosopher’s death. 
 
 A similar narrative, more authentic but not less 
 singular, serves as an introduction to the decisive 
 event which changed the destiny of Columba, and 
 transformed him from a wandering poet and ardent 
 bookworm into a missionary and apostle. While 
 visiting his ancient master, Finnian, our saint found 
 means to make a clandestine and hurried copy of 
 the abbot’s Psalter, by shutting himself up at night 
 in the church where the Psalter was deposited, 
 lighting his nocturnal work, as happened to I know 
 not what Spanish saint, by the light which escaped 
 from his left hand while he wrote with the right. 
 The Abbot Finnian discovered what was going on 
 by means of a curious wanderer, who, attracted by 
 that singular light, looked in through the keyhole, 
 and while his face was pressed against the door had 
 his eye suddenly torn out by a crane, one of those 
 familiar birds who were permitted by the Irish 
 monks to seek a home in their churches. Indig- 
 nant at what he thought a theft, Finnian claimed 
 the copy when it was finished, on the ground that 
 a copy made without permission ought to belong to 
 the master of the original, seeing that the tran- 
 scription is the son of the original book. Columba 
 refused to give up his work, and the question was 
 referred to the king in his palace at Tara. 
 
i9 
 
 King Diarmid. 
 
 King Diarmid, or Dermott, supreme monarch of 
 Ireland, was, like Columba, descended from the 
 great King Niall, but by another son than he whose 
 great-grandson Columba was. He lived, like all 
 the princes of his country, in a close union with 
 the Church, which was represented in Ireland, more 
 completely than anywhere else, by the monastic 
 order. Exiled and persecuted in his youth, he had 
 found refuge in an island, situated in one of those 
 lakes which interrupt the course of the Shannon, 
 the chief river of Ireland, and had there formed a 
 friendship with a holy monk called Kieran, who 
 was no other than the son of the carpenter, the 
 jealous comrade of Columba at the monastic school 
 of Clonard, but since that time his generous rival 
 in knowledge and in austerity. Upon the still 
 solitary bank of the river the two friends had 
 planned the foundation of a monastery, which, 
 owing to the marshy nature of the soil, had to be 
 built upon piles. “ Plant with me the first stake,” 
 the monk said to the exiled prince, “ putting your 
 hand under mine ; and soon that hand shall be 
 over all the men of Erin;” and it happened that 
 Diarmid was very shortly after called to the throne. 
 He immediately used his new power to endow richly 
 the monastery which was rendered doubly dear to 
 him by the recollection of his exile and of his 
 friend. This sanctuary became, under the name 
 of Clonmacnoise, one of the greatest monasteries 
 and most frequented schools of Ireland, and even 
 
20 His Decision on the Psalter. 
 
 of Western Europe. It was so rich in possessions 
 and even in dependent communities, daughters or 
 vassals of its hierarchical authority, that, according 
 to a popular saying, half of Ireland was contained 
 within the enclosure of Clonmacnoise. This en- 
 closure actually contained nine churches, with two 
 round towers ; the kings and lords of the two 
 banks of the Shannon had their burying-place there 
 for a thousand years, upon a green height which 
 overlooks the marshy banks of the river. The 
 sadly picturesque ruins may still be seen, and 
 among them a stone cross, over which the prince 
 and the abbot, holding between them the stake 
 consecrated by the legend, are roughly sculp- 
 tured. 
 
 This king might accordingly be regarded as a 
 competent judge in a contest at once monastic and 
 literary; he might even have been suspected of 
 partiality for Columba, his kinsman — and yet he 
 pronounced against him. His judgment was given 
 in a rustic phrase which has passed into a proverb 
 in Ireland — To every cow her calf, and, conse- 
 quently, to every book its copy. Columba pro- 
 tested loudly. “ It is an unjust sentence,” he said, 
 “ and I will revenge myself.” After this incident 
 a young prince, son of the provincial king of Con- 
 naught, who was pursued for having committed an 
 involuntary murder, took refuge with Columba, but 
 was seized and put to death by the king. The 
 irritation of the poet-monk knew no bounds. The 
 
2 1 
 
 Flight of St Columba. 
 
 ecclesiastical immunity which he enjoyed in his 
 quality of superior and founder of several monas- 
 teries ought to have, in his opinion, created a sort 
 of sanctuary around his person, and this immunity 
 had been scandalously violated by the execution of 
 the youth whom he protected. He threatened the 
 king with prompt vengeance. “ I will denounce,” 
 he said, “ to my brethren and my kindred thy 
 wicked judgment, and the violation in my person 
 of the immunity of the Church ; they will listen to 
 my complaint, and punish thee sword in hand. 
 Bad king, thou shalt no more see my face in thy 
 province until God, the just Judge, has subdued 
 thy pride. As thou hast humbled me to-day before 
 thy lords and thy friends, God will humble thee on 
 the battle day before thine enemies.” Diarmid 
 attempted to retain him by force in the neighbour- 
 hood ; but, evading the vigilance of his guards, he 
 escaped by night from the court of Tara, and di- 
 rected his steps to his native province of Tyrcon- 
 nell. His first stage was Monasterboyce, where he 
 heard from the monks that the king had planted 
 guards on all the ordinary roads to intercept him. 
 He then continued, his course by a solitary path- 
 way over the desert hills which lay between him 
 and the north of Ireland ; and as he went upon his 
 lonely way, his soul found utterance in a pious 
 song. He fled, chanting the ‘ Song of Trust,’ 
 which has been preserved to us, and which may be 
 reckoned among the most authentic relics of the 
 
22 
 
 The Song of Trust . 
 
 ancient Irish tongue. We quote from it the fol- 
 lowing verses : — 
 
 “ Alone am I on the mountain, 
 
 O royal Sun ; prosper my path, 
 
 And then I shall have nothing to fear. 
 
 Were I guarded by six thousand, 
 
 Though they might defend my skin, 
 
 When the hour of death is fixed, 
 
 Were I guarded by six thousand, 
 
 In no fortress could I be safe. 
 
 Even in a church the wicked are slain, 
 
 Even in an isle amidst a lake ; 
 
 But God’s elect are safe 
 Even in the front of battle. 
 
 No man can kill me before my day, 
 
 Even had we closed in combat ; 
 
 And no man can save my life 
 When the hour of death has come. 
 
 My life ! 
 
 As God pleases let it be ; 
 
 Nought can be taken from it, 
 
 Nought can be added to it : 
 
 The lot which God has given 
 Ere a man dies must be lived out. 
 
 He who seeks more, were he a prince, 
 
 Shall not a mite obtain. 
 
 A guard ! 
 
 A guard may guide him on his way ; 
 
 But can they, can they, guard 
 Against the touch of death ? . . . 
 
 Forget thy poverty a while ; 
 
 Let us think of the world’s hospitality. 
 
 The Son of Mary will prosper thee, 
 
 And every guest shall have his share. 
 
 Many a time 
 
 What is spent returns to the bounteous hand, 
 And that which is kept back 
 Not the less has passed away. 
 
23 
 
 The Song of Trust. 
 
 0 living God ! 
 
 Alas for him who evil works ! 
 
 That which he thinks not of comes to him, 
 
 That which he hopes vanishes out of his hand. 
 
 There is no Sreod* that can tell our fate, 
 
 Nor bird upon the branch, 
 
 N or trunk of gnarled oak. . . . 
 
 Better is He in whom we trust, 
 
 The King who has made us all, 
 
 Who will not leave me to-night without refuge. 
 
 1 adore not the voice of birds, 
 
 Nor chance, nor the love of a son or a wife. 
 
 My Druid is Christ, the Son of God, 
 
 The Son of Mary, the great Abbot, 
 
 The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 
 
 My lands are with the King of kings ; 
 
 My order at Kells and at Moone.” 
 
 “ Thus sang Columba,” says the preface to this 
 < Song of Trust,’ “ on his lonely journey ; and this 
 song will protect him who repeats it while he 
 travels.” 
 
 Columba arrived safely in his province, and im- 
 mediately set to work to excite against King 
 Diarmid the numerous and powerful clans of his 
 relatives and friends, who belonged to a branch of 
 the house of Niall distinct from and hostile to that 
 of the reigning monarch. His efforts were crowned 
 with success. The Hy-Nialls of the North armed 
 eagerly against the Hy-Nialls of the South, of whom 
 
 * An unknown Druidical term, probably meaning some 
 pagan superstition of the same description as the flight o 
 birds and the knots in the trees, mentioned immediately 
 after. 
 
24 Battle of Citl-Dreimkne. 
 
 Diarmid was the special chief. They naturally 
 obtained the aid of the king of Connaught, father 
 of the young prince who had been executed. Ac- 
 cording to other narratives, the struggle was one 
 between the Nialls of the North and the Piets 
 established in the centre of Ireland. But in any 
 case, it was the north and west of Ireland which 
 took arms against the supreme king. Diarmid' 
 marched to meet them, and they met in battle 
 at Cool-Drewny, or Cul-Dreimhne, upon the bor- 
 ders of Ultonia and Connacia. He was completely 
 beaten, and obliged to take refuge at Tara. The 
 victory was due, according to the annalist Tigher- 
 nach, to the prayers and songs of Columba, who 
 had fasted and prayed with all his might to obtain 
 from Heaven the punishment of the royal inso- 
 lence, and who, besides, was present at the battle, 
 and took upon himself before all men the responsi- 
 bility of the bloodshed. 
 
 As for the manuscript which had been the object 
 of this strange conflict of copyright elevated into a 
 civil war, it was afterwards venerated as a kind of 
 national, military, and religious palladium. Under 
 the name of Cathac , or Fighter , the Latin Psalter 
 transcribed by Columba, enshrined in a sort of 
 portable altar, became the national relic of the 
 O’Donnell clan. For more than a thousand years 
 it was carried with them to battle as a pledge of 
 victory, on the condition of being supported upon 
 the breast of a clerk pure from all mortal sin. It 
 
25 
 
 Remorse of the Saint . 
 
 has escaped as by miracle from the ravages of 
 which Ireland has been the victim, and exists still, 
 to the great joy of all learned Irish patriots. 
 
 Columba, though victor, had soon to undergo 
 the double reaction of personal remorse and the 
 condemnation of many pious souls. The latter 
 punishment was the first to be felt. He was ac- 
 cused, by a synod convoked in the centre of the 
 royal domain at Teilte, of having occasioned the 
 shedding of Christian blood, and sentence of ex- 
 communication was in his absence pronounced 
 against him. Perhaps this accusation was not en- 
 tirely confined to the war which had been raised 
 on account of the copied Psalter. His excitable 
 and vindictive character, and, above all, his pas- 
 sionate attachment to his relatives, and the violent 
 part which he took in their domestic disputes and 
 in their continually recurring rivalries, had engaged 
 him in other struggles, the date of which is perhaps 
 later than that of his first departure from Ireland, 
 but the responsibility of which is formally imputed 
 to him by various authorities, and which also ended 
 in bloody battles. 
 
 Columba was not a man to draw back before his 
 accusers and judges. He presented himself before 
 the synod which had struck without hearing him. 
 He found a defender there in the famous Abbot 
 Brendan, the founder of the Monastery of Birr. 
 When Columba made his appearance, this abbot 
 rose, went up to him, and embraced him. “ How 
 
26 
 
 Sentence on him . 
 
 can you give the kiss of peace to an excommuni- 
 cated man ? ” said some of the other members of 
 the synod. “ You would do as I have done/’ 
 he answered, “ and you never would have excom- 
 municated him, had you seen what I see — a pillar 
 of fire which goes before him, and the angels that 
 accompany him. I dare not disdain a man predes- 
 tined by God to be the guide of an entire people t6 
 eternal life.” Thanks to the intervention of Bren- 
 dan, or to some other motive not mentioned, the sen- 
 tence of excommunication was withdrawn; but Co- 
 lumba was charged to win to Christ by his preaching 
 as many pagan souls as the number of Christians 
 who had fallen in the battle of Cool-Drewny. 
 
 It was then that his soul seems first to have 
 been troubled, and that remorse planted in it the 
 germs at once of a startling conversion and of his 
 future apostolic mission. Sheltered as he was from 
 all vengeance or secular penalties, he must have 
 felt himself struck so much the more by the eccles- 
 iastical judgment pronounced against him. Various 
 legends reveal him to us at this crisis of his life, 
 wandering long from solitude to solitude, and from 
 monastery to monastery, seeking out holy monks, 
 masters of penitence and Christian virtue, and ask- 
 ing them anxiously what he should do to obtain 
 the pardon of God for the murder of so many vic- 
 tims. One of these, Froech, who had long been 
 his friend, reproached him with affectionate severity 
 for having been the instigator of that murderous 
 
The Monk Abban. 
 
 2 7 
 
 fight. “ It was not I who caused it,” said Columba 
 with animation; “it was the unjust judgment of 
 King Diarmid — it was his violation of ecclesiastical 
 immunity which did it all.” “ A monk,” answered 
 the solitary, “ would have done better to bear the 
 injury with patience than to avenge it with arms in 
 his hands.” “ Be it so,” said Columba ; “ but it is 
 hard for a man unjustly provoked to restrain his 
 
 heart and to sacrifice justice.” 
 
 He was more humble with Abban, another 
 famous monk of the time, founder of many reli- 
 gious houses, one of which was called the Cell of 
 Tears, because the special grace of weeping for sin 
 was obtained there. This gentle and courageous 
 soldier of Christ was specially distinguished by his 
 zeal against the fighting men and disturbers of the 
 public peace. He had been seen to throw himself 
 between two chiefs at the moment when their 
 lances were crossed at each other’s breasts; and 
 on another occasion had gone alone and unarmed 
 to meet one of the most formidable rievers of the 
 island, who was still a pagan and a member of a 
 sovereign family, had made his arms drop from his 
 hands, and had changed first into a Christian and 
 then into a monk the royal robber, whose great- 
 grandson has recorded this incident. When Co- 
 lumba went to Abban, he said, “ I come to beseech 
 thee to pray for the souls of all those who have 
 perished in the late war, which I raised for the 
 honour of the Church. I know they will obtain 
 
28 
 
 Exile of St Columba . 
 
 grace by thy intercession, and I conjure thee to 
 ask what is the will of God in respect to them from 
 the angel who talks with thee every day.” The 
 aged solitary, without reproaching Columba, re- 
 sisted his entreaties for some time, by reason of his 
 great modesty, but ended by consenting ; and after 
 having prayed, gave him the assurance that these 
 souls enjoyed eternal repose. 
 
 Columba, thus reassured as to the fate of the 
 victims of his rage, had still to be enlightened in 
 respect to his own duty. He found the light which 
 he sought from a holy monk called Molaise, famed 
 for his studies of Holy Scripture, who had already 
 been his confessor, and whose ruined monastery is 
 still visible in Innishmurry, on the coast of Sligo, 
 one of the isles of the Atlantic. This severe hermit 
 confirmed the decision of the synod; but to the 
 obligation of converting to the Christian faith an 
 equal number of pagans as there were of Christians 
 killed in the civil war he added a new condition, 
 which bore cruelly upon a soul so passionately 
 attached to country and kindred. The confessor 
 condemned his penitent to perpetual exile from 
 Ireland. Columba bowed to this sentence with 
 sad resignation — “ What you have commanded,” he 
 said, “ shall be done.” 
 
 He announced his future fate in the first place 
 to his relations, the warlike Nialls of Tyrconnell. 
 “ An angel has taught me that I must leave Ireland 
 and remain in exile as long as I live, because of all 
 
29 
 
 His Companions in Exile . 
 
 those whom you slew in the last battle, which you 
 fought on my account, and also in others which 
 you know of.” It is not recorded that any among 
 his kindred attempted to hold him back; but when 
 he acquainted his disciples with his intended emi- 
 gration, twelve among them decided to follow him. 
 The most ardent of all was a young monk called 
 Mochonna, son of the provincial king of Ulster. 
 In vain Columba represented to him that he ought 
 not to abandon his parents and native soil. “It 
 is thou,” answered the young man, “ who art my 
 father, the Church is my mother, and my country 
 is where I can gather the largest harvest for Christ.” 
 Then, in order to render all resistance impossible, 
 he made a solemn vow aloud to leave his country 
 and follow Columba — “ I swear to follow thee 
 wherever thou goest, until thou hast led me to 
 Christ, to whom thou hast consecrated me.” It 
 was thus, says his historian, that he forced himself 
 rather than offered himself as a companion to the 
 great exile in the course of his apostolical career 
 among the Piets — and he had no more active or 
 devoted auxiliary. 
 
 Columba accepted, though not without sadness, 
 as has been seen, the sentence of his friend. He 
 dedicated the rest of his life to the expiation of his 
 faults by a voluntary exile, and by preaching the 
 faith to the heathen. Up to this time we have had 
 difficulty in disentangling the principal events of 
 the first forty years of his life from a maze of con- 
 
30 The Biography of Adamnan. 
 
 fused and contradictory narratives. We have fol- 
 lowed what has seemed to us the most probable 
 account, and one most calculated to throw light 
 upon the character of the saint, his people, and his 
 country. Henceforward we shall find a surer guide 
 in Adamnan, who only touches very slightly upon 
 the first half of his hero’s life, and who, with 4 an 
 apparent contempt for the unanimous testimony of 
 Irish witnesses, while agreeing that the departure of 
 the saint took place after the battle in which the 
 King of Ireland had been beaten by Columba’s 
 kindred, attributes his departure solely to his de- 
 sire for the conversion of the heathens of the great 
 neighbouring isle. 
 
3i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ©olumba an ^Emigrant tn ©alcbonta — ®f)t 
 Issle of Iona. 
 
 E who has not seen the islands and 
 gulfs of the western coast of Scotland, 
 and who has not been tossed upon 
 the sombre sea of the Hebrides, can 
 scarcely form any image of it to himself. Nothing 
 can be less seductive at the first glance than that 
 austere and solemn nature, which is picturesque 
 without charm, and grand without grace. The tra- 
 veller passes sadly through an archipelago of naked 
 and desert islands, sowed, like so many extinct vol- 
 canoes, upon the dull and sullen waters, which are 
 sometimes broken by rapid currents and dangerous 
 whirlpools. Except on rare days, when the sun— 
 that pale sun of the North— gives life to these 
 shores, the eye wanders over a vast surface of 
 gloomy sea, broken at intervals by the whitening 
 crest of waves, or by the foamy line of the tide, which 
 
32 Aspect of the Hebrides. 
 
 dashes here against long reefs of rock, there against 
 immense cliffs, with a forlorn roar which fills the air. 
 Through the continual fogs and rains of that rude 
 climate may be seen by times the summits of chains 
 of mountains, whose abrupt and naked sides slope 
 to the sea, and whose base is bathed by those cold 
 waves which are kept in constant agitation by the 
 shock of contrary currents, and the tempests of 
 wind which burst from the lakes and narrow rav- 
 ines farther inland. The melancholy of the land- 
 scape is relieved only by that peculiar configuration 
 of the coast, which has been remarked by the ancient 
 authors, and especially by Tacitus — a configuration 
 which exists besides only in Greece and Scandinavia. 
 As in the fiords of Norway, the sea cuts and hol- 
 lows out the shores of the islands into a host of 
 bays and gulfs, of strange depth, and as narrow as 
 profound. These gulfs take the most varied forms, 
 penetrating by a thousand tortuous folds into the 
 middle of the land, as if to identify themselves with 
 the long and winding lakes of the Highland interior. 
 Numberless peninsulas, terminating in pointed head- 
 lands, or summits covered with clouds ; isthmuses 
 so narrow as to leave the sea visible at both sides ; 
 straits so closely shut between two walls of rock 
 that the eye hesitates to plunge into that gloom ; 
 enormous cliffs of basalt or of granite, their sides 
 perforated with rents ; caverns, as at Staffa, lofty as 
 churches, flanked through all their length by pris- 
 matic columns, through which the waves of the 
 
33 
 
 Aspect of the Hebrides . 
 
 ocean dash with groans ) and here and there, in 
 contrast with that wild majesty, perhaps in an island, 
 perhaps upon the shore of the mainland, a sandy 
 beach, a little plain covered with scanty prickling 
 grass ; a natural port, capable of sheltering a few 
 frail boats ; everywhere, in short, a strangely varied 
 combination of land and sea, but where the sea 
 carries the day, penetrates and dominates every- 
 thing, as if to affirm her empire, and, as Tacitus 
 has said, “ inseri velut in suo .” 
 
 Such is the present aspect— such must have been, 
 with the addition of the forests which have disap- 
 peared, the aspect of those shores when Columba 
 sought them to continue and end his life there. It 
 was from this point that he was to assail the Land 
 of Woods, that unconquerable Caledonia, where the 
 Romans had been obliged to relinquish the idea of 
 establishing themselves, where Christianity hitherto 
 had appeared only to vanish, and which for long 
 seemed to Europe almost outside the boundaries of 
 the world. To Columba was to fall the honour of 
 introducing civilisation into the stony, sterile, and 
 icy Escosse la Sauvage , which the imagination of 
 our fathers made the dwelling-place of hunger, and 
 of the prince of demons. Sailing by these distant 
 shores, who could refrain from evoking the holy 
 memory and forgotten glory of the great mission- 
 ary ? It is from him that Scotland has derived that 
 religious spirit which, led astray as it has been since 
 the Reformation, and in spite of its own rigid nar- 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 St Columba at Iona . 
 
 rowness, remains still so powerful, so popular, so 
 fruitful, and so free. Half veiled by the misty dis- 
 tance, Columba stands first among those original 
 and touching historical figures to whom Scotland 
 owes the great place she has occupied in the mem- 
 ory and imagination of modern nations, from the 
 noble chivalry of the feudal and Catholic kingdom 
 of the Bruces and Douglases, down to the un- 
 paralleled misfortunes of Mary Stuart and Charles 
 Edward, and all the poetic and romantic recollec- 
 tions which the pure and upright genius of Walter 
 Scott has endowed with European fame. 
 
 A voluntary exile, at the age of forty-two, from 
 his native island, Columba embarked with his 
 twelve companions in one of those great barks of 
 osier covered with hide which the Celtic nations 
 employed for their navigation. He landed upon a 
 desert island situated on the north of the opening 
 of that series of gulfs and lakes which, extending 
 from the south-west to the north-east, cuts the Cale- 
 donian peninsula in two, and which at that period 
 separated the still heathen Piets from the district 
 occupied by the Irish Scots, who were partially 
 Christianised. This isle, which he has made im- 
 mortal, took from him the name of I-Colm-kill (the 
 island of Columb-kill), but is better known under 
 that of Iona. A legend, suggested by one of our 
 saint’s most marked characteristics, asserts that he 
 first landed upon another islet called Oronsay, but 
 that, having climbed a hill near the shore immedi- 
 
Appearance of the Island . 35 
 
 ately on landing, he found that he could still see 
 Ireland, his beloved country. To see far off that 
 dear soil which he had left for ever, was too hard a 
 trial. He came down from the hill, and immedi- 
 ately took to his boat to seek, farther off, a shore 
 from which he could not see his native land. When 
 he had reached Iona, he climbed the highest point 
 in the island, and, gazing into the distance, found 
 no longer any trace of Ireland upon the horizon. 
 He decided, accordingly, to remain upon this un- 
 known rock. One of those heaps of stones, which 
 are called cairns in the Celtic dialect, still marks 
 the spot where Columba made this desiredly un- 
 fruitful examination, and has long borne the name 
 of the Cairn of Farewell.* 
 
 Nothing could be more sullen and sad than the 
 aspect of this celebrated isle, where not a single 
 tree has been able to resist either the blighting wind 
 or the destroying hand of man. Only three miles 
 in length by two in breadth, flat and low, bordered 
 by grey rocks which scarcely rise above the level 
 of the sea, and overshadowed by the high and 
 sombre peaks of the great island of Mull, it has not 
 even the wild beauty which is conferred upon the 
 neighbouring isles and shores by their basalt cliffs, 
 which are often of prodigious height — or which 
 belongs to the hills, often green and rounded at 
 the summit, whose perpendicular sides are beaten 
 incessantly by those Atlantic waves, which bury 
 * Cam cut ri Erin — literally, the hack turned on Ireland . 
 
36 Appearance of the Island . 
 
 themselves in resounding caverns hollowed by the 
 everlasting labours of that tumultuous sea. Upon 
 the narrow surface of the island white stretches of 
 sand alternate with scanty pastures, a few poor 
 crops, and the turf-moors where the inhabitants find 
 their fuel. Poor as the culture is, it seems every- 
 where resisted and disputed by the gneiss rocks, 
 which continually crop out, and in some places 
 form an almost inextricable labyrinth. The only 
 attraction possessed by this sombre dwelling-place 
 is the view of the sea, and of the mountains of Mull 
 and the other islands, to the number of twenty or 
 thirty, which may be distinguished from the top of 
 the northern hill of Iona. Among these is Stafifa, 
 celebrated for the grotto of Fingal, which has been 
 known only for about a century, and which, in the 
 time of Columba, moaned and murmured in its 
 solitary and unknown majesty, in the midst of that 
 Hebridean archipelago which is at present haunted 
 by so many curious admirers of the Highland shores 
 and ruined feudal castles, which the great bard of 
 our century has enshrined in the glory of his verse. 
 
 The bay where Columba landed is still called the 
 bay of the osier bark , j Port 1 a Churraich ; and a long 
 mound is pointed out to strangers as representing 
 the exact size of his boat, which was sixty feet long. 
 The emigrant did not remain in this bay, which is 
 situated in the middle of the isle ; he went higher 
 up, and, to find a little shelter from the great sea 
 winds, chose for his habitation the eastern shore, 
 
First Erections on it. 
 
