XII. THE SCHOOL OF CLONMACNOISE…

XII. THE SCHOOL OF CLONMACNOISE

"Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo." --Jeremias.

I.--ST. CIARAN OF CLONMACNOISE.

How solitary now she sits by the great river that once thronged City! Her gates are broken, and her streets are silent. Yet in olden time she was a queen, and the children of many lands came to do her homage. She was the nursing mother of our saints, and the teacher of our highest learning for a long six hundred years. The most ancient and the most accurate of the Annals of Erin were written in her halls; the most learned 'Doctors of the Scots' lectured in her classrooms; the sweetest of our old Gaedhlic poems were composed by her professors; the noblest youth of France and England crowded her halls, and bore the renown of her holiness and learning to foreign lands. Even still her churches, her crosses, and her tombstones furnish the best and most characteristic specimens of our ancient Celtic art in sculpture and in architecture. View it as you may, Clonmacnoise was the greatest of our schools in the past, as it is the most interesting of our ruins in the present.

How well St. Ciaran chose the site of his monastic city in those turbulent and lawless days. It reposed in the bosom of a grassy lawn of fertile meadow land on the eastern bank of the Shannon, about ten miles south of Athlone. Just at this point the majestic river takes a wide semi-circular sweep first to the east and then to the south; presently it widens and deepens into calm repose under the shelter of that grassy ridge, which Ciaran chose as the site of his monastery. A vast expanse of bog lies beyond the river; and in the time of St. Ciaran the country all round about was an impassable morass to the east, south, and north of the verdant oasis on which he built his little church. So it became necessary to construct a causeway through the bog from the monastery somewhat on the line of the present road to Athlone. At this day the aspect of the place is very desolate and lonely. There is nothing to distract the attention of the stranger save the gray ruins, the sweep of the full-bosomed river stealing silently onwards like time in its flight, and vast flocks of plover and curlew that are now settled on the meadows, and a moment after are circling in flying clouds around us. The report of a gun had startled both them and us. It was like a voice in the regions of the dead.

St. Ciaran, the founder of Clonmacnoise, is usually called Ciaran Mac In Tsair, that is, the Son of the Carpenter, and sometimes Ciaran the Younger, to distinguish him from St. Ciaran of Saigher, the patron of the diocese of Ossory. His father, Beoit, son of Olcan, though a carpenter by trade, came of high descent. His mother, Darerca, was a daughter of the race that gave its name to the county Kerry. Beoit lived at Larne, in Antrim, but being greatly harassed by the exactions of Ainmire, king of the district, he migrated to the province of Connaught, and settled at a place called Rath Crimthann, near Fuerty, in the county Roscommon. He was, it seems, unmarried at the time, and there took to himself a wife from the daughters of the Ciarraighe, who about the same time had migrated from Irluachair, in Kerry, and had settled along the western bank of the Suck in that very district.[208] They were a holy couple, and trained up a holy family, for they had no less than five sons and three daughters, who were great servants of God.

Ciaran was baptized by the deacon Justus at Fuerty (Fidharta), in the year A.D. 512, which we take to be the date of the saint's birth.[209] He received his early education from the same holy man, and in his turn was not too proud to tend the herds of his tutor at Fuerty, especially during the absence of the holy deacon. We are told, too, that while tending the cattle he was also much given to study and prayer.

It is probable that young Ciaran went directly from home to the great School of Clonard, of which we have already spoken. While he was there, he gave himself up with great zeal to the study of holy Scripture under the direction of the wise and learned Finnian. He made the acquaintance, too, of nearly all the great and holy men who about this period lived in blessed brotherhood at Clonard, and were afterwards known as the Twelve Apostles of Erin. He was much beloved both by his master, who called him the "gentle youth," and by his companions, whom he was ever anxious to oblige. Books were then very scarce, and on one occasion when St. Ninnidius of Lough Erne was vainly searching for a copy of the Gospels, Ciaran gave him his own copy, saying that we should do to others as we would have others do to us--the text which he was studying in St. Matthew at the moment.

Ciaran once made a present of corn to his master and the brotherhood, which sufficed for their wants during forty days--it was said, too, this blessed food given by Ciaran had virtue to heal the sick, who partook of it, and a portion of it was reserved for that purpose. Finnian in return blessed his generous and holy pupil, and foretold that his Church in the coming years would be fruitful "of nobility and wisdom;" that it would have much glory and much land; and that half Ireland would one day be subject to his rule. When the master was absent, Ciaran was deputed to take his place, which shows the high opinion then entertained by Finnian of his learning and holiness. One day Finnian saw in vision two golden moons in the firmament of Erin; one he said was Columcille, to illumine the North with the lustre of his virtues and high descent; the other was Ciaran, who would shine over central Erin, with the mild radiance of charity and meekness.

At length the time came for Ciaran to leave Clonard. Both masters and scholars were sorry to part with the gentle youth. Finnian even offered to resign the master's chair in his favour; but Ciaran wisely declined the great honour, for he was too young and inexperienced for that office. Columcille was then at Clonard about the year A.D. 537 or 538, and was greatly attached to Ciaran; he composed regretful stanzas at his departure, and afterwards followed him all the way to Aran:--

"The noble youth that goeth westward, And leaves us mourning here-- Ah! gentle, loving, tender-hearted Is Ciaran Mac In Tsair."

We have in a previous chapter referred to Ciaran's sojourn in Aran with St. Enda. On his departure from the blessed isles Ciaran told the venerable Enda that he saw in a vision a large fruitful tree planted in the midst of Erin, and its boughs sheltered all the land. Its fair fruit was borne over land and sea, and all the birds of the air came and eat thereof. "That tree is thyself," said Enda; "all Erin shall be filled with thy name, and sheltered by the grace that will be in thee, and many men from all parts will be fed by thy prayers and thy fastings. Go, then, in God's name, and found thy Church on the Shannon's banks in the centre of the island."

After leaving Aran, Ciaran paid a short visit to St. Senan of Scattery Island, in the Lower Shannon, and was much edified by the example and conversation of that holy man. He then went north in obedience to the word of Enda and at first founded a church at a place called Isell Ciaran, where he remained only a short time. He then founded another oratory on Inis Ainghin, now called Hare Island, in Lough Ree, a beautifully wooded islet about two miles north of Athlone, where a ruined church may still be seen that was built on the site of Ciaran's more ancient oratory.

It was an admirable site for a monastery; far enough from the shore for security, but near enough for convenience, and situated just at the point where the wide and beautiful lake contracts its waters into the stately stream that flows beneath the historic arches of the bridge at Athlone.

For three years and three months only Ciaran remained at Hare Island. This would fix his arrival there in A.D. 540 if, as we shall see, he died in A.D. 544 at the age of thirty-three years. Going further south by the bank of the river to a place that would be nearer to the centre of the island, he stopped at the spot then called Ard Mantain, which in his opinion was too fertile and too beautiful to be chosen as the abode of fasting saints. "We might," he said, "have here much of the world's riches, but the souls going to heaven from it would be few." So he journeyed on still further to the south through what was then a desolate expanse of fens and brakes, until he came to Ard Tiprait, the Height of the Spring. "Here," he said to his companions, "let us remain, for many souls will ascend to heaven from this spot."[210] It was on the 10th of the Kalends of February that Ciaran took up his abode at Clonmacnoise with eight companions; and it was on the 10th of the Moon, and a Saturday. This is very specific information, and evidently authentic. It shows that the writer of Ciaran's life knew what he was saying, and was not afraid of being contradicted. These dates prove that the foundation of Clonmacnoise took place on Saturday, the 23rd of January, in the year A.D. 544.[211] It was finished on the 9th of May following; and the same ancient and accurate life tells us the circumstances of this most remarkable event--the founding of the greatest school and the greatest monastery in Ireland.

When Ciaran was planting the first post to mark out the site of the Cathair of Clonmacnoise, Diarmaid Mac Cearbhaill, who happened to be present with a few of his companions, helped the saint with his own hands to fix the post in the earth. "Though your companions to-day are few," said Ciaran, "to-morrow thou shalt be High King of Erin." This prophecy, like many others, helped to fulfil itself. One of Diarmaid's companions, Maelmor,[212] his foster brother, overheard the saint's word; and knowing that he was a man of God, he resolved to help in carrying it out. King Tuathal Maelgarbh, great grandson of Niall the Great, had set a price on Diarmaid's head, or rather on his heart, if brought to him in person; so Diarmaid was forced to hide himself and live in the deserts and bogs around Clonmacnoise. There he met the saint, and not only aided him to build his monastery, as stated above, but in reverence to the saint he placed his own hand beneath that of Ciaran in fixing the first pole. Now, Maelmor hearing the prediction, with Diarmaid's reluctant consent, took his fleet black horse, and a whelp's heart besprinkled with blood on the point of his spear, and rode post haste to a place called Greallach Eillte in Meath, where the king with his nobles happened to be at the time. Seeing the stranger riding post to the king with the bloody heart on his spear, all made way for him, for they, like the king himself, thought it was the heart of Diarmaid, which he was going to present to the king. But instead of Diarmaid's heart, Maelmor gave the monarch a fatal thrust with his spear, which killed him on the spot. Maelmor was immediately set upon by the royal guards and hewn to pieces. But his purpose was achieved--Diarmaid MacCearbhaill was the nearest heir to the throne, and was immediately proclaimed king without opposition. During his reign he was, as might be expected, a great patron and benefactor of Clonmacnoise, and although there is good reason to believe that he still kept Druids[213] and soothsayers in his palace, he gave that monastery large grants of land, and subjected to its authority no less than one hundred of the small churches in its neighbourhood. Such was the origin of the Diocese of Clonmacnoise, which after many vicissitudes is now united to that of Ardagh.[214]

St. Ciaran lived only four months after founding his monastery and little church--the Eclais Beg--on the banks of the Shannon. The same accurate writer of his life states with great precision that his death came upon him in the thirty-third year of his age, on the fifth of the Ides (the 9th) of September, on a Saturday, the fifteenth day of the moon. These data mark the year A.D. 544 (not 549), as the year of the saint's death. It was also the year in which King Diarmaid ascended the throne, and which brought with it a great plague that proved fatal to many of the saints of Erin, as well as to Ciaran himself.

The death of Ciaran was very touching. "Take me out a little," he said, "from the cell into the open air." Then looking up to the blue sky, he said--"Narrow indeed is the way which leads to heaven." "Not for you, father, will it be narrow," said one of his monks who was standing nigh. "It is not said in the Gospel that it will be easy for me or for any one," said Ciaran; "even the blessed Paul and David were afraid." He would not allow the stone pillow to be removed in order to give more ease to his head. He had kept it during life, and he would rest on it in death--"Blessed are they," he observed, "who persevere unto the end." The brethren now saw God's angels hovering in the air around them awaiting the moment of Ciaran's departure. He grew weaker, so they brought him in again to Eclais Beg. It was fitting he should die there; it was the scene of his prayers and tears. The skin on which he used to sleep in his little cell was stretched on the ground, and he was laid upon it. The end was now at hand. He gave his last blessing to the brethren, and asked them to close the church, and leave him alone with his soul's friend, St. Kevin of Glendaloch, whom he had known and loved at Clonard. Kevin blessed holy water according to the Church's rite, and sprinkled the little oratory, and the couch of the dying saint. Then he gave Ciaran the holy Communion and blessed him once more ere he died. Ciaran loved the holy Kevin much; God had sent him to his bedside at the prayer of Ciaran himself--and as a pledge of his love the dying saint gave to Kevin his bell--the symbol in those days of monastic rule--and bidding him a tender farewell, he gave up his pure and gentle soul to God.

He was, indeed, a wonderful man--that St. Ciaran. He died very young; it was at the sacred age of thirty-three, as all our Annals tell. In four months--from February to May--he built his convent; for four months more he ruled his community; and then he was called to his reward; yet that community grew to be the greatest and most learned of all the land.

All our martyrologies assign the festival of St. Ciaran to the 9th of September; and the day has been celebrated from that hour to the present. St. Ængus says that it is a solemnity that "fills territories and impels fast-going ships" on sea and river--hurrying to celebrate the glorious festival of Ciaran of Cluain.

Anyone who visits Clonmacnoise on the 9th of September will see the "territory" of the saint still filled with pilgrims, and the 'ships' laden with crowds of men and women crossing the Shannon to visit his holy shrine. St. Cummian of Clonfert in his Paschal Epistle, of which we have already spoken, ranks Ciaran, and most justly, amongst the "early Fathers of the Irish Church."[215] Alcuin, who studied at Clonmacnoise, calls him the glory of the Irish nation.[216] "The three worst counsels that were ever accomplished in Erin," says the gloss on Ængus, "by the advice of saints, were the shortening of Ciaran's life, the exile of Columcille, and the expulsion of Mochuda from Rahan." The 'saints,' it seems, were jealous because Diarmaid had conferred so many favours on Ciaran--so they prayed to God to take him out of the world before any harm came of it, and lo! it was done. A more thoughtful man, however, would say, not without reason, that these three counsels were great blessings for Ireland and for Scotland too. It was well that Ciaran was called away so soon to heaven before jealousy or rivalry made enemies for Clonmacnoise; it was well, surely, that Molaise of Innismurray sent Columba to Scotland to preach the Gospel; and it was well, too, that Mochuda left Rahan; for it was only to found a greater and more magnificent monastery at Lismore. So Providence always out of seeming evil brings forth good.

There was hardly time for Ciaran himself to do any literary work at Clonmacnoise--he built the house and blessed it; and was then summoned to his Father's House in heaven. There is, however, an old Gaelic poem widely celebrated, which is attributed to Ciaran. It begins with the words "An rim, an ri, an richid rain," and seems to have been a fruitless prayer that God would spare his life to do greater works for His glory. God thought, however, he had done enough, and called him home. He was, say the ancients, like to John the Apostle in his life and habits--pure, and young, and loving, soaring up to God on the wings of the eagle.

Like most of the Apostles of the early Irish Church, Ciaran led an extremely ascetic life. He never passed a day without manual labour for the benefit of the brethren. He was never idle. He slept on the naked clay; he had a stone for his pillow; he never wore a soft garment next his skin. He was, as we know, above all, humble, gentle and chaste; he never, it is said, told a lie and never looked on the face of a woman. He never drank ale or milk, except diluted one-third with water. He never ate any bread except one-third sand was mixed with it. He was thus a man of humility, abstinence, and prayer, and therefore God blessed the work of his hand, and exalted him both during his life and after his death. There was no saint more beloved by his own contemporaries--by Enda, and Kevin, and Finnian, and Columcille. They all loved him dearly whilst he was with them; and their hearts were sore at his departure. And to this day, at least by the Shannon's shore, there is no saint whose name is held in more affectionate remembrance than the founder of Clonmacnoise.

The Eclais Beg, in which St. Ciaran died, became not unnaturally a sacred spot. It was the very centre of the holiness of Clonmacnoise. He left several relics, which the piety of his children deemed most holy, and not without cause. The Imda Chiarain, or cow-skin couch,[217] on which he died was deemed a most precious relic, and cured the sick who were allowed to stretch their feeble frames over it. His holy body was buried in the Eclais Beg, or Tempull Chiaran, and his grave is still venerated by the faithful, although the site is rather doubtful. The "Cemetery of noble Cluain" was deemed as sacred a burial place as any in Rome itself; and the noblest families in all the land built mortuary chapels within the sacred enclosure. There were saints interred in its cemetery, it was said, "whose prayers would make even hell a heaven." The sound of its bell was holy, and frightened away the demons. The shadow of its round tower sanctified the soil that it fell upon. Ciaran brought to heaven by his prayers, during their life or after their death, the souls of all those who were buried in that holy ground. Or, as it is quaintly put in the Registry of Clonmacnoise--"What souls harboured in the bodies buried under that dust may never be adjudged to damnation--wherefore those of the same (royal) blood have divided the churchyard amongst themselves by the consent of Kyran, and of his holy clerks."

This is not the imagining of later writers, for the venerable Adamnan tells us that when after the Synod of Drumceat (A.D. 585) St. Columcille came to visit Clonmacnoise, he took a portion of the same holy clay to bring it home; but threw it into the sea at Coryvreckan to still the raging waves, which thereupon became quite calm.

II.--THE RUINED CHURCHES AT CLONMACNOISE.

The existing ruins at Clonmacnoise, though now so much dilapidated, are highly interesting, both from the historical and artistic point of view. They belong to different periods, the date of which can be easily ascertained, and thus furnish many authentic specimens of the Irish Romanesque.

Of St. Ciaran's original church or oratory--the Eclais Beg--not a trace now remains. The grave of the saint is pointed out close by the southern wall of the ruin called Tempull Ciaran, which is in the very centre of the church-yard, and in all probability was built on the site of Ciaran's original oratory.

The following are the principal ruined churches still to be seen at Clonmacnoise:--

(1.) There is the Daimhlaig, or Great Stone-Church, called also M'Dermott's Church, and sometimes the Cathedral. We know for certain that it was built in A.D. 909 by Flann, King of Ireland, and by Colman, abbot of Clonmacnoise and Clonard at that time. The beautiful stone cross which was erected to commemorate the building of the church itself is still standing before the great western doorway, and tells its own story. In two of the compartments of the sculptured shaft a prayer is asked of every one who passes for the souls' rest of the founders of the church. In one it is:--OR DO FLAVND MAC MAELSECHLAIND--"A prayer for Fland, son of Maelsechlaind." In the other it is:--COLMAN DORROINI IN CROISSA AR IN RI FLAND--that is, "Colman made this cross for King Fland." The inscriptions are partly effaced, but not so as to obliterate the words completely. Taken in connection with the entry in the Annals of Clonmacnoise, A.D. 901 (recte 908), they are highly interesting. "King Flann and Colman Connellagh this year founded the church in Clonmacnoise called the Church of the Kings." Colman outlived King Flann, who died in A.D. 916, by eight years, and no doubt this cross, as Petrie points out, was erected for the two-fold purpose of commemorating the foundation of the church, and of marking the sepulchre of King Flann, its pious founder. The sculptures on the west side of the shaft represent St. Ciaran and King Diarmaid in the act of planting the first pole of the Eclais Beg; the opposite side represents in high relief several events in the life of our Saviour, as recorded in Holy Scripture. Hence this great cross came to be called the Cross of the Scriptures--Cros na Screaptra. It is fifteen feet in height; and is a most interesting specimen of Celtic art in sculpture at that early and unpropitious period. This, the Cathedral Church, afterwards came to be called M'Dermott's Church, because, as the Registry of Clonmacnoise informs us, "Tomaltach M'Dermott, chief of Moylurg, repaired or rebuilt the Great Church upon his own costs; and it was for the cemetery of the Clanmaolruany that he did so." This Tomaltach Mac Dermott, the King of Moylurg, "a most formidable and triumphant man against his enemies, and a man of the greatest bounty and alms-giving," died in the year A.D. 1336,[218] which sufficiently fixes the period of the restoration of the Great Church. There is an inscription over the northern doorway in Latin, which tells that "Odo, Dean of Clonmacnoise, caused it to be made," probably in the fifteenth century.

(2.) On the western boundary of the church-yard is the ruined chancel of the church called Tempull Finnian, which probably dates back to the ninth century, and was built on the site of a more ancient oratory dedicated to St. Finnian of Clonard, if not actually built by that saint. He was, as we have seen, the 'tutor' of Ciaran, and loved him much; so that doubtless he came to visit his former disciple at Clonmacnoise. Close at hand on the river's bank is Finnian's Well; and tradition still points out the grave in which he is said to be buried. The chancel arch of this church in three orders is highly ornamented, and is considered an excellent specimen of the Celtic Romanesque. The round tower, which adjoins this church, appears to be coeval with the building; and doubtless both were erected during the Danish wars. It is only 56 feet high, but it is 49 feet in circumference. The material is a fine sandstone, probably carried thither on the river, for there is none in the neighbourhood. Lord Dunraven considered it to be the most interesting monument at Clonmacnoise, and Petrie describes it as wholly built of ashlar masonry with a fine sandstone laid in horizontal courses. Its conical roof is built in a peculiar herring-bone ashlar, such as is not found elsewhere in Ireland.

This tower is commonly called M'Carthy's Tower; and the church is frequently called M'Carthy's Church, from a mistaken notion that it was built by Finneen M'Carthy of Desmond in the beginning of the thirteenth century. M'Carthy certainly gave some land to the community of Clonmacnoise to secure their prayers, and what he valued even more, a burial-place in its holy soil for his own royal race. Tempull Finnian was assigned to him for the purpose; and it was doubtless repaired by M'Carthy; but it was built long before any of his name was known at Clonmacnoise.

(3.) The O'Conors, Kings of Connaught, also gave a grant of many townlands to secure a mortuary chapel at Clonmacnoise. It was known as Tempull Conor, and was founded by Cathal, King of Connaught, who died A.D. 1010; he was son of that Conor (Conchobhar) who gave his name to their royal race.

(4.) Another kingly family of Connaught--the O'Kellys of Hy-Many--built themselves a sepulchral chapel within the sacred enclosure, which they paid for with many a broad acre. It was founded by Conor O'Kelly of Moenmoy, in the year A.D. 1167, as the Four Masters inform us. He was a great chief, famed for his royal bounty, and ruled over Hy-Many for forty years.

(5.) King Diarmaid, who helped St. Ciaran to fix the first stake enclosing the sacred boundary of Clonmacnoise, belonged to the southern Hy-Niall race. It is no wonder, therefore, that his royal descendants had their chapel there. It was called Tempull Righ--the King's Church--and sometimes Tempull Ua Maelshechlainn, from the family name, which the southern Hy-Niall afterwards assumed. It stands south-east of the cathedral, and measures 40 feet in length by 17 feet in breadth.

