Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/68

 responsible. Besides the tilling of the ground there was the work of tending the animals. Night and morning the milk had to be carried from the 'milking field,' and as each returned thus laden, he paused at the door of Columba's cell, and obtained the saint's blessing. A horse was also employed in this daily task of carrying the milk. Then there was occasional building work to be done. Some of the huts were made of wooden planks, and the timber had to be hewn and prepared for them. This was at times very hard work, especially when storm and rain had to be encountered. Other huts were formed of wattles and clay. Although these did not require the same expenditure of labour at first, they must have been very often in need of repair. Boats, too, had to be built; frail crafts they were, made of wicker covered with skin, yet wonderfully long voyages were sometimes taken in them. Then there was the work of the household. The butcher, the cook and the baker are mentioned, showing that there was a division of labour, in which each had his own task.

The most important business of all, and that for which the Columban monasteries were famous, was the writing and illuminating of copies of the Scriptures. At Iona this work was carried on continuously, and was under the special superintendence of Columba himself. He made it a rule that none of his establishments should be without a copy of the Word of God, and most of the books which were thus scattered through the length and breadth of the land were produced at Iona. The magnificent copy of the Gospels known as the Book of Kells, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, though not, as had once been imagined, as old as the time of Columba, is scarcely a century later in