Whether the new stone monastery in Iona was to afford them better security against their pagan plunderers the Danes was now to be tested, as seven years had not elapsed before they renewed their attack; and we now get a glimpse into the state of the monastery at this time from a contemporary, in the metrical life of St. Blathmac, written by Walafrid Strabo, who himself died only in the year 849.^[565] He tells us that Blathmac was of royal descent, heir of a throne in that rich Ireland which had given birth to him as her future king; that, renouncing all secular prospects, he resolved to lead a religious life and do honour to his name, which signifies in Latin ‘pulcher natus;’^[566] that he surreptitiously joined a certain monastery, which his biographer does not name, but which was in his father’s principality, and finally, as abbot, ruled a venerable body of monks; that he finally, in order to attain the height of perfection, coveted the crown of martyrdom, and, in order to attain his desire, thought he could not do better than go to ‘a certain island on the shores of the Picts placed in the wave-tossed brine, called Eo,’ or Iona, ‘where Columba, the saint of the Lord, rests in the flesh. This island he sought under his vow to suffer the marks of Christ, for here the frequent hordes of pagan Danes were wont to come armed with malignant furies.’ He seems to have had the care of the monastery intrusted to him, and had not long to wait, ‘for the time soon came when the great mercy of God decreed to associate his servant with his glorious hosts above the stars, and confer a sure crown,’ viz. that of martyrdom, ‘upon the pious victor.’ He became aware that an attack on the island was about to be made by the Danes, and he thus addressed the brethren:—‘“Ye, O companions, seek within your own minds whether it be your determination to endure with me the coming fate, for the name of Christ. Whoever of you can face it, I pray you arm yourselves with courage; but those who are weak at heart and panic-struck should hasten their flight, that they may avoid the obvious danger, arming their hands for better vows. Before us stands the imminent trial of certain death. May a firm faith keep us prepared for future events; may the careful guardian of the flying protect those less strong.” The community, touched by these words, determined to act according to their strength. Some, with a brave heart resolved to face the sacrilegious bands, and rejoiced to have to submit their heads to the raging sword; but others, whom the confidence of mind had not yet persuaded to this, hasten their flight to known places of refuge.’

Blathmac was aware that in attacking the monasteries the great object of desire to the Danes was the shrines enriched with precious metals; and therefore the monks ‘took the shrine from its place,’ which was, no doubt, on the right side of the altar, and ‘deposited it in the earth in a hollowed tumulus, or grave, and covered it with sods.’^[567] The fatal day is then ushered in rather poetically, showing how thoroughly the narrator realised the scene. ‘The golden aurora,’ he says, ‘dispelling the dewy darkness, dawned, and the glittering sun shone again with glorious orb, when this pious cleric stood before the holy altar, celebrating the holy offices of the mass, himself a victim acceptable to God to be offered up to the threatening sword. The rest of the brethren lay commending their souls with prayers and tears, when, behold, the cursed bands rushed raging through the unprotected houses, threatening death to those blessed men, and, furious with rage, the rest of the brethren being slain, came to the holy father, urging him to give up the precious metals which enclosed the sacred bones of Saint Columba,’—a description which shows that there was a church or oratory, with an altar—that the services of the church were again observed, and that there were houses or cells for the monks. ‘This booty,’ he proceeds, ‘the Danes coveted; but the holy man stood firm with unarmed hand, by a stern determination of the mind taught to resist battle and to challenge encounter, unaccustomed to yield. He then poured out in the barbarous tongue—that is, in Danish—the following words: “I know not truly what gold ye seek, where it may be placed in the ground, and in what recesses it may be hid; but, if it were permitted me to know, Christ permitting, never would these lips tell this to your ears.^[568] Savagely bring your swords, seize their hilts and kill. O God, I commend my humble self to Thy protection.” Hereupon the pious victim is cut in pieces with severed limbs, and what the fierce soldier could not compensate with a price he began to search for by wounds in the stiffened entrails. Nor is it a wonder, for there always were and always will arise those whom evil rage will excite against the servants of the Lord.’ And so Blathmac attained his desire, and was made ‘a martyr for the name of Christ.’ This event, so graphically described by the abbot of Augiadives, or Reichenau, took place in the year 825.^[569]

