gentle west wind, in the twinkling of
an eye (non solum subito sed in ictu oculi), and exactly opposite the
abbey of Inchcolm, the ship sank to the bottom like a stone. Hence, adds
the writer of this miracle in the _Scotichronicon_,--and no doubt that
writer was the Abbot Walter Bower,--in consequence of these marked
retaliating propensities of St. Columba, his vengeance against all who
trespassed against him became proverbial in England; and instead of
calling him, as his name seems to have been usually pronounced at the
time, St. Callum or St. Colam, he was commonly known among them as
_St. Quhalme_ ("et ideo, ut non reticeam quid de eo dicatur, apud eos
vulgariter _Sanct Quhalme_ nuncupatur"[32]).

But without dwelling on these and other well-known facts and fictions in
the history of Inchcolm, let me state,--for the statement has, as we
shall afterwards see, some bearing upon the more immediate object of
this notice,--that this island is one of the few spots in the vicinity
of Edinburgh that has been rendered classical by the pen of Shakspeare.
In the second scene of the opening act of the tragedy of Macbeth, the
Thane of Ross comes as a hurried messenger from the field of battle to
King Duncan, and reports that Duncan's own rebellious subjects and the
invading Scandinavians had both been so completely defeated by his
generals, Macbeth and Banquo, that the Norwegians craved for peace:--

"Sueno, the Norways' King, craves composition;
Nor would we deign him burial of his men
Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes Inch,
Ten thousand dollars to our general use."

Inchcolm is the only island of the east coast of Scotland which derives
its distinctive designation from the great Scottish saint. But more than
one island on our western shores bears the name of St. Columba; as, for
example, St. Colme's Isle, in Loch Erisort, and St. Colm's Isle in the
Minch, in the Lewis; the island of Kolmbkill, at the head of Loch Arkeg,
in Inverness-shire; Eilean Colm, in the parish of Tongue;[33] and, above
all, Icolmkill, or Iona itself, the original seat and subsequent great
centre of the ecclesiastic power of St. Columba and his successors.[34]
An esteemed antiquarian friend, to whom I lately mentioned the preceding
reference to Inchcolm by Shakspeare, at once maintained that the St.
Colme's Isle in Macbeth was Iona. Indeed, some of the modern editors[35]
of Shakspeare, carried away by the same view, have printed the line