THE five hundred years, one half of which preceded the birth of our Lord, may be considered the period of Ireland’s greatest power and military glory as a nation. The five hundred years which succeeded St. Patrick’S mission may be regarded is this period of Ireland’s Christian and Scholastic fame. In the former she sent her warriors, in the latter her missionaries, all over Europe. Where her fierce hero kings carried the sword, her saints now bore the cross of faith. It was in this latter period, between the sixth and the eighth centuries particularly, that Ireland became known all over Europe as the Insula Sanctorum et Doctorurja—” the Island of Saints and Scholars’ Churches, cathedrals, monasteries, convents, universities, covered the island. From even the most, distant parts of Europe, kings and their subjects came to study in the Irish schools. King Alfred of Northumberland was educated in one of the Irish universities. A glorious roll of Irish Saints and scholars belong to this period: St. Columba or Columcille, St. Columbanus, St.Gall, who evangelised Helretia, St.Frigidian, who was bishop of Lucca in Italy, St. Livinus, who was martyred in Flanders, St. Argobast, who became bishop of Strasburg, St. Killian, the apostle of Fanconia, and quite a host of illustrious Irish missionaries, who carried the blessings of faith and education all over Europe. The record of their myriad adventurous enterprises, their glorious labours, their evangelising conquests, cannot be traced within the scope of this book. There is one, however, the foremost of that sainted band, with whom exception must be made—the first and the greatest of Irish missionary saints, the abbot of lona’s isle, whose name and fame filled the world, and the story of whose life is a Christian romance— Columba, the” Dove of the Cell”.
The personal character of Columba and the romantic incidents of his life, as well as his prééminence amongst the missionary conquerors of the British Isles, seem to have had a powerful attraction for the illustrious Monta Lembert, who, in his great work, “The Monks of the West”, traces the eventful career of the saint in language of exquisite beauty, eloquence, and feeling. Moreover, there is this to be said further of that Christian romance, as I have called it, the life of St. Columba, that happily the accounts thereof which we possess are complete, authentic, and documentary; most of the incidents related we have on the authority of well known writers, who lived in Columba’s time and held personal communication with him or with his companions.
The picture presented to us In these life-portraitures of lona’s saint is assuredly one to move the hearts of Irishmen, young and old. In Columba two great features stand out in bold prominence; and never perhaps were those two characteristics more powerfully developed in one man—devotion to God and passionate love of country. He was a great saint, but he was as great a “ politician”, entering deeply and warmly into everything affecting the weal of Clan Nial, or the honour of Erinn. His love for Ireland was something beyond description. .As he often declared in his after-life exile, the very breezes that blew on the fair hills of holy Ireland were to him like the zephyrs of paradise. Our story were incomplete indeed, without a sketch, however brief, of “the Dove of the Cell”.
Columba was a prince of the royal race of Nial, his father being the third in decent from the founder of that illustrious house Nial of the nine Hostages He was born at Gartan, in Donegal, on the December 521 . “The Irish legends”, says Montalembert, “which are always distinguished, even amidst the wildest vagaries of fancy, by a high and pure morality, linger lovingly upon the childhood and youth of the predestined saint”. Before his birth (according to one of these traditions) the mother of Columba had a dream, “which posterity has accepted as a graceful and poetical symbol of her son’s career. An angel appeared to her, bringing her a veil covered with flowers of wonderful beauty, and the sweetest variety of colours; immediately after she saw the veil carried away by the wind, and rolling out as it fled over the plains, woods, and mountains. Then the angel said to her, ‘Thou art about to become the mother of a son, who shall blossom for Heaven, who shall be reckoned among the prophets of God, and who shall lead numberless souls to the heavenly country”.
