can in Kilmacrenan. All these, and many others,
whose names tradition but feebly echoes, were contemporary, or nearly
so, with him; and with many of them, he was united in the warmest bonds
of friendship,--a friendship that served to rivet him the more to Derry.
Even the budding glories of Durrow and Kells could not draw him away
from his "loved oak-grove;" and at length, when the time had come for
him to go forth and plant the faith in a foreign land, it was the monks
of Derry who received his last embrace ere he seated himself with his
twelve companions, also monks of Derry, in his little osier coracle, and
with tearful eyes watched his grove till the topmost leaf had sunk
beneath the curving wave.

When twenty-seven years after he visited his native land, as the deputy
of an infant nation and the saviour of the bards, on whom, but for his
kindly intercession, the hand of infuriated justice had heavily fallen,
his first visit was to Derry. It was probably during this visit that he
founded that church on the other side of the Foyle, whose ivy-clad walls
and gravelled area the reader of "Thackeray's Sketch Book" may remember;
but few know that it was wantonly demolished by Dr. Weston (1467-1484),
the only Englishman who ever held the See of Derry; and "who," adds
Colgan, "began out of the ruins to build a palace for himself, which the
avenging hand of God did not allow him to complete."

Columba's heart ever yearned to Derry. In one of his poems he tells us
"how my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my Irish oak grove."
And one day when "that grey eye, which ever turned to Erin," was gazing
wistfully at the horizon, where Ireland ought to appear, his love for
Derry found expression in a little poem, the English version of which I
transcribed from Cardinal Moran's "Irish Saints."

"Were the tribute of all Alba mine,
From its centre to its border,
I would prefer the sight of one cell
In the middle of fair Derry.

"The reason I love Derry is
For its quietness, for its purity;
Crowded full of heaven's angels,
Is every leaf of the oaks of Derry.

"My Derry, my little oak grove,
My abode and my little cell,
O eternal God in heaven above,
Woe be to him who violates it."

With the same love that he himself had for his "little oak grove," he
seems to have inspired the annalists of his race, for on turning over
the pages of the Four Masters, the eye is arrested by such entries