Book II. Church and Culture (part 3)

There is perhaps no more beautiful character recorded in history than that of Margaret. For purity of motives, for an earnest desire to benefit the people among whom her lot was cast, for a deep sense of religion and great personal piety, for the unselfish performance of whatever duty lay before her, and for entire self-abnegation, she is unsurpassed, and the chroniclers of the time all bear testimony to her exalted character. Ordericus Vitalis says of her, in few words, ‘This distinguished princess, descended from a long line of kings, was still more eminent for her great worth and the sanctity of her life;’ and the Saxon Chronicle considers that her marriage took place by divine appointment, for ‘the prescient Creator knew beforehand what He would have done by her; for she was to increase the praise of God in the land, and direct the king from the erroneous path, and incline him, together with his people, to a better way, and suppress the evil habits which the nation had previously cultivated, as she afterwards did;’ and the Chronicle sums it up by saying that she ‘performed many useful deeds in the land to the glory of God, and also in royal qualities bore herself well, as to her was natural.’ It was not unnatural that her religion, though unquestionably pure and genuine, and the all-pervading motive of her actions, should yet be identified with the church in which this feature of her character had been developed, and that the rites and customs of that church formed the standard to which she brought everything as the only rule of right; and thus much that appeared strange to her in the customs of the church of her adopted land could only present itself to her mind as erroneous and as evil practices which required to be corrected. Unfortunately the life of Queen Margaret which has come down to us, and which has been attributed to Turgot, her confessor, while it enters into details as to her private life which amply bear out her personal character as a religious, pious and devoted woman, is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory in describing her relations with the native church. It tells us that in the place where her nuptials were celebrated, that is, in Dunfermline, she erected a noble church, which she dedicated to the Holy Trinity; and she decorated it with many ornaments, among which not a few of her gifts, which were designed for the most holy service of the altar, consisted of vases of solid and pure gold. She also introduced the crucifix into the church, having presented one to this church richly ornamented with gold and silver intermixed with precious stones; and similar crucifixes she left to other churches, ‘as marks of her piety and devotion, of which the church of St. Andrews affords an instance, where a beautiful crucifix which she there erected is still to be seen.’ Her attention, however, appears to have been soon directed towards the state of the Scottish Church generally, in which she naturally found many practices, peculiar to the old Celtic Church, which differed from those she was accustomed to see in the church in which she had been reared. Estimated by the standard of that church, they appeared to her ‘to be contrary to the rules of the true faith as well as to the sacred customs of the universal church,’ and she sought, by frequent councils, to have them rectified. Her biographer tells us that ‘at the principal council thus held she, with a few of her own ecclesiastics, contended for three days with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, against the supporters of these strange customs; while her royal husband, who was equally well acquainted with the Anglic language and with his native Gaelic, acted as interpreter.’

Margaret began by pointing out that they who agreed with the Catholic Church in worshipping one God, in one faith, should not differ in regard to certain new and strange practices. And she, first of all, ‘explained they did not rightly observe the forty days’ fast, inasmuch as they did not commence the fast, with holy church everywhere, on Ash Wednesday, but on Monday in the following week. To which they replied, that what they observed was a six weeks’ fast, on the authority of the Gospels which narrate the fast of Christ. The queen answers that they differed widely in this from the Gospel: for it is read thus, that our Lord fasted forty days, which it is obvious you do not; for, if the six Sundays during the six weeks are deducted from the fast, there only remain thirty-six days for you to observe the fast. It is necessary, therefore, to add four days to the time at which you commence the fast, if you would follow the Lord’s example by fasting forty days; otherwise you alone repudiate the authority of our Lord and the tradition of the entire holy church. Convinced by this clear exposition of the truth, they thenceforward commenced the solemn period of the Lenten fast at the same time with the holy church everywhere.’ Here the whole point is whether, as the Catholic Church at this time never fasted on the Lord’s day, the Sundays should be counted in computing the forty days’ fast of Lent, or not. That the forty days’ fast of our Saviour was a continuous fast, is obvious, and in this the Scottish Church followed the recognised practice of the earlier church. The queen then urged another point, and ‘required them to explain why they refrained from partaking of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ on Easter day, according to the custom of the holy and apostolic church.’ To this they replied, ‘The apostle tells us, “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself;” and, as we feel that we are sinners, we are afraid to partake of that sacrament, lest we eat and drink judgment to ourselves.’ ‘What then,’ said the queen, ‘shall all who are sinners refuse to partake of that holy mystery? No one in that case ought to partake, for no one is free from the stain of sin, not even the infant who has lived but a single day upon earth. But, if no one ought to partake, why does the Gospel proclaim the saying of our Lord, “Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you”? But the saying of the apostle, which you quote, must evidently, according to the judgment of the Fathers, be otherwise understood; for he does not esteem all sinners to be unworthy to partake of the sacrament of salvation. For when he said, “He eateth and drinketh judgment to himself,” he added, “not discerning the Lord’s body,” that is, not distinguishing it in faith from ordinary food, he eateth and drinketh judgment to himself. So he who without confession and penitence, with the stains of his trespasses, presumes to approach these sacred mysteries, he, I say, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself. But we, who having, many days before, made confession of our sins, are chastened with penance, worn with fasts, and washed from the stains of our sins with alms and tears, on the day of the Lord’s resurrection, approaching his table in Catholic faith, partake of the flesh and blood of the immaculate Lamb Jesus Christ, not to judgment but to the remission of our sins, and to the salutary preparation for the enjoyment of eternal blessedness.’ Having nothing to oppose to these propositions, they afterwards observed the rules of the church in the reception of this life-giving mystery. Besides this, there were certain of the Scots who, in different parts of the country, were wont to celebrate masses in I know not what barbarous rite, contrary to the custom of the whole church, which the queen—full of godly zeal—resolved to suppress and abolish, so that henceforth no one in the whole nation of the Scots should be found to presume to do such a thing. They were wont also to neglect the due observance of the Lord’s day, prosecuting their worldly labours on that as on other days, which she likewise showed, by both argument and authority, was unlawful. ‘Let us keep,’ she said, ‘the Lord’s day in reverence, on account of the resurrection of our Lord from the dead on that day, and let us do no servile work on that day on which, as we know, we were redeemed from the slavery of the devil. The blessed Pope Gregory lays this down, saying that “we must cease from earthly labour on the Lord’s day, and continue instant in prayer, so that, if aught has been done amiss during the six days, it may be expiated by our prayers on the day of our Lord’s resurrection.” Being unable to oppose anything to these weighty arguments of the queen, they ever after observed the due reverence of the Lord’s days, no one being allowed to carry burdens, or to compel others to do so, on these days.’

It cannot certainly be said to be very consistent with modern theories to find the Roman Church reproving the so-called pure Culdean Church for celebrating the eucharist without communicating, and for desecrating the Sabbath. It is obvious, however, from the mode in which these two points are stated, that there was no neglect in the native church in celebrating the eucharist; but that, while in the Catholic Church the people were accustomed to communicate on the great festivals, and especially that of Easter, the Scots celebrated on that day without communicating; and that in some parts of Scotland the eucharist was celebrated in a manner contrary to the custom of the church. It is not explained in what this peculiarity consisted, but it was something done after a barbarous manner, so that it was impossible to tell how it was celebrated, and it was entirely suppressed. This is hardly applicable to the mere introduction of some peculiar forms or ceremonies, and the most probable explanation of these expressions is that in the remote and mountainous districts the service was performed in the native language and not in Latin, as was the custom of the universal church. Her next point was that they did not duly reverence the Lord’s day, but in this latter instance they seem to have followed a custom of which we find traces in the early Monastic Church of Ireland, by which they held Saturday to be the Sabbath on which they rested from all their labours, and on Sunday, on the Lord’s day, they celebrated the resurrection by the service in church. Thus Adamnan tells us that St. Columba, on the last Saturday of his life, said to his attendant Diormit, ‘This day, in the holy Scriptures, is called the Sabbath, which means rest, and this day is indeed a Sabbath to me, for it is the last day of my present laborious life, and on it I rest after the fatigues of my labours; and this night at midnight, which commenceth the solemn Lord’s day, I shall, according to the sayings of Scripture, go the way of our fathers.’ There was no want of veneration for the Sunday, though they held that Saturday was properly the Sabbath on which they abstained from work.

The last point, one which also savoured somewhat of Judaism, was that it was not unusual for a man to marry his stepmother or his deceased brother’s wife; but Giraldus Cambrensis accuses the Irish church of the very same custom—that in some parts of Ireland men married the widows of their brothers; and it does not appear in either case that this was a custom sanctioned by the church. ‘Many other practices which were contrary to the rule of faith and the observances of the church she persuaded the council to condemn and to drive out of the borders of her kingdom.’ It seems, however, strange that more important questions than these were not touched upon. There is nothing said about the marriage of the clergy, about high offices in the church being filled by laymen, about the appropriation of the benefices by the laity, and their being made hereditary in their families. But possibly she was restrained by the knowledge that the royal house into which she had married owed its origin to the lay abbots of one of the principal monasteries, and was largely endowed with the possessions of the church; and if in the Council her eye lighted upon her young son Ethelred, who, even in boyhood, was lay abbot of Dunkeld, her utterances on that subject could hardly be otherwise than checked.

The biographer of St. Margaret bears testimony, however, in favour of the Anchorites. He says that at this time ‘there were many in the kingdom of the Scots, who, in different places, enclosed in separate cells, lived in the flesh, but not according to the flesh, in great straitness of life, and even on earth lived the life of angels. In them the queen did her best to love and venerate Christ, and frequently to visit them with her presence and converse, and to commend herself to their prayers; and, as she could not induce them to accept any earthly gift from her, she earnestly requested them to deign to prescribe for her some work of charity or of mercy. Whatever was their desire she devoutly fulfilled, either in recovering the poor from their poverty, or relieving the afflicted from the miseries which oppressed them; and as the religious devotion of the people brought many from all parts to the church of St. Andrews, she constructed dwellings on both sides of the sea which divides Lodoneia, or Lothian, from Scotia—that is, the Firth of Forth—that the pilgrims and the poor might put up there and rest and find there ready everything required for the refreshment of the body. Servants were placed there to minister to them, and vessels provided in which they were ferried across without payment.’ It is probable that among those anchorites who commended themselves so much to her favour were the Cele De of Lochleven, for we find Malcolm and Margaret, king and queen of Scotia, giving devoutly the town of Ballechristin to God the Omnipotent and the Keledei of Louchleven, with the same liberties as before; and Bishop Fothad too, here called Modach, son of Malmykel, ‘a man of most pious memory, bishop of St. Andrews, with whose life and doctrine the whole region of the Scots was happily enlightened, gives to God and St. Servanus and the hermit Keledei on the island of Lochleven, living there in the school of all virtues devoutly and honourably, with the same liberties, the church of Auchterderran.’

The church of Iona, too, benefited by her. When, on the death of Thorfinn, earl of Orkney, in 1057, the provinces of Scotland which he had subjected to his sway reverted to their natural rulers, the native population of the Western Isles appear to have placed themselves under an Irish chief, Diarmed, son of Maelnambo, who ruled them till his death in 1072. This led to a renewed connection with Ireland; for, in the same year, 1057, Gilchrist Ua Maeldoraid, who was of the race of Connal Gulban, became coärb of Columcille both in Ireland and in Alban, and died in 1062, and three years later Dubhtach of Alban, the chief anmchara, or soul-friend, of Erinn and Alban, died at Armagh. This is no doubt that St. Duthac who has left his name on the west coast in Loch Duich, and in Bailedhuich or Tain. After Gilchrist’s death we find the coärb of Columcille at Kells, while there appears at Iona a separate abbot, who is simply called grandson of Baetan; but in 1070 he is slain by Gilchrist’s son, and the absence of the Christian names of both, with what appears to have been a violent attempt to establish hereditary succession in the family of Ua Maeldoradh, rather indicates that these were laymen. Two years after, on the death of Diarmed, the Isles seem to have fallen into the hands of King Malcolm, and the state of Iona with a ruined monastery, and the decay of its clergy, seems to have attracted the attention of Margaret; for Ordericus Vitalis tells us that, ‘among the other good deeds of this illustrious lady, she restored the monastery of Iona, which Columba, the servant of Christ, erected in the time of Brude, son of Meilocon, king of the Picts. It had fallen to ruin in the storms of war and the lapse of ages, but this faithful queen rebuilt it, and furnished it with monks, with an endowment for performing the Lord’s work.’ It is clear from this statement that what the queen repaired was the monastery. The existing ruins show no appearance of any work of the time of Queen Margaret, but they are the remains of a later monastery. What she restored was the older stone monastery which preceded the present buildings. The church, which is situated on the south side of the choir of the abbey church, and the small oratory which had enclosed the shrine of St. Columba, were probably still entire, and their remains belong to a still older period; but the other buildings of the monastery were no doubt in a ruinous state, and had perhaps been so ever since the great attack of the Danes upon it in 986; and these she now rebuilt, and reorganised the establishment of monks. It is probable, too, that she has left traces of her restoration in the Norman doorway of the chapel of St. Odhran. In the last year, however, of King Malcolm’s life the Western Isles passed again under the rule of the Norwegians, having been ceded by him to Magnus surnamed Barefoot, king of Norway; and this cession was renewed by his son Edgar in 1097. The two expeditions by King Magnus to the Western Isles, which led to their cession in these years, have been combined in the Norse Saga into one, so that it is difficult to know to which of them to refer the following incident related in the Saga:—‘King Magnus came with his army to the Holy Island, that is, to Iona, and gave quarter and peace to all men that were there, and to the property of every one. It has been said that King Magnus opened the smaller church of Kollum-killa, but did not go into it. He immediately locked the door, and said that no man should be so bold as to go in there, and that church has never been opened since.’ This was no doubt the small oratory which had held the shrine of St. Columba. The Saga was written about the year 1221, and it is unlikely that a church used simply for the service of the monks should have remained closed for a century and a quarter; but it is probable that if, as in the case of Templemolaga, the ecclesiastical buildings consisted only of the larger church, the remains of which still exist in what is called the Nameless Chapel, on the north side of the choir of the abbey, and of the small oratory of the shrine, the latter would be meant by the expression of the little church of Kollum-killa; and the awe and reverence with which King Magnus regarded it, and his motive for closing it, would be natural enough. In the last year of the century but one, 1099, died Donnchad, grandson of Moenaig, the last of the old abbots of Iona.

The line of the native bishops of Alban, too, was to come to an end in this century, for in the last year of King Malcolm’s reign died also Fothad, who is termed high bishop of Alban, and no successor was appointed to him for fourteen years, when a stranger, the first of a line of bishops who were of foreign descent, was placed in the see of St. Andrews. We get a glimpse into the state of the church at this time from a grant to the Keledei of Lochleven by Ethelred, a younger son of King Malcolm. It runs thus:—‘Edelradus, a man of venerated memory, son of Malcolm king of Scotia, abbot of Dunkeld and likewise earl of Fyf, gave to God the Omnipotent and St. Servanus and the Keledei of the island of Louchleven, with the utmost reverence and honour, and with every freedom, and without any exaction or demand whatever in the world from bishop, king, or earl, Admore, with its rightful boundaries and divisions; and, seeing that this possession was given him by his parents while he was yet in boyhood, he with the more affection and love immolates it to God and St. Servanus and those men serving God there; and this collation and donation, when first made, was confirmed by the two brothers of Edelradus, David and Alexander, in the presence of several men worthy of credit, such as Constantin, earl of Fyf, a most discreet man, and Nesse; and Cormac, son of Macbeath, and Malnethte, son of Beollan, priests of Abernethy; and Mallebride, another priest; and Thuadhel and Augustinus, a priest, who were Keledei; and Berbeadh, rector of the schools of Abernethy; and before the rest of the whole community of Abernethy then living there, and before God the Omnipotent and all saints.’ Here we find Edelradus, or Ethelred, the young son of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret, appearing as lay abbot of Dunkeld, and granting lands to the Keledei of Lochleven, who still continued to be the same community of hermits which they were at the beginning. The grant appears to have been confirmed at Abernethy. The community there were its witnesses, and we find that they consisted, first, of secular priests, of whom two are named; secondly, of a body of Keledei, three of whom are named, two of them being priests; and, thirdly, of a functionary here called rector, or governor, of the schools, but who can have been no other than the Ferleighinn, or lector, of the Irish churches.

To the same period we may apply the description of the church of St. Andrews given at the end of the larger legend of St. Andrew. We there read that the ‘kingdom of the Picts having been entirely destroyed and occupied by the Scots, the substance and possessions of the church alternately increased or decreased as kings and chiefs showed devotion to St. Andrew. Of these we cannot speak in detail, but we must treat compendiously of what relates to ourselves. The royal city was called Rymont, or royal mount, which King Hungus gave to God and the holy apostle. Those holy men who brought the relics of the blessed apostle having departed this life, as well as their disciples and followers, the religious service there died away, as the people were barbarous and uncultivated. There were kept up, however, by carnal succession, in the church of St. Andrew, such as it then was, thirteen, commonly called Keledei, whose manner of life was shaped more in accordance with their own fancy and human tradition than with the precepts of the holy fathers. Nay, even to the present day their practice continues the same; and although they have some things in common, these are trifling in amount and value, while they individually enjoy the larger and better portion, just as each of them happens to receive gifts, either from friends who are united to them by some unavoidable tie, such as kindred or connection, or from those whose soul-friends, that is, spiritual advisers, they are, or from any other source. And after they are made Keledei they are not allowed to keep their wives within their lodgings, nor any other women who might give rise to injurious suspicions. Moreover, there were seven “personæ,” or beneficiaries, who divided among themselves the offerings of the altar, of which seven portions the bishop used to enjoy but one and the hospital another; the remaining five were apportioned to the other five members, who performed no duty whatever either at altar or church, and whose only obligation was to provide, after their custom, lodging and entertainment for pilgrims and strangers when more than six chanced to arrive, determining by lot whom and how many each of them was to receive. The hospital, it is to be observed, had continual accommodation for a number not exceeding six; but, from the time that, by God’s goodness, it came into the possession of the canons, it has been open to all comers. The above-mentioned beneficiaries were also possessed of their private revenues and property, which, upon their death, their wives whom they openly lived with, and their sons or daughters, their relatives or sons-in-law used to divide among themselves; even the very offerings of the altar at which they did not serve—a profanation which one would blush to speak of, if they had not chosen to practise it.’ We are further told that at this time ‘there were none who served at the altar of the blessed apostle, nor used mass to be celebrated there, except upon the rare occasions when the king or the bishop visited the place. The Keledei, however, were wont to say their office after their own fashion in a corner of a church, which was very small.’

From this account we can gather that there were at St. Andrews at this time in point of fact two churches, and that the community consisted of two divisions, connected with these churches respectively. The first was the church containing ‘the altar of the blessed apostle’ St. Andrew, and the revenues of this church were appropriated by seven persons, one of whom was the bishop, the second the hospital, and the other five laymen, or lay rectors as they might be termed, who were married, and whose portions were inherited by their families. The only burden imposed upon them was to provide lodging and entertainment for pilgrims and strangers beyond the number which the hospital could accommodate. There was no provision for service in this church, except on rare occasions when the king or bishop visited the place. The second was a smaller church, which belonged to a body of thirteen Keledei, probably the prior or provost, and twelve brethren, who lived apart, had wives, and possessed private property, as well as certain ecclesiastical dues which were inherited by their families. In this church they performed divine service according to their own rite, and they also provided from their body an anmchara, soul-friend, or confessor. That this was one of their proper functions appears from the Rule of the Cele De, attributed to Maelruain, which contains the following passage: ‘Difficult indeed is the duty of the anmchara, or soul-friend, because, if he give the proper remedy, it is oftener violated than observed; but if the soul-friend does not give it, its liability falls upon himself, because several deem it enough to make the confession without doing the penance; but it is better to proclaim their welfare to them, though they do not respond to the penance enjoined by the confessor. Another soul-friend may be gone to, if necessary, after the permission of the first soul-friend.’ The one party represented that portion of the community which formerly consisted of secular clergy, but whose position and revenues had, with the exception of those of the bishop and the hospital, been usurped by laymen, while their clerical duties remained unperformed. The other party consisted of the only clerical portion of the community. They represented what had originally been a society of Anchorites or Hermits, but now presented all the features of Secular canons, as they became modified in Ireland on the introduction of the canonical rule. The state of the church of St. Andrews, as we find it here pictured, is almost an exact reproduction of what we find at Armagh at the same time. Here, prior to 1126, the abbacy was in the hands of laymen, and there is no appearance of any of the usual officers of a great monastery. The only clergy who are mentioned in connection with the houses of prayer are the Cele De. Dr. Reeves gives us the following account of the Cele De of Armagh. After stating that the ‘community of the Culdees was originally a college of secular clergy who lived together and submitted to a rule, the principal requirement of which was a common table:’ ‘that they were analogous to secular canons, who in many instances formed the ancient chapters of cathedral and collegiate establishments;’ and also that ‘the maintenance of divine service, and, in particular, the practice of clerical worship, seems to have been their special function, and on this account they formed an important element in the cathedral economy;’ he adds, ‘These Cele De, then, of Armagh continued to be the officiating clergy of the churches here, and by degrees grouped themselves around the great church, where they became the standing ministers of the cathedral. They were presided over by a prior, and numbered about twelve individuals. This prior had the charge of the services in church, and superintended the order of public worship, which was principally choral;’ and this correspondence between the Cele De of the metropolitan churches of Ireland and Scotland is what we might expect, as we have seen that the rules adopted in Ireland for the Cele De were introduced into Scotland in 921 shortly after the church of St. Andrews had been placed at the head of the Scottish Church.