(6.) The beautiful round tower at the north-western corner of the cemetery is commonly called O'Rorke's Tower, because, as the Registry of Clonmacnoise tells us, it was built by Fergal O'Rorke, King of Connaught, towards the middle of the tenth century. This prince, for his soul's sake, and as the price of his family sepulchre, undertook to keep all the churches in repair during his own life; and he also built the causeway still in part existing from the Yew Tree to the Lough. The portion of the tower built by O'Rorke's men in the tenth century is of fine-jointed ashlar masonry; but the upper portion, executed two centuries later in A.D. 1135, is of ruder and very inferior workmanship.[219] At that date lightning struck the tower, overthrowing its roof and twenty feet of wall. The coarser masonry represents the restoration then effected by Turlogh O'Conor and O'Malone, Abbot of Clonmacnoise. This tower is now sixty-two feet high, and fifty-six feet in circumference. There were other chapels and sepulchral oratories at Clonmacnoise, which have now completely disappeared, and to which it is unnecessary for us to make further reference. The nunnery whose foundations have only recently been brought to light, was about 1,000 paces to the east of the monastery.

On the western border beyond the cemetery are the ruins of a very striking Norman Keep, commonly called De Lacy's Castle. It was built, however, in A.D. 1214, not by De Lacy, who was then dead, but by John de Gray,[220] Bishop of Norwich, an able and vigorous justiciary, who built this strong keep to protect the monastery and defend the passes of the Shannon against the turbulent Connaught men. Like all the Norman work of that period in Ireland, it is as solid and massive as if it were built of solid rock, not by man but by nature.

The churchyard has many inscribed tombstones, which are fully described by Petrie and by Miss Stokes in her interesting work on Christian Inscriptions. These were the tombstones placed over the graves of the abbots of Clonmacnoise, for the humble brothers of the monastery were interred beneath 'noteless burial stones.' The most striking feature exhibited in these monuments is their wonderful variety of design and the delicacy of execution.

One of the most interesting of the tombstones is that placed over "Suibine, son of Mailae Humai," who, in the Chronicon Scotorum, is described as an anchorite and choice scribe, and whose death is marked at the year A.D. 890 or 891. He is beyond doubt the person who, as we shall see hereafter, is described by Florence of Worcester as the "most learned Doctor of the Scots"--Doctor Scotorum peritissimus--truly a high eulogy of Suibine, whose name is inscribed on this stone, and whose dust lies beneath it.

There is another stone on which is incised a cross of very peculiar form with the simple legend BLAIMAC, who, as we learn from the same Chronicon Scotorum, was princeps, or ruling Abbot of Clonmacnoise, and died in A.D. 896.

There were no less than one hundred and forty of these inscribed stones at Clonmacnoise, when it was first visited by Petrie in early life. Many of them have since disappeared, but a few new ones have been discovered during more recent excavations, so that the place is still a perfect treasury of the monuments of our ancient art. There is an ancient Gaedhlic poem in the Burgundian Library at Brussels which gives an account of the kings and warriors who are buried in "the city of Ciaran, the prayerful, the pious and the wise."[221] A somewhat similar poem, written by Conaing Buidhe O'Mulconry, is in Trinity College, and has been translated by the late Mr. Hennessy.[222] The second stanza tells how Turlough O'Conor and his ill-starred son, Roderick, the last King of Ireland, sleep on either side of the high altar in Temple Mor, which the Four Masters identify with Temple-Ciaran. The independence of Erin sleeps with them in their tomb.

III.--THE SCHOLARS OF CLONMACNOISE.

There was one feature in the government of the monastery of Clonmacnoise which served to make it more than any other school in Ireland a kind of national seminary--it belonged to no tribe. Its monks and its scholars came from all parts of the country; and its abbots were chosen not from any family, or from any tribe, but from all the provinces without distinction. Its founder was a Connaughtman of half-northern and half-southern extraction. His successor, St. Oena, was from the territory of Laeghis (Leix) in Leinster. The third abbot, MacNisse, was of the Ultonians; and the fourth, Alithir, who died in A.D. 599, was a Munsterman. This wise policy tended to develop a generous and large-minded spirit in the community, which must have been productive of the happiest effects.

The influence of Clonmacnoise as a great school was first displayed during the discussions on the Easter question. The Columbian houses in the north of Ireland, following the example of the mother house at Hy, adhered to the ancient method of fixing the date of Easter. On the other hand the religious houses of the south and south-eastern parts of Ireland, in obedience to the directions of Pope Honorious, convoked a Synod at Magh Lene in King's County to discuss this most important question. Magh Lene was near Durrow, and not far from Clonmacnoise; but Durrow was Columbian, and its abbot remained away. Cummian, however, expressly tells us that Ciaran's successor was present at that great assembly and sanctioned its decrees. Though belonging to the northern half--for Clonmacnoise was in the ancient Meath--the abbot had learning and courage enough to see that the Irish practice was opposed to that of the universal Church, and ought to be given up in favour of the Roman discipline.

It is from this time forward that Clonmacnoise begins to rank as the first of our Irish Schools. It was already largely endowed by the kings of Meath and Hy-Many, to both of whom, so to speak, it belonged, for the river was the only boundary. These possessions were constantly growing larger. In A.D. 648 or 649, Diarmaid, King of Meath, crossed the Shannon to fight Guaire, King of Connaught, and his Munster allies. Diarmaid on his way to battle stopped at Clonmacnoise, and begged the congregation of Ciaran to pray to God that he would return safe home "through the merits of their guarantee." Then the King, full of courage, continued his march, and fought the great battle of Carn Conaile, near Gort, in which he was completely victorious. On his return he granted the territory of Tuaim-n-Eirc, now Lemanaghan, in King's County, with all its sub-divisions, as an altar sod, i.e., church land, to God and St. Ciaran for ever, so that no king of Meath might take so much as a 'drink of water from its well without paying for it.' For this grant King Diarmaid also secured the right of sepulchre at Clonmacnoise, and was himself buried there. What is stranger still, his rival, Guaire, towards the close of his life came to do penance at Clonmacnoise; and he, too, the Generous and Hospitable, was buried there in A.D. 663, and no doubt did not forget the monks when he was dying. Just at this time the plague wrought great havoc amongst the saints and students of Clonmacnoise. Two or three abbots died in rapid succession, and doubtless the family of the monastery suffered severely, for the frightened students fled far away. In A.D. 719 the monastery was burned. Most of the buildings up to this time were probably of wood, for it was not easy to procure stone at Clonmacnoise. But the schools were soon again at work. In A.D. 724 we hear of the death of Mac Concumba, a learned scribe of this monastery. His duty was to multiply copies of valuable works, and record in the annals of the monastery from year to year entries of all those noteworthy events which happened throughout the kingdom. It was these scribes who prepared the materials afterwards so admirably compiled by Tighernach and his associates. Another 'choice scribe' died in A.D. 768; and we are told that the monastery was burned again in A.D. 751, and a third time in A.D. 773--on both occasions probably by accident.

At this time Clonmacnoise was at the height of its literary glory. The Danes had not yet arrived on the coasts of Ireland. Great scholars flourished there, the fame of whose learning attracted students from many lands. Fortunately here we are not left to vague conjecture; we have definite historical proofs both native and foreign. In the very year the Danes first landed at Rathlin--in A.D. 794 or 795--we find recorded the death of Colgan (or Colgu or Colcu), a professor of Clonmacnoise, who was probably the teacher of the greatest scholar of that age. He was a Munster-man by birth, but seems to have lived and died at Clonmacnoise. His fame was very great amongst his contemporaries, who called him Colgu the Wise. He was lecturer in Theology, and seems also to have been Rector of the Monastic College. That he was a diligent student of St. Paul's Epistles we may infer from a story told in his life. One day returning from his class hall with his leathern book-satchel on his shoulder, he sat down to rest at the place called Mointireanir. As he sat a stranger came up and began to converse in the kindest and most affable way with the professor, and even ventured to give him counsel and instruction. Nay, more, he took up the book-satchel, and carried it on his own shoulders, letting the tired master walk on by his side. The kind stranger turned out to be the Apostle Paul himself. On another occasion when public disputation was being held at the college, it seems certain scholars were objecting vigorously to Colgu's views, when St. Paul once more appeared as a learned stranger, and was invited to take part in the discussion. The unknown scholar accepted the invitation, and reasoned so convincingly that in a very short time he clearly showed to the satisfaction of all present that Colgu's view of the question at issue was the correct one.

The celebrated Alcuin was the most distinguished scholar of his own time in Europe. There is fortunately a letter of his still preserved, which shows quite clearly that he was a student of Clonmacnoise, and a pupil of Colgu, and which also exhibits the affectionate veneration that he retained through life for his Alma Mater at Clonmacnoise. It is addressed to "Colgu, Professor (lectorem) in Ireland--the blessed Master and Pious Father of Albinus,"[223] the more usual name given to Alcuin in France, by Charlemagne and his courtiers. The writer complains that for some time past he was not deemed worthy to receive any of those letters 'so precious in my sight from your Fatherhood,' but he daily feels the benefit of his absent Father's prayers. He adds that he sends by the same messenger an alms of fifty sicles of silver from the bounty of King Charles, and fifty more from his own resources for the brotherhood. He also sends a quantity of (olive) oil which it was then very difficult to procure in Ireland, and asks that it may be distributed amongst the Bishops in God's honour for sacramental purposes. This shows the thoughtful piety of Alcuin, who doubtless noticed, when he was a student of Clonmacnoise, the difficulty of procuring pure olive oil for the holy Chrism and Extreme Unction. This letter breathes the most beautiful spirit of piety, and shows the affectionate gratitude of Alcuin for the home and the teachers of his youth.

Colgu, or Colgan, of Clonmacnoise, is the earliest Ferlegind who is noticed in our Annals. During the course of the ninth century the Ferlegind appears by name in the School of Armagh, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries we find reference made to these 'Readers' in several of our Irish monasteries. We may infer the nature of his office, not only from his name--the 'reading-man' or lecturer--but also from the position, which he appears to have held in the monastery. He is different from the abbot, and subject to him, but he appears superior to all the other teachers and officials, so that he may be described not only as chief professor, but also as the Rector of the Monastic School under the abbot. His position corresponded to that of the scholasticus in the early Continental schools. He arranged the programme of study, superintended the classes, kept the other officials, like the scribneoir and aeconomus, to their duties, and lectured himself in the most important subjects--especially in Scripture and theology. To be an accomplished 'scribe,' however, required very special gifts not merely of beautiful penmanship, but also a knowledge of the subject, which would prevent the writer from making grave mistakes in transcription, thus destroying the value of his manuscript. Hence we find the same person is frequently described as 'scribe and bishop;' and sometimes 'scribe, abbot and bishop.'

Colgu has been called a saint, and justly; his piety seems to have been quite equal to his learning. The "Prayer of St. Colgu," written by the saint in Latin, has been rendered into English from the copy in the ancient Book of Clonmacnoise, called Leabhar-na-h-Uidhre. It is a prayer, full of the deepest and most ardent devotion, in which the holy man implores, "With Thee, O holy Jesus," the intercession of all the heavenly host and of all the saints, apostles, and martyrs, and bishops, and virgins of the Old and New Law, that, "Thou, O Holy Trinity, may take me this night under Thy protection and shelter, and defend me from the demons.... and from desires, from sins, from transgressions, from disobediences ... from the fire of hell and eternity ... and that God may light up in their souls meekness and charity, and gratitude and mercy, and forgiveness in their hearts, and in their thoughts, and in their souls, and in their minds, and in their bowels."

Colgan also wrote another celebrated work in Irish, called Scuap Chrabhaigh, or the "Besom of Devotion," which his namesake, the renowned Franciscan, also a lector in theology, pronounces to be a "book of most fervent prayers, after the manner of a litany; a book, moreover, of most ardent devotion and elevation of the soul to God."[224] Some think that the "Besom of Devotion" referred to by Colgan, is only the Litany or Prayer of St. Colgan, under another name.

In spite of the devastations both of the Danes and native princes during the ninth century, learning still flourished at Clonmacnoise. That Suibhne, son of Maeluma, whose grave-stone may still be seen at Clonmacnoise, died in A.D. 891. His fame was great, not only in Ireland, but in England also. The Saxon Chronicle and the Annals of Cambria, as well as Florence of Worcester, all notice his death and describe him as the wisest and the greatest Doctor of the Scots or Irish, and the Annals of Ulster call him a "most excellent scribe." Unfortunately we have none of his writings extant to confirm the judgment of his contemporaries.

Yet during this and the following century, which produced these great scholars, we read a shameful record of the burnings, pillage, and slaughter wrought both by native and foreigner in this peaceful home of sanctity and learning.

It was plundered or burned--generally both--on at least ten different occasions by the Danes. But the Irish themselves exceeded even that bloody record, and laid sacrilegious hands on these holy shrines and their inmates no less than fourteen or fifteen times. The Danes began this foul work; both Danes and Irish continued it at short intervals; the English of Athlone completed the job. Nothing more shameful, or so shameful, can be found in the annals of any even half-civilized country. There were many accidental fires that destroyed the monastic buildings during the first three hundred years of its existence, but no pillage, no slaughter is recorded during that period. The Danes set the bad example, and several of the native princes were not slow to follow it. The worst of them was Felim Mac Criffan (Fedhlimidh Mac Crimthann), King of Cashel. He plundered Clonmacnoise and its termon lands three times, at one of which, A.D. 833, he spoiled and pillaged up to the church doors, and butchered the monks like sheep--jugulatio is the word in the Annals. He did the same to Durrow and several other religious houses. He broke into the oratory of Kildare in A.D. 836, and took Forannan, the Primate of Armagh and his attendants prisoners, forcing the Primate to give a reluctant consent to his claim to be recognised as High King of all Erin. Ten years later he died after a stormy life, and the Annals of Ulster describe him as the best of the Scots--optimus Scotorum--a scribe and an anchorite! There is no foundation for Dr. Todd's assertion that he was an 'abbot and bishop,'[225] except a poetic reference to his bachall, which the poet mockingly says he left in the shrubbery,[226] and which was carried off by his rival, Niall Caille, King of the North. Neither is there any ground for O'Donovan's assertion in the note that "he was Abbot and Bishop of Cashel in right of his crown of Munster." There was neither an abbot nor bishop of Cashel at the time, nor for many years after; and although Cormac Mac Cullinan was certainly a bishop, he is not described as Bishop of Cashel either in our Annals or our Martyrologies.[227] The warlike Felim Mac Criffan retired to a hermitage a short time before his death to do penance for his many crimes; and he seems to have employed his leisure in copying MSS. Hence the Martyrology of Donegal commemorates him simply as an 'anchorite'[228] who retired into solitude to bewail his sins, and as his penance seems to have been sincere, there was nothing to prevent him becoming a saint. The Chronicon Scotorum, whilst recording his death, as that of 'a scribe and anchorite, and the best of the Scots,' records a little before that Ciaran followed him to Munster after the last violation of his monastery, and gave him a thrust of his crozier, causing an internal wound, which, no doubt, hastened his death, and perhaps prompted him to do penance. The true date of his death is A.D. 847.

We cannot stay to record the many similar deeds of violence from which the sanctuary of Ciaran suffered during these lawless times. Even the religious communities themselves were infected with the evil spirit that prevailed around them. The monks sometimes took up arms, not merely to protect themselves against murderous aggression, which would be reasonable enough, but to wage war on their own account as well. It was a woful time for Inisfail. She was writhing in the grasp of the invader; and no sooner did that grasp begin to relax than her own false princes drew their aimless swords in fratricidal strife. Even the salt of the earth lost its savour--lay usurpers called themselves the Heirs of Patrick in Armagh, and the monks of St. Ciaran forgot to pray, and put their trust in sword and shield, like the lawless chieftains around them:--

"Sure it was a maddening prospect thus to see this storied land, Like some wretched culprit, writhing in the strong avenger's hand-- Kneeling, foaming, weeping, shrieking, woman-weak and woman-loud-- Better, better, Mother Erin! they had wrapped thee in thy shroud."

IV.--ANNALISTS OF CLONMACNOISE.

During the eleventh century Clonmacnoise produced several most distinguished scholars. This was the earliest era for prose chroniclers in Ireland. Hitherto the chronicles of the kingdom were written in verse, which greatly facilitated the work of the professional sheanachies. It was the safest way to preserve history in those turbulent days. The monastery might be burned, and the parchments all destroyed; but so long as the rhyming chronicler, or even one of his disciples survived, the historical poem committed to their faithful memory could not perish. Amongst these rhyming chroniclers there are several whose poems are still extant, although unpublished. Such, for instance, were Eochy O'Flinn and Kennett O'Hartigan, and in the eleventh century Gilla Caemhain, who died in A.D. 1072. But during that century a new race of prose chroniclers arose for the first time in Ireland. Of these the two most distinguished were Flann of Monasterboice, who died in A.D. 1056, and his illustrious contemporary Tighernach, the greatest glory of the School of Clonmacnoise.

Of the personal history of Tighernach we unfortunately know little. He belonged to the Sil Muiredhaigh of Magh Aei--the royal race of Connaught--of which the O'Conors were the chiefs. His family name was O'Braoin,[229] and we are merely told that he was Erenach of Clonmacnoise, and elsewhere, that he was Comarb of Ciaran and Coman of Roscommon. Like St. Ciaran himself, he was a native of the co. Roscommon, which bordered on Clonmacnoise; and he was doubtless educated in that monastery. His death is recorded under date of A.D. 1088, in all our Annals; and he is described as a Saoi or Chief Doctor, in Wisdom, Learning, and Oratory. His bones repose in the holy clay of Clonmacnoise, but the exact place is not known.

Tighernach truly was one of the greatest Doctors of the Gael. His Annals are yet extant, and prove him to have been a man of great and various learning. Unfortunately we have no perfect copy of his Annals. There are many gaps in the entries, and the original text has been greatly defaced by the errors of ignorant copyists. Dr. O'Conor's edition in the Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores is by no means faultless, and the book is so rare and expensive, that although Tighernach is much talked about he is very little read.

Both Flann of the Monastery and Tighernach have done much to fix the true chronology of Irish historical events. They were men of wide culture, and were familiar with the great Ecclesiastical historians--Eusebius, Jerome, Orosius, Africanus--and followed their example in giving a sketch of universal history in the opening pages of their Annals. They were acquainted not merely with the chronology of the Bible, like several of their predecessors, but also with the history and chronology of Greece and Rome and the great Eastern Empires. The special value of their work is that for the first time in our history they synchronize the leading facts in Irish history with the great events of the general history of antiquity. They were perfectly well acquainted with the use of the Olympian Era, the Era from the Building of the City, and the Christian Era, and were thus enabled to fix the true dates of the reigns of our early monarchs. This was no easy task; for hitherto there were confused lists of Kings often handed down by memory with the length of their reigns; but there was, so to speak, no definite starting point. Tighernach himself, who was a man of highly critical mind, saw this difficulty, and made the famous statement that before the reign of Cimbaeth and the founding of Emania all the historical monuments of the Scots were uncertain. It is strange indeed that he dates our authentic history from the reign of a mere provincial king. The real reason, however, seems to be that from Cimbaeth forward, he found in the poems of Eochaidh O'Flinn definite lists of the Ulster Kings, and of the High Kings also, which enabled him to trace their genealogy, and fix the dates. But he could find no such accurate lists of the earlier kings, and hence he pronounces the bardic histories of the earlier period to be uncertain.

Tighernach was probably the first Irish historian who used the common era--that of the Incarnation. But in the earlier entries he dates from the Creation, giving also the Lunar Epact, and the Day of the Week for the Kalends of January. There are certainly some errors in these dates; but they have arisen probably from the ignorance of the transcribers. The Annals written by himself came down to the date of his death in A.D. 1088; and the scribe continued them to A.D. 1178. Various subsequent additions were made by different writers down to A.D. 1407, where the entire chronicle ends.

These Annals undoubtedly furnish the earliest and most authentic record that we possess of our national history. Their author was a man of judgment, learning, and candour. Hence the statements of Tighernach, supported as they are by collateral evidence in very many cases, may always be accepted as authentic history. It is very probable the work was left in an unfinished state; and this is all the more to be regretted, because he had materials at hand, very many of which have since unfortunately perished. The Irish of Tighernach is considered very pure, like that of Cormac Mac Cullinan, for it was the classic era of the Gaedhlic language. The Annals, however, are too often half-Latin, half-Gaedhlic, although the writer could have done the work much better by adopting either language exclusively.

To Clonmacnoise we also owe the Chronicon Scotorum, which has been very ably edited by the late lamented W. M. Hennessy, and is published in the Rolls Series. The text is mainly taken from a transcript made by the celebrated Duald M'Firbis, and now preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. O'Curry thought it was a compilation made by M'Firbis[230] from different sources, but in this opinion that eminent scholar was mistaken. The work produced by M'Firbis is a mere copy of the original work, which was undoubtedly composed and preserved at Clonmacnoise. This is quite evident, as Hennessy remarks, from an entry made under date of the year A.D. 718 by M'Firbis himself. "A front of two leaves of the old book out of which I copy this is wanting, and I leave what is before me of this page for them. I am Dubhaltach Firbisigh."

The entries in this Chronicle of the Scots are very brief and condensed; but contain scraps of most valuable information not to be found in other authorities. They are particularly valuable in all that refers to Clonmacnoise as well as to its neighbouring territories and monastic houses. In the MS. of the Royal Irish Academy there is prefixed a note written in Gaedhlic, which attributes the composition of the Chronicle to Gilla-Christ O'Maeileoin--that is O'Malone--abbot of Clonmacnoise, who flourished in the twelfth century. This is highly probable. O'Malone was a very distinguished scholar of Clonmacnoise, and was present at the Synod of Uisneach held in the year A.D. 1111, of which Synod this Chronicle alone gives original and detailed information. The writer takes care to add that Gillachrist Ua Maeileoin, abbot of Cluain, with the congregation of Ciaran were present at the Synod. The death of this learned abbot is noticed at A.D. 1123, where he is described as "the fountain of knowledge and charity, the head of the prosperity and affluence of Erin." In its present form the Chronicle has been continued by another hand down to the year A.D. 1150. It is, therefore, a later, but hardly less important Chronicle, than that of Tighernach himself.

