Columba arrived. Whether actuated by his general feeling of benevolence, or having some leaning in favour of the professors of an art which he himself practised, the Saint interfered in behalf of the threatened Bards; and prevailed so far as that, under certain limitations and restrictions, their order should still be permitted to exist.t The important question, respecting the poets, being thus disposed of, the Assembly had next to pronounce their judgment upon the question at issue between the two kings. On the ground of his descent from Carbre Rieda, to whom, as we have seen, a grant had been made, in the middle of the third century, of all those parts of the county of Antrim which formed the territory called, from thenceforth, Dalriada, King Aidan asserted his hereditary right to the sovereignty of that territory, and maintained that, as belonging to his family, it should be exempt, if not in the whole, at least in part, from the payment of tribute to the King of Ireland, and from all such burdens as affected the rest of the kingdom. The Irish monarch, on the other hand, contended that the territory in question formed a portion of his dominions, and had always, equally with the rest, been subject to imposts and contributions; that, before the Dalriadians became sovereigns in Britain, such tribute had been always paid by that principality, nor could the elevation of its princes to a throne in North Britain make any difference in its relations to the Irish monarchy. Notwithstanding his known attachment to King Aidan, so great was the general trust in Columba's sense of justice, that to him alone the decision of the question was first referred. On his declining, however, to pronounce any opinion respecting it, the task of arbitration was committed to St. Colman,-a man deeply versed, as we are told, in the legal and ecclesiastical learning,—who, on the obvious grounds, that Dalriada, being an Irish province, could not but be subject, in every respect, to the monarch of all Ireland, gave his decision against the claim of King Aidan. During this, his last, sojourn in Ireland, Columba visited all the various religious establishments which he had founded; passing some time at his favourite monastery at Diarmagh, and there devoting himself to the arrangement of matters connected with the discipline of the church. After accomplishing, to the best of his power, all the objects he had in view in visiting Ireland, he returned to his home in North Britain,-to that "Isle of his heart," as, in some prophetic verses attributed to him, Iona is called,—and there, assiduous to the last in attending to the care of his monasteries and numerous churches, remained till death closed his active and beneficent course. The description given of his last moments by one who received the details from an eye-witness, presents a picture at once so calm and so vivid, that I shall venture, as nearly as possible in the words of his biographer, to relate some particulars of the scene. Having been forewarned, it is said, in his dreams of the time when his death was to take place, he rose, on the morning of the day before, and ascending a small eminence, lifted up his hands and * According to Mr. O'Reilly, Columba "wrote several pieces, both in Irish and Latin. Upwards of thirty poems in the Irish language, ascribed to him, have come down to our times, of which copies are in possession of the assistant secretary." There is, however, little or no reliance to be placed on the authenticity of the pieces attributed to this Saint; which had probably their origin in that favourite practice of the Irish writers of the middle ages, of introducing their own productions to public notice under the sanction of long celebrated names. The whole of this account of the proceedings at Drumceat, respecting the Bards, is represented by Mr. Whitty (Popular Hist. of Ireland) as an invention of the poets of subsequent times, who, he says, “knew well the value of dignified associations, and accordingly did not fail to connect their order with the names of St. Patrick and St. Columb-cille." But the perfect consistency of the acts of the council at Drumceat, as well as of some others at a still earlier period, with all that is known of the political importance of the Irish bards in later times, is such as to confirm the historical truth of the curious circumstance above related. In a parliament held by the Duke of Clarence, at Kilkenny, in the reign of Edward III., it was made penal to entertain any of the Irish minstrels, rhymers, or news tellers. (Davies's Discovery.) Under Henry VIII., some of the coercive measures proposed by Baron Finglas were directed against "Irish minstrals, rhymers, shannaghs (genealogists,) and bards;" and, in the time of Elizabeth, acts were passed against this order of men, which show how dangerous, as political engines, they were even at that period considered. "For that those rhymers do by their ditties and rhymes made to divers lords and gentlemen in Ireland, in the commendation and high praise of extortion, rebellion, rape, raven, and other injustice, encourage those lords and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to leave," &c. &c. So late, indeed, as the reign of Charles I. we find "wandering poets," who sought to gain their ends, "under threat of some scandalous rhyme," made liable to imprison ment. 1 "In the Isle of my heart, the Isle of my love, instead of a monk's voice there shall be lowing of cattle. But, ere the world comes to an end, Iona shall flourish as before."