The only other church where we obtain some insight into its condition is the church of Iona. It remained for upwards of half a century under Norwegian rule, and we hear nothing of it after King Magnus’s visit to the holy island; but when, along with the southern portion of the Western Isles, it again reverted to their native rulers, we obtain a notice of the state of the community, which we may well consider equally applicable to this period. No abbot appears; but the goodmen, or chiefs of the family of Iona, who claimed the right of electing an abbot, were four in number. These were, first, the Sacart mor, or great priest; secondly, the Ferleighinn, or lector; thirdly, the Disertach; and fourthly, the Cenn, or head, of the Ceile De, and the rest of the chiefs of the family. During this period, when Iona was in the hands of the Norwegians, the coärbs of Columcille were the abbots of Kells, and we find in that church the counterpart of the first three of these chiefs of the family. In the Irish charters in the Book of Kells we find mention of the Sacart and the Ferleighinn. Thus, in the oldest charter, granted before 1084, there is mention of ‘the coärb of Columcille, that is, Domnall mac Robartaigh, with all the ecclesiastics of Kells, in like manner, both Sacart, or priest, Epscop, or bishop, and Ferleighinn, or lector.’ Again, a charter, some ten years later, relates to ‘land which the Sacart, or priest of Kells and his kinsmen purchased, that is, O’Breslen and his kinsmen,’ which rather implies that the priesthood was hereditary in his family. Then, in a charter granted between 1128 and 1138, we have the ‘coärb of Columcille, viz., Gilla Adomnan O’Coirthen, and the Sacart of Kells, viz., Maelmartin O’Breslen, and the Ferleighinn of Kells, viz., Guaire O’Clucan;’ and finally, in a charter granted between 1128 and 1140, the goodmen, or chiefs, of Kells are mentioned. They are ‘Muredach O’Clucan, abbot of Kells; Conaing O’Breslen, the Sacart; Guaire O’Clucan, the Ferleighinn; and Aedh, son of Mac Rechtogan, the Vice-Erenagh.’ From these charters we see that the office of Sacart, or priest, was hereditary in the family of O’Breslen. The charters of Kells, too, throw light upon the chief of the family of Iona termed the Disertach; for the oldest charter in the Book of Kells is one before 1084, in which the king of Tara, or of Ireland, Maelsechnaill, and the coärb of Columcille, ‘with all the ecclesiastics of Kells, both priest and bishop and lector, and also the vice-erenagh, with the young clerics of the congregation of Columcille, have all granted for ever Disert-Columcille in Kells, with its garden, to God and to pious Deoradh, or pilgrims, no pilgrim having any lawful possession in it at any time until he devotes his life to God and is devout.’ This last clause is obviously to prevent the Disert falling into the hands of a layman. Then, in a later charter, ‘the family of Kells have granted, for the support of Deoradh, or pilgrims, Ardcamma, that is, Baile Ui Uidhrin, with its mill and all its land, and Baile Ui Chomhgain, with all its land and with its mill, to God and to Columcille and to the bishop O’Cellaigh, the senior of all the men of Meath, and to Malmaire O’Robhartaigh, the Cenn, or head, of the Disert, on the third of the Ides of November, the feast of Martin, in the year when the kine and swine of Ireland perished by a pestilence. The Disert of Kells is granted to pious pilgrims for ever. Whatever layman or clergyman shall oppose this grant, he shall be accursed of Columcille and Finan and the clergy of Ireland and of the Christian church in general.’ We find then the name of Cenn na Disert, or Head of the Disert, appearing at Kells about the same time as that of Disertach makes its first appearance in connection with the family of Iona, and that in the former case it originated from the abbot of Kells, Domnall Ua Robartaigh, in conjunction with the king of Ireland, founding what was called a Disert for pious Deoradh, or pilgrims, and that this Disert became known by the name of Disert Coluimcille. The old burying-ground in Iona, which, along with the remains of the vallum, is the sole relic of the original monastery of Columcille, bears the name of Cladh an Disert, or the burying-ground of the Disert; and as Domnall, the abbot of Kells, was coärb of Columcille from the year 1062 to 1098, that is, during the entire life of Margaret as queen, who had shown such a warm interest in the anchorites and pilgrims of Scotland, it is not an unreasonable supposition that she too, in conjunction with the coärb of Columcille, had included in her work of restoration at Iona the foundation here of a Disert for pious pilgrims.

Of the Cele De there is no trace at Kells, at least under that name, for by this time the name of Cele De had long passed in Ireland from the Deoradh, or pilgrims, to the Secular canons, nor do they appear in connection with any of the Columban monasteries in Ireland; but we find the type of the Iona Cele De in another Irish monastery. This was the celebrated monastery of Clonmacnois, which was founded on the banks of the Shannon in the sixth century by St. Ciaran, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, and where St. Columba had been received with so much honour in the later years of his life. And here, with the exception of the Disert and its Disertach, which, as we have seen, had been derived from the Columban monastery of Kells, we find the same ecclesiastical functionaries in the community as appear in that of Iona. The Sacart, or priest, makes his appearance at Clonmacnois before the year 914, when the death of Maelbairrfinn, Sacart, or priest, of Clonmacnois, is recorded. In 948 we have the death of a prim-sacart, or chief priest of Clonmacnois; and in 1109 he appears under the same designation as he bears in Iona, and in the same position of being, in the absence of an abbot, at the head of the community; for in that year died Flaithbertach Ua Loingsigh, coärb of Ciaran, and Sacart mor, or great priest, of Clonmacnois. We also find the Ferleighinn frequently mentioned both under that title and that of Scribnidh, or scribe, during the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, as one of the community of Clonmacnois; and here, as elsewhere, this office was frequently combined with others in the community. But the most remarkable feature of the community at Clonmacnois is the appearance of a line of hereditary Anchorites, descending from father to son for several generations, and finally merging in the title of Cenn na Cele De, or head of the Culdees. The first of these is Eoghan, Anchorite of Clonmacnois, who died in 845. His son Luchairen appears as scribe and anchorite at Clonmacnois. Egertach, the son of the latter, is Erenagh of the little church of Clonmacnois, and his son Dunadhach is bishop of Clonmacnois; but Dunadhach’s son Dunchadh is first Ferleighinn, or lector, of Clonmacnois and afterwards its Anchorite. His son Joseph appears as Anmchara, or soul-friend, of Clonmacnois, and he was father to Conn na mbocht, or of the poor, whose death is recorded in 1031 as Cenn na Cele De, or Head of the Culdees, and Anchorite of Clonmacnois. A century later we find this title of Head of the Cele De of Clonmacnois hereditary in a family called Ua Neachtain; for in 1132 is recorded the death of Uareirghe Ua Neachtain, Cenn Cele De, or Head of the Culdees of Clonmacnois. In 1170 that of Maelmordha, son of Uareirghe, ‘a learned charitable senior, the prosperity and affluence of Clonmacnois and Cenn na Chele De,’ or Head of the Culdees; and in 1200 that of Uareirghe, son of Maelmordha, son of Uareirghe Ua Neachtain, ‘one of the noble sages of Clonmacnois, a man full of the love of God and of every virtue, and Cenn Cele De,’ or Head of the Culdees of Clonmacnois.

We thus find this title of Head of the Culdees emerging in the eleventh century out of that of Anchorite at Clonmacnois; and at Iona we likewise find that there were Anchorites in the tenth century who occupied an important position in the community, while a century later the same title of Cenn na Cele De, or Head of the Culdees, appears there also. The origin and position of the Cele De were probably the same in both communities.

Chapter IX. Extinction of the Old Celtic Church in Scotland.

The causes which combined to bring the old Celtic Church to an end may be classed under two heads—internal decay and external change. Under the first head the chief cause was the encroachment of the secular element upon the ecclesiastic, and the gradual absorption of the latter by the former. As long as the old monastic system remained intact there was a vitality in its ecclesiastical organisation which to a great extent preserved the essential character of these monasteries as great ecclesiastical foundations; but this was to some extent impaired by the assimilation of the church to that of Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries, which introduced a secular element among her clergy; and the Danish invasions, with all their devastating and destructive consequences, completed the total disorganisation of the Monastic Church. The monasteries were repeatedly laid waste and destroyed, and her clergy had either to fly or to take up arms in self-defence; her lands, with their ruined buildings and reduced establishment, fell into the hands of laymen, and became hereditary in their families; until at last nothing was left but the mere name of abbacy applied to the lands, and of abbot borne by the secular lord for the time. The external change produced in the church was the result of the policy adopted towards it by the kings of the race of Queen Margaret. It was in the main the same policy as that adopted towards Ireland by the Norman kings of England. It mainly consisted, first, in placing the church upon a territorial in place of a tribal basis, and substituting the parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with their monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; secondly, in introducing the religious orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries as centres of counter influence to the native church; and, thirdly, in absorbing the Culdees, now the only clerical element left in the Celtic Church, into the Roman system, by converting them from secular into regular canons, and merging them in the latter order.

During the war of succession which followed the death of Malcolm the Third and ended in the firm establishment of the sons of the Saxon Queen Margaret upon the throne of Scotland in the person of Edgar, her eldest son, no successor appears to have been appointed to Fothad, the last native bishop of St. Andrews, and no attempt appears to have been made to follow out the policy which had been inaugurated by that queen of assimilating the native church to that of Rome. During this interval Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was left without a bishop, and the conflict between the Celtic and the Saxon element in the population of the country, which was to determine whether Scotland was to remain a Celtic or a Teutonic kingdom, probably threw the northern portion of it into too great a confusion to render any attempt to reorganise the church possible. The only ecclesiastical foundations made during this period were confined to the southern districts, where the sons of Malcolm, who owed to English assistance the vindication of their right to the throne, showed their gratitude by grants to the church of Durham. Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm, made over to the monks of Durham Tiningeham, Aldeham, Scuchale, Cnolle, Hatherwich, and all right which Bishop Fodan had in Broccesmuthe. These lands are in East Lothian, and formed part of the possessions of St. Balthere’s monastery of Tyningham. The allusion to the rights of Bishop Fodan or Fothad shows that this part of Lothian at least had by this time come under the bishops of St. Andrews; and we find that these lands afterwards reverted to that see.

Edgar, the eldest son of Queen Margaret, had no sooner made good his right to the throne by English assistance, than we find him refounding the monastery of Coldingham, which had been destroyed by the Danes. In his charter he says that he had come to the dedication of the church of St. Mary at Coldingham, which dedication had been honourably completed to the praise of God and to his contentment, and that he had immolated on the altar to the same church, in endowment, and granted, the whole town of Swintun, to be held for ever free and quit from all claim, and to be disposed of at the will of the monks of St. Cuthbert. He adds that he had ordained to the men of Coldinghamshire, as they themselves have chosen and confirmed in his hand, that they every year pay to the monks half a mark of silver for each plough. The mention of Coldinghamshire, and the burden imposed upon the men of the district to contribute to the support of the church, indicate something like a parochial district attached to the church; and we find, in another charter, the establishment of a parish church clearly presented to us, as well as the process by which it was accomplished. In this document, Thor informs his lord, Earl David, that King Edgar had given him Ednaham, now Ednam, in Berwickshire, waste; that he had inhabited it, and built from the foundation the church which King Edgar caused to be dedicated to Saint Cuthbert, and had endowed it with one plough; and he prays his son to confirm the donation he had made of the church to St. Cuthbert and the monks of Durham. Here we have in fact a formation of a manor with its parish church, and in a subsequent document it is termed the mother church of Ednam.

Edgar appears to have made no attempt to introduce a parochial church north of the Forth, or even to fill up the vacancy in the see of St. Andrews; but, on his death, when the territory which formed his kingdom, with its heterogeneous population, was divided between his two brothers—the districts north of the Forth and Clyde, with Lothian as far as the Lammermoors, falling, under his will, to Alexander as king, and the districts of the Cumbrian Britons, with the rest of Lothian, to David as earl—the policy which had been inaugurated by their Saxon mother, Queen Margaret, of assimilating the native church to that of England, was at once resumed by both. Alexander’s first step was to fill up the vacancy in the bishopric of St. Andrews, by the appointment, in the first year of his reign, of Turgot, prior of Durham, and at the same time to create two additional bishoprics for the more remote and Celtic portion of his kingdom. The first was that of Moray, to which he appointed a bishop named Gregorius; and the second was that of Dunkeld, which he revived in the person of Cormac.

The districts beyond the Spey were at this time so little under the influence of the Crown, and their connection with what formed the kingdom proper so slender, that the position of a bishop of Moray appointed by the king can have been little more than nominal. In fact, we know very little of the state of the church in that great Celtic district at this time, except what may be gathered from the dedications of the churches. The low-lying portion of its territory, extending along the south shore of the Moray Firth from the Spey westward, with its fertile soil and temperate air, must always have formed an attractive position for ecclesiastical establishments; and in that part of it which lies between the Spey and the Findhorn three churches come now rather prominently forward. These are the churches of Brennach, or Birnie, Spyny and Kenedor; and we learn something of this last church from the legend of Saint Gervadius or Gernadius, whose day is the 8th of November. He was a native of Ireland, and leaving his home to preach the Word of Life in Scotland, he came to the territory of Moravia or Moray, in which place he associated with himself many fellow-soldiers in Christ, and under angelic direction, as it is said, built an oratory or cell in a place called Kenedor. Here he had a stone bed, and led the life of an Anchorite. A cave near Elgin and a spring of water in the rock above bear his name. An allusion in his legend to a war by the king of the Angles against the Scots, which brought the Anglic soldiers to his neighbourhood, fixes his date to the year 934, when Athelstane, king of Northumbria, invaded Scotland both by sea and land; and his establishment has all the features of a Culdee church. There was no trace, however, of the name of Culdee in this district when Alexander founded his bishopric, and it was not till the time of Bricius, the sixth bishop of Moray, who filled that position from 1203 to 1222, that the bishops had any fixed residence in the diocese. They are said before his time to have had their episcopal seat in one or other of the three churches of Birnie, Spyny and Kenedor. When Bricius became bishop in 1203 he fixed his cathedral at Spyny, and founded a chapter of eight secular canons, giving to his cathedral a constitution founded on the usage of Lincoln, which he ascertained by a mission to England. After his death the seat of the bishopric was removed to Elgin.

The bishopric of Dunkeld was in a very different position, and its relations with the Crown were of the most intimate character. A church had been built there by Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the Scottish dynasty, and a part at least of the relics of St. Columba had been transferred to it by him. The abbot, in his time, was the first bishop of his Pictish kingdom. It had then, along with the great territory forming the lay abbacy of Dull, passed into the possession of a line of lay abbots, from whom the family on the throne were the male descendants; and it had now, probably by the death of Ethelred the young lay abbot, again reverted to the Crown, as we hear no more of him after the reign of Edgar. Mylne, who was a canon of Dunkeld in the fifteenth century, tells us in his Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld ‘that, when it seemed good to the Supreme Controller of all Christian religion, and when devotion and piety had increased, St. David, the sovereign, who was the younger son of King Malcolm Canmor and the holy Queen Margaret, having changed the constitution of the monastery, erected it into a cathedral church, and, having superseded the Keledei, created, about the year 1127, a bishop and canons, and ordained that there should in future be a secular college. The first bishop on this foundation was for a time abbot of that monastery, and subsequently a counsellor of the king.’ Mylne is, however, wrong both in the date and in the name of the founder; for, as we have seen, the bishopric was founded by Alexander, the predecessor of King David, as early as the year 1107. The possession of the ample territories belonging to the lay abbacy of Dunkeld would enable him at once to refound the bishopric with its cathedral and chapter in proper form. And here we find the remains of the old Columban Church brought into sharp contact with the Culdee foundations. The church which Kenneth had founded there certainly inherited, along with a part of the relics of the great founder of the Columban Church, to a certain extent also the primatial jurisdiction of the monastery of Iona over the Columban monasteries on the mainland. These monasteries had, with few exceptions, become lay abbacies, and Mylne appears so far to have given a correct representation of the revival of the episcopate, as we find that the rights of the original monastery of Dunkeld over the Columban foundations do appear to have been now exercised by the bishop. Besides the two great lay abbacies of Dull and Glendochart, founded respectively by St. Adamnan and St. Fillan in the seventh century, whose united territory comprised the entire western districts of Atholl, bounded by Drumalban on the west, and the districts beyond this range, which afterwards formed the diocese of Argyll, we find the new bishopric possessing within the limits of other dioceses disconnected parishes which represented old Columban foundations. In Stratherne it had the parishes of Madderty and Crieff, the former dedicated to St. Ethernanus, whose death is recorded by Tighernac in 669, and who therefore belonged to the Columban Church; and here we find the bishop dealing with the rights of Can and Conveth which the clerics of the church of Dunkeld had from ‘the lands of Madderty, which in Scotch are termed Abthen.’ In charters to the monastery of Dunfermline the rights of Dunkeld in Fife and Fotherif are specially reserved; and here the bishopric possessed Incholm, dedicated to St. Columba, and adjacent lands on the mainland. In Angus it possessed the parishes of Fearn and Menmuir, dedicated to St. Aidan, the Columban bishop of Lindisfarne; and it even penetrated beyond the Firth of Forth on the south, where it possessed Cramond dedicated to St. Columba, and on the north beyond the Mounth, when we find in a charter granted by the Mormaer, or earl of Buchan, in the earlier years of the reign of King David, of the lands of Pet-mec-Cobrig ‘for the consecration of a church of Christ and Peter the apostle (at Deer) and to Columcille and to Drostan,’ that is, for the reconsecration of the church of Deer to St. Peter, which had previously been dedicated to St. Columba and St. Drostan, and the lands are granted ‘free from all exactions with their tie to Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld.’ This monastery of Deer is one of the few Columban foundations which preserved its clerical character intact down to this period, and here we find no trace of the name of Culdee in connection with it.

On the other hand, and in contrast to these rights of Dunkeld, Turgot was no sooner elected bishop of St. Andrews than the fate and fortunes of the Culdee establishments were committed into his hands; for we are told that ‘in his days the whole rights of the Keledei over the whole kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St. Andrews.’ The appointment of Turgot, the prior of Durham, to the bishopric of St. Andrews, in conformity with the policy adopted towards the native church by the sons of Queen Margaret, had one result which probably King Alexander did not anticipate when he made it. It brought upon him the claim of the archbishop of York to supremacy over the Scottish Church, whose bishops he regarded as his suffragans. It is not necessary for our purpose to enter at length on this intricate subject. His claim was, no doubt, founded upon the original commission by Pope Gregory to Augustine in the end of the sixth century, by which he placed all the churches north of the Humber under the bishop of York, and to the convention between the archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1072, by which it was attempted to revive this arrangement, and to place all the churches of the northern province, as far as the extreme limits of Scotland, under the latter; but such a right had never been either recognised or exercised, and the only substantial ground upon which it could be based was one very similar to that on which the supremacy claimed by the king of England over Scotland could be founded. It is certain that the province of York extended ecclesiastically, as the kingdom of Northumbria did civilly, to the Firth of Forth; and so far as concerned the churches of Lothian and Teviotdale, the former of which were now under the rule of the bishop of St. Andrews, while the latter were claimed by Glasgow, there may have been some ground for the assertion of such a right, similar to that which the annexation of Lothian to the kingdom of Scotland gave for the civil claim; but beyond the Firths of Forth and Clyde the claims of both were shadowy in the extreme, and Alexander, in his jealousy for the independence of his kingdom, saw the necessity of resisting the threatened encroachment of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of York. In the end Turgot was consecrated at York on 1st August 1109, with reservation of the rights of either see. He died on 31st August 1115, and during his tenure of office, owing mainly to these disputes, he appears to have done nothing to affect the rights of the Culdees. In order to avoid a recurrence of this question, Alexander applied to the archbishop of Canterbury to recommend him an English cleric as bishop, stating that the bishops of St. Andrews had hitherto been consecrated either by the Pope or by the archbishop of Canterbury. The former assertion was probably true in so far as regards the later bishops; but the incautious admission of the latter, which was totally inconsistent with fact, led the king into a new and unprofitable dispute, which had an equally awkward bearing upon the more important question of the independence of the kingdom. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, was sent, but was not elected till 1120; and in the following year he returned to Canterbury, and the bishopric remained unfilled up for three years.

