"You are a monk," said the hermit, "and should be patient."
"But," said Columba, "it is hard for an injured man to repress his just anger."
He went to Abban, founder of many monasteries, one of which was called the Cell of Tears. This meek soldier of Christ had often parted warriors in battle and gone unarmed to meet a pagan brigand, whom he converted to be a Christian and a monk. Columba asked him to pray for those whose death he had caused, and Abban told him their souls were saved. He then sought St. Molaisse, who was renowned for his study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose monastery is yet traced in the isle of Inishmurray, on the coast of Sligo. The stern solitary renewed the sentence of the synod, and added that of exile for life from his too beloved country. Columba obeyed. He told his warlike kinsmen, the Nialls of Tirconnell, that an angel had bidden him go into exile, on account of those whom they had slain on his account. None of them opposed the sentence, and twelve disciples determined to follow him. One was Mochouna, prince of Ulster. Columba refused at first the voluntary sacrifice, but yielded at last; and the devoted band left Ireland for ever.
It was in 563 that Columba left Ireland. Some say that he had offended King Diarmid by the severity with which he reproved vice. This is not the reason given by Adamnan, who succeeded him in his monastery of Hy, and left a collection of records, written at the end of the seventh century, which reveals the intention of the heroic apostle; and, as it contains facts related by competent witnesses, this precious relic of antiquity is more valuable than a well-arranged biography. It must have been from the traditions of his monastery that he describes the saint, who was by nature so warlike and impatient, as retaining a tender and passionate love for his country, and a sympathy with all his national habits, while he quitted Erin, in expiation of the crime to which that love had led him. Columba did more than this; he sacrificed his poetic tastes and learned pursuits to convert not only the half-Christian Dalirads, who had early left Erin for Scotland, but more especially the heathen Picts of the North, the descendants of the brave opponents of Agricola under Galgacus, who were not of his own Milesian race.
St. Columbkill was forty-two when he left his country in a wicker coracle covered with leather, in which he trusted himself with his twelve disciples, confiding solely in God, to brave the tempests and the enormous waves of the sea which parts the two countries, with only the light of faith and the strength of prayers to guide them through the rocks and whirlpools which beset the misty archipelago of isles lying below the mountains and deep bays, or fiords, of Lochaber. Adamnan describes his Irish tonsure, which showed an Eastern rather than a Roman teaching; the top of his head shaven, and his hair hanging down his back; his majestic countenance, whose pride was softened only by religion; his princely features, whose severity was mingled with a cast of irony; and his voice, whose tone commanded while it penetrated the heart, so that it is considered to have been one of the most miraculous of his gifts. Thus he braved the future, trusting in the simplicity of charity for safety in a savage land and savage tribes, to whom he brought the knowledge of truth and morals and the hope of heaven. His fiery temper, and the courage that fitted him for a soldier, and the genius which marked him for a poet or an orator, were devoted to the conversion of hostile chiefs; and the violence of his own feelings enabled him better to influence the people, while it was softened by the great sorrow of his life, the exile from his country. With a heart yearning for Erin and its noble clans, he reached the desolate island of Oronsay; and, ascending the highest part of the rock, he saw in the south the distant mountains of Dalreida. He rejected the consolation, and left the island for Iona. Then, finding that he could not from its highest point see the country he had abandoned, he fixed there his place of exile, and a heap of stones yet marks the spot where he discovered that the sacrifice was complete, and it is still called the Farewell to Ireland.
The island of Hy is low though rocky, and not a tree nor bush can live there; for not only do the winds sweep over it, but the very spray of the Atlantic moistens it with salt showers. It lies amid the islets on the coast of Morven, already celebrated by Ossian; Staffa and its basaltic columns are on the north, and Mull with its lofty mountains on the south. Barren islands lie on every side, separated by deep channels; and so narrow are the bays which run up between the mountains of the mainland that the water becomes a lake and the land a peninsula. Forests then clothed their sides; and the clouds, which almost always hang on their summits, fall and rise above the precipices and waterfalls of that lofty coast, peopled by unrecorded emigrants from Erin, whence Ossian had gone to Tara, and Fingal had made war and peace with the kindred tribes of Inisfail.
It was within sight of this repulsive field of labor, where his penance was to convert souls, that Columba and his missionaries founded a monastery destined to be the centre of religion and civilization to Europe. The first building was of twisted boughs inlaced with ivy, and it was many years before they cut down oaks in the forest of Morven to make the wooden edifices in use till the twelfth century. Thus Columba prepared for the future, but he had not forgotten the past. He felt the bitterness of exile, and wrote verses, in which he prefers "death in Erin to exile in Albania;" and then, in a plaintive but resigned tone, he sings:
"Alas! no more I float upon thy lakes
Or dance upon the billows of thy gulfs,
Sweet Erin; nor with Comgall at my side
Hear the strange music of the wild swan's cry!
Alas that crime has exiled me, and blood—
Blood shed in battle—stains my guilty hand!
My guilty foot may not with Cormac tread
The cloisters of my Durrow, which I love;
My guilty ears may never hear the wind
Sound in its oaks, nor hear the blackbird's song,
Nor cuckoo, and my eyes may never see
The land so loved but for its hated kings.
'Tis sweet to dance along the white-topped waves,
And watch them break in foam on Erin's strand;
And fast my bark would fly if once its prow
To Erin turned and to my native oaks;
But the great ocean may not bear my bark
Save to Albania, land of ravens dire.
My foot is on the deck, my bleeding heart
Aches as I think of Erin, and my eyes
Turn ever thither; but while life endures—
So runs my vow—these eyes will never see
The noble race of Erin; and the tear
Fills my dim eyes when looking o'er the sea
Where Erin lies—loved Erin, where the birds
Sing such sweet music, and the chant of clerks
Makes melody like theirs. O happy land!
Thy youths are gentle, thine old men are wise,
Thy princes noble, and thy daughters fair.
Young voyager, my sorrows with thee bear
To Comgall of 'eternal life,' and take
My blessing and my prayer, a sevenfold part,
To Erin; to Albania all the rest.
My heart is broken in my breast; if death
Should come, it is for too much love of Gaels."