Page:Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy vol XXXIII.djvu/634

306 It is not necessary for our purpose to discuss the question whether this semi-political scheme for Christianizing the Picts was already conceived when Columba first determined to leave Ireland, or was a later development. But it is worthy of remark that both Adamnan (if I understand him aright) and O'Donnell leave the question open. For the former the enterprise is merely a "pilgrimage," for the latter a departure into exile, which is a somewhat different expression of the same idea. On the other hand, both the Life of St. Molaise of Damh Inis and "De Causa Peregrinationis" represent it as having had from its very inception a missionary character. This seems to indicate that O'Donnell follows a tradition earlier than that of either of the fourteenth-century authorities.

But another objection to O'Donnell's story of Cul Dremhne must be briefly noticed. Why, it is asked, if the incidents which he describes really happened, are they passed over in silence by Adamnan, and even by the less trustworthy author of the Old Irish Life? The reason is to be found in the aim of these two writers and the method of their work. We may confine ourselves to Adamnan; for what has to be said of him may be applied with very slight alteration to the later writer. Now Adamnan, valuable as his account of St. Columba is, can scarcely be called a biographer in the modern sense. His Vita Sancti Columbae is not a regular narrative, it is a collection of anecdotes. He recounts prophecies, miracles, and angelic visions; and sometimes these things are more or less loosely connected with historical incidents of a more ordinary kind. But historical facts have for him, as for other hagiographers, a merely secondary importance. "To relate an ecclesiastical occurrence for its own sake was foreign to the scope of his work"; and so the synod, which has been already referred to, and St. Columba's excommunication thereat, are alluded to only by way of introduction to a more edifying tale. "Had there been no vision to relate, no fact would have been recorded." Bearing this characteristic of his work in mind, we shall not be surprised to find few references in Adamnan's pages to the events recorded by O'Donnell. He might have mentioned the copying of St. Finnian's book for the sake of the light that streamed from Columba's fingers, or the incident of the pet crane; or he might have included among his anecdotes the vision of the Archangel at Cul Dremhne, if any of these supernatural events had come to his ears. But to tell the story as a whole was exactly the thing that he would not do. Indeed, there are not many of Adamnan's anecdotes whose scene is laid in Ireland, probably because he knew much less about the saint's earlier life than of the incidents which were preserved in the traditions of Iona.