During this time, however, while St. Andrews was, practically speaking, without a bishop, Alexander commenced to carry out another part of this policy, by introducing the canons-regular of St. Augustine, or the black canons, as they were called, into Scotland; and for this purpose he selected the most central and important position in his kingdom, that of Scone, which was peculiarly associated with the very heart of the monarchy, and had been the scene of previous legislation regarding the church. Here he brought a colony of canons regular from the church of St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in Yorkshire, and founded a priory in the year 1115, which was confirmed by the seven earls of his kingdom, and by Gregory and Cormac, the bishops of the two additional bishoprics he had created, who here term themselves bishops by the authority of God, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul and of Saint Andrew the apostle. The church, which was previously dedicated to the Trinity, was placed under the patronage of the Virgin, St. Michael, St. John, St. Lawrence and St. Augustine. Some years later Alexander introduced the regular canons into the diocese of Dunkeld. In the year 1122 he founded a priory of canons on an island near the east end of Loch Tay, which became a cell of Scone, and here his queen, Sibylla, died and was buried; and in 1123 he founded a monastery for the same canons in the island of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth. In the following year Alexander heard of the death of Eadmer, and filled up the bishopric of St. Andrews by appointing Robert, the English prior of Scone; but, four months after this appointment, and before Robert was consecrated, he died in the April of that year. Probably the last act of his life was the right which he conferred upon the church of the Holy Trinity of Scone, to hold a court, in a charter which is addressed to the bishops and earls of Scotland, and is witnessed by Robert, bishop-elect of St. Andrews, Cormac the bishop, and Gregory, bishop of Moray.

During the whole period of Alexander’s reign, his younger brother David was carrying out the same policy in the southern districts of Scotland, over which he ruled as earl. In the year 1113 he founded a monastery at Selkirk, in which he placed Benedictine monks of the order of Tyron; but his great work there was the reconstitution of the bishopric of Glasgow. This diocese he restored about the year 1115, and caused an inquisition to be made by the elders and wise men of Cumbria into the lands and churches which formerly belonged to the see of Glasgow. In this document, which has been preserved, and which may be placed in the year 1120 or 1121, its framers relate the foundation of the church of Glasgow by St. Kentigern, and that he was succeeded by several bishops in the see; but that the confusion and revolutions of the country at length destroyed all traces of the church, and almost of Christianity, till the restoration of the bishopric by Earl David, and the election and consecration of John, who had been his tutor, and is commonly called the first bishop of Glasgow. The bishopric, as reconstituted after the information derived from this inquisition, extended from the Clyde on the north to the Solway Firth and the march with England on the south, and from the western boundary of Lothian on the east to the river Urr on the west; and it included Teviotdale, which had remained a part of the diocese of Durham while the Lothian churches north of the Tweed were transferred to St. Andrews, and which was now reclaimed as properly belonging to Glasgow. Here we find no traces of the Keledei, who had formerly formed the chapter of Glasgow; but in the reign of Malcolm the Fourth the pope confirmed a constitution of the dean and chapter, which had been introduced after the model of Sarum by Herbert, elected bishop in 1147. Here, too, the foundation of the new bishopric of Glasgow brought upon him the claims of the archbishop of York, which were equally resisted, and the non-dependence of the diocese on any metropolitan bishop established. The rights of York were, however, recognised in the case of the bishopric of Candida Casa, likewise restored some years later, when Gilda Aldan was appointed its first bishop, as this see had been first established by the Anglic king of Northumbria in the eighth century. Galloway, though civilly united to Scotland, was considered ecclesiastically to belong to England, and its bishop owed obedience as one of his suffragans to the archbishop of York, by whom Gilda Aldan was consecrated soon after David’s accession to the throne of Scotland.

Ailred of Rivaux, who was King David’s contemporary, tells us of him that ‘he seemed not undeservedly loved both by God and men. He was plainly beloved by God, for at the very outset of his reign he diligently practised the things which belong to God in erecting churches and founding monasteries, which he endowed with possessions and covered with honours. For whereas he had found in the whole kingdom of Scotland three or four bishops only, the other churches, without a shepherd or bishop, going to wrack and ruin in respect both of morals and substance; what with ancient ones which he restored and new ones which he founded, he left nine at his death. He left also monasteries of the Cluniac, Cistercian, Tyronian orders (who were Benedictines), and the Arovensian, Præmonstratensian, and Belvacensian (who were canons-regular from Aroise, Prémontré, and Beauvais), not few in number or small in size, but full of brethren.’ There is a catalogue of religious houses at the end of Henry of Silgrave’s Chronicle, written about A.D. 1272, which belongs however to an earlier period, and does not come down later than the reign of William the Lion; and from it alone do we obtain any information as to the Keledean character of these foundations. The bishoprics which he found at his accession were those of St. Andrews, Moray, and Dunkeld, to which Ailred, probably with some hesitation, adds Glasgow. Galloway was not included, as it properly belonged to England. We find no trace of Keledei in either Glasgow or Moray; and the catalogue mentions only secular canons, that is, the chapters established after their restoration. The greater part of the new bishoprics which he added were founded in the first few years of his reign; and he appears to have commenced his proceedings by having Robert, bishop-elect of St. Andrews, consecrated in 1128 by the archbishop of York, in the same manner as Turgot had been consecrated, that is, reserving the rights of both sees; and by completing the division of Scotland north of the great range of the Mounth into separate sees.

The first of these appears to have been the diocese of Rosemarky, or Ross. A charter granted by King David to the monks of Dunfermline, between the years 1128 and 1130, is witnessed by Robert bishop of St. Andrews, who had now been consecrated, John bishop of Glasgow, Cormac bishop of Dunkeld, and Gregory bishop of Moray—these are the four bishoprics alluded to by Ailred—and there now appears as a witness an additional bishop—Makbeth, bishop of Rosmarkyn, or Rosemarky. This church, as appears by its dedication, was originally founded as a Columban monastery by Lugadius, or Moluoc, abbot and bishop of Lismore, whose death is recorded in 577; but, as we have seen, Bonifacius refounded it in the eighth century, and dedicated the church to St. Peter. Here he placed, according to Wyntoun, secular canons, and we now find the canons designated as Keledei in the catalogue of religious houses. The chapter, however, was reconstituted early in the succeeding century, when the term Keledei disappears, and instead there is a regular cathedral body of canons under a dean.

The next bishopric established appears to have been that of Aberdeen, embracing the extensive districts between the Dee and the Spey, and including the earldom of Mar and Buchan. The memorandum of the charter by the Mormaer, or Earl, of Buchan, refounding the church of Deer, which has been already referred to, in which Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld, is mentioned, is witnessed by Nectan, bishop of Aberdeen; and this is the earliest notice of that see. According to Fordun, it succeeded an earlier see founded at Mortlach, on the banks of the river Fiddich, which falls into the Spey, and therefore not far from the western boundary of the diocese. Fordun gives the following account of its foundation. After narrating a victory by King Malcolm the Second over the Norwegian army in the north, he proceeds:—‘In the seventh year of his reign Malcolm, thinking over the manifold blessings continually bestowed upon him by God, pondered anxiously in his mind what he should give Him in return. At length, the grace of the Holy Ghost working within him, he set his heart upon increasing the worship of God; so he established a new episcopal see at Murthillach, not far from the spot where he had overcome the Norwegians and gained the victory, and endowed it with churches and the rents of many estates. He desired to extend the territory of the diocese, so as to make it reach from the stream or river called the Dee to the river Spey. To this see a holy man and one worthy the office of bishop, named Beyn, was at the instance of the king appointed, as first bishop, by our lord the Pope Benedict.’ The church of Aberdeen appears, however, somewhat earlier to have had a tradition that the see was originally founded at Mortlach, and was transferred to Aberdeen by King David in the thirteenth year of his reign; but the foundation of the church at Mortlach is ascribed to Malcolm Canmore in the sixth year of his reign. This tradition is contained in five charters, or memoranda of charters, prefixed to the Chartulary of Aberdeen, and the interval between Beyn, the supposed first bishop, and Nectan is filled up by Donercius, the second bishop, and Cormauch, the third bishop. That a bishopric was founded there by Malcolm the Second is clearly at variance with the undoubted fact that there was at that time but one bishop in Scotland, whose seat was at St. Andrews, and who was termed the Epscop Albain, or Episcopus Scottorum; and the five documents which contain the Aberdeen tradition have been shown by the learned editor of the Chartulary to be unquestionably spurious. The first authentic writ in that Chartulary is a bull by Pope Adrian IV. in 1157, confirming to Edward, bishop of Aberdeen, the church of Aberdeen, the church of St. Machar, with the town of Old Aberdeen and other lands, in which are included the monastery of Cloveth and the town and monastery of Murthillach, with five churches and the lands belonging to them. There is here no allusion to Murthillach having been an episcopal see, the seat of which had been transferred to Aberdeen. The designation of monastery points unequivocally to these churches having been old Columban monasteries; and accordingly we find that Murthillach was dedicated to St. Moluoc, the founder of the churches of Lismore and Rosemarky in the sixth century. Of the three bishops who are said to have preceded Nectan, Beyn probably belongs to the Columban period, Donercius has all the appearance of a fictitious name, and Cormauch is probably Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld, who, as we have seen, appears in the charter in which Nectan is first mentioned as having rights connected with the church of Deer, and who may have possessed similar claims upon the monasteries of Cloveth and Murthillach, as old Columban foundations, from which probably any clerical element had by this time disappeared.

We fortunately now possess an invaluable record in the Book of Deer, which throws some light upon two Columban foundations in the district of Buchan, forming the north-eastern portion of the diocese of Aberdeen, as well as upon the social organisation of the Celtic inhabitants of that district. These are the monasteries of Deer and Turriff, the one founded by St. Columba and placed under the care of his nephew St. Drostan, the other founded by St. Comgan in the following century; and the notices in the Book of Deer are peculiarly valuable, as it shows these monasteries retaining their clerical element and Celtic character unimpaired down to the reign of David I. It is here, if anywhere, that we should expect to find, according to popular notions, these Columban clergy bearing the name of Culdees; but the term Cele De nowhere appears in this record in connection with them. The peculiar value of this MS. consists in memoranda of grants to the monastery of Deer, written in the Irish character and language on blank pages or on the margins. These are in two handwritings. The first contains notices of grants preceding the time of Gartnait, Mormaer or Earl of Buchan, who lived in the earlier years of King David’s reign. These are written on three blank pages at the end of the MS. and on the margin of the first page. The second begins with the grant by Gartnait refounding the church and dedicating it to St. Peter, and is followed by a short notice of a grant, by the same earl, which probably preceded it, as the grant is to Columcille and Drostan alone, without mentioning St. Peter; and on the margin of the second page, in the same handwriting, is a grant by Colban, the son-in-law and successor of Gartnait. The scribe appears to have added to two of the grants in the first handwriting the important statement that they were made in freedom from Mormaer and Toisech to the day of judgment, with ‘his blessing on every one who shall fulfil, and his curse on every one who shall go against it.’ The second of the grants by Earl Gartnait, which appears to have immediately preceded the reconstitution of the church, is witnessed by ‘Gillecalline the sacart, or priest, Feradach, son of Maelbhricin, and Maelgirc, son of Tralin,’ in whom we have probably the small society to which the clerics of Deer had by this time been reduced, and which rendered a refoundation necessary. As the grant refounding the church is witnessed by the Ferleighinn, or man of learning, of Turbruad, or Turriff, it is not a very violent supposition that he may have been the scribe. The charter granted by King David towards the end of his reign, declaring that the clerics of Deer shall be free from all lay interference and exaction, as written in their book, shows that they had become exposed to the encroachments of the laity and required protection; and the foundation by William, earl of Buchan, of the Cistercian abbey of Deer in the year 1219 seems to have brought to a close its history as a Celtic monastery. The monastery of Turbruad, or Turriff, appears also to have existed as a Celtic monastery at the same time, and we have some incidental notices of it in the Book of Deer. Domingart, Ferleighinn Turbruad, or ‘lector of Turriff,’ witnesses one of Earl Gartnait’s grants, and that by his successor Colbain is witnessed by Cormac, Abb. Turbruad, or ‘abbot of Turriff;’ but it probably passed into lay hands before the end of David’s reign, as his charter of confirmation is witnessed by ‘Cormac de Turbrud,’ or Cormac of Turriff, without any designation implying a clerical character. The charter by Cainnech, Mormaer or Earl of Buchan, refounding the church of Deer, contains the last notice of Cormac bishop of Dunkeld; and Gregorius, the bishop of Moray, appears to have been translated to Dunkeld, as in a charter by David the First to Dunfermline, granted before the death of his queen, Matilda, in 1130, we find as witnesses Robert bishop of St. Andrews and Gregorius bishop of Dunkeld; and along with them appears, for the first time, Andreas bishop of Cataness, or Caithness.

This great district, which comprised both the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, and extended from the Dornoch to the Pentland Firths, was at this time in the possession of the Norwegian earl of Orkney; and, though he held the earldom of Caithness nominally under the crown of Scotland, its connection with the Scottish kingdom was as yet but a slight one. The erection of it into a diocese and the appointment of a bishop by the king of Scotland could have had little reality in them till they were accepted by the Norwegian earl; and David appears to have provided his new bishop with the means of supporting his position by conferring upon him the church of the Holy Trinity at Dunkeld, with its possessions of Fordouin, Dunmernoch, Bendacthin, or Bendochy, Cupermaccultin, Incheturfin and Chethec, or Keithock. Towards the end of David’s reign Andrew probably obtained a footing in Caithness, as he made over this church to the monks of Dunfermline; and we find his immediate successors, John and Adam, living in Caithness, and claiming certain subsidies from the people. The principal church of the diocese was that of Dornoch, situated in the district of Sutherland, on the north side of the Dornoch Firth. This church was dedicated to St. Bar or Finbar, and his festival was held on thethe 25th of September. This is the day of St. Bar or Finbar, bishop of Cork in the Irish Calendar; but the legend given in the Aberdeen Breviary obviously identifies him with St. Finbar of Maghbile, the preceptor and friend of St. Columba, whose day in the Irish Calendar is the 10th of September. There seems, therefore, to be some confusion between the two, and it is more probable that it was, like Rosemarky, a Columban foundation. The name of St. Duthac, to whom the church of Tain on the opposite shore of the firth is dedicated, is connected also with the church at Dornoch, where he is said to have performed a miracle on St. Finbar’s day; and in his time the Keledei may have been introduced here, where we find them in the catalogue of religious houses. In the year 1196 that portion of the earldom of Caithness which lay between the Ord of Caithness and the Dornoch Firth appears to have been taken from the Norwegian earl and bestowed upon Hugh of Moray, of the then rising family of De Moravia; and the appointment of another member of the family, Gilbert de Moravia, soon after to the bishopric of Moray led to the proper organisation of Dornoch as a cathedral. But the Culdees had by this time disappeared, and the clerical element reduced, as was usual, to a single priest; for his deed establishing a cathedral chapter of ten canons, with the usual functionaries of dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer and archdeacon, proceeds on the narrative ‘that in the times of his predecessors there was but a single priest ministering in the cathedral, both on account of the poverty of the place and by reason of frequent hostilities; and that he desired to extend the worship of God in that church, and resolved to build a cathedral church at his own expense, to dedicate it to the Virgin Mary, and, in proportion to his limited means, to make it conventual.’

As far as we have gone, the Celtic Church appears mainly as dying out by internal decay, and as being superseded by the bishoprics founded in the earlier years of King David’s reign, and the establishment of the ordinary cathedral staff of canons with their dean and other functionaries. We have now arrived at that period of David’s reign when an active war against the Culdee establishments commenced, and every effort was made to suppress them entirely, and when the process of internal decay was accompanied by a course of external aggression which we must now follow as it rolled from St. Andrews, into whose hands their fate was committed, westward, till it finally reached the far shores of the island of Iona.

In the year 1144, Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, who had been prior of the monastery of regular canons of St. Augustine at Scone, founded a priory for the same canons at St. Andrews, and, besides various lands, granted to them two of the seven portions of the altarage of St. Andrews, which then belonged to lay persons, and likewise the hospital of St. Andrews, with the portion which belonged to it; and this grant was confirmed in the same year by the pope Lucius II. The object of this foundation evidently was that it should in time supersede the Culdees. Accordingly, in the same year King David grants a charter to the prior and canons of St. Andrews, in which he provides that they shall receive the Keledei of Kilrimont into the canonry, with all their possessions and revenues, if they are willing to become canons-regular; but, if they refuse, those who are now alive are to retain them during their lives, and, after their death, as many canons-regular are to be instituted in the church of St. Andrews as there are now Keledei, and all their possessions are to be appropriated to the use of the canons. Three years later Pope Eugenius III., by a bull directed to the prior of St. Andrews, deprived the Keledei of their right to elect the bishop, and conferred it upon the prior and canons of St. Andrews, and at the same time decreed that, as the Keledei died out, their places were to be filled up by canons-regular. The Keledei appear to have resisted these changes, and to have continued to assert their right to participate in the election of the bishop, as the decree depriving them of it was renewed from time to time by subsequent popes down to the year 1248. About the year 1156, Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, granted to the prior and brethren of St. Andrews the whole of the portions of the altarage, with the exception of the seventh, which belongs to the bishop, thus adding three more later to the three portions they already possessed; and six years later Bishop Arnald gave the whole of the altarage, which was divided into seven portions, and had been held by seven persons not living a conventual life, to the canons professing a regular life and living in community. Of the two bodies into which the community of St. Andrews had been divided, that one which had passed, with the exception of the bishop’s share, into the hands of secular persons, thus came to be represented by the priory of regular canons. In 1220 we find a bull by Pope Honorius III. requiring the legate of the apostolic see to inquire into a dispute between the Prior and convent of St. Andrews on the one hand, and the Bishop and those clerics of St. Andrews who are commonly called Keledei on the other, in regard to their respective possessions. The Keledean community at St. Andrews now appears under the name of the Provost and Keledei of the Church of St. Mary; and they are so designated in a document connected with the controversy between the prior and convent of St. Andrews and the provost of the church of St. Mary of St. Andrews and the Keledei living there as canons and their vicars; and in the same year there is a bull by Pope Innocent the Fourth to the prior and canons, who are now termed the Chapter of St. Andrews in Scotland of the order of St. Augustine, which narrates that it had been ordained by his predecessors that, on the decease of the Keledei, their place should be filled up by canons-regular, and their prebends and possessions made over for their use; but that, the prebend of Gilbert the Keledeus having become vacant, the Keledei refused to give it up or to allow a regular canon to be introduced in his place, contrary to these statutes; and it directed the Keledei to be excommunicated if they did not obey them. Master Richard Vermont, Keledeus, appears on behalf of the Keledei, and resigns the prebend, which is made over to the canons. Three years later we find in another bull ‘the provost and chapter of the Caledei of the church of St. Mary in the city of St. Andrews’ still claiming to participate in the election of the bishop, and supported by the archdeacon. In a subsequent bull, two years after, addressed to the prior and chapter of the cathedral church of St. Andrews of the order of St. Augustine, on the narrative that ‘two of the Keledei of the church of Saint Mary of Kilrimont, who term themselves canons,’ had been allowed to take part in the election of a previous bishop, it is decreed, with consent of the Keledei, that this shall not operate to their prejudice. In the year 1258 they are finally deprived of their parochial status as vicars of the parish church of the Holy Trinity of St. Andrews. It is evident from these deeds that the Keledei asserted their claim to be considered as canons, and did not submit without a struggle to be deprived of the right of participating in the election of bishop, from which they are finally excluded in the year 1273. We again find them in a document in 1309, and the position which they had now come to occupy is clearly defined. It is a decision given by Sir Thomas Randulph, the guardian of Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, in a controversy between the Keledei and the bishop regarding territorial jurisdiction, in which he finds that ‘within the bounds of the district termed the Boar’s Chase there are only three baronies, viz., the barony of the bishop of St. Andrews, the barony of the prior of St. Andrews, and the barony of the Keledei, and that these baronies with their inhabitants are under the immediate jurisdiction of the bishop of St. Andrews and of the church, and of no one else.’ While, therefore, the priory of the canons-regular of St. Andrews ‘soon took its place as first in rank and wealth of the religious houses of Scotland, and the prior, with the ring and mitre and symbols of episcopacy, had rank and place in Parliament above abbots and all other prelates of the regular clergy,’ the name of Keledei gradually disappears, being mentioned for the last time in the year 1332, when the usual formula of their exclusion in the election of a bishop is repeated; and instead of them we hear only of the provostry of ‘the church of Saint Mary of the city of St. Andrews,’ of ‘the church of the blessed Mary of the Rock,’ and of the ‘provostry of Kirkheugh,’ the society consisting of a provost and ten prebendaries.

