He was born on the 7th of December, 521,[2] twenty-nine years after the reputed death of St. Patrick, and four years before that of St. Brigit, at Gartan[3] in Donegal, a wild but beautiful district of which his father was the prince. The reigning monarch of Ireland was his half-uncle, while his mother Ethne was the direct descendant of the royal line of Cáthaoir [Cauheer] Mór, the regnant family of Leinster, and he himself would have had some chance of the reversion of the monarchy had he been minded to press his claims. Reared at Kilmacrenan, near Gartan, the place where the O'Donnells were afterwards inaugurated, he received his first teaching at the hands of St. Finnén or Finnian in his famous school at Moville, for already since Patrick's death Ireland had become dotted with such small colleges. It was here at this early age that his school-fellows christened him Colum-cille, or Colum of the Church, on account of the assiduity with which he sought the holy building. At this period the Christian clergy and the bardic order were the only two educational powers in Ireland, and after leaving St. Finnian, Columcille travelled south into Leinster to a bard called Gemmán[4] with whom he took lessons. From him he went to St. Finnén or Finnian of Clonard. While studying at Clonard it was the custom for each of the students to grind corn in his turn at a quern, but Columcille's Irish life in the Book of Lismore tells us naïvely, in true old Irish spirit, "howbeit an angel from heaven used to grind on behalf of Columcille; that was the honour which the Lord used to render him because of the eminent nobleness of his race." St. Ciaran [Keeran] was at this time a fellow-student with him, and Finnian, says the Irish life, saw one night a vision, "to wit, two moons arose from Clonard, a golden moon and a silver moon. The golden moon went into the north of the island, and Ireland and Scotland gleamed under it. The silver moon went on until it stayed by the Shannon, and Ireland at her centre gleamed." That, says the author, signified "Columcille with the grace of his noble kin and his wisdom, and Ciaran with the refulgence of his virtues and his good deeds."
Leaving Clonard behind him, Columcille passed on to yet another school—this time to that of Mobhí at Glasnevin, near Dublin, where there were as many as fifty students at work, living in huts or cells grouped round an oratory, some of whom were famous men in after-time, for they included Cainnech and Comgall and Ciaran. A curious incident is recorded of these three and of Columcille in the Irish life in the Book of Lismore.
Columcille was driven from Glasnevin by the approach of the great plague which ravaged the country, and of which his teacher Mobhí died.
"Once on a time," says the author, "a great church was built by Mobhí. The clerics were considering what each of them would like to have in the church. 'I should like,' said Ciaran, 'its full of church children to attend the canonical hours.' 'I should like,' said Cainnech, 'to have its full of books to serve the sons of life.' 'I should like,' said Comgall, 'its full of affliction and disease to be in my own body: to subdue me and repress me.' Then Columcille chose its full of gold and silver to cover relics and shrines withal. Mobhí said it should not be so, but that Columcille's community would be wealthier than any community, whether in Ireland or in Scotland."[5]
Betaking himself northward with a growing reputation, he was offered by his cousin, then Prince of Aileach, near Derry, and afterwards monarch of Ireland, the site of a monastery on the so-called island of Derry, a rising ground of oval shape, covering some two hundred acres, along the slopes of which flourished a splendid forest of oak-trees, which gave to the oasis its name of Derry or the oak grove. Columcille, like all Gaels—and indeed all Celts—was full of love for everything beautiful in nature, both animate and inanimate, and so careful was he of his beloved oaks that, contrary to all custom, he would not build his church with its chancel towards the east, for in that case some of the oaks would have had to be felled to make room for it. He laid strict injunctions upon all his successors to spare the lovely grove, and enjoined that if any of the trees should be blown down some of them should go for fuel to their own guest-house, and the rest be given to the people.
This was Columcille's first religious institution, and, like every man's firstling, it remained dear to him to the last. Years afterwards, when the thought of it came back to him on the barren shores of Iona, he expressed himself in passionate Irish poetry.
"For oh! were the tributes of Alba mine
From shore unto centre, from centre to sea,
The site of one house, to be marked by a line
In the midst of fair Derry were dearer to me.
That spot is the dearest on Erin's ground,
For the treasures that peace and that purity lend,
For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round,
Protecting its borders from end to end.
The dearest of any on Erin's ground
For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love,
Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found
To be crowded with angels from heaven above.
My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove,
My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell,
May God the Eternal in Heaven above
Send death to thy foes and defend thee well."[6]
Columcille was yet a young man, only twenty-five years of age, when he founded Derry, but both his own genius, and more especially his great friends and kinsfolk, had conspired to make him famous. For the next seventeen years he laboured in Ireland, and during this time founded the still more celebrated schools of Durrow in the present King's County, and of Kells in Meath, both of which became most famous in after years. Durrow,[7] which, like Derry, was named from the beautiful groves of oak which were scattered along the slope of Druim-caín, or "the pleasant hill," seems to have retained to the last a hold upon the affections of Columcille second only to that of Derry. When its abbot, Cormac the voyager, visited him long years afterwards in Iona, and expressed his unwillingness to return to his monastery again, because, being a Momonian of the race of Eber, the southern Ui Neill were jealous of him, and made his abbacy unpleasant or impossible, Columcille reproached him in pathetic terms for abandoning so lovely an abode—
"With its books and its learning,
A devout city with a hundred crosses."