 37 
 
 opposite the large island of Mull, which is separated 
 from Iona only by a narrow channel of a mile in 
 breadth, and whose highest mountains, situated 
 more to the east, approach and almost identify 
 themselves with the mountain-tops of Morven, 
 which are continually veiled with clouds. It was 
 there that the emigrants built their huts of branches, 
 for the island was not then, as now, destitute of 
 wood. When Columba had made up his mind to 
 construct for himself and his people a settled estab- 
 lishment, the buildings of the new-born monastery 
 were of the greatest simplicity. As in all Celtic 
 constructions, walls of withes or branches, supported 
 upon long wooden props, formed the principal 
 element in their architecture. Climbing plants, 
 especially ivy, interlacing itself in the interstices of 
 the branches, at once ornamented and consolidated 
 the modest shelter of the missionaries. The Irish 
 built scarcely any churches of stone, and retained, 
 up to the twelfth century, as St Bernard testifies, the 
 habit of building their churches of wood. But it 
 was not for some years after their first establishment 
 that the monks of Iona permitted themselves the 
 luxury of a wooden church; and when they did so, 
 great oaks, such as the sterile and wind-beaten soil 
 of their islet could not produce, had to be brought 
 for its construction from the neighbouring shore. 
 
 Thus the monastic capital of Scotland, and the 
 centre of Christian civilisation in the north of Great 
 Britain, came into being thirteen centuries ago. 
 
Dr Johnson on Iona. 
 
 38 
 
 Some ruins of a much later date than the days of 
 Columba, though still very ancient, mingled among 
 a few cottages scattered on the shore, still point 
 out the site. 
 
 “ We were now treading/ 7 said, in the eighteenth 
 century, the celebrated Johnson, who was the first 
 to recall the attention of the British public to this 
 profaned sanctuary — “ we were now treading that 
 illustrious island which was once the luminary of 
 the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and 
 roving barbarians derived the benefits of know- 
 ledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract 
 the mind from all local emotion would be impos- 
 sible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, 
 if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from 
 the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, 
 the distant, or the future predominate over the 
 present, advances us in the dignity of thinking 
 beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be 
 such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indiffer- 
 ent and unmoved over any ground which has been 
 dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man 
 is little to be envied whose patriotism would not 
 gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose 
 piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of 
 Iona ! ” 
 
 Columba, who had been initiated into classic 
 recollections, like all the monks of his time, had no 
 doubt heard of Marathon; but certainly it could 
 never have occurred to him that a day would come 
 
The Saint's Regrets for Ireland. 39 
 
 in which a descendant of the race he came to save 
 should place his humble shelter in the same rank 
 with the most glorious battle-field of Hellenic 
 history. 
 
 Far from having any prevision of the glory of 
 Iona, his soul was still swayed by a sentiment 
 which never abandoned him — regret for his lost 
 country. All his life he retained for Ireland the 
 passionate tenderness of an exile, a love which dis- 
 played itself in the songs which have been preserved 
 to us, and which date perhaps from the first mo- 
 ments of his exile. It is possible that their authen- 
 ticity is not altogether beyond dispute; and that, 
 like the poetic lamentations given forth by Fortuna- 
 tus in the name of St Radegund, they were com- 
 posed by his disciples and contemporaries. But 
 they have been too long repeated as his, and depict 
 too well what must have passed in his heart, to per- 
 mit us to neglect them. “ Death in faultless Ire- 
 land is better than life without end in Albyn.” 
 After this cry of despair follow strains more plain- 
 tive and submissive. In one of his elegies he 
 laments that he can no longer sail on the lakes and 
 bays of his native island, nor hear the song of the 
 swans, with his friend Comgall. He laments above 
 all to have been driven from Erin by his own fault, 
 and because of the blood shed in his battles. He 
 envies his friend Cormac, who can go back to his 
 dear monastery at Durrow, and hear the wind sigh 
 among the oaks, and the song of the blackbird and 
 
40 Lament of the Exile. 
 
 cuckoo. As for Columba, all is dear to him in 
 Ireland except the princes who reign there. This last 
 particular shows the persistence of his political ran- 
 cour. No trace of this feeling, however, remains in 
 a still more characteristic poem, which must have 
 been confided to some traveller as a message from 
 the exile of Iona to his country. In this he cele- 
 brates, as always, the delight of voyaging round 
 the coast of Ireland, and the beauty of its cliffs 
 and beach. But, above all, he mourns over his 
 exile : — 
 
 “ What joy to fly upon the white-crested sea, and 
 to watch the waves break upon the Irish shore ! 
 what joy to row the little bark, and land among the 
 whitening foam upon the Irish shore ! Ah ! how 
 my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my 
 Irish oak-grove ! But the noble sea now carries me 
 only to Albyn,* the land of ravens. My foot is in 
 my little boat, but my sad heart ever bleeds. There 
 is a grey eye which ever turns to Erin ; but never 
 in this life shall it see Erin, nor her sons, nor her 
 daughters. From the high prow I look over the 
 sea, and great tears are in my grey eye when I 
 turn to Erin— to Erin, where the songs of the birds 
 are so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the 
 birds ; where the young are so gentle, and the old 
 so wise ; where the great men are so noble to look 
 
 * Albania was the original name of the country which the 
 Romans called Caledonia, and which is now known as Scot- 
 land. 
 
His Passionate Love of Ireland. 41 
 
 at, and the women so fair to wed. Young traveller, 
 carry my sorrows with thee, carry them to Comgall 
 of eternal life. Noble youth, take my prayer with 
 thee, and my blessing ; one part for Ireland — seven 
 times may she be blessed ! and the other for Albyn. 
 Carry my blessing across the sea — carry it to the 
 west My heart is broken in my breast : if death 
 comes to me suddenly, it will be because of the 
 great love I bear to the Gael.” 
 
 But it was not only in these elegies, repeated 
 and perhaps retouched by Irish bards and monks, 
 but at each instant of his life, in season and out of 
 season, that this love and passionate longing for his 
 native country burst forth in words and in musings ; 
 the narratives of his most trustworthy biographers 
 are full of it. The most severe penance which he 
 could imagine for the guiltiest sinners who came to 
 confess to him, was to impose upon them the same 
 fate which he had voluntarily inflicted upon him- 
 self — never to set foot again upon Irish soil. But 
 when, instead of forbidding to sinners all access to 
 that beloved isle, he had to smother his envy of 
 those who had the right and happiness to go there 
 at their pleasure, he dared scarcely trust himself to 
 name its name ; and when speaking to his guests, 
 or to the monks who were to return to Ireland, he 
 could only say to them, “You will return to the 
 country that you love.” 
 
 This melancholy patriotism never faded out of 
 his heart,, and was evidenced much later in his life 
 
42 The Wandering Stork. 
 
 by an incident which shows an obstinate regret for 
 his lost Ireland, along with a tender and careful 
 solicitude for all the creatures of God. One morn- 
 ing he called one of the monks and said to him, 
 “ Go and seat thyself by the sea, upon the western 
 bank of the island ; there thou wilt see arrive from 
 the north of Ireland and fall at thy feet a poor 
 travelling stork, long beaten by the winds and ex- 
 hausted by fatigue. Take her up with pity, feed 
 her and watch her for three days ; after three days’ 
 rest, when she is refreshed and strengthened, she 
 will no longer wish to prolong her exile among us 
 — she will fly to sweet Ireland, her dear country 
 where she was born. I bid thee care for her thus, 
 because she comes from the land where I, too, was 
 bom.” Everything happened as he had said and 
 ordered. The evening of the day on which the 
 monk had received the poor traveller, as he returned 
 to the monastery, Columba, asking him no ques- 
 tions, said to him, “ God bless thee, my dear child, 
 thou hast cared for the exile ; in three days thou 
 shalt see her return to her country.” And, in fact, 
 at the time mentioned the stork rose from the 
 ground in her host’s presence, and, after having 
 sought her way for a moment in the air, directed 
 her flight across the sea, straight upon Ireland. 
 The sailors of the Hebrides all know and tell this 
 tale ; and I love to think that among all my readers 
 there is not one who would not fain have repeated 
 or deserved Columba’s blessing. 
 
43 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ®J)e &posstolatc of ©olumfia among tj)e Scots 
 anti ^tcts. 
 
 OWEVER bitter the sadness might be 
 with which exile filled the heart of 
 Columba, it did not for a moment 
 turn him from his work of expiation. 
 As soon as he had installed himself with his com- 
 panions in that desert isle, from whence the Chris- 
 tian faith and monastic life were about to radiate 
 over the north of Great Britain, a gradual and 
 almost complete transformation became apparent 
 in him. Without giving up the lovable peculiarities 
 of his character and race, he gradually became a 
 model for penitents, and at the same time for con- 
 fessors and preachers. Without ceasing to main- 
 tain an authority which was to increase with years, 
 and which does not seem ever to have been dis- 
 puted, over the monasteries which he had founded 
 in Ireland, he applied himself at once to establish, 
 
44 
 
 Change in his Character . 
 
 on the double basis of manual and intellectual 
 labour, the new insular community which was to 
 be the centre of his future activity. Then he pro- 
 ceeded to unite himself in friendly relations with 
 the inhabitants of the neighbouring districts, whom 
 it was needful to evangelise or confirm in the faith, 
 before thinking of carrying the light of the Gospel 
 further off to the north. He prepared himself for 
 this grand mission by miracles of fervour and 
 austerity, as well as humble charity, to the great 
 profit in the first place of his own monks, and 
 afterwards of the many visitors who came, whether 
 from Ireland or from the Caledonian shores, to 
 seek at his side the healing or the consolation of 
 penitence. 
 
 This man, whom we have seen so passionate, so 
 irritable, so warlike and vindictive, became little by 
 little the most gentle, the humblest, the most ten- 
 der of friends and fathers. It was he, the great 
 head of the Caledonian Church, who, kneeling 
 before the strangers who came to Iona, or before 
 the monks returning from their work, took off their 
 shoes, washed their feet, and after having washed 
 them respectfully kissed them. But charity was 
 still stronger than humility in that transfigured soul. 
 No necessity, spiritual or temporal, found him in- 
 different. He devoted himself to the solace of all 
 infirmities, all misery, and pain, weeping often over 
 those who did not weep for themselves. These 
 tears became the most eloquent part of his preach- 
 
His own Residence at Iona . 45 
 
 in g, the means which he employed most willingly 
 to subdue inveterate sinners, to arrest the criminal 
 on the brink of the abyss, to appease and soften 
 and change those wild and savage but simple and 
 straightforward souls, whom God had given him to 
 subdue. 
 
 In the midst of the new community Columba 
 inhabited, instead of a cell, a sort of hut built of 
 planks, and placed upon the most elevated spot 
 within the monastic enclosure. Up to the age of 
 seventy-six he slept there upon the hard floor, with 
 no pillow but a stone. This hut was at once his 
 study and his oratory. It was there that he gave 
 himself up to those prolonged prayers which ex- 
 cited the admiration and almost the alarm of his 
 disciples. It was there that he returned after 
 sharing the outdoor labour of his monks, like the 
 least among them, to consecrate the rest of his 
 time to the study of Holy Scripture and the tran- 
 scription of the sacred text. The work of transcrip- 
 tion remained until his last day the occupation of 
 his old age as it had been the passion of his youth; 
 it had such an attraction for him, and seemed to 
 him so essential to a knowledge of the truth, that, 
 as we have already said, three hundred copies of 
 the Holy Gospels, copied by his own hand, have 
 been attributed to him. It was in the same hut 
 that he received with unwearied patience the 
 numerous and sometimes importunate visitors who 
 soon flowed to him, and of whom sometimes he 
 
46 His strict Investigation 
 
 complained gently — as of that indiscreet stranger, 
 who, desirous of embracing him, awkwardly over- 
 turned his ink upon the border of his robe. These 
 importunate guests did not come out of simple 
 curiosity; they were most commonly penitent or 
 fervid Christians, who, informed by the fishermen 
 and inhabitants of the neighbouring isles of the 
 establishment of the Irish monk, who was already 
 famous in his own country, and attracted by the 
 growing renown of his virtues, came from Ireland, 
 from the north and south of Britain, and even from 
 the midst of the still heathen Saxons, to save their 
 souls and gain heaven under the direction of a man 
 of God. 
 
 Far from making efforts to attract or lightly ad- 
 mitting these neophytes, nothing in his life is more 
 clearly established than the scrupulous severity with 
 which he examined into all vocations, and into the 
 admission of penitents. He feared nothing so much 
 as that the monastic frock might serve as a shelter 
 for criminals who sought in the cloister not only a 
 place of penitence and expiation, but a shelter from 
 human justice. On occasion he even blamed the 
 too great facility of his friends and disciples. One 
 of the latter, Finchan, had founded upon Eigg, an- 
 other Hebridean island, to the north of Iona, near 
 Skye, a community resembling that of Iona, and 
 possibly dependent upon it : he had there admitted 
 to clerical orders, and even to the priesthood, a 
 prince of the clan of Piets established in Ireland, 
 
47 
 
 into Religious Vocations . 
 
 Aedh or Aldus, called the Black, a violent and 
 bloodthirsty man, who had assassinated Diarmid, 
 the king of Ireland. It was this king, as will be 
 remembered, who pronounced the unjust sentence 
 which drove Columba frantic, and was the occasion 
 of all his faults and misfortunes. The abbot of Iona 
 was not the less on this account indignant at the 
 weakness of his friend. “ The hand which Finchan 
 has laid, in the face of all justice and ecclesiastical 
 law, upon the head of this son of perdition,” said 
 Columba, “ shall rot and fall off, and be buried be- 
 fore the body to which it is attached. As for the 
 false priest, the assassin, he shall himself be assas- 
 sinated.” This double prophecy was accomplished. 
 
 Let us lend an ear to the following dialogue 
 which Columba held with one of those who sought 
 shelter under his discipline. It will explain the 
 moral and spiritual condition of that age better than 
 many commentaries, and will, besides, show the 
 wonderful influence which Columba, penitent and 
 exiled in the depths of his distant island, exercised 
 over all Ireland. It was one day announced to 
 him that a stranger had just landed from Ireland, 
 and Columba went to meet him in the house re- 
 served for guests, to talk to him in private, and 
 question him as to his dwelling-place, his family, and 
 the cause of his journey. The stranger told him 
 that he had undertaken this painful voyage in order, 
 under the monastic habit and in exile, to expiate 
 his sins. Columba, desirous of trying the reality of 
 
48 Treatment of a Criminal \ 
 
 his penitence, drew a most repulsive picture of the 
 hardship and difficult obligations of the new life. 
 “ I am ready,” said the stranger, “to submit to the 
 most cruel and humiliating conditions that thou 
 canst command me.” And after having made 
 confession, he swore, still upon his knees, to ac- 
 complish all the requirements of penitence. “ It 
 is well,” said the abbot ; “now rise from thy knees, 
 seat thyself, and listen : you must first do penance 
 for seven years in the neighbouring island of Tiree, 
 after which I will see you again.” “ But,” said the 
 penitent, still agitated by remorse, “how can I 
 expiate a perjury of which I have not yet spoken ? 
 Before I left my own country I killed a poor man. 
 I was about to suffer the punishment of death for 
 that crime, and I was already in irons, when one of 
 my relations, who is very rich, delivered me by paying 
 the composition demanded. I swore that I would 
 serve him all the rest of my life ; but after some 
 days of service I abandoned him, and here I am, 
 notwithstanding my oath.” Upon this the saint 
 added that he would only be admitted to the paschal 
 communion after seven years of penitence. When 
 these were completed, Columba, after having given 
 him the communion with his own hand, sent him 
 back to Ireland to his patron, carrying a sword 
 with an ivory handle for his ransom. The patron, 
 however, moved by the entreaties of his wife, gave 
 the penitent his pardon without ransom. “ Why 
 should we accept the price sent to us by the holy 
 
49 
 
 The Story of Libran . 
 
 Columba? We are not worthy of it. The request 
 of such an intercessor should be granted freely. 
 His blessing will do more for us than any ransom.” 
 And immediately he detached the girdle from his 
 waist, which was the ordinary formula in Ireland 
 for the manumission of captives or slaves. Columba 
 had besides commanded his penitent to remain 
 with his old father and mother until he had ren- 
 dered to them the last services. This accomplished, 
 his brothers let him go, saying, “ Far be it from us 
 to detain a man who has laboured for seven years 
 for the salvation of his soul with the holy Columba.” 
 He then returned to Iona, bringing with him the 
 sword which was to have been his ransom. “ Hence- 
 forward thou shalt be called Libran, for thou art 
 free, and emancipated from all ties,” said Columba; 
 and he immediately admitted him to take the mo- 
 nastic vows. But when he was commanded to return 
 to Tiree, to end his life at a distance from Columba, 
 poor Libran, who up to this moment had been so 
 docile, fell on his knees and wept bitterly. Co- 
 lumba, touched by his despair, comforted him as 
 best he could, without, however, altering his sen- 
 tence. “Thou shalt live far from me, but thou 
 shalt die in one of my monasteries, and thou shalt 
 rise again with my monks, and have part with 
 them in heaven,” said the abbot. Such was the 
 "history of Libran, called Libran of the Rushes, be- 
 cause he had passed many years in gathering rushes 
 — the years probably of his penitence. 
 
 D 
 
50 Anecdotes of the Saint . 
 
 This doctor; learned in penitence, became day 
 by day more gifted in the great art of ruling souls ; 
 and, with a hand as prudent as vigorous, raised up 
 on one side the wounded and troubled conscience, 
 while, on the other, he unveiled the false monks 
 and false penitents. To a certain monk, who, in 
 despair at having yielded during a journey to the 
 temptations of a woman, rushed from confessor to 
 confessor without ever finding himself sufficiently 
 repentant or sufficiently punished, he restored peace 
 and confidence, by showing him that his despair 
 was nothing but an infernal hallucination, and by 
 indicting upon him a penance hard enough to con- 
 vince him of the remission of his sin. To another 
 sinner from Ireland, who, guilty of incest and frat- 
 ricide, had insisted, whether Columba pleased or 
 not, on taking refuge in Iona, he imposed perpet- 
 ual exile from his native country, and twelve years 
 of penance among the savages of Caledonia, pre- 
 dicting at the same time that the false penitent 
 would perish in consequence of refusing this expi- 
 ation. Arriving one day in a little community 
 formed by himself in one of the neighbouring islets 
 — Himba, the modern name of which is unknown 
 —and intended to receive the penitents during 
 their time of probation, he gave orders that certain 
 delicacies should be added to their usual repast, 
 and that even the penitents should be permitted to 
 enjoy them. One of the latter, however, more 
 scrupulous than needful, refused to accept the. 
 
5i 
 
 Number of his Neophytes . 
 
 improved fare, even from the hand of the abbot. 
 “Ah!” said Columba, “thou refusest the solace 
 which is offered to thee by thy superior and myself. 
 
 A day will come when thou shalt again be a robber 
 as thou hast been, and shalt steal, and eat the veni- 
 son in the forests wherever thou goest.” And this 
 prophecy too was fulfilled. 
 
 Notwithstanding these precautions, and his appa- 
 rent severity, the number of neophytes who sought 
 the privilege of living under the rule of Columba 
 increased more and more. Every day, and every 
 minute of the day, the abbot and his companions, 
 in the retirement of their cells, or at their outdoor 
 labours, heard great cries addressed to them from 
 the other side of the narrow strait which separates 
 Iona from the neighbouring island of Mull. These 
 shouts were the understood signal by which those 
 who sought admission to Iona gave notice of their 
 presence, that the boat of the monastery might be 
 sent to carry them over. Among the crowds who 
 crossed in that boat some sought only material 
 help, alms, or medicines; but the greater part 
 sought permission to do penance, and to pass a 
 shorter or longer time in the new monastery, where 
 Columba put their vocation to so many trials. Once 
 only was he known to have at the very moment of 
 their arrival imposed, so to speak, the monastic 
 vows upon two pilgrims, whose virtues and ap- 
 proaching death had been by a supernatural instinct 
 revealed to him. 
 
52 New Monastic Establishments . 
 
 The narrow enclosure of Iona was soon too small 
 for the increasing crowd, and from this little monas- 
 tic colony issued in succession a swarm of similar 
 colonies, which went forth to plant new communi- 
 ties, daughters of Iona, in the neighbouring isles, 
 and on the mainland of Caledonia, all of which 
 were under the authority of Columba. Ancient 
 traditions attribute to him the foundation of three 
 hundred monasteries or churches, as many in Cale- 
 donia as in Hibernia, a hundred of which were in 
 the islands or upon the sea-shore of the two coun- 
 tries. Modem learning has discovered and regis- 
 tered the existence of ninety churches, whose origin 
 goes back to Columba, and to all or almost all of 
 which, according to the custom of the time, monas- 
 tic communities must have been attached. Traces 
 of fifty-three of these churches remain still in modern 
 Scotland, unequally divided among the districts in- 
 habited by the two races which then shared Cale- 
 donia between them. Thirty-two are in the Western 
 Isles and the country occupied by the Irish-Scots, 
 and the twenty-one others mark the principal sta- 
 tions of the great missionary in the land of the Piets. 
 The most enlightened judges among the Scotch 
 Protestants agree in attributing to the teachings of 
 Columba— to his foundations and his disciples — all 
 the primitive churches, and the very ancient paro- 
 chial division of Scotland. 
 
 But it is time to tell what the population was 
 whose confidence Columba had thus gained, and 
 
The Dalriadian Scots. 53 
 
 from which the communities of his monastic family 
 were recruited. The portion of Great Britian which 
 received the name of Caledonia did not include 
 the whole of modern Scotland ; it embraced only 
 the districts to. the north of the isthmus which 
 separates the Clyde from the Forth, or Glasgow 
 from Edinburgh. All this region to the north and 
 to the east was in the hands of those terrible Piets 
 whom the Romans had been unable to conquer, 
 and who were the terror of the Britons. But to the 
 west and south-west, on the side where Columba 
 landed, he found a colony of his own country and 
 race — that is to say, the Scots of Ireland, who were 
 destined to become the sole masters of Caledonia, 
 and to bestow upon it the name of Scotland. More 
 than half a century before, following in the train of 
 many similar invasions or emigrations, a colony of 
 Irish, or, according to the name then in use, of 
 Scots, belonging to the tribe of Dalriadians, had 
 crossed the sea which separates the north-east coast 
 of Ireland from the north-west of Great Britain, 
 and had established itself— between the Piets of 
 the north and the Britons of the south— in the 
 islands and upon the western coast of Caledonia, 
 north of the mouth of the Clyde, and in the dis- 
 trict which has since taken the name of Argyll. 
 The chiefs or kings of this Dalriadian colony, who 
 were destined to become the parent stock of those 
 famous and unfortunate Stuarts who once reigned 
 over both Scotland and England, had at that time 
 
54 Connection of the Saint with them . 
 
 strengthened their growing power by the aid of the 
 Niall princes who reigned in the north of Ireland, 
 and to whose family Columba belonged. Columba 
 had also a very close tie of kindred with the Dal- 
 riadians themselves, his paternal grandmother hav- 
 ing been the daughter of Lorn, the first, or one of 
 the first kings of the colony. He was thus a rela- 
 tion of King Connal, the sixth successor of Lorn, 
 who, at the moment of Columba’s arrival, had 
 been for three years the chief of the Scotic emi- 
 grants in Caledonia. Iona, where the abbot estab- 
 lished himself, was at the northern extremity of 
 the then very limited domain of the Dalriadians, 
 and might be regarded as a dependency of their 
 new state, not less than of that of the Piets, who 
 occupied all the rest of Caledonia. Columba im- 
 mediately entered into alliance with this prince. 
 He visited him in his residence on the mainland, 
 and obtained from him, in his double title of cousin 
 and countryman, a gift of the uninhabited island 
 where he had just established his community. 
 
 These Scots, who had left Ireland after the con- 
 version of the island by St Patrick, were probably 
 Christians, like all the Irish, at least in name ; but 
 no certain trace of ecclesiastical organisation or of 
 monastic institutions is visible among them before 
 Columba’s arrival at Iona. The apostolate of 
 Ninian and of Palladius does not seem to have 
 produced a durable impression upon them any more 
 than upon the Southern Piets. A new apostolical 
 
His Personal Appearance. 55 
 
 enterprise by Celtic monks was necessary to renew 
 the work at which the Roman missionaries had 
 laboured a century before. Columba and his 
 disciples neglected no means of fortifying and 
 spreading religion among their countrymen, who 
 were emigrants like themselves. We see him in 
 the narratives of Adamnan administering baptism 
 and the other rites of religion to the people of 
 Scotic race, through whose lands he passed, plant- 
 ing there the first foundations of monastic com- 
 munities. Many narratives, more or less legend- 
 ary, indicate that this people, even when Christian, 
 had grea t need to be instructed, directed, and estab- 
 lished in the good way ; while at the same time 
 the Dalriadians showed a certain suspicion and 
 doubt of the new apostle of their race, which only 
 yielded to the prolonged influence of his self-devo- 
 tion and unquestionable virtue. 
 
 Columba was still in the flower of his age when 
 he established himself at Iona; he was not more at 
 the most than forty-two. All testimonies agree in 
 celebrating his manly beauty, his remarkable height, 
 his sweet and sonorous voice, the cordiality of his 
 manner, the gracious dignity of his deportment and 
 person. These external advantages, added to the 
 fame of his austerities and the inviolable purity of 
 his life, made a singular and varied impression upon 
 the pagans and the very imperfect Christians of 
 Caledonia. The Dalriadian king put his virtue to 
 the proof by presenting to him his daughter, who 
 
56 His Temptations . 
 
 was remarkably beautiful, and clothed in the richest 
 ornaments. He asked if the sight of a creature so 
 beautiful and so adorned did not excite some in- 
 clination in him. “ Without doubt,” answered the 
 missionary, “the inclination of the flesh and of 
 nature; but understand well, lord king, that not 
 for all the empire of the world, even could its hon- 
 ours and pleasures be secured to me to the end 
 of time, would I yield to my natural weakness.” 
 About the same time, a woman who lived not far 
 from Iona spread for him a more dangerous and- 
 subtle snare. The celebrated and handsome exile 
 having inspired her with a violent and guilty pas- 
 sion, she conceived the idea of seducing him, qtnd 
 succeeded in drawing him to her house. But as 
 soon as he understood her design, he addressed to 
 her an exhortation upon death and the last judg- 
 ment, which he ended by blessing her, and making 
 the sign of the cross. The temptress was thus 
 delivered even from her own temptations. She con- 
 tinued to love him, but with a religious respect. It is 
 added that she herself became a model of holiness. 
 