-Cited in Armstrong's Gaelic Dictionary. "PerDr. Johnson appears to have been animated with a similar spirit of prophecy respecting this island. haps," says the moralist, "in the revolutions of the world, Iona may be, some time again, the instructress of the western regions." (Journey to the Western Islands.) § Post hæc verba de illo dicens (descendens) monticellulo, et ad monasterium revertens, sedebat in tugurio Psalterium scribens; et ad illum tertii Psalmi versiculum perveniens, ubi scribitur, Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono, Hic, ait, in fine cessandum est pagine; quæ vero sequuntur Baitheneus scribat. ... Interim cætus monachorum cum luminaribus accurrens, Patre viso moriente, cæpit plangere; et ut ab aliquibus qui præsentes inerant didicimus, Sanctus necdum egrediente anima, apertis sursum oculis, ad utrumque latus cum mira hilaritate et lætitia circumspiciebat.... Diermitius tum Sancti sanctum sublevat, ad benediciendum monachorum chorum, dexteram manum: sed et ipse venerabilis Pater in quantum poterat, suam simul movebat manum.-Adamnan, lib. iii. cap. 3. solemnly blessed the monastery. Returning from thence, be sat down in a hut adjoining, and there occupied himself in copying part of the Psalter, till, having finished a page with a passage of the thirty-third Psalm, he stopped and said, "Let Baithen write the remainder." This Baithen, who was one of the twelve disciples that originally accompanied him to Hy, had been named by him as his successor. After attending the evening service in the church, the Saint returned to his cell, and, reclining on his bed of stone, delivered some instructions to his favourite attendant, to be communicated to the brethren. When the bell rang for midnight prayer, he hastened to the church, and was the first to enter it. Throwing himself upon his knees, he began to pray-but his strength failed him; and his brethren, arriving soon after, found their beloved master reclining before the altar, and on the point of death. Assembling all around him, these holy men stood silent and weeping, while the Saint, opening his eyes, with an expression full of cheerfulness, made a slight movement of his hand, as if to give them his parting benediction, and in that effort breathed his last, being then in the seventy-sixth year of his age. The name of this eminent man, though not so well known throughout the Latin church as that of another Irish Saint, Columbanus, with whom he is frequently confounded,* holds a distinguished place among the Roman and other martyrologies, and in the British Isles will long be remembered with traditional veneration. In Ireland, rich as have been her annals in names of saintly renown, for none has she continued to cherish so fond a reverence, through all ages, as for her great Columbkill; while that Isle of the Waves, with which his name is now inseparably connected, and which, through his ministry, became "the luminary of the Caledonian regions," has far less reason to boast of her numerous Tombs of Kings, than of those heaps of votive pebbles left by pilgrims on her shore, marking the path that once led to the honoured Shrine of her Saint. So great was the reverence paid to his remains in North Britain, that, at the time when the island of Hy began to be infested by the Danes, Kenneth III. had his bones removed to Dunkeld on the river Tay, and there founded a church, dedicated it to his memory; while the Saint's crosier, and a few other relics, were all that fell to the share of the land of his birth.|| In the annals of the Four Masters, for the year 1006, we find mention made of a splendid copy of the Four Gospels, said to have been written by St. Columba's own band, and preserved at Kells in a cover, richly ornamented with gold. In the time of Usher, this precious manuscript was still numbered among the treasures of Kells;** and if not written by Columba himself, is little doubted to have been the work of one of his disciples. The reigns of those monarchs who filled, in succession, the Irish throne, during the interval which the acts of this eminent man occupied, possess little interest except what is imparted to them by their connexion with the great Saints of those times. Uninterest Among the writers who have been led into this confusion is M. Thierry, (Hist. de la Conquête de l'Angleterre,) who, in pursuance of his professed object,-that of making his history picturesque,-has jumbled together the lives of the two saints most graphically. Such, according to some writers, is the meaning of the term Iona.