Four years after the martyrdom of Blathmac, we find Diarmaid, the abbot of Iona of whose presence in Iona while the Danes attacked the monastery in 825 we saw no trace, coming to Scotland with the Mionna of Coluimcille.^[570] The word Mionna, as Dr. Reeves has pointed out, ‘signifies articles of veneration, such as the crozier, books, or vestments of a saint, upon which oaths used in after-times to be administered,’ in contradistinction to the word Martra, denoting the bones or remains of the body of the saint. Thus we find Adamnan mentioning the brethren endeavouring to avert the effects of a drought by walking round a field, with the white tunic of St. Columba and some book written in his own hand.^[571] By this time, then, the brethren who had escaped were reassembled at Iona under their abbot; and to this period we may assign the construction, over the spot where the shrine had been concealed, of a small oratory for its reception. At the west end of the present ruins of the abbey church, and attached to the west wall of the cloister, are the foundations of a small quadrangular cell which goes by the name of St. Columba’s tomb. The walls are about three and a half feet high, but it has been partly excavated, as the interior floor is somewhat below the surface of the surrounding ground. It has at the west end a regularly formed entrance, and within it—at the east end—are two stone cists placed along the north and south walls, with the space of a few feet between them. That this so-called cell is, in fact, the remains of a small oratory, is at once evident when we compare these remains of the building with oratories of this description in Ireland; and of one of these, which is more entire, it seems to be almost a reproduction. In the parish of Templemolaga and county of Cork there are the remains of some ecclesiastical buildings. They consist of a central or enclosing wall, within which are the remains of a church about twenty-five feet long by twelve feet broad inside measure, and on the north side of this, at a little distance, is a small oratory, which goes by the name of Leaba Molaga, or St. Molaga’s bed. It measures internally ten feet by seven feet two inches clear of walls, which are two feet nine inches thick. The cell at Iona measures internally ten feet five inches by seven feet, and the walls are about two feet thick. The west gable of St. Molaga’s bed is partly preserved, and shows in the centre a doorway formed of two upright stones for jambs, which support a massive horizontal lintel. It is five feet six inches in height and two feet four inches in width. The entrance to the cell at Iona is in the same place and of the same width. This kind of oratory in Ireland has one peculiarity, and that is a prolongation of the side walls beyond either gable to the extent of from eighteen inches to two feet, which is carried up the gables on a line with the stone roof, forming a species of pilaster. These exist in Leaba Molaga, being about two feet three inches wide and one foot four inches deep; and the same peculiar feature is seen in the cell at Iona. At the east end of Leaba Molaga there were a small window and an altar of stone on which were preserved two stones believed to have been candlesticks; and on the south side of the altar, and along the south wall of the oratory, was a stone cist, or tomb, which measures five feet six inches in height, one foot eight inches in width, and one foot in depth. Within the cell at Iona there are two stone cists, one lying along the south wall of the oratory, and the other along the north wall, with the space of a few feet between them. The cist on the south wall is eight feet ten inches in length, and that on the north wall six feet nine inches, and both cists are also one foot eight inches broad. The east end of the cell now forms the wall of the cloister, and, if a window existed, it has been built up, but the resemblance between the two buildings is so striking, that we can hardly doubt that it was an oratory of the same kind, and that the space between the two cists was once filled, at the east end, by a stone altar.^[572] The stone cist on the right, or south, side of the altar would, according to custom, contain the shrine of St. Columba, the patron saint; that on the north side probably the remains of St. Blathmac, who died a martyr in protecting it from the Danes and who, we are told by his biographer, ‘reposes in the same place, where, for his holy merits, many miracles are displayed.’^[573]