The Keledei of Lochleven fared no better than those of St. Andrews, and were extinguished in much the same manner by being converted into canons-regular, though the process was a shorter one. They were a small community, and preserved, even as late as the reign of Malcolm Canmore, their original character of an eremetical society. They were the oldest Keledean establishment in Scotland, and thus exhibited its earliest form. By an arrangement between them and the bishop of St. Andrews, their establishment had been made over to him prior to the year 961; and this enabled Bishop Robert, when he established the priory of regular canons in St. Andrews, to convey to the prior ‘the abbacy of the island of Lochleven, with all its pertinents, in order that he might establish in it a body of canons-regular. He conveys to him all the lands which had from time to time been granted to the Keledei of Lochleven, with all their revenues, and likewise the ecclesiastical vestments which belonged to the Chelede, as well as the books which constituted their library.’ This was followed by a charter by King David, in which he declared ‘that he had given and granted to the canons of St. Andrews the island of Lochleven, that they might establish canonical order there; and the Keledei who shall be found there, if they consent to live as regulars, shall be permitted to remain in society with and subject to the others; but, should any of them be disposed to offer resistance, his will and pleasure was that such should be expelled from the island.’ A century later we find that the conversion of the community of Keledei into a priory of canons-regular had been fully accomplished, as in the year 1248 the prior and convent of canons-regular of St. Andrews, on the narrative that ‘Kings David and William of Scotland and Bishops Robert and Richard of St. Andrews had given and confirmed to them the abbacy of Keledei in Lochleven, and that it was desirable to improve the position of their priory of Lochleven and of their brethren the canons-regular of the order of St. Augustine instituted and dwelling there, make over to the church of St. Servanus of Lochleven the property of the island of St. Servanus situated on that lake;’ and we hear no more of the Keledei of Lochleven.

Another community of Keledei connected with the church of St. Andrews was treated much in the same manner. Among the possessions of that church beyond the great chain of the Mounth was Monimusk, situated in the vale of the river Don. The popular tradition of its foundation is that Malcolm Canmore, when proceeding on a military expedition against the people of Moray, came to Monimusk, and, finding that the barony of Monimusk belonged to the crown, he vowed it to St. Andrew in order to procure him victory. This tradition is so stated by Hector Boece, and if it rested upon no better authority it could hardly be received as historical; but it is certain that Malcolm Canmore did make an expedition against the race of Moray in 1078, from which he returned victorious; and in a bounding charter said to have been transcribed from the Register of St. Andrews, between the lands of Keig and Monimusk, there is added that ‘these are the marches which King Malcolm gave to God and the church of Saint Mary of Monimusk on account of the victory granted to him.’ So far we may infer that it was not an ancient Columban foundation; and it is certain that the bishop of St. Andrews was termed the founder of the house, and that it, like the church of Keledei at St. Andrews, was dedicated to St. Mary, and contained a community of Keledei which probably emanated from that church. Their possessions, too, included those northern churches which were connected with the legend of St. Andrew, or were dedicated to him, as Kindrochet in Mar, Alford and Eglismenythok in Angus. The notices of these Keledei are all to be found in the Register of the Priory of St. Andrews, which contains various grants made to them. They first appear in the year 1170 simply as the ‘Keledei of Munimusc,’ when they receive a grant from Roger, earl of Buchan; but their principal benefactor was Gilchrist, earl of Mar, who flourished between the years 1199 and 1207. He appears to have built them a convent, and enforced the canonical rule upon the Keledei, who now call themselves canons; for we find him granting the church of Loychel to God and St. Marie of Munimusc and the Keledei serving there, and the bishop of Aberdeen confirms this grant to the church of the blessed Mary of Munimusc and the canons, who are called Keledei, serving God there; and again the bishop confirms the grant which Gilchrist, earl of Mar, had made to this monastery which he had founded at Munimusc in the church of St. Mary in which the Keledei previously were. In another confirmation by the same bishop, as well as in one by the bishop of St. Andrews, they are termed simply the canons of Munimusc. So far then the Keledei seem to have been recognised and favoured, but the storm soon after broke upon them. In 1211 a complaint was laid before the pope by William, bishop of St. Andrews, that ‘certain Keledei who professed to be canons, and certain others of the diocese of Aberdeen in the town of Munimusc, which pertained to him, were endeavouring to establish a regular canonry, contrary to justice, to the prejudice of his church;’ whereupon a commission was issued to the abbots of Melrose and Dryburgh and the archdeacon of Glasgow to inquire into the matter, which resulted in a convention between the bishop of St. Andrews and the Keledei of Munimusc to the following effect:—‘That the Keledei in future should have one refectory and one dormitory in common, and one oratory without a cemetery; and that the bodies of the Keledei and of clerks or laymen who might die when with them should receive the rights of sepulture at the parish church of Munimusc; further, there were there twelve Keledei and a thirteenth, Bricius, whom the Keledei were to present to the bishop of St. Andrews for confirmation, in order that he should be their master, or prior; that on his retirement or death the Keledei were to choose three of their society, from among whom the bishop was to select the one he considered best suited to become their prior, or master, and who was to do fealty to him as the founder of the house of the Keledei;’ that the election of the prior, or master, of the Keledei should be so conducted in future, with this addition, that it should not be lawful for them at any future time to profess the life or order of monks or canons-regular without the bishop’s consent, or to exceed the number; that, when a Keledeus died or withdrew, those who remained were at liberty to fill up the vacant place; but that such Keledeus was, upon his admission, to swear before the bishop or his deputy that he would observe the terms of this composition. The Keledei were to retain the lands called Eglismenythok, which they had received from Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, and other dues commonly belonging to Keledei. They promised to do nothing to the prejudice of the church of St. Andrews or the parish church of Munimusc; and when the bishop of St. Andrews came to Munimusc, the Keledei were to receive him with a solemn procession. They were thus brought under the more direct control of the bishop of St. Andrews, who is there called the founder of their house, and assimilated to the state into which the Keledei of St. Andrews had been brought. Like them, they consisted of a prior, or head, with twelve members. Like them, they were excluded from all parochial functions. As their position gave them no claim to be considered as a capitular body, it was unnecessary to exclude them from participation in the election of a bishop; and the same provision seems to have been made, though in a more correct manner, for gradually superseding them by regular canons and inhibiting them as each Keledeus died. In a charter granted a few years after by Duncan, earl of Mar, of the church of Loychel and other possessions, they are termed Keledei or canons; but in the confirmation by Alexander the Second the former term is dropped, and they are called simply canons; and in 1245 the Keledei of Munimusk have entirely disappeared, and instead we have, in a confirmation by Pope Innocent IV., ‘the prior and convent of Munimusc, of the order of Saint Augustine.’

Another feature of the policy by which the kings of this race endeavoured to assimilate the native church to that of Rome, was that of introducing the monastic orders of that church, and establishing monasteries which should form centres of influence for the spread of the new system. Upon these monasteries the remains of the old Columban foundations were to a large extent conferred, and in this policy the monarchs were very generally seconded by the great earls and barons of Scotland. King David, soon after his accession, remodelled the church at Dunfermline which had been founded by Queen Margaret, and placed in it Benedictine monks, consisting of an abbot and twelve brethren, brought from Canterbury; and he introduced the same monks into the district of Moray, by founding at Urquhart, not far from its eastern boundary, a priory of Benedictines which became a cell of Dunfermline. Towards the end of his reign, and after the great district of Moray had been brought under subjection to the Crown, he founded at Kinloss, somewhat farther west, and not far from the mouth of the Findhorn, a monastery, in which he placed Cistertians brought from Melrose. In the following reign another colony of the same monks was brought from Melrose by Malcolm IV., and placed at Cupar-Angus, in the diocese of St. Andrews, where he founded a monastery in the year 1164. In the reign of his successor another order of Benedictines—those of Tyron—who had been established by King David at Kelso, was introduced into the diocese of St. Andrews. Their principal house was that of Aberbrothock, or Arbroath, founded by King William the Lion in 1173, and dedicated to St. Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr. The same year his brother David, earl of Huntingdon, founded a monastery at Lindores in Fife, for the same order, and in the following year the earl of Buchan, founded at Fyvie, in the diocese of Aberdeen, a priory which was affiliated to Arbroath, and belonged to the same order.

During the reign of King William the possessions of their principal monastery at Arbroath increased with great rapidity, and estates in land, churches and tithes were heaped upon the new foundation by the earls and barons of Angus and the north. These included many of the old Columban foundations; and, if the Book of Deer throws much light upon the state of Buchan, both as regards the position of its Columban monasteries and the social organisation of its old Celtic population, the Chartulary of Arbroath is in this respect the most important record we have, and we derive from it much insight into the state and characteristics of the old territorial system south of the great range of the Mounth. Among the churches granted by King William, we find in Angus the church of St. Mary of Old Munros, with its land, called ‘in the Scottish speech Abthen,’ or, as it is afterwards termed, ‘the land of the abbacy of Munros,’ with other churches there; in Mar, the churches of Banchory St. Ternan and Coul; in Buchan, Fyvie, Tarves and Gameryn; and in Banff, the churches of St. Marnan of Abirchirdir, Inverbondin, or Boindie, dedicated to St. Brandan, and Banff; and the king likewise grants to them the lands of Forglen, the church of which was dedicated to St. Adamnan, with the custody of the Brecbennach, or banner of St. Columba. Margery, countess of Buchan, grants to them the church of Turfred, or Turriff, dedicated to St. Comgan, which, as we have seen, had preserved its Celtic character as late as the reign of David I. The grants by the earls of Angus give us, however, the most interesting information; and in one of these we come upon an incidental mention of the Culdees. Gilchrist, earl of Angus, grants to the monks of Arbroath ‘the church of Monifod, with its chapels, lands, tithes and oblations, and with the common pasturage and other privileges belonging to it,’ which grant is confirmed by King William. Malcolm, earl of Angus, grants about the year 1220 the land of the Abthein of Munifeth to Nicholas son of Bricius, priest of Kerimure; and this grant is confirmed by his daughter, Countess Matilda, whose charter is witnessed by William, vicar of Monifeit. Another charter by the same countess is witnessed by William vicar of Monifodh, and Nicholas abbot of Monifodh. Countess Matilda then grants to the monks of Arbroath ‘the land on the south side of the church of Monifodh, which the Keledei held in the life of her father, with a croft at the east end of the church;’ and finally Michael, lord of the Abbathania of Monifoth, holds this croft in feu-farm from the monks of Arbroath. Here we see an old Abthen, or abbacy, granted to the son of a priest, who then calls himself abbot, while the church is served by a vicar; and a late descendant appears, as in other cases, with the simple designation of ‘de Monifoth,’ and calls himself lord of the Abbathania, or territory of the abbacy. The ancient monastery had therefore now passed into the hands of a hereditary lay abbot, but we also find part of the land held by a body of Keledei, who are only once mentioned, and then pass away for ever. The dedications throw some light on this. The church of Monifieth, situated on the north shore of the Firth of Tay, was dedicated to St. Regulus, or St. Rule; but within the parish was the chapel of Eglismonichty, dedicated to St. Andrew. The dedications, therefore, reflect the two legends of the foundation of St. Andrews—the older Columban foundation under St. Regulus, and the later Pictish one, when the relics of St. Andrew were really introduced. The lay abbacy represents the former. The Keledean establishment belongs to the later foundation. We find, too, John Abbe, son of Malise, granting to the monks the privilege of taking charcoal in the wood of Edale, which is confirmed by Morgund, son of John Abbe. The church of Edale, now Edzell, was dedicated to St. Drostan, the founder of the church of Deer; and here, too, we find one of the old Columban foundations in the possession of a lay family, who seem even to have adopted Abbe as a surname.

Among other churches granted to the monks of Arbroath by King William was ‘the church of Abyrnythy, with its chapels, lands, tithes and oblations, its common pasturage, and all other privileges belonging to it;’ but this church belonged to the diocese of Dunblane, one of the latest bishoprics founded by King David I. Towards the end of his reign he appears to have added two bishoprics to those already founded by him. These were the bishoprics of Dunblane and Brechin. They are mentioned as already existing, in a bull by Pope Adrian addressed to the bishops of Glasgow, Whithern, St. Andrews, Dunblane, Dunkeld, Brechin, Aberdeen, Moray, Ross and Caithness, ten in number, in the second year after King David’s death, in which he directs them to submit to the archbishop of York, a command which was not obeyed except by the bishop of Candida Casa, or Whithern. The struggle for the independence of the Scottish Church was, however, terminated in the year 1188, when the pope, Clement III., in a bull addressed to King William the Lion in that year, recognised the independence of the Scottish Church, and declared ‘the Church of Scotland to be the daughter of Rome by special grace, and immediately subject to her.’ In this bull the church is said to contain the following episcopal sees—viz., St. Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Dunblane, Brechin, Aberdeen, Moray, Ross and Caithness, that is, nine of the bishoprics mentioned in the previous bull—that of Candida Casa, or Whithern, remaining subject to the archbishop of York; and these nine bishoprics are obviously the episcopal sees referred to by Ailred of Rivaux, when he states that King David found at his accession only three or four bishops, and founded or restored so many as to leave nine at his death. We find accordingly Samson, bishop of Brechin, witnessing the charter granted by King David to the Church of Deer in the last year of his reign; and again, along with Laurence, bishop of Dunblane, a charter granted by Malcolm IV. to the monks of Dunfermline between 1160 and 1162; but, although Laurence is first mentioned in the bull of Pope Adrian in 1155, his bishopric is included in the nine left by King David at his death, and must have been founded shortly before and probably at the same time as that of Brechin. The reorganisation of the church under a diocesan episcopacy was thus completed during the lifetime of King David; and during the subsequent reigns we find the occasional appearance of a representative body of seven bishops, in obvious connection with that other body termed the seven earls of Scotland. The seven bishops of Scotland appear to have consisted of the bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, and the five bishops added by King David himself during his reign, omitting the bishops of Dunkeld and Moray, whose bishoprics had been restored in the previous reign of Alexander the First.

The two bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane thus founded towards the end of King David’s reign were probably formed from the remains of the old Pictish bishopric of Abernethy, in so far as the churches which had been subject to it had not been absorbed by the growing bishopric of St. Andrews which immediately succeeded it. We may infer this from the facts that, though Abernethy was within the limits of the diocese of St. Andrews and surrounded on all sides by her churches, it belonged ecclesiastically to the diocese of Dunblane; that Abernethy was dedicated to St. Bridget, and that we find a Panbride in the diocese of Brechin and a Kilbride in that of Dunblane, indicating that the veneration of the patroness of Abernethy had extended to other churches included in these dioceses. Abernethy, too, was the last of the bishoprics which existed while the kingdom ruled over by the Scottish dynasty was still called the Kingdom of the Picts, while that of St. Andrews was more peculiarly associated with the Scots; and it was in Stratherne and in the northern part of Angus and in the Mearns that the Pictish population lingered longest distinct from that of the Scots, while the latter had their main seat in the central region consisting of the rest of Angus, Gowrey, Fife and Fothrif. The two bishoprics of Dunblane and Brechin on the one hand, and that of St. Andrews on the other, to some extent represented what had at one time been the main territory occupied by the two populations. Abernethy has, by popular tradition, always been peculiarly associated with the Pictish population, and its history, so far as it can be ascertained, shows its connection with the church among the southern Picts from the very earliest period. The legend of its first foundation connects it with the church of St. Ninian, when a church is said to have been established there by King Nectan, who had, while in exile, visited Kildare in the fifth century, and who dedicated his church to St. Brigid, or St. Bride. When the Columban church entered the province of the southern Picts in the end of the sixth century, it was refounded by King Garnard for Columban monks, while the dedication to St. Bride was preserved; but, like Kildare itself, it now contained an establishment of monks. What its fate was during the interval between the expulsion of the Columban monks in the beginning of the eighth century and their reintroduction under Kenneth mac Alpin—whether the monks of Abernethy were expelled and secular clergy introduced, or whether they conformed to the decree of the Pictish king and were allowed to remain—we do not know; but during the reign of the first king of the Scottish dynasty, when the abbot of Dunkeld became the first bishop of his kingdom, Abernethy appears to have been visited and reorganised by the abbot of the mother church of Kildare, and to this period the erection of its round tower can be most probably assigned. On the death of the bishop-abbot of Dunkeld, it became the seat of the bishop of the kingdom, and three elections of these bishops had taken place there when it was in its turn superseded by St. Andrews.

In the reign of Edgar the Keledei of Abernethy first appear on record, but whether they were introduced, as at Lochleven in the eighth century, or, as at St. Andrews, in the tenth, we have no means of ascertaining; but we are told by Bower that this community of Keledei, whom he terms the prior and canons, possessed the lands and tithes which formerly belonged to St. Bridget and her times, and that, as usual with the Keledei, their church had become dedicated to St. Mary. By King William the church of Abernethy was granted to Arbroath; and we now find the one half of the church and its dependencies in the possession of a hereditary lay abbot, while the other half belonged to the Keledei, for in that reign—some time between 1189 and 1198—Laurence, son of Orm de Abernethy, conveys to the church and monks of Arbroath his whole right ‘in the advowson of the church of Abernethy, with its pertinents, that is, the chapel of Dron, the chapel of Dunbulcc, with the chapel of Erolyn and the lands of Belache and Petenlouer, and with the half of all the tithes which belonged to him and his heirs, the other half belonging to the Keledei, and with all the tithes of the territory of Abernethy and its proper rights, with the exception of those tithes which are appropriated to the churches of Flisk and Cultram and the tithes from his lordship of Abernythy, which the Keledei of Abernethy have and which properly belong to him, viz., those of Mukedrum and Kerpul and Balehyrewelle and Ballecolly and Invernythy on the east side of the river,’ that is, the land extending along the south shore of the Firth of Tay from the river Nethy to the east boundary by Mugdrum. This very instructive grant thus presents to us a picture of Abernethy in which the ancient abbacy is now represented by a family of lay abbots, while the possessions of the old nunnery are held by Keledei, and the lay lord of the territory conveys his abbatial rights to Arbroath, retaining the land, and becomes to all intents and purposes a secular baron of Abernethy, from whom sprang the baronial house of Abernethy. In the succeeding century we find a dispute between the abbot and monks of Arbroath and the prior and Keledei of Abernethy regarding the tithes of certain lands which the abbot declared belonged to their parish church of Abernethy; but it was decided by the bishop of Dunblane against the Keledei. These Keledei were eventually disposed of in the same manner as the others had been, and were in 1272 converted into a community of canons-regular of St. Augustine. We have no record of the process; but there is no reason to doubt the fact as stated by Bower, and the name of Keledei no longer occurs in connection with Abernethy.

The church of Brechin, which became the seat of the bishopric founded by King David, has no claim to represent an old Columban monastery; for its origin as a church is clearly recorded in the Pictish Chronicle, which tells us that King Kenneth, son of Malcolm, who reigned from 971 to 995, immolated the great town of Brechin to the Lord; and its dedication likewise indicates a later foundation, for it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Like the other churches which belong to the period after the establishment of a Scottish dynasty on the throne in the person of Kenneth mac Alpin, it emanated from the Irish Church, and was assimilated in its character to the Irish monasteries; and to this we may, no doubt, attribute the well-known round tower at Brechin. We hear nothing more of this church till the reign of David the First; but one of the witnesses to the charter granted by him, in the eighth year of his reign, to the church at Deer, is ‘Leot, abbot of Brechin.’ The later charter granted by the same king to the church of Deer is, as we have seen, witnessed by Samson, bishop of Brechin; and that, in this case as well as that of Dunkeld, the abbot had become the bishop is probable, for a charter granted by his successor Turpin, bishop of Brechin, is witnessed by ‘Dovenaldus, abbot of Brechin;’ and the same Dovenaldus, abbot of Brechin, grants a charter to the monastery of Arbroath, of the lands of Ballegillegrand for the health of the souls, among others, of his ‘father Samson,’ thus showing that though Samson had become bishop, the abbacy passed to his son. The charter of Bishop Turpin, which is witnessed by this Dovenaldus, contains among the witnesses ‘Bricius, prior of the Keledei of Brechin,’ who ranks immediately after the bishop of St. Andrews; and it is apparent that the abbacy had now become secularised, for Dovenaldus does not appear among the clerical witnesses, but follows Gilbride, earl of Angus. Brechin thus presents at this time the same features as Abernethy, and shows us the abbacy in the possession of a lay abbot and a community of Keledei under a prior. That the abbacy now passed into the possession of a family of hereditary lay abbots, who, as in other cases, bore the name of Abbe, appears from the chartulary of Arbroath, where we find a grant to the monastery by ‘Johannes Abbe, son of Malisius,’ which is witnessed by Morgund and John, his sons, and Malcolm his brother. He himself too witnesses a charter as ‘Johannes, abbot of Brechin,’ and this grant is confirmed by ‘Morgundus, son of Johannes Abbe.’ The community of Keledei with their prior appear as in other cases to have formed the chapter of the diocese, till they were gradually superseded by a regular cathedral chapter. In the charter by Abbot Dovenaldus we find the prior, who in the earlier charters ranked after the bishop, giving place to the archdeacon of Brechin, while the appearance of ‘Andreas, parson of Brechin,’ indicates that they had now lost their parochial functions. They then appear conjoined with other clergy in forming the chapter in a charter granted by the prior and Keledei and the other clerics of the chapter of the church of Brechin to the monks of Arbroath, and a dean appears among the witnesses. In a charter granted by the bishop of Brechin, the archdeacon, the chaplain of Brechin, and two other chaplains and the dean take precedence of the prior of the Keledei. After the year 1218 we find the Keledei distinguished from the chapter; and in 1248 they have entirely disappeared, and we hear only of the dean and chapter of Brechin.

