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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
after life. A generation later, when lona had become
his home, he often reverted to it in his talk and occa-
sionally allowed his feeling to find expression in poetry.
"He loved that city greatly," says the Lismore life, "and
said:
For this do I love Derry,
For its smoothness, for its purity,
Because it is quite full of white angels
From one end to the other." 1
4. His CAREER AS MONASTIC FOUNDER
About 553 he founded the school of Durrow in the
present King's County which attained great celebrity.
Durrow (Irish, Dairmagh, oak-plain) was like Derry
named from the beautiful groves of oak which were scat-
tered along the slope of Druim-Cain, and, as Columcille's
chief institution it is mentioned by Bede. He appointed as
its abbot Cormac, the son of Dima, who figures in the
pages of Adamnan as an indefatigable voyager in the
northern ocean, repeatedly visiting lona and going as far
north, it would appear, as Iceland. Cormac was a
Momonian of the race of Heber and not of the kin of
Columcille, and as a result he does not appear to have got
on well with the southern Ui Niall with whom he found
himself. This fact may account for his travels abroad.
Columcille in one of his poems upbraids him for aban-
doning so lovely
an abode :
"With its books and its learning
A devout city with a hundred crosses."
During the sixteen years interval between 546 and 562,
when Columcille departed for lona, he established a
i Anecdota Oxoniensia, ser. 5, p. 175. A more eloquent translation Is given
in Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, p. 169. The full poem in Irish was
copied from a Brussels MS., by Michel Ua Clerigh for Colgan. It has been
modified in transcription.
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