The poet-saint could sing the charms of Durrow as well as those of
Derry:
There the wind sings through the oaks and the elms,
The joyous note of the blackbird is heard at dawn,
The cuckoo chants from tree to tree in that noble land.
And again he calls it:
A city devout with its hundred crosses,
Without blemish and without transgression.
In the years to come, when Columba was in Iona, one cold winter's day the brethren noticed that their beloved abbot was sad and silent.
"What ails you, Father?" asked Diarmaid, his faithful companion.
"My soul is sorrowful," said Columbcille, "for my dear monks of Durrow. Bitter is the weather, and their abbot keeps them hard at work, fasting and a-cold."
At the same moment Laisren, the abbot of Durrow, felt a sudden inspiration to bid his monks get their dinner, and take a little rest, on account of the severity of the weather. Another day about the same time, when the monks of Durrow were building their new church, Columba in his cell at Iona saw one of them falling from the roof. He cried to God for help, and his guardian angel—such is the flashlike speed of an angel's flight—caught the monk ere he touched the ground.
More famous even than the "Book of Durrow" is the celebrated "Book of Kells," the most wonderful monument of the art of the Sixth Century that has come down to us. It was written also by the hand of Columbcille for Kells, his third foundation, though some of the illustrations were probably added at a later date.
The story runs that not long after the foundation of Durrow, Columba went to Kells, one of the royal seats of Diarmaid, High King of Ireland. Now Diarmaid belonged to the southern branch of the Hy-Nialls and was regarded by the northern branch with no great favour. When Columba arrived the King was absent, and the Saint was treated with scant ceremony by the soldiers of the royal guard, to whom he was probably a stranger. When Diarmaid returned and heard of the insult that had been offered in his royal palace to the greatest and most beloved of the Saints of Erin, one of the royal blood and his own cousin, he was ready to make atonement by any means in his power. He offered to give Columba Kells itself and the surrounding country for the founding of a monastery and a church.