Above: Picture of Pennine Alps

The great name of St. Columcille is held dear by the descendants of the Scots both in Erin and in Alba. The people of the Hebrides invoke his aid to this day in their annual Shealing Hymn, and the stone flag on which he was born at Gartan is worn bare by the hands and feet of pious pil-f’ims. Yet he has his full habitation throughout even a wider area, and even in his own time Adamnan could write that:-—” Though he lived in this small and remote island of the British sea, his name has not only become illustrious throughout the whole of our own Ireland and Britain, but has reached even to triangular Spain, and to Gaul, and to Italy which lies beyond the Pennine Alps, and also to the city of Rome itself, the head of all cities.”

“His large statesmanship,” writes Mrs. Greene, ” his lofty genius, the passionate and poetic temperament that filled men with awe and reverence, the splendid voice and stately figure that seemed almost miraculous gifts, the power of inspiring love that brought dying men to see his face once more before they fell at his feet in death, give surpassing dignity and beauty to his life.”