Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/196

Aidan originally formed of a portion of the west coast of Scotland by Fergus Mor, son of Erc, who came at the end of the fifth century from Irish Dalraida. According to the law of tanistry which governed the succession, Gabran was immediately succeeded by a relative named Conall, and it was only after Conall's death that the throne was accessible to Aidan. It was St. Columba who chose him to be king in preference to his brother Eaganan, and solemnly crowned him in the island of Iona. Aidan pursued a vigorous policy. The Dalraid Scots were, before his time, regarded as an Irish colony and subject to the mother tribe in Ireland. In 575 Aidan attended a great council at Drumceat, and announced to the Irish his intention to govern Scottish Dalraida as an independent kingdom. In 603 he led a large force of Britons and Scots against Ethelfrith, the Anglian king of Bernicia, and was defeated at a spot called by Bede ‘Degsastan,’ which is probably in Liddesdale. Bede notes that so signal was the defeat inflicted on Aidan, that no like attempt had since been made up to his own time (731) in northern England. Aidan died in 606, and St. Columba named his son Eocha Buidhe, or ‘the yellow-haired,’ his successor.

[Skene's Celtic Scotland, i. 143, 162–3, 229, 239, 247, 249; Bede's Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. i. c. xxxiv.; Reeves's Adamnan, pp. 81, 264; Biog. Brit., where a long account is given of the mythical history of Aidan as related by Hector Boece and later writers; Pinkerton's Enquiry into Scottish History, ii. 114.]  AIDAN, (d. 651), was the first bishop of Lindisfarne. Oswald, who became king of Northumbria in 635, had been converted to Christianity during his exile at the monastery of Hii or Iona. His first duty as king was to repulse the heathen Welsh. His success enabled him to persuade his people to accept the christian faith. He summoned missionaries from the monastery of Hii, which had been founded by the Irish monk Columba. The monks of Hii sent a bishop of austere temper, who was soon dispirited by the obstinacy of the Northumbrian people. He returned to Hii and reported his ill success. The monks sat in silence, which was broken by one of the brethren, Aidan. ‘Were you not too severe,’ he said, ‘to unlearned hearers? Did you not feed them with meat instead of milk?’ All agreed that Aidan should be sent to Northumbria as bishop. He set out at the end of 635.

Aidan was the founder of the Northumbrian church. He was the fast friend of King Oswald, who acted as his interpreter when he began to preach at the court, and the thegns heard him gladly. Faithful to the traditions of his youth, Aidan chose as the seat of his church the island of Lindisfarne, which in some measure reproduced the features of Iona. It lies off the Northumbrian coast, to which it is joined at low tide by an expanse of two miles of wet sands; at high tide it becomes an island. As it was close to the royal vill of Bamborough, Aidan could vary a monastic life with missionary journeys to the mainland, and frequent intercourse with the king. Monks from Iona flocked to Lindisfarne, and thence carried monastic civilisation along the Tweed, where Boisil founded the monastery of Old Melrose. The zeal of Oswald and the piety of Aidan went hand in hand. Churches were built, and the Northumbrian folk flocked to hear the new teachers. The personal characters of Oswald and Aidan were the chief means of commending Christianity to the people. Aidan taught no otherwise than he lived, and impressed his own standard upon his followers. The gifts which he received from the king and his thegns were at once distributed amongst the poor. He had no care for worldly pleasures, but spent his time in study and in preaching. His life was simple: he traversed the country on foot, and preached to every one whom he met (, Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. cap. 5). His friendship with King Oswald continued unbroken. One Easter day Aidan sat at dinner with Oswald, when the royal almoner came in to say that he had not enough to satisfy all the needy. Oswald ordered the food to be taken from his own table, and his silver dish to be broken in pieces and distributed. Aidan seized the outstretched hand of the king and blessed him, saying, ‘May this hand never perish!’ When Oswald fell in battle against the heathen Penda in 642, his right hand and arm were found severed from his body, and men said that through Aidan's blessing they remained uncorrupted, and were a relic of the church of York.

Oswald's defeat by the heathen king of Mercia threatened to sweep away Northumbrian Christianity. Deira, under Oswini, submitted to Penda; but Bernicia under Oswiu, Oswald's brother, still made resistance. Penda ravaged the land and laid siege to the rocky fortress of Bamborough. Finding it impregnable by assault, he gathered all the wood and straw of the neighbourhood to the foot of the rock, and, waiting for a favourable wind, fired it. The sparks would easily have set on fire the wattled houses of the little town. Aidan, from his retirement in a hermitage on the isle of Farne, just opposite Bamborough, saw the cloud of smoke