The Four Masters had before them when compiling their own immortal work a book which they call the Annals of Clonmacnoise, coming down to the year A.D. 1227. It has been conjectured that the Four Masters in that statement refer to the Chronicon Scotorum, which they do not mention under that name, and which doubtless must have come into their hands. But the Chronicon Scotorum, although it might properly be called the Annals of Clonmacnoise, as having been compiled in that monastery, does not in its present form come down beyond the year A.D. 1150. Neither can the work referred to by the Four Masters be the Book of Clonmacnoise, translated by MacGeoghegan in A.D. 1627, for that work comes down to A.D. 1407, and, moreover, does not contain important passages, which we know were in the work used by the Four Masters. Our own opinion is that the Book of Clonmacnoise, and the Annals of Clonmacnoise, to which the Four Masters frequently refer, are identical with the Chronicon Scotorum, and that the work in their time did come down to A.D. 1227, but the folios containing the years from A.D. 1050 to that date have perished from mere careless use, if not from accident.

V.--THE LEABHAR-NA-H-UIDHRE.

Another celebrated work, undoubtedly composed at Clonmacnoise, is the Leabhar-na-h-Uidhre, now in the Royal Irish Academy. A great part of the work has unfortunately perished, so that the 138 folio pages still remaining can only be regarded as a fragment. The history of the book is very strange. The author, or rather compiler, was Maelmuire--that is, Servant of Mary--a grandson of the celebrated Conn-na-mBocht, or Conn of the Poor. Conn himself was a holy and learned man, but seems to have never taken Orders. He was greatly esteemed at Clonmacnoise; and founded an hospital or refuge for poor laymen, of which he himself seems to have been the head. He had at least two sons, one called Gellananaeve, arch-priest of Clonmacnoise, and another called Ceileachair, probably the father of this Maelmuire. Both were distinguished scholars and writers, whose books Conal MacGeoghegan quotes as sources for his own Annals of Clonmacnoise. Conn's grandson Maelmuire, must have been a very distinguished scholar, and was also in all probability a lay brother of the community of Clonmacnoise. The Annals of the Four Masters record the tragic end of the industrious scribe. In A.D. 1106 he was slain by a party of robbers in the midst of the great stone church of Clonmacnoise. His work was written therefore during the last years of the eleventh, and the beginning of the twelfth century; and with the exception of the Book of Armagh is, so far as it goes, the oldest transcript now existing of our great historical works.

From Clonmacnoise the Book was carried, we know not when or by whom, all the way to Donegal. About the year A.D. 1340 it was given to O'Connor Sligo, so an entry in the Book itself informs us, as a ransom for O'Donnell's chief historian, who had been taken prisoner by Cathal Oge O'Conor. Donnell O'Conor, a chieftain of the same race, ordered his own historian, Sigraidh O'Cuirnin, to make an entry of the name of the author, who composed "this beautiful book," and he made that entry a week before Good Friday in the year A.D. 1345. It seems that even then the opening pages were lost, and it is to Donnell O'Conor we owe our knowledge of the writer, small as it is. The book remained in Sligo, where it was highly prized, for about 130 years, when the fortune of war brought it back again to Donegal. In A.D. 1470, Hugh Roe O'Donnell took the Castle of Sligo from the O'Conors; and amongst other trophies carried off this book again to Donegal, as the Four Masters proudly record under date of that year. How it came to the Royal Irish Academy we are not informed, but it is quite evident that the work was just as highly prized in Sligo and in Donegal, as it is in the Academy; and what is more to the purpose, the O'Clerys and O'Cuirnins knew much better how to interpret its contents than any of the members of that learned body.

The contents of the fragment are of a very varied character, partly biblical, partly historical, partly old romantic tales. One of the most important documents contained in the Leabhar-na-h-Uidhre is the ancient elegy on Columcille, composed by another bard, the celebrated Dallan Forgaill so early as the end of the sixth century. This poem is undoubtedly genuine. The language is so ancient that even the great scholars of Clonmacnoise in the eleventh century found it necessary to write an interlinear gloss in order to render it intelligible to ordinary readers at that early date.

VI.--DICUIL THE GEOGRAPHER.

In connection with the School of Clonmacnoise an account of Dicuil, the celebrated Geographer, as he is called, will not be deemed out of place. For there is very good reason to believe that he was trained at Clonmacnoise; and if not trained there, he was certainly a pupil of some of the Columbian Schools, of which we shall treat in our next chapter. A sketch of his history and his writings, therefore, is most appropriate in this place.

Dicuil's treatise, De Mensura Orbis Terrarum, is one of the most interesting monuments of ancient Irish scholarship, and furnishes most conclusive proof that the culture of our writers and the learning of our schools in the ninth century were superior to almost anything yet exhibited in Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. This work has been published in Paris, but it is now very rare, and hence we purpose giving a fuller account of its contents than might otherwise be deemed necessary. It is not to the credit of Irish learning in the present day that no attempt has been made even by any of our learned Societies to print this treatise in Ireland. It is to French scholarship we are indebted for editing and annotating Dicuil's treatise.[231]

Unfortunately we know nothing whatsoever of the personal history of Dicuil except what can be gathered from a few incidental references which he makes to himself in this treatise; but these, though very brief, are clear and definite. He tells us first of all that his name was Dicuil, and that he finished his task in the spring of the year A.D. 825. Like most of his countrymen at that time, he was fond of poetry, and gives us this information in a neat poem, written in Latin hexameters at the end of the MS., to which we shall refer again. He also implies in his opening statement, or prologue, that he had already written an Epistola de questionibus decem Artis Grammaticae, which was probably intended to be copied and circulated amongst the Irish monastic schools of the time, but of which we know nothing more. He tells us that a certain Suibneus (Suibhne), or Sweeney, was his master to whom under God he owed whatever knowledge he possessed. His native country was Ireland, which he describes in affectionate language as "nostra Hibernia,"--our own Ireland--in opposition to the foreign countries of which he had been speaking. Elsewhere he calls it in accordance with the usage of the time nostra Scottia. He also adds when referring to the islands in the north and north-west of Scotland, that he had dwelt in some of them, he had visited others, more of them he had merely seen, and some of them he had only read of.

This is really all the information we have about Dicuil, and from data so meagre, it is very difficult to identify Dicuil the Geographer, amongst the many Irish monks who bore that name.

By a careful examination, however, of these and some other facts to which he refers, we can conjecture with some probability where and by whom he was educated.

When speaking of Iceland Dicuil refers to information communicated to him thirty years before by certain Irish clerics, who had spent some months in that island. This brings us back to A.D. 795, so that when Dicuil wrote in A.D. 825, he must have been a man considerably advanced in years. We may infer, too, that his master, Suibhne, to whom he owed so much, flourished as a teacher at a still earlier period than A.D. 795. There were several abbots who bore that name between A.D. 750 and A.D. 850; but it appears to us that the master of Dicuil must have been either Suibhne, Abbot of Iona, who died in A.D. 772, or Suibhne, son of Cuana, Abbot of Clonmacnoise, who died in A.D. 816. If Dicuil were, suppose, seventy-five when he wrote his book, he must have been born in A.D. 750. He would then be about sixteen years of age when Suibhne, Vice-Abbot of Iona, came over to his native Ireland in A.D. 766, where he remained some time. Suppose that Dicuil returned with him as a novice in that year, he could have been six years under the instruction of Suibhne before that abbot's death in A.D. 772. It is likely that Dicuil remained in Iona for several years after the death of his beloved master. It was, doubtless, during these years that he visited the Scottish islands, and dwelt with some of the communities whom St. Columba had established there. On this point his own statement is clear and explicit.

The founder of Iona, Columcille, with his kinsmen, originally came from Donegal, and the monastery seems to have been principally recruited at all times by members of the Cenel-conal race. Amongst the saints who were called Dicuil, or Diucholl, were two who were venerated in Donegal; one the son of Neman, whose memory was venerated at Kilmacrenan on December 25th; the other was Dicuil of Inishowen, whose feast-day is December 18th. The latter is described as a hermit; and it may be that our geographer, after his return from Iona, retired to a life of solitude in Inishowen, and there, towards the close of his life, composed this treatise, of which the most valuable portion is that containing the reminiscences of his early life in the Scottish islands.

The chief difficulty against this hypothesis, that Suibhne, Dicuil's master, was the Abbot of Iona who died in A.D. 772, is the great age at which, in that case, the pupil must have written his book, in A.D. 825. The monks of those days, however, were often intellectually and physically vigorous at the age of eighty, and even of ninety years.

The other hypothesis certainly fits in better with the dates; so we must assume that Dicuil was trained at the great College of Clonmacnoise, which at this period was certainly the most celebrated school in Ireland, if not in Europe. Suibhne, we are told, was abbot for two years before his death, in A.D. 816; but had been, no doubt, for many years previously, a fer-legind, or professor in Clonmacnoise. It was nothing new for the younger monks to travel to other religious houses in pursuit of knowledge and sanctity; and in this way Dicuil, like so many of his countrymen, would visit Iona and the Scottish islands.

The treatise De Mensura Orbis Terrarum is very valuable as affording evidence of the varied classical culture that existed in our Irish monastic schools at this period. In the prologue the author tells us that he derived his information mainly from two sources; first, from the Report of the Commissioners whom the divine Emperor Theodosius had sent to survey the provinces of the Roman Empire; and secondly, from the excellent work of Plinius Secundus--that is, the Natural History which is so well known to scholars. Dicuil complains that the manuscripts of the Report in his possession were very faulty; but still, being of more recent date than Pliny's work, he values it more highly. He adds that he leaves vacant places in his own manuscript for the numbers, in order to be able to fill them in afterwards when he can verify or correct them by collating his own with other manuscripts of the Report. He also quotes numerous passages from other writers, who, we are afraid, are not very familiar to the classical scholars of our own times. The first of these works is that of Caius Julius Solinus, known as the Polyhistor. Of his personal history we know as little as we do of Dicuil himself. He flourished about the middle of the third century, and appears to have borrowed his matter, and sometimes even his language, from Pliny's Natural History. The contents of this work of Solinus may be inferred from the title of an English translation, published in A.D. 1587: "The Excellent and Pleasant Work of Julius Solinus, Polyhistor, containing the Noble Actions of Humaine Creatures, the Secretes and Providence of Nature, the Description of Countries, the Manners of the People, &c., &c. Translated out of the Latin by Arthur Golding, Gent." Another work, equally unknown to the present generation, but frequently quoted by Dicuil, is the Periegesis of Priscian. It is a metrical translation into Latin hexameters of a Greek work bearing the same title, which was originally composed by Dionysius, surnamed from that fact Periegetes, or the "Traveller," in Goldsmith's sense. He appears to have flourished in the second half of the third century of the Christian era.

Such are the principal authorities whom Dicuil follows; and as he knew nothing of foreign countries himself, he cites his authorities textually for the benefit of his own countrymen. It is surely a singular and interesting fact that we should find an Irish monk, in the beginning of the ninth century, collating and criticising various manuscripts of those writers either in some Irish monastic school at home, or in the equally Irish school of Iona, though surrounded by Scottish waters and in view of the Scottish hills.

For us, however, the information which Dicuil gives us of his own knowledge, or gathered from his own countrymen, is far more valuable; and to this we would especially invite the reader's attention.

In the sixth chapter, when speaking of the Nile, he says

"Although we never read in any book that any branch of the Nile flows into the Red Sea, yet Brother Fidelis[232] told in my presence, to my master Suibhne (to whom, under God, I owe whatever knowledge I possess), that certain clerics and laymen from Ireland, who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, sailed up the Nile for a long way."

--and thence continued their voyage by canal to the entrance of the Red Sea.

This Irish pilgrimage to Jerusalem is worthy of notice, for many of our critics where they find mention of such pilgrimages to Rome and to Jerusalem in the Lives of our early Saints, seem to regard it as an exaggeration, if not a kind of pious fraud. But here we have the testimony of one in every way worthy of credit, who himself spoke to such pilgrims after their return from the Holy Land.

Then their testimony is peculiarly valuable in reference to a vexed geographical question regarding the existence of a navigable canal in those days from the Nile to the Red Sea. A canal called the "River of Ptolemy" and afterwards "The River of Trajan," was certainly cut from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to the Red Sea at Arisnoe. It was certainly open for commerce in the time of Trajan, but during the decline of the Roman empire became partially filled with sand. Trajan, it seems, however, when re-opening the canal connected it with the Nile at a point higher up the river than the old route, opposite Memphis, near Babylon, in order that the fresh water might flow through the canal and help to keep it open. Under the Arabians this canal of Trajan was re-opened, but geographers have asserted that it became choked shortly afterwards and remained so ever since. The testimony of the Irish pilgrims quoted by Dicuil is the only satisfactory evidence that we now possess to prove that this canal was open at the end of the eighth century for the purposes of commerce and navigation.[233]

The pilgrims also give some interesting information with reference to the Pyramids, which they call the "Barns of Joseph." "The pilgrims," he says, "saw them from the river rising like mountains four in one place and three in another." Then they landed to view these wonders close at hand and coming to one of the three greater pyramids, they saw eight men and one woman and a great lion stretched dead beside it. The lion had attacked them, and the men in turn had attacked the lion with their spears, with the result that all perished in the mutual slaughter, for the place was a desert and there was no one at hand to help then. From top to bottom the pyramids were all built of stone, square at the base, but rounded towards the summit, and tapering to a point. The aforesaid brother Fidelis measured one of them, and found that the square face was 400 feet in length. Going thence by the canal to the Red Sea, they found the passage across to the eastern shore at the Road of Moses to be only a short distance. The brother who had measured the base of the pyramid wished to examine the exact point where Moses had entered the Red Sea, in order to try if he could find any traces of the Chariots of Pharaoh, or the wheel tracks; but the sailors were in a hurry and would not allow him to go on this excursion. The breadth of the sea at this point appeared to him to be about six miles. Then they sailed up this narrow bay which once kept the murmuring Israelites from returning to Egypt.

This is a very interesting and manifestly authentic narrative. Another interesting chapter is that in which Dicuil describes Iceland and the Faroe Islands. "It is now thirty years," he says, "since certain clerics, who remained in that island (Ultima Thule) from the 1st of February to the 1st of August, told me that not only at the Summer solstice, (as Solinus said), but also for several days about the solstice, the setting sun at eventide merely hid himself, as it were, for a little behind a hill, so that there was no darkness even for a moment, and whatever a man wished to do, if it were only to pick vermin off his shirt--vol pediculos de camisia abstrahere--he could do as it were in the light of the sun, and if he were on a mountain of any height, he could doubtless see the sun all through." This way of putting it is certainly more graphic than elegant, but it is at the same time strictly accurate, and shows that the Irish monks had really spent the summer in Iceland. For the arctic circle just touches the extreme north of Iceland, and therefore in any part of that country the sun would even at the solstice set for a short time, but it would be only, as it were, going behind a hill to reappear in an hour or in half an hour. So that by the aid of refraction and twilight a man would always have light enough to perform even those delicate operations to which Dicuil refers.

He then observes with much acuteness that at the middle point of this brief twilight it is midnight at the equator, or middle of the earth; and in like manner he infers that about the Winter solstice there must be daylight for a very short time in Thule, when it is noonday at the equator. These observations show a keen observant mind, and would lead us to infer that Dicuil, like his countryman Virgilius, who flourished a little earlier, had been taught the sphericity of the earth in the schools of his native country. He says also in this same chapter, what is certainly true, that those writers are greatly mistaken who describe the Icelandic Sea as always frozen, and who say that there is a perpetual day from Spring to Autumn, and perpetual night from Autumn to Spring. For the Irish monks sailed thither, he says, through an open sea in a month of great natural cold, and whilst they were there enjoyed alternate day and night except about the Summer solstice, as already explained. But one day's sail further north brought them to the frozen sea.

Dicuil's reference to Iceland is interesting from another point of view. In almost all our books of popular instruction, and even in many standard works on geography, it is stated that the Danes, or Norwegians, "discovered" Iceland about the year A.D. 860, and shortly afterward colonized it during the reign of Harold Harfager. But Dicuil clearly shows that it was well known to Irish monks at least more than half a century before Dane or Norwegian ever set foot on the island, as is now generally admitted by scholars who are familiar with Icelandic literature and history.

The following interesting passage which shows the roving spirit that animated some of the Irish monks at that period is contained in the third section of the same seventh chapter. "There are several other islands in the ocean to the north of Britain, which can be reached in a voyage of two days and two nights with a favourable breeze. A certain trustworthy monk (religiosus) told me that he reached one of them by sailing for two summer days and one night in a vessel with two benches of rowers (duorum navicula transtrorum). Some of these islands are very small and separated by narrow straits. In these islands for almost a hundred years there dwelt hermits, who sailed there from our own Ireland (nostra Scottia). But now they are once more deserted, as they were from the beginning, on account of the ravages of the Norman pirates. They are, however, still full of sheep, and of various kinds of sea birds. We have never found these islands mentioned by any author."

It is quite evident that Dicuil here refers to the Faroe Islands, which are about 250 miles north of the Scottish coast. A glance at the map will show that they are rather small, and separated from each other by very narrow channels, and in this respect differing from the Shetland Islands, to which this description could not therefore apply. Besides, the Shetlands are only 50 miles from the Orkneys, and about 100 from the mainland; hence they could easily be reached in a single day by an open boat sailing before a favourable wind; whereas the islands occupied by the Irish hermits could only be reached after a voyage of two days and a night, even in the most favourable circumstances. The word "nostra Scottia" of course refers to Ireland; for up to the time that Dicuil wrote, that word had never been applied to North Britain. Skene, himself a learned Scot, has shown by numerous citations from ancient authors that beyond all doubt the name "Scottia" was applied to Ireland, and to Ireland alone, prior to the tenth century.[234] Up to that time the name of Scotland was Alban or Albania.

The love of the ancient Irish monks for island solitudes is one of the most remarkable features in their character. There is hardly an island round our coasts, which does not contain the remains of some ancient oratory or monastic cells. But they did not always remain in sight of land. Inspired partly with the hope of finding a "desert" in the ocean, partly, no doubt, also with a love of adventure and a vague hope of discovering the "Land of Promise," they sailed out into the Atlantic in their currachs in search of these lonely islands. Every one has heard of the seven years' voyage of St. Brendan in the western ocean. St. Ailbe of Emly had resolved to find out the island of Thule, which the Roman geographers placed somewhere in the northern sea. He was, however, prevented from going himself, but "he sent twenty men into exile over the sea in his stead."[235] St. Cormac the Navigator, made three voyages in the pathless ocean seeking some desert island where he might devote himself to an eremitic life. It is highly probable he went as far north as Iceland; for Adamnan tells us that he sailed northwards for fourteen days, until he was frightened by the sight of the monsters of the deep, when he returned home touching on his way at the Orkney islands.

When the Norwegians first discovered Iceland in A.D. 860, they found Irish books, and bells, and pilgrims' staffs, or croziers, which were left there by men who professed the Christian religion and whom the Norwegians called "papas" or "fathers." Dicuil, however, gives us the earliest authentic testimony that Iceland and the Faroe Isles had been discovered and occupied by Irish monks long before the Danes or Norwegians discovered these islands. Of Ireland itself, Dicuil unfortunately gives us no information. He was writing for his own countrymen, and he assumed that they knew as much about Ireland--"our own Ireland"--as he did. The only observation he makes in reference to Ireland is that there were islands round the coast, and that some were small, and others very small. But he takes one quotation from Solinus, who says that--

"Britain is surrounded by many important islands, one of which, Ireland, approaches to Britain itself in size. It abounds in pastures so rich, that if the cattle are not sometimes driven away from them they run the risk of bursting. The sea between Britain and Ireland is so wide and stormy throughout the entire year that it is only navigable on a very few days. The channel is about 120 miles broad."

Dicuil, however, good Irishman as he was, does not quote two other statements which Solinus made about the pre-Christian Scots--for he wrote before the time of St. Patrick--first, that the Irish recognised no difference between right and wrong at all; and, secondly, that they fed their children from the point of the sword--a rather inconvenient kind of spoon we should think. In fact the Romans of those days knew as little, and wrote as confidently, about Ireland as most Englishmen do at present, and that is saying a good deal.

There is one incidental reference in Dicuil--chapter V., section ii.--which is of the highest importance, because it settles the question as to the nationality of the celebrated Irish poet, Sedulius, the author of the hymns Crudelis Herodes and A solis ortus Cardine, in the Roman Breviary. Dicuil quoting twelve lines of poetry from the Report of the Commissioners of Theodosius, observes, that the first foot of the seventh and eighth of these hexameter lines is an amphimacrus. Here are the lines:--

"Cōnfĭcī ter quinis aperit cum fastibus annum. Sūpplĭcēs hoc famuli, dum scribit, pingit et alter."

"At the same time," says Dicuil, "I do not think it was from ignorance of prosody these lines were so written, for the writers had the authority of other poets in their favour, and especially of Virgil, whom in similar cases our own Sedulius imitated, and he, in his heroic stanzas, rarely uses feet different from those of Virgil and the classical poets." "Noster Sedulius," here applied to the great religious poet by his own countryman, in the ninth century, settles the question of his Irish birth. The reader will observe also, what a keen critic Dicuil was of Latin poetry, and will probably come to the conclusion that they knew Prosody better in the Irish schools of the ninth than they do in those of the nineteenth century.

In the closing stanzas of his own short poem on the classic mountains, Dicuil implies that he finished his work in the Spring of A.D. 825, when night gives grateful rest to the wearied oxen who had covered the seed-wheat in the dusty soil.

