hood while at Clonard. It throws an interesting light on the character of the ecclesiastics in early Christian Ireland, several of whom we know, by authentic record, to have been artisans, to learn that when the boy sought out Bishop Etchen for his ordination, he found him ploughing his field. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age when he returned home from school. His close kinsman, the Prince of TirConaill, gave him a grant of land, a hill of oaks near where the river Foyle debouches into the Loch of the same name-where he founded his famous monastery of Derry. As a love for all of God's living things was a marked characteristic of almost all the early Irish saints, we find Colm, when erecting his monastery here, breaking a precedent, that was not only honoured but blest, by refusing to build his church with its chancel towards the east-because he was thereby able to spare the life of many oak-trees.3 His next foundation, after Derry, was the monastery of Durrow (in the present Kings County)—founded seven or eight years later. His missionary activity now became extraordinary. He was travelling east and west, preaching, exhorting, organising communities, founding monasteries. He founded Kells, Swords, Drumcolum, Drumcliff, Screen, Kilglass and Drumhome, and many, many more. In all he is said to have founded thirty monasteries in Northern Ireland-before yet he was exiled, which event occurred in 562, when he was forty-two years of age. His exile, the greatest, saddest event of his life, for which calamity through all his years after he never ceased to grieve, was yet fraught with seeds of happy blessing for the neighbouring countries to which he and his disciples were to bear the tidings of Christ. The reason of Colm's exile, the terriblest sentence that could be 3 After he left Derry and left Ireland we find him in his beautifully pathetic lament for exile telling how the angels crowded every leaf of the oaks of Derry, listening to the monks chanting the psalms, both at midnight and at morn. For, through the beautiful years that he spent there building up the community, and making the monastery a temple of the living God, the holy man's heart sent down its roots deep into Derry hill. His soul was sorely pained at parting from his many monasteries, but it got a most woful wrench when he had to tear his heart's roots from among the roots of the oak wherewith they had mingled on his beloved Derry hill. "The reason that I love Derry is, For its peace, for its purity, And for its crowds of white angels, "O Derry, my own little grove, pronounced against one of the most passionate patriots that Eirinn ever produced, is alleged to have been a penance for causing the great battle of Cuildremne (in Sligo) where a host of lives were lost. And the causes of his instigating this battle are popularly supposed to be two: because the Ard-Righ, Diarmuid O'Carroll, in the first place adjudged a case against him-unfairly, as Colm believed; and because, furthermore, Diarmuid violated monastic sanctuary and carried away and punished with death a homicide who had taken sanctuary with the saint. The case adjudged against him affected a copy of the Psalms which he, Colm, had made surreptitiously from the book of his master, Finian of Moville. When Finian discovered that his pupil had made and carried off a copy he claimed its return as stolen property. The case was laid before the High King, Diarmuid, who, after hearing argument on both sides, delivered the sententious judgment which was popularised ever after in Ireland, "Le gach boin a boinín”-to every cow her calf-a verdict which, as it would make the copy Finian's, Colm hotly resented and rejected.* After this Cuildremne slaughter (in 561) the impetuous Colm gave way to remorse that bit into his soul. His biographer, Adamnan, says there was a synod held at Taillte shortly after, where a motion was made to excommunicate Colm, for his crime-which would have been carried but that his bosom friend, Brendan of Birr, held out against the other members and saved Colm. But his own soul was punishing him. He finally went to St. Molaiseof Devenish, as some say, or St. Molaise of Inishmurry, others say-humbly confessed his crime and asked to be penanced. For such a great crime the penance must be great. Knowing the intense love that possessed Colm for his native land, Molaise ordered that he should go forth from his country and behold it never more. Also he should bring to Christ as many souls as there * The violation of sanctuary occurred when Curan, son of King Aed of Connaught, a hostage at Tara, had, at a game of caman, struck and killed the son of the High-King's steward, and had then taken refuge with Colm. King Diarmuid commanded that the young prince should be taken forcibly from Colm and put to death-which was done. For this unforgiveable outrage against traditional sanctuary, Colm, eluding a guard that had been put over him, quitted Diarmuid's domain, and made his way over the mountains to his home in Tir-Conaill. His kinsmen, the princes of Tir-Conaill and Tir-Eogain, took up his quarrel, and joining their army to that of Aed, King of Connaught, father of the prince who had been put to death, met Diarmuid and his forces at Cuildremne, fought and defeated him, with terrible slaughter-three thousand dead, some say, being left on the field. The battle of Cuildremne was not the only one for which the impetuous Colm was responsible. Other contentions of his had caused the battles of Coleraine wherein his people fought the Dal Araide, and the battle of Culfeda in which they fought Coleman, the son of Diarmuid. had been lives lost at Cuildremne. Sad-hearted for the sore sentence that had been meted out to him-but resolute-Colm, taking with him twelve companions, among whom were his uncle, Ernaan, and his cousin, Baoithin, sailed away from the land which his heart loved so fondly, and which now must nevermore be his. "Alas for the voyage, O High King of Heaven, Enjoined upon me, For that I on the red plain of bloody Cooldrevin "Three things I am leaving behind me, the very Tir-Leidach I'm leaving, and Durrow and Derry. "Yet my visit and feasting with Comgall have eased me And all but thy government, Eire, had pleased me, Into a bay on the island of Oronsay in the southern Hebrides they ran their boat, on an evening. Next morning Colm, climbing It was a grievously sorrowful leave-taking of Ireland was Colm's, as, looking back from his boat, his moistened sight embraced the