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CHAPTER XII
DEATH OF COLUMCILLE
I. The Last Scene at lona. 2. Illuminated Manuscripts and Latin
Poems. 3. By the Time of Adamnan. 4. The Hibernicizing of
North Britain.
IT
i. THE LAST SCENE AT IONA
is characteristic of the meticulous accuracy of Irish
and the
records that we know not merely the year
month, but the very day and almost the very hour
and minute of the night in which Columcille passed
away. 1
It was just after midnight between Saturday the
8th and Sunday the 9th of June, in the year 597, that
there took place at lona a scene, the story of which is as
moving and humanly interesting as any that has come out
of the North.
The story is told in the last chapter of Adamnan, where
he describes "How Our Patron Saint Columba Passed to
the Lord." On the eve before his death the great man, hav-
ing inspected the granary and the barn of the monastery
and having exprest satisfaction that the brethren would
be well supplied for the year, confided to his attendant
Diarmuid that his end was near. A touching dialog then
follows, which leaves Diarmuid weeping bitterly, while
later on is depicted the oft-quoted incident of the white
horse, "the obedient servant that used to carry the milkvessels
between the monastery and the byre," which wept
i On the subject of the accuracy of Irish annals, etc., consult Reeves, Pro-
ceeding's of the Royal Irish Acad., Joyce, Social History of Ireland, I., pp.
513-21; War of the Gaels with the Galls, ed., Todd, Introd. XXVI; Hyde,
Literary Hist, of Ireland, 38-43; Kuno Meyer's "Early Relations between the
Gael and Brython," read before Society of Cyrnmrodorion, May 28, 1896.
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