"Post octingentos viginti quinque peractos Summi annos Domini terrae, aethrae, carceris atri, Semine triticeo sub ruris pulvere tecto Nocte bobus requies largitur fine laboris."

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XIII. THE COLUMBIAN SCHOOLS IN IRELAND

"I hold it truth with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things." --Tennyson.

I.--ST. COLUMBA'S EDUCATION.

Columba was the greatest saint of the Celtic race; and after St. Patrick, he is the most striking figure in our Celtic history. He was a poet, a statesman, and a scholar, as well as a great missionary saint--the apostle of many tribes, and the founder of many churches. His name is dear to every child of the Scottic race both in Erin and Alba; and what is stranger still, monk and priest though he was, his memory is cherished not only by Catholics but by Protestants and even by Presbyterians also.

His adventurous career has a strange dramatic interest of its own. He was fortunate too in finding a biographer, who has written his Life in a spirit of loving sympathy; and in our own times the biographer has found an editor to publish and illustrate his work with great learning and complete impartiality.[236]

Columba was a typical Celt, and seems to have been endowed by nature with all the virtues and many of the failings of the Celtic race. He was generous, warm-hearted, imaginative; he hated injustice and oppression; he was capable of the tenderest friendship, passionately fond of his native land, and filled with enthusiastic zeal for the propagation of the Gospel. Yet he had his faults. He was fiery and impetuous, impatient of contradiction, and too easily prone to anger and revenge. But this is his glory that with God's help he conquered his faults; and therefore it is we love him because he is so human, so like ourselves in all things. It gives us greater confidence in the struggle, when we have a patron saint who can have compassion on our infirmities because he was tried like us in all things; and, if we are to believe the story of his life, not altogether without sin. It is well too that he should be for us an example of perfect penance; even as he schooled himself in patient endurance, and all other noble virtues.

We, however, have to deal with Columba mainly as a scholar, a teacher, and a writer--the founder of many schools, the patron of learning, the protector and the idol of all the Bards of Erin. It is perhaps best in sketching the literary history of St. Columba to make separate reference to each of the great schools which he established, and at the same time to give an account of those events which brought him into connection with the various scenes in which he played so striking a part. We shall therefore begin with the School of Derry, which was the first he founded in his own native territory. First of all, however, it is necessary to know something of his own early history.

St. Columba was born at Gartan, in the barony of Kilmacrenan, co. Donegal, on the 7th of December, in the year A.D. 521.[237] It is a very wild but beautiful district, surrounded by dark rugged mountains, which cast their shadows over a beautiful sheet of water stretched at their base, sometimes called Lough Veagh, but more properly Lough Gartan. His father, Felim (Fedhlimidh) was prince of the surrounding district, and a scion of the royal race of Niall the Great, or Niall of the Nine Hostages, and his mother was Eithne, the daughter of a Leinster Chief, who came of the equally royal line of Cathaeir Mor, a famous High King of Erin in the second century of the Christian era. Most justly, therefore, does his biographer, Adamnan, say that Columba was sprung from noble parentage, for he was, through Conal Gulban, the great-grandson of Niall the Great. The reigning king at his birth, Muircertach (Murtogh) Mac Erca, was his uncle, of the half blood; and he himself might one day be qualified not only to rule over the Cenel-Conal, but even to be elected High King of all Ireland.[238]

There is no trace at present of any royal rath or ancient fort at Gartan, so far as we could ascertain. The land around is naked and barren, and the cabins of the cottagers are even poorer and blacker than may be seen elsewhere in Donegal. About a quarter of a mile from the place of the saint's birth, there is an old ruined church and church-yard; but although certainly ancient, the church does not appear to have been coeval with Columba himself. It was probably founded some years after his death, when the place began to obtain some celebrity as the birth-place of so great a saint.

But the flag, on which he was born, is pointed out to every visitor; and there can hardly be any doubt that the tradition fixing the spot is continuous and trustworthy. It is worn quite bare by the hands and feet of pious pilgrims; and what is stranger still, the poor emigrants, who are about to quit Donegal for ever, come and sleep on that flag the night before their departure from Derry. Columba himself was an exile, and they fondly hope that sleeping on the spot where he was born will help them to bear with lighter heart the heavy burden of the exile's sorrows.

Shortly after his birth the child was brought from Gartan to Tulach Dubhglaisse to be baptized by an old priest named Cruithnechan, who dwelt there. It is now called Temple-Douglas, and the old church and church-yard beside the dark stream is still there about mid-way between Gartan and Letterkenny. There is a parish called Kilcronaghan in the Co. Derry, which is supposed to take its name from the 'illustrious priest,' who had the privilege of baptizing Columcille, and who was also his tutor and foster-father.

The boy, however, seems to have spent the years of his early youth mostly at Kil-mac-nenain--now corrupted into Kilmacrenan--which was in all probability, even at that early period, a place of note in Tir-connell. In after times it became celebrated as the place where the O'Donnells were inaugurated as princes of Tir-connell. It is about three miles north of Temple-Douglas, and about the same distance to the north-east of Gartan. The place is supposed to have got its name from the 'Son of Enan,' whose mother was Columba's sister.

We need not specially refer to the visions and prophecies concerning Columba, which are given in his various Lives. The authentic facts of his history are quite as strange and marvellous as any one can desire--in fact his whole life was a miracle of grace. From the fact that the 'illustrious priest,' who baptized Columba, is also described by Adamnan as his fosterer--pueri nutritor--we may fairly infer that he was trained by that holy man in the rudiments of learning, both in his native tongue and in the Latin language. It illustrates what was quite a common custom in days when schools were few and far between. The boy designed for the Church was placed under the care of the priest or bishop, and was thus trained in virtue and learning from his earliest years under the eyes of one whose duty and interest it was to watch over him with the most zealous care.

We know little, however, of Columba's history until he came from Kilmacrenan to the more famous School of St. Finnian at Moville, near the head of Strangford Lough. We have already given an account of the seminary founded there by that great saint. At Moville Columba was ordained a deacon; and here also, according to one account, his baptismal name of Crimthann was changed by his young companions into that other name the "Dove of the Church"--Columcille--by which he is best known to history. Dr. Reeves, however, seems to think that he was called Colum at his baptism, and that cille was merely added by his companions because he so loved to haunt the church, when they would have him play. We learn from Adamnan that whilst he was at Moville, the young saint devoted his attention chiefly to the study of Sacred Scripture, of which Finnian was a most distinguished professor. We have the sober testimony of the same Adamnan that whilst the saint was a deacon at Moville no wine could be found on a certain festival day for the "Sacrificial Mystery." Whilst the ministers at the altar were complaining of the want of the wine, the deacon took a cruet to the well, as it was his duty to procure and taste the water for the Holy Sacrifice. Knowing that the wine was wanting, he invoked our Lord Jesus Christ, and lo! the water in his hands was changed into wine, as it once was at Cana of Galilee; and he brought it to Bishop Finnian for the Sacrifice, who gave thanks to God on account of this wondrous miracle.

It is not certain whether it was at this period or later on that Columba made that furtive copy of Finnian's Gospel, which subsequently begot so much trouble, and appears to have been the main cause of the bloody battle of Cuil-dreimhne in Carberry, co. Sligo. We have referred to this incident before, and we may have to refer to it again, when we come to explain the causes of Columba's departure from Erin.

From Moville Columba, still a deacon, went southward to the plains of Leinster, and placed himself under the instruction of an aged bard called Gemman. The young deacon had a soul for music; and he greatly loved the Bards, who sang of the brave deeds of warrior kings and ancient heroes. He wished, also, to perfect himself in his own native tongue, and to become a pupil in the School of the Bards was the recognised way to study the language and literature of Erin, such as it was at that time. But he was also learning 'divine wisdom' in Leinster at the same time, probably at the School of St. Finnian of Clonard, which was on the borders of Meath and Leinster.

There a very striking incident took place, which is in itself evidence of the lawless character of the times, and the necessity of the presence of some moral power with a divine sanction to hold that savagery in check. It happened one day that whilst Gemman, the Bard, was sitting in the open field reading his book, he saw a young girl flying to him for protection from the attacks of a ruffian, who pursued her closely as she fled. Gemman called to his disciple Columba who was close at hand, and both of them sought to protect the maiden from the violence of her assailant. But he, heedless of the reverence due both to the deacon and the bard, pierced the maiden with his lance, even as she sought shelter in vain behind their cloaks. She fell dead at their feet, but Columba, divinely inspired, cried out that her soul would fly to heaven, and the murderer's soul would fly as quickly to hell. No sooner was the word spoken, than the wretch fell dead before them, and the name of God and of Columba was greatly magnified through all the neighbouring country.

We have already spoken of the great College of Clonard founded by St. Finnian, who is quite distinct from his namesake of Moville. We have seen that Columba was there, and was recognised as one of the Twelve Apostles of Erin, who were trained up together at that great seminary in all sacred learning. He was about twenty-two years of age at this period, for he was not yet ordained a priest, so that we may fix the period of his sojourn at Clonard about the year A.D. 543. The immediate purpose of Columba's studies at Clonard was to prepare himself for the priesthood. There he was trained by the most celebrated master of Erin in all the virtue and learning necessary for that holy state. He built his little cell close to the church, and when he was not engaged in study, or attending his lectures, he was nearly always to be found before the altar in prayer. Though of the royal blood of Tara's kings, he was humble, and took his turn at the quern, or hand-mill, grinding the corn that was necessary for himself and his companions. Their chief food was bread and water, or a little milk, when it could be had. No doubt from time to time they might succeed in catching some fish in the River Boyne, which flows through the meadows around Clonard. It was a simple life, but a happy and a heavenly one, when the youthful Apostles of Erin wandered together by the banks of that historic stream, or gathered round their venerable master to hear his lectures, as he sat on the old moat of Clonard, or to listen to his burning words in his little church, when he exhorted them to the love of God and the contempt of all worldly things for God's sake.

It was the custom in those days for the students to visit the various saints of Erin, who were celebrated for holiness and learning; and so we find that Columba, when he had finished his studies under Finnian of Clonard, directed his steps to the school of another great master of the spiritual life, St. Mobhi Clarainech of Glasnevin. Before his departure, however, from Clonard, according to one account, the saint was ordained a priest,[239] not by Finnian, for he does not appear to have been bishop, but by Etchen of Clonfad, which is situated a little west of Clonard, and who doubtless exercised at that time the episcopal jurisdiction, which was afterwards exercised by the prelates of Clonard. It is said that it was Finnian's purpose to have Columba ordained a bishop on this occasion, but through some mistake on the part of Bishop Etchen, he was only ordained a priest. Deeming it providential, Columba in his humility would never afterwards consent to be raised to the episcopal dignity.[240]

The students' cells at Glasnevin were situated on one side of the River Tolka, and Mobhi's church was on the other, at or near the spot where the Protestant church now stands. The light-footed youngsters of those days, however, found no difficulty in crossing the rapid and shallow stream at ordinary times. But when the river was swollen with heavy rains, it was no easy task to breast the flood; yet such was Columba's zeal in the service of God that on one such occasion, to his master's admiration and surprise, he crossed the angry torrent, that he might be present as usual at the exercises in the church. "May God be praised," said Columba, when he had crossed safely over, "and deliver us from these perils in future." It is said that his prayer was heard; and that all the cells, with their occupants, were suddenly transferred to the other side of the stream, and remained there ever after.

It was doubtless during his leisure hours, while under Mobhi's care at Glasnevin, that Columba used to ramble out to the Hill of Howth, and sitting on the brow of its lofty cliffs, gaze in pensive mood over the wide spreading sea, and contemplate, with a poet's eye, all the stern grandeur of that iron-bound coast. He fed his soul on the glorious vision, and in after years, when surrounded by the sterile rocks of Iona, his sad thoughts often turned to those scenes of his youth, and found expression in words that cannot fail to touch a sympathetic chord in every heart.

"Delightful to be on Benn-Edar Before crossing o'er the white sea, (To see) the dashing of the waves against its brow, The bareness of its shore, and its border.

Delightful to be (once more) on Benn-Edar After crossing the white-bosomed sea; To row one's little coracle, Ochone! on its swift-waved shore.

Ah, rapid the speed of my coracle; And its stern turned on Derry; I grieve at my errand o'er the noble sea, Travelling to Alba of the ravens.

My foot in my sweet little coracle; My sad heart still bleeding; Weak is the man that cannot lead, Totally blind are the ignorant (of God's will.)"

Columba had for companions at Glasnevin St. Cannech, St. Ciaran, and St. Comgall--and during their entire lives a tender and ardent friendship united these holy men together. A pestilence which broke out in A.D. 544, and of which St. Ciaran appears to have died, scattered the holy disciples of St. Mobhi's School; so Columba resolved to return home to his native territory.

When he crossed the stream then called the Bior, but now called the Moyola Water, which flows into Lough Neagh at its north-western extremity, he earnestly prayed to God to stay the ravages of the terrible "Buidhe Chonnaill" on the southern banks of that stream, so that it might not invade the territories of his kinsmen. His earnest prayer was heard, and thus Tir-Owen and Tir-Connell escaped the dreadful plague.

II.--COLUMBA FOUNDS DERRY.

Columba was now a priest twenty-five years of age; and he began to think of founding a church in his native territory. The Annals of Ulster record the founding of Derry by Columba in the year A.D. 545;[241] and it was brought about in this way. The first cousin of St. Columba, Ainmire, son of Setna, who succeeded to the throne of Tara later on, was in A.D. 545 prince of Ailech and the neighbouring territory. His eldest son Aedh, was then a boy of ten years; but it seems, according to O'Donnell's Life of Columba, the king in the name of his son Aedh, offered the fort in which he then dwelt on the site of the present city of Derry to his cousin in order to found his church and monastery. Columba, however, was at first unwilling to accept the gift, because his master Mobhi had not yet given him, as was customary, permission to found a church--doubtless thinking him too young and inexperienced. But Mobhi himself was taken sick, and died of the plague in A.D. 544, shortly after Columba had left him; and before he died he retracted his prohibition, and sent two of his disciples to Columba with his girdle as a sign to give him full permission to act as he pleased. These messengers had just then arrived; and so Columba gladly accepted the gift of his cousin, and founded his church on, what was called then and long after, the Island of Derry. It was a rising ground oval in shape containing 200 acres of land, surrounded on two sides by the Foyle, and on the third by low marshy ground since known as the 'bog.' The slopes of the hill were covered with a beautiful grove of oak trees, which gave its name to the place. In ancient times it was called Daire Calgaich, but after the tenth century it came to be more commonly known as Daire Columcille.

Columcille's original church, called the Dubh-Regles, was built close to the site now occupied by the Roman Catholic Cathedral; and hence it was outside the walls of the modern city. Nigh to it were three wells anciently known as Adamnan's Well, and Martin's Well, and Columba's Well. One of them is, it appears, now dry; and the others are called simply "St. Columb's Wells." Near to the church there was also erected a round tower, which in like manner has completely disappeared. So anxious was Columba to spare the beautiful oak-grove which covered the hill, that he would not even build his church with the chancel towards the east according to custom, because in that case some of his beloved oaks should be cut down to make room for the church. It was probably for the same reason he built on the low ground at the foot of the hill, instead of on its slope or summit, where the modern city stands. He strictly enjoined his successors to spare the sacred grove, and even directed in case any of the trees were blown down by the storm to give a part to the poor, a part to the citizens, and to reserve another part as fuel for the guest-house. In later ages a cathedral called Templemore was built on the slope of the hill; and the Dominicans, Augustinians, and Franciscans had each a church and a monastery in the city of St. Columba. It also seems that a Cistercian convent was founded there, but not a trace of any of them now remains; so effectually did the imported colonists change the physical as well as the religious aspect of the city.

We know very little of the history of Derry during the period that Columba ruled over his monastery in person. He always loved it dearly, and many a time his heart turned fondly from his lonely island in the Scottish main to his beloved Derry.

"The reason I love Derry is For its peace, for its purity, And for its crowds of white angels From one end to the other.

My Derry! mine own little grove! My dwelling, my dear little cell; O eternal God, in heaven above. Woe be to him, who violates it!"

From all the highlands and valleys of Tir-connell his kith and kin rallied round the young monk in his infant monastery. It was built on the border-land between the territories of Eoghan and Conal; and in after ages every acre of its termon lands was stained with blood, shed in fratricidal strife by the two great clans of the north. It stood, too, under the shadow of that ancient keep, the Grianan of Ailech, which, it is said, was the abode of the northern kings long before the Christian era. It was certainly the Royal Fortress of the Hy-Niall in their proudest days, and still rears its stately walls, that overlook at once the Foyle and the Swilly, as if in silent scorn of time and storm and man.

It will help us to understand better the subsequent history of Columcille, if we try now to realize what manner of man he was. He came of a fierce and haughty race, and seems to have been himself by nature, notwithstanding his name, a man of ardent temperament and strong passions. He was, says an ancient commentator,[242] quoting from a still more ancient poet, "a man of well-formed and powerful frame; his skin was white, his face was broad and fair and radiant, lit up with large grey luminous eyes; his large and well-shaped head was crowned (except where he wore his frontal tonsure) with close and curling hair. His voice was clear and resonant, so that he could be heard at the distance of fifteen hundred paces, yet sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards." Truly a great and striking man to hear and to look at; one to admire but also to fear, and moreover, animated with lofty purpose, and inspired with all the dauntless courage of his race. In many respects his character appears to us to bear a very striking resemblance to the character of the Prince of the Apostles both in its strength and in its weakness.

Doubtless such a man as we have described, found it not only useful, but necessary to chastise his body and bring it under subjection. "Though my devotion is delightful," he is represented as saying of himself, "I sit in a chair of glass, for I am fleshly and often frail."[243] We are told that he practised the most extreme austerities. He barely took food enough to sustain nature, and that was of the simplest kind. "He did not," says the Felire, "take as much in a week as would serve for one meal of a pauper." He abstained from meat and wine, living exclusively on bread and water, and vegetables--sometimes contenting himself with nettles. He slept on the bare ground with a stone for a pillow, and a skin for a coverlid. Three times at night he rose to pray; and often scored his flesh with the discipline in atonement for his sins. By day he read, or preached to the brethren, or recited the divine office; and not unfrequently he took a share in the manual labour of the monks--carrying on his own broad bare shoulders the sacks of meal from the mill to the kitchen.

No wonder with such an example before their eyes that the young nobles of Tirconnell strove with generous emulation to excel each other in the service of God. What marvel if the white-robed brethren under such a master became angels in the flesh; and what wonder if God's angels came down from heaven, and "crowded every leaf on the oaks of Derry," to listen to such a brotherhood chanting at midnight's hour and at morning's dawn the inspired strains of the Hebrew Bard?

III.--THE SCHOOLS OF DURROW AND KELLS.

We know from the express statement of Venerable Bede that Columba founded the noble monastery of Durrow before he left Ireland for Iona.[244] Like Derry, it takes its name from an oak-grove; for it means the Plain of the Oaks--in Irish Dair-magh. It was anciently called Ros-grencha--the oak plain of the far famed Ros-grencha--and also Druim-Cain, or the Beautiful Hill; and even to-day whoever wanders through the rich pastures and the stately groves of Durrow will readily admit that it well deserves its ancient name. It is situated not far from Clara in the barony of Ballycowan, in the King's County; but in the time of Columcille it formed part of the ancient kingdom of Teffia. Aedh, son of Brendan, prince of the territory, gave it to Columcille for the purpose of founding a monastery. It is true that Brendan himself was alive until A.D. 576; but, as not unfrequently happened in Erin, after the death of Crimthann in A.D. 533 the lordship passed not to his brother, but to his nephew, Brendan's son, who doubtless had been previously recognised as the tanist. If, as Bede says, the monastery was founded before Columba set out for Britain in A.D. 563, it certainly was not completely founded; for several years after Columba's arrival in Britain we read of the building of the Great House of the monastery--whether that was, as Petrie thinks, the round tower, or what is more likely, a larger church than the original one designed to accommodate the enlarged community.

We may assume then that Durrow was founded about A.D. 553, that is seven years after the foundation of Derry. By this time the reputation of Columba had spread far and wide over the entire kingdom. His 'cousins' too of the Southern Hy-Niall then reigned at Tara, and at this period the saint seems to be on friendly terms with that branch of his family. Being so famous and so influential, it is not to be wondered at that Columba was invited to found monasteries through almost all the northern half of Ireland to which even Durrow at that period belonged.

Several interesting incidents are recorded by Adamnan in his Life of Columba having reference to Durrow. The monks, it seems, had an orchard near the monastery on its southern border, and in the orchard there was one tree that produced a great abundance of apples; but they were so bitter that no one would eat them. The saint hearing every one complaining of the sour apples, raised his hand and blessed the tree in the name of Almighty God, and lo! at once every apple on the tree became sweet and good to eat.

Even when he was in Iona Columba was solicitous about his beloved monks of Durrow. One cold winter's day the saint in Iona was very sad, and shed silent tears. Diarmait, his attendant, asked what troubled him; and Columba replied, that he was sore grieved because he saw in spirit how Laisren, the prior of Durrow, kept his poor monks working on that bitter day in building the Great House.[245] At the very same moment Laisren in Durrow found himself moved by some internal suggestion, and bade the monks, as the weather was so severe, to get their dinner, and take rest for the remainder of the day. This too was made known in spirit to Columba, and he greatly rejoiced.

On another occasion during the building of the same Great House, Columba in spirit saw one of the monks falling from the very top of the roof. "Help! help!" cried the saint--and lo! the guardian angel of Iona flew to the monk's aid at the prayer of Columba, and caught him up before he fell to the ground. Such is the speed of an angel's flight, and the virtue of a saint's prayer; for it is written, "He hath given His angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up; lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."[246]

When Columba was leaving Durrow, he was very anxious to secure the future well-being of that dear monastery, which next to Derry appears to have held the highest place in his affection. There is an ancient poem attributed to the saint in which he describes with loving minuteness the various charms of Durrow. There the wind sings through the elms, as well as through the oaks; the blackbird's joyous note is heard at early dawn; and the cuckoo chants from tree to tree in that noble angelic land--"all but its government was indeed delightful." Elsewhere the saint speaks with tenderest feeling of the toll of its soft-toned bell; and the glories of the woods in beautiful many-coloured Dair-magh.