-See Garnett's Tour in the Highlands, vol. i. "We were now treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions. 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 upon the ruins of Iona."-Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands. §"The Port na Curachan, where Columba is said to have first landed;-a bay towards the west, which is marked by large conical heaps of pebbles, the penitentiary labours, as tradition says, of pilgrims to his shrine."-Macculloch's Western Isles. Among the various prophecies attributed to St. Columba, the arrival of the English and their conquest of the country were, it is said, foretold by him. "Then," says Giraldus, "was fulfilled the alleged prophecy of Columba, of Hibernia, who long since foretold that, in this war, there should be so great a slaughter of the inhabitants, that their enemies would swim up to the knees in their blood."-(Hibern. Expugnat. lib. ii cap. 16.) There is yet another remarkable passage of this prophecy, which adjourned its fulfilment to a very remote period. The Irish are said to have four prophets, Moling, Braccan, Patrick, and Columbkill, whose books, written in the Irish language, are still extant; and speaking of this conquest (by the English.) they all bear witness that in after times the island of Ireland will be polluted with many conflicts, long strife, and much slaughter. But they all pronounce that the English shall not have a complete victory till but a very little before the day of judgment." "Omnes testantur eam crebris conflictibus, longoque certamine multa in posterum tempora multis cædibus fœdaturam. Sed vix parum ante diem judicii plenam Anglorum populo victoriam compomittunt."(lb. cap. 33) Usher mentions also another copy of the Gospels, said to have been written by Columba's own hand, which had been preserved at the monastery founded by that Saint at Durrow." Inter cujus zuμnλz Evan. geliorum codex vetustissimus asservabatur, quem ipsius Columbæ fuisse monachi dictitabant: ex quo, et non minoris antiquitatis altero, eidem Columbæ assignato (quem in urbe Kells sive Kenlis dictâ Midenses sacrum habent) diligentè cum editione vulgata Latina collatione factâ, in nostros usus variantium lectionum binos libellos concinnavimus."-Eccles. Primord. 691. **This Kells manuscript is supposed to have been the same now preserved in the library of Trinity Col lege, Dublin, on the margin of which are the following words, written by O'Flaherty, in the year 1677"Liber autem hic scriptus est manu ipsius B. Columbæ." HISTORY OF IRELAND. A. D. ing, however, as are the events of these reigns, the historian is bound not to pass them wholly in silence, but at least to number the royal links as they pass, however To Murkertach, the last occupant of the 527. void they may be of lustre or value. throne whom we have noticed, succeeded Tuathal Maogarb, great-grandson of Nial the Great, during whose reign of eleven years the only events that stand out prominently in his annals, are the death of the aged bishop Moctheus, the last surviving disciple of St. Patrick, and the foundation of Columba's favourite establishment, the monastery of Daire-Calgaich, or Derry. His successor Diarmid's life and reign are someA. D. With the fate common to most Roydamnas, or sucwhat more fertile in events. 539. cessors apparent, he had been, throughout the reign of Tuathal, an object of jealousy and suspicion; and was even, for some time, through fear of persecution, obliged to conceal himself among the islets of Lough Rie. It was here, doubtless, that his friendship with St. Kieran, the eminent founder of Clonmacnois, commenced; and either then, or on his accession to the monarchy, he made a grant of one of the islands to this Saint, who, building a monastery upon the spot, was soon joined by a numerous company of monks, and called up around him, in those solitudes, the voice of psalmody and prayer. By the same royal patronage, he was enabled, not many years after, to accomplish a still greater design; for, a site being granted to him, by the monarch, on the western bank of the Shannon,* St. Kieran founded there that great monastery of Clonmacnois, which became in after-times so celebrated for its nine Royal Churches, and all those luxuries of ecclesiastical architecture which gathered around its site.f In the reign of this monarch, the Ancient Hall or Court of Tara, in