Columba an Emigrant in Caledonia — The Holy Isle of Iona

Aspect of the Hebridean archipelago. — Columba first lands at Oronsay, but leaves it because Ireland is visible from its shores. — Description of lona. — First buildings of the new monastery. — What remains of it. — Enthu- ^^ " Se peregrinationis socium non magis obtulit, quam obtrusit.... Tu mihi pater es, Ecclesia mater, et patria ubi uberiorem bene merendi segetem et majorem Christo deserviendi ansam invenero.... Te quocumque lens sequar, donee ad Christum perduxeris, cui me pridem consecraras." —O'DoNNELL, Vita Columba:, lib. iii. c. 24, 25, 26.

*" "Post bellum Cule Drebene... quo tempore vir beatus de Scotia peregrinaturus primitus enavigavit." Adamn., i. 7. What is said of the poem called Alius, the composition of which was suggested by the remorse of Columba after his three battles, will be seen further on, p. 732.

*' " De Scotis ad Britanniam pro Christo peregrinari volens, enavigavit." — Adamn., Fraf. The MS. of Salamanca, quoted by Colgan, adds: ^' Ad convertendos ad fidem Pictos." eiasm or Johnson on landing there in the eighteenth century. — Columba bitterly regrets his country. — Passionate elegies on the pains of exile. —Note upon the poem of Alius. — Proofs in his biography of the continuance of that patriotic regret. — The stork comes from Ireland to lona. He who has not seen the islands and gulfs of the western coast of Scotland, and who has not been tossed upon the sombre sea of the Hebrides, can scarcely form any image of it to himself. Nothing can be less seductive at the first glance than that austere and solemn nature, which is picturesque without charm, and grand without grace. The traveller passes sadly through an archipelago of naked and desert islands, sowed, like so many extinct volcanoes, upon the dull and sullen waters, which are sometimes broken by rapid currents and dangerous whirlpools. Except on rare days, when the sun — that pale sun of the North — gives life to these shores, the eye wanders over a vast surface of gloomy pea, broken at intervals by the whiteningcrest of waves, or by the foam}" line of the tide, which dashes here against long reefs of rock, there against immense cliffs, with a forlorn roar which fills the air. Through the continual fogs and rains of that rude climate may be seen by times the summits of chains of mountains, whose abrupt and naked sides slope to the sea, and whose base is bathed by those cold waves which are kept in constant agitation by the shock of contrary currents, and the tempests of wind which burst from the lakes and narrow ravines farther inland. The melancholy of the landscape is relieved only by that peculiar configuration of the coast, which has been remarked by the ancient authors, and especially by Tacitus — a configuration which exists besides only in Greece and Scandinavia.*^"'^ As in the fiords of Norway, the sea cuts and hollows out the shores of the islands into a host of bays and gulfs, of strange depth, and as narrow as profound.^'^ These gulfs take the most varied forms, penetrating by a thousand tortuous folds into the middle of the "'^ " Xusquam latius dominari mare, multura fluminum hue atquc illuc ferre, nee littoro tenus adcrescere aut resorberi, sed influere penitus atque ambire, etiam jugis atque montibus inseri velut in suo." — Tacitus, Jf^rtcolcB Vita, c. 10. " Diversorum prolixioribus promontoriorum tractibus, quae arenatis Oceani sinibus ambiuntur." — Gildas, vol. iii. p. 11, ed. Stevens.

^ " Mare, quo latus ingens Dant scopuli, et multa litus se valle receptat."

Pekseus, Sat. vi. These lines of Perseus upon the Riviera of Genoa describe still better the western coast of Scotland.