The other bishopric, however, which had been formed by King David from the old Pictish bishopric of Abernethy, and to which that church was more immediately attached—the bishopric of Dunblane—was undoubtedly connected with an old Columban foundation. The church of Dunblane dates back to the seventh century, and seems to have been an offshoot of the church of Kingarth in Bute, for its founder was St. Blane. He was of the race of the Irish Picts, and nephew of that Bishop Cathan who founded Kingarth; and was himself bishop of that church, and his mother was a daughter of King Aidan of Dalriada. The church of Dunblane was situated in the vale of the river Allan, not far from its junction with the Forth, and is mentioned in the Pictish Chronicle under the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, when it was burnt by the neighbouring Britons of Strathclyde. We hear no more of this church till the foundation of the bishopric by King David. The catalogue of religious houses places Keledei as the religious community of the church, but the only Keledei we have any record of appear as located at Muthill, situated farther north, and not far from the river Earn; while a later record shows us that the Columban monastery, like many others, had fallen into lay hands, and the clerical element then was limited to a single cleric, who performed the service. In a document containing the judgment of the pope’s delegates in a question between the bishop of Dunblane and the earl of Menteith, in the year 1238, we read that the bishop had gone in person to Rome and represented to the pope ‘that the church of Dunblane had formerly been vacant for a hundred years and more, and almost all its possessions had been seized by secular persons; and, although in process of time several bishops had been appointed to her, yet by their weakness and indifference the possessions thus appropriated had not only not been recovered, but even what remained to them had been almost entirely alienated; in consequence of which no one could be induced to take upon himself the burden of the episcopate, and the church had thus remained without a chief pastor for nearly ten years; that the present bishop, when appointed, had found the church so desolate that he had not a cathedral church wherein to place his head; that there was no collegiate establishment; and that in this unroofed church the divine offices were celebrated by a certain rural chaplain, while the bishop’s revenues were so slender that they scarce afforded fitting maintenance for half the year.’ This picture of clerical desolation does not differ from what we have found in other churches the possessions of which had fallen into the hands of lay families, and it is quite inconsistent with the statement that there was a body of Keledei in the church of Dunblane. The Keledei referred to must have been those at Muthill, which at this time was one of the principal seats of the earls of Stratherne. We unfortunately know little of the early history of this church. It adjoins the old parish of Strageath, which has been united to it from beyond the memory of man; and, as we have seen, after the expulsion of the Columban monks in the beginning of the eighth century, St. Fergus or Fergusanius, a bishop of the Roman party who came from Ireland, is said to have founded three churches in the confines of Strageath. The church of Strageath was dedicated to St. Patrick, and the other two churches were probably those of Blackford, also dedicated to St. Patrick, and of Muthill, within the bounds of which parish were St. Patrick’s well and a chapel dedicated to him; but whether we are to place the introduction of the Keledei at this period or in the reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth mac Alpin, when the Keledei were re-established under the canonical rule in Scotland, and when St. Cadroë was reviving religion in Stratherne under the auspices of his uncle St. Bean of Foulis and Kinkell, neighbouring parishes, there is nothing now to show. We find the Keledei with their prior at Muthill from 1178 to 1214, when they disappear from the records, and Muthill becomes the seat of the dean of Dunblane, who had already taken precedence of the prior of the Keledei. It is probable that under the growing importance of Dunblane as a cathedral establishment, the possessions of the Keledei had fallen into secular hands. In the meantime the earls of Stratherne had introduced the canons-regular from Scone into the diocese by the foundation of the priory of Inchaffray, separated from the parishes of Muthill and Strageath only by the river Earn. This took place some time before the year 1198. The founders were Earl Gilbert and his countess, and it was dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the apostle, to whom they give ‘Incheaffren, which is called in Latin Insula Missarum,’ placing it under the care of Malise, the parson and hermit, for canons under the rule of St. Augustine, and bestowing upon it the ancient Columban foundations of St. Cattan of Aberruthven and St. Ethernan of Madderdy, and the more modern churches of St. Patrick of Strageath, St. Makessog of Auchterarder and St. Bean of Kinkell. Bower, whose authority in matters of church history at this period must not be underrated, tells us that, when Earl Gilbert founded this monastery, he divided his earldom into three equal portions, one of which he gave to the church and bishop of Dunblane, another to the canons of Inchaffray, and the third he reserved for himself and his heirs; but this is inconsistent with the account which the bishop of Dunblane gives of the state of the church five years after the death of that earl, and probably its only foundation was the arrangement proposed by the adjudicators, by which a fourth of the tithes of all the parish churches in the diocese was to be assigned to the bishop, in order that he might, after receiving a sufficient part for his own maintenance, appropriate the rest to the establishment of a dean and chapter; otherwise the episcopal see was to be transferred to the monastery of Inchaffray, whose canons were to form the chapter, and the bishop was to receive the fourth part of the tithes of those churches which had been appropriated by secular persons. This alternative plan did not take effect; and what Bower reports of the lands of the earldom may have been true in so far as regards the tithes of the secularised churches.

The bishopric of Dunkeld prior to the thirteenth century was not confined to the district of Atholl alone, with the isolated churches which belonged to it within the limits of other dioceses, but extended as far as the Western Sea, and included the districts stretching along its shores, from the Firth of Clyde to Lochbroom, and forming the great province of Arregaidhel, or Argyll. It possessed this extensive jurisdiction as representing the primatial supremacy of Iona over the Columban churches, though the monastery of Iona itself, being within the bounds of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, came to belong to the metropolitan diocese of Trontheim. It is within the bounds of this diocese that, if popular notions regarding the Culdees are correct, we ought to find the most abundant traces of them; but, except in the church of Iona itself, they have left no record of their presence, and we do not find their name connected with any of the old Columban foundations. The great abbacy of Dull, founded in the seventh century by St. Adamnan, had, with its extensive territory, long been in lay hands. The church of Dull had been granted to the priory of St. Andrews by Malcolm, earl of Atholl, in the reign of King William the Lion, ‘after the decease of his own cleric,’ and the grant was confirmed by his son Henry and by the bishop and chapter of Dunkeld; and, in a memorandum of the proceedings of a court held at Dull by the prior in 1264, we find mention of a vicar of Dull and of a cleric of Dull. The names of William of Chester and John of Carham, canons, indicate a foreign infusion, and the name of a solitary clerauch witnesses for the Celtic element, but there is no appearance of any Keledei. Another great Columban abbacy—that founded by St. Fillan in the same century in the vale of Glendochart—appears also to have passed into the hands of a lay abbot. In one of the laws of King William, ‘called Claremathane,’ we find the abbot of Glendochart ranking as a great lord with the earls of Atholl and Menteith, and sharing with the former the jurisdiction over the dwellers of the adjacent part of Argyll. And, in 1296, among the barons holding of the crown who do homage to Edward the First are Malcolm of Glendochart and Patrick of Glendochart, of the county of Perth, who are obviously simple laymen taking their name from the abbacy. But while the lands of the monastery thus passed into the possession of a secular family, the monastery seems, like many others, to have had connected with it a Deoradh, or anchorite, to whose descendants as coärb, or heir, of St. Fillan, the ecclesiastic jurisdiction, with the custody of his pastoral staff, called the Coygerach, seems to have fallen, as we find from an inquest held at Kandrochid, or Killin, on the 22d April 1428, that ‘the office of bearing the said relique belonged hereditarily to the progenitor of Finlay Jore, who appeared before the jury as the successor of Saint Felan with that office, and that these privileges had been preserved in the time of King Robert Bruce, and in the time of the subsequent kings to the present day,’ in virtue of which the family possessed a certain jurisdiction which bears an obvious relation to that possessed in the reign of King William by the abbot of Glendochart; and in the year 1487 there is a letter by King James, in which the king states that his ‘servitour Malice Doïre and his forebearis has had ane relik of Sanct Fulane, called the quegrith, in keping of us and of our progenitors’ since the time of ‘King Robert the Bruys and of before, and made nane obedience nor answer to na persone spirituale nor temporale in ony thing concerning the said haly relik,’ and charging all and sundry to ‘mak him nane impediment, letting, or distroublance in the passing with the said relik throch the contre as he and his forebearis wes wount to do.’

The districts, belonging to the bishopric of Dunkeld, which lay to the west of the great range of Drumalban were, about the year 1200, separated from it and formed into a new bishopric termed first that of Argyll and afterwards that of Lismore. Canon Mylne of Dunkeld tells us, in his Lives of the Bishops, that John, called the Scot, but an Englishman by birth, who had been archdeacon of St. Andrews, was elected bishop in the year 1167, and that he divided the diocese of Dunkeld, and obtained letters from the pope constituting his chaplain Eraldus bishop of Argyll. This name is no doubt the Norwegian Harald, which had become naturalised among the Gael in the form of Arailt or Erailt. The seat of the bishopric appears to have been fixed first in the district of Mucarn, or Muckairn, on the south side of Loch Etive, which belonged in property to the bishop of Dunkeld, and here his church bore the name of Killespeckerrill, or the church of bishop Erailt. The catalogue of religious houses states the community of the bishopric of ‘Argiul’ to have been Keledei, but we find no trace of this name in connection with any church in the diocese. It is possible, however, that some of the Keledei from Dunkeld may have accompanied the new bishop, and been established here. In 1230 or 1231 the priory of Ardchattan was founded, on the opposite shore, for monks of the order of Vallis Caulium by Dunkan mak Dougall, the head of the great family of lords of Lorn, and like most of these foundations, had many of the older churches bestowed upon it. The dependencies upon this priory were the churches of Balivedan, within which parish it was situated, and which was dedicated to St. Modan; of Kilninvir in Lorn, Kilbrandan in Seil, Kirkapol in Tiree, Kilmanivaig in Lochaber, and Kilmarow in Kintyre. A few years later it was resolved to remove the seat of the bishopric, probably for greater security, to the island of Lismore. In this island a Columban monastery had been founded by St. Lughadh, or Moluoc, but like many others, it had become secularised, and the possessions of the monastery, including the territory on the mainland which had formed part of the Abthania, or abbey lands—a name corrupted into Appin—had now passed into the hands of the great lords of Lorn. Like the abbacy of Glendochart, the only vestige of its former character was the existence of a family of hereditary custodiers of the old bishop’s crozier, called bachuill more; and we find ‘in‘in 1544 Archibald Campbell, fiar of the lands of Argyll, Campbell and Lorn, in honour of the blessed Virgin, and of his patron saint Moloc, mortifying to John mac Molmore vic Kevir and his heirs-male half the lands of Peynabachalla and Peynchallen, extending to a half-merk land in the island of Lismore, with the keeping of the great Staff of St. Moloc, as freely as his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and other predecessors held the same.’ In order to carry this resolution into effect, the bishop of the Isles, within whose diocese the island of Lismore was, prays the pope to relieve him from the care of this episcopal church, which, he says, from the perverseness of the times, had been brought into a state of extreme destitution; and the pope addresses a mandate to the bishop of Moray, in the year 1236, directing him to dissever the church of Lismore from the bishopric of the Isles, in order that another bishop might be placed there. Lismore now became the seat of the bishop, and the designation became changed from that of Argyll to that of Lismore. On the death of Bishop William, who was drowned in the year 1241, the bishopric remained vacant for some years, and we find Pope Innocent the Fourth directing the bishops of Glasgow and Dunblane in 1249 to take steps for supplying the church of Argyll, which had been deprived of a chief pastor for more than seven years, with a canonically elected bishop; and in another mandate he directs the same bishops, as the seat of the bishopric was now situated in a certain island in the sea, and almost inaccessible from the stormy channel, across which the people could not pass without danger, to transfer it to a more convenient site. The first mandate was carried into effect by the election, in 1250, of Bishop Alan, but no attempt was made to carry out the second; and the position of the bishop in Lismore was improved by grants of land and the institution of a cathedral chapter, for we find in 1249 Alexander the Second granted to the episcopal see of Argyll, for the episcopal table, the parish church of St. Brigid the Virgin in Lorn, that is, Kilbride; and two years after, in 1251, Eugenius the knight, the son of Duncan of Erregeithill, or Argyll, grants to William, bishop of Argyll, fourteen penny lands in Lismore, free of all secular exactions; and this charter is witnessed by Gillemeluoc, dean of Lismore, and the whole chapter.

Of the Columban foundations in this great western district, we find traces of only two which throw light upon the condition of the church. In the southern division of the district, which was usually termed ‘Argyll pertaining to Scotia,’ on the north shore of the Holy Loch, was the church of Kilmun, which had been founded by St. Fintan Munnu of Teach Munnu in Ireland, whom St. Adamnan notices as having wished to become a monk under St. Columba, but having arrived in Iona only after his death. We find this church in lay hands in the thirteenth century, as, between 1230 and 1246, Duncan, son of Fercher, and his nephew Lauman, son of Malcolm, grant to the monks of Paisley lands which they and their ancestors had at Kilmun, with the whole right of patronage in the church of Kilmun; and in 1294 a charter to the monks of Paisley is witnessed by Humfred of Kylmon; and here, too, we have traces of certain lands on the west side of Loch Long being held with the hereditary custody of the staff of St. Mund, to which the name of ‘Deowray’ was attached.

We have also traces of the condition to which a much more important monastery in the northern part of the district had been brought. This was the monastery of Apurcrosan, now Applecross, founded by St. Maelrubha, in the year 673, in that part of the province which was termed Ergadia Borealis, or North Argyll. Of the abbots of this monastery the Irish Annals, as we have seen, notice three—Maelrubha, who died in 822; Failbe, son of Guaire, termed his heir, or coärb, who was drowned with twenty-two of his crew, who were probably brethren of the monastery, on his passage to Ireland in 736; and Macoigi of Apuorchrosan, who became abbot of the monastery of Bangor in Ireland, the monastery from which Maelrubha had proceeded on his mission to Britain, and died there in 801. The possessions of this monastery were very extensive, and comprehended the entire district extending along the shores of the Western Sea from Loch Carron on the south to Loch Broom on the north. They appear to have fallen into the hands of a family of hereditary sagarts or priests, who, according to tradition, bore the name of O’Beollan. The name of one of these priests is connected with an upright slab in the churchyard, bearing the figure of a collared cross, which is known as the stone of Ruairidh mor mac Caoigan, who was said to have been proprietor of Applecross, and to have been slain by the Danes. His name undoubtedly connects him with abbot Macoigi; but we find ourselves on surer ground in the reign of Alexander the Second, when Ferchar, called Macintsagart, that is, the son of the sagart, or priest, gave such powerful support to the king in suppressing insurrections both in the north and in Galloway, that he was created earl of Ross as his reward. His position as hereditary lord of the extensive possessions of the monastery made him, in fact, a very powerful chief; and from him the later earls of Ross were descended. From him, too, descended, according to Mac Vurich, ‘Gillapatrick the Red, the son of Ruairidh, the son of the green abbot,’ who is known in tradition as the ‘red priest,’ and whose daughter brought the possessions of the monastery into the family of the Macdonalds, Lords of the Isles. Besides other churches dedicated to St. Maelrubha, there was one in the parish of Muckairn, on a small island in a lake called Kilvarie Loch; and here was the usual relic of the crozier kept by the possessors of a small portion of land; for, in 1518, Sir John Campbell of Calder receives the services of some of the small clans, ‘who were sworn upon the mess buik and the relic callit the Arwachyll, at the isl of Kilmolrue;’ and there is a township near it called Ballindore, that is, Baile-an-deoradh, the town of the Deoradh, or Dewar, as he came to be called.

It only remains for us now to terminate this inquiry into the decadence of the old Celtic Church with the island of Iona, whence it originally took its rise; and here too we shall find that the efforts made to preserve the old Celtic establishment failed, and that it had to give way before the invasion of one of the religious orders of the Roman Church. The last of the old abbots, of whom we have any notice, died in the last year of the eleventh century; and for upwards of fifty years there is an unbroken silence regarding Iona. During this period the whole of the Western Islands were under the rule of the Norwegian kings of the Isles, and the connection between the church in the Isles and the mainland of Scotland, on the one side, and Ireland, on the other, must have been to a great extent cut off. The abbots of the Irish monastery of Kells were at this time the coärbs of Columcille there; but they do not appear to have had anything to do with Iona, and there is no trace of the bishop of Dunkeld having at this time exercised any jurisdiction over the island. The Norwegian kings of the Isles, though professing Christianity, showed no desire to foster the church; and the whole establishment in Iona was probably in a state of decay. The Norwegian king of the Isles was at this time Godred, who succeeded his father, Olaf Bitling, in the year 1154; but his rule becoming too tyrannical and oppressive to be borne, a powerful Norwegian chief, Thorfinn, went to Somerled, the Celtic kinglet of Argyll, who had already almost entirely expelled the Norwegians from that mainland district, and requested to have his son Dubgal, whose mother was the daughter of Olaf Bitling, that he might set him on the throne of the Isles. To this Somerled gladly consented, and Thorfinn took the young prince, and, conducting him through all the Isles, forced the chiefs to acknowledge him for their king. This led to a war between Godred and Somerled, and in 1156 a naval battle was fought between them during the night of the Epiphany, with great slaughter on both sides. Next morning, however, at daybreak, they came to a compromise, and divided between them the sovereignty of the Isles, ‘so that,’ says the Chronicle, ‘from that period they have formed two distinct kingdoms to the present day.’ The part assigned to Somerled consisted of the islands which lay to the south of the point of Ardnamurchan; and among them was the island of Iona. Somerled appears, some years after, to have endeavoured to restore the abbacy of Iona to its original state by placing it under the care of the abbot of Derry, Flaithbertach O’Brolchan, who had been raised in 1158 to the dignity of a bishop, and had the coärbship of Columcille conferred upon him; and we find in 1164 that the chiefs of the family of Iona went to him and invited him to accept the abbacy of Iona by the advice of Somerled and the men of Argyll and the Isles, but the abbot of Armagh, the king of Ireland and the chiefs of Cinel Eoghan prevented it. The chiefs of the family of Iona, who thus represented the community at this time, were the Sacart mor, or great priest, the Ferleighinn, or lector, the Disertach, or head of the Disert for the reception of pilgrims, and the head of the Cele De or Culdees; and the ground of the opposition of the civil and ecclesiastical heads of the state in Ireland is not told us. Somerled was slain two years afterwards, and, in the division of his extensive territories among his sons, the Isles and Kintyre fell to the share of his second son Reginald or Ranald. Macvurich, the sennachy of the clan, says of him that he was ‘the most distinguished of the Galls (that is, the Norwegians) and of the Gaels for prosperity, sway of generosity, and feats of arms;’ and undoubtedly the church benefited largely by these qualities. He appears to have rebuilt the ruined monastery of Iona on a larger scale. The Catalogue of religious houses places Keledei in the ‘abbatia in insula,’ or abbacy of Iona, at this time; and apparently it was at this time under the charge of Donald O’Brolchan, whose name is inscribed on one of the pillars of the abbey church as having built it, and whose death as prior is recorded in the year 1202 as having taken place on the 26th of April; but the annalist who records it does not tell us of what place he was prior. His name, however, connects him with Derry; and, though the heads of the Irish Church and State may have objected to the bishop of Derry being also abbot of Iona, they may have consented to Iona being placed under the prior.