"O Cormac, beautiful is that church of thine, With its books, with its learning; A city devout with its hundred crosses, Without blemish, and without transgression."

The reference here is to Cormac Ua Liathain, who seems to have been left in charge at Durrow, when Columba himself retired to Iona. But Cormac was a Momonian, as he is called in the dialogue with Columba, and hereditary jealousy between North and South soon showed itself at Durrow after Columba's departure. The princes of the Clan-Colman, or Southern Hy-Niall, objected to have a Momonian the ruler in Durrow, and made it so unpleasant for Cormac that the latter, without waiting for Columba's permission, resolved to leave the government of Durrow to Laisren, the first cousin of Columba, and seek for himself a desert isle in the ocean to be the place of his rest and resurrection.

With a few companions he set out from Killala, and sailed the northern seas for two long years, but yet could find no island home in the northern main. After perils and hardships untold, he and his famished crew succeeded in reaching Iona, where they were kindly welcomed by Columba. But when Columba discovered why it was that Cormac had sailed so long 'over the all-teeming sea, from port to port and from wave to wave,' his brow grew stern; and he felt much inclined to rebuke Cormac severely for his disobedience. "Thou art welcome," he said; "since the sea hath sent thee hither--else thou hath merited satire and reproach."[247]

Columba then urges on Cormac to return back again to his monastery in Durrow; he enlarges on the beauty of that devout city with its books, and its learning, and its hundred crosses; he describes how sweet is the blackbird's song and the music of the wind, as it murmurs through the elms on the Oak-plain of far-famed Ros-grencha; he promises Cormac that he will cause the Clann-Colman of the reddened swords to protect the monastery of Durrow; "and I pledge thee my unerring word," he said, "which may not be impugned, that death is better in reproachless Erin than life for ever in Alba."[248]

Still Cormac was unwilling to return--"How can I go there amongst the powerful northern tribes in that border land, O Colum? and if it is better to be in noble Erin than in inviolate Alba, do thou return to Erin and leave me at least by turns in Alba." The discussion grew warm between the two saints; but it appears to have ended amicably. Cormac was allowed to remain for a time in Iona, and afterwards to found a monastery of his own in Tyrawley, on condition that he used his influence with his southern kinsmen to make them pay their alms and dues to the monastery of Durrow.

The two Irish poems printed by Colgan and Bishop Reeves giving an account of these events, can scarcely in their present form be regarded as the composition of Columcille. There can hardly be any doubt, however, that they convey a truthful narrative of the facts, and were in their original form the work of Columcille himself.

Whilst Columba was at Durrow he wrote, as far as we can judge with his own hands, the celebrated copy of the Gospels, known as the Book of Durrow. That the saint was an accomplished scribe is certain; we know from many passages in his life that he spent much time in copying parts of the sacred volume; and he was engaged in the same pious labour when he felt the call of death, and asked Baithen "to write the rest." We shall see later on how he copied stealthily Finnian's MS. of the Gospels, which afterwards led to serious trouble and much bloodshed in Erin.

The Book of Durrow is a highly ornamental copy of the Four Gospels according to Jerome's version, then recently introduced in Ireland. It is written across the page in single columns, and the MS. also contains the Epistle of St. Jerome to Pope Damasus, an explanation of certain Hebrew names, with the Eusebian Canons and synoptical tables. It has also symbolical representations of the Evangelists, and many pages of coloured ornamentation--spiral, interlaced, and tesselated.[249] There is a partly obliterated entry on the back of fol. 12, praying for "a remembrance of the scribe, Columba, who wrote this evangel in the space of twelve days." That Columba was indeed the scribe who wrote this manuscript is rendered still more probable from the old tradition that he with his own hands wrote a copy of the Gospels for each of the monasteries which he had founded. We have already seen that the Book of Derry was lost, but fortunately the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells are still in existence. It is referred to by O'Clery in the Martyrology of Donegal, "as having gems and silver on its cover," and was seen by Connell Mac Geoghegan, the translator of the Annals of Clonmacnoise, who made an entry at the foot of folio 116 in the year A.D. 1623. It was then at Durrow, but passed into the possession of Henry Jones, Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in the time of Cromwell. O'Flaherty saw it in A.D. 1677, and fortunately then deciphered the inscription on the cover, and entered it on the fly-leaf of the manuscript. The cover has since disappeared with its gems and its silver cross--but thanks to O'Flaherty we know the inscription, which it bore in Irish--Oroith agus benedacht Coluimcille do Fland Macc Mailshechnaill do righ Erenn las a ndernad a cumdach so.

"The prayer and benediction of Columcille for Mailshechnaill, King of Erin, for whom this cover was made."

"I have seen," says O'Flaherty, referring to this MS. and its cover, "handwritings of St. Columba in Irish characters, as straight and as fair as any print of above 1,000 years standing, and Irish letters engraved in the time of Flann, King of Ireland, deceased in A.D. 916." O'Flaherty saw the Book in Trinity College in A.D. 1677; and it is there still. Jones, the Vice-Chancellor, afterwards Bishop of Meath, gave it to the College.

At present there is no trace of any of the ancient buildings at Durrow. There is a holy well--St. Columba's well--still flowing, which is greatly venerated for the virtue of its waters, and is kept in good order by the present noble proprietor of these lands, Lord Norbury, whose mansion is close at hand. There is an old church-yard, too, which doubtless marks the site of the ancient churches; it is still much used for burials, although already overcrowded with the dead. The most interesting memorial, however, at present in Durrow is a beautiful sculptured cross which stands on a low stone pedestal close to the church-yard. It is like the Cross of Monasterboice. There are also two ancient inscribed stones, one unfortunately broken, but the inscription remains, ✠ OR DO CHATHALAN--(pray for little Cathal)--the proper name being a diminutive of Cathal. This fragment is now only six inches long. The other stone asks a prayer for Aigide. The inscribed cross on this stone, now half buried in the grass, is of the most chaste and beautiful design, richly adorned with spirals, knots, and frets, which point to the most flourishing period of Celtic art. Nowhere else has a cross of similar design been discovered. Two of the outer arch-stones of an ancient and once very beautiful window are built into a wall near the High Cross. No other remains of antiquity are now to be found on the site of the once celebrated monastery of Durrow.

Hugh de Lacy completely desolated Durrow and uprooted its ancient shrines. In the year A.D. 1186 that stern warrior set about building a castle at Durrow. For this purpose he seized the abbey-lands, drove out the neighbouring Celtic proprietor, whose name was Fox, and proceeded to build his castle with the stones of Columba's monastery and churches. But this was the close of his evil career. A workman, sent it is said by Fox for the purpose, was watching for his opportunity, and when De Lacy, who superintended the work in person, was stooping forward, he struck off his head with one blow of his keen axe. The body fell into the ditch of the castle; and at the same moment the assassin burst through the astonished workmen, and fled into the neighbouring woods. "It was in revenge of Columcille" that this was done, say the Four Masters, and certainly it seems as if the fate that overtook this "profaner and destroyer of many churches" was the not unnatural outcome of his own evil deeds. In 1839 the Earl of Norbury, a worthy successor of De Lacy, was assassinated in the same spot, after he had erected a castle on the site of De Lacy's.

----Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas Immolat, et poenam scelerato de sanguine sumit.--Virgil.

IV.--THE FOUNDATION OF KELLS.

The foundation of Kells took place soon after that of Durrow, but the exact date cannot be assigned--all we know is that it was founded during the reign of King Diarmait, the son of Fergus Cearbhaill. It is necessary to know something of this King Diarmait, whose history is intimately connected with that of Columcille. He was great grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, and therefore a second cousin once removed of Columcille himself. But Columcille belonged to the northern or Ulster Hy-Niall, who derived their descent from Eoghan and Conal Gulban; while the southern, or Meath Hy-Niall, were descended from Conal Crimthann, another son of Niall the Great, who fixed his residence in Meath. Considerable jealousy existed between these two branches of the Hy-Niall stock, especially when Diarmait succeeded to the throne of Tara after the murder of his predecessor, Tuathal Maelgarbh in A.D. 544; for he was supposed to have instigated the commission of that crime. The princes of the North, especially the sons of the gallant and ill-fated Muir-ceartach Mac Earca, considered that they themselves had a better title to the throne than Diarmait, and indeed during his reign of twenty years they were often in rebellion against him, and not unfrequently were victorious in the strife. Still Diarmait contrived to maintain his hold of Tara, and governed the kingdom with vigour and wisdom, until he fell out with the 'Saints,' whom he found more difficult to control than the princes of the rival line. In consequence of his dispute with St. Ruadhan of Lorrha, Tara was cursed and abandoned; and because of another outrage which he offered to Columcille the great battle of Cuil-dreimhne was fought in which his army was utterly routed, and he himself escaped with much difficulty. Shortly afterwards he, in his turn, was slain by the hands of an assassin.

The only authority we have in reference to the foundation of Kells during the reign of this Diarmait is O'Donnell's Life of Columba. It is not noticed in our Annals, nor, at least explicitly, in the other Lives of the Saint. According to O'Donnell's Life, Columba, after founding Durrow, went to Kells[251]--in Irish Cenannus--where it seems the king then lived, although he happened to be absent at this time. The saint when entering the place was very rudely received by certain soldiers of the Royal Guard, to whom he was most probably unknown. But when the king returned home and heard that his soldiers had insulted the greatest saint in Erin at the time, and moreover one of his own royal blood, he resolved to make over the city itself to Columba for a monastery, as an atonement for the rudeness of his soldiers. Columba could expect no more, and thankfully accepted the gift. The donation was also ratified by the sanction of Aedh Slaine, the eldest son of the king, and heir apparent to the throne. In return Columba predicted that Aedh would mount the throne of Erin, and that his reign would be prosperous so long as he abstained from shedding innocent blood--a condition, however, which he afterwards did not observe.

Kells was thus founded about the year A.D. 554, although its foundation is sometimes set down so early as the year A.D. 550. It does not, however, seem to have attained great eminence during the lifetime of St. Columba himself; for its fame was eclipsed by other more celebrated houses founded by the saint. It was only after the decline of Iona in the ninth century, consequent on the ravages of the Danes, that Kells became the chief monastery of the Columbian order both in Erin and Alba, as we shall see further on.

It may be useful, however, at present to make reference to the chief memorials of Columba, which point to his own intimate connection with that establishment. St. Columba's 'House' is the most interesting of the existing antiquities at Kells. We may safely accept the opinion of the learned and accurate Petrie, that St. Columba's House at Kells and St. Kevin's at Glendalough were erected by the persons whose names they bear, and that they both served the double purpose of a habitation and an oratory.[252] The building is a plain oblong, twenty-four feet long by twenty-one broad, having a very high-pitched pyramidal stone roof, which is now covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy. The original door was in the west end, but for the purpose of greater security was placed about eight feet from the ground, and must have been reached by a ladder which could easily be drawn up by the inmates in case of alarm or danger. The building contains two apartments; the lower, which was the oratory, is covered with a semicircular stone arching, and was lighted by two small windows--a slender semicircular one in the east gable, and a triangular headed one in the south sidewall. The chamber or sleeping apartment of the saint was in the croft between the convex arching and the roof. It is about six feet high, and is lighted by a small window in the gable. It appears originally to have contained three apartments, in one of which is a large flat stone six feet in length, which is traditionally said to have been Columba's bed. If we suppose a somewhat similar house to have been at Durrow, it will help to explain Adamnan's reference to the Great House, and the danger of falling from the ridge of the roof, for in Kells it is thirty-eight feet from the ground.

There is a sculptured cross standing in the market-place of the same character as that of Durrow; there is another fine ancient cross in the churchyard having on the plinth in Irish characters the words--

"Patricii et Columbae (Crux)."

which show that it was erected to commemorate these two great saints, and probably at the time when Kells was the recognised head of all the Columbian foundations. There is a third cross, which Miss Stokes declares to have been the finest of the three, now lying mutilated in the church. These crosses show that ecclesiastical art was carefully and successfully cultivated at Kells, and that the city well deserved the appellation of "Kells of the Crosses."

The fine round tower of Kells, which is still ninety feet high, marks the importance of the place during the Danish wars, and fixes also the site of the great church, for the towers were almost always built within ten or twelve paces of the great western door of the church towards the left or southern side, looking from the doorway. No trace, however, of the great church now remains at Kells, from the sacristy of which we are told the Great Gospel of Columcille was stolen at night in the year A.D. 1006.[253]

This Great Gospel of Columcille was without any doubt the celebrated MS., known as the Book of Kells, which is now preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. It is highly probable both from intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, that like the Book of Durrow, this celebrated codex was written by Columcille himself, although, doubtless the ornamentation was, at least to some extent, wrought by other, if not by later hands. The tradition of the church itself, as shown from the entry in the Annals quoted above, shows that so early as the year A.D. 1006 it was regarded as a copy of the Gospels, if not written, certainly used by the saint himself. It is called the Great Gospel of Columcille, and truly well deserves that name, for it has been pronounced by Professor J. O. Westwood, of Oxford, to be "unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS. of so early a date now in existence, far excelling in the gigantic size of the letters at the beginning of each Gospel, the excessive minuteness of the ornamental details crowded into whole pages, the number of its very peculiar decorations, the fineness of the writing, and the endless variety of its initial capitals, the famous Gospels of Lindisfarne in the Cottonian Library." We may add that the Gospel of Lindisfarne was also a work of Irish art, as Lindisfarne itself was originally a monastery founded and peopled by Irish monks from Iona.

No description can give an adequate idea of the Book of Kells--it must be seen and studied to be duly appreciated.

It has had, too, a strange history. It was stolen, as we have seen, by some sacrilegious wretch in A.D. 1006; and at that time it was regarded as the chief relic of the western world. Fortunately it was found after forty days and two months, covered with sods in a bog, but its gold had been stripped off. Some few leaves at the beginning have been lost, and certain deeds and grants of land made to the churches of Kells are recorded in Irish on some of the blank pages probably left there for that purpose. In the time of Usher it was still preserved at Kells; but he secured it when Bishop of Meath, as he himself tells us, to collate the readings with the Vulgate; whether it was by purchase or otherwise we cannot say.[254] It passed to Trinity College with Usher's collection, and, like many of the other ancient treasures of Celtic Ireland, is preserved there at present.

We have already referred to another manuscript written by Columba, which has had a far more momentous history than either the Book of Durrow or the Book of Kells, that is the MS. which caused the battle of Cuil-Dreimhne, and which was indirectly, at least according to the common account, the means of sending Columba to preach the Gospel in Alba. It was brought about in this way according to Keating.

That Diarmait, of whom we have already spoken, made a great feast at Tara, and many princes and nobles were present at the feast. There were also games on the green of Tara, and during a game of hurling Curnan, son of Hugh, son of Eochaidh Tirmcharna, struck the son of the king's steward with his hurley and killed him with the blow. Brawling at the games of Tara was strictly forbidden; so the young Prince of Connaught knowing the consequences of his rash act, fled for refuge to Columcille, who was in Tara at the time. But Diarmait seized the fugitive, tore him from the embrace of the saint, and had him put to death on the spot.

But this was not all. It seems that on this occasion Columba came to Tara to claim in the court of the king that copy of the Psalms which he had stealthily made from the copy which St. Finnian had brought from Rome, and which he very highly prized. Finnian waited until Columba, who was a choice scribe, had completed the copy, and then claimed it as his own. We have already spoken of Diarmait's decision, and Columba's appeal to his kinsmen in the North.

They flew to arms, and called to their aid all those who had suffered wrongs at the hands of King Diarmait. Very soon they assembled a great army in the heart of the North. It was led by the two sons of Muircheartach Mac Earca, Fergus and Domhnall, the rival claimants of the crown, and by Ainmire, son of Sedna, first cousin of Columba, and by Nainnidh, son of Duach, another first cousin, and by Aedh, the Prince of Connaught, whose son had been put to death by the King at Tara. This was a formidable alliance, but King Diarmait lost no time in raising troops to meet his foes. The two armies came into collision on the ridge of Cuil-Dreimhne, now Cooladrummon, between Benbulbin mountain and the sea, in the county Sligo. It is said the rival saints supported the rival armies--that Columcille prayed for the men of the North, and that St. Finnian was behind the lines of King Diarmait. Be that as it may, the men of the North were completely victorious; three thousand of their foes were slain, while only one man fell on their side, who had transgressed the precept of Columba forbidding them to go beyond a certain point on the field, called the Druid's fence.

Then it seems his conscience sorely smote Columcille. Was he justified in urging his kinsmen to fight this bloody battle which caused the loss of three thousand lives? He went straight to his confessor, St. Molaise of Innismurray Island, who at the time was in his own Church of Ahamlish, not more than two miles from the scene of the battle. Molaise declared that Columcille had sinned, and that he must do penance; and his penance must be proportionate to his fault. He bade him leave Ireland, and go to preach the Gospel, where he would gain as many souls for Christ as lives were lost in the battle, and never look upon his native land again.

It has been said that this story is the invention of a later age;[255] that it is in itself improbable; and above all, that Adamnan is silent in reference to it. It is, however, the expression of a very ancient tradition, and it is assumed as true by O'Donnell in his Life of Columba, by Keating, and by the Four Masters. The silence of Adamnan, too, is very significant. He refers in more than one place to the battle of Cuil-Dreimhne, as if it were an era in the life-history of Columba. He plainly does not want to say anything derogatory to the Saint of Iona; but in our opinion he also plainly implies that he had some connection with the battle of Cuil-Dreimhne; to which he either thinks it inexpedient or unnecessary for him to make more explicit reference. We, therefore, cannot reject the story as either improbable in itself, or unsupported by authority. His connection with this battle may have been a fault, or even a crime, on the part of Columba; but in itself it is so natural, and in its consequences so edifying, and so encouraging to our frail human nature, that we cannot help saying from our hearts--O felix culpa--O blessed fault which produced so much good both for Erin and for Alba. The poem[256] in which Columba declares that the voyage to Alba was enjoined on him for his own share in this battle, if not his composition, is certainly of very ancient origin, and furnishes a distinct proof of the existence of the tradition at the time it was written.

The site of the battle is a remarkable spot. The townland of Cooladrummon is situated on the very crest of the hill, in a line with the nose of Benbulben mountain, about six miles north of Sligo. It commands a view of unrivalled beauty both by land and sea. The tourist travelling from Sligo to Bundoran will be on the very battle field of Cuil-Dreimhne as soon as he reaches that point of the road on the very crest of the ridge, where the Bay of Donegal at once bursts full upon his view. Let him pause and admire it at his leisure, for rarely, if ever, will he see again such an expanse of sea, backed by noble mountains, and waving woods, and fertile fields, and, especially in Columba's own Drumcliff, many a neat but frugal happy homestead.

The battle of Cuil-Dreimhne was fought A.D. 561; but Columba and his associates did not set out for Alba until nearly two years later, in A.D. 563. The traditional accounts of his departure from Derry, and his arrival in Iona, are exceedingly touching.

Having made up his mind to perform the bitter penance enjoined on him by Molaise at the Cross of Ahamlish (Ath-Imlaisi), his first object would naturally be to seek companions for his voyage. It was, no doubt, a perilous and laborious enterprise; but he found no difficulty in procuring associates in his task. As soon as he made known his resolution to the monks of Derry, he had abundance of volunteers who feared no perils, and were ready to accompany their beloved abbot to any spot on earth where he chose to dwell. He selected twelve from amongst them--men of his own blood, and monks of his own obedience. Amongst them were his uncle, Ernaan, who afterwards became superior of the monastery in the Island of Hinba, and his two first cousins, Baithen, who succeeded him in Iona, and his brother, Cobthach, both sons of Brenden, son of Fergus, grandfather of the saint.

It appears the exiles set sail from Derry for the north in one or two currachs, in the year A.D. 563, when Columba was in the forty-second year of his age. When they came to set sail, not only the monks of Derry, but the bishops and clergy and people, from all the country round about, crowded to the shore to bid farewell to their beloved saint. Then a great wailing was borne on the breeze that filled the light sails of the currachs; even the wild sea-birds hovered round their bark, as if loth to leave the blessed Columba. His heart was full, and his eyes were dim with tears, as he saw the oak-woods of Derry and the hills of Inishowen fading, it might be for ever, from his view. In the old Irish poem already referred to, there are some stanzas which are supposed to give expression to the feelings of the saint, when, with bleeding heart, he vainly sought another glimpse of Erin amid the waste of waters all around him. We venture to render a few of these stanzas in verse:--

"Ah! my heart will never find rest, There's a tear in my soft grey eye; Give Eri once more to my breast, And then I am ready to die.

I stand on the deck of my bark, And gaze o'er the southern sea; But alas! and alas! my Eri For ever is hidden from me.

How bright are the eyes of my Eri, Like the gleam of an angel's wing; And sweet is the breath of my Eri-- Her voice is the music of Spring.

Oh! deep is my burden of sorrow; I pine like the mateless dove-- Will this heart from the years never borrow A balm for the loss of my love?"

Supposing that Columba and his twelve companions sailed straight for the Western Isles of Scotland, one day's prosperous breeze would carry them past the Rhynns of Islay, and bring them in sight of Colonsay. It is said that Columba and his companions landed on the southern extremity of Colonsay, now called Oronsay, and mounting the cliffs looked along the verge of the southern horizon. Dimly in the distance like a cloud, he saw the hills of Inishowen, and once more he bade his companions embark--for he might not stay where he could see the distant hills of Erin. So they re-embarked and sailed further north, until they landed on Iona, which is about twenty miles north-and-by-west of Colonsay.