Abbot Diarmaid did not remain long in Iona, for we find him in the year 831 returning to Ireland with the Mionna,^[574] and we hear no more of him. In 849 Innrechtach, abbot of Iona, is said to have gone to Ireland with the Mionna of Columcille, from which we may infer that they had been restored to Iona, and that some time between the year 831 and 849 Innrechtach had become abbot. We know nothing of his race except that his surname was Ua Finachta, and nothing of his history except that he was slain by the Saxons when on a journey to Rome in the year 854, and that he is then called heir, or coärb, of Columcille.^[575] In the meantime that great revolution had been effected which placed a Scottish dynasty on the throne of the Picts. This is the most obscure portion of the history of Scotland, and it is now hardly possible to trace the circumstances which combined to elevate a Scot, in the person of Kenneth mac Alpin, to a position of so much power, or to ascertain to what extent the ecclesiastical element entered into this revolution; but we can gather that it led to the reintroduction of the Scottish clergy into the eastern districts thus added to Kenneth’s kingdom, and to an attempt to reclaim for them these monasteries from which they had been expelled in the preceding century. And this appears to have extended even to the Scottish foundations in Lothian; for Kenneth, we are told, invaded Saxonia, as the country south of the Firth of Forth was still termed, six times, and burnt Dunbarre and Mailros, which had been usurped. In whatever sense Dunbarre was held to be usurped, or whether this epithet was intended to apply to it as well as to Mailros, the latter was unquestionably founded by the Scottish missionaries from Iona, who were, as we know, expelled from the monasteries they had founded, if they would not conform to Rome; and it is possible that Dunbar may also have been a Scotch foundation. It was undoubtedly in the possession of the Angles of Northumbria; but Melrose appears to have been transferred to the Britons of Strathclyde, as we find it afterwards in the diocese of Glasgow; and it was probably in retaliation that the Britons burnt Dunblane.^[576] Be this as it may, Kenneth certainly resolved to re-establish the Columban Church within the territories of the southern Picts, which now formed the heart of his kingdom, on a different basis; and, for this purpose, selected Dunkeld, where Constantine, king of the Picts, had founded a church, probably as being the nearest of the Pictish churches to the former Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, and the most central for the whole kingdom.

Here, we are told, he built a church, and removed to it the relics of St. Columba—that is, probably, only a part of them—in the seventh year of his reign,^[577] which corresponds with the year 850, the year after Innrechtach had departed to Ireland with the Mionna. Iona, as we have seen, had already lost her primacy over the Columban monasteries in Ireland, which, in consequence of the destruction of her monastery by the Danes, was transferred to Kells; and, in taking the relics to Dunkeld, Kenneth constituted it too as an Annoid, or mother church, over the Columbans in Scotland, and seems to have resolved to place the abbot of his new monastery of Dunkeld as bishop over the church in the territories of the southern Picts which had now come under his rule, with a view to the more ready reorganisation of Scottish monasteries within them, so that it should form one diocese, as it were, under one bishop. Accordingly, five years after Kenneth’s death, we find recorded the death of Tuathal mac Artguso, abbot of Dunkeld and first bishop of Fortrenn, as the kingdom of the southern Picts was then called.^[578] As abbot of Dunkeld, a church dedicated to St. Columba and possessing part of his relics, he thus occupied towards the Columban monasteries in Scotland the same position as had belonged to Iona, and would be regarded by them as coärb of Columcille. As bishop of Fortrenn he was the recognised head of the Pictish church.^[579]

The same year in which the death of the first bishop of Fortrenn is recorded contains also the record of the death in the territory of the Picts of Cellach son of Aillel, abbot of Kildare, and abbot of Iona.^[580] Nothing can better show how completely Iona had lost her position for the time, and how difficult it now was to find a person to occupy the post of danger, than the abbacy falling to an abbot of Kildare; but, though he is said to have been also abbot of Iona, he did not die either there or in his own monastery of Kildare, but in the country of the Picts. He had probably been driven from his own monastery in the province of Leinster by its exposure to the attacks of the Danes, by whom it was plundered and its church burnt in the year 836; and in 845 its vice-abbot was slain,^[581] a title which seems to indicate the absence of the abbot. Kildare was, as we know, dedicated to the great virgin saint of Ireland, St. Bridget, or St. Bride, and was the mother church of all her foundations; but there was within the country of the Picts one church in especial which was also dedicated to St. Bride, and was held to be in a manner affiliated to that of Kildare, and that was the church of Abernethy; and when we find an abbot of Kildare seeking refuge in the Pictish kingdom and dying peacefully within its bounds, it could hardly be elsewhere than in this church of Abernethy that he took refuge; and he appears, when Innrechtach had left his monastery of Iona and been slain on his way to Rome in 854, to have been appointed abbot of Iona. Abernethy thus comes again into view for the first time since it was refounded by St. Columba at the end of the sixth century. The Columban monks were, no doubt, expelled from it in the beginning of the eighth century, but now, in the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, it was once again occupied by Irish clergy. It is at this time probably that we may place the erection of the round tower there, which could only have been the work of Irish clergy; and this is the more probable as it is undoubtedly of an older type than the round tower at Brechin, the date of the building of which can be placed with some degree of certainty late in the succeeding century, and as a round tower had been erected at Kildare, which Dr. Petrie places at the close of the preceding century.^[582]

