The Scotichronicon contains the following account of King Alexander's adventure and temporary sojourn in Inchcolm:—
"About the year of our Lord 1123, under circumstances not less wonderful than miraculous, a monastery was founded on the island Aemonia, near Inverkeithing. For when the noble and most Christian Sovereign Alexander, first of this name, was, in pursuit of some state business, making a passage across the Queensferry, suddenly a tremendous storm arose, and the fierce south-west wind forced the vessel and sailors to make, for safety's sake, for the island of Aemonia, where at that time lived an island hermit (eremita insulanus), who, belonging to the service of St. Columba, devoted himself sedulously to his duties at a certain little chapel there (ad quandam inibi capellulam), content with such poor food as the milk of one cow and the shell and small sea fishes which he could collect. On the hermit's slender stores the king and his suite of companions, detained by the storm, gratefully lived for three consecutive days. But on the day before landing, when in very great danger from the sea, and tossed by the fury of the tempest, the king despaired of life, he vowed to the Saint, that if he should bring him and his companions safe to the island, he would leave on it such a memorial to his honour as would render it a future asylum and refuge to sailors and those that were shipwrecked. Therefore, it was decided on this occasion that he should found there a monastery of prebendaries, such as now exists; and this the more so, as he had always venerated St. Columba with special honour from his youth; and chiefly because his own parents were for several years childless and destitute of the solace of offspring, until, beseeching St. Columba with suppliant devotion, they gloriously obtained what they sought for so long a time with anxious desire. Hence the origin of the verse—
'M.C, ter, I. bis, et X literis à tempore Christi,
Aemon, tunc ab Alexandro fundata fuisti
Scotorum primo. Structorem Canonicorum
Transferat ex imo Deus hunc ad alta polorum.'"[56]
The preceding account of King Alexander's visit to Inchcolm, and his founding of the monastery there, occurs in the course of the fifth book (lib. v. cap. 37) of the Scotichronicon, without its being marked whether the passage itself exists in the original five books of Fordun, or in one of the additions made to them by the Abbot Walter Bower.[57] The first of these writers, John of Fordun, lived, it will be recollected, in the reigns of Robert II. and III., and wrote about 1380; while Walter Bower, the principal continuator of Fordun's history, was Abbot of Inchcolm from 1418 to the date of his death in 1449.
In the work known under the title of Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scocie,[58] there is an account of Alexander's fortuitous visit to Inchcolm, exactly similar to the above, but in an abridged form. Mr. Tytler, in his History of Scotland,[59] supposes the Extracta to have been written posterior to the time of Fordun, and prior to the date of Bower's Continuation of the Scotichronicon,—a conjecture which one or more passages in the work entirely disprove.[60] If the opinion of Mr. Tytler had been correct, it would have been important as a proof that the story of the royal adventure of Alexander upon Inchcolm was written by Fordun, and not by Bower, inasmuch as the two accounts in the Scotichronicon and in the Extracta are on this, as on most other points, very similar, the Extracta being merely somewhat curtailed. As evidence of this remark, let me here cite the original words of the Extracta:—
"Emonia insula seu monasterium, nunc Sancti Columbe de Emonia, per dictum regem fundatur circa annum Domini millesimum vigesimum quartum miraculose. Nam cum idem nobilis rex transitum faciens per Passagium Regine, exorta tempestas valida, flante Africo, ratem cum naucleris, vix vita comite, compulit applicare ad insulam Emoniam, ubi tunc degebat quidam heremita insulanus, qui seruicio Sancti Columbe deditus, ad quamdam inibi capellulam tenui victu, utpote lacte vnius vacce et conchis ac pisiculis marinis contentatus, sedule se dedit, de quibus cibariis rex cum suis, tribus diebus, vento compellente, reficitur. Et quia Sanctum Columbam a juventute dilexit, in periculo maris, ut predicitur, positus, vouit se, si ad prefatam insulam veheretur incolumis, aliquid memoria dignum ibidem facere, et sic monasterium ibidem construxit canonicorum, et dotauit."[61]
I shall content myself with citing from our older Scottish historians one more account of Alexander's adventure upon Inchcolm—namely, that given by Hector Boece, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, in his Scotorum Historia, a work written during the reign of James V., and first published in 1526. In this work, after alluding to the foundation of the Abbey of Scone, Boece proceeds to state that—(to quote the translation of the passage as given by Bellenden)—"Nocht long efter King Alexander come in Sanct Colmes Inche; quhair he was constrainit, be violent tempest, to remane thre dayis, sustenand his life with skars fude, be ane heremit that dwelt in the said inche: in quhilk, he had ane litill chapell, dedicat in the honoure of Sanct Colme. Finaly, King Alexander, becaus his life was saiffit be this heremit, biggit ane Abbay of Chanonis regular, in the honour of Sanct Colme; and dotat it with sindry landes and rentis, to sustene the abbot and convent thairof."[62]
As Bellenden's translation of Boece's work does not in this and other parts adhere by any means strictly to the author's original context, I will add the account given by Boece in that historian's own words:[63]
"Nec ita multo post Fortheæ rex æstuarium trajiciens, coorta tempestate in Emoniam insulam appulsus descendit, repertoque Divi Columbæ saccllo, viroque Eremita, triduo tempestatis vi permanere illic coactus est, exiguo sustentatus cibo, quem apud Eremitam quendam sacelli custodem reperiebat, nec tamen comitantium multitudini ulla ex parte sufficiente. Itaque eo periculo defunctus Divo Columbæ ædem vovit. Nec diu voto damnatus fuit, cœnobio paulo post Regularium, ordinis Divi Augustini extructo, agrisque atque redditibus ad sumptus eorum collatis."
That the very small and antique-looking edifice which I have described as still standing on Inchcolm is identically the little chapel or cell spoken of by Fordun and Boece as existing on the island at the time of Alexander's visit to it, upwards of seven centuries ago, is a matter admitting of great probability, but not of perfect legal proof. One or two irrecoverable links are wanting in the chain of evidence to make that proof complete; and more particularly do we lack for this purpose any distinct allusions or notices among our mediæval annalists, of the existence or character of the building during these intervening seven centuries, except, indeed, we consider the notice of it which I have cited from the Scotichronicon "ad quandam inibi capellulam," to be written by the hand of Walter Bower, and to have a reference to the little chapel as it existed and stood about the year 1430, when Bower wrote his additions to Fordun, while living and ruling on Inchcolm as Abbot of its Monastery.