The Life of Saint Columba, Apostle of Scotland

by F. A. Forbes

On leaving Clonard, Columba went in company with the gentle-hearted Ciaran to visit the school of another great master of the spiritual life, St. Mobhi of Glasnevin. There they met St. Comgall and St. Cannich, and formed with them a lifelong friendship. It was during his stay at Glasnevin that Columba was sent by St. Mobhi to Etchen, Bishop of Clonfad, to be ordained a priest, and it is characteristic of the simplicity of the times that the holy bishop, who was Columba's own cousin, and the son of a reigning prince, was found in the fields guiding the oxen of his plough.

It must have been also about this time that Ciaran and Columba journeyed together to the rocky Isle of Aran in the west, to visit St. Enda the Holy, the tutor of both Finnian of Moville and Finnian of Clonard. Aran was indeed a very nursery of sanctity, and Enda was reverenced as a father by all the saints of Ireland. They learnt from his lips the virtues and duties of a true monk, but they learnt still more from his example. He and his community slept on the bare ground in their stone cells, never warmed by a fire even in the coldest days of winter. Their frugal food was the fruit of the labour of their hands, but it was little enough that the barren rocks of Aran could furnish. To these men, whose hearts were on fire with the love of God, their desert island was a little paradise, where they lived in close communion with the unseen world, and from whence the voice of praise went up incessantly to the throne of God.

We are told that the gentle-hearted Ciaran, the son of the carpenter, was beloved by Enda above all his disciples, and that when the time came for him to leave the Isle of Aran to found his own great monastery of Clonmacnoise on the banks of the Shannon, the old man knelt and wept bitterly on the rocky shore. Perhaps he may have foreseen the early death of his beloved pupil, the sudden quenching of that light that was to shine so brightly during the few years that remained to him of his earthly pilgrimage.

For a few years after his departure from Aran the holy Ciaran exercised his apostleship in his native country, and then founded the monastery of Clonmacnoise, which in after days was to become the greatest and most learned community in Ireland. Four months later a terrible pestilence broke out, and the gentle Ciaran was amongst its victims. He asked the brethren to take him out into the open air that his eyes might see the blue sky once again before he died. The skin on which he used to sleep was spread on the ground and they laid him on it, weeping bitterly the while. The dying man then asked to be left alone with St. Kevin of Glendalough, his soul's friend (the beautiful old Celtic name for spiritual father—still in use among the Catholics of western Scotland), who blessed him and gave him the Holy Communion.

Ciaran bade him a tender farewell, for, says the old chronicle, he loved him much. Then, lifting his eyes to heaven with a smile on his lips, the pure and holy Ciaran breathed his last, and white angels came and carried his soul to Paradise.

CHAPTER III

DERRY AND DURROW

THE terrible outbreak of plague that carried off young Ciaran in the flower of his age found Columba at Glasnevin. St. Mobhi bade his disciples disperse to their homes, and Columbcille went northwards to Tir-Connell. When he reached the stream of Moyola he prayed earnestly that God might stay the plague on the southern bank of the river, and spare the country of his people. His prayer was heard, and the terrible scourge forbore to cross the water.

Columba was now twenty-five years of age, and his friends and kinsmen earnestly desired that he should found a church and monastery in their own country. His cousin the Prince of Ailech even offered him a piece of land on the northern coast, but Columba was deaf to their entreaties. His master, St. Mobhi, had given him no permission to found; and without it, so great was his reverence for the holy old man, he would take no steps in the matter. But Mobhi had fallen a victim to the pestilence and was sick unto death. One of his last acts was to send messengers in search of his beloved disciple, to take him his blessing and his girdle in token that the time had come for him to found his monastery.

The spot that Ailech had offered to Columba was altogether after his own heart and was now most gratefully accepted. The so-called "island" of Derry or Daire, surrounded as it was on two sides by the Foyle water and on the third by a marsh, consisted of a gently rising green hill, crowned on the summit with a beautiful wood of oaks. So dear was the oak grove of Derry to Columbcille, that rather than cut down one of its trees, he preferred to build his church in the space that remained between them.