 But it was towards another race, very different 
 from his Scotic countrymen and much less acces- 
 sible, that Columba felt himself drawn as much by 
 the penance imposed upon him as by the necessi- 
 ties of the Church and of Christendom. While the 
 Irish-Scots occupied the islands and part of the west- 
 ern coast of Caledonia, all the north and east — that 
 is to say, by far the greater part of the country — 
 
Mission to the Piets . 
 
 57 
 
 was inhabited by the Piets, who were still heathens. 
 Originally from Sarmatia, according to Tacitus 
 according to Bede, descendants of the Scythians — 
 these primitive inhabitants of Great Britain, who had 
 remained untouched by Roman or Christian influ- 
 ences, owed their name to their custom of fighting 
 naked, and of painting their bodies in various col- 
 ours, which had been the wont of all the ancient 
 Britons at the time of Caesar’s invasion. The holy 
 bishop Ninian more than a century before had 
 preached the Christian faith to the Southern Piets 
 — that is to say, to those who lived on the banks of 
 the Forth or scattered among the Britons in the 
 districts south of that river. But while even the 
 traces of Ninian’s apostolic work seemed at that 
 moment effaced, although destined afterwards to 
 reappear, the great majority of the Piets — those 
 who inhabited the vast tracts to the north of the 
 Grampians, into which no missionary before Co- 
 lumba had ever dared to penetrate — had always 
 continued heathen. The thirty-four years of life 
 which Columba had still before him were chiefly 
 spent in missions, undertaken for the purpose of 
 carrying the faith to the hilly straths, and into the 
 deep glens and numerous islands of northern Cale- 
 donia. There dwelt a race, warlike, grasping, and 
 bold, as inaccessible to softness as to fear, only half 
 clothed notwithstanding the severity of the climate, 
 and obstinately attached to their customs, belief, 
 and chiefs. The missionary had to preach, to con- 
 
58 His Labours among them . 
 
 vert, and even at need to brave those formidable 
 tribes, in whom Tacitus recognised the farthest off 
 of the earth’s inhabitants, and the last champions of 
 freedom — u t err arum ac libertatis extremos ; ” those 
 barbarians who, having gloriously resisted Agricola, 
 drove the frightened Romans from Britain, and 
 devastated and desolated the entire island up to 
 the arrival of the Saxons ; and whose descendants, 
 after filling the history of Scotland with their feats 
 of arms, have given, under the name of Highlanders , 
 to the fallen Stuarts their most dauntless defenders, 
 and to modern England her most glorious soldiers. 
 
 Columba crossed again and again that central 
 mountain-range in which rise those waters which 
 flow, some north and west to fall into the Atlantic 
 Ocean, and some to the south to swell the North 
 Sea — a range which the biographer of the saint calls 
 the backbone of Britain ( dorsum Britannice\ and 
 which separates the counties of Inverness and Ar- 
 gyll, as now existing, from the county of Perth, and 
 includes the districts so well known to travellers 
 under the names of Breadalbane, Atholl, and the 
 Grampians. This was the recognised boundary be- 
 tween the Scots and Piets, and it was here that the 
 ancestors of the latter, the heroic soldiers of Galga- 
 cus, had held their ground against the father-in-law 
 of Tacitus, who even when victorious did not ven- 
 ture to cross that barrier. Often, too, Columba fol- 
 lowed the course of that long valley of waters which, 
 to the north of these mountains, traverses Scotland 
 
Visit to the Pictish King . 59 
 
 diagonally from the south-west, near Iona, to the 
 north-east beyond Inverness. This valley is formed 
 by a series of long gulfs and of inland lakes, which 
 modern industry has linked together, making it pos- 
 sible for boats to pass from one sea to the other 
 without making the long round by the Orcadian 
 Isles. Thirteen centuries ago religion alone could 
 undertake the conquest of those wild and pictur- 
 esque regions, which a scanty but fierce and suspi- 
 cious population disputed with the fir-forests and 
 vast tracts of fern and heather, which are still to be 
 encountered there. 
 
 The first glance thrown by history upon this 
 watery highway discovers there the preaching and 
 miracles of Columba. He was the first to traverse 
 in his little skiff Loch Ness and the river which 
 issues from it \ he penetrated thus, after a long and 
 painful j ourney, to the principal fortress of the Pict- 
 ish king, the site of which is still shown upon a rock 
 north of the town of Inverness. This powerful and 
 redoubtable monarch, whose name was Bruidh or 
 Brude, son of Malcolm, gave at first a very inhos- 
 pitable reception to the Irish missionary. The 
 companions of the saint relate that, priding himself 
 upon the royal magnificence of his fortress, he gave 
 orders that the gates should not be opened to the 
 unwelcome visitor ; but this was not a command to 
 alarm Columba. He went up to the gateway, made 
 the sign of the cross upon the two gates, and then 
 knocked with his hand. Immediately the bars and 
 
60 Opposition of the Heathen Priests . 
 
 bolts drew back, the gates rolled upon their hinges 
 and were thrown wide open, and Columba entered 
 like a conqueror. The king, though surrounded by 
 his council, among whom no doubt were his heathen 
 priests, was struck with panic ; he hastened to meet 
 the missionary, addressed to him pacific and en- 
 couraging words, and from that moment gave him 
 every honour. It is not recorded whether Bruidh 
 himself became a Christian, but during all the rest 
 of his life he remained the friend and protector of 
 Columba. He confirmed to him the possession of 
 Iona, the sovereignty of which he seems to have 
 disputed with his rival the king of the Dalriadian 
 Scots, and our exile thus saw his establishment 
 placed under the double protection of the two 
 powers which shared Caledonia between them. 
 
 But the favour of the king did not bring with it 
 that of the heathen priests, who are indicated by 
 the Christian historians under the name of Druids 
 or Magi, and who made an energetic and persever- 
 ing resistance to the new apostle. These priests 
 do not seem either to have taught or practised the 
 worship of idols, but rather that of natural forces, 
 and especially of the sun and other celestial bodies. 
 They followed or met the Irish preacher in his 
 apostolic journeys, less to refute his arguments than 
 to hold back and intimidate those whom his preach- 
 ing gained to Christ. The religious and supernat- 
 ural character which was attributed by the Druids 
 of Gaul to the woods and ancient trees, was attached 
 
His Preaching among them . 61 
 
 by those of Caledonia to the streams and fountains, 
 some of which were, according to their belief, salu- 
 tary and beneficial, while others were deadly to 
 man. Columba made special efforts to forbid 
 among the new Christians the worship of sacred 
 fountains, and, braving the threats of the Druids, 
 drank in their presence the water which they 
 affirmed would kill any man who dared to put it to 
 his lips. But they used no actual violence against 
 the stranger whom their prince had taken under 
 his protection. One day, when Columba and his 
 monks came out of the enclosure of the fort in 
 which the king resided, to chant vespers according 
 to the monastic custom, the Druids attempted to 
 prevent them from singing, lest the sound of the 
 religious chants should reach the people ; but the 
 abbot instantly intoned the sixty-fourth psalm, 
 “ Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum : dico opera 
 mea regip with so formidable a voice, that he 
 reduced his adversaries to silence, and made the 
 surrounding spectators, and even the king himself, 
 tremble before him. 
 
 But he did not confine himself to chanting in 
 Latin; he preached. The dialect of the Piets, 
 however, being different from that of the Scots, and 
 unknown to him, it was necessary to employ the 
 services of an interpreter. But his words were not 
 the less efficacious on this account, though every- 
 where he was met by the rival exhortations or 
 derisions of the pagan priests. His impassioned 
 
62 
 
 A Child recalled to Life . 
 
 nature, as ready to love as to hate, made itself as 
 apparent in his apostolic preachings as formerly 
 in the struggles of his youth ; and ties of tender 
 intimacy, active and never appealed to in vain, 
 were soon formed between himself and his converts. 
 One of the Piets, who, having heard him preach by 
 his interpreter, was converted with his wife and all 
 his family, became his friend, and received many 
 visits from him. One of the sons of this new con- 
 vert fell dangerously ill ; the Druids profited by the 
 misfortune to reproach the anxious parents, making 
 it appear that the sickness of their child' was the 
 punishment of their apostasy, and boasting the 
 power of the ancient gods of the country, as 
 superior to that of the Christian’s God. Columba 
 having been informed hastened to his friend’s aid : 
 when he arrived the child had just expired. As 
 soon as he had done all that in him lay to console 
 the father and mother, he asked to be allowed to 
 enter alone into the place where the body of the 
 child was. There he kneeled down and prayed 
 long, bathed in tears ; then rising, he said, “ In the 
 name of the Lord Jesus Christ, return to life and 
 arise ! ” At the same moment the soul came back 
 to the child’s body. Columba helped him to rise, 
 supported him, led him out of the cabin, and re- 
 stored him to his parents. The power of prayer 
 was thus as great, says Adamnan, in our saint as in 
 Elijah and Elisha under the old law, or in St Peter, 
 St Paul, and St John under the new. 
 
His Tolerance . 
 
 63 
 
 While thus preaching faith and the grace of God 
 by the voice of an interpreter, he at the same time 
 recognised, admired, and proclaimed among those 
 savage tribes the lights and virtues of the law of 
 nature. He discovered the rays of its radiance in 
 many an unknown hearer, by the help of that super- 
 natural gift which enabled him to read the secrets 
 of the heart, and to penetrate the darkness of the 
 future ; a gift which developed itself more and 
 more in him as his apostolical career went on. 
 One day while labouring in his evangelical work in 
 the principal island of the Hebrides, the one which 
 lies nearest to the mainland — Skye — he cried out all 
 at once, “ My sons, to-day you will see an ancient 
 Pictish chief, who has kept faithfully all his life the 
 precepts of the natural law, arrive in this island ; he 
 comes to be baptised and to die.” Immediately 
 after, a boat was seen to approach the shore with 
 a feeble old man seated in the prow, who was 
 recognised as the chief of one of the neighbouring 
 tribes. Two of his companions took him up in 
 their arms and brought him before the missionary, 
 to whose words, as repeated by the interpreter, 
 he listened attentively. When the discourse was 
 ended the old man asked to be baptised ; and im- 
 mediately after breathed his last breath, and was 
 buried in the very spot where he had just been 
 brought to shore. 
 
 At a later date, in one of his last missions, when, 
 himself an old man, he travelled along the banks 
 
64 
 
 Release of a Slave . 
 
 of Loch Ness, always in the district to the north of 
 the mountain-range of the dorsum Britannia , he 
 said to the disciples who accompanied him, “ Let 
 us make haste and meet the angels who have come 
 down from heaven, and who wait for us beside a 
 Piet who has done well according to the natural 
 law during his whole life to extreme old age : we 
 must baptise him before he dies.” Then hastening 
 his steps and outstripping his disciples, as much as 
 was possible at his great age, he reached a retired 
 valley, now called Glen Urquhart, where he found 
 the old man who awaited him. Here there was no 
 longer any need of an interpreter, which makes it 
 probable that Columba in his old age had learned 
 the Pictish dialect. The old Piet heard him preach, 
 was baptised, and with joyful serenity gave up to 
 God the soul which was awaited by those angels 
 whom Columba saw. 
 
 In this generous heart humanity claimed its 
 rights no less than justice. It was in the name of 
 humanity, his biographer expressly tells us, that he 
 begged the freedom of a young female slave, born 
 in Ireland, and the captive of one of the principal 
 Druids or Magi. This Druid was named Broichan, 
 and lived with the king, whose foster-father he was, 
 a tie of singular force and authority among the 
 Celtic nations. Either from a savage pride, or out 
 of enmity to the new religion, the Druid obstinately 
 and cruelly refused the prayer of Columba. “ Be 
 it so,” said the apostle ) “ but learn, Broichan, that 
 
Druidical Hostility . 65 
 
 if thou refusest to set free this foreign captive, thou 
 shalt die before I leave the province.” When he 
 had said this he left the castle, directing his steps 
 towards that river Ness which appears so often in 
 his history. But he was soon overtaken by two 
 horsemen who came from the king to tell him that 
 Broichan, the victim of an accident, was dying, 
 and fully disposed to set the young Irish girl free. 
 The saint took up from the river bank a pebble, 
 which he blessed, and gave to two of his monks, 
 with the assurance that the sick man would be 
 healed by drinking water in which this stone had 
 been steeped, but only on the express condition 
 that the captive should be delivered. She was im- 
 mediately put under the charge of Columba’s com- 
 panions, and was thus restored at the same moment 
 to her country and her freedom. 
 
 The Druid, though healed, was not thereby ren- 
 dered less hostile to the apostle. Like the magi- 
 cians of Pharaoh, he attempted to raise nature and 
 her forces against the new Moses. On the day 
 fixed for his departure, Columba found, on reach- 
 ing, followed by a numerous crowd, the banks of 
 the long and narrow lake from which the Ness 
 issues, and by which he meant to travel, a strong 
 contrary wind and thick fog, as Broichan had 
 threatened, which the Druids exulted to see. But 
 Columba, entering his boat, bade the frightened 
 rowers set the sail against the wind, and the as- 
 sembled people saw him proceed rapidly on his 
 
 E 
 
66 Fellow-labourers with the Saint . 
 
 course, as if borne by favourable breezes, towards 
 the south end of the lake, by which he returned to 
 Iona. But he left only to make a speedy return, 
 and came so often as to accomplish the conversion 
 of the Pictish nation, by destroying for ever the 
 authority of the Druids in this last refuge of Celtic 
 paganism. This sanguinary and untamable race was 
 finally conquered by the Irish missionary. Before 
 he ended his glorious career he had sown their 
 forests, their defiles, their inaccessible mountains, 
 their savage moors, and scarcely inhabited islands, 
 with churches and monasteries. 
 
 Columba’s assistants, in his numerous missions 
 among the Piets, were the monks who had come 
 with him, or who had followed him from Ireland. 
 The fame of the obscure benefactors and civilisers 
 of so distant a region has still more completely dis- 
 appeared than that of Columba : it is with difficulty 
 that some lingering trace of them is to be disen- 
 tangled from the traditions of some churches 
 whose sites may yet be found upon the ancient 
 maps of Scotland. Such was Malruve (642-722), 
 a kinsman of Columba, and like him descended 
 from the royal race of Niall, but educated in the 
 great Monastery of Bangor, which he left to follow 
 his illustrious cousin into Albyn, passing by Iona. 
 He must have long survived Columba, for he was 
 for fifty-one years abbot of a community at Aper- 
 crossan — now Applecross — upon the north-west 
 coast of Caledonia, opposite the large island of Skye, 
 
The Monastery of Tears. 67 
 
 before he met his death, which was, according to 
 local tradition, by the sword of Norwegian pirates. 
 
 Upon the opposite shore, in that striking pro- 
 montory which forms the eastern extremity of 
 Scotland, a district now known as Buchan, various 
 churches trace their origin to Columba, and to one 
 of his Irish disciples called Drostan. The mor-maer 
 or chief of the country had at first refused them his 
 permission to settle there, but his son fell danger- 
 ously ill, and he hastened after the missionaries, 
 offering them the land necessary for their founda- 
 tion, and begging them to pray for the dying boy. 
 They prayed, and the child was saved. After 
 having blessed the new church, and predicted that 
 none who profaned it should ever conquer their 
 enemies or enjoy long life, Columba installed his 
 companions in their new home, and himself turned 
 to continue his journey. When Drostan saw him- 
 self thus condemned to live at a distance from his 
 master, he could not restrain his tears ; for these 
 old saints, in their wild and laborious career, loved 
 each other with a passionate tenderness, which is 
 certainly not the least touching feature in their 
 character, and which places an inextinguishable 
 light upon their heads amid the darkness of the 
 legends. “Then,” Columba said, “let us call this 
 place the Monastery of Tears;” and the great 
 abbey — that of Deir — which lasted a thousand 
 years upon that spot, always retained the name. 
 “ He who sows in tears shall reap in joy.” 
 
68 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ©olumba consecrates tjje 3£tng of tty Scots. — P?e 
 goes to tty Jiattonal gfssemblg of Erelanti, Ue= 
 fentiss tjc Inbcpenticnce of tty ?t?tktno=jccotic 
 ©olong, anD sabes tty ©orporatton of 30arbs. 
 
 T would not, however, be natural to 
 suppose that the mission of Columba 
 among the Piets could entirely ab- 
 sorb his life and soul. That faithful 
 love for his race and country which had moved 
 him with compassion for the young Irish girl in 
 captivity among the Piets did not permit him to 
 remain indifferent to the wars and revolutions 
 which were at the bottom of all national life 
 among the Irish Scots as well as the Irish colony 
 in Scotland. There was not a more marked feature 
 in his character than his constant solicitude, his 
 compassionate sympathy, as well after as before his 
 removal to Iona, for the bloody struggles in which 
 his companions and relatives in Ireland were so 
 
Sympathy with Ireland. 69 
 
 often engaged. Nothing was nearer to his heart 
 than the claim of kindred ; for that reason alone 
 he occupied himself without ceasing with the affairs 
 of individual relatives. “ This man,” he said to 
 himself, “ is of my race ; I must help him. It is 
 my duty to pray for him, because he is of the same 
 stock as myself. This other is of kin to my 
 mother,” &c. And then he would add, “ My 
 friends and kindred, who are descended like me 
 from the Nialls, see how they fight ! ” And from 
 the far distance of his desert isle he fought with 
 them in heart and thought, as of old he had aided 
 them in person. He breathed from afar the air 
 of battle ; he divined the issue by what his com- 
 panions considered a prophetic instinct, and told it 
 to his monks, to his Irish countrymen, and to the 
 Caledonian Scots who sought him in his new dwell- 
 ing. With better reason still his soul kindled within 
 him when he foresaw any struggle in which his 
 new neighbours the Dalriadian colonists were to 
 be engaged, either with the Piets, whom they were 
 one day to conquer, or with the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 One day towards the end of his life, being alone 
 with Diarmid his minister (as the monk attached 
 to his personal service was called), he cried out all 
 at once, “The bell ! let the bell be rung instantly!” 
 The bell of the modest monastery was nothing bet- 
 ter than one of the little square bells made of beaten 
 iron, which are still shown in Irish museums, ex- 
 actly similar to those which are worn by the cattle 
 
70 Anglo-Saxon Invaders . 
 
 in Spain and the Jura. It was enough for the 
 necessities of the little insular community. At its 
 sound the monks hastened to throw themselves on 
 their knees around their father. “ Now,” said he, 
 “let us pray — let us pray with intense fervour for 
 our people, and for King Aidan ; for at this very 
 moment the battle has begun between them and 
 the barbarians.” When their prayers had lasted 
 some time, he said, “ Behold, the barbarians flee ! 
 Aidan is victorious !” 
 
 The barbarians, against whom Columba rang his 
 bells and called for the prayers of his monks, were 
 the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria, who were still 
 pagans, and whose descendants were destined to 
 owe the inestimable blessings of Christianity to the 
 monks of Iona and the spiritual posterity of Co- 
 lumba. But at that time the invaders thought only 
 of taking a terrible revenge for the evils which 
 Britain, before they conquered it, had endured from 
 Scoto-Pictish incursions, and of extending their 
 power ever farther and farther on the Caledonian 
 side. As for King Aidan, he had replaced his 
 cousin-german, King Connall, who had guaranteed 
 to Columba the possession of Iona, as chief of the 
 Dalriadian colony in Argyll. His accession to the 
 throne took place in 574, eleven years after the 
 arrival of Columba ; and nothing proves more fully 
 the influence acquired by the Irish missionary dur- 
 ing this short interval than Aidan’s resolution to 
 have his coronation blessed by the Abbot of Iona. 
 
Consecration of King A'idan . 71 
 
 Columba, though his friend, did not wish him to be 
 king, preferring his brother ; but an angel appeared 
 to him three times in succession, and commanded 
 him to consecrate Aidan according to the ceremony 
 prescribed in a book covered with crystal which 
 was left with him for that purpose. Columba, who 
 was then in a neighbouring island, went back to 
 Iona, where he was met by the new king. The 
 abbot, obedient to the celestial vision, laid his 
 hands upon the head of Aidan, blessed him, and 
 ordained him king. He inaugurated thus not only 
 a new kingdom, but a new rite, which became at a 
 later date the most august solemnity of Christian 
 national life. The coronation of A'idan is the first 
 authentic instance known in the West. Columba 
 thus assumed, in respect to the Scotic or Dalriadian 
 kingdom, the same authority with which the abbots 
 of Armagh, successors of St Patrick, were already 
 invested in respect to the kings of Ireland. That 
 this supreme authority and these august functions 
 were conferred upon abbots instead of bishops, has 
 been the cause of much surprise. But at that 
 period of the ecclesiastical history of Celtic nations 
 the episcopate was entirely in the shade ; the abbots 
 and monks alone appear to have been great and 
 influential, and the successors of St Columba long 
 retained this singular supremacy over the bishops. 
 
 According to Scotch national tradition, the new 
 king Aidan was consecrated by Columba upon a 
 great stone called the Stone of Destiny. This stone 
 
72 
 
 The Stone of Destiny . 
 
 was afterwards transferred to Dunstaffnage Castle, 
 the ruins of which may be seen upon the coast of 
 Argyll, not far from Iona; then to the Abbey of 
 Scone, near Perth ; and was finally carried away by 
 Edward I., the cruel conqueror of Scotland, to 
 Westminster, where it still serves as a pedestal for 
 the throne of the kings of England on the day of 
 their coronation. The solemn inauguration of the 
 kingdom of Aidan marks the historical beginning 
 of the Scotch monarchy, which before that period 
 was more or less fabulous. Aidan was the first 
 prince of the Scots who passed from the rank of 
 territorial chief to that of independent king, and 
 head of a dynasty whose descendants were one day 
 to reign over the three kingdoms of Great Britain. 
 
 But to secure the independence of the new Scot- 
 tish royalty, or rather of the young nation whose 
 stormy and poetic history was thus budding under 
 the breath and blessing of Columba, it was neces- 
 sary to break the link of subjugation or vassalage 
 which bound the Dalriadian colony to the Irish 
 kings. All this time it had remained tributary to 
 the monarchs of the island which it had left nearly 
 a century before to establish itself in Caledonia. 
 To obtain by peaceable means the abolition of this 
 tribute, Columba — who was Irish by heart as well 
 as by birth, yet who at the same time was, like the 
 Dalriadians, his kinsmen, an emigrant in Caledonia, 
 and, like the new king, descended from the mon- 
 archs of Ireland — must have seemed the mediator 
 
Mission to Ireland \ 
 
 73 
 
 indicated by nature. He accepted the mission, 
 and returned to Ireland, which he had thought 
 never to see again, in company with the king whom 
 he had just crowned, to endeavour to come to an 
 agreement with the Irish monarch and the other 
 princes and chiefs assembled at Drumkeath. His 
 impartiality was above all suspicion ; for the very 
 day of the coronation of A'idan he had announced 
 to him, in the name of God, that the prosperity of 
 the new Scotic kingdom depended upon peace with 
 Ireland, its cradle. In the midst of the ceremony 
 he had said aloud to the king whom he had crowned, 
 “ Charge your sons, and let them charge their 
 grandchildren, never to expose their kingdom to be 
 lost by their fault. The moment that they attempt 
 any fraudulent enterprise against my spiritual de- 
 scendants here, or against my countrymen and 
 kindred in Ireland, the hand of God will weigh 
 heavily upon them, the heart of men will be raised 
 against them, and the victory of their enemies will 
 be assured.” 
 
 The king of Ireland, Diarmid, who was, like Co- 
 lumba, of the race of Niall, but of the Nialls of the 
 North, and whom our saint had so violently re- 
 sisted, had died immediately after the voluntary 
 exile of Columba. He perished, as has been men- 
 tioned, by the hand of a prince called Black Aedh, 
 chief of the Antrim Dalriadians, who remained in 
 Ireland when a part of their clan emigrated to 
 Scotland. Some time afterwards the supreme 
 
74 P arliament of Drumceitt. 
 
 throne of Ireland fell to another Aedh, of the south- 
 ern branch of the race of Niall, and consequently 
 of the same stock as Columba. He was also the 
 friend and benefactor of his emigrant cousin, to 
 whom he had given before his exile the site of 
 Derry, the most important of his Irish foundations. 
 The first synod or parliament of Aedh’s reign had 
 been convoked in a place called Drumceitt, now 
 Drumkeath, the Whale's Back , situated in his 
 special patrimony, not far from the sea and the gulf 
 of Lough Foyle, where Columba had embarked, and 
 at the further end of which was his dear monastery 
 of Derry. It was there that he returned with his 
 royal client, the new king of the Caledonian Scots, 
 whose confessor, or, as the Irish termed it, friend 
 of his soul \ he had become. The two kings, Aedh 
 and Aidan, presided at this assembly, which sat for 
 fourteen months, and the recollection of which has 
 been preserved among the Irish people, the most 
 faithful nation in the world, for more than a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 The Irish lords and clergy encamped under tents 
 like soldiers during the entire duration of this ‘par- 
 liament. The most important question discussed 
 among them was no doubt that of the tribute ex- 
 acted from the king of the Dalriadians. It does 
 not appear that the Irish king demanded tribute 
 on account of the new kingdom founded by his an- 
 cient subjects, but rather on account of that part of 
 Ireland itself, at present the county of Antrim, from 
 
75 
 
 Defence of the Bards . 
 
 whence the Dalriadian colonists had gone, and which 
 was the hereditary patrimony of their new king. 
 This was precisely the position in which the Nor- 
 man princes, who had become kings of England, 
 while still dukes of Normandy, found themselves, 
 five centuries later, in respect to the kings of France. 
 Columba, the friend of both kings, was commissioned 
 to solve the difficulty. According to some Irish 
 authors, the Abbot of Iona, when the decisive mo- 
 ment arrived, refused to decide, and transferred to 
 another monk, St Colman, the responsibility of pro- 
 nouncing the judgment. At all events, the Irish 
 king renounced all suzerainty over the king of the 
 Dalriadians of Albania, as Scotland was then called. 
 Independence and freedom from all tribute were 
 granted to the Albanian Scots, who, on their side, 
 promised perpetual alliance and hospitality to their 
 Irish countrymen. 
 
