l behind.[189]

One of the deans of Lismore, Sir James MacGregor, between 1512 and 1540,
compiled a commonplace book, filled chiefly with Gaelic heroic ballads,
several of which are ascribed to the authorship of Ossian.

12. DIOCESE OF THE ISLES

The history of Iona is associated with St. Columba, and, although its
church did not attain full cathedral status until 1506, the island was
one of the earliest centres of Christianity in Scotland.

St. Columba (Columcille or Colm) was born at Gartan, County Donegal, 7th
December 521, and was the son of a chief related to several of the
princes then reigning in Ireland and the west of Scotland. He studied
under St. Finnian at Moville, and under another of the same name at
Clonard. In 546 he founded the monastery of Derry, and in 553 that of
Durrow. The belief that he had caused the bloody battle of Culdremhne
led to his excommunication and exile from his native land, and,
accompanied by twelve disciples, he left Ireland and sailed for the
Western Islands, settling ultimately at Iona, where he and his
companions began their work among the heathen Picts. The legend of his
perpetual exile seems to be a fable, and Dr. Skene adds, "His real
motive for undertaking this mission seems therefore to have been partly
religious and partly political. He was one of the twelve apostles of
Ireland who had emerged from the school of Finnian of Clonard, and he no
doubt shared the missionary spirit which so deeply characterised the
monastic Church of Ireland at that period. He was also closely
connected through his grandmother with the line of the Dalriadic kings,
and, as an Irishman, must have been interested in the maintenance of the
Irish colony in the west of Scotland. Separated from him by the Irish
Channel was the great pagan nation of the Northern Picts, who, under a
powerful king, had just inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Scots of
Dalriada, and threatened their expulsion from the country; and, while
his missionary zeal impelled him to attempt the conversion of the Picts,
he must have felt that, if he succeeded in winning a pagan people to the
religion of Christ, he would at the same time rescue the Irish colony of
Dalriada from a great danger, and render them an important service by
establishing peaceable relations between them and their greatly more
numerous and powerful neighbours, and replacing them in the more secure
possession of the western districts they had colonised."[19