which, for so many centuries, the Triennial Councils of the nation had been held, saw, for the last time, her kings and nobles assembled within its precincts; and the cause of the desertion of this long-honoured seat of legislation shows to what an enormous height the power of the ecclesiastical order had then risen. Some fugitive criminal, who had fled for sanctuary to the monastery of St. Ruan, having been dragged forcibly from thence to Tara, and there put to death, the holy abbot and his monks cried aloud against the sacrilegious violation; and proceeding in solemn procession to "From that day," say the annalists, the Palace, pronounced a curse upon its walls. "no king ever sat again at Tara;" and a poet who wrote about that period, while mourning evidently over the fall of this seat of grandeur, ventures but to say, "It is not with my will that Teamor is deserted." A striking memorial of the church's triumph on the occasion, was preserved in the name of distinction given to the monastery, which was, ever after, in memory of this malediction, called "The Monastery of the Curses of Ireland." A. D. 554. A. D. 599. On the death of Diarmid, who, after a reign of twenty-one years, was killed by Aidus, a Dalriadian prince, surnamed the Black, the crown reverted to the Eugenian branch of the northern Nials; and two brothers, Donald and Furgus, who had fought with success against the Nials of the South, in the great battle of Culdremni, were elevated to the sovereignty. The joint reign of these royal brothers lasted but for a year, during which an invasion of the province of Leinster for the enforcement of the odious tribute, and a furious battle in consequence, on the banks of the Liffey, in which the Lagenians were defeated, marked with the accustomed track of blood the short term of their copartnership. To these succeeded another pair of associates in the throne, named Boetan and Eochad; and after them, at an interval of but two years, Anmerius, or Anmery, a prince, remarkable, it is said, for learning, who, after reigning little more than the same period, was cut off by a violent death; as was also his successor, Boetan the Second, in the course of less than a year. The prince raised to the Sovereignty after this last-named monarch was that Adius, of whom we have already spoken,-memorable for the great convention which he held at Drumceat,-and whose reign, far more fortunate than the passing pageants which had gone before him, lasted for the long space of six-and-twenty years. To give an account of all the numerous Saints, male and female, whom the fervent zeal of this period quickened into existence and celebrity, would be a task so extensive as to require a distinct historian to itself; and, luckily, this important part of Ireland's history, during her first Christian ages, has been treated fully, and with the most sifting * Among the lands bestowed for this purpose, were some contiguous to Mount Usneach, which had been formerly occupied by the Druids. + See, for an account of these churches, Ware, vol. i. Irish Hymn, attributed to Fiech, a disciple of St. Patrick, but evidently from this allusion to the desertion of Tara, written at least as late as the time of King Diarmid. Annal. Ulton. ad ann. 564, note. O'Flaherty. The Annals of the Four Masters prolong it to three years. zeal and industry, by a writer in every respect qualified for such a task, and who has left no part of his ample subject untouched or unexplored.* Referring, therefore, to this learned historian for a detailed account of the early Irish Church, I shall notice such only of its most distinguished ornaments as became properly known throughout Europe, and regained for the "Sacred Island" of other days, all its ancient fame, under the new Christian designation of "the Island of Saints." The institution of female monasteries, or nunneries, such as, in the fourth century, were established abroad by Melania, and other pious women, was introduced into Ireland, towards the close of the fifth century, by St. Brigid; and so general was the enthusiasm her example excited, that the religious order which she instituted spread its branches through every part of the country. Taking the veil herself at a very early age, when, as we are told, she was clothed in the white garment, and the white veil placed upon her head, she was immediately followed, in this step, by seven or eight other young maidens, who, attaching themselves to her fortunes, formed, at the first, her small religious community. The pure sanctity of this virgin's life, and the supernatural gifts attributed to her, spread the fame she had acquired more widely every day, and crowds of young women and widows applied for admission into her institution. At first she contented herself with founding establishments for her followers in the