After a time he asked Cormac softly:
“Will you leave your work?”
“My work?” repeated Cormac.
“Ay, your work—you alone are able to work in that vineyard. Cormac of Fail, my warrior from over the seas, chosen redeemer of my bards, you have a noble work before you.”
“When they told me,” he continued slowly, “of Cormac of Fail, and how he was gathering my bards around him, I hardly dared to believe it. Such news was too good to be true! I had heard of your father—King of Damnonia we called him in the North—and I knew that the son of Griffith Finnfuathairt could lead warriors in a noble cause only—when I heard all this, I tell you that I felt the saviour of my bards had come.” He paused again. “My bards,” he murmured, in a tone of infinite tenderness. “My bards!”
The last words were said to himself, half unconsciously.
“I know the tales men tell of them—how they swagger, and idle, and brag by the firesides of their chiefs—and how bragging leads to brawling, and brawling to worse things. It is true! But it is not given to all men to lead lives of prayer—there are others who must go out into the world and fight; and if they cannot, they will stay and idle at home. All they want is a noble cause—and then we shall have noble warriors and noble men!”
Columba’s eyes flashed, and Cormac remembered the war-like deeds of the saint’s father, Feidilmid. He had come from a race of warriors, the Kings of Conall, bred in the dark wolf-haunted mountains of the North, where life meant perpetual warfare, with beast as well as man. At that time, and for centuries after, Hibernia rang with the exploits of the great Conall Gulban of the same race—he after whom the north-west of Hibernia was named, Tirconnall.
“My son, you have a noble work before you to redeem the youth of Hibernia!” The saint held out his hands in entreaty. “I ask you, I entreat you to give them a trial.”
Cormac’s cheek burnt with pride and shame that the great Columba should treat him as a friend and equal. It was even more surprising than that he, one of the greatest men of the day, and the ruler of forty churches, should live the life of a peasant.