"To oars again; we may not stay, For ah! on ocean's rim I see, Where sunbeams pierce the cloudy day, From these rude hills of Oronsay, The isle so dear to me.

But when once more we set our feet On wild sea-crag or islet fair, There shall we make our calm retreat, And spend our lives as it is meet, In penance and in prayer."[257]

On the southern shore of Iona there is a small sandy cove, bounded on both sides by steep and ragged cliffs rising from the waves. A patch of green sward runs down to the sandy margin of this little bay, and outside it is sheltered from the fury of the south and south-west winds by several rocky islets, through which, however, a currach might easily glide even in broken weather, and reach the little sandy beach in safety. This cove is still called Port a Churraich, and it is the unfailing tradition of Iona that it was in this cove Columba and his companions first landed, and that the cove takes its name from his currach. "The length of the curachan or ship is obvious to anyone who goes to the place, it being marked up at the head of the harbour upon the grass between two little pillars of stone, set up to show forth the same, between which pillars there is three score of foots in length, which was the exact length of the curachan or ship."[258] We must now devote a separate chapter to Iona and its scholars, for, during six hundred years, it was an Irish island in Scottish seas.

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XIV. THE COLUMBIAN SCHOOL IN ALBA

"Saint of the seas---- Whose days were passed in teacher's toil-- Whose evening song still filled the aisle-- Whose poet's heart fed the wild bird's brood-- Whose fervent arm upbore the rood-- Still from thy roofless rock so gray, Thou preachest to all, who pass that way." --M'Gee.

I.--IONA.

When Columba landed on Iona he ascended the steep cliff still called Cnoc-na-Faire--the Hill of the Outlook--just above Port-a-Churraich, and looking southward over the sea to the utmost verge of the horizon, he sought in vain for one glimpse of the hills of holy Ireland. He could see, as we saw from the same spot, the rugged peaks of Jura, and the brown summits of Islay; and further still he might perceive the bare blue mountains of Kintyre mingling with the sky; but no trace of the land of his love to the south or south-west--nothing but the open shoreless sea. Then Columba knew that this was the land which God gave him to be the place of his exile, and there he resolved to make his monastic home.

Iona is little more than three miles long, and less than a mile in average breadth; and its physical features are uninviting. It is separated from the Ross of Mull--a bare and bleak mountain district--by a strait less than a mile wide. The surface of the island is very bare and rugged, especially towards the south and west. On the north-eastern border there are a few patches of tillage, but no trace of a tree. The craggy rock crops up everywhere, interspersed with moory or sandy flats; and in sheltered corners there are fields of potatoes, oats, and barley, which, especially on the north-eastern shore, grow very well. The cattle are a small woolly haired breed, easily fed and very hardy. Craggy is the only epithet that will correctly describe the general appearance of the place; there are crags everywhere, interspersed with patches of pasture, which furnish a scanty and precarious herbage to the sheep and black cattle. Dunii is the highest hill on the island; it is situated towards the northern extremity, not far from the monastery, and rises to the height of more than 300 feet above the sea. Like the other hills, it is almost all naked rock. The south and south-western portion of the island is entirely uninhabited; and is still more wild and barren than the north. Across the middle of the island from east to west, there stretches an extensive belt of low and comparatively level land, called the Machar, or Plain. The eastern portion of this plain, called Sliganach, from its shelly beach, is fairly cultivated; the western part affords pasturage to a goodly number of sheep and small hardy cattle.

Port Ronan, the usual landing place, is close to the village near the centre of the eastern shore of the island. The village itself, in which there were some hovels as poor as any in Connemara, contains about a dozen of houses; the whole island has about 500 inhabitants, amongst whom, when we visited it, there was not a single Roman Catholic. There is a fair hotel; but as the Duke of Argyle allows no spirituous drinks to be sold on the island, of which he is proprietor, travellers who wish to procure refreshment of this kind had better take it with them. Porter was, however, surreptitiously sold in more than one house in the village.

When Columba, with his twelve companions, came to Iona, it was a wilderness, without inhabitants and without cultivation. Fishermen and pilgrims sometimes landed there, but none appear to have settled permanently in the island. Tighernach, the accurate annalist of Clonmacnoise, states expressly that the island of Hy was granted to Columcille by Conall, King of the Dalriada. On the other hand, Bede says that it was the gift of Brude, King of the Picts; but as Columcille was established at Iona before the conversion of Brude, we must understand Bede to mean that the King of the Picts confirmed the grant, which the sub-king Conall had already made to Columba. King Conall was the son of Comgall, who was a grandson of Fergus Mor Mac Earc, one of the leaders of the colony that came from Dalriada about the year A.D. 506 to establish themselves in Alba. Kintyre and Knapdale was the cradle of this gallant band, that founded the kingdom afterwards known as the Scottish Dalriada, whose princes became the stem of the royal line of Scotland's kings. It was from this prince Conall that Columba received permission to settle in Iona in the first instance, but Brude later on, being a much more powerful prince and ruler of the outer islands, confirmed the grant, most probably at the earnest request of Columba himself.

There is at present no trace of any of the original buildings founded by Columcille. They were probably, as at Durrow, constructed for the most part of perishable materials; but if of stone, they were entirely destroyed during the oft-renewed ravages of the Danes. We do not think it necessary to make here special reference to the churches of a later date, which have no particular connection with our subject. They are in two groups--the Cathedral group about 200 yards from the shore, somewhat to the north of Port Ronan; and a little to the south and nearer to the shore the nunnery group with the ancient parish church of Kilronan, a portion of whose walls are still standing. Near this group of ruins is an ancient cross standing by the way-side, and now commonly called M'Lean's Cross. It is a tall thin flag covered with interlacing ornaments of an Irish character. It is fixed in a kind of millstone;[259] and is probably as old as the time of Adamnan himself.

In the cathedral group may be noticed the Reilig Odhrain, or ancient cemetery surrounding the Church of St. Odhran, which is a little to the south of the cathedral. This Odhran was, according to the Irish Life, one of the twelve who came with Columcille, although Adamnan seems to imply that he was a Briton. He took sick and died in the island, and gladly met his end, that the burial of his body might, as Columcille said, fix the roots of the holy community in the island, and make it kindred earth. The cemetery was called by his name, and is to this day the only cemetery in the island; for Columcille saw Odhran's soul going to heaven, and he said that no request would be granted to anyone at his own tomb except it were first asked at the tomb of Odhran.

There is a large number of sculptured gravestones in this cemetery, and many of them beautifully wrought; but none are of the most ancient time, and very few of them bear inscriptions. Yet they are obviously the tombs of distinguished persons during the middle ages--of kings and princes; of bishops and abbots; of knights in armour with sword and shield--all resting side by side in Reilig Odhran.

There is a low square tower in the very centre of the "Cathedral," between the nave and chancel. It has also two transepts, and apparently two lady-chapels--nearly opposite the sacristy; perhaps one was a mortuary chapel. The cloister and other monastic buildings adjoined the church on the north-west--so as to enable the monks to enter from the cloister by a door beneath the tower. There are two crosses; one is still standing--St. Martin's--just before the great western doorway; the second cross, now broken, stood a little more to the north, and nearer to the wall of the church. The sculptured figures are much effaced by the hand of time, the severity of the climate, and partly, too, it is to be feared, by the zeal of the 'reformers.' In the little church of St. Odhran there was a beautifully sculptured crucifix just over the throne or abbot's seat; but it has been wantonly broken and defaced.

These, however--except the Reilig Odhran--are all the remains of the mediæval monastery and churches founded by the Scottish Kings long after the ravages of the Danes. It is now difficult to fix the exact site of Columba's monastery. It was in our opinion within the circular enclosure, a little to the north, just outside the wall enclosing the present cathedral ruins. The site of the mill, to which Adamnan refers, can easily be traced; there is the lakelet that served as a mill-pond; the stream that turned the mill still flows to the sea; and even the place of the sluice can be observed near the cottage, that has been probably built on the site of the mill. Just on the road side beyond the church-yard is the craggy eminence, which Adamnan refers to as the monticulus monasterio eminens; and Torr Abb--the Abbot's Rock--is still there within the present enclosure and on the same side of the road. Nature's land-marks are all there, and testify to the truth and accuracy of Adamnan's most minute details; but the works of human hands are gone--by men they were raised, and by men they were destroyed.

It is no part of our purpose to refer to Columba's missionary labours amongst the Picts of the Highlands, whom he converted to the faith of Christ. We can only make a brief reference to his influence both as a saint and as a scholar on the learning of his own time, and of subsequent ages.

In all the monasteries which he founded, we find that Columba made ample provision for the pursuit of sacred learning, and the multiplication of books, without which these studies could not be successfully carried on. He was himself, as we have already seen, a celebrated scribe:--

"Three hundred gifted, lasting, Illuminated, noble books he wrote."[260]

In Iona there was always one or more scribes constantly at work; and it was considered a most honourable occupation. Baithen, who succeeded Columba as Abbot, was frequently employed as scribe, and on one occasion he wrote rather quickly--percurrens scripsi--a copy of the Psalter, yet so accurately, that there was not a mistake of a single letter, except in one word where the vowel i was omitted. Sometimes the scribe became abbot, but at other times he became the bishop, usually resident in the community, to perform episcopal functions in Iona, and its dependant houses. Dorbene, abbot in A.D. 713, was a "choice scribe." We have one of his manuscripts still with his name in it;[261] and the celebrated Adamnan, of whom we shall speak more fully hereafter, also wrote a beautiful hand. There was, doubtless, a scriptorium in Iona; and reference is explicitly made to waxen tablets for writing--tabulae--and also to the pens and styles--graphia and calami--and to the ink horn--cornicula atramenti.

The study of the Holy Scripture was their primary concern; the psaltery was generally got by heart; the Lives of the Saints were read for the community; and the works especially of the Latin Fathers, were frequently studied. Classical learning was not neglected in Iona, and the writings of Adamnan show that he was familiar with the best Latin authors, and had some knowledge of Greek also.[262] Theological and moral conferences were also held from time to time in presence of the principal members of the community. It was a monastic principle at Iona as elsewhere "to let not a single hour pass in which the monk should not be engaged either in prayer, or reading, or writing, or some other useful work."[263] This was, Adamnan tells us, the invariable practice of Columba himself; and he sought to make it the rule of life in all the monasteries that he founded. A great portion of the time was undoubtedly given to manual labour--but then laborare est orare--whilst the hands laboured, the thoughts were with God; and besides labour is in itself a prayer, when the toil is necessary and the purpose holy.[264]

It was also prescribed in the Rule attributed to St. Columba that the monk should help his brethren by giving them instruction, or by writing for them; or if he were not qualified to discharge these important works of charity, then he was to help them by sewing their garments, or by whatever labour they might be most in want of--the principle being, never to be idle, and to help others as far as possible.[265]

II.--COLUMBA PROTECTS THE BARDS.

Another way in which Columba exercised great influence on learning in Ireland was by his successful efforts to preserve the Bards from the destruction with which they were threatened.

All our history and all our literature, even to some extent our laws, down to the time of Tighernach, were written in verse. Some people might think it better if they were written in prose; but the probability is--if we did not have them in verse, we should not have had them at all. "It was their duty," says O'Donnell in his Irish Life of St. Columba, "to record the achievements, wars, and triumphs of the kings, princes and chiefs; to preserve their genealogies, and define the rights of noble families; to ascertain and set forth the limits and extent of the sub-kingdoms and territories ruled over by the princes and chiefs."

But the Bards did not confine themselves to their official duties. Being a highly privileged class, they soon increased in numbers by the admission of their sons and other relatives amongst their ranks. They became greedy of gain, importunate in their demands, and oppressive in their exactions. They lived at free quarters, extolling their benefactors with extravagant praise, and satirizing the niggardly with unsparing invective. Even their best friends at length became weary of their importunities. The king had expelled them from his palace; but a party of them soon after reappeared, and audaciously demanded as their fee the royal brooch--the Roth Croi--which the king wore on his breast.

Tired of their eulogies and exactions, he and the whole nation rose up against the avarice and venom of the Bards. Their old enemies grew strong in numbers and courage, for now the king himself was on their side. A great convention was to be held forthwith; and it was given out as the fixed purpose of the king and his chiefs to procure the total abolition of the Bardic Order; and thus get rid of them and their exactions for ever.

The Bards were now thoroughly alarmed. The whole country was against them, and they probably felt that they were guilty. In this great emergency there was only one person powerful enough to help them; to him they appealed to come to their relief, and save them from destruction; and Columba listened to their prayer.

At this time his influence was all-powerful both in Erin and Alba. He was a cousin of the High King of Erin; he had inaugurated at Iona the king of the Scottish Dalriada, who was also his connection by blood. He had founded many monasteries in both countries; and though he was a stern ruler, he was beloved and venerated by his disciples. He was known to be a man of miracles, filled with the spirit of prophecy, and powerful in word and work. Every one in Ireland had heard how he converted Pictland; how the barred doors of King Brude's fort flew open at his touch. Many feared him; but more loved, and all reverenced him.

The great Convention of Drumceat, in which the fate of the Bards, as well as some other important questions were to be decided, appears to have been held in A.D. 575. "The precise spot," says Reeves, "where the assembly was held is the long mound in Roe Park, near Newtownlimavaddy, called the Mullagh, and sometimes Daisy Hill." Aedh Mac Ainmire was king of Ireland at this period, and was a first cousin once removed of Columcille. The saint was accompanied to the meeting by Aidan, king of the Scottish Dalriada, who was resolved to assert the independence of his kingdom, and have it formally recognised without bloodshed in this great assembly. Through the aid of Columcille he was successful. The next request made by the saint was the liberation of Scanlan Mor, son of the king of Ossory, who was most unjustly kept in bonds by the High King. In this demand also Columba, though not without difficulty, succeeded. The third great question--the proposed abolition of the Bards--was then taken into consideration.

King Aedh himself was their accuser. All the princes of the line of Conn were ranged around him. The Bards were there, too, with the illustrious chief Bard, Dallan Forgaill. The queen and her ladies were, it is said, also present; and twenty bishops, forty priests, thirty deacons, and many clergy of inferior grade were seated near Columcille in this great parliament of the Irish nation.

The king brought all those charges against the Bards, to which we have already referred--their avarice, their idleness, their exactions, their insolence; and he called upon the assembly to dissolve the Order, and take away all their privileges. Then Columcille arose; and all that vast assembly did him reverence. With his clear and strong melodious voice, which was borne to the utmost verge of the vast multitude, he defended the ancient Order of the Bards of Erin. He did not deny the existence of grave abuses--let them be corrected; and in future let the guilty be severely punished. But why destroy the Order itself? Who would then preserve the records of the nation--celebrate the great deeds of its kings and warriors--or chant a dirge for the noble dead? His eloquence carried the assembly with him. The Order was preserved from destruction; but it was to be reformed, and restrained by salutary laws from such excesses in future.

It is said that on this occasion Columba made a formal visitation of all the religious houses which he or his immediate disciples had founded in Ireland. It was no easy task to accomplish, for Dr. Reeves in his notes furnishes a list of no less than thirty-seven monasteries throughout the northern half of Ireland, of which Columba is the reputed founder and patron. Besides Durrow, Derry, and Kells, he was also the founder of Swords, Drumcliff, Screen, Kilglass, Drumcolumb, and many other celebrated houses, to which we cannot now refer in detail.[266]

There is a story told, but without good authority, that during these visits to Ireland Columcille wore a cere-cloth over his eyes, and had clay from Iona in his sandals; so that in accordance with the penance imposed on him by St. Molaise, he neither trod the soil of Ireland, nor looked upon his native land again. If such a penance were ever imposed, it was too rigid to be always binding, and even if it were binding, such a public cause as attendance at the assembly of Drumceat would render his presence there necessary and lawful, without making any special effort to observe his obligation to the letter.

Columba was at this period the most powerful man either in Ireland or Scotland. Large grants of land were made to his monasteries, and thousands of people begged to be enrolled amongst his disciples. St. Patrick himself had not greater influence than Columba possessed at this period in the North of Ireland.

In gratitude to Columba for preserving the Bardic Order in Erin, Dallan Forgaill composed the celebrated poem in praise of Columcille, known as the Amhra Choluimcille, to which we shall refer again. But Dallan did more effective service to Irish literature in another way. By the advice and under the direction of the saint, he reorganized and reformed the Bardic Order, as decreed by the assembly of Drumceat, and moreover founded regular schools for the instruction of the young aspirants of the Order. This tended to check their vagabond disorderly habits, which led to so many abuses in the past. These schools also fostered habits of systematic study, encouraged the cultivation of the Celtic language, and developed a taste for general literature even outside the monastic schools.

According to Keating, who had sources of information at hand that have since been lost, Dallan appointed four Arch-poets--one for each province--who were to preside over these Bardic schools, and carry out the regulations enacted at Drumceat. There is no doubt that it is in a great measure to these schools of the Bards, and the systematic training which their pupils received, that we owe the preservation not only of the ancient and authentic chronicles of Erin, but also of that immense mass of romantic literature in the Gaedhlic tongue, which at length is beginning to attract the attention not only of British, but also of foreign scholars. It was the monastic schools, no doubt, that preserved and transcribed the Lives of the Saints, which, in spite of many fables, have added so much to our knowledge of ancient Erin in things profane, as well as in things sacred. We know what the Four Masters have done for the literature and history of ancient Erin. But they were in reality the last and not unworthy representatives of the ancient Bards of Erin. Through good and ill they laboured to preserve and perpetuate the knowledge of our ancient books; and when the nation's day was darkest, and the future without a single ray of hope to light up the deepening gloom, they sat down in the ruined convent of Donegal, and at the peril of their lives, arranged and transcribed for posterity those immortal Annals, which, like the work of the Greek historian, will be our treasured possession for all time.

We cannot narrate in detail the subsequent history of Columba's life. It was such as we have already seen, a life of study, of labour, of prayer, a life of missionary toil that carried the light of the Gospel over stormy seas to the remotest islands on the west of Scotland, and over pathless mountains to the Pictish tribes on its farthest eastern border.

We must hasten to the close of his glorious career, and see, as it were with our own eyes, in the simple narrative of his biographer, how an Irish saint could die.

III.--THE DEATH OF COLUMBA.

There is no more touching or edifying scene recorded in the life of any saint, than that which exhibits in the simple language of his biographer the beautiful death of Columba. We shall give it as far as possible, in Adamnan's own words.

In the month of May before his death the saint paid a visit to his monks, where they were working on the farm in the western part of the island, and on that occasion he told them that God would, if he (Columba) wished it, have called him away at Easter, but that he was unwilling then to leave his beloved monks, and turn the joyous festival of Easter into one of grief and sadness for them. Now, however, the day of his departure, he said, was fast approaching, when he should have to leave them for ever. Then they were all filled with grief at his words; he however, sought as best he could to give them consolation, and turning towards the east in the direction of the monastery, he blessed it, with the entire island, and all its inhabitants. In consequence of this blessing no noxious thing has ever since been seen in our island. Immediately afterwards the saint returned to the monastery.

Some days later Columba whilst saying Mass in the church had a vision of an angel, whom God sent to warn him that he should soon be called away.

Now on the last day of that same week, that is, on Saturday, the venerable man went out with Diarmait, his attendant, to bless the barn; and after he blessed it, he observed that he was glad to see from the great heaps of corn that his dear monks would have enough of food for the year, even if he himself were called away. Then Diarmait was sad, and said, "You grieve us often of late, father, by referring to your approaching departure from amongst us." "I will tell you a secret, Diarmait," replied the saint, "if you promise faithfully never to reveal it to any one before my death." Diarmait promised on his knees, and then Columba said, "This day (Saturday) is called in Scripture the Sabbath: and it will also be the Sabbath of my labours, for on this coming Sunday night I will, in the words of Scripture, be gathered to my fathers. My Lord Jesus has deigned just now to invite me; and at midnight I shall depart in obedience to his summons." Diarmait hearing these words, began to weep, and the saint strove as well as he could to console him.

On their way home from the barn to the monastery, the saint sat down to rest himself on the roadside, at the spot where the cross now stands fixed in the millstone. And as he sat resting his aged limbs, the old white horse that used to carry the milk-pails from the byre to the monastery, came up to the saint, and put his head in the saint's bosom, as if the animal had the use of reason, and knew that his master was going to leave him; and the horse seemed deeply grieved and appeared to shed tears like a human being in his master's bosom. Then the saint was deeply moved, and blessed the poor faithful horse, "for," he said, "it is God that has made known to him through instinct that he will see me no more."

And going thence the saint ascended the hill that overlooks the monastery (now called Cnoc-na-Carnan), and standing on its summit he raised his two hands aloft and blessed his monastery, and foretold that the kings of the Scots, and even the rulers of rude and foreign nations with their subjects would yet pay much honour to his poor monastery, and that the saints of other churches too would hold it in veneration.

Then he came down the hill and went straight to his cell, and sat there copying the psaltery. But as soon as he came to that verse of the thirty-third psalm where it is written--Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono--"Here I must stop," he said, "at the end of this page--let Baithen write the rest." And it was an appropriate verse for him to end with, as the next was an appropriate one for his successor to begin with--Venite filii, audite me, timoren Domini docebo vos.

Having written his last verse the saint went to the church to join in the first vespers of the Sunday, which are chanted on Saturday evening; and when the office was over he returned to his little cell and sat down upon his bed during the night--that bed was a naked rock with a stone for a pillow--the stone that now stands beside his grave as the title of his monument. Whilst sitting thus on the rocky bed he gave his last instructions to his monks in the hearing of Diarmait alone. "My little children," he said, "my last words to you are:--Cherish mutual and unfeigned love for each other, and God will never let you want the necessaries of life in this world, and you will have, moreover, eternal glory in the world to come."

