Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/64

 myth and legend. The book is not a biography in the strict sense. The author does not pretend to give us a detailed account of the incidents of Saint Columba's life, but dwells first on the prophecies, secondly on the miracles, and thirdly on the visions of the saint. As may well be supposed, many of the anecdotes he relates must have been simple ordinary events, which may easily have happened without any miraculous element at all. But Adamnan sees miracles in everything. He revels in the extraordinary; and as we read story after story, in some places one more impossible than the other, we are sorely tempted to give it all up in disgust. But notwithstanding all its improbable miracles, the book is most valuable. It was written while the isolation of Irish Church life was still to a great extent unbroken, and the incidental references it contains portray for us all the more truthfully, because unintentionally, the life led by the community at Iona in its earliest times; and as Iona was formed on the same pattern as the monasteries of Ireland, the description of it will enable us to picture to ourselves the kind of scene which they also presented.

We have to imagine to ourselves a centre of busy activity and cheerful toil. Members of the community were continually coming and going. Sometimes it would be on a missionary expedition to preach amongst the pagan Picts. At other times it would be to visit a king or chief with whom it was of importance to make a kind of treaty, or who was perhaps to be rebuked for some unlawful act that he had done. Often they went to treat for the ransom of captives, or to beg for pity on behalf of the conquered. Occasionally, too, they were sent to Ireland, where perhaps a synod was being held, or where it was necessary to visit their brethren, followers of