respective districts of which they were natives; and in this task the bishops of the different diocesses appear to have concurred with, and assisted her. But the increasing number of those who required her own immediate superintendence rendered it necessary to form some one great establishment, over which she should herself preside; and the people of Leinster, who claimed to be peculiarly entitled to her presence, from the illustrious family to which she belonged having been natives of their province, sent a deputation to her, to entreat that she would fix among them her residence. To this request the Saint assented; and a habitation was immediately provided for herself and her sister nuns, which formed the commencement both of her great monastery and of the town or city of Kildare. The name of Kill-dara, or Cell of the Oak, was given to the monastery, from a very high oak-tree which grew near the spot, and of which the trunk was still remaining in the twelfth century;-no one daring, as we are told by Giraldus, to touch it with a knife. The extraordinary veneration in which St. Brigid was held, caused such a resort of persons of all ranks to this place-such crowds of penitents, pilgrims, and mendicants-that a new town sprang up rapidly around her, which kept pace with the growing prosperity of the establishment. The necessity of providing spiritual direction, as well for the institution itself, as for the numerous settlers in the new town, led to the appointment of a bishop of Kildare, with the then usual privilege of presiding over all the churches and communities belonging to the order of St. Brigid, throughout the kingdom. Among the eminent persons who were in the habit of visiting or corresponding with this remarkable woman, are mentioned St. Ailbe, or Emly, one of the fathers of the Irish church, and the Welsh author, Gildas, who is said to have sent to St. Brigid, as a token of his regard, a small bell cast by himself. By one of those violations of chronology not unfrequently hazarded for the purpose of bringing extraordinary personages together, an intimate friendship is supposed to have existed between St. Brigid and St. Patrick, and she is even said to have woven, at the apostle's own request, the shroud in which he was buried. But with this imagined intercourse between the two Saints, the dates of their respective lives are inconsistent; and it is but just possible that Brigid might have seen the great apostle of her country, as she was a child of about twelve years old when he died. Among the miracles and gifts by which, no less than by her works of charity and holi Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, by the Rev. John Lanigan, D. D. †The bishop who admitted her into the number of Sacred Virgins, was named Maccaile, or Maccaleus; and the ceremony is thus described by her biographer, Cogitosus:-" Qui (Maccaleus) cæleste intuens desiderum et pudicitiam, et tantum tastitatis amorem in tali virgine, pallium album et vestem candidam super ipsius venerabile caput imposuit."-Cap. 3. Illa jam cella Scotice dicitur Kill-dara, Latine vero sonat Cella Quercus. Quercus enim altissima ibi erat, cujus stipes adhuc manet.-S. Brigid. Vita. § A veneration for small portable bells, as well as for staves, which had once belonged to holy persons, was, in the time of Giraldus, common both among the laity and clergy. "Campanus baiulas, baculos quoque in superiori parte cameratos, auro et argento vel ære contectos, aliasque hujusmodi sanctorum reliquias, in magna reverentia tam Hyberniæ et Scotia, quam et Walliæ populus et clerus habere solent."-Itiner. Camb. lib. i. cap. 2. The same writer mentions the Campana Fugitiva of O'Toole, the chieftain of Wicklow; and we are informed by Colgan (in Triad.) that whenever St. Patrick's portable bell tolled, as a preservative against evil spirits and magicians, it was heard from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear, from the Hill of Howth to the western shores of Connemara," per totam Hiberniam." See note on this subject in Hardman's Irish Minstrel, vol. i. ness, the fame of St. Brigid and her numerous altars was extended, has always been mentioned, though on the sole authority of Giraldus Cambrensis, that perpetual Fire, at Kildare, over which, through successive ages, the holy virgins are said to have kept constant watch; and which, so late as the time of Giraldus, about six hundred years from the date of St. Brigid, was, as he tells us, still, unextinguished. Whether this rite formed any part of the Saint's original institution,* or it is to be considered but as an innovation of later times, it is, at all events, certain that at the time when Kildare was founded, the policy of converting to the purposes of the new faith those ancient forms and usages which had so long been made to serve