among

later; and Martin, in his wanderings among the Western Isles at the beginning of the eighteenth century, tells us that there" is a church here, in the east side of the isle, dedicated to St Donnan," and that "St Donnan's Well, which is in the south-west end, is in great esteem the natives, for St Donnan is the celebrated tutelar of this isle."1 There are many places among the Western Isles and Highlands named Kildonnan, as the sites of religious houses dedicated to the martyr. There are two in the south-western Lowlands, one in Wigtownshire, another in Ayrshire; and at the other extremity of the Scottish Lowlands, at Auchterless, in the interior of Aberdeenshire, a church was dedicated to St Donnan, where Dempster, who lived near it, says that his pastoral staff was preserved; and a cattlemarket held periodically in April is still called Donnan fair.2

Conspicuous among the companions or disciples of Columba was Cormac, of the tribe of Lethan, who claimed descent from Oillil Ollum, an illustrious king of Munster. He seems to have had a strong liking for the sea, and he often took boat from Ireland to visit his friends in Iona. His reception on one of these occasions gives us a peep into monastic life, and the incidents that might enliven it, touched with the customary homage to the preternatural powers of the saint. The brethren are talking about Cormac. He had sailed some time before to the Orkney Islands, and they are speculating from appearances whether or not he has had a prosperous voyage. The voice of the saint breaks in on their prattle. They shall see Cormac himself

1 Martin's Western Islands, 277.

2 Collection for the History of Aberdeen and Banff, 506.

that very day, and have the account of his fortune from his own lips. Accordingly, an hour or so afterwards, Cormac steps into the oratory, to the delighted surprise of all, and their strengthened confidence in the prophetic gifts of their chief. But a journey to Iona—even to Orkney—seems to have been but a step to Cormac. We are told of a wild voyage of fourteen days' duration straight northwards before he touched land, whence it has been supposed that he went as far as Iceland. He encountered not only the usual perils of the deep, but the attacks of sea-monsters of hideous and unknown form, which struck against the oars, and threatened to break through the leather sides of the vessel; for a currach or coracle made of skins stretched on a skeleton of wood, propelled by oars, was the frail vessel in which the missionary sought the deep.'

1 "Ut pelliceum tectum navis penetrales putarentur penetrare posse." -Adam., ii. 42. Such incidents are told by the older hagiologists with a succinct dryness that leaves abundant space to be supplied by the imagination. How the emptiness can be filled up by genius, helped by the faith proper to the purpose, we may see in the following passage, grouping together this and some other incidents briefly referred to in the

text:

"Columba's prayers, his special and ardently desired blessing, and his constant and passionate intercession for his brethren and disciples, were the grand safeguard of the navigators of Iona, not only against wind and shipwrecks, but against other dangers which have now disappeared from these coasts. Great fishes of the cetaceous order swarmed at that time in the Hebridean sea. The sharks ascended even into the Highland rivers, and one of the companions of Columba, swimming across the Ness, was saved only by the prayer of the saint, at the moment when he was but an oar's length from the odious monster, which had before swallowed one of the natives. The entire crew of a boat manned by monks took fright and turned back one day on meeting a whale, or perhaps only a shark more formidable than its neighbours; but on another occasion, the same Baithen, who was the friend and successor of Columba, encouraged by the holy abbot's blessing, had more courage, continued his course, and saw the monster bury itself in the waves. 'After all,' said the monk, we are both in the hands of God, both this monster and I.'

We get something like a tangible notion of the object and character of Cormac's journeys in some arrangements that preceded the voyage to Orkney. It is one of the few brief notices in which the biographer of

Other monks, sailing in the high northern sea, were panic-struck by the appearance of hosts of unknown shellfish, who, attaching themselves to the oars and sides of the boat, made holes in the hide with which the framework was covered.