But indeed, according to the legends of the Hy Nial, the coming of their great saint was foretold still more remotely. St. Patrick, they tell us, having come northward to bless the territory and people, was stopped at the Daol—the modern Deel or Burmidale river—by the breaking of his chariot wheels. The chariot was repaired, but again broke down; a third time it was refitted, and a third time it failed at the ford. Then Patrick, addressing those around him, said: “Wonder no more: behold, the land from this stream northwards needs no blessing from me; for a son shall be born there who shall be called the Dove of the Churches; and he shall bless that land; in honour of whom God has this day prevented. my doing so”. The name Ath-an-Charpaid (ford of the chariot) marks to this day the spot memorised by this tradition. Count Montalembert cites many of these stories of the “childhood and youth of the predestined saint”. He was, while yet a child, confided to the care of the priest who had baptized him, and from him he received the first rudiments of education. “ His guardian angel often appeared to him; and the child asked if all the angels in Heaven were so young and shining as he. A little later, Columba was invited by the same angel to choose among all the virtues that which he would like best to possess. ‘I choose’, said the youth, ‘chastity and wisdom’; and immediately three young girls of wonderful beauty but foreign air, appeared to him, and threw themselves on his neck to embrace him. The pious youth frowned, and repulsed them with indignation. ‘What’, they said, ‘then thou dost not know us?’ ‘No, not the least in the world’. ‘We are thres sisters, whom our Father gives to thee to be thy brides’. ‘Who, then, is your Father?’ ‘Our Father is God, He is Jesus Christ, the Lord and Saviour of the world’. ‘Ah, you have indeed an illustrious Father But what are your names?’ ‘Our names are Virginity, Wisdom, and Prophecy; and we come to leave thee no more, to love thee with an incorruptible love’ .
From the house of this early tutor Columba passed into the great monastic schools, which were not only a nursery for the clergy of the Irish Church, but, where also young laymen of all conditions were educated.
“While Columba studied at Clonard, being still only a deacon”, says his biographer, “an incident took place which has been proved by authentic testimony, and which fixed general attention upon him by giving a first evidence of his supernatural and prophetic intuition. An old Christian bard (‘the bards were not all Christians') named Germain had come to live near the Abbot Finnian, asking from him, in exchange for his poetry, the secret of fertilizing the soil, Columba; who continued all his life a passionate admirer of the traditionary poetry of his nation, determined to join the school of the bard, and to share his labours and studies. The two were reading together out of doors, at a little distance from each other, when a young girl appeared in the distance pursued by a robber. At the sight of the old man the fugitive made for him with all her remaining strength, hoping, no doubt, to find safety in the authority exercised throughout Ireland by the national poets. Germain, in great trouble, called his pupil to his aid to defend the unfortunate child, who was trying to hide herself under their long robes, when her pursuer reached the spot. Without taking any notice of her defenders, he struck her in the neck with his lance, and was making off, leaving her dead at their feet. The horrified old man turned to Columba. ‘How long’, he said, ‘Will God leave unpunished this crime which dishonours us?’ ‘For this moment only’, said Columba, ‘not longer; at this very hour, when the soul of this innocent creature ascends to heaven, the soul of the murderer shall go down to hell’. At the instant, like Ananias at the words of Peter, the assassin fell dead. The news of this sudden punishment, the story goes, went over Ireland, and spread the fame of the young Columba far and wide”.
At the comparatively early age of twenty-five, Columba had attained to a prominent position in the ecclesiastical world, and had presided over the creation of a crowd of monasteries. As many as thirty-seven in Ireland alone recognized him as their founder. “It is easy”, says Montalembert, “to perceive, by the importance of the monastic establishments which he had brought into being, even betore he had attained to manhood, that his influence must have been as precocious as it was considerable. Apart from the virtues of which his after life afforded so many examples, it may be supposed that his royal birth gave him an irresistible ascendancy in a country where, since the introduction of Christianity, all the early saints, like the principal abbots, belonged to reigning families, and where the influence of blood and the worship of genealogy still continue, even to this day, to a degree unknown in other lands. Springing, as has been said, from the same race as the monarch of all Ireland and consequently himself eligible for the same high office, which was more frequently obtained by election or usurpation than inheritance—nephew or near cousin of the seven monarchs who successively wielded the supreme authority during his life—. he was also related by ties of blood to almost all the provincial kings. Thus we see him during his whole career treated on a footing of perfect intimacy and equality by all the princes of Ireland and of Caledonia and exercising a sort of spiritual sway equal or superior to the authority of secular sovereigns”.