The year 865, which saw the deaths both of the first bishop of Fortrenn and of the abbot of Kildare, corresponds with the second year of the reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth; and he seems to have transferred the bishopric from Dunkeld to Abernethy, for we find the next abbot of Dunkeld, who died during this reign, called simply superior of Dunkeld, while the title of bishop of Fortrenn is dropped;^[583] and Bower, the abbot of Inchcolm, tells us of Abernethy that ‘in that church there had been three elections of bishops when there was but one sole bishop in Scotland; and at that time it was the principal royal and episcopal seat, for some time, of the whole kingdom of the Picts.’Picts.’^[584] He is surely here reporting a genuine tradition, and the statement as to the three elections during the time when there was one sole bishop is so specifically made that it must have been derived from some authentic record. But the time when there was one sole bishop cannot have been before the nomination of the abbot of Dunkeld as first bishop of Fortrenn. It must, however, have been before the bishops of St. Andrews appear as sole bishops in the succeeding century. We are driven, therefore, to place it in this interval between the death of Tuathal, first bishop of the Picts, in the year 865, and the first appearance of that position being occupied by a bishop of St. Andrews, which, as we shall see, was in the year 908. We have no record of the three bishops elected at Abernethy during this interval; but we may possibly find the name of one of them in the dedication of a neighbouring parish. The church of Lathrisk, now Kettle, was dedicated to St. Ethernascus, whose day in the Scotch Calendar is the 22d December; and we find on the same day in the Irish Calendar Saints Ultan, Tua and Iotharnaisc, at Claonadh, now Clane, in the county of Kildare, which too connects him with the mother church of St. Bridget of Kildare.^[585]

There is a legend which seems intimately connected with the events of this very obscure portion of Scottish history. It is the legend of St. Adrian, and, like all such legends, possesses some features which may be considered historical. It is thus told in the Aberdeen Breviary at 4th March, the day of St. Adrian:—Adrian, a distinguished soldier of Christ, derived his origin from the province of Pannonia, a part of the region of Hungary. He was, as usual, of royal descent, and, from his transcendent merits, was early raised to the episcopate; and a large number of clerics and laymen can testify to his labours among them. Desirous of extending them to other countries, and inflamed with zeal for the Christian religion, he took with him a venerable company and set out for the central parts of Scotia, which were then occupied by the Picts, and landed there, having with him confessors, clerics, and common people to the number of six thousand and six, among whom the most notable were Glodianus, who was crowned with martyrdom, Gayus and Monanus, white-robed confessors, Stobrandus and other chief priests adorned with the mitre. These men with their bishop Adrian, the Pictish kingdom being destroyed, did many signs and wonders among the people, but afterwards desired to have a habitation of their own on the Isle of May, at the entrance of the Firth of Forth. But the Danes, who then devastated the whole of Britain, came to the isle and there slew them. In this island of May there was anciently a monastery founded, built of fair-coursed masonry in honour of God and of his martyred saints, which was afterwards destroyed by the nation of the Angles; but there still remains a church often frequented by the faithful people on account of their merits. There is also a celebrated cemetery where the bodies of the martyrs repose.^[586] At 1st March, on which day St. Monanus was celebrated, the Breviary legend further tells us that ‘Monanus, born in Pannonia, a province of the region of Hungary, belonged to that company who, with the blessed Adrian, came from the pagan inhabitants of Noricum to the Isle of May, where they were crowned with martyrdom. But, before that the aforesaid company was destroyed by the fury of the Danes, blessed Monanus preached the Gospel to the people on the mainland and in a place called Inverry in Fyf. There his relics rest. Many miracles of healing were performed there.’^[587] The only other version we have of this legend is that given by Wyntoun, who was prior of Lochleven and there composed his Chronicle, and possessed no doubt sources of information as to church legends now lost to us. He thus in his quaint verse tells the tale in connection with Constantin, son of Kenneth, who reigned from 863 to 876:—