VOL. IT. 3 land, as if to identify themselves with the long and winding lakes of the Highland interior. Numberless peninsulas, ternfinating in pointed headlands, or summits covered with clouds; isthmuses so narrow as to leave the sea visible at both sides; straits so closely shut between two walls of rock that the eye hesitates to plunge into that gloom; enormous cliffs of basalt or of granite, their sides perforated with rents; caverns, as at Staffa, lofty as churches, flanked through all their length by prismatic columns, through which the waves of the ocean dash with groans; and here and there, in contrast with that wild majesty, perhaps in an island, perhaps upon the shore of the main land, a sandy beach, a little plain covered with scanty prickling grass; a natural port, capable of sheltering a few frail boats; everywhere, in short, a strangely varied combination of land and sea, but where the sea carries the day, penetrates and dominates everything, as if to affirm her empire, and, as Tacitus has said, " insert velut in suoy

Such is the present aspect — such must have been, with the addition of the forests which have disappeared, the aspect of those shores when Columba sought them to continue and end his life there. It was from this point that ho was to assail the Land of Woods,*^^ that unconquerable Caledonia, where the Romans had been obliged to relinquish the idea of establishing themselves, where Christianity hitherto had appeared only to vanish, and which for long seemed to Europe almost outside the boundaries of the world. To Columba was to fall the honor of introducing civilization into the stony, sterile, and icy Escosse la Sauvage,^^ which the imagination of our fathers made the dwelling-place of hunger, and of the prince of demons. Sailing by these distant shores, who could refrain from evoking the holy memory and forgotten glory of the great missionary? It is from him that Scotland has derived that religious spirit which, led astray as it has been since the Reformation, and in spite of its own rigid narrowness, remains still so powerful, so popular, so fruitful, and ^* In Gaelic, Calyddon, land of forests, according to Augustin Thierry; according to Camden this name is derived from kaled, which means hard and wild.

^^ See the expressions of Jean de Meung, Froissart, and others, collected by M. Francisque Michel, in his fine and learned work, Les Ecossais en France et les Franqais en Fcosse, printed by Gounouilhou, Bordeaux, 1862, p. 3-5. The words addressed by St. Louis when sick to his son are well known: "I pray thee to make thyself loved by the people of thy kingdom; for if thou rulest ill, I had rather that a Scot came from Scotland and reigned in thy place." — Joinville, p. 4.

SO free.^^ Half veiled by the misty distance, Columba stands first among those original and touching historical figures to whom Scotland owes the great place she has occupied in the memory and imagination of modern nations, from the noble chivalry of the feudal and Catholic kingdom of the Bruces and Douglases, down to the unparalleled misfortunes of Mary Stuart and Charles Edward, and all the poetic and romantic recollections which the pure and upright genius of Walter Scott has endowed with European fame.

A voluntary exile, at the age of forty-two, from his native island, Columba embarked with his twelve companions ^'' in one of those great barks of osier covered with hide which the Celtic nations employed for their navigation. He landed uponadesert island situated on the north of the open- lands at ing of that series of gulfs and lakes which, extending ^°°^' from the south-west to the north-east, cuts the Caledonian peninsula in two, and which at that period separated the still heathen Picts from the district occupied by the Irish Scots, who were partially Christianized. This isle, which he has made immortal, took from him the name of I-Colm-Kill (the island of Columb-Kill), but is better known under that of Iona.6^ A legend, suggested by one of our saint's most marked characteristics, asserts that he first landed upon another islet called Oronsay,^^^" but that, having climbed a hill near the shore immediately on landing, he found that he could still see Ireland, his beloved country. To see far oif that dear soil which he had left forever, was too hard a trial. He came down from the hill, and immediately took to his boat to seek, farther off, a shore from which he could not see his native land. When he had reached lona he climbed the highest point in the island, and, gazing into the distance,

®^ This is evidenced by the wonderful outburst of the Fj-ee Kirk, produced in 1843 by a local dispute upon the lay patronage of parishes, and which has established in almost every village of Scotland a new community and a new church, sustained by voluntary contributions in face of the official Church, which continues to hold a portion of the ecclesiastical possessions of Catholic times.

'^'' See their names in Appendix A of Reeves. Let us at present remark two among them whom we shall meet again further on — Baithen, Columba's secretary, and his successor as abbot of lona, and Diormit or Dermott, his minister (ministrator), the monk specially attached to his person, after the young Mochonna, of whom mention has already been made.

^'* The primitive name was Ily, Illi, or /— that is to say, the isle, the isle par excellence. lona, according to various authors, means the blessed isle. This last word is written lova by Adamnan and the ancient authors; but usage has turned it into lona.