And now, as the happy hour of his departure was quickly approaching, he became silent for a little. But as soon as the bell for matins struck at the midnight hour, he rose up quickly, and going to the church before the others he entered it alone and threw himself on his bended knees in prayer near the altar. Diarmait, his attendant, followed a little more slowly to the church, and at that moment as he approached the door, he saw the church lit up with a bright angelic light as if shining over the saint. Others saw it too at the same moment, but when they came nearer it disappeared. Diarmait then entered the church, and groping through the darkness--for the lights were not yet brought in--he found the saint stretched before the altar, and raising him gently, he sat down beside him and took his holy head and laid it in his bosom.

The crowd of monks now coming up with lights, and seeing their father dying, broke out into lamentation. But the saint, as we heard from those who were present, lifting his eyes towards heaven, looked around him on both sides, and his face was full of a wondrous heavenly joy, as if he were looking at angels. Then Diarmait raised the saint's right hand to bless the circle of monks, and our holy father moved his hand as well as he could, so that he might with the motion of his hand give them that blessing which he could not utter with his voice. Having thus blessed them, he immediately expired; yet his face remained still bright-coloured, so that he did not look like one that was dead but only sleeping. Meanwhile, the whole church was filled with wailing.

So passed away the blessed Columba, as he had foretold, on Sunday night a little after 12 o'clock, the 9th of June, in the year of our Lord 597. It was the seventy-seventh of his age, and the thirty-fourth of his pilgrimage in Iona.

As soon as matins were finished, the blessed body of the saint was carried back to the hospice, accompanied by all the brethren chanting psalms. Thereafter for three days and three nights the obsequies of the saint were celebrated with all due and fitting rites. After which the venerable body of our holy patron was wrapped up in clean linen and buried in a coffin with all reverence--but Adamnan does not mention the exact spot, where it was laid.

IV.--THE WRITINGS OF COLUMBA.

Many writings have been circulated under the name of the great St. Columba--some few of which are genuine, but most of them spurious. We shall very briefly call attention to both. There are three Latin poems published in the second volume of the Liber Hymnorum by the late Dr. Todd, which are generally regarded by critics as genuine. The first and most celebrated is the Altus Prosator. It was first printed by Colgan from the Book of Hymns preserved at St. Isidore's. A splendid edition has also been lately printed by the Marquis of Bute, who has good reason to regard Columba as the patron saint of his family, which is sprung from the early Dalriadan Kings.

The Altus Prosator is beyond any doubt a very ancient poem, written in rather rude Latinity, but syntactically correct, that is, if we make allowance for the errors and ignorance of the copyists. It consists of twenty-two capitula or stanzas, each stanza consisting of six lines, except the first which being in honour of the Holy Trinity has seven, and each line has sixteen syllables. The meter is a kind of trochaic tetrameter, with a pause after the eighth syllable, and a rhyme or assonance at the end of the lines. The first word of each of the twenty-two stanzas begins with one of the letters of the alphabet in regular order according to the Hebrew letters.

There is a preface, or introduction, to the whole poem, and a brief notice of the title and subject matter at the head of each stanza. The preface which is substantially the same both in the Book of Hymns and in the Leabhar Breac, sets forth as usual the time, place, motive, and author of the poem, but gives two different accounts. The author was, according to all accounts, Columcille, and he wrote the poem in the Black Church of Derry after much careful preparation. His motive was to praise God and do penance for the sins he had committed, especially in causing the bloody battle of Cuil-Dreimhne. The time was during the reign of Aedh Mac Ainmire in Erin, and of Aidan, son of Gabhran in Dalriada. The other account represents the poem as written in Iona, while Columba was grinding a bag of meal in the mill for the entertainment of some clerics who came from Rome to present him, in the name of Pope Gregory, with a richly enshrined relic of the true Cross, known afterwards as Morgemm, and long, it is said, preserved at Iona. This is a much less plausible explanation than the former, and probably invented by some foolish admirers of the saint, who did not relish the idea of Columcille having to do penance for grave faults of anger and indiscretion.

The poem is the production of a fervent and pious spirit that feels the power and mercy of God's all-ruling Providence in the past, and in the present. It describes the Trinity, the Angels, the creation of the world, and the fall of man, also the deluge and other noteworthy events in sacred history, ending with a vivid description of the terrors of the last judgment. Many graces are promised to those who recite it worthily: Angels will attend them while chanting it; the devil shall not know their way to lie in wait for them, nor their enemies to destroy them; there shall be no strife in the house where it is sung; it protects against sudden and violent death; and there shall be no want where it is regularly recited.

Columba's second Latin Hymn, known, as the In te Christe, is merely the complement of the Altus Prosator. Columba sent that latter Hymn to Pope Gregory in Rome in return for the portion of the Cross which he had sent to Columba. When it was recited before the Pope he was greatly pleased with it, especially as he was privileged to see the Angels listening to it at the same time. He observed that there was only one fault in it--that the praise of the Trinity was too scanty, being confined to the first stanza alone. Columcille hearing this resolved to supplement the Altus by another poem in praise of the Holy Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It contains fifteen rhyming couplets of the same character as those in the Altus, but its authenticity is by no means so certain. The fact that it is contained in the Book of Hymns proves, however, that it is a very ancient poem, although even there in the preface some doubt is thrown on its authenticity.

The third Latin Hymn attributed to Columba is the Noli Pater containing seven rhyming couplets, with sixteen syllables in the line. It is found in the Book of Hymns. The short preface says that it was composed by the saint in Daire Calgaich at the time that he received the grant of that place from Aedh Mac Ainmire; and the messengers came at the same time announcing Mobhi's death, and bearing his girdle as the token of the saint's permission for Columcille to found his church. But just then the place took fire, and Columcille composed the hymn to stay the ravages of the flames. And it has been sung from that time forward as a protection against fire, and lightning, and the wrath of the elements.

The following is the first stanza of the Altus which shows the metre.

"Altus prosător, vetustus dierum et ingenitus, Erat absque origine primordii et crepidine, Est et erit in saecula saeculorum infinitus, Cui est unigenitus Christus et Spiritus Sanctus Coaeternus in gloria Deitatis perpetuae; Non tres Deos depromimus, sed unum Deum dicimus Salva fide in personis tribus gloriosissimis."

The two principal Irish poems attributed to Columcille are the "Dialogue of Columcille and Cormac in Hy"--and his pathetic "Lament for his Native Land"--to both of which we have already referred. There is a third poem known as his "Farewell to Aran," which has been rendered into English verse by another true poet, Aubrey de Vere. T. D. Sullivan has given a very beautiful rendering, if not of the words, at least of the spirit of Columba's "Lament for his Native Land." "The 'Dialogue' and the 'Lament' may not," says Reeves, "be genuine, but they are poems of very considerable antiquity, and the first shows the early notions which existed in Ireland about Cormac's adventures, and his relations to Columba." Colgan is inclined to think them genuine, and has given them amongst the reputed writings of the saint. They may have been retouched by some bard later than Columba's time; but in our opinion they represent substantially poems that were really written by the saint. They breathe his pious spirit, his ardent love for nature, and his undying affection for his native land. Although retouched perhaps by a later hand, they savour so strongly of the true Columbian spirit that we are disposed to reckon them amongst the genuine compositions of the saint.

That Columba was indeed a true prophet, to whom God made known to some extent things future and things distant, is clearly shown by his biographer Adamnan. It was probably his fame in this respect that gave some countenance to the "forgeries" that were circulated under his name, not one of which appears to have the smallest claim to be considered genuine: although some of them are undoubtedly very ancient. O'Curry found one of them in the Book of Leinster, purporting to be a prophecy of the coming of the Danes on Lough Ree, and their occupation of the abbacy of Armagh. Reference is also made to the death of Cormac MacCullinan, and the destruction of Aileach by Mortogh O'Brien, and to similar historical events that were manifestly foretold (and sometimes with mistakes) after they had happened. But in the MS. Columcille is described as narrating these things in cold Iona to Baithen, his friend and successor. Both Reeves and O'Curry justly denounce the spirit of greed and impiety, that would in recent times try to palm off on simple-minded people certain impudent forgeries as the genuine oracles of the saints of God. Such fraudulent practices are injurious to religion: they dishonour the saints, and are unworthy of any publisher who calls himself a Catholic.

V.--LIVES OF COLUMCILLE.

Of these Colgan with his usual industry and erudition has published five. The author of Colgan's First Life is unknown, but Colgan believed that it was written by some contemporary or disciple of the saint, and he therefore placed it first in order. The Second Life is attributed by Colgan to Cuimine the Fair[267] (Cuimineus Albus), seventh abbot of Hy; who, if he did not himself see the saint, was in daily intercourse with those who did. Adamnan cites this author by name, and embodies the work in his own splendid biography. The Third Life is that published by Capgrave, and taken by him from John of Teignmouth--a learned Benedictine monk, who flourished about the year A.D. 1366. He was a mere compiler, not an author. Colgan's Fourth Life is the celebrated one by Adamnan, to which we shall refer at length a little later on. The Fifth Life is a lengthy one written in Irish. Its author was Manus O'Donnell, chief of Tir-Connell, as the writer distinctly sets forth in his Preface:--"Be it known to the readers of this Life, that it was Manus, son of Hugh, son of Hugh Roe, son of Niall Garve, son of Torlogh of the Wine O'Donnell, that ordered the part of this Life, which was in Latin to be put into Gaelic, and who ordered the part that was in difficult Gaelic to be modified so that it might be clear and comprehensible to every one; and who gathered and put together the parts of it that were scattered through the old books of Erin; and who dictated it out of his own mouth, with great labour and a great expenditure of time in studying how he should arrange all its parts in their proper places, as they are left here in writing by us; and in love and friendship for his illustrious Saint, Relative, and Patron, to whom he was devoutly attached. It was in the castle of Port-na-tri-namad (that is Lifford--the Port of the three enemies) that this Life was indited when were fulfilled twelve and twenty and five hundred and one thousand years of the age of the Lord (A.D. 1532)."

What may be called the autograph copy--it has never yet been printed--exists, says Dr. Reeves, in all its original dimensions, beauty, and material excellence written in large vellum folio in double columns, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Colgan's edition is merely an abstract of the Irish life rendered into Latin. It may be safely said that O'Donnell's Life comprises everything that has been written, or handed down by tradition, concerning Columcille. Some of the miraculous stories which he gives were deemed so extravagant even by Colgan, that he omitted them in his own compilation. Still, this Life is of great value, and we hope to see it soon fitly edited by some competent Irish scholar.

VI.--OTHER SCHOLARS OF IONA.

Besides Columba himself there were several other distinguished scholars connected with Iona. Of these the most distinguished was the celebrated Adamnan, ninth abbot of Hy. Before, however, giving an account of Adamnan, it will be useful to give a brief sketch of some of his predecessors in the abbatial chair.

"Let Baithen write the rest," said Columba, when he was attacked with his last illness, and dropped his pen at the end of the page in the middle of the thirty-third psalm. The saying was taken as an indication of his wish that Baithen should succeed him as head of the Columbian Houses. He was a cousin of the founder, and had been for many years prior of Iona. Moreover, he was in every way fitted for the high office by his virtues, his learning, and his prudence. Kinship with the founder, too, was deemed at the time an indispensable qualification for holding the abbacy. The monastic family formed, as it were, a kind of spiritual clan or tribe, and as connection by blood with the head of the tribe was deemed necessary for the chieftaincy in the temporal order, so also was it deemed for many generations to be essential in the spiritual order likewise.

Baithen from his boyhood was the pupil of Columba himself, and inherited all his virtues. He was especially remarkable for his spirit of prayer. When walking his hands were clasped in prayer beneath his habit: when working at the harvest he prayed whilst he was carrying his handful of oats to the sheaf; even at his meals he said, Deus in adjutorum meum intende, between every two morsels of food. He was a monk in Derry, when chosen by Columba to accompany him to Iona. There he was appointed a general overseer of the work done by the monks in the field, but being an accomplished scribe, he was often engaged in reading and writing. Like his friend and master, whatever time he did not spend in relieving the wants of others, he gave to reading, or prayer, or bodily labour; so his Life expressly states.

His great virtues marked him as a fitting person to be sent to govern the monastery, which Columba had founded at Magh-Lunga--the Plain of the Ships--in the Island of Heth, called also Ethica, 'the low lying land of the barley,' as it is called in an ancient Gaedhlic poem. It was situated about twenty miles to the north-west of Iona, from which it is of course distinctly visible. It is a low, sandy tract, about eleven miles long, and varying in breadth from one to three. He, however, maintained a constant connection with the parent house, which he frequently visited; for twenty miles even of that wild sea were as nothing to the hardy sailor monks, who knew that God watched over them on sea as well as on land. He wrought many miracles, and possessed in a very striking manner that power, which our Saviour gave His apostles, of casting out devils.[268] He is also recognized either as the founder or patron saint of Taugh-boyne (Teach-Baeithin), in the barony of Raphoe, county Donegal. It is not unlikely that this was his native district, and was afterwards placed under his special protection.

Baithen's rule as Abbot of Iona was very brief--from A.D. 597 to A.D. 600--three years exactly, if these dates are correct; for he died on the same day of the month as his beloved master Columcille. He was seized near the altar with a fainting fit on Tuesday, the 4th of June. The brethren crowded round him in tears, for they thought he was going to die, and Dermitius, Columba's old attendant, said to them, "You see, my brothers, what a small interval will separate the feast-days of our two abbots." Thereupon Baithen opened his eyes, and prayed earnestly to God not to take him out of the world until the feast-day of his beloved master. His prayer was heard; he died like Columba on the 9th of June, and, doubtless, was buried beside him in that church, where they so often joined in prayer before the same altar.

The very last sentence in the Life, as given in the Salamanca MS., states that the intense pains, which he suffered, did not prevent the sick monk from continuing his constant occupation of writing, praying, and teaching, up to the very moment of his happy death.

Writing, praying, and teaching--truly fit occupations for the head of a great monastic school. No wonder that Fintin, son of Lippan, when asked about the learning of St. Baithen, replied--"Be assured that he had no equal on this side of the Alps in his knowledge of sacred Scripture, and in the profundity of his science."[269] There is an old Irish poem still extant, purporting to be a dialogue between Columcille and Baithen, which has been attributed to the latter; and some verses eulogistic of Columba have also been circulated under his name. That he was a man of great learning is undoubted; and that he left his spirit behind him in Iona will be seen from what follows.

Columba used to say that Baithen was like St. John the Beloved in his innocence and simplicity of heart, and that even in the rigorous discipline of perfection they were not much unlike; but that it was very different with their fosterers--he himself was very far indeed from being like unto Christ.

Laisren, who had been Abbot of Durrow during Columba's lifetime, was now called to succeed Baithen in Iona. We know little of his history, except that he was uncle of Seghine, the fifth abbot, who ruled from A.D. 623 to A.D. 652, during the stormy period of the Paschal Controversies. The latter was an ardent defender of the ancient discipline both as to the tonsure and paschal observance. He had been a pupil of Columba in Iona; and was of his knowledge able to testify to many things concerning the saint in presence of the Abbot Falveus, the immediate predecessor of Adamnan.

In literary history Seghine is chiefly remarkable as the person to whom Cummian addressed his celebrated Epistle on the Paschal Question in the year A.D. 634, to which we have referred at length already.[270] The superscription is "Segieno Abbati Columbae Sancti et Caeterorum Sanctorum Successori"--a high testimony to the reputed sanctity of his predecessors. Seghine was also one of those to whom the Roman clergy during the vacancy of the See in A.D. 640, addressed an important letter on the same subject. This shows that from his high official position, as head of the Columbian monasteries, and, doubtless, also from his high personal character, it was deemed of the greatest importance to secure the adhesion of Seghine to the Roman discipline. In this, however, the authors of both the letters were disappointed. Seghine, who was animated with the unyielding and somewhat, haughty spirit of Conal Gulban's line, could not bring himself to believe that his sainted predecessors, whose holiness was proved by so many miracles, could by any possibility be wrong in the discipline which they followed. The monks who were trained under him, like Aidan and Colman of Lindisfarne, were animated with the same spirit; so that even after the Conference of Whitby the aged Colman preferred to leave his beloved retreat in Lindisfarne, and sail back again to his stormy home on the coast of Mayo, rather than adopt the new discipline; and we know that the Irish monks of Lindisfarne followed him to a man.

Seghine was succeeded by Suibhne, the first "outsider" whom the monks of Iona elected as head of their Order. Colgan observes that his genealogy is not recorded in our native annals; whence we may infer that he owed his elevation to his merit rather than to the accident of his birth. He died in A.D. 657. His successor, Cuimine, was of the Cenel-Conail line, for he was nephew of Seghine, the fifth abbot. He wrote a tract, De Virtutibus S. Columbae, which is cited by Adamnan. It really forms the groundwork of Adamnan's Third Book, into which it has been bodily transferred. It has been also published by Colgan, and the Bollandists, though from different sources. It is also to be found in the recently published Salamanca Codex. This life shows that Cuimine was an excellent Latin scholar, and although scarcely possessing the wide culture of Adamnan, he is little inferior to that celebrated writer, in the graphic account which he gives of the miracles and virtues of St. Columba.

The Paschal Epistle already referred to has been attributed to this Cuimineus Albus, as Adamnan calls him. We have shown elsewhere that the real author was Cummian Fada, Bishop of Clonfert; and it is well known that during the whole of the seventh century the entire community of Iona was vehemently opposed to the adoption of that discipline, which the author of the Paschal Epistle advocates and defends. This of itself proves that the Abbot of Hy was not its author. We are now come to Adamnan, the ninth abbot, whose history we must narrate at greater length.

VII.--ADAMNAN, NINTH ABBOT OF HY.

In the year 1845 Dr. Ferdinand Keller was poking with a German's pertinacity through the shelves of the Town Library of Schaffhausen, in Switzerland. In a corner of the room he found a high book chest filled with all kinds of old MSS., without title or number of any kind, and at the very bottom of the heap he came upon a dark brown parchment manuscript, bound in moth-eaten beech wood, covered with calf skin, carefully clasped in front, and very neatly and curiously sewed at the back. It was a goodly quarto of 68 leaves, with double columns, written on dark coloured goat skin parchment in large heavy drawn letters of the character known as minuscular. Everything about the MS. showed great antiquity--the cover, the parchment, the lettering, and the ornamentation. Dr. Keller at first thought he had come upon a hitherto undiscovered treasure; but in this he was mistaken. He only recovered a lost treasure, and secured its preservation for the learned world. On examination, the MS. turned out to be the oldest and most authentic copy of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, made in Iona either during the life time of Adamnan himself, or certainly within a few years after his death.

The monastery of Richenau in the ninth century appears to have had many Irish inmates; and this is not unnatural, for the great Irish monastery of St. Gall was within a few miles of the shore of Lake Constance, and considerable intercourse would naturally take place between the two houses. Walafridus Strabo, Abbot of Reichenau, from A.D. 842 to A.D. 849, had been previously Dean of St. Gall, and in his writings shows an intimate knowledge of many things connected with Ireland, which he could have learned only from Irishmen.[271] We know, too, from other sources, that crowds of Irishmen came to France and Germany in the beginning of the ninth century, and that many of them brought their books from their schools at home along with them, as Dungal brought the books which he bequeathed to the monastery of Bobbio. It is thus easy to understand how some of the monks of Iona, driven from home by the Norsemen, who so often plundered the Island about the beginning of the ninth century, would migrate to some friendly monastery on the continent, carrying their literary treasures with them.

There can, however, be no doubt that the Schaffhausen MS. of St. Columba's Life was written in the Island of Hy by one of the Family, so early as the beginning of the eighth century. The character is of that peculiar kind of which we have almost contemporary specimens the Book of Kells, and the Book of Durrow, and which is now universally acknowledged to be purely Irish; the ornamentation of the chapters and of the capital letters is Irish; the orthography is Irish, and what is stranger than all, the Lord's Prayer is written in Greek on the last page of the MS., and in Greek, of which we have other specimens remaining in old Irish MSS. with the same peculiar spelling, in the same semi-uncial character, without accents, and without breathings--a fact which of itself indisputably proves that the Greek tongue was taught and written in the Irish School of Hy, 1170 years ago.

The Colophon, or superscription, in rubric, at folio 136, at the end of the life, records, according to the usual custom, the name of the scribe:--"Whoever reads these books on the virtues of St. Columba, let him pray to the Lord for me, Dorbbeneus, that after death I may possess eternal life."

In A.D. 713, Tighernach records the death of Dorbene, Abbot of Hy, the very year of his election to that high office. There can be no doubt that this Dorbene was the writer of the Schaffhausen MS.; there is no mention of any other of the same name in our annals except of one Dorbene, whose son Failan is said to have died in A.D. 724. This Dorbene was as Dr. Reeves thinks, a layman; and, if his son died in A.D. 724, he himself in the course of nature must have lived and died before Adamnan. But the Abbot who died in A.D. 713, would have outlived Adamnan only nine years, and in all probability had been for many years scribe of the monastery, and may have written the book at the dictation of Adamnan himself.

And now, who was Adamnan? Unfortunately we know very little of his early youth. He gives us to understand, at least by implication, that he was born at or near Drumhome, in the barony of Tirhugh, and co. Donegal. The church of Drumhome was founded by St. Columba, but St. Adamnan is the patron; and this fact, too, indicates his connection with the locality. There, also, he seems to have spent his earlier years; for it was there he says, "in my youth that a very old man called Ferreol, a servant of Christ, who is buried in Drumhome, told me of a glorious vision which he saw, when fishing in the valley of the Finn, on the night of Columba's death." Scarcely any traces of the old church of Drumhome now remain; but it was once nobly endowed by the O'Donnells. Even so late as A.D. 1609, an Inquisition tells us that "there are in the said parish of Drumhome, four quarters of church land, three quarters of Columbkille's land, each quarter containing six townlands, then in the possession of Lewis O'Cleary," the head of that family, which the Four Masters have made illustrious for ever. The old church was finely situated near the shore of the Bay of Donegal, not far from Ballintra, and in view of the bold range of mountains, where the sons of Conal Gulban so long and so nobly defended their ancient freedom.

