siting Inchcolm with Captain Thomas, Dr. Daniel Wilson, and some other
friends, and its peculiar antique character and strong rude masonry
struck all of us, for it seemed different in type from any of the other
buildings around it. Last year I had an opportunity of visiting several
of the oldest remaining Irish churches and oratories at Glendalough,
Killaloe, Clonmacnoise, and elsewhere, and the features of some of them
strongly recalled to my recollection the peculiarities of the old
building in Inchcolm, and left on my mind a strong desire to re-inspect
it. Later in the year Mr. Fraser and I visited Inchcolm in company with
our greatest Scottish authority on such an ecclesiological question--Mr.
Joseph Robertson. That visit confirmed us in the idea, first, that the
small building in question was of a much more ancient type than any
portion of the neighbouring monastery; and, secondly, that in form and
construction it presented the principal architectural characters of the
earliest and oldest Irish churches and oratories. More lately I had an
opportunity of showing the various original sketches which Mr. Drummond
had made for me of the building to the highest living authority on every
question connected with early Irish and Scoto-Irish ecclesiastical
architecture--namely, Dr. Petrie of Dublin; and before asking anything
as to its site, etc., he at once pronounced the building to be "a
Columbian cell."

The tradition, as told to our party by the cicerone on the island on my
first visit, was, that this neglected outbuilding was the place in which
"King Alexander lived for three days with the hermit of Inchcolm." There
was nothing in the rude architecture and general character of the
building to gainsay such a tradition, but the reverse; and, on the
contrary, when we turn to the notice of a visit of Alexander I. to the
island in 1123, as given by our earliest Scotch historians, their
account of the little chapel or oratory which he found there perfectly
applies to the building which I have been describing. In order to prove
this, let me quote the history of Alexander's visit from the
_Scotichronicon_ of Fordun and Bower, the _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_,
and the _Scotorum Historia_ of Hector Boece.[55]

The _Scotichronicon_ contains the following account of King Alexander's
adventure and temporary sojourn in Inchcolm:--

"About the year of our Lord 1123, under circumstances not less
wonderful than miraculous, a mo