His attachment to poetry and literature has been already glanced at. He was, in fact, an enthusiast on the subject; he was himself a poet and writer of a high order of genius, and to an advanced period of his life remained an ardent devotee of the muse, ever powerfully moved by whatever affected the weal of the minstrel fraternity. His passion for books (all manuscript, of course, in those days, and of great rarity and value) was destined to lead him into that great offence of his life, which he was afterwards to expiate by a penance so grievous. “He went everywhere in search of volumes which he could borrow or copy; often experiencing refusals which he resented bitterly”. In this way occurred what Montalembert calls “the decisive event which changed the destiny of Columba, and transformed him from a wandering poet and ardent book-worm, into a missionary and apostle”. While visiting one of his former tutors, Finian, he found means to copy clandestinely the abbot’s Psalter by shutting himself up at nights in the church where the book was deposited. “Indignant at what he considered as almost a theft, Finian claimed the copy when it was finished by Columba, on the grounds that a copy made without permission ought to belong to the master of the original, seeing that the transcriptions is the son of the original book. Columba refused to give up his work, and the question was referred to the king in his palace of Tara”. What immediately follows, I relate in the words of Count Montalembert, sumarising or citing almoat literally the ancient authors already referred to:
“King Diarmid, or Dermott, supreme monarch of Ireland, was, like Columba, descended from the great king Niall, but by another son than he whose great-grandson Columba was. He lived, like all the princes of his country, in a close union with the Church, which was represented in Ireland, more completely than anywhere else, by the monastic order. Exiled and persecuted in his youth, he had found refuge in an island situated in one of those lakes which interrupt the course of the Shannon, the chief river of Ireland, and had there formed a friendship with a holy monk called Kieran a zealous comrade of Columba at the monastic school of Clonard, and since that time his generous rival in knowledge and in austerity. Upon the still solitary bank of the river the two friends had planned the foundation of a monastery, which, owing to the marshy nature of the soil, had to be built upon piles. ‘Plant with me the first stake’, the monk said to the exiled prince, ‘putting your hand under mine, and, soon that hand shall be over all the men of Erinn’; and it happened that Diarmid was very shortly after called to the throne. He immediately used his new power to endow richly the monastery which was rendered doubly dear to him by the recollection of his exile and of his friend. This sanctuary became, under the name of Clonmacnoise, one of the greatest monasteries and most frequented schools of Ireland, and even of Western Europe.
“This king might accordingly be regarded as a competent judge in a contest at once monastic and literary; he might even have been suspected of partiality for Columba, his kinsman — and yet he pronounced judgment against him. His judgment was given in a rustic phrase which has passed into a proverb in Ireland—To every cow her calf, and, consequently, to every book its copy. Columba protested loudly. ‘It is an unjust sentence’, he said, ‘and I will revenge myself’. After this incident a young prince, son of the provincial king of Connaught, who was pursued for haying committed an involuntary murder, took refuge with Columba, but was seized and put to death by the king. The irritation of the poet-monk knew no bounds. The ecclesiastical immunity which he enjoyed in his quality of superior and founder of several monasteries, ought to have, in his opinion, created a sort of sanctuary around his person, and this immunity had been scandalously violated by the execution of a youth whom he protected. He threatened the king with prompt vengeance. ‘I will denounce’, he said, ‘to my brethren and my kindred thy wicked judgment, and the violation in my person of the immunity of the Church; they will listen to my complaint and punish thee sword in hand. Bad king, thou shalt no more see my face in thy province, until God, the just judge, has subdued thy pride. As thou hast humbled me to-day before thy lords and thy friends, God will humble thee on the battle-day before thine enemies’. Diarmid attempted to retain him by force in the neighbourhood; but, evading the vigilance of his guards, he escaped by night from the court of Tara, and directed his steps to his native province of Tyrconnell. “Columba arrived safely in his province, and immediately set to work to excite against king Diarmid the numerous and powerful clans of his relatives and friends, who belonged to a branch of the house of Niall, distinct from and hostile to that of the reigning monarch. His efforts were crowned, with success. The Hy-Nialls of the north armed eagerly against the Hy-Nialls of the south of whom Diarmid was the special chief. “Diarmid marched to meet them, and they met in battle at Cool-Drewny, or Cul-Dreimhne, upon the borders of Ultonia and Connacia. He was completely beaten, and was obliged to take refuge at Tara. The victory was due, according to the annalist Tighernach, to the prayers and songs of Columba, who had fasted and prayed with all his might to obtain from Heaven the punishment of the royal insolence, and who, besides, was present at the battle, and took upon himself before all men the responsibility of the bloodshed.