Adamnan's father, Ronan, was sixth in descent from that same Conal Gulban, and thus belonged to the royal blood of Tirconnell; his mother was Ronnat, a daughter of Enna, who gave his name to Tirenna, the territory that in ancient times extended from Lough Foyle to Lough Swilly. Thus Adamnan was of the same family as St. Columba himself; for Columba was grandson of Fergus, son of Conal Gulban, and Adamnan was sixth in descent from the same Fergus. He was born in A.D. 624, according to the best authorities, just twenty-seven years after Columba's death, and, as we may fairly assume, was in his youth placed under the care of the monks of Drumhome, in whose old churchyard he himself tells us many of the monks of Columba await a happy resurrection.

How long the boy remained in his native Tirhugh, feeding his spirit on the glorious vision of its waves and mountains, we cannot now ascertain. It was at that time, as we have seen, the custom of scholars, even of the noblest birth, to visit the great monastic schools of the country, and all the more celebrated masters were surrounded by crowds of eager students, who lived on their wits, and lodged as best they could, generally in little huts of their own contrivance. A curious story is told of St. Adamnan himself in his youth, which amusingly illustrates what may be called the University life of the time.

Finnachta, afterwards Monarch of Ireland, from A.D. 675 to 695, and Adamnan's greatest friend, although of the blood royal, was at first very poor. He had a house and wife, but only one ox and one cow. Now the king of Feara Ross (Carrickmacross) strayed to the neighbourhood of Finnachta's hut; his wife, too, was with him and a crowd of retainers; but they could not find their way home, for the night came on dark, cold, and stormy, so they were forced to take refuge in the hut. Small as it was, the size of the house was greater than its wealth. Finnachta, however, "struck the ox on the head and the cow on the head," and feasted all the king's people sumptuously, so that no one was hungry.

Then the King and Queen of Feara Ross gave large herds of cattle to the generous Finnachta, and made him a great man. Shortly after this time Finnachta, not yet king however, was one day coming with a large troop of horse to his sister's house, and as they rode along they overtook Adamnan, then a young school boy, travelling the same road with a vessel full of milk on his back. Anxious to get out of the way, Adamnan stumbled and fell, spilling all the milk and breaking the jar to pieces. The cavalcade rather enjoyed the fun and rode away; but Adamnan pursued them closely, and said: "O, good men, I have reason to be sad, for there are three good school-boys in one house, and they have us as two messengers--for there is always one going about seeking food for the five--and it came to my turn to-day. The gathering I made is scattered, and what I grieve for far more, the borrowed vessel has been broken and I have no means to pay for it." Then Finnachta declared he would make it all right, and he kept his word. He not only paid for the vessel but he brought the scholars--clerics they are called--to his own house, and their teacher along with them; he fitted up the ale-house for their reception, and gave them such abounding good cheer that the professor, exhilarated by the ale, or filled with the spirit of prophecy, as the annals say, declared that Finnachta would one day become the King of all Ireland, "and Adamnan shall be the head of the wisdom of Erin, and shall become 'soul's friend,' or confessor to the king."

When Adamnan was duly trained in the wisdom of the Irish schools at home his thoughts naturally turned to Iona. For that remote islet, surrounded by the stormy waters and under the misty skies of the Hebrides, had long been the religious home of his race and family. At this very time, when Adamnan was about twenty-five years old, a cousin of his own, Seghine, fifth Abbot of Hy, ruled the entire Order. So with the south wind blowing fair, we may suppose the young scholar launched his currach on the Foyle, and sweeping past the hills of Inishowen, he would in about twelve hours see Columba's holy island slowly rising from the waves. As his bark approached he would eagerly note all the features of the island--the central rugged ridge, the low moory shores and narrow strait separating it from the Ross of Mull on the mainland. With a heart swelling with emotion, he must have stepped on the shore of Port Ronain, and then kneeling prostrate before the Abbot in his wooden cell, begged to be admitted to the habit of the Order. And we may be sure the venerable Seghine received with open arms the strong-limbed, fair-haired boy, who was sprung of his own ancient line and born in his own Tirhugh.

Adamnan began his novitiate about A.D. 650, and after thirty years' service in the brotherhood was himself raised to the abbatial Chair in A.D. 679. We know little of his life during this period, except that it was eminent for virtue and learning. We have undoubted proofs of his success in sacred studies, not only in the works that remain, but also from the testimony of his contemporaries. He was, says Venerable Bede, a virtuous and learned man pre-eminently skilled in Sacred Scripture.[272] This is high testimony from a high authority. Father H. Ward felt himself justified in saying that Adamnan was thoroughly educated in all the knowledge of his time, liberal, sacred, and ascetical; that he was also skilled in the Greek and Hebrew languages, as well as in the arts, laws, and history written in his native tongue.[273]

Yet this learned monk was not above giving his assistance in the manual labour of the monastery. He tells us in his life of St. Columba[274] how on a certain occasion he and a number of other monks cut down as many oak trees in one of the neighbouring islands, probably Arran, as loaded twelve boats in order to procure material to repair the monastery; and how, when detained by an adverse wind, St. Columba heard their prayer and procured for them a favourable breeze to waft them home. This fact, incidentally mentioned, proves that most of the monastic cells were made of oaken boards, which were covered in with a roof of reeds. St. Columba's own hut is represented as tabulis suffultum, and we know from other sources that as a protection against the weather these cells were thatched with reeds--harundine tecta. It is in this respect that the "Vita Columbae" is so valuable because it gives us incidentally not only a graphic picture of the simple and pious lives of the Family of Hy, but also of their food, their clothing, their monastery, and their entire social arrangements.

Although St. Adamnan ruled the monastery of Hy from A.D. 679 to his death in A.D. 704, he paid several visits to Ireland, and exercised a large influence both on its ecclesiastical and civil polity. This was due partly to his high character for learning and holiness, partly to his position as supreme head of the Columbian Houses, and in great measure also to his influence with Finnachta, the High King, from A.D. 675 to 695. It is not easy to ascertain the exact date of these visits, nor the work done on each occasion, but the substantial facts are certain.

In the year A.D. 684 one of the generals of the Northumbrian King, Ecgfrid, made a descent on Magh-Bregh, that is the eastern plain of Meath along the sea-shore. He pillaged and slaughtered in the usual fashion, and furthermore carried off many captives, male and female. This attack was wholly unprovoked, and, as Bede testifies, brought down upon the Northumbrian prince the signal chastisement of heaven. In the following year, rashly advancing against the Pictish King Brude, Ecgfrid was slain and his army routed at a place called Dun Nechtain. Thereupon Aldfrid, his brother, returned from Ireland, where he had been for many years an exile, and succeeded to the throne. Aldfrid, during the years he spent in Ireland, became intimate with Adamnan--our annalists call him the alumnus, or foster son of Adamnan. Now that he was raised to the throne, the latter took occasion to pay him a visit in order to obtain by his friendly offices the release of the captives. Miraculously crossing the Solway Frith, whose rushing tide "the best steed in Saxon land ridden by the best rider could not hope to escape," he came to the Northumbrian Court at Bamborough, and seems to have been received with open arms by his alumnus, who at once consented to restore the captives, sixty in all, whom shortly after Adamnan brought home to Ireland. But this visit to the English court had other important consequences. "When he saw," says Bede, "during his stay in our province (probably at Easter) the canonical rites of our church, and was prudently admonished that they who were placed on a little corner at the end of the world should not persevere in their peculiar Paschal observance against the practice of the universal church, he changed his mind and willingly adopted our custom." On the same occasion he visited the monastery of Jarrow, where the monks greatly admired the humility and modesty of his demeanour, but were somewhat scandalized at his Irish frontal tonsure from ear to ear, then known as the tonsure of Simon Magus.

On his return to Hy, Adamnan tried to induce his monks to adopt the Roman Paschal observance; but they were so much attached to the practice sanctioned by their great and holy founder that even Adamnan failed to bring about a change. It was not until A.D. 716, twelve years after his death, that they finally consented to adopt the Dionysian cycle of nineteen years in fixing Easter Day.

He was more successful in Ireland. On his return thither with the captives in A.D. 686, a Synod seems to have been held for the purpose of bringing about this change, to which he himself alludes in his Life of St. Columba. Neither the time nor place of the Synod can be exactly ascertained; it is not unlikely, however, that it took place on the Hill of Tara at the "Rath of the Synods," where tradition still marks out the place of "Adamnan's Tent," and "Adamnan's Cross."[275] Others think it was held at a much later date in A.D. 696 or 697, when "Adamnan's Canon" was published, to which we shall refer later on. It is certain, however, that Adamnan exerted his great influence thenceforward to introduce the new Paschal observance into Ireland, although he did not perhaps finally succeed until towards the end of his life.

On this occasion Adamnan's visit was not of long duration; but he paid a second visit to Ireland in A.D. 692--fourteen years after the death of his predecessor, Failbhe, as the Annals say. This time it was a political question that attracted him from Hy. For forty reigns the men of Leinster had been paying the cow-tax, known as the Borumean tribute, to the princes of the Hy-Niall race, to which Adamnan himself belonged. Finnachta, however, the reigning High King, the old friend of Adamnan, remitted this tribute at the prayer of St. Moling, whom our Annalists represent as having recourse to a curious equivocation to effect his purpose. The king, at the prayer of the Saint Moling consented to remit payment of the tax for "the day and night." "All time," said the saint, when the king had pledged his royal word to this remission, "is day and night; thou canst never re-impose this tax." In vain the monarch protested that he had no such intention; the saint kept him to his word, promising him heaven if he kept it, and the reverse if he did not. When Adamnan heard how weakly the king had yielded the ancient rights of the great Hy-Niall race, he was somewhat wrathful, and at once sought out the monarch, and asked to see him. The king was playing chess, and told Adamnan's messenger, who asked an interview for the saint, that he must wait till the game was finished; then he played a second and was going to play a third, when the saint threatened him with reading a psalm that would not only shorten his life, but exclude him from heaven. Thereupon he came quick enough, and at once Adamnan said, "Is this true that thou hast remitted the Borumha for day and night?" "It is true," said the king. "Then it is the same as to remit it for ever," said the saint; and he "scolded" him in somewhat vigorous language, and made a song on him on the spot, calling him a foolish, white-haired, toothless king, and using several other epithets the reverse of complimentary.

Of course all this is the work of a northern bard, who puts into the mouth of Adamnan language which he would use himself; nevertheless, there is a substratum of truth in the story highly coloured as it is by poetic fiction. In the end, however, the writer adds:--"Afterwards Finnachta placed his head on the bosom of Adamnan, and Adamnan forgave him for the remission of the Borumha." Shortly after, however, Adamnan was again angry with the king, and foretold "that his life would be short and that he would fall by fratricide." The Irish life gives the true cause of the anger and the prediction; it was because Finnachta would not exempt from taxes the lands of Columbkille, as he exempted the lands of Patrick, Finnian, and Ciaran. This not unnaturally incensed the saint against the ungrateful king, whose throne he had helped to maintain. The prediction was soon verified; Finnachta fell by the hand of a cousin in A.D. 697.

It was on his return to Hy after this second visit that Adamnan seems to have written the Life of Columbkille. Shortly after he paid a third visit to Ireland in A.D. 697, and apparently spent the remaining seven years of his life in this country. It was in that year, most probably, was held the Synod of Tara in which the Cain, or Canon of Adamnan, was promulgated. According to a story in the Leabhar Breac there are four great Laws, or "Canons" in Ireland. The Canon of Patrick, not to kill the clergy; the Canon of the nun Dari, not to kill the cows; the Canon of Adamnan, not to kill women; and the Sunday Canon, not to travel on that day. The origin of the Canon of Adamnan was this:--He was once travelling through Meath, carrying his mother on his back, when he saw two armies in conflict, and a woman of one party dragging a woman of the other party with an iron reaping hook fixed in her breast. At this cruel and revolting sight, Adamnan's mother insisted that her son should promise her to make a law for the people that women should in future be exempted from all battles and hostings. Adamnan promised and kept his word[276]--in A.D. 696, according to the Ulster Annals. That is he procured the passing of a law exempting women and children--innocentes--from any share in the actual conflict or its usual consequences, captivity or death. This fact is substantially true, though considerably embellished in the details.[277] And Ireland owes the great Abbot a lasting debt of gratitude for procuring the enactment of this law, which was afterwards re-enacted in A.D. 727, when the relics of Adamnan were removed from Iona to Ireland and the "law renewed." There were several other Canons probably enacted at a Synod held at Armagh about the same time, but this is far the most important of them all.

The Life of St. Gerald of Mayo represents Adamnan as governing the monastery of that place, originally founded by the Saxons, for seven years. Tradition also connects the saint with the Church of Skreen in the county Sligo, of which he is the patron, and was in all probability the founder. As head of the Columbian Order it was his duty, from time to time, to visit the Columbian Churches in Ireland, of which there were very many, especially in Sligo and Donegal. He may thus have spent a considerable time in Mayo of the Saxons, although the Life of St. Gerald is very unsatisfactory evidence of the fact.

We cannot stay to notice the alleged "cursing" of Irgalach by Adamnan. The story is intrinsically improbable and unsustained by respectable authority. In the last year of his life, A.D. 704, he returned to Iona. Although the monks would not consent to give up St. Columba's Easter, he loved them dearly, and wished to bless them before he died. After his noble life he might well rest in peace with the kindred dust of all the saints of Conal Gulban's line that sleep in the holy island.

A century later, however, as we have seen, the sacred relics were transferred to Ireland, but it is not known for certain where they were laid.

Adamnan's two most important works are his Vita Sancti Columbae, and his book, De Locis Sanctis.

The life of St. Columba has been pronounced by Pinkerton to be "the most complete piece of such biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the whole middle ages." Adamnan himself declares that he wrote the book at the earnest request of the Brothers; and that he states nothing except what was already written in the records of the monastery, or what he himself heard from the elder monks, many of whom saw the blessed Columba, and were themselves witnesses of his wonderful works. The entire narrative, which is written in fairly good Latin, furnishes ample proof of the truth of this statement. Hence the great value of this Life, not only as an authentic record of the virtues and miracles of St. Columba, but also as a faithful picture of the religious life of those early times by a contemporary writer, so well qualified to sketch it, and who does so quite unconsciously. The manuscript in the library of Schaffhausen is of equal authority with the autograph of the saint, if, indeed, it were not actually written at his dictation, so that the most sceptical cannot question the authenticity of this venerable record. The Life was printed from this codex by Colgan in 1647, and by the Bollandists at a later date. But the edition published in 1837 by Dr. W. Reeves for the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, is by far the most valuable. The notes and appendices to this admirable volume render it a perfect mine of wealth for the student of Irish History.

Venerable Bede gives us a very full account of the treatise De Locis Sanctis, in the 16th and 17th chapters of the fifth book of his Ecclesiastical History. It is, he says, a book most useful to the reader (in that age). The author, Adamnan, received his information about the holy places from Arculfus, a bishop from Gaul, who had himself visited Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, and all the islands of the sea. When returning home a tempest drove his vessel to the west parts of Britain,[278] where he met Adamnan, probably in Hy, to whom he narrated all the noteworthy scenes he had gone through. Adamnan at once reduced the narrative to writing, for the information of his own countrymen. He presented the work to his friend King Aldfrid, through whose liberality copies were multiplied for the benefit of the young, if such be the meaning of Bede's phrase:--"Per ejus largitionem etiam minoribus ad legendum contraditus." Bede himself was greatly pleased with the book, from which he inserts several extracts in his own history, concerning Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Mount Olivet, and other places in Palestine. It was published at Ingoldstadt in 1619.

A Life of St. Patrick and some poems have been attributed to Adamnan, but there is no evidence to prove that they are genuine. The same may be said of the "Vision of Adamnan," a kind of moral discourse in Irish, which purports to relate a wonderful vision of the joys of heaven, and of the torments of hell, as seen and narrated by the saint. The work is certainly very ancient, but contains many things that go far to disprove its own authenticity.

When we consider the life and writings of this great man, as well as the large influence which he exercised on Irish affairs during the latter half of the seventh century, few will be disposed to question his right to take a high place amongst the saints and scholars of the west. He has been justly described in the prologue to the Vision as "the noble sage of the Western World." We have already quoted Bede's high testimony to his virtue and learning. The Four Masters emphatically endorse that testimony, and add that "he was tearful, penitent, fond of prayer, diligent and ascetic;" and that he was, moreover, "learned in the clear understanding of the Holy Scriptures of God."

After the death of Adamnan, A.D. 704, the Annals of Hy become less interesting. It still retained its headship of all the Columbian houses both in Erin and Alba--its abbots holding what is called a principatus over the rulers of the subject monasteries. Mention is also made of the cathedra of Columba and of Iona; but probably the same thing is meant--not episcopal or territorial jurisdiction, but the supreme authority over the Columbian houses and their wide domains. Reference, however, is made, for instance, in A.D. 712, to the death of "Ceddi, Bishop of Iona," but he doubtless derived his jurisdiction from the abbot. In A.D. 717 we are told that the Pictish King, Nectan, expelled the Columbian monks from his dominions, because they refused to conform to the general discipline as to the paschal observance, and the coronal tonsure. This seems to have brought the entire community to a sense of their duty, for now at length, under the Abbot Faelcu, they began to wear the Roman tonsure, as they had already adopted the Roman Easter. In A.D. 727 we are told that the "Relics of Adamnan" were brought to Ireland, and his Law renewed in that country. The object of bringing over these relics seems to have been to heal a feud between the Cenel-Eoghain and Cenel-Conal, in which the clergy appear to have been also mixed up, contrary to the Cain or Law of Adamnan. The relics were brought back again by the abbot in A.D. 730.

In A.D. 739, we read of the Dimersio familiae Iae, as if the greater part of the community were lost in some flood or shipwreck--most likely the latter. In A.D. 753, and in subsequent years reference is made to enforcing the Law of Columcille, which seems to have been a tribute assessed by the parent house on the subject monasteries and their adjacent lands. As the relics of Adamnan were carried to Erin, where his Cain was enforced, so it is likely some relics, if not of Columba's body, yet in some other way connected with him, were carried round on these occasions.

Iona had now become a celebrated place of pilgrimage. Even kings and princes, as Columba had predicted, came to the island shrine, and were deemed especially happy, when they died on their pilgrimage. Niall Frassach gave up his crown to take the pilgrim's staff, and died in Iona in A.D. 778; so did Artgal, son of Cathal, King of Connaught, in A.D. 791, and many princes of the Picts and Saxons in like manner.

Thus for two hundred years since the death of their holy founder, the community had been growing in celebrity and influence, but now a day of trial and doom was at hand.

In A.D. 794 the 'Gentiles' made their first descent on the Hebrides; the following year they attacked and pillaged the holy island itself. It was, however, only the beginning of the evil time. It was burned in A.D. 802, and the same year saw the death of Connachtach, 'a very choice scribe,' whose end was doubtless hastened by the sight of his beloved monastery in flames.

Fortunately, however, the community of Hy got two years later "a free grant of Kells without a battle." They had, doubtless, been claiming it as their own; for it was given to Columba by King Diarmait long ago; but the place may have got into other hands in the interval. Now, however, that they had recovered it in peace, they resolved to make it their headquarters in future. In A.D. 807 they began to build a new religious 'city' in Kells; the great church was finished in A.D. 814, when the old Abbot Cellach resigned the principatus of Iona, which thenceforward was transferred to Kells, where the new abbot fixed his official abode. It seems that the venerable Cellach would not leave his beloved island for the new city in Ireland, and so he resigned his office, and next year went to his rest in that old churchyard, where the bones of so many of his sainted predecessors were already laid.

Many of the monks still clung with the same tenacious affection to the old monastery in the sacred island of Columba, although they knew that they lived there in daily peril of their lives. It was thus the martyrdom of St. Blaithmac came to pass in A.D. 825. The Gentiles' fleets were once more upon the seas. Word was brought that they were harrying the neighbouring islands; and the monks of Iona betook themselves to flight. It was not difficult to cross the narrow strait, and escape into the wild hills of Mull. But Blaithmac would not stir; he was ardently longing for the crown of martyrdom, and now the hour of his triumph was at hand. He had hidden the shrine containing the relics of the holy founder, adorned with gold and gems, deep in the earth, and covered over the spot with fresh green sods, so as to leave no trace of the treasure beneath. This was, however, what the spoilers wanted. They asked the old man where he had hidden the shrine. He refused to tell; and then, enraged by baffled greed, they slew him on the spot. It was fitting that Iona, the sacred nursery of so many doctors and confessors, should also have its martyrs in the ranks of the saints of God. It was fortunate, too, that the heroic martyr should have found a poet to celebrate his triumph in verses not unworthy of such a Christian hero.

Walafridus Strabo, a monk of the abbey called Augia Dives, now Reichenau in Switzerland, heard of the heroism of the Ionian monk from his fellow monks who had fled for refuge to their countrymen in this Irish House on the Rhine. Of German birth himself, he was filled with admiration for such lofty Christian courage; and composed a poem of 180 Latin hexameters, in which he celebrates the fortitude of--

"Blaithmaic, genuit quem dives Hibernia mundo, Martyriique sequens misit perfectio caelo."

The poem is too long to insert here, but it is a noble tribute from the pen of a foreigner to the courageous virtue of the Columbian monk who gave his life for Christ in Iona more than one thousand years ago.

The Rule of Columba[279] required that his monks should be ready for martyrdom whenever God's honour required it. Their mind was to be always fortified and steadfast for 'the white martyrdom' of patient endurance; but they were also bound to have the mind if occasion arose prepared for 'red martyrdom.' Blaithmac found the opportunity and was unwilling to lose his crown.

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