***» To the south of Colonsay, not far from the large island of Islay.

28 ST, COLUMBA,

found no longer any trace of Ireland upon the horizon. He decided, accordingly, to remain upon this unknown rock. One of those heaps of stones, which are called cairns in the Celtic dialect, still marks the spot where Columba made this desiredly unfruitful examination, and has long borne the name of the Cairn of Farewell,^'* Description Nothing could be more sullen and sad than the of the isle aspect of this celebrated isle, where not a single tree has been able to resist either the blighting wind or the destroying hand of man. Only three miles in length by two in breadth, flat and low, bordered by gray rocks which scarcely rise above the level of the sea, and overshadowed by the high and sombre peaks of the great island of Mull,'*^ it has not even the wild beauty which is conferred upon the neighboring isles and shores by their basalt cliffs, which are often of prodigious height— or which belongs to the hills, often green and rounded at the summit, whose perpendicular sides are beaten incessantly by those Atlantic waves, which bury themselves in resounding caverns hollowed by the everlasting labors of that tumultuous sea. Upon the narrow surface of the island white stretches of sand alternate with scanty pastures, a few poor crops, and the turfmoors where the inhabitants find their fuel. Poor as the culture is, it seems everywhere resisted and disputed by the gneiss rocks, which continually crop out, and in some places form an almost inextricable labyrinth. The only attraction possessed by this sombre dwelling-place is the view of the sea, and of the mountains of Mull and the other islands, to the number of twenty or thirty, which may be distinguished from the top of the northern hill of Iona,''i Among these is Staffa, celebrated for the grotto of Pingal, which has been known only for about a century, and which, in the time of Columba, moaned and murmured in its solitary and unknown ^' Corn cul ri Erin— literally, the hack turned on Ireland, Many historians are of opinion that the isle had been formerly inhabited by Druids, whose burying-place is still shown— ClacJuiaji Druineach. O'Donnell says that they resisted the landing of the Irish emigrants; but Dr. Reeves contests this idea with very strong arguments. His edition of Adamnan contains a detailed map of lona, with all the names of places in Celtic,

70 u Where a turret's airy head
O'erlooked, dark Mull! thy mighty Sound,
Where thwarting tides, with mingled roar.
Part thy swarth hills from Morven's shore."

"Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles, i. 7, '' This hill, the highest in the island, is only 320 feet above the level of the sea. majesty, in the midst of that Hebridean archipelag;o which is at present haunted by so many curious admirers of the Highland shores and ruined feudal castles, which the great bard of our century has enshrined in the glory of his verse."^

The bay where Columba landed is still called the hay of the osier bark, PorV a Churraich; and a long mound is pointed out to strangers as representing the exact size of his iDoat, which was sixty feet long. The emigrant did not remain in this bay, which is situated in the middle of the isle; he went higher up, and, to find a little shelter from the great sea winds, chose for his habitation the eastern shore, opposite the large island of Mull, which is separated from lona only by a narrow channel of a mile in breadth, and whose highest mountains,''^ situated more to the east, approach and almost identify themselves with the mountain-tops of Morven, which are continually veiled with clouds. It was there that the emigrants built their huts of branches, for the island was not then, as now, destitute of wood.'* When First estab- Columba had made up his mind to construct for him- jjie^JJ^™* "^ self and his people a settled establishment, the build- monastery. ings of the new-born monastery were of the greatest simplicity. As in all Celtic constructions, walls of withes or branches, supported upon long wooden props, formed the principal element in their architecture. Climbing plants, especially ivy, interlacing itself in the interstices of the branches, at once ornamented and consolidated the modest shelter of the missionaries.'^ The Irish built scarcely any churches of stone, and retained, up to the twelfth century, as St. Bernard testities, the habit of building their churches of wood. But it was not for some years after their first establishment that the monks of lona permitted themselves the luxury of a wooden church; and when they did so, great ^^ In the Lord of the Isles Scott has given a poetic itinerary of all the archipehigo so frequented by St. Columba. The powerful Celtic dynasties who, under the title of Lords of the Isles, ruled the Hebrides during the middle ages, were of the clan Macdonald: their sway extended over the district of Morven, which is the part of the main land nearest to lona.

" The highest mountain in Mull is 3178 feet in height.

'^ It is said that Columba retired in saltibus to pray. At present the inhabitants of lona have no other wood than that which is thrown by the sea upon the beach. See in the Appendix No. ¹ some notes upon the present condition of lona.