“As for the manuscript which bad been the object of this strange conflict of copyright elevated into a civil war, it was afterwards venerated as a kind of national, military, and religious palladium. Under the name of Cathach or Fightu, the Latin Psalter transcribed by Columba, enshrined in a sort of portable altar, became the national relic of the O’Donnell clan. For more than a thousand years it was carried with them to battle as a pledge of victory, on the condition of being supported on the breast of a clerk free from all mortal sin. It has escaped as by miracle from the ravages of which Ireland has been the victim, and exists still, to the great joy of all learned Irish patriots”.
But soon a terrible punishment was to fall upon Columba for this dread violence. He, an anointed priest of the Most High, a minister of the Prince of Peace, had made himself the cause and the inciter of a civil war which had bathed the land in blood—the blood of Christian men— the blood of kindred. Clearly enough, the violence of political passions, of which this war was the most lamentable fruit, had, in many other ways, attracted upon the youthful monk the severe opinions of the ecclesiastical authorities. “His excitable and vindictive character”, we are told, “and above all his passionate attachment to his relatives, and the violent part which he took in their domestic disputes and their continually recurring rivalries, had engaged him in other struggles, the date of which is perhaps later than that of his first departure from Ireland,
(*“The Annals of the Four Masters report that in a battle waged In 1497, between the O’Donnells and McDermotts, the sacred book fell into the hands of the latter, who, however, restored it in 1499. It was preserved for thirteen hundred years in the O’Donnell family, and at present belongs to a baronet of that name, who has permitted it to be exhibited in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, where it can be seen by all. It is composed of fifty eight leaves of parcbment, bound in silver. The learned O’Curry (p. 322) has given a facsimile of a fragment of this MS., which he does not hesitate to believe is in the handwriting of our saint, as well as that of the fine copy of the Gospels called the Book of Kells, of which he has also given a facsimile. See Reeves’ notes upon Adamnan, p. 250, and the pamphlet upon Marianus Scotus, p. 12’"—Count Montalembert’s note.)
but the responsibility of which is formally imputed to him by various authorities, and which also ended in bloody battles”. At all events, immediately after the battle of Cool Drewney, “he was accused by a synod, convoked in the centre of the royal domain at Tailte, of having occasioned the shedding of Christian blood”. The synod seems to have acted with very uncanonical precipitancy; for it judged the cause without waiting for the defence—though, in sooth, the facts, beyond the power of any defence to remove, were ample and notorious. However, the decision was announced—sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him!.
“Columba was not a man to draw back before his accusers and judges. He presented himself before the synod which had struck without hearing him. He found a defender in the famous Abbot Brendan, the founder of the monastery of Birr. When Columba made his appearance, this abbot rose, went up to him, and embraced him. ‘How can you give the kiss of peace to an excommunicated man?’ said some of the other members of the synod ‘You would do as I have done’, he answered, ‘and you never would have excommunicated him, had you seen what I see—a pillar of fire which goes before him, and the angels that accompany him. I dare not disdain a man predestined by God to be the guide of an entire people to eternal life’. Thanks to the intervention of Brendan, or to some other motive not mentioned, the sentence of cx-communication was withdrawn, but Columba was charged to win to Christ, by his preaching, as many pagan souls as the number of Christians who had fallen in the battle of Cool-Drewny”.
