Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

38y INSULAR CHURCH lis.
Whether the chapel on Trodda, with the other appa-
rently eremitical buildings dispersed about the islands,
existed before the Catholic times, is, and must remain, un-
certain. The structures themselves could not have been
older than the date of the expulsion of the Culdees, of St.
Columba's own apostolic order. I have already said that
the last of these hermits recorded, is the one whom
Martin found in Benbecula. In that, as in the islands
south of it, the Catholics not only remained after the
reformation, but continue lo this day, as I have men-
tioned. But the influence of the Church was at an end,
and the monastic system, in all its ramifications, met its
natural death.
It is interesting" to note the enormous disproportion be-
tween the churches of those days and the parishes of the
present. Nothing can serve better to give us a notion of
the influence and wealth of the Catholic church, even in
this wretched country ;
since, if they did not all maintain
ministers or eremites, the very buildings must have drawn
largely on the funds of Chiefs, who could never have
been very opulent, from what we know of the crowds of
followers and clansmen whom they were compelled to
maintain, in whole or in part. The same considerations
will lead us to form a notion of the influence of religion
over the Highlanders, even in the most barbarous times ;
and indeed there is little else remaining from which we
could conjecture whether they had any religion at all.
That these churches were built and endowed by the Chiefs,
is a necessary consequence pf the state of things at that
time ;
were the fact itself not distinctly stated in one case,
namely, that of the large donations and repairs to various
churches, made by John Lord of the Isles, who died in
1380 and was buried in Oran's chapel in lona. Had not
the people and the inferior Chiefs been of a religious cha-
racter, neither these buildings nor their inhabitants and