11/06/2024

Colmcille Rambles Part III ~ Island of Iona
Our rambles this week are in the footsteps of Donegal scholar, and missionary Colm Cille (St. Columba) whose feast day was June 9.
The journey to the Scottish island of Iona is still only possible by boat, and the boats are still liable to be thwarted by bad weather. We had a choice of visiting Iona late in the evening when the ferry was definitely going over, or waiting until the next day, when passage was unlikely. So we chose the evening, even though darkness was already falling as we made our way out.
It is impossible to be on the water and not imagine what it must have been like for the 6th century monks. While the friendly cottages would not have been blinking out their welcome, the island contours and blustery skies would have been the same. My eyes were sandblasted and watery, from the wind, but also from some undefinable sense of awe at the raw elemental nature of the journey.
When you get to the island, you trot by some fishermens' cottages that are now holiday rentals, and you can see a large stone abbey in the centre of the island. This is obviously a much more modern building, but it is built on the site of the old Abbey, and some of the old crosses remain.
Colmcille's reasons to leave Ireland for Scotland are probably connected to his desire to continue to build monasteries and keep spreading the word of Christianity. However, it has become part of the story of Colmcille that he self-exiled to a remote Scottish island as a penance for a war that he had caused over a copy of a manuscript. This story comes from a descendent of Colmcille's family, one of the powerful O'Donnells of Donegal, and links a massive battle and the manuscript to the legend of Colmcille. Not only do we get a reason for Colmcille's emigration, we also get some other great stories about him returning to Ireland blindfolded, and wearing sods of Scottish turf tied to his feet (so he doesn't actually 'set foot' in Ireland ever again).
What is interesting is that the story of the Cathach or copied manuscript emerges at around the same time as the Printing Press, and the famous 'judgement' of the 6th century - 'to every cow her calf, to every book its copy' may well be a far more contemporary warning to would-be copiers. It's a lot more imaginative then a sticker on your photocopier!
Colm Cille arrived in Iona in 563 and built a wooden church, and a writing hut for himself, which was more than likely on the hilly lump that's photographed here- it's called 'Tór an Aba' or the Hill of the Abbot. Almost as soon as they arrived, Colmcille and his monks began writing stuff down- dates and events, which eventually was collected into a chronicle, and this was later included in the Annals of Ireland. This is a vital source of information for later historians. When Colmcille dies on Iona in 597, he is buried on the island, and people start making pilgrimages there, hoping that proximity to a saintly man like CC will help them on their own spiritual journey. In 690, Adómnan, a well respected scholar writes a biography of Colmcille, and by the 1400s, pilgrimages to Iona are big business, and include stations at high crosses and at the vault containing the saint. With the cult of Colmcille comes the stories and legends- the miracles, the cures, the folklore - and more hagiographies. And here's us, in 2024, still talking about it. So how successful was that for a campaign!
I think it is the remoteness and the relative endurance of these sites that impresses you the most. It is, for the most part, cliff and ocean, stone and ruin. It's light and shade, and myth and legend. It was worth it, every second of twilight.
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