Her towers above the flood.”
In an age of ferocious manners and continual war this holy and peaceful isle, far removed from scenes of strife and blood, might well be regarded not only as the fit resting-place of the dead, but as the happiest home of the living.
Even to-day, in its loneliness and desolation, there is a calm, sweet look about it that makes one linger as loath to quit so sacred a spot. But the simple, great ones of old are gone; their bones lie buried beneath our feet.
“To each voyager
Some ragged child holds up for sale a store
Of wave-worn pebbles.…
How sad a welcome!
Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir,
Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer.”
A few poor fishermen with their families dwell upon the island. They are all Protestants. After the Reformation, the Calvinistic Synod of Argyll handed over all the sacred edifices of Iona to a horde of pillagers, who plundered and destroyed them. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these ruins were given up to the ignorant inhabitants of the island, who turned the cathedral into a stable, used the church of the convent of canonesses as a quarry, and broke and threw into the sea nearly all of the three hundred and sixty crosses which formerly covered the island.