 Columba had another cause to plead at the par- 
 liament of Drumceitt, which was almost as dear to 
 his heart as the independence of the Scotic kingdom 
 and colony of which he was the spiritual head. 
 The question in this case was nothing less than 
 that of the existence of a corporation as powerful 
 as, and more ancient and national than, the clergy 
 itself : it concerned the bards, who were at once 
 poets and genealogists, historians and musicians, 
 and whose high position and popular ascendancy 
 form one of the most characteristic features of Irish 
 history. The entire nation, always enamoured of its 
 
76 Corporation of the Bards . 
 
 traditions, its fabulous antiquity, and local and do- 
 mestic glory, surrounded with ardent and respectful 
 sympathy the men who could clothe in a poetic 
 dress all the lore and superstitions of the past, as well 
 as the passions and interests of the present. In the 
 annals of Ireland, as far back as they can be traced, 
 the bards or ollambh , who were regarded as oracles 
 of knowledge, of poetry, history, and music, are 
 always to be found. They were trained from their 
 infancy with the greatest care in special communi- 
 ties, and so greatly honoured that the first place 
 at the royal table, after that of the king himself, 
 was reserved for them. Since the introduction of 
 Christianity, the bards, like the Druids of earlier 
 times, whose successors they are supposed to have 
 been, continued to form a powerful and popular 
 band. They were then divided into three orders : 
 the Fileas , who sang of religion and of war ; the Bre- 
 hons , whose name is associated with the ancient 
 laws of the country, which they versified and recited ; 
 the Seanachies , who enshrined in verse the national 
 history and antiquities, and, above all, the gene- 
 alogies and prerogatives of the ancient families 
 who were specially dear to the national and war- 
 like passions of the Irish people. They carried this 
 guardianship of historical recollections and relics 
 so far as to watch over the boundaries of each pro- 
 vince and family domain. They took part, like 
 the clergy, in all the assemblies, and with still 
 greater reason in ail the fights. They were over- 
 
Its proposed A bolition. 7 7 
 
 whelmed with favours and privileges by the kings 
 and petty princes, on whom their songs and their 
 harp could alone bestow a place in history, or even 
 a good name among their contemporaries. But 
 naturally this great power had produced many 
 abuses, and at the moment of which we speak, the 
 popularity of the bards had suffered an eclipse. A 
 violent opposition had been raised against them. 
 Their great number, their insolence, their insatiable 
 greed, had all been made subjects of reproach ; 
 and, above all, they were censured for having 
 made traffic and a trade of their poetry— of lavish- 
 ing praises upon the nobles and princes who were 
 liberal to them, and making others the subject of 
 satirical invectives, which the charm of their verse 
 spread but too readily, to the great injury of the 
 honour of families. The enmities raised against 
 them had come to such a point, that King Aedh 
 felt himself in sufficient force to propose to the 
 assembly of Drumceitt the radical abolition of this 
 dangerous order, and the banishment, and even 
 outlawry, if not, as some say, the massacre, of all 
 the bards. 
 
 It is not apparent that the clergy took any part 
 whatever in this persecution of a body which they 
 might well have regarded as their rivals. The in- 
 troduction of Christianity into the country of Ossian, 
 under St Patrick, seems scarcely, if at all, to have 
 affected the position of the bards. They became 
 Christians without either inflicting or suffering any 
 
78 They are saved by St Columba. 
 
 violence, and they were in general the auxiliaries 
 and friends of the bishops, monks, and saints. Each 
 monastery, like each prince and lord, possessed a 
 bard, whose office it was to sing the glory, and 
 often to write the annals, of the community. Not- 
 withstanding, it is apparent through many of the 
 legends of the period, that the bards represented 
 a pagan power, in the eyes of many ecclesiastical 
 writers, and that they were willingly identified with 
 those Druids or Magi who had been the principal 
 enemies of the evangelical mission of Patrick in 
 Ireland and of Columba in Scotland. Even in 
 the legend of Columba it is noted that some 
 among them had determined to make him pay 
 for his ransom according to their custom, and had 
 for this end addressed to him importunate solicita- 
 tions, threatening, if he refused, to abuse him in 
 their verse. 
 
 Notwithstanding, it was Columba who saved 
 them. He who was born a poet and remained a 
 poet to the last day of his life, interceded for them, 
 and gained their cause. His success was not with- 
 out difficulty, for King Aedh was eager in their 
 pursuit ; but Columba, as stubborn as bold, made 
 head against all. He represented that care must 
 be taken not to pull up the good corn with the 
 tares ; that the general exile of the' poets would 
 be the death of a venerable antiquity and of that 
 poetry which was so dear to the country and so 
 useful to those who knew how to employ it. The 
 
79 
 
 His Sympathy with them . 
 
 ripe corn must not be burned, he said, because of 
 the weeds that mingle with it. The king and the 
 assembly yielded at length, under condition that 
 the number of bards should be henceforward 
 limited, and that their profession should be put 
 under certain rules determined by Columba him- 
 self. It was his eloquence alone which turned 
 aside the blow by which they were threatened; 
 and knowing themselves to be saved by him, they 
 showed their gratitude by exalting his glory in 
 their songs and by leaving to their successors the 
 charge of continuing his praise. 
 
 Columba himself had a profound pleasure in this 
 poetical popularity. The corporation of bards had 
 a chief, Dalian Fergall, who was blind, and whose 
 violent death (he was murdered by pirates) has 
 given him a place among the holy martyrs, of whom 
 there are so few in Ireland. Immediately after the 
 favourable decision of the assembly, Dalian com- 
 posed a song in honour of Columba, and came to 
 sing it before him. At the flattering sounds of this 
 song of gratitude the Abbot of Iona could not 
 defend himself from a human sentiment of self- 
 satisfaction. But he was immediately reproved by 
 one of his monks, Baithen, one of his twelve 
 original companions in exile, and who was destined 
 to be his successor. This faithful friend was not 
 afraid to accuse Columba of pride, nor to tell him 
 that he saw a sombre cloud of demons flying and 
 playing round his head. Columba profited by the 
 
8o 
 
 The Ambhra. 
 
 warning. He imposed silence upon Dalian, re- 
 minding him that it was only the dead who should 
 be praised, and absolutely forbade him to repeat 
 his song. Dalian obeyed reluctantly, and awaited 
 the death of the saint to make known his poem, 
 which became celebrated in Irish literature under 
 the name of Ambhra , or the Praise of St Columbcille. 
 It was still sung a century after his death through- 
 out all Ireland and Scotland, and even the least 
 devout of men repeated it with tenderness and 
 fervour, as a safeguard against the dangers of war 
 and every other accident. It even came to be 
 believed that every one who knew this Ambhra by 
 heart and sang it piously would die a good death. 
 But when the unenlightened people came so far as 
 to believe that even great sinners, without either 
 conversion or penitence, had only to sing the 
 Ambhra of Columbcille every day in order to be 
 saved, a wonder happened, says the historian and 
 grandnephew of the saint, which opened the eyes 
 of the faithful, by showing to them how they ought 
 to understand the privileges accorded by God to 
 His saints. An ecclesiastic of the metropolitan 
 church of Armagh, who was a man of corrupt life, 
 and desired to be saved without making any change 
 in his conduct, succeeded in learning the half of 
 the famous Ambhra, but never could remember the 
 other half. It was in vain that he made a pilgrim- 
 age to the tomb of the saint, fasted, prayed, and 
 spent the entire night in efforts to impress it upon 
 
8 1 
 
 Irish Poetry . 
 
 his memory — the next morning he found that, 
 though he had at length succeeded in learning the 
 latter half, he had completely forgotten the first. 
 
 The gratitude of the bards to him who had pre- 
 served them from exile and outlawry has certainly 
 had some share in the wonderful and lasting popu- 
 larity of Columba’s name. Shrined in the national 
 and religious poetry of the two islands, his fame 
 has not only lasted in full brilliancy in Ireland, but 
 it has survived even the Reformation — which has 
 destroyed almost all other traces of their past his- 
 tory as Christians — in the memory of the Celts of 
 Scotland. 
 
 On the other hand, the protection of Columba 
 certainly confirmed the popularity of the bards in 
 the heart of the Irish nation. All opposition be- 
 tween the religious spirit and the bardic influence 
 disappeared from his time. Music and poetry after 
 that period identified themselves more and more 
 with ecclesiastical life. Among the relics of the 
 saints the harps on which they had played found a 
 place. At the first English conquest the bishops 
 and abbots excited the surprise of the invaders by 
 their love of music, and by accompanying them- 
 selves on the harp. Irish poetry, which was in the 
 days of Patrick and Columba so powerful and so 
 popular, has long undergone in the country of 
 Ossian the same fate as the religion of which these 
 great saints were the apostles. Rooted like it in 
 the heart of a conquered people, and like it pro- 
 
 F 
 
82 Persecution of the Bards 
 
 scribed and persecuted with unwearying vehemence, 
 it has come ever forth anew from the bloody furrow 
 in which it was supposed to be buried. The bards 
 became the most powerful allies of patriotism, the 
 most dauntless prophets of national independence, 
 and also the favourite victims of the cruelty of 
 spoilers and conquerors. They made music and 
 poetry weapons and bulwarks against foreign op- 
 pression, and the oppressors used them as they had 
 used the priests and the nobles. A price was set 
 upon their heads. But while the last scions of the 
 royal and noble races, decimated or ruined in 
 Ireland, departed, to die out under a foreign sky 
 amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the 
 bards, the minstrel, whom nothing could tear from 
 his native soil, was pursued, tracked, and taken like 
 a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered like the 
 most dangerous of rebels. 
 
 In the annals of the atrocious legislation directed 
 by the English against the Irish people, as well 
 before as after the Reformation, special penalties 
 against the minstrels , lards, rhymers , and genealo- 
 gists, who sustained the lords and gentlemen in 
 their love of rebellion and of other crimes, are to 
 be met at every step. An attempt was made, 
 under the sanguinary Elizabeth, to give pecuniary 
 recompense to those who would celebrate “ her 
 Majesty’s most worthy praise.” The bargain was 
 accepted by none. All preferred flight or death to 
 this salary of lies. Wandering over hill and dale, 
 
in after times. 
 
 83 
 
 hidden in the depths of the devastated country, 
 they perpetuated there the poetic traditions of their 
 condemned race, and sang the glory of ancient 
 heroes and new martyrs, the shame of apostates,, 
 and the crimes of the sacrilegious stranger. 
 
 In order the better to brave tyranny in the midst 
 of a subdued and silent people, they had recourse 
 to allegory and the elegies of love. Under the 
 figure of an enslaved queen — or of a woman loved 
 with an everlasting love and fought for with de- 
 spairing faithfulness, in face of the jealous fury of a 
 stepmother — they celebrated again and again the 
 Irish Fatherland, the country in mourning and 
 tears, once queen and now a slave. The Irish, 
 says a great historian of our own day, loved to 
 make of their country a real being whom they 
 loved, and who loved them. They loved to ad- 
 dress her without naming her name, and to identify 
 the austere and perilous devotion which they had 
 vowed to her with all that is sweetest and most 
 fortunate in the affections of the heart, like those 
 Spartans who crowned themselves with flowers 
 when about to perish at Thermopylae. 
 
 Up to the time of the ungrateful Stuarts, this 
 proscription of the national poets was permanent, 
 increasing in force with every change of reign and 
 every new parliament. The rage of the Cromwell- 
 ian Protestants carried them so far as to break, 
 wherever they met with them, the minstrel’s harps 
 which were still to be found in the miserable cot- 
 
84 Characteristics of 
 
 tages of the starving Irish, as they were eleven 
 centuries before, at the time when the courageous 
 and charitable Bridget saw them suspended on the 
 wall of the king’s palace. Nevertheless the harp 
 has remained the emblem of Ireland even in the 
 official arms of the British Empire ; and during all 
 last century the travelling harper, last and pitiful 
 successor of the bards protected by Columba, was 
 always to be found at the side of the priest to cele- 
 brate the holy mysteries of the proscribed worship. 
 He never ceased to be received with tender respect 
 under the thatched roof of the poor Irish peasant, 
 whom he consoled in his misery and oppression by 
 the plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of 
 the music of his fathers. 
 
 The continuance of these distinctive features of 
 Irish character through so many centuries is so 
 striking, and the misfortunes of that noble race 
 touch us so nearly, that it is difficult to resist the 
 temptation of leaving behind us those distant ages, 
 and of following through later generations the mel- 
 ancholy relics of all that has been discovered or 
 admired in the most ancient days. We may be 
 pardoned for adding that, if the text of those poetic 
 and generously obstinate protests against the en- 
 slavement of Ireland have perished, the life and 
 spirit of them has survived in the pure and pene- 
 trating beauty of the ancient Irish airs. Their har- 
 monies and their refrains, which are inimitably 
 natural, original, and pathetic, move the depths of 
 
85 
 
 Celtic Poetry . 
 
 the soul, and send a thrill through all the fibres of 
 human sensibility. Thomas Moore, in adapting to 
 them words which are marked with the impression 
 of a passionate fidelity to the proscribed faith and 
 oppressed country, has given to the ‘Irish Melodies’ 
 a popularity which was not the least powerful among 
 those pleas which determined the great contest of 
 Catholic Emancipation. 
 
 The genius of Celtic poetry has, however, sur- 
 vived not only in Ireland, in the country of Co- 
 lumba and of Moore, but has found a refuge in the 
 glens of the Scottish Highlands, among those vast 
 moors and rugged mountains, and beside the deep 
 and narrow lakes, which Columba, bearing the light 
 of the faith to the Caledonian Piets, had so often tra- 
 versed. In those districts where, as in a great part 
 of Ireland, the Erse or Gaelic language is still 
 spoken, the Celtic muse, always sad and always 
 attached to the cause of the people, has been found 
 in recent times, at the most prosaic moment of mo- 
 dem civilisation, in the eighteenth century itself, 
 inspiring the warlike songs and laments which the 
 Highlanders have consecrated to the conquered 
 Pretender and his followers slain. And if we may 
 believe a competent and impartial judge — Charles 
 Mackay, in his Introduction to the ‘Jacobite Songs 
 and Ballads of Scotland ’ — the last effusions of the 
 soul of the Gaelic race surpass, in plaintive beauty 
 and in passionate feeling, even those delicious 
 Anglo-Scottish songs which no traveller can hear 
 
86 
 
 The Jacobite Relics . 
 
 without emotion, and which have assured the palm, 
 at least of poetry, to the cause of the Stuarts, which 
 has been so sadly represented by its princes, and 
 so ill served by events, but which the popular and 
 national muse has thus avenged, even for the irre- 
 mediable defeat of Culloden. 
 
87 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ©olum&a’g IflUIattong fottf) Ireland — ©ontinuet). 
 
 N the national parliament of Drumceitt 
 which saved the bards, and where all the 
 ecclesiastical chiefs of the Irish nation, 
 along with their princes and provincial 
 kings, were assembled, Columba, already invested 
 by his apostolical labours with great power and 
 authority, found himself surrounded by public 
 homage, and tokens of universal confidence. To 
 all the kings, whose kinsman and friend he was, he 
 preached peace, concord, the pardon of affronts, 
 and the recall of exiles, many of whom had found 
 shelter in the island monastery which owed its ex- 
 istence to his own exile. Nevertheless, it was not 
 without trouble that he obtained from the supreme 
 monarch the freedom of a young prince, named 
 Scandlan, son of the chief of Ossory, whom Aedh 
 detained in prison, in contempt of his sworn faith, 
 and of an agreement to which Columba himself 
 
88 Career of King DomnalL 
 
 had been a witness. The noble abbot went to the 
 prisoner in his dungeon, blessed him, and predicted 
 to him that he should be twice exiled, but that he 
 should survive his oppressor, and reign for thirty 
 years in his paternal domain. The king yielded on 
 this point, but with a bad grace; he feared the 
 influence of the illustrious exile, and had seen him 
 return to Ireland with dissatisfaction. His eldest 
 son had publicly ridiculed the monks of Iona, and 
 had thus drawn upon himself the curse of Columba, 
 which brought misfortune, for he was afterwards 
 dethroned and assassinated. But the king’s second 
 son Domnall, who was still young, took openly the 
 part of the Abbot of Iona, who predicted for him 
 not only a long and glorious reign, but the rare 
 privilege of dying in his bed, on the condition of 
 receiving the Holy Communion every eight days, 
 and of keeping at least one in seven of his promises 
 — a somewhat satirical limit, which betrays either 
 the old contradictory spirit of the converted Niall, 
 or the recollection of his own legitimate resentment 
 against certain princes. His prophecy, extremely 
 improbable as it was, in a country where all the 
 princes perished on the battle-field or by a violent 
 death, was nevertheless fulfilled. Domnall, who was 
 the third successor of his father, following after two 
 other kings who were destroyed by their enemies, 
 had a long and prosperous reign ; he gained numer- 
 ous victories, marching to battle under a banner 
 blessed by St Columba, and died, after an illness of 
 
89 
 
 Fate of his Father . 
 
 eighteen months, in his bed, or, as Columba speci- 
 fied, with a precision which marks the rareness of 
 the occurrence, on his down-bed. His father, al- 
 though reconciled to Columba, did not escape the 
 common law. The great abbot bestowed upon 
 him his monastic cowl, promising that it should 
 always be to him as an impenetrable cuirass. After 
 this, he never went into battle without putting on 
 his friend’s cowl above his armour. But one day 
 when he had forgotten it, he was killed in a combat 
 with the king of Lagenia or Leinster. Columba 
 had previously warned him against waging war with 
 the people of Leinster, which was the country of 
 his mother, and which he loved with that impas- 
 sioned clan or family affection which is so distinc- 
 tive a feature in his character. The Lagenians had 
 not lost the opportunity of working upon this senti- 
 ment : for one day, when he was at his Abbey of 
 Durrow, upon their boundary, a numerous assembly 
 of all ages, from children to old men, came to him, 
 and, surrounding him, pleaded with such animation 
 their kindred with his mother, that they obtained 
 from him the promise, or prophecy, that no king 
 should ever be able to overcome them, so long as 
 they fought for a just cause. 
 
 There is no doubt that, after the assembly of 
 Drumceitt, Columba made many journeys to Ire- 
 land. The direction of the various monasteries 
 which he had founded there before his voluntary 
 exile, and of which he had kept the government in 
 
90 
 
 Work in Ireland . 
 
 his own hands, must have led him often back ; but 
 after that assembly, his visits were always made 
 notable by miracles of healing, prophecy, or revela- 
 tion, and still more by the tender solicitude of his 
 paternal heart. Sometimes, towards the decline of 
 his life, while traversing a hilly or marshy country, 
 he travelled in a car, as St Patrick had done ; but 
 the care with which his biographers note this fact, 
 proves that formerly the greater part of his journeys 
 had been made on foot. He did not limit himself 
 to communities of which he was the superior or 
 founder; he loved to visit other monastic sanctu- 
 aries also, such as that of Clonmacnoise, the im- 
 portance of which has already been pointed out. 
 And on such occasions the crowding and eagerness 
 of the monks to pay their homage to the holy and 
 beloved old man was redoubled ; they left their out- 
 door work, and, crossing the earthen intrenchment, 
 which, like the vallum of Roman camps, enclosed 
 the Celtic monasteries, came to meet him, chanting 
 hymns. When they came up to him, they prostrated 
 themselves on the ground at his feet, ere they em- 
 braced him ; and in order to shelter him from the 
 crowd during the solemn processions which were 
 made in his honour, a rampart of branches was 
 carried like a dais by four men, who surrounded 
 him, treading with equal steps. An ancient author 
 even goes so far as to say, that on the occasion of 
 his return and prolonged stay in his native country, 
 he was invested with a sort of general supremacy 
 
St Ernan. 9 1 
 
 over all the religious of Ireland, both monks and 
 nuns. 
 
 During the journey from Durrow to Clonmac- 
 noise, Columba made a halt at one of his own 
 monasteries, where a poor little scholar, “ of thick 
 speech, and still more heavy aspect,” whom his 
 superiors employed in the meanest services, glided 
 into the crowd, and, stealthily approaching the great 
 abbot, touched the end of his robe behind him, as 
 the Canaanitish woman touched the robe of our 
 Lord. Columba, perceiving it, stopped, turned 
 round, and, taking the child by the neck, kissed 
 him. “ Away, away, little fool 1” cried all the spec- 
 tators. “ Patience, my brethren,” said Columba : 
 then turning to the boy, who trembled with fear, 
 “My son,” he said, “open thy mouth, and show 
 me thy tongue.” The child obeyed, with increasing 
 timidity. The abbot made the sign of the cross 
 upon his tongue, and added, “This child, who 
 appears to you so contemptible, let no one hence- 
 forward despise him. He shall grow every day in 
 wisdom and virtue ; he shall be reckoned with the 
 greatest among you ; God will give to this tongue, 
 which I have just blessed, the gift of eloquence and 
 true doctrine.” The boy grew to manhood, and 
 became celebrated in the churches of Scotland and 
 Ireland, where he was venerated under the name of 
 St Ernan. He himself told this prophecy, so well 
 justified by the event, to a contemporary of Adam- 
 nan, who has preserved all the details for us. 
 
92 
 
 Personal Anecdotes. 
 
 These journeys, however, were not necessary to 
 prove Columba’s solicitude for the monks who filled 
 his monasteries. He showed the same care when 
 distant as when at hand, by the help of that mira- 
 culous foresight which came to the assistance of 
 his paternal anxiety in all their spiritual and tem- 
 poral necessities. One day, after his return from 
 Ireland, he was heard to stop suddenly short in the 
 correspondence or transcription in which he had 
 been engaged in his little cell in Iona, and cry 
 with all his strength, “ Help, help !” This cry was 
 addressed to the guardian angel of the community, 
 and the appeal was made on behalf of a man who 
 had fallen from the top of the round tower which 
 was then being built at Durrow, in the centre of 
 Ireland — so great was his confidence in what he 
 himself called the indescribable and lightning speed 
 of the flight of angels ; and greater still was his 
 trust in their protection. Another time, at Iona, in 
 a day of chilly fog, such as occurs often in that 
 sombre climate, he was suddenly seen to burst into 
 tears. When asked the reason of his distress, he 
 answered, “ Dear son, it is not without reason that 
 I weep. At this very hour I see my dear monks 
 of Durrow condemned by their abbot to exhaust 
 themselves in this dreary weather building the great 
 round tower of the monastery, and the sight over- 
 whelms me.” The same day, and at the same 
 hour, as was afterwards ascertained, Laisran, the 
 abbot of Durrow, felt within himself something like 
 
Authority exercised by the Saint . 93 
 
 an internal flame, which reawakened in his heart 
 a sentiment of pity for his monks. He immediately 
 commanded them to leave their work, to warm 
 themselves, and take some food, and even forbade 
 them to resume their building until the weather 
 had improved. This same Laisran afterwards came 
 to deserve the name of Consoler of the Monks, so 
 much had he been imbued by Columba with that 
 supernatural charity which, in monastic life, as in 
 every other Christian existence, is at once a light 
 and a flame, ardens et lucens. 
 
 Columba not only retained his superior jurisdic- 
 tion over the monasteries which he had founded in 
 Ireland, or which had been admitted to the privi- 
 leges of his foundations, but he also exercised a 
 spiritual authority, which it is difficult to explain, 
 over various laymen of his native island. On one 
 occasion, he is known to have sent his cousin, 
 friend, and principal disciple to the centre of Ire- 
 land, to Drum-Cuill, to pronounce sentence of 
 excommunication against a certain family, whose 
 crime, however, is not specified. This disciple was 
 Baithen, whom we have seen to be one of Colum- 
 ba’s companions from the moment of his exile, and 
 who warned his superior against the fumes of pride, 
 at the time when the bards began to express their 
 enthusiastic gratitude. The gentle Baithen, when 
 he had arrived at the appointed place, after having 
 passed the whole night in prayer under an oak, 
 said to his companions, “ No, I will not excommu- 
 
94 
 
 His Companion Baithen. 
 
 nicate this family before making sure that it will 
 not repent. I give it a year’s respite, and during 
 the year, the fate of this tree shall be a warning to 
 it.” Some time after the tree was struck by light- 
 ning; but we are not informed if the family thus 
 warned was brought to repentance. 
 
