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Columcille, Apostle of Scotland
mouth and the old life of unknown authorship written
in Irish and contained in the Book of Lismore, as well
as another independent Latin memoir. The Book of
Leinster, the Leabar Breac, or Speckled Book, and other
Irish compilations have notices concerning him, while
Bede, Alcuin, Walafrid Strabo and Notker Balbulus
likewise refer to him. They are but the vanguard of
a procession that has endured to our day. 1 Of all the
influential personages born in Ireland in her long prime,
men distinguished by high birth, lofty talent, and accom-
plishing eminent work in Ireland and abroad, to Colum-
cille alone, by a singular destiny, has been allotted through
the ages his fair meed of fame. He still stands before
us a commanding, aged, inscrutable and yet familiar fig-
ure, surrounded by a crowd of men, who assisted or succeeded
him in his work, and who are known to us chiefly
because of him.
Columcille was born in 521 at Gartan close to the
Atlantic shore in the beautiful territory of the Cinel
Connaill of which his father, Fedhlimidh, was a ruling
prince. The reigning high monarch of Ireland was his
half-uncle, while his mother Ethne was the direct descendant
of the line of Cathaoir Mor which gave Leinster
its kings. Reared at Kil-mac-nenain,
celebrated later
as the site of the inauguration of the O'Donnells as
Princes of Tyr-Connaill, Columcille received some preliminary
teaching at the hands of Finnian in his famous
foundation at Moville. The strictly lay element in his
education was next acquired in the Leinster school of
the bards presided over by the aged Gemman. The old
iThe last and most copious of the manuscript lives of Columcille is a
compilation of all existing documents and poems both in Latin and Irish,
made by the order of his clansman, Manus Ua Domnaill, Prince of Tyrconnell.
in 1532. It is preserved in a lar^e vellum folio in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford and Irish and English texts were printed in 1918 by the Irish Fellowship
Foundation at the University of Illinois.
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