[118] The poem alluded to is designated "De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiæ Eboracencis." A copy of it is printed in Gale's Historiæ Britannicæ, etc. Scriptores, vol. iii. p. 703, seq. The famous author of this poem, Alcuin, who was brought up at York, and probably born there about the year 735, became afterwards, as is well known, the councillor and confidant of Charlemagne. The application to the Bass of the lines in which he describes the anchoret residence of St. Balther is evident:
Est locus undoso circumdatus undique ponto,
Rupibus horrendis prærupto et margine septus,
In quo belli potens terreno in corpore miles
Sæpius aërias vincebat Balthere turmas; etc.
The Bass was not the only hermit's island on our eastern coasts which was imagined, in these credulous times, to be the occasional abode of evil spirits. According to Bede no one had dared to dwell alone on the island of Farne before St. Cuthbert selected it as his anchoret habitation, because demons resided there (propter demorantium ibi phantasias demonum). Vita Cuthberti, cap. 16. See also the undevilling of the cave of Dysart by St. Serf in the footnote of page [125], supra; and some alleged feats of St. Patrick and St. Columba in this direction in Dr. O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 156. Two other islands in the Firth of Forth are noted in ancient ecclesiastical history—viz., Inch May and Inch Keith. "The ile of May, decorit (to use the words of Bellenden) with the blude and martirdome of Sanct Adriane and his fallowis," was the residence of that Hungarian missionary and his disciples when they were attacked and murdered about the year 874 by the Danes (Bellenden's Translation of Boece's History, vol. i. p. 37); see also vol. ii. p. 206; Dempster's Historia Eccl. Gentis Scotorum, lib. i. 17, and vol. i. p. 20; and Fordun, in the Scotichronicon, lib. i. c. vi., where he describes "Maya, prioratus cujus est cella canonicorum Sancti Andreæ de Raymonth; ubi requiescit Sanctus Adrianus, cum centum sociis suis sanctis martyribus." Inch Keith is enumerated by Dr. Reeves (Preface to Life of Columba, p. 66) as one of the Scotch churches of St. Adamnan, Abbot of Iona from A.D. 679 to 704, and the biographer of St. Columba[119]—Fordun having long ago described it as a place "in qua præfuit Sanctus Adamnanus abbas, qui honorifice suscepit Sanctum Servanum, cum sociis suis, in ipsa insula, ad primum suum adventum in Scotiam." Andrew Wynton, himself the Prior of St. Serf's Isle in Lochlevin, describes also, in his old metrical Orygynale Chronykil of Scotland, vol. i. p. 128, this apocryphal meeting of the two saints
"at Inchkeith,
The ile betweene Kingorne and Leth."
The Breviary of Aberdeen, in alluding to this meeting, points out that the St. Serf received by Adamnan was not the St. Serf of the Dysart Cave, and hence also not the baptiser of St. Kentigern at Culross, as told in the legend of his mother, St. Thenew, or St. Thenuh—a female saint whose very existence the good Presbyterians of Glasgow had so entirely lost sight of, that centuries ago they unsexed the very name of the church dedicated to her in that city, and came to speak of it under the uncanonical appellation of St. Enoch's. This first St. Serf and Adamnan lived two centuries, at least, apart. In these early days Inch Keith was a place of no small importance, if it be—as some (see Macpherson's Geographical Illustrations of Scottish History) have supposed—the "urbs Giudi" of Bede, which he speaks of as standing in the midst of the eastern firth, and contrasts with Alcluith or Dumbarton, standing on the side of the western firth. The Scots and Picts were, he says, divided from the Britons "by two inlets of the sea (duobus sinibus maris) lying betwixt them, both of which run far and broad into the land of Britain, one from the Eastern, and the other from the Western Ocean, though they do not reach so as to touch one another. The eastern has in the midst of it the city of Giudi (Orientalis habit in medio sui urbem Giudi). The western has on it, that is, on the right hand thereof (ad dextram sui), the city of Alchuith, which in their language means the 'Rock of Cluith,' for it is close by the river of that name (Clyde)." (Bede's Hist. Ecclesiast., book i. c. xii.) In reference to the supposed identification of Inch Keith and this "urbs Giudi," let me add (1.) that Bede's description (in medio sui) as strongly applies to the Island of Garvie, or Inch Garvie, lying midway between the two Queensferries: (2.) it is perhaps worthy of note that the term "Giudi" is in all probability a Pictish proper name, one of the kings of the Picts being surnamed "Guidi," or rather "Guidid" (see Pinkerton's Inquiry into the History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 287, and an extract from the Book of Ballymote, p. 504); and (3.) that the word "urbs," in the language of Bede, signifies a place important, not so much for its size as from its military or ecclesiastic rank, for thus he describes the rock (petra) of Dumbarton as the "urbs Alcluith," and Coldingham as the "urbs Coludi" (Hist. Eccl., lib. iv. c. 19. etc.),—the Saxon noun "ham" house or village, having, in this last instance, been in former times considered a sufficient appellative for a place to which Bede applies the Latin designation of "urbs."
[119] As I have not the Life of Columba at hand to refer to, I must assume that so able an archæologist as my friend Dr. Reeves had sufficient authority for this statement. If it rested only on Fordun or Wynton, I should deem their authority insufficient to establish as a fact what seems to me so improbable. Assuming the story to have had a foundation, might not the real Adamnan have been the priest and monk of the monastery of Coludi or Coldingham, of whom Bede has written? Coldingham, in his time, belonged to the Northumbrian kingdom.—P.
[120] See his edition of Adamnan's Life of Saint Columba, p. 366.
[121] Colgan refers to the Life of S. Fintani Eremita ad 15 Novemb., Tr. T., p. 606:—"Tir mille anachoritas in Momonia est. S. Hibaro Episcopo cujusdam quæstionis decidendæ causâ simul collect [illegible] & Angelus Dei ad convivium à S. Brigida Christo paratum invitativies had so in auxilium per Jesum Christum." Quoted from the Book of Litanies of S. Ængus, on the same page.
See also the Summary of the Saints in that Litany in Ward's Vita S. Rumoldi, pp. 204, 205.
In short, the notices of deserts, hermits, and anchorites to be found, lives of saints, etc. etc., are innumerable.—P.