 Baithen was a man of tender soul, of whom we 
 would fain speak at greater length, if it were not 
 needful to circumscribe the wide and confused re- 
 cords of Celtic hagiography. Columba compared 
 him to St J ohn the Evangelist ; he said that his 
 beloved disciple resembled him who was the beloved 
 disciple of Christ, by his exquisite purity, his pene- 
 trating simplicity, and his love of perfection. And 
 Columba was not alone in doing justice to the man 
 who, after having been his chief lieutenant in his 
 work, was to become his first successor. One day, 
 in an assembly of learned monks, probably held in 
 Ireland, Fintan, a very learned and very wise man, 
 and also one of the twelve companions of Columba’s 
 exile, was questioned upon the qualities of Baithen. 
 “ Know,” he answered, “ that there is no one on 
 this side of the Alps who is equal to him in know- 
 ledge of the Scriptures, and in the greatness of his 
 learning.” “ What ! ” said his questioners — “ not 
 even his master, Columba?” “I do not compare 
 the disciple with the master,” answered Fintan. 
 “ Columba is not to be compared with philo- 
 sophers and learned men, but with patriarchs, 
 prophets, and apostles. The Holy Ghost reigns in 
 
95 
 
 Character of him. 
 
 him ; he has been chosen by God for the good of 
 all. He is a sage among all sages, a king among 
 kings, an anchorite with anchorites, a monk of 
 monks ; and in order to bring himself to the level 
 even of laymen, he knows how to be poor of heart 
 among the poor; thanks to the apostolic charity 
 which inspires him, he can rejoice with the joyful, 
 and weep with the unfortunate. And amid all the 
 gifts which God’s generosity has lavished on him, 
 the true humility of Christ is so royally rooted in 
 his soul, that it seems to have been born with him.” 
 It is added that all the learned hearers assented 
 unanimously to this enthusiastic eulogium. 
 
96 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ©olumtm tfje protector of jailors anti &griculturisstss, 
 tf)e ifrienti of Sagmen, ant) tfjc &benger of tl)c 
 <®ppreg$eD. 
 
 URING all the rest of his life, which was 
 to pass in his island of Iona, or in the 
 neighbouring districts of Scotland which 
 had been evangelised by his unwearied 
 zeal, nothing strikes and attracts the historian 
 so much as the generous ardour of Columba’s 
 charity. The history of his whole life proves 
 that he was born with a violent and even vindic- 
 tive temper; but he had succeeded in subduing 
 and transforming himself to such a point that he 
 was ready to sacrifice all things to the love of his 
 neighbour. It is not merely an apostle or a monas- 
 tic founder whom we have before us — beyond and 
 besides this it is a friend, a brother, a benefactor of 
 men, a brave and untiring defender of the labourer, 
 the feeble, and the poor : it is a man occupied not 
 
 i 
 
97 
 
 Labours of the Monks . 
 
 only with the salvation but also with the happiness, 
 the rights, and the interests of all his fellow-crea- 
 tures, and in whom the instinct of pity showed 
 itself in a bold and continual interposition against 
 all oppression and wickedness. 
 
 Without losing the imposing and solemn char- 
 acter which always accompanied his popular fame, 
 he will now be revealed to us under a still more 
 touching aspect, through all the long succession of 
 his apostolic labours, and in the two principal 
 occupations — agriculture and navigation— which 
 gave variety to his missionary life. 
 
 For navigation alternated with agriculture in the 
 labours of the cenobites of Iona. The same monks 
 who cultivated the scanty fields of the holy island, 
 and who reaped and thrashed the corn, accom- 
 panied Columba in his voyages to the neighbouring 
 isles, and followed the sailor’s trade, then, it would 
 seem, more general than now among the Irish race. 
 Communication was then frequent, not only be- 
 tween Ireland and Great Britain, but between 
 Ireland and Gaul. We have already seen in the 
 port of Nantes an Irish boat ready to carry away 
 the founder of Luxeuil. The Gaulish merchants 
 came to sell or offer their wines as far as to the 
 centre of the island, to the Abbey of Clonmacnoise. 
 In the life of our saint, seafaring populations are 
 constantly spoken of as surrounding him, and 
 receiving his continual visits; and exercises and 
 excursions are also mentioned, which associate his 
 
 G 
 
98 Boats of the Period. 
 
 disciples with all the incidents of a seafaring life. 
 As a proof of this we quote four lines, in very an- 
 cient Irish, which may be thus translated : 
 
 u Honour to the soldiers who live at Iona ; 
 
 There are three times fifty under the monastic rule, 
 Seventy of whom are appointed to row, 
 
 And cross the sea in their leathern barks.” 
 
 These boats were sometimes hollowed out of the 
 trunks of trees, like those which are still found 
 buried in the bogs or turf-mosses of Ireland ; but 
 most generally they were made of osier, and covered 
 with buffalo-skins, like those described by Caesar. 
 Their size was estimated by the number of skins 
 which had been used to cover them. They were 
 generally small, and those made of one or two skins 
 were portable. The abbot of Iona had one of this 
 description for the inland waters when he travelled 
 beyond the northern hills (dorsum Britannia), 
 which he crossed so often to preach among the 
 Piets. At a later period the community possessed 
 many of a much larger size, to convey the materials 
 for the reconstruction of the primitive monastery at 
 Iona, and the timber which the sons of Columba 
 cut down and fashioned in the vast oak forests 
 which then covered the whole country, now so sadly 
 deprived of wood. They went like galleys, with 
 sail or oar, and were furnished with masts and rig- 
 ging like modern boats. The holy island had at 
 last an entire fleet at its disposal, manned and 
 navigated by the monks. 
 
 
Daring Navigators. 99 
 
 In these frail skiffs Columba and his monks 
 ploughed the dangerous and stormy sea which 
 dashes on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and 
 penetrated boldly into the numberless gulfs and 
 straits of the sombre Hebridean archipelago. They 
 knew the perils to which their insular existence 
 exposed them ; but they braved those dangers 
 without fear, accustomed as they were to live in 
 the midst of storms, upon an isle which the great 
 waves of ocean threatened continually to swallow 
 up. Not less alarming was their position when the 
 winds carried them towards the terrible whirlpool, 
 named, after a prince of the Niall family who had 
 been drowned there, the Caldron of Brechan, and 
 which there was always a risk of being driven upon 
 while crossing from Ireland to Scotland. The 
 winds, when blowing from certain directions, hollow 
 out in their whirl such terrible abysses about this 
 spot, that even to our own time it has continued 
 the terror of sailors. The holiest of Columba’s 
 guests passed it by with trembling, raising their 
 hands towards heaven to implore the miracle 
 which alone could save them. But he himself, 
 who one day was almost swallowed up in it, and 
 whose mind was continually preoccupied by the 
 recollection of his kindred, imagined that he saw 
 in this whirlpool a symbol of the torments en- 
 dured in purgatory by the soul of his relative who 
 had perished at that spot, and of the duty of pray- 
 ing for the repose of that soul at the same time 
 
ioo Dangevs of the Sects. 
 
 as he prayed for the safety of the companions of 
 his voyage. 
 
 Columba’s prayers, his special and ardently de- 
 sired blessing, and his constant and passionate in- 
 tercession for his brethren and disciples, were the 
 grand safeguard of the navigators of Iona, not only 
 against wind and shipwrecks, but against other 
 dangers which have now disappeared from these 
 coasts. Great fishes of the cetaceous order swarmed 
 at that time in the Hebridean sea. The sharks 
 ascended even into the Highland rivers, and one of 
 the companions of Columba, swimming across the 
 Ness, was saved only by the prayer of the saint, at 
 the moment when he was but an oar’s-length from 
 the odious monster, which had before swallowed one 
 of the natives. The entire crew of a boat manned 
 by monks took fright and turned back one day on 
 meeting a whale, or perhaps only a shark more 
 formidable than its neighbours ; but on another 
 occasion, the same Baithen who was the friend and 
 successor of Columba, encouraged by the holy 
 abbot’s blessing, had more courage, continued his 
 course, and saw the monster bury itself in the 
 waves. “ After all,” said the monk, “ we are both 
 in the hands of God, both this monster and I. 
 Other monks, sailing in the high northern sea, were 
 panic-struck by the appearance of hosts of unknown 
 shellfish, who, attaching themselves to the oars and 
 sides of the boat, made holes in the hide with which 
 the framework was covered. 
 
IOl 
 
 Objects of the Voyagers . 
 
 It was neither curiosity nor love of gain, nor even 
 a desire to convert the pagans, which stimulated 
 Columba’s disciples to dare all the dangers of navi- 
 gation in one of the most perilous seas of the 
 world ; it was the longing for solitude, the irresist- 
 ible wish to find a more distant retreat, an asylum 
 still further off than that of Iona, upon some un- 
 known rock amid the loneliness of the sea, where 
 no one could join them, and from which they never 
 could be brought back. They returned to Iona 
 without having discovered what they were in search 
 of, sad yet not discouraged ; and after an interval 
 of rest always took to sea again, to begin once 
 more their anxious search. It was thus that the 
 steep and almost inaccessible island of St Kilda, 
 made famous by the daring of its bird-hunters, was 
 first discovered ; then far to the north of the 
 Hebrides and even of the Orcades, they reached 
 the Shetland Isles, and even, according to some, 
 Iceland itself, which is only at the distance of a 
 six days’ voyage from Ireland, and where the first 
 Christian church bore the name of St Columba. 
 Another of their discoveries was the Faroe Islands, 
 where the Norwegians at a later date found traces 
 of the sojourn of the Irish monks, Celtic books, 
 crosses, and bells. Cormac, the boldest of these 
 bold explorers, made three long, laborious, and 
 dangerous voyages with the hope, always dis- 
 appointed, of finding the wilderness of which he 
 dreamed. The first time on landing at Orkney he 
 
102 The Prayers of the Saint . 
 
 escaped death, with which the savage inhabitants 
 of that archipelago threatened all strangers, only by 
 means of the recommendations which Columba had 
 procured from the Pictish king, himself converted, 
 to the still pagan king of the northern islanders. 
 On another occasion the south wind drove him for 
 fourteen successive days and nights almost into the 
 depths of the icy ocean, far beyond anything that 
 the imagination of man had dreamed of in those 
 days. 
 
 Columba, the father and head of those bold and 
 pious mariners, followed and guided them by his 
 ever vigilant and prevailing prayers. He was in 
 some respects present with them, notwithstanding 
 the distance which separated them from the sanc- 
 tuary and from the island harbours which they had 
 left. Prayer gave him an intuitive knowledge of 
 the dangers they ran. He saw them, he suffered 
 and trembled for them ; and immediately assem- 
 bling the brethren who remained in the monastery 
 by the sound of the bell, offered for them the 
 prayers of the community. He implored the Lord 
 with tears to grant the change of wind which was 
 necessary for those at sea, and did not rise from 
 his knees until he had a certainty that his prayers 
 were granted. This happened often, and the saved 
 monks, on returning from their dangerous voyages, 
 hastened to him to thank and bless him for his pro- 
 phetic and beneficent aid. 
 
 Often he himself accompanied them in their voy- 
 
103 
 
 His own Voyages. 
 
 ages of circumnavigation or exploration, and paid 
 many visits to the isles of the Hebridean archipel- 
 ago discovered or frequented by the sailors of his 
 community, and where cells or little colonies from 
 the great island monastery seem to have existed. 
 This was specially the case at Eigg, where a colony 
 of fifty-two monks, founded and ruled by a disciple 
 of the abbot of Iona, were killed by pirates twenty 
 years after his death. This was a favourite spot 
 which he loved to visit, no doubt to enjoy the soli- 
 tude which was no longer to be found at Iona, 
 where the crowds of penitents, pilgrims, and peti- 
 tioners increased from day to day. And he took 
 special pleasure also in Skye, the largest of the 
 Hebridean isles, which, after the lapse of twelve 
 centuries, was recalled to the attention of the world 
 by the dangerous and romantic adventures of 
 Prince Charles-Edward and Flora Macdonald. It 
 was then scarcely inhabited, though very large and 
 covered by forests, in which he could bury himself 
 and pray, leaving even his brethren far behind him. 
 One day he met an immense wild boar pursued by 
 dogs ; with a single word he killed the ferocious 
 brute, instead of protecting it, as in similar cases 
 the saints of the Merovingian legends were so ready 
 to do. He continued during all the middle ages 
 the patron of Skye, where a little lake still bears 
 his name, as well as several spots and monuments 
 in the neighbouring isles. 
 
 Storms often disturbed these excursions by sea, 
 
104 Legends. 
 
 and then Columba showed himself as laborious and 
 bold as the most tried of his monastic mariners. 
 When all were engaged in rowing, he would not 
 remain idle, but rowed with them. We have seen 
 him brave the frequent storms of the narrow and 
 dangerous lakes in the north of Scotland. At sea 
 he retained the same courageous composure in the 
 most tempestuous weather, and took part in all the 
 sailors’ toils. During the voyage which he made 
 from Iona to Ireland, to attend with King A'idan 
 the parliament of Drumceitt, his vessel was in great 
 danger ; the waves dashed into the boat till it was 
 full of water, and Columba took his part with the 
 sailors in baling it out. But his companions stop- 
 ped him. “ What you are doing at present is of 
 little service to us,” they said to him; “you would 
 do better to pray for those who are about to 
 perish.” He did so, and the sea grew calm from 
 the moment when, mounting on the prow, he raised 
 his arms in prayer. 
 
 With these examples before them, his com- 
 panions naturally appealed to his intercession 
 whenever storms arose during any of his voyages. 
 On one occasion he answered them, “ It is not 
 my turn ; it is the holy abbot Kenneth who must 
 pray for us.” Kenneth was the abbot of a mon- 
 astery in Ireland, and a friend of Columba’s who 
 came often to Iona to visit him. At the very 
 same hour he heard the voice of his friend echo 
 in his heart, and, warned by an internal voice, left 
 
Lessons from these . 105 
 
 the refectory where he was, and hastened to the 
 church to pray for the shipwrecked, crying, “ We 
 have something else to do than to dine when Co- 
 lumba is in danger of perishing at sea.” He did 
 not even take the time to put on both his shoes 
 before he went to the church, for which he received 
 the special thanks of his friend at Iona ; an inci- 
 dent which recalls another Celtic legend— that of 
 the bishop St Paternus, who obeyed the call of his 
 metropolitan with a boot upon one foot only. 
 
 Under all these legendary digressions it is evi- 
 dent that the monastic apostle of Caledonia, apart 
 from the prevailing efficacy of his prayers, had 
 made an attentive study of the winds and of all 
 the phenomena of nature which affected the lives 
 of the insular and maritime people whom he sought 
 to lead into Christianity. A hundred different 
 narratives represent him to us as the Eolus of those 
 fabulous times and dangerous seas. He was con- 
 tinually entreated to grant a favourable wind for 
 such or such an expedition ; it even happened one 
 day that two of his monks, on the eve of setting 
 out in two different directions, came to him to ask, 
 the one a north wind, and the other a south wind. 
 He granted the prayer of both, but by delaying the 
 departure of the one who was going to Ireland 
 until after the arrival of the other, who went only 
 to the neighbouring isle of Tiree. 
 
 Thus it happened that from far and near Co- 
 lumba was invoked or feared by the sailors as the 
 
106 Legend of Libran . 
 
 master of all the winds that blew. Libran of the 
 Rushes, the generous penitent whose curious his- 
 tory has been already recorded, wishing to return 
 from Ireland to Iona, was turned back by the crew 
 of the boat which was leaving the port of Derry 
 for Scotland, because he was not a member of the 
 community of Iona. Upon which the disappoint- 
 ed traveller mentally invoked across the sea the 
 help of his absent friend. The wind immediately 
 changed, and the boat was driven back to land. 
 The sailors saw poor Libran still lingering upon 
 the shore, and called to him from the deck, “ Per- 
 haps it is because of thee that the wind has 
 changed; if we take thee with us, art thou dis- 
 posed to make it once more favourable?” “ Yes,” 
 said the monk ; “ the holy abbot Columba, who 
 imposed upon me seven years of penitence, whom 
 I have obeyed, and to whom I wish to return, will 
 obtain that grace for you.” And the result was 
 that he was taken on board, and the journey was 
 happily accomplished. 
 
 These events took place in his lifetime ; but dur- 
 ing at least a century after his death he remained 
 the patron, always popular and propitious, of sailors 
 in danger. A tone of familiar confidence, and 
 sometimes of filial objurgation, may be remarked 
 in their prayers, such as may be found among the 
 Celts of Armorica and the Catholic nations of the 
 south of Europe. Adamnan confesses that he him- 
 self and some other monks of Iona, embarked in a 
 
Anecdotes from Adamnan. 107 
 
 flotilla of a dozen boats charged with oaken beams 
 for the reconstruction of the monastery, were so 
 detained by contrary winds in a neighbouring 
 island, that they took to accusing their Golumba. 
 “Dear saint,” they said to him, “what dost thou 
 think of this delay? We thought up to this moment 
 that thou hadst great favour with God.” Another 
 time, when they were detained by the same cause 
 in a bay near the district of Lorn, precisely on the 
 vigil of St Columba’s day, they said to him, “ How 
 canst thou leave us to pass thy feast to-morrow 
 among laymen, and not in thine own church ? It 
 would be so easy for thee to obtain from the Lord 
 that this contrary wind should become favourable, 
 and permit us to sing mass in thy church !” On 
 these two occasions their desires were granted ; the 
 wind changed suddenly, and permitted them to get 
 to sea and make their way to Iona in those frail 
 boats whose spars, crossing upon the mast, formed 
 the august symbol of redemption. More than a 
 hundred witnesses of these facts were still living 
 when the biographer of our saint wrote his history. 
 
 This tender and vigilant charity, which lent it- 
 self to all the incidents of a sailor’s and traveller’s 
 life, becomes still more strongly apparent during all 
 the phases of his existence, in his relations with the 
 agricultural population, whether of Ireland, which 
 was his cradle, or of his adopted country Caledo- 
 nia. Amid the fabulous legends and apocryphal 
 and childish miracles with which Irish historians 
 
io8 
 
 The Saint as the 
 
 have filled out the glorious story of the great mis- 
 sionary, it is pleasant to be able to discover the 
 unmistakable evidence of his intelligent and fruitful 
 solicitude for the necessities, the labours, and the 
 sufferings of the inhabitants of the rural districts, 
 and his active intervention on their behalf. When 
 the legend tells us how, with one stroke of his 
 crosier, he made fountains of sweet waters spring 
 in a hundred different corners of Ireland or Scot- 
 land, in arid and rocky districts, such as that of 
 the peninsula of Ardnamurchan ; when it shows 
 him lowering, by his prayers, the cataracts of a 
 river so that the salmon could ascend in the fishing 
 season, as they have always done since, to the 
 great benefit of the dwellers by the stream, we 
 recognise in the tale the most touching expression 
 of popular and national gratitude for the services 
 which the great monk rendered to the country, by 
 teaching the peasants to search for the fountains, 
 to regulate the irrigations, and to rectify the course 
 of the rivers, as so many other holy monks have 
 done in all European lands. 
 
 It is equally apparent that he had with zeal and 
 success established the system of grafting and the 
 culture of fruit-trees, when we read the legend 
 which represents him to us, at the beginning of his 
 monastic career in Durrow, the most ancient of his 
 foundations, approaching, in autumn, a tree covered 
 with sour and unwholesome fruit, to bless it, and 
 saying, “ In the name of Almighty God, let thy 
 
Patron of Agriculture. 109 
 
 bitterness leave thee, O bitter tree, and let thy 
 apples be henceforward as sweet as up to this time 
 they have been sour !” At other times he is said 
 to have obtained for his friends quick and abun- 
 dant harvests, enabling them, for example, to cut 
 barley in August which they had sown in June— a 
 thing which then seemed a miracle, but is not with- 
 out parallel in Scotland at the present time. Thus 
 almost invariably the recollection of a service ren- 
 dered, or of a benefit asked or spontaneously con- 
 ferred, weds itself in the legend to the story of 
 miracles and outbursts of wonder-working prayer — 
 which, in most cases, were for the benefit of the 
 cultivators of the soil : it is evident that he studied 
 their necessities and followed their vicissitudes with 
 untiring sympathy. 
 
 In the same spirit he studied and sought reme- 
 dies for the infectious diseases which threatened 
 life, or which made ravages among the cattle of the 
 country. Seated one day upon a hillock in his 
 island, he said to the monk who was with him, and 
 who belonged to the Dalriadian colony, “ Look at 
 that thick and rainy cloud which comes from the 
 north ; it has within it the germs of a deadly sick- 
 ness ; it is about to fall upon a large district of our 
 Ireland, bringing ulcers and sores upon the body 
 of man and beast. We must have pity on our 
 brethren. Quick, let us go down, and to-morrow 
 thou shalt embark and go to their aid.” The monk 
 obeyed, and, furnished with bread which Columba 
 
no Legendary Miracles . 
 
 had blessed, he went over all the district smitten 
 by the pestilence, distributing to the first sick per- 
 sons he met, water, in which the bread blessed by 
 the exiled abbot, who concerned himself so anxi- 
 ously about the lot of his countrymen, had been 
 steeped. The remedy worked so well, that from 
 all parts both men and beasts crowded round the 
 messenger of Iona, and the praises of Christ and 
 His servant Columba resounded far and wide. 
 
 Thus we see the saint continually on the watch 
 for those evils, losses, and accidents which struck 
 the families or nations specially interesting to 
 him, and which were revealed to him either by a 
 supernatural intuition or by some plaintive appeal. 
 Sometimes we find him sending the blessed bread, 
 which was his favourite remedy, to a holy girl who 
 had broken her leg in returning from mass ; some- 
 times curing others of ophthalmia by means of salt 
 also blessed; everywhere on his evangelical jour- 
 neys, or other expeditions, we are witnesses of his 
 desire, and the pains he took, to heal all the sick 
 that were brought to him, or who awaited him on 
 the roadside, eager, like the little idiot of Clonmac- 
 noise, to touch the border of his robe — an accom- 
 paniment which had followed him during the whole 
 course of his journey to the national assembly of 
 Drumceitt. 
 
 His entire life bears the mark of his ardent sym- 
 pathy for the labourers in the fields. From the 
 time of his early travels as a young man in Ireland, 
 
Agricultural Labours . 1 1 1 
 
 when he furnished the ploughmen with ploughshares, 
 and had the young men trained to the trade of black- 
 smith, up to the days of his old age, when he could 
 only follow far off the labour of his monks, his pa- 
 ternal tenderness never ceased to exercise on their 
 account its salutary and beneficent influence. Seated 
 in the little wooden hut which answered the purpose 
 of a cell, he interrupted his studies, and put down 
 his pen, to bless the monks as they came back from 
 the fields, the pastures, or the barns. The younger 
 brethren, after having milked the cows of the com- 
 munity, knelt down, with their pails full of new 
 milk, to receive from a distance the abbot’s bless- 
 ing, sometimes accompanied by an exhortation use- 
 ful to their souls. During one of the last summers 
 of his life, the monks, returning in the evening from 
 reaping the scanty harvest of their island, stopped 
 short as they approached the monastery, suddenly 
 touched with strange emotion. The steward of the 
 monastery, Baithen, the friend and future successor 
 of Columba, asked them, “ Are you not sensible of 
 something very unusual here?” “ Yes,” said the 
 oldest of the monks, “ every day, at this hour and 
 place, I breathe a delicious odour, as if all the 
 flowers in the world were collected here. I feel 
 also something like the flame of the hearth which 
 does not burn but warms me gently ; I experience, 
 in short, in my heart a joy so unusual, so incom- 
 parable, that I am no longer sensible of either 
 trouble or fatigue. The sheaves which I carry on 
 
1 1 2 The A Imsgiving Blacksmith. 
 
 my back, though heavy, weigh upon me no longer ; 
 and I know not how, from this spot to the monas- 
 tery, they seem to be lifted from my shoulders. 
 What, then, is this wonder?” All the others gave 
 the same account of their sensations. “ I will tell 
 you what it is,” said the steward; “it is our old 
 master, Columba, always full of anxiety for us, who 
 is disturbed to find us so late, who vexes himself 
 with the thought of our fatigue, and who, not being 
 able to come to meet us with his body, sends us his 
 .spirit to refresh, rejoice, and console us.” 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that he re- 
 served his solicitude for his monastic labourers 
 alone. Far from that, he knew how to appreciate 
 the work of laymen when sanctified by Christian 
 virtue. “ See,” he said one day to the elders of the 
 monastery, “ at this moment while I speak, such a 
 one who was a blacksmith yonder in Ireland — see 
 him, how he goes up to heaven ! He dies an old 
 man, and he has worked all his life ; but he has not 
 worked in vain. He has bought eternal life with 
 the work of his hands ; for he dispensed all his 
 gains in alms ; and I see the angels who are going 
 for his soul.” It will be admitted that the praise of 
 manual labour, carried to a silly length in our days, 
 has been rarely expressed in a manner so solemn 
 and touching. 
 
 It is also recorded that he took pleasure in the 
 society of laymen during his journeys, and lived 
 among them with a free and delightful familiarity. 
 
Duties of Hospitality. 113 
 
 This is one of the most attractive and instructive 
 phases of his history. He continually asked and 
 received the hospitality not only of the rich, but also 
 of the poor; and sometimes, indeed, received a 
 more cordial reception from the poor than from the 
 rich. To those who refused him a shelter he pre- 
 dicted prompt punishment. “ That miser,” he said, 
 “ who despises Christ in the person of a traveller, 
 shall see his wealth diminish from day to day and 
 come to nothing ; he will come to beggary, and his 
 son shall go from door to door holding out his hand, 
 which shall never be more than half filled.” When 
 the poor received him under their roof, he inquired 
 with his ordinary thoughtfulness into their resour- 
 ces, their necessities, all their little possessions. At 
 that period a man seems to have been considered 
 very poor in Scotland who had only five cows. 
 This was all the fortune of a Lochaber peasant in 
 whose house Columba, who continually traversed 
 this district when going to visit the king of the 
 Piets, passed a night, and found a very cordial 
 welcome notwithstanding the poverty of the house. 
 Next morning he had the five little cows brought 
 into his presence and blessed them, predicting to 
 his host that he should soon have five hundred, and 
 that the blessing of the grateful missionary should 
 go down to his children and grandchildren — a pro- 
 phecy which was faithfully fulfilled. 
 