Troubled in soul, but still struggling with a stubborn self-will, Columba found his life miserable, unhappy, and full of unrest; yet remorse had even now “planted in his soul the germs at once of a startling conversion and of his future apostolic mission”. “Various legends reveal him to us at this crisis of his life, wandering long from solitude to solitude, and from monastery to monastery, seeking out holy monks, masters of penitence and Christian virtue, and asking them anxiously what he should do to obtain the pardon of God for the murder of so many victims”.
At length, after many wanderings in contrition and mortification, “he found the light which he sought from a holy monk, St. Molaise, famed, for his studies of Holy Scripture, and who had already been his confessor”.
“This severe hermit confirmed the decision of the synod; but to the obligation of converting to the Christian faith an equal number of pagans as there were of Christians killed in the civil war, he added a new condition, which bore cruelly upon a soul so passionately attached to country and kindred. The confessor condemed his penitent to perpetual exile from Ireland!”
Exile from Ireland!. Did Columba hear the words right? .Exile from Ireland What I see no more that land which he loved with such a wild and passionate love!. Part from the brothers and kinsmen all, for whom he felt perhaps too strong and too deep an affection. Quit for aye the stirring scenes in which so great a part of his sympathies were engaged!, Leave Ireland!.
Oh it was more hard than to bare his breast to the piercing sword; less welcome than to walk in constant punishment of suffering, so that his feet pressed the soil of his worshipped Erinn, But it was even so.
Thus ran the sentence of Molaise: “perpetual exile from Ireland!”
Staggered, stunned, struck to the heart, Columba could not speak for a moment. But God gave him in that great crisis of his life the supreme grace of bearing the blow and embracing the cross presented to him. At last he spoke, and in a voice agitated with emotion he answered:
“Be it so; what you have commanded shall be done”.
From that instant forth his life was one prolonged act of penitential sacrifice. For thirty years—his heart bursting within his breast the while—yearning for one sight of Ireland—he lived and laboured in distant Iona. The fame of his sanctity filled the world; religions houses subject to his rule arose in many a glen and isle of rugged Caledonia; the gifts of prophecy and miracle momentously attested him as one of God’s most favoured spostles: yet
all the while his heart was breaking; all the while in his silent cell Columba’s tears flowed freely for the one grief that never left him—the wound that only deepened with lengthening time—he was away from Ireland!. Into all his thoughts this sorrow entered. . In all his songs—and several of his compositions still remain to us—this one sad strain is introduced. Witness the following, which, even in its merely literal translation into the English, retains much of the poetic beauty and exquisite tenderness of the original by Columba in the Gaelic tongue:

What joy to fly upon the white crested sea; and watch the waves break upon the Irish shore
My foot is in my little boat; but my sad heart ever bleeds
There is a grey eye which ever turns to Erinn; but never in this life shall it see Eirinn nor her sons, nor her daughters !
From the high prow I look over the sea; and great tears are in my eyes when I turn to Erinn—
To Erinn, where the songs of the birds are so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the birds:
Where the young are so gentle, and the old are so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed !
Young traveller I carry my sorrows with you; carry them to Comgall of eternal life !
Noble youth, take my prayer with thee, and my blessing: one part for freland-—seven times may she be blest—and the other for Albyn.
Carry my blessing across the sea; carry it to the West. My heart is broken in my breast !
If death comes suddenly to me, it will be because of the great love I bear to the Gael ! *

(“ This poem appears to have been presented as a farewell gift by St. Columba to some of the Irish visitors at Iona, when returning home to Ireland. It is deservedly classed amongst the most beautiful of his poetic compositions").