7a " Virgarum fascicules ad hospitium construendum. ... Binales sudes." — Adamnan, ii. 3-7. Dr. Reeves has put together several ancient authorities upon the materials of chapels and churches in Wales and Brittany. "Virgis torquatis muros perficientes... musco silvestri solum ot hederaa nexibus adornato.... Virgas et fenum ad materiam cellae construeudae.. ." oaks, such as the sterile and wind-beaten soil of their islet could not produce, had to be brought for its construction from the neighboring shoreJ^

Thus the monastic capital of Scotland, and the centre of Christian civilization in the north of Great Britain, came into being thirteen centuries ago. Some ruins of a much later date than the days of Columba, though still very ancient, mingled among a few cottages scattered on the shore, still point out the site.

" We were now treading," said, in the eighteenth century, the celebrated Johnson, who was the first to recall the attention of the British public to this profaned sanctuary— "we were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavored, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us 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 force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona! " "''

Columba, who had been initiated into classic recollections, like all the monks of his time, had no doubt heard of Marathon; but certainly it could never have occurred to him that a day would come in which a descendant of the race he came to save should place his humble shelter in the same rank with the most glorious battle-field of Hellenic history.

Far from having any prevision of the glory of lona, his lumba ^*^^^ ^^'^^ ^^'^^ swayed by a sentiment which never

abandoned him— regret for his lost country. All his life he retained for Ireland the passionate tendercountry, j^ggg q£ q^^ exile, a love which displayed itself in the songs which have been preserved to us, and which date perhaps from the first moments of his exile. It is possible that their authenticity is not altogether beyond dispute; and that, ''^ " Cum roborese... duodecim currucis congregatis, materiee ad nostrum renovandum traherentur monasterium."

^' BoswELL'a Tour to the Hebrides. like the poetic lamentations given forth by Fortunatus in the name of St. Radegund,'^ they were composed by his disciples and contemporaries. But they have been too long repeated as his, and depict too well what must have passed in his heart, to permit us to neglect them. " Death in faultless Irebetter than life without end in Albyn." After this cry of despair follow strains more plaintive and submissive. In one of his elegies,'^ he laments that he can no longer sail on the lakes and bays of his native island, nor hear the song of the swans, with his friend Comgall. He laments above all to have been driven from Erin by his own fault, and because of the blood shed in his battles. He envies his friend Cormac, who can go back to his dear monastery at Durrow, and hear the wind sigh among the oaks, and the song of the blackbird and cuckoo. As for Columba, all is dear to him in Ireland except the princes folio reign there. This last particular shows the persistence of his political rancor. No trace of this feeling, however, remains in a still more characteristic poem,^*^ which must have been confided to some traveller as a message from the exile of lona to his country. In this he celebrates, as always, the delight of voyaging round the coast of Ireland, and the beauty of its cliffs and beach. But, above all, he mourns over his exile: —

^' What joy to fly upon the white-crested sea, and to watch the waves break upon the Irish shore! what joy to row the little bark, and land among the whitening foam upon the Irish Ah! how my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my Irish oak-grove! But the noble sea now carries me only to Albyn,^^ the land of ravens. My foot is in my little boat, but my sad heart ever bleeds. There is a gray eye which ever turns to Erin; but never in this life shall it see Erin, nor her sons, nor her daughters.^^ From the high prow

'* See ante, p. 488.

'* Published by Reeves, Appendix, p, 275.

^^ Reeves, p. 285-87. The original text of this poem is in very ancient Irish.

®' Alha, Albania, is the name generally applied by Irish writers to that part of Great Britain which afterwards became Scotland. It is evidently the same as Albion, and later took the form of Albany, which lias been always employed in the heraldic language of the two kingdoms as a title borne by the princes of the royal house. Everybody knows that the widow of Charles Edward, when married a second time to Alfieri, called herself Countess of Albany.