The Lord of the Isles seems, however, to have resolved to adopt the policy of the Scottish kings, and to introduce into his territories the religious order of the Roman Church; and Macvurich tells us that ‘three monasteries were formed by him—a monastery of black monks in I, or Iona, in honour of God and Saint Columchille; a monastery of black nuns in the same place; and a monastery of grey friars at Sagadul or Saddle, in Kintyre.’ We learn from other sources that Reginald did found a religious house at Saddle for Cistercian, or white, monks; and he appears to have established the Benedictines, or black monks, in Iona in the year 1203, after the death of the prior Donald O’Brolchan, and to have founded in connection with it a nunnery for Benedictine, or black, nuns, of which Beatrice or Bethok, the sister of Reginald, was the first prioress. It is of this Benedictine monastery and nunnery that the present ruins are the remains; and they were formerly connected by a causeway which extended in a straight line from the nunnery to the monastery. On the west side of it, next the nunnery, was the church called Teampul Ronain, which became the parish church; and on both sides of the causeway were the houses which formed the town traditionally called Baile Mor, in the middle of which stood the cross called Maclean’s Cross, and between it and the abbey was, on the west side of the causeway, Relic Odhrain, with its chapel termed Teampul Odhrain. The deed of confirmation of the Benedictine monastery still exists in the Vatican. It is dated on the 9th December 1203, and is addressed to Celestinus, abbot of St. Columba, of the island of Hy, and his brethren professing a religious life; and the pope takes the monastery of St. Columba under the protection of St. Peter and the Pope, in order that the monastic order which has been instituted in that place according to the rule of St. Benedict may be preserved inviolate in all time to come; and he confirms to them the place itself in which the said monastery is situated, with its pertinents, consisting of churches, islands and lands in the Western Isles. King William at the same time grants to the abbey of Holyrood four churches in Galloway which had belonged to the abbacy of Hy Columcille. These churches are not included in the pope’s confirmation of the possessions of the new monastery, and must have belonged to the prior abbacy. This Benedictine monastery was no sooner established than its abbot, Celestine, appears to have attempted to thrust out the prior Celtic community and place them in a separate building nearer the town; for we are told in the Ulster Annals that in 1203 ‘a monastery was erected by Cellach’—no doubt the Celestinus of the Benedictine monastery—‘in the middle of the Cro of Iona (Croi Ia), without any legal right, and in despite of the family of Iona, so that he did considerable damage to the town (Baile). A hosting by the clergy of the north (of Ireland), viz., by Florence O’Carolan, the bishop of Tyrone, Maelisa O’Deery, bishop of Tyrconnell, and abbot of the abbey church of Saints Paul and Peter at Armagh, and by Aulay O’Ferghail, abbot of Derry, with a great number of the family of Derry and of the northern clergy beside; and, in obedience to the law of the church, they pulled down the monastery.’ Although the right of the old Celtic community to remain in the monastery which had been rebuilt by Reginald was thus vindicated by the assistance of their Irish brethren, we hear no more of the Keledei at Iona. They probably adopted the Benedictine rule and became amalgamated with the monks; while the functionary formerly known as the Head of the Culdees was represented by the prior of Iona, whom we afterwards find in the monastery.

And thus the old Celtic Church came to an end, leaving no vestiges behind it, save here and there the roofless walls of what had once been a church, and the numerous old burying-grounds to the use of which the people still cling with tenacity, and where occasionally an ancient Celtic cross tells of its former state. All else has disappeared; and the only records we have of their history are the names of the saints by whom they were founded preserved in old calendars, the fountains near the old churches bearing their name, the village fairs of immemorial antiquity held on their day, and here and there a few lay families holding a small portion of land, as hereditary custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relic of the reputed founder of the church, with some small remains of its jurisdiction.

Chapter X. Learning and Language.

One of the most striking features of the organisation of the early Monastic Church in Ireland and Scotland was its provision for the cultivation of learning and for the training of its members in sacred and profane literature; so that it soon acquired a high reputation for the cultivation of letters, and drew to it students from all quarters, as the best school for the prosecution of all, and especially theological, studies. The fathers and founders of this Monastic Church had, as we have seen, been themselves taught, some in the monastic school of Candida Casa, where they were trained in the rules and institutions of monastic life and in the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and others in the monasteries in Wales, presided over by David, Gildas and Cadoc, wise and learned men, where they were instructed in learning and religion, and studied with assiduity. The school of Clonard, founded by Finnian, who had himself been trained in the Welsh monasteries, soon equalled them in reputation, and from it issued those fathers of the Monastic Church termed the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. We are told in the life of one of them, Ciaran of Saighir, that he with other saints of Ireland went to Finnian of Clonard, renowned for his wisdom, and in his holy school used to read in the divine Scriptures, and that he lived both to learn and to hear the holy Scriptures.

The Monastic Church of Ireland soon became so celebrated as a school of learning that students flocked to it from all quarters; and in the seventh and eighth centuries, when intercourse between it and the continental churches was renewed, it certainly occupied in this respect the first position among them. Bede tells us that, when the great pestilence devastated Ireland in the year 664, ‘many of the nobility and of the middle ranks of the Anglic nation were there at that time, who, in the days of the bishops Finan and Colman, forsaking their native island, had retired thither, for the sake either of divine studies or of a more continent life; and some of them presently devoted themselves faithfully to a monastic life, others chose rather to apply themselves to study, going about from one master’s cell to another. The Scots most willingly received them all, and took care to supply them gratuitously with daily food, as also to furnish them with books to read and their teaching, without making any charge;’ and of Aldfrid, son of King Osuiu, who succeeded his brother Ecgfrid, when he was slain by the Picts in 685, as king of Northumbria, Bede says that ‘he was a man most learned in Scripture,’ ‘that he at that time lived in exile in the islands of the Scots for the sake of studying letters,’ and that, previous to his accession to the throne, ‘he had for a considerable time gone into voluntary exile in the regions of the Scots, for the sake of acquiring learning, through the love of wisdom.’ We hear, too, in the Life of Senan, of ‘fifty Roman monks who came to Ireland for the purpose of leading a life of stricter discipline, or improving themselves in the study of the Scriptures then much cultivated in Ireland, and became pupils of those holy fathers who were most distinguished for sanctity of life and the perfection of monastic discipline.’

The Monastic Church, founded by Columba in Iona, was not behind its mother church of Ireland in this respect; and we are told by his biographer, Adamnan, that Columba ‘never could spend even one hour without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation.’ He tells us, also, of a book of hymns for the office of every day in the week, which had been written by Columba, and of his transcribing the Psalter. We read also of a prefect ‘learning wisdom with them.’ Columba, too, appears to have cultivated his own language and not to have despised his native literature; for, according to a quatrain quoted in the old Irish life,

Thrice fifty noble lays the Apostle made,
Whose miracles are more numerous than grass:
Some in Latin, which were beguiling;
Some in Gaelic, fair the tale.

And we learn, from the anonymous Life of Cuthbert, that when King Aldfrid of Northumbria had, before his accession to the throne, resorted to the islands of the Scots for study, one of these islands was that of Iona.

The remains of the literature of this period of the Monastic Church which have come down to us bear ample testimony to the intellectual development which characterised it. Of these perhaps the most complete are the works of Columbanus. Besides his monastic rule, we possess six of his letters connected with important questions regarding ecclesiastical matters, seventeen instructions or sermons addressed to his monks, and one or two poetical pieces. They are all written in Latin, and show a mastery of that language as it was then used by ecclesiastical writers, a thorough acquaintance with the holy Scriptures, with the spirit and language of which they are indeed saturated, and a perfect knowledge of the contemporary history and literature of the church. He places the holy Scriptures as the highest standard of authority in all matters of Christian faith. As we have seen, he gives as the character of his church that ‘it received nothing beyond the teaching of the Evangelists and Apostles;’ and the same spirit is manifested in one of his instructions, when he says, ‘Excepting those statements which either the Law or the Prophets or the Gospels or the Apostles have made to us, solemn silence ought to be observed, as far as other authorities are concerned, with respect to the Trinity. For it is God’s testimony alone that is to be credited concerning God, that is, concerning himself.’ Cummian’s letter regarding the Easter festival, also written in Latin, shows a perfect mastery of his subject, and may compare with any ecclesiastic document of the time. Then we have the Latin lives of Columba by two of the abbots of Iona; and, besides Adamnan’s Life, we also possess his tract on the Holy Places, works which give proof of his classical attainments as well as his acquaintance with ecclesiastical writings.

The seventh century, which had seen the church distracted by the Easter controversy, the withdrawal of the Columban monks from Northumbria, and the conformity of the church of the northern Scots of Ireland to Rome, likewise witnessed some other changes in its intellectual life. One was the appearance, in the end of this century, of a functionary in the monasteries, termed in Irish Scribhnidh, or Scribhneoir, and in Latin ‘Scriba,’ a learned man among the monks, who was selected for the purpose not only of transcribing and preserving the ancient records of the monastery, but likewise of exercising the functions of teacher and public lecturer. One of the earliest monuments of their industry is the MS. termed the Book of Armagh. It was compiled by Ferdomnach, ‘a sage and choice Scribhnidh of the church of Armagh,’ at the instance of Torbach, abbot of Armagh, who had himself been a scribe and lector of the church; and, as he was only one year in the abbacy, and died in the year 808, this fixes the date of the compilation of the book at the year 807.

The contents of this MS. will show somewhat of the literature of the church at the time. The volume commences with certain memoirs of St. Patrick, which are the oldest we now possess, and they are followed by the Confession of St. Patrick, an undoubtedly genuine work. After this comes St. Jerome’s Preface to the New Testament; and then the Gospels in their usual order. In the enumeration of the apostles in the Gospel of St. Matthew, the name of Judas has opposite to it, on the margin, the Irish word trogaun or wretch, and at the end of the Gospel is the following prayer of the writer, in Latin:—‘O God, whose mercy is unbounded, and whose holiness passeth speech, with humble voice have I boldness to implore that, like as Thou didst call Matthew to be a chosen Apostle, from being a receiver of customs; so, of Thy compassion, Thou wilt vouchsafe to direct my steps during this life into the perfect way; and place me in the angelic choir of the heavenly Jerusalem, that, on the everlasting throne of endless joy, I may be deemed worthy to join with the harmonious praises of archangels in ascribing honour to Thee; through Thy only-begotten Son, who liveth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, throughout all ages. Amen.’ After the Gospels follow St. Paul’s Epistles, to which are prefixed prefaces chiefly taken from the works of Pelagius. Between the Epistle to the Colossians and the First Epistle to Timothy is inserted the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans, which is found in a great variety of Latin MSS. of the New Testament; and in the First Epistle of St. John the passage concerning the witnesses (v. 7) is omitted, as it also is in the oldest copy of the Vulgate. The Epistles are followed by the Apocalypse, after which comes the Acts of the Apostles, an order peculiar to this MS.; and the Book of Armagh closes with the Life of St. Martin of Tours, written by Sulpicius Severus, and with a short litany, or intercession, on behalf of the writer. This MS., compiled at Armagh in 807, probably contained the only memoirs of its patron saint which were then known to exist.

The oldest lives of the Irish saints belong to the seventh century, and the rise of the hagiology of the Irish Church corresponds with that of the Easter controversy and with the conformity of the church to that of Rome. It was followed in the next century by the enshrining of the relics of the saints most venerated. Prior to the conformity of part of the Monastic Church to Rome in that century, we do not find much appearance of the memory of the early fathers of the church having been preserved in written memoirs. The early Monastic Church, as we have seen, either knew or said little about St. Patrick as the great apostle of Ireland; and Cummian, who first mentions him in this century, belonged to the Roman party, and does so in connection with the Easter controversy. The oldest memoir of St. Patrick in the Book of Armagh consists of what are called Annotations by Tirechan, a bishop, who calls himself pupil of Bishop Ultan, son of Conchubar, that is, of the bishop of Ardbraccan, whose death is recorded in 657. The second is a life of which part only of the first book is preserved; but the second book appears to be entire, and the headings of the chapters of the whole of the first book are fortunately given, which affords us some indication of the contents of the missing leaves. It bears to be written by Muirchu Macumactheni, at the dictation of Aedh, bishop of Sleibhte; and the names of both appear among the subscribers to the Synod of Tara in 697, while the death of the former is recorded in 699. Muirchu, however, prefaces his memoir by the following statement, addressed to Bishop Aedh:—‘Forasmuch as many, my lord Aedus, have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration, namely this, according to what their fathers and they who from the beginning were ministers of the Word have delivered unto them; but by reason of the very great difficulty of the narrative, and the diverse opinions and numerous doubts of very many persons, have never arrived at any one certain track of history; therefore (if I be not mistaken, according to this proverb of our countrymen, Like boys brought down into the amphitheatre), I have brought down the boyish rowboat of my poor capacity into this dangerous and deep ocean of sacred narrative, with wildly-swelling mounds of billows, lying in unknown seas between most dangerous whirlpools—an ocean never attempted or occupied by any barks, save only that of my father Cogitosus. But, lest I should seem to make a small matter great, with little skill, from uncertain authors, with frail memory, with obliterated meaning and barbarous language, but with a most pious intention, obeying the command of thy belovedness and sanctity and authority, I will now attempt, out of many acts of Saint Patrick, to explain them, gathered here and there with difficulty.’ Now both Ultan of Ardbraccan and Aedh of Sleibhte belonged to that part of the Church of Ireland which had conformed to Rome; and this party seems to have fallen back upon the traditions of the earlier church, which had preceded the Monastic Church, and to have revived the veneration of its great founder St. Patrick. The oldest lives of St. Bridget, the other great saint of this earlier church, belong also to the same period, and are attributed, one to Bishop Ultan, and another to Cogitosus the father of Muirchu. The oldest memoir of Columba is that by Cummene, who was abbot of Iona from 657 to 669, and it too was, as we have seen, called forth by the Easter controversy, but was written to maintain the authority of Columba, as the father of the Columban Church against that of Rome, and to claim for him a high position by the sanctity of his character and the possession of miraculous power and spiritual gifts. Adamnan too, who writes the second life, was the first abbot of Iona who gave his adhesion to the Roman party; and it seems to have been called forth by his connection with the Northumbrian Church. These early lives gave rise to a great hagiologic literature, consisting of the lives of all the leading saints and founders of churches, in which every effort was made to magnify their power and sanctity by a record of so-called miracles and prophecies. It is to this literature that we are obliged in a great measure to resort for the early history of the Celtic Church; but, for historic purposes these lives must be used with great discrimination. There is nothing more difficult than to extract historical evidence from documents which confessedly contained a mixture of the historical and the fabulous; but the fiction, in the form in which it appears, pre-supposes a stem of truth upon which it has become encrusted; and it is only by a critical use of authorities of this kind that we can hope to disentangle the historical core from the fabulous addition.

The Lives of St. Patrick afford a good illustration of this. There is a continuous series of them from the seventh century to the twelfth. Space will, of course, not admit of anything like a complete analysis of them, but a comparison of the lives, in the order in which they appear to have been compiled, will show the growth of the legendary and fabulous additions to the real facts of his life, and the process by which it passed, from the few leading features of it which can be extracted from his own authentic writings, to the extraordinary mixture of fact, legend and fable which now makes up the popular conception of his life. The oldest memoirs of St. Patrick are the Annotations of Bishop Tirechan, ‘written from the mouth or book of Ultan the bishop, whose pupil and disciple he was.’ He tells us that he ‘found four names given to Patricius in the book of Ultan: Magonus, which is “clarus;” Succetus, which is Patricius; and Cothirthiac, because he served four houses of “magi,” and one of them, whose name was Miliuc, bought him, and he served him seven years.’ That he was taken captive in his seventeenth year, and obtained his liberty in his twenty-second year, which corresponds with his own statement in his Confession; but Tirechan adds ‘that in seven other years he walked and sailed over the waves, and over country parts, and through valleys and over mountains, through Gaul and all Italy, and the islands which are in the Terrene sea, as he says in the commemoration of his labours.’ There is no foundation, however, for this in his Confession, except his sixty days’ wanderings through the desert before he reached the house of his parents. Tirechan then adds, ‘He was in one of these islands, which is called Aralanensis, for thirty years, as was testified by Bishop Ultan.’ He then gives us the following chronological data:—‘All things which happened you will find clearly written in his history, and these latest wonders were fulfilled and brought to a close in the second year of the reign of Loigaire mac Neill. From the passion of Christ to the death of Patricius are four hundred and thirty-six years. Loigaire reigned two or five years after the death of Patricius. The whole period of Loigaire’s reign was thirty-three years, as we think.’ Now we may assume as a fixed point the death of Loigaire in the year 463. His reign, therefore, commenced in 430. His second year brings us to 432 for the termination of St. Patrick’s wanderings in foreign countries; and his death, if it occurred five years before that of Loigaire, would fall in the year 458, or, if two years only, in 461; but the Irish Annals agree in placing under the year 458 the death of Sen Patraic, or old Patrick, which identifies him with the Patricius of Tirechan’s Annotations. It is unnecessary for our purpose to advert to Tirechan’s account of his proceedings in Ireland; but he adds at the end some further data. He says ‘the age of Patricius, as it was delivered to us, may be thus stated:—In his seventh year he was baptized. In the tenth year (after) he was taken captive. Four years he served. Thirty years he studied. Seventy-two years he taught. His whole age was one hundred and twenty. In four points he resembled Moses: 1st, He heard an angel from a bush of fire. 2d, He fasted forty days and forty nights. 3d, He accomplished one hundred and twenty years in this present life. 4th, Where his bones are no one knows. In the XIII year of Theodosius the emperor Patricius the bishop was sent by Bishop Celestine, Pope of Rome, for the instruction of the Irish, which Celestine was the forty-second bishop of the apostolical see of the city of Rome after Peter. Palladius the bishop was the first sent, who is otherwise called Patricius, and suffered martyrdom among the Scots, as the ancient saints relate. Then the second Patricius was sent by an angel of God, named Victor, and by Pope Celestine, by whose means all Ireland believed, and who baptized almost all the inhabitants.’ Now here Tirechan betrays at once the party in the church to which he and Ultan belonged, by asserting that St. Patrick, as well as Palladius, had been sent by Pope Celestine; and he gives us the important fact that Palladius was also known to the Irish by the name of Patricius. If St. Patrick had taught for seventy-two years, and died in 458, it is plain that his mission to the Irish must have long preceded that of Palladius; but at the same time, as Palladius is termed by a contemporary writer the first bishop sent to the Scots, St. Patrick could not have been consecrated a bishop till after him. He himself tells us that he was forty-five when he was consecrated a bishop; and, if this took place in the year 432, it would place his birth in the year 387; and, if he died in 458, the period of seventy-two years would thus represent his entire life. Tirechan has thus, by interpolating his thirty years’ study in Gaul, and by taking seventy years as representing his teaching in Ireland, lengthened out his life to one hundred and twenty-three years, and thus obtained his parallelism with Moses in this respect. If Palladius and Patricius were known to the Irish by the same name, it is hardly possible that, when the traditions regarding them were first collected and formed into a regular biography in the seventh century, they should not have been confounded together. The mission from Pope Celestine and the thirty years’ study in Gaul and Italy are entirely inconsistent with St. Patrick’s account of himself, and no doubt truly belong to the acts of Palladius.

The next life is that by Muirchu. The first membrane of the Book of Armagh, containing the commencement of the life, is unfortunately wanting; but the preface and the headings of the chapters have been preserved in a different part of the MS. The preface has already been given, and the headings of the missing chapters are these:—

‘Concerning the birth of St. Patrick and his first captivity.

Concerning his journeys and sea voyage to the Gentiles, and his sufferings among the nations ignorant of God.

Concerning his second captivity, which he suffered for sixty days from hostile men.

Concerning his reception by his parents when they recognised him.

Concerning his age when going to visit the apostolic see where he wished to learn wisdom.

Concerning his discovery of holy men in Gaul, and that therefore he went no farther.’

