visited the grove, in company
with the local chieftain, a youth named Columba, a scion of the royal
race of the O'Donnells. He was captivated by its beauty. It seemed the
very spot for the monastery he was anxious to establish. He was only a
deacon; but the fame of his sanctity had already filled the land, and
the princes of his family were ever urging him to found a monastery
whose monks, they hoped, would reflect his virtues and increase the
faith and piety of their clan. This seemed the very spot for such an
establishment. The neighborhood of the royal fortress of Aileach, that

"Sits evermore like a queen on her throne
And smiles on the valleys of green Innishowen,"

promised security; the river an unfailing supply of fish; the woods
material to build with; and, better than all, the lord of the district
was his cousin Ainmire, from whom Columba had only to ask to receive. He
did ask the island for God, and his request was joyfully complied with.

It was just three years after the deacon-abbot of Monte Casino had
passed to his reward, that the young Irish deacon began his monastery.
To erect monastic buildings in those days was a work of very little
labor. A wooden church, destined in the course of time to give place to
a more durable edifice--the seat of a bishopric--was first erected. Then
the cells of the monks were put up. They were of circular form and of
the simplest construction. A stout post was firmly planted in what was
to be the centre, and a number of slighter poles were then placed at
equal distances round it. The interstices--space however having been
left for a door--were filled up with willow or hazel saplings in the
form of basketwork. From the outer poles rafters sprang to the
centre-posts, and across them were laid rows of laths over which a fibry
web of sod was thrown, and the whole thatched with straw or rushes. The
inside of the wall was lined with moss--the outside plastered with soft
clay. A rough wooden bed--and in the case of Columba himself and many of
his monks--a stone pillow, a polaire or leathern satchel for holding
books, a writing-desk and seat, formed the furniture of this rude cell,
which was the ordinary dwelling of monk and student during the golden
age of the Irish Church.

Only a few weeks elapsed from the time that the first tree was felled
till the new community, or rather order, took up their abode in it, and
the swelling strain of their vespers was borne down t