 In the same district of Lochaber, which is still 
 the scene of those great deer-stalking expeditions in 
 
 H 
 
1 14 Anecdotes of 
 
 which the British aristocracy delight, our saint was 
 one day accosted by an unfortunate poacher, who 
 had not the means of maintaining his wife and chil- 
 dren, and who asked alms from him. “ Poor man,” 
 said Columba, “go and cut me a rod in the forest.” 
 When the rod was brought to him, the abbot of 
 Iona himself sharpened it into the form of a spear. 
 When he had done this he blessed the improvised 
 javelin, and gave it to his suppliant, telling him 
 that if he kept it carefully, and used it only against 
 wild beasts, venison should never be wanting in his 
 poor house. This prophecy also was fulfilled. The 
 poacher planted his blessed spear in a distant cor- 
 ner of the forest, and no day passed that he did not 
 find there a hart or doe, or other game, so that he 
 soon had enough to sell to his neighbours as well 
 as to provide for all the necessities of his own 
 house. 
 
 Columba thus interested himself in all that he 
 saw, in all that went on around him, and which he 
 could turn to the profit of the poor or of his fellow- 
 creatures ; even in hunting or fishing he took pains 
 to point out the happy moment and most favourable 
 spot where the largest salmon or pike might be 
 found. Wherever he found himself in contact with 
 the poor or with strangers, he drew them to him- 
 self and comforted them even more by the warm 
 sympathy of his generous heart than by material 
 benefits. He identified himself with their fears, 
 their dangers, and their vexations. Always a peace- 
 
His Charity . 1 1 5 
 
 maker and consoler, he took advantage here of the 
 night’s shelter given him by a rich mountaineer to 
 end a dispute between two angry neighbours ; and 
 there made a chance meeting in a Highland gorge 
 with a countryman an occasion for reassuring the 
 peasant as to the consequences of the ravages made 
 in his district by Pictish or Saxon invaders. “ My 
 good man,” he said, “ thy poor cattle and thy little 
 all have fallen into the hands of the robbers ; but 
 thy dear little family is safe — go home and be com- 
 forted.” 
 
 Such was this tender and gentle soul. His cha- 
 rity might sometimes seem to have degenerated 
 into feebleness, so great was the pleasure he took 
 in all the details of benevolence and Christian 
 brotherhood; but let there appear an injustice to 
 repair, an unfortunate individual to defend, an op- 
 pressor to punish, an outrage against humanity or 
 misfortune to avenge, and Columba immediately 
 awoke and displayed all the energy of his youth. 
 The former man reappeared in a moment; his 
 passionate temperament recovered the mastery — 
 his distinctive character, vehement in expression 
 and resolute in action, burst forth at every turn ; 
 and his natural boldness led him, in the face of all 
 dangers, to lavish remonstrances, invectives, and 
 threats, which the justice of God, too rarely visible 
 in such cases, sometimes deigned to fulfil. 
 
 Among the many sufferers whom he found on 
 his way, it is natural to suppose that the exiles, who 
 
1 1 6 Doom of a Murderer . 
 
 were so numerous in consequence of the discords 
 which rent the Celtic races, would most of all call 
 forth his sympathy. Himself an exile, he was the 
 natural protector of all who were exiled. He took 
 under his special guardianship a banished Piet, 
 of noble family, probably one of those who had 
 received him with kindness and listened to his 
 teachings at the time of his first missions in North- 
 ern Caledonia. Columba confided, or, as the his- 
 torian says, recommended, assigned in manum , 
 according to the custom which came to be general 
 in feudal times, his banished friend to a chief called 
 Feradagh, who occupied the large island of Islay, 
 south of Iona, praying him to conceal his guest for 
 some months among his clan and dependants. A 
 few days after he had solemnly accepted the trust, 
 this villain had the noble exile treacherously mur- 
 dered, no doubt for the sake of the articles of value 
 he had with him. When he received the news, 
 Columba cried, “ It is not to me, it is to God, that 
 this wretched man, whose name shall be effaced out 
 of the book of life, has lied. It is summer now, 
 but before autumn comes — before he can eat of the 
 meat which he is fattening for his table — he shall 
 die a sudden death, and be dragged to hell.” The 
 indignant old man’s prophecy was reported to 
 Feradagh, who pretended to laugh at it, but never- 
 theless kept it in his mind. Before the beginning 
 of autumn, he ordered a fattened pig to be killed 
 and roasted, and even before the animal was entirely 
 
Fearlessness of the Saint . 117 
 
 cooked gave orders that part of it should be served 
 to him, in order to prove, at the earliest possible 
 moment, the falsehood of the prophesied vengeance. 
 But scarcely had he taken up the morsel, when, 
 before Jie had carried it to his mouth, he fell back 
 and died. Those who were present admired and 
 trembled to see how the Lord God honoured and 
 justified His prophet; and those who knew Colum- 
 ba’s life as a young man recalled to each other 
 how, at the very beginning of his monastic life, the 
 murderer of the innocent maiden had fallen dead 
 at the sound of his avenging voice. 
 
 In his just wrath against the spoilers of the poor 
 and the persecutors of the Church, he drew back 
 before no danger, not even before the assassin’s 
 dagger. Among the rievers who infested Scottish 
 Caledonia, making armed incursions into their 
 neighbours’ lands, and carrying on that system of 
 pillage which, up to the eighteenth century, con- 
 tinued to characterise the existence of the Scottish 
 clans, he had distinguished the sons of Donnell, 
 who belonged to a branch of the family which ruled 
 the Dalriadian colony. Columba did not hesitate 
 to excommunicate them. Exasperated by this sen- 
 tence, one of these powerful ill-doers, named or 
 surnamed Lamm-Dess ( Right-hana\ took advantage 
 of a visit which the great abbot paid to a distant 
 island, and undertook to murder him in his sleep. 
 But Finn-Lugh, one of the saint’s companions, hav- 
 ing had some suspicion or instinctive presentiment 
 
1 1 8 A Narrow Escape . 
 
 of danger, and desiring to save his father’s life by 
 the sacrifice of his own, borrowed Columba’s cowl, 
 and wrapped himself in it. The assassin struck 
 him whom he found clothed in the well-known 
 costume of the abbot, and then fled. But the 
 sacred vestment proved impenetrable armour to the 
 generous disciple, who was not even wounded. 
 Columba, when informed of the event, said nothing 
 at the moment. But a year after, when he had 
 returned to Iona, the abbot said to his community, 
 “ A year ago Lamm-Dess did his best to murder 
 my dear Finn-Lugh in my place; now at this mo- 
 ment it is he who is being killed.” And, in fact, 
 the news shortly arrived that the assassin had just 
 died under the sword of a warrior, who struck the 
 fatal blow while invoking the name of Columba, in 
 a fight which brought the depredations of these 
 rievers to an end. 
 
 Some time before, another criminal of the same 
 family, called Joan, had chosen for his victim one 
 of the hosts of Columba, one of those poor men 
 whom the abbot had enriched by his blessing in 
 exchange for the hospitality which even in their 
 poverty they had not refused. This poor man lived 
 on the wild and barren peninsula of Ardnamurchan, 
 a sombre mass which rises up out of the waves of 
 the Atlantic, and forms the most western point of 
 the Scottish mainland. The benediction of the 
 missionary had brought him good fortune, as had 
 
A Highland Riever . 1 1 9 
 
 been the case with the peasant of Lochaber, and 
 his five cows, too, had multiplied, and were then 
 more than a hundred in number. Columba was 
 not satisfied with merely enriching his humble 
 friend, but gave him also a place in his affec- 
 tions, and had even bestowed upon him his own 
 name; so that all his neighbours called him Co- 
 lumbain , the friend of St Columba. Three times 
 in succession, Joan, the princely spoiler, had pil- 
 laged and ravaged the house of the enriched pea- 
 sant, the friend of the abbot of Iona; the third 
 time, as he went back with his bravos, laden with 
 booty, to the boat which awaited him on the beach, 
 he met the great abbot, whom he had supposed far 
 distant. Columba reproved him for his exactions 
 and crimes, and entreated him to give up his prey; 
 but the riever continued his course, and answered 
 only by an immovable silence, until he had gained 
 the beach and entered his boat. As soon as he 
 was in his vessel, he began to answer the abbot’s 
 prayers by mockeries and insults. Then the noble 
 old man plunged into the sea, up to his knees, as 
 if to cling to the boat which contained the spoils 
 of his friend; and when it went off he remained 
 for some time with his two hands raised towards 
 heaven, praying with ardour. When his prayer 
 was ended, he came out of the water, and returned 
 to his companions, who were seated on a neigh- 
 bouring mound, to dry himself. After a pause, he 
 
120 
 
 His Destruction . 
 
 said to them, “ This miserable man, this evil-doer, 
 who despises Christ in His servants, shall never 
 more land upon the shore from which you have 
 seen him depart — he shall never touch land again. 
 To-day a little cloud begins to rise in the north, 
 and from that cloud comes a tempest that shall 
 swallow him up, him and his ; not one single soul 
 shall escape to tell the tale.” The day was fine, 
 the sea calm, and the sky perfectly serene. Notwith- 
 standing, the cloud which Columba had announced 
 soon appeared; and the spectators, turning their 
 eyes to the sea, saw the tempest gather, increase, 
 and pursue the spoilers. The storm reached them 
 between the islands of Mull and Colonsay, from 
 whose shores their boat was seen to sink and perish, 
 with all its crew and all its spoils. 
 
 We have all read in Caesar’s Commentaries how, 
 when he landed on the shores of Britain, the stan- 
 dard-bearer of the tenth legion threw himself into 
 the sea, up to the knees in water, to encourage his 
 comrades. Thanks to the perverse complaisance 
 of history for all feats of force, this incident is im- 
 mortal. Caesar, however, moved by depraved am- 
 bition, came but to oppress a free and innocent 
 race, and to bring it under the odious yoke of 
 Roman tyranny, of which, happily, it has retained 
 no trace. How much grander and more worthy of 
 recollection, I do not say to every Christian, but to 
 every upright soul, is the sight offered to us at the 
 
Cczsar and St Columba . 1 2 1 
 
 other extremity of the great Britannic Isle, by this 
 old monk, who also rushed into the sea up to his 
 knees — but to pursue a savage oppressor, in the 
 interest of an obscure victim, thus claiming for 
 himself, under his legendary aureola, the everlast- 
 ing greatness of humanity, justice, and pity ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ©olumtm’g lagt Hearg — Dead) — |§te 
 ©Jjaracter* 
 
 the side of the terrible acts of ven- 
 geance which have just been nar- 
 rated, the student loves to find in 
 this bold enemy of the wicked and 
 the oppressor a gentle and familiar sympathy for 
 all the affections as well as all the trials of domestic 
 life. Rich and poor, kings and peasants, awoke in 
 his breast the same kindly emotion, expressed with 
 the same fulness. When King Aidan brought his 
 children to him, and spoke of his anxiety about 
 their future lives, he did not content himself with 
 seeing the eldest. “ Have you none younger ? ” 
 said the abbot ; “ bring them all — let me hold them 
 in my arms and on my heart!” And when the 
 younger children were brought, one fair-haired boy, 
 Hector (Eochaidh Buidhe), came forward running, 
 and threw himself upon the saint’s knees. Columba 
 
His Tenderness . 
 
 123 
 
 held him long pressed to his heart, then kissed his 
 forehead, blessed him, and prophesied for him a 
 long life, a prosperous reign, and a great posterity. 
 
 Let us listen while his biographer tells how he 
 came to the aid of a woman in extremity, and how 
 he made peace in a divided household. One day 
 at Iona he suddenly stopped short while reading, 
 and said with a smile to his monks, u I must now 
 go and pray for a poor little woman who is in the 
 pains of childbirth, and suffers like a true daughter 
 of Eve. She is down yonder in Ireland, and 
 reckons upon my prayers, for she is my kinswoman, 
 and of my mother’s family.” Upon this he hastened 
 to the church, and when his prayer was ended 
 returned to his brethren, saying, “ She is delivered. 
 The Lord Jesus, who deigned to be born of a 
 woman, has come to her aid \ this time she will 
 not die.” 
 
 Another day, while he was visiting an island on 
 the Irish coast, a pilot came to him to complain of 
 his wife, who had taken an aversion to him. The 
 abbot called her and reminded her of the duties 
 imposed upon her by the law of the Lord. “ I am 
 ready to do everything,” said the woman — “I will 
 obey you in the hardest things you can command. 
 I do not draw back from any of the cares of the 
 house. I will go even, if it is desired, on pilgrim- 
 age to Jerusalem, or I will shut myself up in a 
 nunnery — in short, I will do everything except 
 live with him.” 
 
124 
 
 A Reconciliation . 
 
 The abbot answered that there could be no 
 question of pilgrimage or of a convent so long as 
 her husband lived; “but,” he added, “let us try to 
 pray God, all three, fasting — you, your husband, 
 and myself.” 
 
 “Ah,” said the woman, “I know that you can 
 obtain even what is impossible from God.” How- 
 ever, his proposal was carried out — the three fasted, 
 and Columba passed the whole night in prayer 
 without ever closing his eyes. Next morning he 
 said to the woman, with the gentle irony which he 
 so often employed, “ Tell me to what convent are 
 you bound after your yesterday’s projects ? ” “ To 
 
 none,” said the woman; “my heart has been 
 changed to-night. I know not how I have passed 
 from hate to love.” And from that day until the 
 hour of her death she lived in a tender and faithful 
 union with her husband. 
 
 But Columba fortunately was connected with 
 other households more united, where he could ad- 
 mire the happiness of his friends without feeling 
 himself compelled to make peace. From his sanc- 
 tuary at Iona his habitual solicitude and watchful 
 sympathy followed them to their last hour. One 
 day he was alone with one of the Saxons whom he 
 had converted and attached to his community, and 
 who was the baker of the monks ; while this stran- 
 ger prepared his bread, he heard the abbot say, 
 looking up to heaven, “ Oh ! happy, happy woman ! 
 She goes into heaven with a guard of angels.” 
 
125 
 
 Visions of the Saint . 
 
 Exactly a year after, the abbot and the Saxon baker 
 were again together. “ I see the woman, said 
 Columba, "of whom I spoke to thee last year 
 coming down from heaven to meet the soul of her 
 husband, who has just died. She contends with 
 powerful enemies for that dear soul, by the help of 
 the holy angels : she gains the day, she triumphs, 
 because her goodman has been a just man and 
 the two are united again in the home of ever- 
 lasting consolation.” 
 
 This vision was preceded and followed by many 
 others of the same description, in which the blessed 
 death of many bishops and monks, his friends and 
 contemporaries, were announced to him. They 
 seem to have been intended to give him a glimpse 
 of that heaven into which God was shortly to call 
 him. Nor was it only at Iona that these super- 
 natural graces were accorded to him, for he did not 
 limit his unwearied activity to the narrow enclosure 
 of that island, any more in the decline of his life 
 than in the earlier period of his emigration. Up 
 to old age he continued to have sufficient strength 
 and courage to return to the most northern regions 
 where he had preached the faith to the Piets j and 
 it was in one of his last missionary journeys, when 
 upon the banks of Loch Ness, to the north of the 
 great line of waters which cuts Caledonia in two, 
 at a distance of fifty leagues from Iona, that he 
 was permitted to see the angels come to meet the 
 soul of the old Piet, who, faithful during all his life 
 
126 Communion with Angels . 
 
 to the law of nature, received baptism, and with 
 it eternal salvation, from the great missionary’s 
 hands. 
 
 At this period the angels, whom he saw carrying 
 to heaven the soul of the just and penitent, and 
 aiding the believing wife to make an entrance 
 there for her husband, continually appeared to him 
 and hovered about him. Making all possible 
 allowance for the exaggerations and fables which 
 the proverbial credulity of Celtic nations has 
 added to the legends of their saints, no Christian 
 will be tempted to deny the verified narratives 
 which bear witness, in Columba’s case as well as in 
 that of the other saints, to supernatural appearances 
 which enriched his life, and especially his old age. 
 Those wonderful soldiers of virtue and Christian 
 truth needed such miracles to help them to support 
 the toils and live through the trials of their danger- 
 ous mission. They required to ascend from time 
 to time into celestial regions to find strength there 
 for their continual struggle against all obstacles 
 and perils and continually renewed temptations — 
 and to learn to brave the enmities, the savage 
 manners, and blind hatreds of the nations whom it 
 was the aim of their lives to set free. 
 
 “Let no one follow me to-day,” Columba said 
 one morning with unusual severity to the assembled 
 community : “ I would be alone in the little plain 
 to the west of the isle.” He was obeyed; but a 
 brother, more curious and less obedient than the 
 
127 
 
 The Angels Hill . 
 
 rest, followed him far off, and saw him, erect and 
 motionless, with his hands and his eyes raised to 
 heaven, standing on a sandy hillock, where he was 
 soon surrounded by a crowd of angels, who came 
 to bear him company and to talk with him. The 
 hillock has to this day retained the name of Cnocan 
 Aingel — the Angels’ Hill. And the citizens of the 
 cdestial country, as they were called at Iona, came 
 often to console and strengthen their future com- 
 panion during the long winter nights which he 
 passed in prayer in some retired corner, voluntarily 
 exposed to all the torments of sleeplessness and 
 cold. 
 
 For as he approached the end of his career this 
 great servant of God consumed his strength in 
 vigils, fasts, and dangerous macerations. His life, 
 which had been so full of generous struggles, hard 
 trial, and toil in the service of God and his neigh- 
 bour, seemed to him neither full enough nor pure 
 enough. In proportion as the end drew near he 
 redoubled his austerities and mortifications. Every 
 night, according to one of his biographers, he 
 plunged into cold water and remained there for the 
 time necessary to recite an entire psalter. One 
 day, when, bent by age, he sought, perhaps in a 
 neighbouring island, a retirement still more pro- 
 found than usual, in which to pray, he saw a poor 
 woman gathering wild herbs and even nettles, who 
 told him that her poverty was such as to forbid 
 her all other food. Upon which the old abbot re- 
 
128 Increasing A us ferities . 
 
 proached himself bitterly that he had not yet come 
 to that point. “ See,” he said, “ this poor woman, 
 who finds her miserable life worth the trouble of 
 being thus prolonged ; and we, who profess to de- 
 serve heaven by our austerities, we live in luxury ! ” 
 When he went back to his monastery he gave orders 
 that he should be served with no other food than 
 the wild and bitter herbs with which the beggar 
 supported her existence ; and he severely reproved 
 his minister, Diarmid, who had come from Ireland 
 with him, when he, out of compassion for his mas- 
 ter’s old age and weakness, threw a little butter 
 into the caldron in which this miserable fare was 
 cooked. 
 
 The celestial light which was soon to receive 
 him began already to surround him like a garment 
 or a shroud. His monks told each other that the 
 solitary cell in the isle of Himba, near Iona, which 
 he had built for himself, was lighted up every 
 night by a great light, which could be seen through 
 the chinks of the door and keyhole, while the abbot 
 chanted unknown canticles till daybreak. After 
 having remained there three days and nights with- 
 out food, he came out, full of joy at having dis- 
 covered the mysterious meaning of several texts of 
 Holy Scripture, which up to that time he had not 
 understood. When he returned to Iona to die, con- 
 tinuing faithful to his custom of spending a great 
 part of the night in prayer, he bore about with him 
 everywhere the miraculous light which already sur- 
 
Legends of his Latter Days . 129 
 
 rounded him like the nimbus of his holiness. The 
 entire community was involuntarily agitated by the 
 enj oyment of that foretaste of paradise. One winter’s 
 night, a young man who was destined to succeed 
 Columba as fourth abbot of Iona remained in the 
 church while the others slept : all at once he saw 
 the abbot come in preceded by a golden light 
 which fell from the heights of the vaulted roof, and 
 lighted all the corners of the building, even includ- 
 ing the little lateral oratory where the young monk 
 hid himself in alarm. All who passed during the 
 night before the church, while their old abbot 
 prayed, were startled by this light, which dazzled 
 them like lightning. Another of the young 
 monks, whose education was specially directed by 
 the abbot himself, resolved to ascertain whether 
 the same illumination existed in Columba’s cell ; 
 and notwithstanding that he had been expressly 
 forbidden to do so, he got up in the night and 
 went groping to the door of the cell to look in, but 
 fled immediately, blinded by the light that filled it. 
 
 These signs, which were the forerunners of his 
 deliverance, showed themselves for several years 
 towards the end of his life, which he believed and 
 hoped was nearer its termination than it proved to 
 be. But this remnant of existence, from which he 
 sighed to be liberated, was held fast by the filial 
 love of his disciples, and the ardent prayers of so 
 many new Christian communities founded or minis- 
 tered to by his zealous care. Two of his monks, 
 
 1 
 
1 30 Prophecy of his End . 
 
 one Irish and one Saxon, of the number of those 
 whom he admitted to his cell to help him in his 
 labour or to execute his instructions, saw him one 
 day change countenance, and perceived in his face 
 a sudden expression of the most contrary emotions : 
 first a beatific joy, which made him raise to heaven 
 a look full of the sweetest and tenderest gratitude ; 
 but a minute after this ray of supernatural joy gave 
 place to an expression of heavy and profound sad- 
 ness. The two spectators pressed him with ques- 
 tions which he refused to answer. At length they 
 threw themselves at his knees, and begged him, 
 with tears, not to afflict them by hiding what had 
 been revealed to him. “ Dear children,” he said 
 to them, “I do not wish to afflict you. . . . 
 
 Know, then, that it is thirty years to-day since I 
 began my pilgrimage in Caledonia. I have long 
 prayed God to let my exile end with this thirtieth 
 year, and to recall me to the heavenly country. 
 When you saw me so joyous, it was because I 
 could already see the angels who came to seek my 
 soul. But all at once they stopped short, down 
 there upon that rock at the farthest limit of the 
 sea which surrounds our island, as if they would 
 approach to take me, and could not. And, in 
 truth, they could not, because the Lord has paid 
 less regard to my ardent prayer than to that of the 
 many churches which have prayed for me, and 
 which have obtained, against my will, that I should 
 still dwell in this body for four years. This is the 
 
A necdotes . 
 
 131 
 
 reason of my sadness. But in four years I shall 
 die without being sick ; in four years, I know it 
 and see it, they will come back, these holy angels, 
 and I shall take my flight with them towards the 
 Lord.” 
 
 At the end of the four years thus fixed he ar- 
 ranged everything for his departure. It was the 
 end of May, and it was his desire to take leave of 
 the monks who worked in the fields in the only 
 fertile part of Iona, the western side. His great 
 age prevented him from walking, and he was 
 drawn in a car by oxen. When he reached 
 the labourers he said to them, “ I greatly desired 
 to die a month ago, on Easter-day, and it was 
 granted to me; but I preferred to wait a little 
 longer, in order that the festival might not be 
 changed into a day of sadness for you.” And 
 when all wept he did all he could to console 
 them. Then turning towards the east, from the 
 top of his rustic chariot he blessed the island and 
 all its inhabitants— a blessing which, according to 
 local tradition, was like that of St Patrick in Ire- 
 land, and drove, from that day, all vipers and 
 venomous creatures out of the island. 
 
 On Saturday in the following week he went, 
 leaning on his faithful attendant Diarmid, to bless 
 the granary of the monastery. Seeing there two 
 great heaps of corn, the fruit of the last harvest, 
 he said, “ 1 see with joy that my dear monastic 
 family, if I must leave them this year, will not 
 
132 The Aged Horse . 
 
 at least suffer from famine.” “ Dear father,” said 
 Diarmid, “why do you thus sadden us by talk- 
 ing of your death?” “Ah, well,” said the abbot, 
 “ here is a little secret which I will tell thee if 
 thou wilt swear on thy knees to tell no one before 
 I am gone. To-day is Saturday, the day which the 
 Holy Scriptures call Sabbath or rest. And it will 
 be truly my day of rest, for it shall be the last of 
 my laborious life. This very night I shall enter 
 into the path of my fathers. Thou weepest, dear 
 Diarmid, but console thyself; it is my Lord Jesus 
 Christ who deigns to invite me to rejoin Him; it is 
 He who has revealed to me that my summons will 
 come to-night.” 
 
 Then he left the storehouse to return to the 
 monastery, but when he had gone half-way stopped 
 to rest at a spot which is still marked by one of 
 the ancient crosses of Iona — the monument called 
 Maclean’s Cross. At this moment an ancient and 
 faithful servant, the old white horse which had 
 been employed to carry milk from the dairy daily 
 to the monastery, came towards him. He came and 
 put his head upon his master’s shoulder, as if to 
 take leave of him. The eyes of the old horse had 
 an expression so pathetic that they seemed to be 
 bathed in tears. Diarmid would have sent the 
 animal away, but the good old man forbade him. 
 “The horse loves me,” he said, “leave him with 
 me ; let him weep for my departure. The Creator 
 has revealed to this poor animal what He has hidden 
 
133 
 
 Last Occupations. 
 
 from thee, a reasonable man.” Upon which, still 
 caressing the faithful brute, he gave him a last 
 blessing. When this was clone he used the rem- 
 nants of his strength to climb to the top of a hillock 
 from which he could see all the isle and the monas- 
 tery, and there lifted up his hands to pronounce 
 a prophetic benediction on the sanctuary he had 
 created. “ This little spot, so small and low, shall 
 be greatly honoured, not only by the Scots kings 
 and people, but also by foreign chiefs and barbarous 
 nations ; and it shall be venerated even by the 
 saints of other Churches.” 
 
