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Death of Columcille
what I grieve for far more, the borrowed vessel has
been broken and I have no means to pay for it." Then
Finnachta declared he would make it all right and he kept
his word. He not only paid for the vessel but he brought
the scholars to his own house and their teacher along
with them ;
he fitted up the ale-house for their reception
and gave them such abounding good cheer that the pro-
declared Finnachta would one
fessor, the annals say,
day become king of Ireland, "and Adamnan shall be the
head of the wisdom of Erin, and shall become soul's
friend or confessor to the king."
Adamnan became abbot of lona in 679 when he was
fifty-five, five years after Finnachta became king of Ireland.
The monarch had never lost sight of the boy with
the jar, whose bearing had indicated a youth of promise.
Adamnan was invited to the court and was ultimately
made the king's spiritual adviser or anamchara.
The friendship that united Adamnan and King Finnachta
was duplicated in the intimacy between Adamnan
and Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, 1
who had an Irish
mother and who was educated in Ireland and was at one
time apparently a schoolfellow or pupil of Adamnan.
The esteem in which he was held by the two kings bore
fruit on the occasions on which he acted as ambassador
between them. One of these diplomatic missions under-
taken by Adamnan brings into relief the only occasion
in Anglo-Saxon history, after the mission of Aidan, on
which an act of hostility was perpetrated by the English
against the nation that had been to them so remarkable
a benefactor. This was an attack on Meath by Ecgfrith,
the predecessor, brother and enemy of Aldfrid, whose
presence in Ireland appears to have been its inspiring
i He talks of visits to "my friend, King Aldfrid, in Saxonia" (V. Columbae,
I, XLVII).