village, having, in this last
instance, been in former times considered a sufficient appellative for a
place to which Bede applies the Latin designation of "urbs."]

[Footnote 119: As I have not the _Life of Columba_ at hand to refer to,
I must assume that so able an archaeologist as my friend Dr. Reeves had
sufficient authority for this statement. If it rested only on Fordun or
Wynton, I should deem their authority insufficient to establish as a
fact what seems to me so improbable. Assuming the story to have had a
foundation, might not the real Adamnan have been the priest and monk of
the monastery of Coludi or Coldingham, of whom Bede has written?
Coldingham, in his time, belonged to the Northumbrian kingdom.--P.]

[Footnote 120: See his edition of Adamnan's _Life of Saint Columba_, p.
366.]

[Footnote 121: Colgan refers to the Life of _S. Fintani Eremita ad 15
Novemb., Tr. T._, p. 606:--"Tir mille anachoritas in Momonia est. S.
Hibaro Episcopo cujusdam quaestionis decidendae causa simul collect
[illegible] & Angelus Dei ad convivium a S. Brigida Christo paratum
invitativies had so in auxilium per Jesum Christum." Quoted from the
_Book of Litanies of S. AEngus_, on the same page.

See also the _Summary of the Saints_ in that _Litany_ in Ward's _Vita S.
Rumoldi_, pp. 204, 205.

In short, the notices of deserts, hermits, and anchorites to be found,
lives of saints, etc. etc., are innumerable.--P.]

[Footnote 122: I think it very improbable, if the monastery founded by
Alexander be meant.--P.]

[Footnote 123: This is no fit place to discuss the ages of the two Round
Towers of Brechin and Abernethy. But it may perhaps prove interesting to
some future antiquary if it is here mentioned, that when Dr. Petrie, in
his _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_ (p. 410), gives "about the
year 1020"[124] as the probable date of the erection of the Bound Tower
of Brechin, he chiefly relied--as he has mentioned to me, when
conversing upon the subject,--for this approach to the era of its
building, upon that entry in the ancient _Chronicon de Regibus
Scotorum_, etc., published by Innes, in which it is stated that King
Kenneth MacMalcolm, who reigned from A.D. 971 to A.D. 994, "tribuit
magnam civitatem Brechne domino." (See the Chronicon in Innes' _Critical
Inquiry_, vol. ii. p. 788.) The peculiarities of architecture in the
Round Tower of Brechin assimilate it much with the Irish Bound Towers of
Donoughmore and Monasterboice,