 After this he went down to the monastery, en- 
 tered his cell, and began to work for the last time. 
 He was then occupied in transcribing the Psalter. 
 When he had come to the 33d Psalm and the verse, 
 Inquirentes autem Domnum non deficient otnm bono, 
 he stopped short. “ I must stop here,” he said ; 
 “ Baithen will write the rest.” Baithen, as has been 
 seen, was the steward of Iona, and was to become its 
 abbot. After this the aged saint was present at the 
 vigil service before Sunday in the church. When 
 he returned to his cell he seated himself upon the 
 naked stones which served the septuagenarian for 
 bed and pillow, and which were shown for nearly a 
 century near his tomb. Then he intrusted to his 
 only companion a last message for the community: 
 “ Dear children, this is what I command with my 
 last words — let peace and charity, a charity mutual 
 and sincere, reign always among you ! If you act 
 
134 
 
 His Death . 
 
 thus, following the example of the saints, God who 
 strengthens the just will help you, and I, who shall 
 be near Him, will intercede on your behalf, and you 
 shall obtain of Him not only all the necessities of 
 the present life in sufficient quantity, but still more 
 the rewards of eternal life, reserved for those who 
 keep His law.” 
 
 These were his last words. As soon as the mid- 
 night bell had rung for the matins of the Sunday 
 festival, he rose and hastened before the other monks 
 to the church, where he knelt down before the altar. 
 Diarmid followed him, but as the church was not 
 yet lighted he could only find him by groping and 
 crying in a plaintive voice, “ Where art thou, my 
 father?” He found Columba lying before the 
 altar, and, placing himself at his side, raised the old 
 abbot’s venerable head upon his knees. The whole 
 community soon arrived with lights, and wept as 
 one man at the sight of their dying father. Co- 
 lumba opened his eyes once more, and turned them 
 to his children on either side with a look full of 
 serene and radiant joy. Then with the aid of 
 Diarmid he raised, as best he might, his right hand 
 to bless them all ; his hand dropped, the last sigh 
 came from his lips ; and his face remained calm 
 and sweet like that of a man who in his sleep had 
 seen a vision of heaven. 
 
 Such was the life and death of the first great 
 apostle of Great Britain. We have lingered, per- 
 
i35 
 
 Grandeur of Jus Life. 
 
 haps, too long on the grand form of this monk, 
 rising up before us from the midst of the Hebri- 
 dean sea, who, for the third part of a century, 
 spread over those sterile isles, and gloomy distant 
 shores, a pure and fertilising light. In a confused 
 age and unknown region he displayed all that is 
 greatest and purest, and, it must be added, most 
 easily forgotten, in human genius : the gift of ruling 
 souls by ruling himself. To select the most marked 
 and graphic incidents from the general tissue of his 
 life, and those most fit to unfold that which attracts 
 the modern reader— that is, his personal character 
 and influence upon contemporary events — from a 
 world of minute details having almost exclusive 
 reference to matters supernatural or ascetical, has 
 been no easy task. But when this is done, it be- 
 comes comparatively easy to represent to ourselves 
 the tall old man, with his fine and regular features, 
 his sweet and powerful voice, the Irish tonsure 
 high on his shaven head, and his long locks falling 
 behind, clothed with his monastic cowl, and seated 
 at the prow of his coracle, steering through the 
 misty archipelago and narrow lakes of the north of 
 Scotland, and bearing from isle to isle and from 
 shore to shore, light, justice, and truth, the life of 
 the conscience and of the soul. 
 
 One loves above all to study the depths of that 
 soul, and the changes which had taken place in it 
 since its youth. No more than his namesake of 
 Luxeuil, the monastic apostle of Burgundy, was he 
 
136 Peculiarities of his Character. 
 
 of the Piets and Scots a Columba. Gentleness was 
 of all qualities precisely the one in which he failed 
 the most. At the beginning of his life the future 
 abbot of Iona showed himself still more than the 
 abbot of Luxeuil to be animated by all the vivaci- 
 ties of his age, associated with all the struggles and 
 discords of his race and country. He was vindic- 
 tive, passionate, bold, a man of strife, born a sol- 
 dier' rather than a monk, and known, praised, and 
 blamed as a soldier — so that even in his lifetime 
 he was invoked in fight ; and continued a soldier, 
 insulanns miles , even upon the island rock from 
 which he rushed forth to preach, convert, enlighten, 
 reconcile, and reprimand both princes and nations, 
 men and women, laymen and clerks. 
 
 He was at the same time full of contradictions 
 and contrasts — at once tender and irritable, rude 
 and courteous, ironical and compassionate, caress- 
 ing and imperious, grateful and revengeful — led by 
 pity as well as by wrath, ever moved by generous 
 passions, and among all passions fired to the very 
 end of his life by two which his countrymen under- 
 stand the best, the love of poetry and the love of 
 country. Little inclined to melancholy w T hen he 
 had once surmounted the great sorrow of his life, 
 which was his exile ; little disposed even, save to- 
 wards the end, to contemplation or solitude, but 
 trained by prayer and austerities to triumphs of 
 evangelical exposition; despising rest, untiring in 
 mental and manual toil; born for eloquence, and 
 
Versatility of Power . 1 3 7 
 
 gifted with a voice so penetrating and sonorous 
 that it was thought of afterwards as one of the most 
 miraculous gifts that he had received of God ; frank 
 and loyal, original and powerful in his words as in 
 his actions — in cloister and mission and parliament, 
 on land and on sea, in Ireland as in Scotland, 
 always swayed by the love of God and of his neigh- 
 bour, whom it was his will and pleasure to serve 
 with an impassioned uprightness. Such was Co- 
 lumba. Besides the monk and missionary there 
 was in him the makings of a sailor, soldier, poet, 
 and orator. To us, looking back, he appears a 
 personage as singular as he is lovable, in whom, 
 through all the mists of the past and all the cross- 
 lights of legend, the man may still be recognised 
 under the saint— a man capable and worthy of the 
 supreme honour of holiness, since he knew how to 
 subdue his inclinations, his weakness, his instincts, 
 and his passions, and to transform them into docile 
 and invincible weapons for the salvation of souls 
 and the glory of God. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Spiritual 3Bw*nD ants of St ©olumfca. 
 
 HE influence of Columba, as of all men 
 really superior to their fellows, and 
 especially of the saints, far from ceas- 
 ing with his life, went on increasing 
 after his death. The supernatural character of his 
 virtues, the miracles which were attributed to his 
 intercession with God, had for a long time left 
 scarcely any doubt as to his sanctity. It was univer- 
 sally acknowledged after his death, and has since 
 remained uncontested among all the Celtic races. 
 The visions and miracles which went to prove 
 it would fill a volume. On the night, and at the 
 very hour, of his death, a holy old man in a distant 
 monastery in Ireland, one of those whom the Cel- 
 tic chroniclers call the victorious soldiers of Christ, 
 saw with the eyes of his mind the isle of Iona, 
 which he had never visited, flooded with miracu- 
 lous light, and all the vault of heaven full of an 
 
How regarded after Death. 139 
 
 innumerable army of shining angels, who went, 
 singing celestial canticles, to bring away the holy 
 soul of the great missionary. Upon the banks of a 
 river, in Columba’s native kind, another holy monk, 
 while occupied with several others in fishing, saw, 
 as also did his companions, the sky lighted up by 
 a pillar of fire, which rose from earth to the highest 
 heaven, and disappeared only after lighting up the 
 whole scene with a radiance as of the sun at noon. 
 
 Thus began the long succession of wonders by 
 which the worship of Columba’s holy memory is 
 characterised among the Celtic races. This wor 
 ship, which seemed at one time concentrated in one 
 of the smallest islets of the Atlantic, extended in 
 less than a century after his death, not only through- 
 out all Ireland and Great Britain, but into Gaul, 
 Spain, and Italy, and even to Rome, which some 
 legends, insufficiently verified, describe him as hav- 
 ing visited during the last years of his life, in order 
 to renew the bonds of respectful affection and 
 spiritual union which are supposed to have united 
 him to the great pope St Gregory, who ascended 
 the pontifical throne seven years before the death 
 of the Hebridean apostle. 
 
 It was expected that all the population of the 
 neighbouring districts would hasten to Iona and 
 fill the island during the funeral of the great abbot 3 
 and this had even been intimated to him before he 
 died. But he had prophesied that the fact would 
 be otherwise, and that his monastic family alone 
 
140 His Burial ’ 
 
 should perform the ceremonies of his burial. And 
 it happened, accordingly, during the three days 
 which were occupied with those rites, that a violent 
 wind made it impossible for any boat to reach the 
 island. Thus this friend and counsellor of princes 
 and nations, this great traveller, this apostle of an 
 entire nation which, during a thousand years, was 
 to honour him as its patron saint, lay solitary upon 
 his bier, in the little church of his island retire- 
 ment; and his burial was witnessed only by his 
 monks. But his grave, though it was not dug in 
 presence of an enthusiastic crowd, as had been 
 looked for, was not the less visited and surrounded 
 by floods of successive generations, who for more 
 than two hundred years crowded there to venerate 
 the relics of the holy missionary, and to drink the 
 pure waters of his doctrine and example at the 
 fountainhead. 
 
 The remains of Columba rested here in peace 
 up to the ninth century, until the moment when 
 Iona, like all the British isles, fell a prey to the 
 ravages of the Danes. These cruel and insatiable 
 pirates seem to have been attracted again and again 
 by the wealth of the offerings that were lavished 
 upon the tomb of the apostle of Caledonia. They 
 burnt the monastery for the first time in 801 • 
 again in 805, when it contained only so small a 
 number as sixty-four monks ; and finally, a third 
 time, in 877. To save from their rapacity a trea- 
 sure which no pious liberality could replace, the 
 
His Body removed to Ireland. 141 
 
 body of St Columba was carried to Ireland. And 
 it is the unvarying tradition of Irish annals that 
 it was deposited finally at Down, in an episcopal 
 monastery not far from the western shore of the 
 island, between the great Monastery of Bangor on 
 the north, from which came Columbanus of Luxeuil, 
 and Dublin, the future capital of Ireland, to the 
 south. There already lay the relics of Patrick and 
 of Bridget ; and thus was verified one of the pro- 
 phecies in Irish verse attributed to Columba, in 
 which he says — 
 
 4 4 They shall bury me first at Iona ; 
 
 But, by the will of the living God, 
 
 It is at Dun that I shall rest in my grave, 
 
 With Patrick and with Bridget the immaculate. 
 
 Three bodies in one grave.” 
 
 The three names have remained since that time 
 inseparably united in the dauntless heart and fer- 
 vent tenacious memory of the Irish people. It is 
 to Columba that the oppressed and impoverished 
 Irish seem to have appealed with the greatest con- 
 fidence in the first English conquest in the twelfth 
 century. The conquerors themselves feared him, 
 not without reason, for they had learned to know 
 his vengeance. John de Courcy, a warlike Anglo- 
 Norman baron, he who was called the Conqueror 
 ( Conquestor) of Ulster, as William of Normandy 
 of England, carried always with him the volume 
 of Columba’s prophecies ; and when the bodies of 
 the three saints were found in his new possessions 
 
142 
 
 Posthumous Miracles. 
 
 in 1180, he prayed the Holy See to celebrate their 
 translation by the appointment of a solemn festival. 
 Richard Strongbow, the famous Earl of Pembroke, 
 who had been the first chief of the invasion, died 
 of an ulcer in the foot, which had been inflicted 
 upon him, according to the Irish narrative, at the 
 prayer of St Bridget, St Columba, and other saints, 
 whose churches he had destroyed. He himself 
 said, when at the point of death, that he saw the 
 sweet and noble Bridget lift her arm to pierce him 
 to the heart. Hugh de Lacy, another Anglo-Nor- 
 man chief of great lineage, perished at Durrow, 
 “by the vengeance of Cohimb-cille,” says a chron- 
 icler, while he was engaged in building a castle 
 to the injury of the abbey which Columba had 
 founded, and loved so much. A century after, this 
 vengeance was still popularly dreaded; and some 
 English pirates, who had pillaged his church in the 
 island of Inchcolm, having sunk like lead in sight 
 of land, their countrymen said that he should be 
 called, not St Columba, but St Quhalme * — that is 
 to say, the Saint of Sudden Death. 
 
 A nation has special need to believe in these 
 vengeances of God, always so tardy and infrequent, 
 and which, in Ireland, above all, have scarcely suf- 
 ficed to light with a fugitive gleam the long night 
 of the conquest, with all its iniquities and crimes. 
 Happy are the people among whom the everlasting 
 
 * Quhalme in Anglo-Saxon meant sudden death, from 
 whence the modern English word qualm. 
 
Iona the Royal Burial-place . 143 
 
 justice of the appeal against falsehood and evil is 
 placed under the shadow of God and the saints ; 
 and blessed also the saints who have left to pos- 
 terity the memory of their indignation against all 
 injustice. 
 
 As long as the body of Columba remained in his 
 island grave, Iona, consecrated henceforward by 
 the life and death of so great a Christian, continued 
 to be the most venerated sanctuary of the Celts. 
 For two centuries she was the nursery of bishops, 
 the centre of education, the asylum of religious 
 knowledge, the point of union among the British 
 Isles, the capital and necropolis of the Celtic race. 
 Seventy kings or princes were buried there at the 
 feet of Columba, faithful to a kind of traditional 
 law, the recollection of which has been consecrated 
 by Shakespeare.* During these two centuries she 
 retained an uncontested supremacy over all the 
 monasteries and churches of Caledonia, as over 
 those of half Ireland ; and we shall hereafter see 
 how she disputed with the Roman missionaries 
 the authority over the Anglo-Saxons of the North. 
 Later still, if we are permitted to follow this narra- 
 tive so far, at the end of the eleventh century, we 
 shall see her ruins raised up and restored to monas- 
 tic life by one of the most noble and touching 
 
 * “ Rosse. Where is Duncan’s body? 
 
 Macduff. Carried to Colmes-Kill, 
 
 The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, 
 
 And guardian of their bones.” 
 
 Shakespeare, Macbeth. 
 
144 The Abbots of Iona . 
 
 heroines of Scotland and Christendom, the holy 
 Queen Margaret, the gentle and noble exile, so 
 beautiful, so wise, so magnanimous and beloved, 
 who used her influence over Malcolm her husband 
 only for the regeneration of the Church in his king- 
 dom, and whose dear memory is worthy of being 
 associated in the heart of the Scottish people with 
 that of Columba, since she obtained by his inter- 
 cession that grace of maternity which has made 
 her the origin of the dynasty which still reigns over 
 the British Isles. 
 
 Let us here reconsider the privilege which gave 
 to the abbots of Iona a sort of jurisdiction over the 
 bishops of the neighbouring districts — a privilege 
 unique, and which would even appear fabulous, if 
 it were not attested by two of the most trustworthy 
 historians of the time, the Venerable Bede and 
 Notker of St Gall. In order to explain this strange 
 anomaly, it must be understood that in Celtic coun- 
 tries, especially in Ireland and in Scotland, eccle- 
 siastical organisation rested, in the first place, 
 solely upon conventual life. Dioceses and par- 
 ishes were regularly constituted only in the twelfth 
 century. Bishops, it is true, existed from the be- 
 ginning, but either without any clearly fixed terri- 
 torial jurisdiction, or incorporated as a necessary 
 but subordinate part of the ecclesiastical machinery 
 with the great monastic bodies ; and such was spe- 
 cially the case in Ireland. It is for this reason that 
 the bishops of the Celtic Church, as has been often 
 
Celtic Bishops and Abbots . 145 
 
 remarked, are so much overshadowed not only by 
 great founders and superiors of monasteries, such 
 as Columba, but even by simple abbots. Never- 
 theless, it is evident that during the life of Columba, 
 far from assuming any superiority whatever over the 
 bishops who were his contemporaries, he showed 
 them the utmost respect, even to such a point that 
 he would not celebrate mass in the presence of a 
 bishop who had come, humbly disguised as a simple 
 convert, to visit the community of Iona. At the 
 same time the abbots scrupulously abstained from 
 all usurpation of the rank, privileges, or functions 
 reserved to bishops, to whom they had recourse for 
 all the ordinations celebrated in the monasteries. 
 But as most of the bishops had been educated in 
 monastic schools, they retained an affectionate 
 veneration for their cradle, which, in regard to 
 Iona especially, from which we shall see so many 
 bishops issue, might have translated itself into a 
 sort of prolonged submission to the conventual 
 authority of their former superior. Five centuries 
 later the bishops who came from the great French 
 abbeys of Cluny and Citeaux took pleasure in pro- 
 fessing the same filial subordination to their monas- 
 tic birthplace. 
 
 The uncontested primacy of Iona over the 
 bishops who had there professed religion, or who 
 came there to be consecrated after their election, 
 may be besides explained by the influence exer- 
 cised by Columba over both clergy and people 
 
 K 
 
146 The Rule of Columb-kill. 
 
 of the districts evangelised by him — an influence 
 which was only increased by his death. 
 
 Did the great abbot of Iona, like his namesake 
 of Luxeuil, leave to his disciples a monastic rule 
 of his own, distinct from that of other Celtic monas- 
 teries ? This has been often asserted, but without 
 positive proof — and in any case no authentic text 
 of such a document exists. That which bears the 
 name of the Rule of Columb-kill ' and which has 
 been sometimes attributed to him, has no reference 
 in any way to the cenobites of Iona, and is only 
 applicable to hermits or recluses, who lived perhaps 
 under his authority, but isolated, and who were 
 always very numerous in Ireland. 
 
 A conscientious and attentive examination of all 
 the monastic peculiarities which can be discovered 
 in his biography reveals absolutely nothing in re- 
 spect to observances or obligations different from 
 the rules borrowed by all the religious communi- 
 ties of the sixth century from the traditions of the 
 Fathers of the Desert. Such an examination 
 brings out distinctly, in the first place, the necessity 
 for a vow or solemn profession to prove the final 
 admission of the monk into the community after 
 a probation more or less prolonged; and, in the 
 second place, the absolute conformity of the mon- 
 astic life of Columba and his monks to the pre- 
 cepts and rites of the Catholic Church in all ages. 
 Authorities unquestionable and unquestioned de- 
 monstrate the existence of auricular confession, the 
 
This not a Monastic one. 147 
 
 invocation of saints, the universal faith in their 
 protection and intervention in temporal affairs, the 
 celebration of the mass, the real presence in the 
 Eucharist, ecclesiastical celibacy, fasts and abstin- 
 ences, prayer for the dead, the sign of the cross, 
 and, above all, the assiduous and profound study 
 of the Holy Scriptures. Thus the assumption 
 made by certain writers of having found in the 
 Celtic Church some sort of primitive Christianity 
 not Catholic, crumbles to the dust ; and the ridi- 
 culous but inveterate prejudice which accuses our 
 fathers of having ignored or interdicted the study 
 of the Bible is once again proved to be without 
 foundation. 
 
 As to the customs peculiar to the Irish Church, 
 and which were afterwards the cause of so many 
 tedious struggles with the Roman and Anglo-Saxon 
 missionaries, no trace of them is to be discovered 
 in the acts or words of Columba. There is no 
 mention of the tiresome disputes about the tonsure, 
 or even of the irregular celebration of Easter, ex- 
 cept perhaps in a prophecy vaguely made by him 
 on the occasion of a visit to Clonmacnoise, upon 
 the discords which this difference of opinion in 
 respect to Easter would one day excite in the 
 Scotic Church. 
 
 If Columba made no rule calculated, like that of 
 St Benedict, to last for centuries, he nevertheless 
 left to his disciples a spirit of life, of union, and of 
 discipline, which was sufficient to maintain in one 
 
148 The Monks of Iona . 
 
 great body, for several centuries after his death, 
 not only the monks of Iona, but the numerous 
 communities which had gathered round them. 
 This monastic body bore a noble name ; it was 
 long called the Order of the Fair Company, and 
 still longer the Family of Columb-kill. It was 
 governed by abbots, who succeeded Columba as 
 superiors of the community of Iona. These abbots 
 proved themselves worthy of, and obtained from 
 Bede, one of the most competent of judges, who 
 began to write a hundred years after the death of 
 Columba, a tribute of admiration without reserve, 
 and even more striking than that which he gave to 
 their founder : — “ Whatever he may have been,” 
 said the Venerable Bede, with a certain shadow of 
 Anglo-Saxon suspicion in respect to Celtic virtue 
 and sanctity, “ it is undeniable that he has left 
 successors illustrious by the purity of their life, 
 their great love of God, and their zeal for monastic 
 order; and, although separated from us as to the 
 observance of Easter, which is caused by their dis- 
 tance from all the rest of the world, ardently and 
 closely devoted to the observance of those laws of 
 piety and chastity which they have learned in the 
 Old and New Testaments.” These praises are justi- 
 fied by the great number of saints who have issued 
 from the spiritual lineage of Columba; but they 
 should be specially applied to his successors in 
 the abbatial see of Iona, and, in the first place, to 
 his first successor, whom he had himself pointed 
 
Celtic Monasticism. 149 
 
 out, the holy and amiable Baithen, who was so 
 worthy to be his lieutenant and friend, and could 
 so well replace him. He survived Columba only 
 three years, and died on the anniversary of his 
 master’s death. The cruel sufferings of his last 
 illness did not prevent him from praying, writing, 
 and teaching to his last hour. Baithen was, as has 
 been said, the cousin-german of Columba, and 
 almost all the abbots of Iona who succeeded him 
 were of the same race. 
 
 The family spirit, or, to speak more truly, the 
 clan spirit, always so powerful and active in Ire- 
 land, and which was so striking a feature in the 
 character of Columba, had become a predominat- 
 ing influence in the monastic life of the Celtic 
 Church. It was not precisely hereditary succes- 
 sion, since marriage was absolutely unknown among 
 the regular clergy ; but great influence was given 
 to blood in the election of abbots, as in that of 
 princes or military leaders. The nephew or cousin 
 of the founder or superior of a monastery seemed 
 the candidate pointed out by nature for the vacant 
 dignity. Special reasons were necessary for break- 
 ing through this rule. Thus it is apparent that 
 the eleven first abbots of Iona after Columba, pro- 
 ceeded, with the exception of one individual, from 
 the same stock as himself, from the race of Tyr- 
 connel, and were all descended from the same son 
 of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the famous king of 
 all Ireland. Every great monastery became thus 
 
150 Monastic Irregularities . 
 
 the centre and appanage of a family, or, to speak 
 more exactly, of a clan, and was alike the school 
 and the asylum of all the founder’s kindred. At a 
 later period a kind of succession, purely laic and 
 hereditary, developed itself by the side of the 
 spiritual posterity, and was invested with the pos- 
 session of most of the monastic domains. These 
 two lines of descendants, simultaneous but distinct, 
 from the principal monastic founders, are distin- 
 guished in the historical genealogies of Ireland 
 under the names of ecclesiastica progenies and of 
 i)lebilis progenies. After the ninth century, in con- 
 sequence of the relaxation of discipline, the inva- 
 sion of married clerks, and the increasing value of 
 land, the line of spiritual descent confounded itself 
 more and more with that of natural inheritance, 
 and there arose a crowd of abbots purely lay and 
 hereditary, as proud of being the collateral descend- 
 ants of a holy founder, as they were happy to 
 possess the vast domains with which the founda- 
 tion had been gradually enriched. This fatal abuse 
 made its appearance also in France and Germany, 
 but was less inveterate than in Ireland, where it still 
 existed in the time of St Bernard ; and in Scotland, 
 where it lasted even after the Reformation. 
 
 It was never thus at Iona, where the abbatical 
 succession was always perfectly regular and unin- 
 terrupted up to the invasions and devastations of 
 the Danes at the commencement of the eighth cen- 
 tury. From the time of those invasions the abbots 
 
Influence of St Columba. 1 5 1 
 
 of Iona began to occupy an inferior position. The 
 radiant centre from which Christian civilisation 
 had shone upon the British Isles grew dim. The 
 headquarters of the communities united under the 
 title of the Family or Order of Columb-kill , were 
 transferred from Iona to one of the other founda- 
 tions of the saint at Kells, in the centre of Ireland, 
 where a successor of Columba, superior-general of 
 the order, titulary abbot of Iona, Armagh, or some 
 other great Irish monastery, and bearing the dis- 
 tinctive title of Coarfr, resided for three centuries 
 more. 
 
 We have lingered too long over the great and 
 touching figure of the saint whose life we have just 
 recorded; and it now remains to us to throw T a 
 rapid glance at the influence which he exercised on 
 all around him, and even upon posterity. 
 
 This influence is especially evident in the Irish 
 Church, which seems to have been entirely swayed 
 by his spirit, his successors, and his disciples, dur- 
 ing the time which is looked upon as the Golden 
 Age in its history, and which extends up to the 
 period of the Danish invasions, at the end of the 
 eighth century. During all this time the Irish 
 Church, which continued, as from its origin, en- 
 tirely monastic, seems to have been governed by 
 the recollections or institutions of Columba. The 
 words Lex Columbcille are found on many pages of 
 its confused annals, and indicate sometimes the 
 mass of traditions preserved by its monasteries. 
 
152 Position of the Irish Church . 
 
 sometimes the tributes which the kings levied for 
 the defence of the Church and country, while carry- 
 ing through all Ireland the shrine which contained 
 his relics. The continued influence of the great 
 abbot of Iona was so marked, even in temporal 
 affairs, that more than two centuries after his death, 
 in 817, the monks of his order, Congregatio Columb- 
 cille , went solemnly to Tara, the ancient capital 
 of Druidical Ireland, to excommunicate there the 
 supreme monarch of the island, who had assassi- 
 nated a prince of the family of their holy chief. 
 
