Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/416

 famous men, studied under Finnian till ordained priest by Etchen, a bishop whose diocese is obsolete, and whose church is indicated by a slight irregularity in the pasture at Clonfad in the parish of Killucan in Westmeath. After his ordination, Columba, with Comgall, Ciaran mac Antsair, and Cairrech, three of his fellow-students at Clonard, lived a religious life at Glasnevin, on the banks of the Finglass. In 544 an epidemic broke up the community and Columba returned to his kindred. As he crossed the river Bior, which separated the kingdom of the Airghialla from the lands of Cinel Eoghain, he prayed that its waters might be the northern limit of the epidemic, an incident of importance as showing that at that time no feud had yet grown up between the tribe of Conall and that of his brother Eoghan. His first foundation was in their marchland. In the far north, a few miles from Ailech, the stone hill fortress of the northern N-i Neill, there was a fortified hill, the sides of which were clothed with an oak wood, and which was called, from some long-forgotten chief, Daire Calgaich. The fort was given by his admiring kinsmen to Columba, and there he built his first church, one day's journey only from the mountains of his birth, and in sight of the sea which was to carry him to the place of his death. In after times the hill acquired the name of its consecrator, and was known for nearly a thousand years as Daire Choluimcille ; it then took a prefix from the home of its conquerors and was called Londonderry, but is now universally known by its oldest name of all, Daire, phonetically spelt Derry. A great church, which gives its name of Templemore to the parish, and which was the predecessor of the present cathedral, was built in 1164 on another site, but a lane called Longtower still marks the locality of the church built by Columba in 545, and near which for many centuries there stood a tall round tower. In the fifteen years following 545 Columba founded many churches with monastic societies. The most important was Durrow, founded in 553. The most secluded was built in the westernmost glen of Ulster, called in some parts of Ireland Seangleann, and in the place itself Glen Columbcille. Here the natives, wishing their patron not to be inferior in achievements to the greatest saint of Ireland, relate how Columba, after prayer and fasting in the solitude, drove out from the glen into the ocean some demons who had fled from the wrath of Patrick in Connaught. The ruins of Columba's church, the small size of which is one sign of its antiquity, and some traces of monastic buildings, are on the north side of the glen. Just below it the sea is always covered with foam round the promontory of Garraros, while mists for six months shut out from view the opposite side of the glen and the path ascending it into the world. The saint and his followers always thought the roar of the sea and mists sweeping across desolate moorland incitements to devotion. In 563 he crossed to the west of Scotland, and received a grant of the island known in English as St. Colm's isle, or Iona, and in Irish as I-coluim-cille, and in Latin as Hy. It lay on the line which divided the nominally Christian Scots of Britain from the pagan Picts. Columba's voyage was made in the second year after a war between his kinsmen and the king of Ireland, of which the saint was the originator. A youth who had taken sanctuary with him was killed by the king. The saint went to the north and roused his tribe to avenge the wrong. They marched several miles beyond the boundary of Tirconaill by the plain which lies between the sea and the foot of Ben Bulben, and met King Diarmait at Cuildremhne, not far from Drumcliff in Sligo, where at this day a very ancient carved stone cross of graceful proportions marks a subsequent monastic foundation of the saint. The accounts of ecclesiastical censure following this conduct are indefinite in the early lives, but seem to have some foundation of truth (, note on the subject, Annala R. I. i. 197). It seems most likely that the banishment was voluntary, and that it was a self-inflicted mortification and not a publicly imposed penance. All late Irish writings represent the banishment as penal, and an elaborate legend, which makes the copying of another saint's gospel Columba's offence, is transferred into most English and foreign accounts of him, but it contains intrinsic evidence that it is not historical. The conversion of the Picts, if not the original object of the migration, soon became part of the saint's work. His preaching was successful, and his reputation for sanctity spread so that in 574, on the death of Conall, lord of the British Dalriada, who had given Inchcolm to Columba, Aidan, his cousin and successor, sought and received formal inauguration in the monastery. In the next year Columba visited Ireland in company with Aidan (d. 606) [q. v.] A great folkmote was held on Drumceatt, a long green ridge which rises from Myroe, the second largest plain of Ireland, a few miles from the northern coast. Here Aedh mac Anmire, king of Ireland, was persuaded formally to renounce rights of sovereignty over the tribes of British Dalriada, and the terms of release of