beloved hills that, afar, were sinking forever from view. In his Lament for Erin, one of the several beautiful poems credited to the poet Colm, he says: "There is a grey eye That will look back upon Erin: The men of Erin nor her women. "I stretch my glance across the brine As I look back upon Erin. "My mind is upon Erin, Upon Loch Lene, upon Linny, "Melodious are Erin's clerics, melo dious her birds, Gentle her youths, wise her elders, Illustrious her men, famous to behold, Illustrious her women for fond espousal. "Carry my blessing with thee to the My heart is broken in my breast: "Were all Alba mine From its centre to its border, I would rather have the site of a house In the middle of fair Derry. "Beloved are Durrow and Derry a high hill to look toward the land where he had left his heart, beheld, on the horizon's verge, low and dim, that land for which his soul so sorely grieved. Here he must not stay! "To oars again, we can not stay, Where sunbeams pierce the cloudy day, The Isle so dear to me!" The sad company had to take to their boat again, and spread their sail to catch a wind that would drive them farther from Eirinn. And Their next landing was their final one. It was on Iona. on that quiet evening on which the keel of their boat grated on the pebbled shore of this quiet isle, to the world unknown till now, Fame with its thousand wings encircled it and marked it for its own. Iona was part of the Scotic Dal Riada, colonised and ruled by the Scots (Irish). King Conal, who now reigned there, was of the Tir-Chonaill family, Colm's own kinsman. And to the exile he made a grant of land whereon the holy man founded a home for his monks, where he was to found his monastery, and where he was to build his school, and from whence he and his disciples were to carry Christ, first to the untutored Picts, and later to the Britons and the Saxons of the south. Starting here with a small number of brothers, and small and poor shelter, they drew to them from Ireland recruits in great numbers, whom the fame of Colm, his power and his piety, perennially attracted. Their buildings grew, their farms spread, their flocks increased. They bore the Gospel tidings to King Brude and to his Pictish hordes in the uttermost corners of Scotland. Their school, too, attained great fame, and attracted students from all these island countries." Called also Hy, and I-Colmcille. "From time to time also to Iona came to visit Colm his brother-saints from Ireland, famous men of that day-the two Brendans, the two Finans, Flannan, Ronan, Comgall, Finbar, all are said to have visited the exile, bringing dearly loved Eirinn to him who to Eirinn could not return. Many others, too, abbots of various Irish monasteries came there, like these, to seek the counsel and advice of one whose counsel was prized beyond that of any other Irishman of that day. Among them, the wandering abbot Cormac Ua Liathain, who, forced from Colm's monastery of Durrow, because he was a Munsterman presiding over Northerns who nagged him, was seeking a deserted isle where he might end his days alone with God. And for leaving that land which of all earth's lands was the most delightful, most joyous, from which no man in his sanity could voluntarily exile Yet, despite the penance which seemed to forbid it, was he destined to tread Eirinn's hallowed soil again. The romantic, dramatic return to his land of him who had been solemnly forbidden ever to see that land again, is one of the outstanding incidents of a life filled with big incidents. He was to return to Eirinn to the famous Convention of Drimceatt-return, too, without literally transgressing against the penitential ordinance. And this was the reason of his return. The poets of Eirinn-of which brotherhood Colm was a proud member had now not only multiplied so largely, but also had become so satirical, so overbearing, and so exacting, that the nobles of the land loudly murmured, because of the burden these people had become. Wandering over the island as they did, surrounded by their hungry bands of attendants, seating themselves down in what court they pleased, commanding whatever their erratic minds fancied, remaining as long as they pleased, exacting what they wished, and leaving when they would, it was little wonder that people began to groan under the intolerable burden. But this state of evil came to a head when at length one of them went so far as to demand, in tribute to his poetic powers, the royal brooch, a rarely beautiful heirloom, of the Ard-Righ-who was now Aedh, the son of Aimmire. The restraint which even a High King had imposed upon himself in deference to poetic genius and sacred tradition, was burst by such brazenness. He swore that the island should be cleared of the poet tribe. To pass a decree for this purpose which should be legal, he called a convention of the princes and nobles, scholars and ecclesiastics of the land, to meet himself, the home-sick Colm, with affectionate upbraiding, upbraids the errant Cormac. "For," Colm tells him, "I pledge thee my uneering word, which may not be impugned, that better is death in reproachless Eirinn than life forever in Alba." And his pining heart which dwells forever upon happy memories of his native land, paints for the hapless wanderer such alluring picture of that pleasant Durrow which he madly quitted as should swiftly bring him back to reason, and draw him there again: "How happy the son of Dimma (i.e., Cormac) of the devout church, when he hears in Durrow the desire of his mind-the fingers of the wind playing upon the elm-trees, the black-birds' joyous note when he claps his wings; the lowing of the cattle at early dawn in Ros Grencha; the cooing of the cuckoo from the tree, on the brink of summer." Even to a sea-gull visitor which comes flying toward Iona from Eirinn, in the west, he addresses a poetic appeal full of affectionate envy for that it saw Ireland so recently, and can see it when it will again. For, this passionate love and longing for the country of his nativity, the intense love and longing which endowed the cold flag of Gartan, that had been his bed, with the virtue of averting home-sickness, persisted in the saint's soul through all his days in Hebridean exile. On Colm's flag (his stone bed) at Gartan, down to most recent days, poor Donegal boys on the eve of their starting for America, Australia, or other far exile, would pass a night-to obtain the great Exile's blessing, which should avert from them the home-sickness which had racked his heart. |