[100] "Alanus de Mortuo Mari, Miles, Dominus de Abirdaur, dedit omnes et totas dimidietates terrarum Villæ suæ de Abirdaur, Deo et Monachis de Insula Sancti Columbi, pro sepultura sibi et posteris suis in Ecclesia dicti Monasterii." (Quoted from the MS. Register or Chartulary of the Abbey by Sir Robert Sibbald in his History of Fife, p. 41.) The same author adds, that, in consequence of this grant to the Monastery of Inchcolm for leave of sepulture, the Earl of Murray (who represents "Stewart Abbott of Inchcolm," that sat as a lay Commendator in the Parliament of 1560, when the Confession of Faith was approved of) now possesses "the wester half of Aberdour." Sir Robert Sibbald further mentions the story that "Alain, the founder, being dead, the Monks, carrying his corpse in a coffin of lead, by barge, in the night-time, to be interred within their church, some wicked Monks did throw the samen in a great deep betwixt the land and the Monastery, which to this day, by the neighbouring fishermen and salters, is called Mortimer's deep." He does not give the year of the preceding grant by Alain de Mortimer, but states that "the Mortimers had this Lordship by the marriage of Anicea, only daughter and sole heiress of Dominus Joannes de Vetere Ponte or Vypont, in anno 1126." It appears to have been her husband who made the above grant. (See Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. i. p. 294.)
[101] Thus, in 1272, Richard of Inverkeithing, Chamberlain of Scotland, died, and his body was buried at Dunkeld, but his heart was deposited in the choir of the Abbey of Inchcolm. (Scotichronicon, lib. x. c. 30.) In Hay's Scotia Sacra is a description of the sepultures on this monument in Inchcolm Church, p. 471. In 1173, Richard, chaplain to King William, died at Cramond, and was buried in Inchcolm. (Mylne's Vitæ, p. 6.) In 1210, Richard, Bishop of Dunkeld, died at Cramond, and was buried in Inchcolm. (Scotichronicon, lib. viii. c. 27); and four years afterwards, Bishop Leycester died also at Cramond, and was buried at Inchcolm (Ibid. lib. ix. c. 27). In 1265, Richard, Bishop of Dunkeld, built a new choir in the church of St. Columba on Inchcolm; and in the following year the bones of three former bishops of Dunkeld were transferred and buried, two on the north, and the third on the south side of the altar in this new choir. (Scotichronicon, lib. x. c. 20, 21.) See also the Extracta e Cronicis Scocie for other similar notices, pp. 90, 95, etc.; and Mylne's Vitæ Dunkeldensis Ecclesiæ Episcoporum, pp. 6, 9, 11, etc.
[102] Many, if not all of.—P.
[103] "There are" (observes Father Innes) "still remaining many copies of Fordun, with continuations of his history done by different hands. The chief authors were Walter Bower or Bowmaker, Abbot of Inchcolm, Patrick Russell, a Carthusian monk of Perth, the Chronicle of Cupar, the Continuation of Fordun, attributed to Bishop Elphinstone, in the Bodleian Library, and many others. All these were written in the fifteenth age, or in the time betwixt Fordun and Boece, by the best historians that Scotland then afforded, and unquestionably well qualified for searching into, and finding out, what remained of ancient MSS. histories anywhere hidden within the kingdom, and especially in abbeys and monasteries, they being all either abbots or the most learned churchmen or monks in their respective churches or monasteries." (Innes' Critical Inquiry, vol. i. p. 228.)
[104] I confess I have still some doubt as to this island having received its name from a church founded by S. Columba-cill, or that he ever resided in it, and I should like to have your present opinion upon the matter. Fordun alone seems to me a very insufficient authority for a fact which is very improbable; and the legend of the seal, which I published, appears to me to be a better authority for the ancient name of the island—"Colmanus nomine, qui ab alijs Mocholmocus. Quia Colmôe & Colmân sunt diminutiva, a Colum. 1. Columba, et affectus vel venerationis causa additur mo; et hinc Mocholmocus," Colgan, vol. i. p. 155. Colgan's authority is of no value, as his statement is wholly founded on Fordun. This is proved by his notice of the monastery in his catalogue of the churches founded by Columba. "Colmis-inse Monasterium canonicorum Regularium in Æmonia insula inter Edinburgum et InverKithin. Fordonus, ibid." As the cautious Dr. Lanigan observes—"Colgan was, to use a vulgar phrase, bewitched as to the mania of ascribing foundations of monasteries to our eminent saints." Further, it should not be forgotten that Fordun tells us that in his time the island was called "Saint Colmy's Inche." See the passage quoted by Ussher, De Brit. Ec., p. 704. Now, I know of no instance of the corruption of Columb, or Columba, into Colmy, which appears rather a corruption of Colmoc or Colman.