"It was neither curiosity nor love of gain, nor even a desire to convert the pagans, which stimulated Columba's disciples to dare all the dangers of navigation in one of the most perilous seas of the world; it was the longing for solitude, the irresistible wish to find a more distant retreat, an asylum still farther off than that of Iona, upon some unknown rock amid the loneliness of the sea, where no one could join them, and from which they never could be brought back. They returned to Iona without having discovered what they were in search of, sad yet not discouraged ; and after an interval of rest always took to sea again, to begin once more their anxious search. It was thus that the steep and almost inaccessible island of St Kilda, made famous by the daring of its bird-hunters, was first discovered; then far to the north of the Hebrides and even of the Orcades they reached the Shetland Isles, and even, according to some, Iceland itself, which is only at the distance of a six days' voyage from Ireland, and where the first Christian church bore the name of St Columba. Another of their discoveries was the Faroe Islands, where the Norwegians at a later date found traces of the sojourn of the Irish monks -Celtic books, crosses, and bells. Cormac, the boldest of these bold explorers, made three long, laborious, and dangerous voyages, with the hope, always disappointed, of finding the wilderness of which he dreamed. The first time on landing at Orkney he escaped death, with which the savage inhabitants of that archipelago threatened all strangers, only by means of the recommendations which Columba had procured from the Pictish king, himself converted, to the still pagan king of the northern islanders. On another occasion the south wind drove him for fourteen successive days and nights almost into the depths of the icy ocean, far beyond anything that the imagination of man had dreamed of in those days.

"Columba, the father and head of those bold and pious mariners, followed and guided them by his ever-vigilant and prevailing prayers. He was in some respects present with them, notwithstanding the distance which separated them from the sanctuary and from the island harbours which they had left. Prayer gave him an intuitive knowledge of the dangers they ran. He saw them, he suffered and trembled for them; and immediately assembling the brethren who remained in the monastery by the sound of the bell, offered for them the prayers of the com

Columba brings persons of the day in a life-like shape before us. Columba is on one of his proselytising visits at the court of Brud, king of the Picts, "beyond the back of Britain," or the Grampian range, perhaps by the side of the Ness, as we have on another occasion found King Brud's court. There the saint meets with a secular visitor to the same court-the Regulus of Orkney. He takes the occasion of the meeting to desire King Brud to enjoin this Regulus, as his tributary, to give protection to his own friend Cormac, who, in his wanderings, is likely to find his way to the Orkney Isles; and we are told that, through this recommendation, Cormac's life was saved when he was there in imminent danger.1

Connected

Cormac was one of the many Irish ecclesiastics whose name became domesticated in Scotland. with his residence in the country, there are, indeed, some remains that may be contemporary with Columba's mission. A little way off from the shore of South Knapdale, in Argyleshire, opposite to the old church of Kilmory and its many sculptured monuments, is a small bare island, called Ellan Moir Vic O'Chormoig, which is rendered the Island of the Great Cormac. In the centre of it is an old ecclesiastical building— very old for Scotland. This, however, is not contemporary with the two saints, since it has been built by masons acquainted with the Norman arch, and though

munity. He implored the Lord with tears to grant the change of wind which was necessary for those at sea, and did not rise from his knees until he had a certainty that his prayers were granted. This happened often, and the saved monks, on returning from their dangerous voyages, hastened to him to thank and bless him for his prophetic and beneficent aid."-Montalembert, Monks of the West, iii. 222-26.

1 Adamnan, lib. ii. c. 42.

it has few distinctive features, can yet be fixed as a work not earlier than the eleventh century. There is a stone in a recess within it, reputed by tradition to be the tomb of Cormac, with a recumbent image of a churchman above it; but these things are still later than the oldest part of the church. They all go, along with a still more recent addition to the church, to show the veneration in which the saint's name was held for centuries.

There is, however, another piece of stone-work that might almost escape observation. It consists of two thick walls within a cleft, the sides of which partly support them. These walls are built with much pains, of thin slabs of stone without cement. There is no arch or roof over them, but the top could have been easily covered by beams and turf, and there is a squaretopped entrance-door. At the end of this primitive building is a deep narrow cavern of the kind used by the early anchorites. The whole may be of any antiquity, and it is quite within the bounds of probability that one of Columba's companions dwelt there. As we have already seen, there are some other unarched buildings in the far west which may be of like age, but we have not the same trace of connection between them and any of these early missionaries.

Another follower of Columba has lately come forth in remarkable and rather startling light. All through Argyleshire there are scattered the sites or remains of ecclesiastical buildings, coming under names which have a generic similarity-as Kilmary, Kilmory, Kilmorich, Kilmora or Kilmoray. Near Applecross, in Ross-shire, is the beautiful mountain-lake called Loch Maree, and one among its many islands, with many