 It has been said, and cannot be sufficiently re- 
 peated, that Ireland was then regarded by all 
 Christian Europe as the principal centre of know- 
 ledge and piety. In the shelter of its numberless 
 monasteries a crowd of missionaries, doctors, and 
 preachers were educated for the service of the 
 Church and the propagation of the faith in all 
 Christian countries. A vast and continual develop- 
 ment of literary and religious effort is there ap- 
 parent, superior to anything that could be seen in 
 any other country of Europe. Certain arts — those 
 of architecture, carving, metallurgy, as applied to 
 the decoration of churches — were successfully 
 cultivated, without speaking of music, which con- 
 tinued to flourish both among the learned and 
 among the people. The classic languages — not 
 only Latin, but Greek — were cultivated, spoken, 
 and written with a sort of passionate pedantry, 
 which shows at least how powerful was the sway 
 
Enthusiasm for Learning. 153 
 
 of intellectual influences over these ardent souls. 
 Their mania for Greek was even carried so far 
 that they wrote the Latin of the church books in 
 Hellenic characters. And in Ireland more than 
 anywhere else, each monastery was a school, and 
 each school a workshop of transcription, from 
 which day by day issued new copies of the Holy 
 Scriptures and the Fathers of the primitive Church 
 — copies which were dispersed through all Europe, 
 and which are still to be found in Continental 
 libraries. They may easily be recognised by the 
 original and elegant character of their Irish writing, 
 as also by the use of the alphabet common to all 
 the Celtic races, and afterwards employed by the 
 Anglo-Saxons, but to which in our day the Irish 
 alone have remained faithful. Columba, as has 
 been seen, had given an example of this unwearied 
 labour to the monastic scribes ; his example was 
 continually followed in the Irish cloisters, where the 
 monks did not entirely limit themselves to the tran- 
 scription of Holy Scripture, but reproduced also 
 Greek and Latin authors, sometimes in Celtic char- 
 acter, with gloss and commentary in Irish, like that 
 Horace which modern learning has discovered in the 
 library of Berne. These marvellous manuscripts, 
 illuminated with incomparable ability and patience 
 by the monastic family of Columba, excited, five 
 hundred years later, the declamatory enthusiasm 
 of a great enemy of Ireland, the Anglo-Norman 
 historian, Gerald de Barry ; and they still attract 
 
154 The Annals of the Saints . 
 
 the attention of archaeologists and philologists of 
 the highest fame. 
 
 Exact annals of the events of the time were also 
 made out in all the monasteries. These annals re- 
 placed the chronicles of the bards ; and so far as 
 they have been preserved, and already published or 
 about to be so, they now form the principal source 
 of Irish history. Ecclesiastical records have natu- 
 rally a greater place in them than civil history. 
 They celebrate especially the memory of the saints, 
 who have always been so numerous in the Irish 
 Church, where each of the great communities can 
 count a circle of holy men, issued from its bosom 
 or attached to its confraternity. Under the name 
 of sanctilogy or festilogy (for martyrs were too little 
 known in Ireland to justify the usual term of 
 martyrology), this circle of biographies was the 
 spiritual reading of the monks, and the familiar 
 instruction of the surrounding people. Several of 
 these festilogies are in verse, one of which, the 
 most famous of all, is attributed to Angus, called 
 the Culdee , a simple brother, miller of the Monas- 
 tery of Tallach. In this the principal saints of 
 other countries find a place along with three hun- 
 dred and sixty-five Irish saints, one for each day 
 of the year, who are all celebrated with that pious 
 and patriotic enthusiasm, at once poetical and 
 moral, which burns so naturally in every Irish 
 heart. 
 
 The name of Culdee leads us to point out in 
 
The Culdees . 
 
 155 
 
 passing the absurd and widespread error which has 
 made the Culdees be looked upon as a kind of 
 monkish order, married and indigenous to the soil, 
 which existed before the introduction of Christian- 
 ity into Ireland and Scotland by the Roman mis- 
 sionaries, and of whom the great abbot of Iona was 
 the founder or chief. This opinion, propagated by 
 learned Anglicans, and blindly copied by various 
 French writers, is now universally acknowledged as 
 false by sincere and competent judges. The Cul- 
 dees, a sort of third order, attached to the regular 
 monasteries, appeared in Ireland, as elsewhere, 
 only in the ninth century, and had never anything 
 more than a trifling connection with the Columban 
 communities. 
 
 Still more striking than the intellectual develop- 
 ment of which the Irish monasteries were at this 
 period the centre, is the prodigious activity dis- 
 played by the Irish monks in extending and multi- 
 plying themselves over all the countries of Europe 
 — here to create new schools and sanctuaries among 
 nations already evangelised — there to carry the 
 light of the Gospel, at peril of their lives, to the 
 countries that were still pagan. We should run 
 the risk of forestalling our future task if we did not 
 resist the temptations of the subject, which would 
 lead us to go faster than time, and to follow those 
 armies of brave and untiring Celts, always adven- 
 turous and often heroic, into the regions where we 
 shall perhaps one day find them again. Let us 
 
156 Irish Monasteries and Saints . 
 
 content ourselves with a simple list, which has a 
 certain eloquence even in the dryness of its figures. 
 Here is the number, probably very incomplete, 
 given by an ancient writer, of the monasteries 
 founded out of Ireland by Irish monks, led far 
 from their country by the love of souls, and, no 
 doubt, a little also by that love of travel which has 
 always been one of their special distinctions : — 
 
 Thirteen in Scotland, 
 
 Twelve in England, 
 
 Seven in France, 
 
 Twelve in" Armorica, 
 
 Seven in Lorraine, 
 
 Ten in Alsatia, 
 
 Sixteen in Bavaria, 
 
 Fifteen in Rhaetia, Helvetia, and Allemania ; 
 
 without counting many in Thuringia and upon the 
 left bank of the Lower Rhine ; and, finally, six in 
 Italy. 
 
 And that it may be fully apparent how great 
 was the zeal and virtue of which those monastic 
 colonies were at once the product and the centre, 
 let us place by its side an analogous list of saints 
 of Irish origin, whom the gratitude of nations con- 
 verted, edified, and civilised by them, have placed 
 upon their altars as patrons and founders of those 
 churches whose foundations they watered with their 
 blood : — 
 
 A hundred and fifty (of whom thirty-six were martyrs) 
 in Germany, 
 
 Forty-five (of whom six were martyrs) in Gaul, 
 
San Cataldo . 
 
 157 
 
 Thirty in Belgium, 
 
 Thirteen in Italy, 
 
 Eight, all martyrs, in Norway and Iceland. 
 
 In the after part of this narrative we shall meet 
 many of the most illustrious, especially in Ger- 
 many. Let us confine ourselves here to point- 
 ing out, among the thirteen Irish saints honoured 
 with public veneration in Italy, him who is still 
 invoked at the extremity of the peninsula as 
 the patron of Tarento under the name of San 
 Cataldo. 
 
 His name in Ireland was Cathal, and before he 
 left his country to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
 and to become a bishop at Tarento, he had presided 
 over the great monastic school of Lismore, in the 
 south of Ireland. Thanks to his zeal and know- 
 ledge, this school had become a sort of university, 
 to which he attracted an immense crowd of stu- 
 dents, not only Irish, but foreigners, from Wales, 
 England, France, and even from Germany. When 
 their education was concluded, a portion of them 
 remained to increase the already numerous commu- 
 nities in the holy and lettered city of Lismore ; the 
 others carried back with them to their different 
 countries a recollection of the advantages which 
 they owed to Ireland and her monks. For it is 
 important to prove that, while Ireland sent forth 
 her sons into all the regions of the then known 
 world, numberless strangers hastened there to seat 
 themselves at the feet of her doctors, and to find 
 
158 Monastic Hospitality . 
 
 in that vast centre of faith and knowledge all the 
 remnants of ancient civilisation which her insular 
 position had permitted her to save from the flood 
 of barbarous invasions. 
 
 The monasteries which gradually covered the 
 soil of Ireland were thus the hostelries of a foreign 
 emigration. Unlike the ancient Druidical colleges, 
 they were open to all. The poor and the rich, the 
 slave as well as the freeman, the child and the old 
 man, had free access and paid nothing. It was 
 not, then, only to the natives of Ireland that the 
 Irish monasteries, occupied and ruled by the sons 
 of Columba, confined the benefits of knowledge and 
 of literary and religious education. They opened 
 their door with admirable generosity to strangers 
 from every country and of every condition ; above 
 all, to those who came from the neighbouring 
 island, England, some to end their lives in an Irish 
 cloister, some to search from house to house for 
 books, and masters capable of explaining those 
 books. The Irish monks received with kindness 
 guests so greedy of instruction, and gave them both 
 books and masters, the food of the body and the 
 food of the soul, without demanding any recom- 
 pense. The Anglo-Saxons, who were afterwards 
 to repay this teaching with ingratitude so cruel, 
 were of all nations the one which derived most 
 profit from it. From the seventh to the eleventh 
 century English students flocked into Ireland, and 
 for four hundred years the monastic schools of 
 
Social State of Ireland \ 159 
 
 the island maintained the great reputation which 
 brought so many successive generations to dip 
 deeply there into the living waters of knowledge 
 and of faith. 
 
 This devotion to knowledge and generous muni- 
 ficence towards strangers, this studious and intel- 
 lectual life, nourished into being by the sheltering 
 warmth of faith, shone with all the more brightness 
 amid the horrible confusion and bloody disasters 
 which signalise, in so far as concerned temporal 
 affairs, the Golden Age of ecclesiastical history in 
 Ireland, even before the sanguinary invasions of 
 the Danes at the end of the eighth century. It has 
 been said with justice that war and religion have 
 been in all ages the two great passions of Ireland. 
 But it must be allowed that war seems almost 
 always to have carried the day over religion, and 
 that religion did not prevent war from degenerat- 
 ing too often into massacres and assassinations. 
 It is true that after the eighth century there are 
 fewer kings murdered by their successors than in 
 the period between St Patrick and St Columba ; it 
 is true that three or four of these kings lived long 
 enough to have the time to go and expiate their 
 sins as monks at Armagh or Iona. But it is not 
 less true that the annals of the monastic family of 
 Columba present to us at each line with mournful 
 laconism a spectacle which absolutely contradicts 
 the flattering pictures which have been drawn of 
 the peace which Ireland should have enjoyed. Al- 
 
160 Social State of Ireland . 
 
 most every year, such words as the following are 
 repeated with cruel brevity : — 
 
 Bellum. 
 
 Bellum lacrymabile. 
 
 Bellum magnum. 
 
 Vastatio. 
 
 Spoliatio. 
 
 Violatio. 
 
 Obsessio. 
 
 Strages magna. 
 
 yugulatio. 
 
 And above all, Jugulatio. It is the word which 
 returns oftenest, and in which seems to be sum- 
 med up the destiny of those unhappy princes and 
 people. 
 
 Such an enumeration should give rise to the re- 
 flection, what this wild tree of Celtic nature would 
 have been without the monastic graft. We can 
 thus perceive with what ferocious natures Columba 
 and his disciples had to do. If, notwithstanding 
 the preaching of the monks, a state of affairs so 
 barbarous continued to exist, what might it have 
 been had the Gospel never been preached to those 
 savages, and if the monks had not been in the 
 midst of them like a permanent incarnation of the 
 Spirit of God ? 
 
 The monks were at the same time neither less 
 inactive nor more spared than the women, who 
 fought and perished in the wars precisely like the 
 men, up to the time when the most illustrious of 
 Columba’s successors delivered them from that ter- 
 
Atrocities common in Ireland. 1 6 1 
 
 rible bondage. A single incident drawn from the 
 sanguinary chaos of the period will suffice at once 
 to paint the always atrocious habits of those Celtic 
 Christians, and the always beneficent influence of 
 monastic authority. A hundred years after the 
 death of Columba, his biographer and ninth succes- 
 sor, \damnan, was crossing a plain, carrying his 
 old mother on his back, when they saw two bands 
 fighting, and in the midst of the battle a woman 
 dragging another woman after her, whose breast 
 she had pierced with an iron hook. At this hor- 
 rible spectacle the abbot’s mother seated herself on 
 the ground, and said to him, “ I will not leave this 
 spot till thou hast promised me to have women 
 exempted for ever from this horror, and from every 
 battle and expedition.” He gave her his word, 
 and he kept it. At the next national assembly of 
 Tara, he proposed and carried a law which is in- 
 scribed in the annals of Ireland as the Law of 
 Adamnan , or Law of the Lnno cents, and which for 
 ever freed the Irish women from the obligation of 
 military service and all its homicidal consequences. 
 
 At the same time, nothing was more common in 
 Ireland than the armed intervention of the monks 
 in civil wars, or in the struggles between different 
 communities. We may be permitted to believe 
 * that the spiritual descendants of Columba reckoned 
 among them more than one monk of character as 
 warlike as their great ancestor, and that there were 
 as many monastic actors as victims in these des- 
 
 L 
 
1 62 The Statute of Kilkenny. 
 
 perate conflicts. Two centuries after Columba, 
 two hundred monks of his abbey at Durrow per- 
 ished in a battle with the neighbouring monks of 
 Clonmacnoise ; and the old annalists of Ireland 
 speak of a battle which took place in 816, at which 
 eight hundred monks of Ferns were killed. The 
 Irish religious had not given up either the warlike 
 humour or the dauntless courage of their race. 
 
 Nor is it less certain that the studious fervour 
 and persevering patriotism which were such marked 
 features in the character of Columba remained the 
 inalienable inheritance of his monastic posterity — 
 an inheritance which continued up to the middle 
 ages, to the time . of that famous statute of Kil- 
 kenny, which is an ineffaceable monument of the 
 ferocious arrogance of the English conquerors, 
 even before the Reformation. This statute, after 
 having denounced every marriage between the two 
 races as an act of . high treason, , went so far as to 
 exclude all native Irish from the monasteries — from 
 those same monasteries which Irishmen alone had 
 founded and occupied for eight centuries, and where, 
 before and after Columba, they had afforded a 
 generous hospitality to the British fugitives and to 
 the victorious Saxons. 
 
 But we must not permit ourselves to linger on 
 the Irish coasts. We shall soon again meet her * 
 generous and intrepid sons, always the first in the 
 field, and the most ready to expose themselves to 
 danger, among the apostles and propagators of 
 
Monasteries founded by the Saint. 163 
 
 monastic institutions, upon the banks of the Scheldt, 
 the Rhine, and the Danube, where also they were 
 eclipsed and surpassed by the Anglo-Saxons, but 
 where their names, forgotten in Ireland, still shine 
 with a pure and beneficent light. 
 
 The influence of Columba, so universal, undeni- 
 able, and enduring in his native island, should not 
 have been less so in his adopted country — in that 
 Caledonia which became more and more an Irish 
 or Scotic colony, and thus merited the name of 
 Scotland, which it retained. Notwithstanding, his 
 work has perhaps left fewer authentic traces there. 
 All unite in attributing to him the conversion of 
 the Northern Piets, and the introduction or re- 
 establishment of the faith among the Piets of the 
 South and the Scots of the West. It is also pretty 
 generally agreed to date from his times even 
 though there is no evidence of their direct subordi- 
 nation to Iona— the great monasteries of Old Mel- 
 rose, of Abercorn, Tynninghame, and Coldingham, 
 situated between the Forth and the Tweed, and 
 which afterwards became the centres of Christian 
 extension among the Saxons of^ Northumbria. 
 Further north, but still upon the east coast, the 
 round towers which are still to be seen at Brechin 
 and Abernethy bear witness to their Irish origin, 
 and consequently to the influence of Columba, who 
 was the first and principal Irish missionary in these 
 districts. The same may be said of those primi- 
 tive and lowly constructions, built with long and 
 
1 64 Sf Kentigern. 
 
 large stones laid upon each other, without cement, 
 which are to be found in St Kilda and other He- 
 bridean isles, and also upon certain points of the 
 neighbouring shore, resembling exactly in form the 
 deserted monasteries which are so numerous in the 
 isles of western Ireland. Another relic of the 
 primitive Church is found in the caves, hollowed 
 out or enlarged by the hand of man, in the cliffs or 
 mountains of the interior, inhabited of old, as were 
 the grots of Subiaco and Marmoutier, and as the 
 caves of Meteores in Albania are still, by hermits, 
 or sometimes even by bishops (as St Woloc, St 
 Regulus). Kentigern, the apostle of Strathclyde, 
 appears to us in the legend at the mouth of his 
 episcopal cave, which was hollowed out in the side 
 of a cliff, and where the people looked at him from 
 afar with respectful curiosity, while he studied the 
 direction of the storms at sea, and breathed in with 
 pleasure the first breezes of the spring. 
 
 This bishop, Welsh by birth, has already been 
 mentioned in connection with the principality of 
 Wales, where, as we have already seen, he founded 
 an immense monastery during an exile, the cause 
 of which it is impossible to ascertain, but which 
 was the occasion of a relapse into idolatry among 
 his diocesans. The district of Strathclyde or Cum- 
 bria, on the west coasts of Britain, from the mouth 
 of the Clyde to that of the Mersey — that is to say, 
 from Glasgow to Liverpool — was occupied by a 
 mingled race of Britons and Scots, whose capital 
 
Glasgow Cathedral 165 
 
 was Al-Cluid, now Dumbarton. A prince called 
 Roderick (Rydderch Hael), whose mother was 
 Irish, and who had been baptised by an Irish monk, 
 hastened, when the authority fell into his hands, to 
 recall Kentigern, who returned bringing with him 
 a hive of Welsh monks, and established definitively 
 the seat of his apostleship at Glasgow, where Ninian 
 had preceded him nearly a century before without 
 leaving any lasting traces of his passage. Kenti- 
 gern, more fortunate, established upon the site of 
 a burying-ground consecrated by Ninian the first 
 foundation of the magnificent cathedral which still 
 bears his name. 
 
 It was consecrated by an Irish bishop, brought 
 from Ireland for the purpose, and who celebrated 
 that ceremony without the assistance of other 
 bishops, according to Celtic customs. Kentigern 
 collected round him numerous disciples, all learned 
 in holy literature, all working with their hands, and 
 possessing nothing as individuals — a true monastic 
 community. He distinguished himself during all 
 his episcopate by his efforts to bring back to the 
 faith the Piets of Galloway, which formed part of the 
 kingdom of Strathclyde ; and afterwards by nume- 
 rous missions and monastic foundations through- 
 out all Albyn — a name which was then given to 
 midland Scotland. His disciples penetrated even 
 to the Orkney Isles; where they must have met 
 with the missionaries of Iona. 
 
 The salutary and laborious activity of Kentigern 
 
1 66 St Kentigern and St Columba . 
 
 must often have encroached upon the regions which 
 were specially within the sphere of Columba. But 
 the generous heart of Columba was inaccessible to 
 jealousy. He was besides the personal friend of 
 Kentigern and of King Roderick. The fame of the 
 Bishop of Strathclyde’s apostolic labours drew him 
 from his isle to do homage to his rival. He ar- 
 rived from Iona with a great train of monks, whom 
 he "arranged in three companies at the moment of 
 their entrance into Glasgow. Kentigern distributed 
 in the same way the numerous monks who sur- 
 rounded him in his episcopal monastery, and whom 
 he led out to meet the abbot of Iona. He divided 
 them, according to their age, into three bands, the 
 youngest of whom marched first ; then those who 
 had reached the age of manhood ; and, last of all, 
 the old and grey-haired, among whom he himself 
 took his place. They all chanted the anthem, In 
 viis Domini magna est gloria Domini , et via just or um 
 facta est : et iter sanctorum prceparaium est. The 
 monks of Iona, on their side, chanted in choir the 
 versicle, Ibunt sancti de virtute in virtutem : vide- 
 bitur Deus eorum in Sion. From each side echoed 
 the Alleluia ; and it was to the sound of those words 
 of Holy Scripture, chanted in Latin by the Celtic 
 monks of Wales and Ireland, that the two apostles 
 of the Piets and Scots met at what had been the 
 extreme boundary of the Roman Empire and limit 
 of the power of the Caesars, and upon a soil hence- 
 forth for ever freed from paganism and idolatry. 
 
The Stolen Ram . 
 
 167 
 
 They embraced each other tenderly, and passed 
 several days in intimate and friendly intercourse. 
 
 The historian who has preserved for us the ac- 
 count of this interview does not conceal a less edi- 
 fying incident. He confesses that some robbers 
 had joined themselves to the following of the abbot 
 of Iona, and that they took advantage of the general 
 enthusiasm to steal a ram from the bishop’s flock. 
 They were soon taken; but Kentigern pardoned 
 them. Columba and his fellow-apostle exchanged 
 their pastoral crosses before they parted in token of 
 mutual affection. Another annalist describes them 
 as living together for six months in the monastery 
 which Columba had just founded at Dunkeld, and 
 together preaching the faith to the inhabitants of 
 Athol and the mountainous regions inhabited by 
 the Piets. 
 
 I know not how far we may put faith in another 
 narrative of the same author, which seems rather 
 borrowed from the Gallo-Breton epic of Tristan and 
 Iseult than from monastic legend, but which has 
 nevertheless remained Kentigern’ s most popular 
 title to fame. The wife of King Roderick, led 
 astray by a guilty passion for a knight of her hus- 
 band^ court, had the weakness to bestow upon him 
 a ring which had been given to her by the king. 
 When Roderick was out hunting with this knight, 
 the two took refuge on the banks of the Clyde dur- 
 ing the heat of the day, and the knight, falling 
 asleep, unwittingly stretched out his hand, upott 
 
1 68 Legend of the Ring . 
 
 which the king saw the ring which he had given 
 to the queen as a token of his love. It was with 
 difficulty that he restrained himself from killing the 
 knight on the spot ; but he subdued his rage, and 
 contented himself by taking the ring from his finger 
 and throwing it into the river; without awakening 
 the guilty sleeper. When he had returned to the 
 town he demanded his ring from the queen, and, as 
 she could not produce it, threw her into prison, and 
 gave orders for her execution. She obtained, how- 
 ever, a delay of three days; and having in vain 
 sought the ring from the knight to whom she had 
 given it, she had recourse to the protection of_St 
 Kentigern. The good pastor knew or divined all 
 — the ring, found in a salmon which he had caught 
 in the Clyde, was already in his hands. He sent it 
 to the queen, who showed it to her husband, and 
 thus escaped the punishment which awaited her. 
 Roderick even asked her pardon on his knees, and 
 offered to punish her accusers. From this, however, 
 she dissuaded him, and, hastening to Kentigern, 
 confessed her fault to him, and was commanded to 
 pass the rest of her life in penitence. It is for this 
 reason that the ancient effigies of the apostle of 
 Strathclyde represent him as holding always the 
 episcopal cross in one hand, and in the other a 
 salmon with a ring in its mouth. 
 
 But neither Kentigern, whose labours can scarcely 
 be said to have survived him, nor Columba, whose 
 influence upon the Piets and Scots was so powerful 
 
Saxon Monks at Iona . 169 
 
 and lasting, exercised any direct or efficacious ac- 
 tion upon the Anglo-Saxons, who became stronger 
 and more formidable from day to day, and whose 
 ferocious incursions threatened the Caledonian 
 tribes no less than the Britons. It is apparent, 
 however, that the great abbot of Iona did not share 
 the repugnance, which had hardened into a system 
 of repulsion, of the Welsh clergy for the Saxon 
 race : express mention, on the contrary, is made in 
 the most authentic documents connected with his 
 history, of Saxon monks who had been admitted 
 into the community of Iona. One of them, for in- 
 stance, had the office of baker there, and was reck- 
 oned among Columba’s intimates. But nothing in- 
 dicates that these Saxons, who were enrolled under 
 the authority of Columba, exercised any influence 
 from thence upon their countrymen. On the con- 
 trary, while the Scotic-Briton missionaries spread 
 over all the corners of Caledonia, and while Co- 
 lumba and his disciples carried the light of the 
 Gospel into the northern districts where it had 
 never penetrated, the Christian faith and the Catho- 
 lic Church languished and gave up the ghost in the 
 southern part of the island under the ruins heaped 
 up everywhere by the Saxon conquest. 
 
 Paganism and barbarism, vanquished by the 
 Gospel in the Highlands of the north, again arose 
 and triumphed in the south — in the most popu- 
 lous, accessible, and flourishing districts — through- 
 out all that country, which was destined hereafter 
 
 M 
 
170 The Saxons and Britons. 
 
 to play so great a part in the world, and which 
 already began *to call itself England. From 569 to 
 586 — ten years before the death of Columba, and 
 at the period when his authority was best estab- 
 lished and most powerful in the north — the last 
 champions of Christian Britain were finally cast 
 out beyond the Severn, while at the same time new 
 bands of Anglo-Saxons in the north, driving back 
 the Piets to the other side of the Tweed, and cross- 
 ing the Humber to the south, founded the future 
 kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. It is true 
 that at a later period the sons of Columba carried 
 the Gospel to those Northumbrians and Mercians. 
 But at the end of the sixth century, after a hun- 
 dred and fifty years of triumphant invasions and 
 struggles, the Saxons had not yet encountered in 
 any of the then Christian, or at least converted na- 
 tions (Britons, Scots, and Piets), which they had 
 assailed, fought, and vanquished, either missionaries 
 disposed to announce the good news to them, nor 
 priests capable of maintaining the precious nucleus 
 of faith among the conquered races. In 586 the two 
 last bishops of conquered Britain, those of London 
 and York, abandoned their churches and took re- 
 fuge in the mountains of Wales, carrying with them 
 the sacred vessels and holy relics which they had 
 been able to save from the rapacity of the idolaters. 
 Other husbandmen were then necessary. From 
 whence were they to come ? From the same inex- 
 tinguishable centre, whence light had been brought 
 
Romish Missionaries. 1 7 1 
 
 to the Irish by Patrick, and to the Britons and Scots 
 by Palladius, Ninian, and Germain. • 
 
 And already they are here ! At the moment 
 when Columba approached the term of his long 
 career in his northern isle, a year before his death, 
 the envoys of Gregory the Great left Rome, and 
 landed, wj^ere Caesar had landed, upon the English 
 shore. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 ' 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.