If this be not the Insula Colmoci of the regal seal—"round seals have something royal"—where are we to find it? Not in Ireland, certainly, though our calendars record the names of two islands called Inch Mocholmoc, from saints of that name. One of these was in Leinster; the locality of the other is unknown. They also record the patron day of a St. Mocholmoc, na hainse, "of the island," at the 30th October. Could we find what was the patron day of the saint of Inche Colm it might help to settle the matter. One of the above saints is called Colman Ailither, or the pilgrim. Chattering in my discursive way, let me add that a Saint Mocholmoc appears to have been a favourite with the Danes of Dublin in the twelfth century, for we find in the lists of the Danish Kings of Dublin that of Donald MacGilloholmoch as reigning from 1125 to 1134; and another of the name is noticed by Regan as an Irish king, who lived not far from Dublin, and who offered his services to the English against the Irish and Danes in 1171. There was a Gillmeholmoc's Lane in Dublin, near Christ's Church, where, as Harris conjectures, he, or some of his family, inhabited. Did this royal Danish family adopt its surname in honour of St. Colman of Lindisfarne, of whom it must have heard a great deal during the Danish occupation of Northumbria, the kings of which were for a long time also kings of Dublin? Or may it have been from a remembrance of the shelter and honourable interment to their dead, given to their predecessors in the little island of St. Colme (or Colmoch!) something more than a century before—said island having derived its name from the Lindisfarne Saint, who may have occasionally occupied it as his desert or hermitage? I do not expect that you will not laugh at all this! but a hearty laugh is not a bad thing in this gloomy weather.—P.
[105] See extract in Goodall's edition of the Scotichronicon, vol. i. p. 6. (footnote), and in Colgan's Trias Thaumaturga, vol. ii. p. 466.
[106] Dr. O'Donovan's Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, vol. i. p. 557.
[107] In Scotland we have various alleged instances of caves being thus employed as anchorite or devotional cells, and some of them still show rudely cut altars, crosses, etc.—as the so-called cave of St. Columba on the shores of Loch Killesport in North Knapdale, with an altar, a font or piscina, and a cross cut in the rock (Origines Parochiales, vol. ii. p. 40); the cave of St. Kieran on Loch Kilkerran in Cantyre (Ibid. vol. ii. p. 12); the cave of St. Ninian on the coast of Wigtonshire (Old Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xvii. p. 594); the cave of St. Molio or Molaise, in Holy Island, in the Clyde, with Runic inscriptions on its walls (see an account of them in Dr. Daniel Wilson's admirable Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 531 to 533, etc). The island of Inchcolm pertains to Fifeshire, and in this single county there are at least four caves that are averred to have been the retreats which early Christian devotees and ascetics occupied as temporary abodes and oratories, or in which they occasionally kept their holy vigils; namely, the cave at Dunfermline, which bears the name of Malcolm Canmore's devout Saxon queen St. Margaret, and which is said to have contained formerly a stone table or altar, with "something like a crucifix" upon it (Dr. Chalmers' Historical Account of Dunfermline, vol. i. pp. 88, 89); the cave of St. Serf at Dysart (the name itself—Dysart—an instance, in all probability, of the "desertum" of the text, p. 124), in which that saint contested successfully in debate, according to the Aberdeen Breviary, with the devil, and expelled him from the spot (see Breviarium Aberdonense, Mens. Julii, fol. xv, and Mr. Muir's Notices of Dysart printed for the Maitland Club, p. 3); the caves of Caplawchy, on the east Fifeshire coast, marked interiorly with rude crosses, etc., and which, according to Wynton, were inhabited for a time by "St. Adrian wyth hys cumpany" of disciples (Orygynale Chronykel of Scotland, book iii. c. viii.); and the cave of St. Rule at St. Andrews, containing a stone table or altar on its east side, and on its west side the supposed sleeping cell of the hermit excavated out of the rock (Old Statistical Account, vol. xiii. p. 202). In Marmion(Canto i. 29) Sir Walter Scott describes the "Palmer" as, with solemn vows to pay,
"To fair St. Andrews bound,
Within the ocean-cave to pray,
Where good St. Rule his holy lay,
From midnight to the dawn of day,
Sung to the billows' sound."