as instruments of error, was very generally acted upon; and, in the very choice of a site for St. Brigid's monastery, the same principle is manifest; the old venerable oak, already invested with the solemnity of Druidical associations, having, in this, as in most other instances of religious foundations, suggested the selection of the spot where the Christian temple was to rise. Having lived to reap the reward of her self-devotion and zeal, in the perfect success and even ascendancy of the institution which she had founded, St. Brigid closed her mortal course at Kildare, about a. D. 525, four years, it is calculated, after the birth of the great Culumbkill,f being herself, at the time of her death, about 74 years of age. The honour of possessing the remains of this holy woman was, for many centuries, contested not only by different parts of Ireland, but likewise by North Britain; the Irish of Ulster contending strenuously that she had been buried, not at Kildare, but in Down ; while the Picts as strongly insisted that Abernethy was her resting-place; and the British Scots, after annexing the Pictish territories to their own, paid the most fervent homage to her supposed relics in that city. But in no place, except at Kildare, was her memory cherished with such affectionate reverence as in that seat of all saintly worship, the Western Isles; where to the patronage of St. Brigid most of the churches were dedicated: by her name, one of the most solemn oaths of the islanders was sworn; and the first of February, every year, was held as a festival in her honour.§ A. D. It has been already observed that the eminent Irish Saint, Columbkill, has been often confounded, more especially by foreign writers, with his namesake, Columba, or Columbanus, whose fame, from the theatre of his holy labours having been chiefly France and Italy, has, among the people of the Continent, obscured or rather 559. absorbed within its own light that of the apostle of the Western Isles. The time of the birth of St. Columbanus is placed about forty years later than that of Columbkill, A. D. 559; and though not of royal extraction, like his distinguished precursor, he appears to have been of a noble family, and also endowed by nature with what he himself considered to be a perilous gift, personal beauty. In order to escape the dangerous allurements of the world, he withdrew from his native province, Leinster; and, after some time passed in sacred studies, resolved to devote himself to a monastic life. The monastery of Bangor, in Ulster, already celebrated in Ireland, but by the subsequent career of St. Columbanus, rendered famous throughout all Europe, was the retreat chosen by this future antagonist of pontiffs and kings; and at that school he remained, under the discipline of the pious St. Congall, for many years. At length, longing for a more extended sphere of action, he resolved to betake himself to some foreign land; and having, at the desire of the abbot, selected from among his brethren, twelve worthy companions, turned his eyes to the state of the Gauls, or France, as requiring especially such a mission as he meditated. By the successive irruptions of the northern barbarians into that country, all the elements of civilized life had been dispersed, and a frightful process of demorilization was now rapidly taking place, to which a clergy, indolent and torpid, * Dr. Lanigan repels indignantly the notion of Ledwich and others, that St. Brigid, and her sister nuns of Kildare, were but a continuation of heathen Druidesses, who preserved from remotest ages an inextinguishable fire." There is, however, an ordinance of Scriptural authority, in which St. Brigid may have found a sanction for her shrines. "The fire upon the altar (of the tabernacle) shall be burning in it, and shall not be put out."-Leviticus, ch. vi. ver. 12. It was for contemning this inextinguishable fire, and using a profane fire in its stead, that the Levites Nadab and Abihu were miraculously put to death. See Dr. Milner's Inquiry, letter 11. † According to other accounts, he was born about 539,-“ A date much earlier," says Dr. Lanigan, "than that of Mabillon and others, but much more probable." The claims of Down to the possession of her remains, as well as of those of St. Patrick and St. Columba, are commemorated in the following couplet, cited by Camden: "Hi tres in Duno tumulo tumulantur in uno Brigida, Patricius atque Columba pius." "From these considerations," says Macpherson, "we have reason to suspect that the Western Isles of Scotland were, in some one period or other, during the reign of popery, and perhaps in a great measure appro priated to St. Brigid."-Crit. Dissert. In Gaelic, the name of Brigid is, according to this writer, Bride; and by Hebrides, or Ey brides, is meant, he says, the Islands of Brigid. |