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Columcille, Apostle of Scotland
2. A CHRISTIAN CUCHULAIN
The atmosphere of idolatry which wrapped Columcille
round in life crystallized into something of an apotheosis
in death. He became the Christian Cuchulain of the
Irish race, the wonder-working miles Christi, whose ex-
ploits performed against the powers of darkness rivaled
those of the pagan hero who in an earlier day had been
chief among "the curled and rosy youth of the kingdom."
The legends that grew around his name took the epic
note and form as they passed from mouth to mouth and
found credence even in the ears of the scholars. Adam-
nan, the chief biographer of Columcille, was a man of
cultivated judgment, steeped in Roman learning. In
preparing the life of his celebrated kinsman he took pains-
taking care, he tells us, in endeavoring to sift the false
from the true. 1
But the popular apotheosis of Columcille also took
captive the imagination of a man as capable as Adamnan.
After the battle of Troy the poets in the Greek-speak-
ing towns collected the traditions and adventures of the
heroes and made a diversion of them for the public.
From such material and through such processes was the
Iliad born and from parallel materials and processes were
developed the epics of the Irish heroic cycle, in which
the youthful hound of Ulster plays the high role. Adam-
nan's life of Columcille, despite its intentionally historical
character, occupies in the Christian field a place com-
parable to these stories in the pagan field. His work is
a Christian epic in which the accomplishments of Columcille
as scribe, statesman, missionary, monastic founder
iln the second preface to his work he tells us that it is the substance
of narratives learned from his predecessors and is founded either on written
authorities anterior to his own time or on what he learned himself from
ancient men then living. He talks of "witnesses, as the law requires."
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