The legendary history of Iona would be as much Pagan as Christian. To-day, at many a ceilidh by the warm hearths in winter, one may hear allusions to the Scandinavian pirates, or to their more ancient and obscure kin, the Fomór.... The Fomór or Fomórians were a people that lived before the Gael, and had their habitations on the isles: fierce prowlers of the sea, who loved darkness and cold and storm, and drove herds of wolves across the deeps. In other words, they were elemental forces. But the name is sometimes used for the Norse pirates who ravaged the west, from the Lews to the town of the Hurdle-ford.
In poetic narration "the men of Lochlin" occurs oftener: sometimes the Summer-sailors, as the Vikings called themselves; sometimes, perhaps oftenest, the Danes. The Vikings have left numerous personal names among the islanders, notably the general term "summer-sailors," somerlédi, which survives as Somerled. Many Macleods and Macdonalds are called Somerled, Torquil (also Torcall, Thorkill), and Mànus (Magnus), and in the Hebrides surnames such as Odrum betray a Norse origin. A glance at any good map will reveal how largely the capes and promontories and headlands, and small bays and havens of the west, remember the lords of the Suderöer.
The fascination of this legendary history is in its contrast of the barbaric and the spiritual. Since I was a child I have been held spellbound by this singular union. To see the Virgin Mary in the sombre and terrible figure of the Washer of the Ford, or spiritual destiny in that of the Woman with the Net, was natural: as to believe that the same Columba could be as tender as St. Bride or gentle as St. Francis, and yet could thrust the living Oran back into his grave, or prophesy, as though himself a believer in the druidic wisdom, by the barking of a favourite hound that had a white spot on his forehead—Donnalaich chon chinain.
Of this characteristic blending of pagan and Christian thought and legend I have tried elsewhere to convey some sense—oftener, perhaps, have instinctively expressed: and here, as they are apposite to Iona, I would like to select some pages as representative of three phases—namely, of the barbaric history of Iona, of the primitive spiritual history which is so childlike in its simplicity, and of that direct grafting of Christian thought and imagery upon pagan thought and imagery which at one time, and doubtless for many generations (for it still survives), was a normal unconscious method. Some five years ago I wrote three short Columban stories, collectively called The Three Marvels of Iona, one named "The Festival of the Birds," another "The Sabbath of the Fishes and the Flies," and the third "The Moon-Child." It is the second of these that, somewhat altered to its present use by running into it part of another Columban tale, I add now.
Before dawn, on the morning of the hundredth Sabbath after Colum the White had made glory to God in Hy, that was theretofore called Ioua, or the Druid Isle, and is now Iona, the saint beheld his own sleep in a vision.
Much fasting and long pondering over the missals, with their golden and azure and sea-green initials and earth-brown branching letters, had made Colum weary. He had brooded much of late upon the mystery of the living world that was not man's world.
On the eve of that hundredth Sabbath, which was to be a holy festival in Iona, he had talked long with an ancient greybeard out of a remote isle in the north, the wild Isle of the Mountains, where Scathach the queen hanged the men of Lochlin by their yellow hair.
This man's name was Ardan, and he was of the ancient people. He had come to Iona because of two things. Maolmòr, the king of the northern Picts, had sent him to learn of Colum what was this god-teaching he had brought out of Eiré: and for himself he had come when old age was upon him, to see what manner of man this Colum was, who had made Ioua, that was "Innis-nan-Dhruidhnean"—the Isle of the Druids—into a place of new worship.
For three hours Ardan and Colum had walked by the sea-shore. Each learned of the other. Ardan bowed his head before the wisdom. Colum knew in his heart that the Druid saw mysteries.
In the first hour they talked of God.