The fragment of the first book commences with his journey to the apostolic see at Rome, and mentions that Germanus ‘sent an elder with him, that is Segitius, that he might have a companion and witness, because he was not as yet ordained by the holy lord Germanus to the pontifical degree.’ It then mentions the mission of Palladius, and that ‘his disciples Augustinus and Benedictus and the rest, returning, related in Ebmoria the circumstance of his death.’ Patrick then proceeds no farther, but goes to a certain man, an illustrious bishop Amathorex, living in a neighbouring place, and receives from him the episcopal degree, after which he returns to Britain. This statement, taken in connection with the heading of the chapter, implies that St. Patrick, though he intended to go to Rome, went no farther than the town of Ebmoria, which must have been in Gaul, and near it was consecrated bishop by Amathorex. St. Patrick is in this life also brought into contact with Germanus; but the connection with Rome is less directly stated than in the previous life. The chronological summary at the end of the life is as follows:—‘Patrick was baptized in his sixth year, taken captive in his twentieth, served in slavery twelve years, studied forty years, taught sixty-one. His entire age was one hundred and eleven years.’ These dates, however, when added together, make up a period of one hundred and thirty-three years, and the process by which his life is thus lengthened is apparent enough. His captivity is placed in his twentieth in place of his sixteenth year. The period of his slavery is doubled. The period of his study with Germanus is increased from thirty to forty years, and his mission reduced from seventy-two to sixty-one years. But, if this latter period is deducted, his life prior to his mission is here made to have been seventy-two years. In the life itself, however, St. Patrick is said to have died ‘on the sixteenth day of the Kalends of April, having attained the age of one hundred and twenty years, as is celebrated every year over the whole of Ireland, and kept sacred;’ and in the last paragraph it is more correctly stated ‘that he was taken captive in the thirteenth year of his age, and was in bondage six years.’ If these two numbers are substituted for the twentieth year and the twelve years of the summary, the entire years of his life will be reduced from one hundred and thirty-three to one hundred and twenty. This life also distinctly states that St. Patrick was buried at Dunlethglaisse, or Down, while Tirechan as distinctly states that ‘where his bones are no one knows.’ The tradition, therefore, which places his relics at Down must have arisen after the time when Tirechan wrote. In some additions to Tirechan’s Annotations, which appear to have been made about the time when the rest was written, another tradition is given. It is there said that ‘Columbcille, instigated by the Holy Spirit, pointed out the sepulchre of Patrick where he lies, that is to say, at Sabul Patricii,’ or ‘Saul Patrick, in the nearest church next the sea, where the relics or bones of Columcille were brought from Britain, and where the relics of all the saints of Ireland will be brought in the day of judgment.’ The Annals of Ulster contain the following curious entry under the year 552:—‘I have found what follows in the Book of Cuanach,’ a chronicle the date of which is unknown, but which cannot be much earlier than the eighth or ninth century. ‘The reliques of St. Patrick were deposited in a shrine, sixty years after his death, by Columcille. Three precious swearing reliques were found in his tomb, viz., the Coach, or cup, the Gospel of the Angel, and the Bell of the Testament. The angel thus showed to Columcille how to divide these reliques, viz., the Coach to Down, the Bell to Armagh, and the Gospel to Columcille himself; and it is called the Gospel of the Angel because Columcille received it at the angel’s hands.’ The church of Saul is on the sea-shore in the immediate neighbourhood of Down; but that either Saul or Down could have been marked out as the place where St. Patrick’s bones were enshrined prior to the eighth century is quite inconsistent with the distinct statement, by his first biographer, that no one in his day knew where they were. As we have seen, Cellach, abbot of Iona, appears to have taken the relics of Columba to Ireland on the slaughter of the community by the Danes in 806; and, as the Book of Armagh was transcribed in 807, and the name of Cellach appears on the margin of one of the leaves, it is probable that this tradition owes its origin to him.

About the same period when the Book of Armagh was transcribed, or not long after, was written the short Life of St. Patrick, by Marcus the Anchorite, annexed to Nennius’ History of the Britons. Marcus is said by Heric, in his Life of St. Germanus, to have been a Briton by birth, but educated in Ireland, where he was for a long time a bishop, and to have at length settled in France, where he died; and his notices of St. Patrick show that he was acquainted with the lives in the Book of Armagh. He states, correctly enough, that Patrick had been captive in Ireland seven years; but, when he says that ‘when he had attained the age of seventeen he returned from his captivity,’ he confuses his age when he was taken captive with that of his liberation. He says that ‘by the divine impulse he was afterwards instructed in sacred literature, and went to Rome, and remained there a long time studying the sacred mysteries of God’—here agreeing with Tirechan in bringing him to Rome; but he adopts the statement of Muirchu in regard to the mission of Palladius, substituting the land of the Picts for that of the Britons as the place of his death. He also follows Muirchu in Patrick’s being sent by Germanus with Segerus to the bishop Amatheus, by whom he is consecrated bishop; but he follows Tirechan in his statement that in four particulars he resembled Moses, that he lived one hundred and twenty years, and that no one knew where his sepulchre was, adding that ‘he was buried in secret no one knowing.’ He concludes his life by saying that ‘he was sixteen years in captivity,’ here confusing the duration of his captivity, with his age when made captive, that ‘in his twenty-fifth year he was consecrated bishop by King Matheus,’ and that he was eighty-five years ‘apostle of the Irish,’ which would give him a life of one hundred and ten years only; but in another passage in Nennius four hundred and five years are said to have elapsed from the birth of Christ to the arrival of Patrick among the Scots, and sixty years from his death to that of St. Bridget. As the latter event, moreover, is said to have taken place four years after the birth of Columba, which gives us a fixed date of 521, this would place the death of Patrick in 465, and his birth, if he was taken captive in 405, in 389, dates which very nearly correspond with those of Tirechan, and of the older Patrick termed Sen Patraic.

The next biography of the saint introduces some new features into the legend. It is the hymn in praise of St. Patrick, attributed to St. Fiacc of Sleibhte, who is said to have been ordained by him. So early a date, however, cannot be assigned to the poem, and it belongs in reality to the ninth century. This poem has formed the nucleus around which a number of floating legends, whether founded on genuine tradition or the fruit of supposititious narrative, have clustered in the shape of a commentary or scholiasm, which is, of course, of even later date; and the two together have given an entirely different aspect to the legendary life of the apostle of Ireland. The so-called Fiacc commences his hymn by giving a new name to the place of St. Patrick’s birth. He tells us that

Patraicc was born in Nemthur, and it is this that has been declared in tales;

And the scholiast adds, ‘That is a city which is in North Britain—viz., Ailcluaide,’—the ancient name of Dumbarton. This accords so far with what we gather from his own Confession, that he was a native of the Roman province in Britain; and we find the same place obviously referred to in an old poem preserved in the Black Book of Caermarthen under the name of Nevtur.

The hymn then proceeds:—

A child of sixteen years when he was brought under tears.
Succat his name it was said; who was his father is to be known:
Son of Calpurn, son of Potitus, grandson of deacon Odisse.
He was six years in slavery....

This corresponds with his own statement in his Confession; but here the scholiast adds other names to his family, and for the first time connects them with Armorica in Gaul. His statement is as follows:—‘This was the cause of the servitude of Patrick; his father was Calpuirnn; Conches, daughter of Ochmuis, was his mother and of his five sisters, namely, Lupait and Tigris and Liamain and Darerca, and the name of the fifth was Cinnenum. His brother was Sannan. They all went from the Britons of Alcluaid, across the Iccian sea southwards, on a journey to the Britons who are in the sea of Icht, namely, the Britons of Letha, because they had brethren there at that time. Now, the mother of these children, namely, Conches, was of the Franks, and she was sister to Martin. At that time came seven sons of Sectmaide, king of Britain, in ships from the Britons; and they made great plunder on the Britons, viz., the Britons of Armuric Letha, where Patrick with his family was, and they wounded Calpuirnn there, and carried off Patrick and Lupait with them to Ireland. And they sold Lupait in Conaille Muirthemne, and Patrick in the north of Dal-araidhe.’ Here Patrick is brought from Alcluaid, the place of his birth, to Armorica, in order to be carried off from thence by Britons and not by Scots; and Armorica is thus thrust somewhat violently into his own narrative, where he distinctly implies that he was made captive in the place of his birth.

We are then introduced to Germanus, and told of Patrick that

He went across all Alps—great God! it was a marvel of a journey,
Until he stayed with German in the south, in the south part of Latium.
In the isles of the Tyrrhene Sea he remained; therein he meditated;
He read canon with German; it is this that writings declare.

Here the scholiast introduces the mission of Palladius and the consecration of Patrick by Amathorex the bishop, whom he identifies with Amator, bishop of Auxerre, who was the predecessor of Germanus, and died A.D. 418. He also makes Patrick accompany Germanus to Great Britain in 429, leaving little doubt that the whole connection of Patrick with Germanus has been transferred to him from the acts of Palladius. The author of the hymn gives sixty years as the period during which Patrick preached to the Irish. He mentions Armagh as the seat of his primacy, and Dun Lethglasse, or Down, as a great church, and implies that he died there; but the scholiast indicates Sabhall Patraic, or Saul, as the place of his death. In the concluding lines of the hymn we find the strange statement—

When Patrick departed, he visited the other Patrick:
It is together they ascended to Jesus, Mary’s Son.

And the comment of the scholiast is equally remarkable. He says that the other Patrick was Sen Patrick. ‘It is what Patrick, the son of Calpuirnn, promised to Sen Patrick, that together they would go to heaven. And it is related that Patrick was from the xiii. (xvi.) of the kalends of April to the ninth of the kalends of September upon the field, and angels around him, praying to Sen Patrick.’ We are here introduced to two Patricks, and a second Patrick has been created, to whom the acts of the historic Patrick, so far as they have as yet been compiled, have been transferred, while the latter retires into the background under the designation of Sen Patrick, or old Patrick. Their original identity, however, is obscurely hinted at in the hymn, when they are made to ascend to heaven together. The two Patricks likewise appear in the ninth century in the Felire of Angus the Culdee; and here the second Patrick comes forward, under the 17th of March, as the great apostle of Ireland, and the older Patrick retires to the 24th of August, when he is designated the tutor of the former. The stanzas which commemorate them may be thus rendered. On the 17th of March we have

The blaze of a splendid sun,
The apostle of stainless Erinn,
Patrick with his countless thousands;
May he shelter our wretchedness.

On the 24th of August we have

The blaze of the people of Srenat
Is the tale which is heard.
Old Patrick, head of battle,
Mild tutor of our patron.

The chronology of the second Patrick was formed by adding the sixty years, during which, according to the hymn attributed to Fiacc of Sleibhte, he preached to the Irish, to the year 432, when, according to Tirechan, his mission commenced, which gives 492 as the termination of his work. His death would thus fall on 17th March 493, and it is so placed in an old quatrain quoted by Tighernac—

From the birth of Christ, a true reckoning,
Four hundred and fair ninety,
Three years add to these,
Till the death of Patrick, chief Apostle.

The second Patrick thus created, with a life which lasted one hundred and twenty years and terminated in 493, is now regarded as the Apostle of Ireland, and to him are appropriated the leading features of his career, while the Patrick of the older lives retains nothing but his designation of Sen Patrick. How much, however, the separate existence of this older Patrick embarrassed the martyrologists, we see from the glosses upon the Felire of Angus the Culdee, which are comparatively of much later date, and now first connect him with Glastonbury. The gloss on the word Srenat is ‘that is, in Gloinestir of the Gael in Saxan, that is, in Britannia.’ The gloss on the last line is ‘Tutor of Patraic of Macha;’ and on the margin of the MS. is written the following note:—‘That is, old Patrick of Ros-dela in Magh Locha; but it is more true that he is in Glastonbury of the Gael, in the south of England, for the Scots were dwelling there on a pilgrimage. But his reliques are in Ulster. Sen Patraic in Armagh.’

Besides the metrical life attributed to Fiacc of Sleibhte, Colgan has collected and printed six prose lives, seven in all. Four of the prose lives—the second, third, fourth and seventh—are anonymous, the fifth life bears to be by a certain Probus, and the sixth by Jocelyn of Furness, whose date is known. It is the latest of the six, and must have been written about the year 1185. These lives fall naturally into two groups. The first, consisting of Colgan’s second and fourth lives, must have been written after the Book of Armagh and the metrical life attributed to Fiacc, but before the compilation of the glosses added to the latter. They give Nemthor as the place of Patrick’s birth, and place it in the plain of Taburna, thus identifying it with the Bannaven Taberniæ of his Confession. They make him to be carried into captivity from thence by an Irish fleet; but they introduce a number of incidents, connected with his childhood, which bear the usual miraculous character. They know nothing of the story told by the scholiast in Fiacc’s hymn, of the transference of the family from Alclyde to Armorica; but the fourth life opens with the strange statement that some thought St. Patrick was sprung from the Jews; that, when they were dispersed after the fall of Jerusalem, a part of them took refuge in Armorica among the Britons, and from thence his parents migrated to the regions of Strathclyde; but this statement is peculiar to this life. Both of these lives make Patrick thirty years old when he went to Germanus, with whom he studied thirty years, and state that he preached to the Irish for sixty years, thus adopting the chronology of the second Patrick.

The second group consists of the life by Probus, Colgan’s third life, the Tripartite life, and that by Jocelyn. These were all compiled later than the tenth century, and that by Probus appears to be the oldest. He was acquainted with the Book of Armagh, part of the lives contained in which are inserted verbatim; but he was also acquainted with the glosses to the hymn of Fiacc, for he inserts the story of the migration of Patrick’s family to Amorica. He places his birth in the Roman province (in Britanniis), in the village of Bannauc of the Taburnian region, which region he considers to be also the Nentrian province, where giants are said to have formerly inhabited. But the main addition to the incidents of Patrick’s life, which characterises this group, is his connection with St. Martin of Tours. The scholiast on the hymn attributed to Fiacc had already made his mother Conches St. Martin’s sister, and St. Patrick is now made to reside for four years with him at Tours, where he was instructed in the rules of monastic life, and received the tonsure; but, as St. Martin died in 397, the date is too early for St. Patrick. On the other hand, it is probably true of St. Ninian, who is also said to have been a nephew of St. Martin and associated with him, and with the dates of whose life it is more consistent. Probus, however, seems to have preserved one incident which is true of the historic Patrick, when he states that, after he was ordained priest by a bishop, whom he calls St. Senior, he preached to the Irish before the mission of Palladius, and before his own consecration as a bishop. This short analysis of the lives of St. Patrick will be sufficient to show how the real events in the life of the historic Patrick, so far as they can be ascertained, were gradually overlaid by spurious additions, till at length the legendary life of a spurious Patrick, as we now have it, was developed out of it.

Besides the great legendary apostle of the Irish, the virgin St. Bridget seems also to occupy a prominent place in Irish hagiology. That she was a historic character, belonging to the earliest period of the Irish Church, there seems little reason to doubt, and it is exceedingly probable that St. Patrick himself in his Confession alludes to her when he says, ‘There was one blessed Scotic maiden, very fair, of noble birth and of adult age, whom I baptized; and after a few days she came to me, because, as she declared, she had received a response from a messenger of God desiring her to become a virgin of Christ and to draw near to God. Thanks be to God, on the sixth day from that, she with praiseworthy eagerness seized on that state of life which all the virgins of God likewise now adopt;’ but her life too was now overlaid with spurious tales and fabulous incidents, till it assumed an aspect far removed from its probable reality. Space will not permit us to analyse these lives, or to enter further into the history of the origin and development of the great hagiologic literature of Ireland; suffice it to mention that the two oldest lives of Bridget are attributed to Bishop Ultan, under whose auspices Tirechan compiled his Annotations, and to Cogitosus, who can now be identified with the father of Muirchu, who wrote the second life in the Book of Armagh.

Besides the Lives of St. Columba by Cummene and Adamnan in the seventh century, the oldest lives in the Scotch hagiology of which we can fix the dates, are the Life of St. Ninian by Aelred, who died in the year 1166, the Life of St. Kentigern, of which a fragment only remains, which was written during the episcopate of Herbert, who was bishop from 1147 to 1164, and that by Jocelyn of Furness, written at the request of his namesake, who was bishop of Glasgow from 1174 to 1199. These lives therefore belong to the twelfth century, when the manipulation of the old chronicles of Scotland had already commenced, which laid the foundation of that fictitious scheme of history, both civil and ecclesiastic, which was reduced to a system by John of Fordun; and to some extent they bear the marks of that influence. The Life of Servanus, however, which has been preserved in the Marsh MSS. in Dublin, belongs probably to a somewhat earlier period. With the exception of these lives, we are dependent almost entirely upon the lections in the ‘Propria Sanctorum’ of the Aberdeen Breviary, and on the works of Dempster and Camerarius, for notices of the Scottish saints; but the former were compiled after Fordun’s great work, and are tainted by the false chronology of his Chronicle; and the two latter works, after the publication of Hector Boece’s work, and are under the influence of the fictitious history elaborated by him. The dates attached to the saints in the Scotch Calendar are in the main fictitious, and cannot be depended on.

Such is a short view of the hagiologic literature of Ireland and Scotland, which forms so remarkable a feature in the literature of the church. Its bearing upon the education of the people presents an equally important feature. In the later part of the eighth and in the ninth centuries we find a new functionary appearing in the monasteries, and gradually superseding the Scribhnigh, or scribe. This was the Ferleiginn, lector or man of learning, whose functions were more closely connected with education. He appears first in Clonmacnois; and we find in 794 the death of ‘Colgu Ua Duineachda Ferleiginn of Cluainmicnois, he who composed the Scuaip-Chrabhaidh,’ recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters. There is no doubt that he is the ‘Colcu lector in Scotia,’ to whom Alcuin wrote an epistle. It appears from his life that he was ‘supreme moderator and prælector of the school of Clonmacnois, and that he arrived at such eminence in learning and sanctity that he was called chief scribe and master of the Scots of Ireland.’ In the following century the Ferleiginn appears also at Armagh, and we are told that in the year 876 Maelrobha, son of Cuimmhach, abbot of Armagh, was taken prisoner by the Galls of Loch-Cuan, as was also the Ferleiginn, Mochta. During the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries these lectors, or Ferleiginn, are repeatedly mentioned in the Irish Annals in connection with the various monasteries in Ireland. They also appear in the Columban monasteries both of Ireland and of Scotland. In 992 we find the death of ‘Dunchadh ua h-Uchtain, Ferleighinn of Cenannus,’ or Kells, recorded; and in 1034 ‘Macnia ua h-Uchtain, Ferleighinn of Kells, is drowned coming from Alban with the bed of Columcill and three of Patrick’s relics, and thirty persons along with him.’ In Scotland he appears in the early part of the reign of David I., in connection with the Columban monastery of Turbruad, or Turriff, founded by Comgan, where ‘Domangart, Ferleginn Turbruad, or of Turriff, witnesses a charter by Gartnait, Mormaer of Buchan, and Eta his wife, to the church of Deer;’Deer;’ and we find him at Iona in 1164, when the Ferleighinn Dubside appears among the prominent functionaries of the monastery. In the following century the name of Ferleiginn is still preserved in connection with the church of St. Andrews and its schools. Between the years 1211 and 1216, a controversy which arose between the prior of St. Andrews and his convent, on the one part, and the master of the schools and the poor scholars of the city of St. Andrews, on the other, in regard to certain lands and dues which the latter claimed, was amicably settled ‘with the assent and goodwill of Master Laurence, who was both archdeacon and Ferleyn of the said city;’ and the prior and canons became bound ‘to pay to the foresaid Laurence the Ferleighinn (Ferlano) and his successors, at the house of the Ferleighinn (in domo Ferlani) of the said city, for the use of the poor scholars,’ certain dues from these lands. ‘Thus was agreement made between the parties, and by authority confirmed, so that neither archdeacon nor Ferleighinn (Ferlanus), nor master of the schools, nor poor scholars, shall hereafter move controversy against the same.’

These scholars seem to have been the lowest order of the ecclesiastical community, and to have been clerics who were undergoing a course of training and instruction to fit them for performing the service of the church. Their Pictish name was Scolofthes, as we learn from Reginald of Durham, who mentions the clerics of the church (of Kirkcudbright), the Scolofthes as they are called in the Pictish speech, and gives ‘Scholasticus, a scholar,’ as its Latin equivalent. We find them under the name of Scolocs in three of the churches belonging to St. Andrews. In the church of Ellon, which was of old the capital of the earldom of Buchan, they appear in 1265 as holding certain lands under the bishop of St. Andrews; and in 1387 the church lands of Ellon are called the Scolog lands, and were hereditary in the families of the Scologs who possessed them. An inquest regarding these lands, held in that year, bears that from one quarter or fourth part of these lands ‘there are to be found for the parish church of Ellon four clerks with copes and surplices, able to read and sing sufficiently;’ another quarter or fourth part ‘is bound to find a house for the scholars;’ a third ‘is bound to find twice in every year twenty-four wax candles for the ‘park’ or ‘perk,’ that is, the bracket or corbel before the high altar; and the fourth quarter is bound to find a smithy. These lands are indiscriminately called the ‘Scolog lands’ and the ‘Scholar lands,’ and are described as ‘lying in the schoolry (Scolaria) of Ellon.’ The Scolocs are also found in the church lands of Arbuthnot in the Mearns, which they likewise held of the see of St. Andrews. Here, in an inquest regarding the lands of the Kirkton of Arbuthnot, held in the year 1206, we find the ecclesiastical territory held by certain tenants called parsons, who had subtenants under them, having houses of their own and cattle which they pastured on the common; and the tenants of these lands are termed by several of the witnesses Scolocs, and are also termed the bishop’s men. These Scolocs were finally ejected altogether from the land which they appear to have tilled. They also appear at the neighbouring church of Fetteresso, likewise belonging to the bishop of St. Andrews. The name of Scoloc is also found in connection with one of the Columban monasteries in Ireland; for in one of the charters preserved in the Book of Kells, which must have been granted between the years 1128 and 1138, we find that among the functionaries of the monastery, after the Coärb of Columcille, or the abbot, the Sacart or priest, the Ferleiginn or lecturer, the Aircennech or Erenagh of the house of guests, and the Fosaircennech or vice-Erenach, appears the Toisech na Scoloc, or Chief of the Scologs, Aengus O’Gamhna.

