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Columcille and Brethren at lona
form of a cross. We hear of plowing, sowing, reaping
and threshing; of the cultivation of oak groves and apple
trees; and of salmon fishing. Strangers signal across the
sound from Mull by shouting or lighting fires and are
ferried over the mile of water.
The yachts, freightships and ferries on the water have
their counterpart in the curri and chariots on the land.
Columcille journeys forth in his chariot both in lona and
Ireland, on one occasion with the chariot unsecured by
linchpins. A rich cleric mounted in a chariot drives
pleasantly along the Plain of Breg (Magh Bregh, Meath)
and Columcille prophesies that he will die lying on a
couch with a prostitute and choked with a morsel of meat
from his neighbor's cattle that had strayed within his
walled enclosure. Most of Columcille's long journeys,
covering in some cases hundreds of miles, were made
however on foot with no greater help than that given by
a staff. Tho the danger from wild beasts must have
been imminent, Columcille and his companions do not
seem to have carried any weapon. On one occasion it is
stated that by prayer and the power of the eye he procured
the death of a huge wild boar pursued by the hounds.
The majority of the houses built by the brethren were
apparently of wood, of heavy timber or wattles, while
others were of stone, and that some of them were not
small is made clear by the anxiety displayed by Colum-
cille over the severe labor of the brethren on one of the
buildings marked out by him at Derry. Many of the houses
of the time were in fact white timbered mansions, glistening
in the sunlight on the summit of great duns, chambered
and unchambered, thousands of which continue to this
day. We hear of a magna domus and a monasterium
rotundum clearly Round Towers, as Petrie notes, were
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