It was to the rugged and desolate Hebrides that Columba turned his face when he accepted the terrible penance of Molaise. He bade farewell to his relatives, and, with a few monks who insisted on accompanying him whithersoever he might go, launched his frail currochs from the northern shore. They landed first, or rather were carried by wind and stream, upon the little isle of Oronsay, close by Islay; and here for a moment they thought their future abode was to be. But when Columba, with the early morning, ascending the highest ground on the island, to take what he thought would be a harmless look towards the land of his heart, lo on the dim horizon a faint blue ridge— the distant hills of Antrim. He averts his head and flies downwards to the strand, Here they cannot stay, if his vow is to be kept. They betake them once more to the currochs, and steering further northward, eventually land upon Iona, thenceforth, till time shall be no more, to be famed as the sacred isle of Columba. Here landing, he ascended the loftiest of the hills upon the isle, and “gazing into the distance, found no longer any trace of Ireland upon the horizon”. In lona accordingly he resolved to make his home. The spot from whence St. Columba made this sorrowful survey is still called by the isles-men in the Gaelic tongue, Carn-cul-ri-Erinn, or the Cairn of Farewell—literally, The back turned on Ireland.
Writers without number have traced the glories of Iona* Here rose, as if by miracle, a city of churches; the isle became one vast monastery, and soon much too small for the crowds that still pressed thither. Then from the parent isle there went forth to the surrounding shores, and all over the mainland, off-shoot establishments and missionary colonies (all under the authority of Columba), until in time the Gospel light was ablaze on the hills of Albyn; and the names of St. Columba and lona were on every tongue from Rome to the utmost limits of Europe !
(“ “We are now”, said Dr. Johnson, “treading that illustrious Island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions; whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion... Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue.’ That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain forth upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona”-— Boswell’s Tour to the hebrides.)
“This man, whom we have seen so passionate, so irritable, so warlike and vindictive, became little by little the most gentle, the humblest, the most tender of friends and fathers. It was he, the great head of the Caledonian Church, who, kneeling before the strangers who came to lona, or before the monks returning from their work, took off their shoes, washed their feet, and after having washed them, respectfully kissed them. But charity was still stronger than humility in that transfigured soul. No necessity, spiritual or temporal, found him indifferent. He devoted himself to the solace of all infirmities, all misery, and pain, weeping often over those who did not weep for themselves.
“The work of transcription remained until his last day the occupation of his old age, as it had been the passion of his youth; it had such an attraction for him, and seemed to him so essential to a knowledge of the truth, that, as we have already said, three hundred copies of the Holy Gospels, copied by his own hand, have been attributed to him”.
But still Columba carried with him in his heart the great grief that made life for him a lengthened penance. “Far from having any prevision of the glory of lona, his soul”, says Montalembert, “was still swayed by a sentiment which never abandoned him—regret for his lost country. All his life he retained for Ireland the passionate tenderness of an exile, a love which displayed itself in the songs which have been preserved to us, and which date perhaps from the ‘first moment of his exile "Death in faultless Ireland is better than life without end in Albyn". After this cry of despair follow strains more plaintive and submissive.
“‘But it was not only in these elegies repented and perhaps retouched by Irish bards and monks, but at each instant of his life, in season and out of season that this love and passionate longing for his native country burst forth in words and musings; the narratives of his most trustworthy biographers ara full of it. The most severe penance which he could have imagined for the guiltiest sinners who came to confess to him, was to impose upon them the same fate which he had voluntarily inflicted on himself—never to set foot again upon Irish soil! But when, instead of forbidding to sinners all access to that beloved isle, he had to smother his envy of those who had the right and happiness to go there at their pleasure, he dared scarcely trust himself to name its name; and when speaking to his guests, or to the monks who were to return to Ireland, he would only say to them, "you will return to the country that you love’ ".
At length there arrived an event for Columba full of excruciating trial—it became necessary for him to revisit Ireland ! His presence was found to be imperatively required at the general assembly or convocation of the princes and prelates of the Irish nation, convened A.D. 573, by Hugh the second.* At this memorable assembly, known in history as the great Convention of Drumceat, the first meeting of the States of Ireland held since the abandonment of Tara, there were to be discussed, amongst other important subjects, two which were of deep and powerful interest to Columba: firstly, the relations between Ireland and the Argyle or Caledonian colony; and secondly, the proposed decree for the abolition of the Bards.