Whether there existed in Ireland a pagan literature, in the proper sense of the term, prior to the introduction of Christianity, and whether the art of writing was known in any shape to its pagan population, is a very difficult question, and one into which it is not necessary for our purpose to enter. |Art of writing introduced.|But whether there existed among them an ante-Christian civilisation of any kind or not, there can be no doubt that the early Celtic Church, such as we have found it to be, must have been a powerful agent in civilising the people, and not less in fixing a standard of language; and the earliest lives of St. Patrick certainly attribute to him the introduction of the written alphabet. Thus Tirechan, having mentioned that Patrick had consecrated three hundred and fifty bishops in Ireland, adds: ‘Of presbyters we cannot count the number, because he used to baptize men daily, and to read letters and abgetoriæ, or alphabets, with them; and of some he made bishops and presbyters, because they had received baptism in mature age.’ Of the two alphabets known to have existed among the Irish, the one now called the Irish alphabet, and supposed to be peculiar to the Irish language, is, as Dr. Todd well remarks, nothing more than the Roman alphabet, which was used over all Europe in the fifth and some following centuries. The other, called the Ogham, which is mainly confined to inscriptions upon stone monuments, though it occasionally appears in MSS., is of the same character as the Scandinavian Runes, and has now also been clearly shown to have a post-Christian origin.

Before letters were introduced, however, there could have been no fixed standard of language. Each Tuath, or tribe, had probably its own variety of the common speech; but these all, no doubt, belonged to that branch of the Celtic language called Gaelic. There would thus be as many varieties of the spoken Gaelic as there were independent tribes. The tendency of language at this stage is to go through a process of corruption and decay. It is then easily modified by surrounding circumstances and affected by external influences, which an oral literature, consisting of the songs and legends of a rude people, is powerless to control. This tendency would be arrested only when a written and cultivated language was formed under the influence of the Christian Church, and a common standard of the language, in its most perfect shapes and preserving its older forms, was established, which was spoken and written by the cultivated class of the community, and to a knowledge of which a portion of the people were raised by education. Under its influence the numerous varieties of the spoken language became more assimilated, until at length we find that in the main there remain only four forms of the vernacular Irish, which were peculiar to the four great provinces of Munster, Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught, into which the country was divided. There was also an old division of Ireland by a line drawn across the island from Dublin to Galway into two parts, termed respectively Leth Cuinn and Leth Mogha. This division was known to Bede, who distinguished between the northern provinces of the Scots and the nations of the Scots dwelling in the northern districts of Ireland. The northern half contained the provinces of Connaught and Ulster and the old province of Meath, which is now included in Leinster, and the seaboard of which formed the plain of Bregia, or Magh Bregh, mentioned more than once by Adamnan. The southern half consisted of the old provinces of Leinster and Munster; and the difference in the spoken language between the northern and southern Irish was somewhat more marked.

The peculiarities in the spoken Gaelic of the four provinces are thus expressed in the following sayings current in most parts of Ireland:—

The Munster man has the accent without the propriety.

The Ulster man has the propriety without the accent.

The Leinster man has neither the propriety nor the accent.

The Connaught man has both the accent and the propriety.

The difference in these four dialects is mainly in words, pronunciation, and idiom; but the grand difference between the vernacular Irish of the northern and that of the southern part of Ireland consists in the position of the accent, in the vowel sounds, and in the form of the verb. In the north the primary accent is on the root of the word, or the first syllable, and the secondary accent on the termination; but in the south the primary accent is on the termination, and the secondary accent on the root, if short. The vowel sounds vary very much, their most perfect pronunciation being in Connaught. In the verb, the analytic form—or that in which the verb has a common form for all the persons, and these are expressed by separate pronouns, while the auxiliary verb is more employed—is used in the spoken language of the north, and principally in Ulster. The synthetic or inflected form, which is the more ancient, is generally used in the south of Ireland; and in this respect it approaches more closely the forms of the written or cultivated language, and shows a less degree of corruption than the vernacular of the north.

In the written Irish, the more ancient verbal forms have been preserved in their entirety, and there is a complete system of inflections, with a very copious vocabulary, of which several glossaries have been preserved. The most ancient is that attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennan, king and bishop of Cashel, who was killed in the year 903; and the greater part of it undoubtedly belongs to that period. There has also been preserved an ancient Grammar termed Uraicecht na m-Eiges, or Precepts of the Poets, which is certainly not much later in date; but Zeuss’ great work, the Grammatica Celtica, exhibits the grammar of this written language in its most complete shape, as he has constructed it from materials furnished by MSS. of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Such being, in the main, the position of the Gaelic language in Ireland and the relation between the written and cultivated language and the spoken dialects, we find that Scotland presents to us, in connection with the distribution of her languages, somewhat peculiar phenomena, which are more difficult of solution. If a line is drawn from a point on the eastern bank of Loch Lomond, somewhat south of Ben Lomond, following in the main the line of the Grampians, and crossing the Forth at Aberfoil, the Teith at Callander, the Almond at Crieff, the Tay at Dunkeld, the Ericht at Blairgowrie, and proceeding through the hills of Brae Angus till it reaches the great range of the Mounth, then crossing the Dee at Ballater, the Spey at lower Craigellachie, till it reaches the Moray Firth at Nairn—this forms what was called the Highland Line, and separated the Celtic from the Teutonic-speaking people. Within this line, with the exception of the county of Caithness which belongs to the Teutonic division, the Gaelic language forms the vernacular of the inhabitants, and beyond it prevails the broad Scotch. The one is as much a dialect of Irish, and is substantially the same language, as the other is of the Anglic or Anglo-Saxon. There are small and unimportant provincial varieties observed in both; yet each forms essentially one dialect; and Scotch Gaelic must be viewed as simply a provincial variety of the spoken Gaelic, of the same class as the provincial varieties of the vernacular Gaelic in Ireland. It exhibits some differences which are peculiar to itself. In other points it corresponds with one or other of the Irish dialects. The primary accent in Scotch Gaelic is invariably on the first syllable of the word, and the analytic form of the verb, with the use of the auxiliary verb, is preferred to the synthetic. In these respects it corresponds with the spoken language of the north of Ireland, and its vowel sounds approach most nearly to those of the Connaught dialect. Scotch Gaelic is, in fact, so far, more closely allied to the northern Irish than the latter is to the spoken language of the south; but there are other peculiarities of Scotch Gaelic which seem due to influence from another quarter. It forms the genitive plural of some nouns by adding the syllable an, in which it resembles Welsh forms. It does not use that phonetic change of the initial consonant, termed by Irish grammarians ‘eclipsis.’ It drops the final vowel in some substantives, and the future tense of its verb resembles the present tense of the Irish verb, while for the present it uses the auxiliary with the present participle. These peculiarities Scotch Gaelic shares with Manx, or the Gaelic of the Isle of Man; and it indicates that this vernacular form of Gaelic had been arrested at a somewhat later stage in its process of disintegration than the northern dialects of Irish.

The whole of the mountain region of Scotland with its islands within the Highland line, with the exception of Caithness, thus possessing a dialect of spoken Gaelic which must be ranked with the vernacular dialects of Ireland, the natural inference is that it must at all times have been peopled by a homogeneous race. But when we inquire into the elements which enter into its early population, we find that, prior to the ninth century, it consisted, in name at least, of two different races. In that part of Argyllshire which formed the kingdom of Dalriada, with the islands south of the promontory of Ardnamurchan, were the Scots, who unquestionably immigrated from Ireland in the beginning of the sixth century; while the whole of the rest of this region, with the islands north of Ardnamurchan, was peopled by the Pictish tribes. If these two races were not homogeneous, the question arises, How did this Gaelic dialect spread over the whole of it? To this question Irish writers usually return a very short and ready answer. They tell us that the Irish colony of Scots spread gradually over the western districts; that in the ninth century they subjugated the Picts; that the Pictish population was superseded by the Scottish; and that the language spoken by the Highlanders was invariably termed by them Erse or Irish. This solution will not, however, stand the test of investigation. The former part of the statement, when compared with the ascertained facts regarding the relative position of the two races, requires an assent to a philological proposition which is almost impossible; and the latter assertion is not true. It is obvious from the statements of both Adamnan and Bede that, as late as the eighth century, the Scots of Dalriada were still confined within those mountain barriers which separated them from the great Pictish race; and, however we may view the revolution which took place in their relative position, it is obvious that the spoken dialect which prevailed over the rest of the Highlands prior to the ninth century, whatever it was, could not have been derived from the Scots of Dalriada. But is it credible that a language spoken in such a mountainous and inaccessible region as the northern and eastern Highlands, with the islands north of Ardnamurchan, could have so entirely disappeared as to leave not a trace even in its topography? Though we do not possess written evidence of the early speech of this part of the country, we have a record in the names of its great natural features—its mountains, its lochs, and its great rivers; and all experience tells us that, though the population of a country may change, these generally remain unaffected by it, and retain the stamp of its earliest race, by whom these names were imposed. We find that the names of farms and homesteads, houses and villages, may change and bear the impress of each succeeding population; but those of the grand and unchangeable features of a country bearing the physical aspect of Scotland remain unchanged, and these names, throughout the whole of the districts peopled by the northern Picts, are unmistakably Gaelic. There may enter into these names some vocables which are not intelligible in the modern vernacular Gaelic; but it must be recollected that the names were imposed at a much earlier stage of the language, and we usually find that they are obsolete words of the same language, and are preserved in the old glossaries.

But, further, the phenomena exhibited in these districts of Scotland, in the relation of the early races which peopled it to the language which we find at a later period pervading the whole range of country, are not very dissimilar from those which appear to have existed at a much earlier period in the north of Ireland. There we find the tradition that the Pictish race once extended over the whole of the north of Ireland; and the remembrance of the Pictish kingdom of Ulster, with its capital of Emhan Macha, or Emania, is preserved almost to historic times. The remains of this Pictish race still existed, within the historic period, in the smaller kingdom of Dalnaraidhe, or Dalaradia, and in the plain of Bregia in Meath; and their close connection with the Picts of Scotland was not dissevered till the middle of the sixth century. Here, too, we have an extended Pictish race, over which however the race of the Scots were more rapidly, and at a much earlier period, superinduced, and the same phenomena of the spoken language of the whole country forming one dialect of that branch of Celtic termed Gaelic, while there is no trace of any other language having prevailed. We may therefore infer that the language spoken by the Pictish race which peopled the Highlands and Islands likewise belonged to the Gaelic branch of the Celtic, and that, like the Irish, before a cultivated standard of language was formed by the introduction of letters, it was characterised by local varieties of speech, and that there were as many dialects, in the most limited sense of the term, as there were districts and tribes. We do not find, however, that St. Columba, when he commenced his mission among the Picts, had any difficulty in conversing freely with them, or preaching the Word intelligibly to them. There are only two instances mentioned by Adamnan where he had to call in the aid of an interpreter, and in both cases it was resorted to in preaching the Word of Life, and not in conversing. These are the cases of the old chief of the Geona cohort, who came by sea to the north end of Skye, and of a peasant in the province of the Picts; but we are not told to what part of the country these men belonged, and the dialect of one part may have been more removed from the Irish form of it than that of another.

A very powerful agency, however, was soon brought to bear upon the language of that part of the country, that, namely, of the Christian Church. Whatever may have been the case in Ireland, it is unquestionably to the Columban Church issuing from Ireland that the northern Picts owed the introduction of letters and of a written language. For centuries her clergy were entirely Scottish, and the instruction of the people and the education of the young was in the hands of the Scottish monks of the Columban Church. By them the standard of the written Irish was introduced. It became the language of the church, the monastery and the school. There was, probably for generations, not a Pictish child, who secured any education at all, who had not learned his alphabet and been taught to read by a Scottish monk. And with the spread of knowledge and of cultivation there must have arisen a coalescing of the numerous varieties of the vernacular into one spoken dialect, and the assimilation of the whole to the cultivated language of Ireland. Towards the close of the period during which this Celtic Church was predominant, and just before its extinction, we have a specimen of the written language of the Columban Church in the Book of Deer. It is a MS. which belonged to the church of Deer, one of the few Columban monasteries in the Pictish territory which retained its clerical character throughout. It contains the Gospel of St. John, portions of the other three Gospels, the fragment of an office for the visitation of the sick, and the Apostles’ Creed, all in Latin, and is written in a character which may be ascribed to the ninth century. A few of the rubrics in the office for the visitation of the sick are, however, in Irish, and, as was usual in such monasteries, there are written on the blank pages notices in Gaelic, written in the Irish character, giving the legend of the foundation of the church, and memoranda of the different grants of lands and privileges made to it. These are all in the same handwriting, and appear to have been written in the early part of the reign of David I. They thus furnish us with a specimen of the written language of the period, and, though it possesses some unimportant peculiarities, it is unquestionably identic with the written Irish of the period. Not long after, we find the vernacular Gaelic appearing under the name of the Albanic, or language of Alban, and exhibiting some of the peculiarities of the Scotch Gaelic. Jocelyn of Furness, who wrote in the twelfth century, gives us in his Life of Kentigern two etymologies of the saint’s name. One is unquestionably from Cymric, or the Welsh language; but in the other the interpretation is derived from the Gaelic. He says that ‘not in vain, but of set purpose, had he been called Kentigern by Servanus, because by the will of the Lord he sought to become the head lord of all, for Ken is “caput” in Latin, and the Albanic Tyern is interpreted “dominus.” in Latin.’ Cen, now Ceann, however, is ‘the head’ both in Irish and Scotch Gaelic, and Tyern is the phonetic spelling of Tighearn, Lord, in Scotch Gaelic, the Irish form of which is Tighearna, thus showing the elision of the final vowel peculiar to Scotch Gaelic. The written language, however, he appears to term Scotic, when he says that he had ‘found a little volume, written in the Scotic dialect, filled from end to end with solecisms, but containing at greater length the life and acts of the holy bishop.’

During the last two and a half centuries of this period the intercourse between the north and west of Scotland and Ireland had, to a great extent, been interrupted by the Norwegian conquest of the Western Isles, and the formation of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles; but the rise of the Celtic chief Somerled, and the foundation of the dynasty of Gaelic Lords of the Isles in his descendants, renewed the intercourse with Ireland; and we find that, during the three centuries in which these powerful Celtic kinglets ruled over the western Highlands and Islands, there was not only a close political connection with Ireland, but the literary influence was equally close and strong, and Ireland was resorted to for instruction in the literature and written language of the country. It was at the commencement of this period, that the name of Scotia became finally and absolutely transferred from Ireland to Scotland, and superseded the older name of Alban, or Albania; and, during the whole of this period, the name applied to the Gaelic language of Scotland was that of Scotic, or Scotch. We find abundant evidence of this during the earlier portion of this period, when the term ‘Scotice’ is invariably applied to the Gaelic forms of the names of places. Thus, in the ‘Descriptio Albaniæ,’ in the twelfth century, the river Forth is said to be called ‘Scottice Froch, Brittanice Werid, Romane vero Scottewattre,’ the term Roman being here curiously enough applied to the Anglic. A charter by William the Lion mentions that spring near Karel ‘quæ Scotice Tobari nuncupatur;’ and the same designation for the Gaelic language of Scotland appears frequently in the Chartularies, while the term Anglic is used for the Teutonic. Thus, in a perambulation of the lands of Kingoldrum in Forfarshire, in 1256, we have ‘Hachethunethouer quod Anglice dicitur Midefeld,‘ and ‘Marresiam quamdam quæ Scotice dicitur Moynebuche.’ And in the fourteenth century Fordun gives us a very distinct account of the distribution of the vernacular dialect in his day. He says, ‘The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech. For two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish (Scotica) and the Teutonic (Theutonica); the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech (Scoticæ linguæ) inhabits the Highlands and outlying districts.’

The dynasty of the Celtic kings of the Isles came to an end in 1478, when the last Lord of the Isles was forfeited; and there followed upon their fall a period of great confusion in the Highlands, when the clans which had been united under their sway were thrown loose, and struggled for the possession of their lands. During this period of darkness education was neglected, and all knowledge of the cultivated or written Irish seems to have perished out of the land. It is during this period that a solitary exception, Dean Macgregor of Lismore, endeavoured to rescue from oblivion the oral literature of the Highlands by transcribing, in 1512, such poems as he could collect; but he was fain to write them down in a phonetic spelling, which has rendered his collection valuable, as indicating the pronunciation of the language at the time, and the degree of divergence between the spoken dialects and the standard Irish. His collection, however, contains also several poems by Irish bards, and among others some of a religious cast by Teague og O’Huggin, whose death is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters in 1448 as ‘chief preceptor of the poets of Erin and Alban;’ and the same annals record in 1554 the death of Teague O’Coffey, ‘chief teacher of poetry in Erin and Alban.’ A contract of fosterage, by Sir Roderick Macleod, in 1614, in Gaelic, has been preserved, which is written in the Irish character; but it is evident that he had to resort to Ireland for his scribe, as the writer of it is obviously an Irishman, and he alone subscribes as a witness in the Irish written language, the three other witnesses all bearing Gaelic names, and two of them, respectively ministers of Duirinish and Bracadale, in Skye, being unable to do so.

The spoken language of the Highlands now begins to be called Irish in place of Scotch. John Major, who wrote in 1520, not long after the Dean of Lismore had made his collection, thus describes the languages in his day: ‘In the island of Britain there are three different languages, as we know, which are mutually unintelligible. The first towards the south is the Welsh (Vallica), which the Britonised Britons use. The second, more extended than the first, the wild Scots and Islanders use, and this is Irish, though somewhat broken (Hibernica licet quodammodo fracta). The third language, the principal one in the island, is the English (Anglicana), which the English and the civilised Scots have.’ Thus, what Fordun called Scotica in the fourteenth century, John Major calls Hibernica in the sixteenth; and what Fordun termed Teutonica, Major calls Anglicana. The expression used by John Major, with regard to the Gaelic spoken in the Highlands and Islands, shows that the differences between it and the written language of Ireland were then quite apparent. While, however, all learning had perished out of the Gaelic-speaking part of the country, there had arisen a literature in the language of the lowlands. Barbour, who was archdeacon of Aberdeen, leads the way not long after Fordun’s time; but he terms the language in which he wrote ‘Inglis,’ or English. He was followed in the next century by Wyntoun, prior of Lochleven, in his Metrical Chronicle. But Gawin Douglas, who wrote in the same Lowland dialect in 1516, terms the language in which he wrote ‘Scottés,’ or Scotch. We thus find in the beginning of the sixteenth century the term Scotic, or Scotch, passing from the written Gaelic to the Anglican dialect of the Lowlands, and the spoken Gaelic of the Highlands coming to be denominated Irish.

The Reformation, however, soon after gave rise to a religious literature, which was printed for the use of the Gaelic-speaking people; but here too it became necessary to resort to Ireland for the written language. Bishop Carsewell printed, in 1567, a translation of John Knox’s liturgy, with a prefatory epistle, in which he says that ‘we, the Gael of Alban and Erin, have laboured under the want that our dialects of the Gaelic have never been printed;’ and the language he uses is unquestionably the written Irish of the time. In the following century translations of the metrical version of the Psalms, of Calvin’s Cathechism, and of the Bible, were printed in Gaelic by the Synod of Argyll and by the Rev. R. Kirke of Balquhidder. These were thoroughly Irish in form, and the latter was simply taken from the Irish version of the Bible. Various editions of the Bible were issued in the succeeding century by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge in Scotland; but, from the divergence which now existed between the spoken language of the people and the written language of Ireland, it was found that these translations were not readily understood, and in each succeeding edition they were brought nearer to the spoken idiom, till, for the cultivated Irish, which formed their written dialect in common with Ireland, there was now substituted a written Scotch Gaelic, in all respects assimilated to the spoken language. There can be little doubt that the spoken or vernacular language remained throughout pretty much the same, exhibiting in a greater or less degree those features which distinguished it from the spoken dialects of Ireland; and to this language the Highlanders themselves have never given any other name than the simple designation of Gaelic. It possessed, too, an oral literature in the popular poetry and prose tales of the Highlanders, handed down by recitation; and in 1741 a vocabulary of this Scottish Gaelic was first printed by Alexander Macdonald, schoolmaster of Ardnamurchan, a scholar and a good Gaelic poet. Ten years later he printed a collection of his own poems, written in the vernacular dialect of the Highlands. To this work he gave the title of ‘Resurrection of the Ancient Language of Alban,’ and in the preface announced that it was only the prelude to a greater collection of poetry ‘from those of the earliest composition to modern times; their antiquity either proved by historical accounts, or ascertained by the best traditions; with a translation into English verse, and critical observations on the nature of such writings, to render the work useful to those that do not understand the Gaelic language.’ It is to be regretted that he never carried this intention into effect. In 1764 the poems of Duncan Ban Macintyre, also composed in the vernacular, were printed, and these collections were followed by numerous others, till this oral literature of the Scottish Gaelic, too, assumed a written form.

And thus, at length, has been created a standard of written Scotch Gaelic, which has stereotyped the language spoken by the Highlanders in its native form and idiom.