Above: Cross Stitch depicting St. Columcille

This is the traditional account of the cause of Columcille’s exile, but it is to be noted that the Old Irish Life does not ascribe his journey to Scotland to the circumstances arising out of the quarrel with King Diarmait, but merely states that :— ” When Columcille had made the circuit of all Erin, and when he had sown faith and religion; when numerous multitudes had been baptised by him ; when he had founded churches and establishments, and had left in them seniors, and reliquaries, and relics of martyrs, the determination that he had formed from the beginning of his life came into his mind—namely, to go on pilgrimage. He then meditated going across the sea to preach the word of God to the men of Alba and to the Britons and the Saxons.

He went therefore on a voyage.His age was forty-two when he went. He was thirty-four years in Alba. And the number that went with him was, twenty bishops, forty priests, thirty deacons, and fifty students. He went in good spirits until he reached the place the name of which today is Hii-Coluim-Cille (Iona).” It is also to be noted that neither Bede nor Adamnan make any reference to the quarrel between the Saints, so that the popular version of the cause of St. Columcille’s exile is a story of a very doubtful character.