The country now known as Scotland was, about the time of the Christian era, inhabited by a barbarous and warlike race called Picts. About the middle of the second century, when Ireland was known to the Romans as Scotia, an Irish chieftain, Carbri Riada (from whom were descended the Dalraids of Antrim), crossed over to the western shores of Alba or Albyn, and founded there a Dalaraidan or Milesian colony. The colonists had a hard time of it with their savage Pictish neighbours; yet they managed to hold their ground, though receiving very little aid or attention from the parent country, to which nevertheless they regularly paid tribute. At length, in the year 503 the neglected colony was utterly overwhelmed by the Picts, whereupon a powerful force of the Irish Dalraids, under the leadership of Leorn, Aengus, and Fergus, crossed over, invaded Albany, and gradually subjugating the Picts, reestablished the colony on a basis which was the foundation eventually of the Scottish monarchy of all subsequent history. To the reestablished colony was given the name by which it was known long after, Scotia Minor; Ireland being called Scotia Major.
In the time of St. Columba, the colony, which so far had continuously been assessed by, and had duly paid ita tribute to, the mother country, began to feel its competency to claim independence. Already it had selected and installed a king (whom St. Columba had formally consecrated), and now it sent to Ireland a demand to be exempted from further tribute. The Irish monarch resisted the demand, which, however, it was decided first to submit to a national assembly, at which the Scottish colony should be represented, and where it might plead its case as best it could. Many and obvious considerations pointed to St. Columba as the man of men to plead the cause of the young nationality on this momentous occasion. He was peculiarly qualified to act as umpire in this threatening quarrel between the old country, to which be felt bound by such sacred ties, and the new one, which by adoption was now his home. He consented to attend at the assembly. He did so the more readily, perhaps, because of his strong feelings in reference to the other proposition named, viz., the proscription of the bards.
It may seem strange that in Ireland, where, from an early date, music and song held so high a place in national estimation, such a proposition should be made. But by this time the numerous and absurd immunities claimed by the bardic profession had become intolerable; and by gross abuses of the bardic privileges, the bards themselves had indubitably become a pest to society. King Hugh had, therefore, a strong public opinion at his back in his design of utterly abolishing the bardic corporation.
St. Columba, however, not only was allied to them by a fraternity of feeling, but he discerned clearly that by purifying and conserving, rathar than by destroying, the national minstrelsy, it would become a potential influence for good, and would entwine itself gratefully around the shrine within which at such a crisis it found shelter. In fine, he felt, and felt deeply, as an Irishman and as an ecclesiastic, that the proposition of King Hugh would annihilate one of the most treasured institutions of the nation—one of the most powerful aids to patriotism and religion.
So, to plead the cause of liberty for a young nationality, and the cause of patriotism, religion, literature, music, and poetry, in defending the minstrel race, St. Columba to Ireland would go!
To Ireland! But then his vow! His penance sentence, that he should never more see Ireland ! How his heart surged! 0 great allurement! 0 stern resolves! 0 triumph of sacrifice!
Yes; he would keep his vow, yet attend the convocation amidst those hills of Ireland which he was never more to see! With a vast array of attendant monks and lay princes he embarked for the unforgotten land; but when the galleys came within some leagues of the Irish coast, and before it could yet be sighted, St. Columba caused his eyes to be bandaged with a white scarf, and thus blindfolded was he led on shore! It is said that when he stepped upon the beach, and for the first time during so many years felt that he trod the soil of Ireland, he trembled from head to foot with emotion.
When the great saint was led blindfold into the Convention, the whole assemblage—kings, princes, prelates, and chieftains—rose and uncovered as reverentially as if Patrick himself had once more appeared amongst them.
(* Some versions allege that, although the saint himself was inceived with reverence, almost with awe, a hostile demonstration was designed, If not attempted, by the king’s party against the Scottish delegation who accompanied St. Columba.*) It was, we may well believe, an impressive scene; and we can well understand the stillness of anxious attention with which all waited to hear once more the tones of that voice which many traditions class amongst the miraculous gifts of Columba. More than one contemporary Writer has described his personal appearance at this time; and Montalembert says: “All testimonies agree in celebrating his manly beauty, his remarkable height, his sweet and sonorous voice, the cordiality of his manner, the gracious dignity of his deportment and person”.