**'•* This seems to refer to a vow which he is said to have made at the moment of his departure, to see neither man nor woman of his country—vow which he evaded on his journey to the national assembly of Drum- I look over the sea, and great tears are in ray gray eye when I turn to Erin — to Erin, where the song of the birds are so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the birds; where the young are so gentle, and the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed. Young traveller, carry my sorrows with thee, carry them to Comgall of eternal life. Noble youth, take my prayer with thee, and my blessing; one part for Ireland— seven times may she be blessed I and the other for Albyn. Carry my blessing across the sea— carry it to the west. My heart is broken in my breast: if death comes to me suddenly, it will be because of the great love I bear to the Gael.^^

^ But it was not only in these elegies, repeated lasts au his and perhaps retouched by Irish bards and monks, ^'^^" but at each instant of his life, in season and out of season, that this love and passionate longing for his native country burst forth in words and in musings; the narratives of his most trustworthy biographers are full of it. The most severe penance which he could imagine for the guiltiest sinners who came to confess to him, was to impose upon them the same fate which he had voluntarily inflicted upon 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 Ceitt by covering his eyes with a bandage, over which he drew his cowl. —Eeeves.

^'^ The Gaoidhil or Gaedhil. This was the name which the Irish gave themselves before the Roman missionaries had given them the name of Scott. It is generally argued that the best known and most authentic, though in our opinion the least interesting, of Columba's Latin poems, dates from the first years of his sojourn at Zona. It is called by the name of Alius, from the first word of the first verse —

" Altus prosator vertustus dierum et ingenitus."

It is composed of twenty-four stanzas. The first word of each verse begins with a different letter, in the order of the letters of the alphabet. Each verse comments in very imaginative language on a text of Scripture, indicated in the argument, on such subjects as the Creation, the Fall, Hell, the Last Judgment, &c. The argument (in Irish) of this poem expressly states that it was suggested to Columba by his desire to obtain the pardon of God for his three battles. The text has been published by Colgan. Dr. Todd announces a more complete edition. Colgan states formally that the poem was composed at lona. He adds that, according to some, the saint occupied some years in meditation on the subject before he wrote it; and that, according to others, he sent it to Pope Gregory the Great, who received it with the most sympathetic respect.

^* See further on an incident related by Adaranan, i. 22. monks who were to return to Ireland, he could only say to them, " You will return to the country that you love." '^^

This melancholy patriotism never faded out of HissoUcihis heart, and was evidenced much later in his life g"^;!'/"^^^).'^ by an incident which shows an obstinate regret for came from his lost Ireland, along with a tender and careful '''^''" ' solicitude for all the creatures of God. One morning he called one of the monks and said to him, '' Go and seat thyself by the sea, upon the western bank of the island; there thou wilt see arrive from the north of Ireland and fall at thy feet a poor travelling stork, long beaten by the winds and exhausted by fatigue. Take her up with pity, feed her and watch her for three days; after three days' rest, when she is refreshed and strengthened, she will no longer wish to prolong her exile among us— she will fly to sweet Ireland, her dear country where she was born. I bid thee care for her thus, because she comes from the land where I, too, was born." Everything happened as he had said and ordered. The evening of the day on which the monk had received the poor traveller, as he returned to the monastery, Columba, asking him no questions, said to him, " God bless thee, my dear child, thou hast cared for the exile; in three days thou shalt see her return to her country." And, in fact, at the time mentioned the stork rose from the ground in her host's presence, and, after having sought her way for a moment in the air, directed her flight across the sea, straight upon Ireland.^*^ The sailors of the Hebrides all know and tell this tale; and I love to think that among all my readers there is not one who would not fain have repeated or deserved Columba's blessing.

^* " In tua quam araas patria... per nuiltos eris aiinos." — Adamn., i. 17. ^® "Nam de aquilonali Hibernise regione quadam hospita grus, valde fessa et fatigata, superveniet, coram te in litore cadcns recumbet; quam misericordiler sublevare curabis, ad propinquara deportabis domuni; et post expleto recroata triduo, nolens ultra apud nos peregrinari, ad priorein ScotisB dulcem, unde orta, remeabit regioneni... quam ideo tibi sic diligenter commendo, quia de nostra paternitatis regione est oriunda.... Benedicat te Deus, mi fili, quia peregrinae bene ministrasti hospitse... qua; post ternos soles ad patriam repedabit... paulisperque in acre viam speculata... recti volatus cursu ad Iliberniam se repedavit tranquillo." — Adamn^ i. 48.

34 ' ST. COLUMBA,