"Had I all countries where the Scottish tribes
Have made their dwelling, I would choose a cell
In my own beauteous Derry, which I love
For its unbroken peace and sanctity.
There, seated on each leaf of those old oaks,
I see a white-winged angel of the sky.
O forests dear! home and cell beloved!
O thou Eternal in the highest heaven!
From hands profane my monasteries shield,
My Derry and my Durrow, Rapho sweet,
Drumhorne in forests prolific. Swords, and Kells,
Where sea-birds scream and flutter o'er the sea,
Sweet Derry, when my boat rows near the shore,
All is repose and most delicious rest."
There are traces of the saint in these beloved foundations: among the ruins of Swords are still seen the chapel of St. Columba, and a round tower and holy well, but not the missal written by himself and given to the church. We have the rule he wrote for the monasteries, but it is said to have been borrowed from the oriental monasteries. He founded Kells in 550, and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. St. Columba's devotion was not confined to his own monasteries; he loved that founded not long before by St. Eudacus in Arran, the Isle of Saints:
"Arran, thou art like sunshine, and my heart
Yearns on thee in thine Ocean of the West;
To hear thy bells would be a life of bliss;
And, if thy soil might be my last abode,
I should not envy those who sleep secure
Beside St. Peter and St. Paul. My light,
My sunny Arran! all my heart's desire
Lies in the Western Ocean and in thee!"
There are eleven Irish and three Latin poems said to be written by St. Columba, and one of these is in praise of St. Bridget, who was living when he was born. Columba was not only a poet himself, but the friend of the bardic order, who held from Druidic times so high a rank in society, and who frequented monasteries as well as palaces. Columba received even the wandering bards of the highways into his monasteries, and especially in one which he founded in Loch Key, which was afterward the Cistercian House of Boyle. He employed them to write the annals of the monastery, and to sing to the harp before the community. He loved books as well as poetry; and his passion was transcribing manuscripts which he collected in his travels, and he is said to have made with his own hand three hundred copies of the gospels or psalter. One of these remains. It is a copy of St. Jerome's translation of the four evangelists, and an inscription testifies that he wrote it in twelve days. He was once refused by an aged hermit the sight of his books, and the legend says that, in consequence of his anger, the books became illegible at the hermit's death. The anger of Columba about another manuscript led to more important consequences—his own conversion from a literary monk to an ascetic missionary. While he visited his old master, St. Frinan, he shut himself up by night in the church to make a secret copy of the psalter. His light was seen, and the abbot claimed possession of the copy. Columba appealed to his kinsman, the supreme monarch Dermot, who was the friend of monks; for, when an exile, he had found a refuge in the monastery of St. Kieran, the schoolfellow of Columba, which they both had built in an islet of the Shannon, and which became Clonmacnoise. Dermot decided that the copy belonged to the abbot. Columba was indignant. The murder of a prince of Connaught, whom he had protected, increased his anger against Dermot, and he foretold his ruin. His own life was in danger, he fled toward Tirconnel, and the monks of Monasterboys told him that his path was beset. He escaped alone, and passed through the mountains, singing as he went his song of confidence; and, as tradition says, these verses will protect all who repeat them on their journeys:
"I am alone upon the mountain, O my God!
King of the sun! direct my steps, and guard
My fearless head among a thousand spears;
Safer than on an islet in a lake
I walk with thee; my life is thine to give
Or to withhold, and none but thou canst add
Or take an hour from its appointed time.
What are the guards? they cannot guard from death.
I will forget my poor and peaceful cell,
And cast myself on the world's charity;
For he who gives will be repaid, and he
Who hoards will lose his treasure. God of life.
Woe be to him who sins! The unseen world
Will come when all he sees has passed away.
The Druids trust to oaks and songs of birds:
My trust is in the God who made me man,
And will not let me perish in the night.
Him only do I serve, the Son of God,
The Son of Mary—Holy Trinity,
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with him
Is my inheritance; my cell
Is with the monks of Kells and Holy Moen."
Columba reached his country, and stirred up his clan, the Hy Nialls of the north, against Dermot, and the Hy Nialls of the south; and with the aid of the king of Connaught, whose son had been slain, Dermot was defeated, and fled to Tara. The victory was attributed to the prayers and fasts of Columba, and the manuscript which had caused this civil war became a national relic with the O'Donnells. It was a Latin psalter, and was enclosed in a portable altar, and carried by a priest into all these battles, and has been miraculously preserved to the present times.
But in the midst of his triumphs, Columba himself was conquered. He felt the pangs of remorse, and suffered the reproaches of the religious. He was summoned to a synod at Tailtan, and condemned, when absent, for having shed Christian blood. But Columba had always shared the contests of his clan, and, though a monk, was still a prince of the O'Donnells. He went to the synod which had condemned him unheard, to dispute their decision. When Columba entered, the abbot Brendan, founder of Berr, rose up and gave him the kiss of peace. All wondered, but the abbot said: "If you had seen, as I did, the fiery column and the angels who preceded him, you would have done the same. Columba is destined by God to be the guide of a nation to heaven." The excommunication was reversed, and the sentence of Columba was, that he should convert as many heathens as he had caused Christians to die in battle. Columba was safe, but not at rest; he went from desert to desert, and from monastery to monastery, to seek some holy teacher of penance. One hermit reproached him as the cause of war.
"It was Diarmid," he replied.