Not in vain did he plead the causes he had come to advocate. Long and ably was the question of the Scottish colony debated. Some versions allege that it was amicably left to the decision of Columba, and that his award of several independence, but fraternal alliance, was cheerfully acquiesced in. Other accounts state that king Hugh, finding argument prevailing against his views, angrily drawing his sword, declared he would compel the colony to submission by force of arms; whereupon Columba, rising from his seat, in a voice full of solemnity and authority, exclaimed: “In the presence of this threat of tyrannic force, I declare the cause ended, and proclaim the Scottish colony free for ever from the yoke!” By whichever way, however, the result was arrived at, the independence of the young Caledonian nation was recognized and voted by the convention through the exertions of St. Columba.
His views on behalf of the bards likewise prevailed. He admitted the disorders, irregularities, and abuses alleged against the body; but he pleaded, and pleaded successfully, for reform instead of abolition. Time has vindicated the farsighted policy of the statesman saint. The national music and poetry of Ireland, thus purified and consecrated to the service of religion and country, have ever since, through ages of persecution, been true to the holy mission assigned them on that day by Columba.
The Dove of the Cell made a comparatively long stay in Ireland, visiting with scarf-bound brow the numerous monastic establishments subject to his rule. At length he returned to lona, where far into the evening of life he waited for his summons to the beatific vision. The miracles he wrought, attested by evidence of weight to move the most callous sceptic, the myriad wondrous signs of God’s favour that marked his daily acts, filled all the nations with awe. The hour and the manner of his death had long been revealed to him. The precise time he concealed from those about him until close upon the last day of his life; but the manner of his death he long foretold to his attendants. “I shall die”, said he, “without sickness or hurt; suddenly, but happily, and without accident”. At length one day, while in his usual health, he disclosed to Diarmid, his “minister”, or regular attendant monk, that the hour of his summons was nigh. A week before he had gone around the island, taking leave of the monks and labourers; and when all wept, he strove anxiously to console them. Then he blessed the island and the inhabitants. “And now”, said he to Diarmid, “here is a secret; but you must keep it till I am gone. This is Saturday, the day called Sabbath, or day of rest: and that it will be to me, for it shall be the last of my laborious life” In the evening he retired to his cell, and began to work for the last time, being then occupied in transcribing the Psalter. When he had come to the thirty-third Psalm, and the verse, “Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficieni omni bono”, he stopped short. .“ I cease here”, said he; “Baithin must do the rest”.
Montalembert thus describes for us the “last scene of all”: —“As soon as the midnight bell had rung ,for the matins of the Sunday festival, he rose and hastened before the other monks to the church, where he knelt down before the altar. Diarmid followed him; but, as the church was not yet lighted, hecould only find him by groping and crying in a plaintive voice, ‘Where art thou, my father?’ He found Columba lying before the altar, and, - placing himself at his side, raised the old abbot’s venerable head upon his knees. The whole community soon arrived with lights, and wept as one man at the sight of their dying father. Columba opened his eyes once more, and turned them to his children at either side with a look full of serene and radiant joy. Then, with the aid of Diarmid he raised as best he might his right hand to bless them all. His hand dropped, the last sigh came from his lips, and his face remained calm and sweet, like that of a man who in his sleep had seen a vision of heaven”
Like the illustrious French publicist whom I have so largely, followed in this sketch, I may say that I have “lingered perhaps too long on the grand form of this monk rising up before us from the midst of the Hebridean sea”. But I have, from the missionary saint-army of Ireland, selected this one—this typical apostle—to illustrate the characters that illumine one of the most glorious pages of our history. Many, indeed, were the “Columbs” that went forth from Ireland, as from an ark of faith, bearing blessed olive branches to the mountain tops of Europe, then slowly emerging from the flood of paganism. Well might we dwell upon this period of Irish history!. It was a bright and a glorious chapter. It was soon, alas! to be followed by one of gloom. Five hundred years of military fame and five hundred years of Christian glory were to be followed by five hundred years of disorganising dissensions, leading to centuries of painful bondage.