The chronology of this tale is quite clear. They came just at the time when the so-called destruction of the Picts by Kenneth mac Alpin took place; and they themselves perished by the Danes in the reign of his son Constantin. Of so remarkable an event, however, as the invasion of Fife by a body of six thousand and six Hungarians history knows nothing, and it is obvious that we have here to deal with a myth somewhat similar to that which brought St. Bonifacius and St. Servanus from Palestine. It appears, however, that there were two traditions as to the origin of these people, and Boece, who reports the fact, may probably here be trusted. He says—‘There are not wanting those who write that these holy martyrs of Christ were Hungarians, who, flying from the pagan fierceness which was then rampant in Germany, passed into Scotland to preserve their religion. Others say they were a company gathered together from Scots and Angles.’^[589] The first refers to the legend in the Breviary; the second contains probably an admission of the truth; and an examination of the legend will confirm this. The names of most of the company are disguised under Latin forms, but one seems to preserve its original shape. Monanus is simply the Irish Moinenn, with a Latin termination. His relics are preserved at Inverry, now St. Monans, and he is venerated on the 1st of March; but this is the day of St. Moinenn in the Irish Calendar, who was first bishop of Clonfert Brenain on the Shannon, and whose death is recorded by Irish annalists in 571.^[590] This leads us at once to Ireland as the country from whence they came; and, so far from being accompanied by a living St. Monan, who lived at Inverry, they had probably brought with them the relics of the dead St. Moinenn, bishop of Clonfert, of the sixth century, in whose honour the church, afterwards called St. Monans, was founded. But, when we turn to the history of Ireland at this period, we find Turgesius the Dane had placed himself at the head of all the foreigners in Ireland, and had brought the whole of the south of Ireland under subjection to him. In the year 832 he attacked Armagh and sacked it three times in one month. During the next nine years he appears to have remained content with his secular possession of the country, and did not attempt to overthrow the power of the ecclesiastical authorities; but in 841 he banished the bishop and clergy and usurped the abbacy of Armagh, that is to say, the full authority and jurisdiction in Armagh and the north of Ireland; and he seems not only to have aimed at the establishment of a permanent rule of the Northmen over Ireland, but to have attempted the establishment of his national heathenism in place of the Christianity which he found in the country.^[591] This continued for four years, till his death in 845. Now, at this very time Kenneth mac Alpin was establishing his Scottish kingdom in Pictland, and reclaiming for the Scottish clerics their old ecclesiastical foundations. This must naturally have led to an extensive immigration of Scots, both lay and cleric, into his new territories, and we find that, after Turgesius had usurped possession of Armagh, he went to Loch Ree, with a fleet of his countrymen, and from thence ‘plundered Meath and Connaught; and Cluainmicnois was plundered by him, and Cluain Ferta Brenain and Lothra, and Tirdaglas, and Inisceltra, and all the churches of Loch Derg-dheirc, or Loch Derg on the Shannon, in like manner.’^[592] This took place between 841 and 845; and under the latter year the Irish Annals report the destruction as still more complete, for they tell us that at Loch Ree ‘a fortress was erected by Turgesius for the foreigners, so that they spoiled Connaught and Meath, and burned Cluain mic Nois with its oratories, and Cluainferta Brennain, and Tirdaglas, and Lothra, and numerous cities.’^[593] Clonfert then was one of a group of monasteries which were plundered and burnt by the Danes at the very time when a body of clerics and laymen are said to have arrived in Fife and erected a church at Inverry, which was dedicated to St. Monenn, the first bishop of Clonfert, and where his relics were deposited. It seems, therefore, a reasonable conclusion that the two events were connected, and that it was probably owing to the state into which the church in Ireland had been brought by the Danes, and to the coincident establishment of a Scottish dynasty on the throne of the Picts, that we find an abbot of Kildare appearing as also abbot of Iona, and dying in the country of the Picts which had come under Scottish rule, and that the arrival of so large a body of Scots in Fife is intimately connected with the revolution which placed these Pictish districts under the rule of a Scottish king.^[594]

The Caplawchy of Wyntoun is now called Caiplie, on the shore of Fife opposite the Isle of May, and Inverry is now called St. Monans. Both are within the eastern district of Fife, which was said to have been given to St. Regulus as a ‘parochia.’ Wyntoun tells us that some of the company who landed there chose to remain on the Isle of May, and others in places beyond the north shore of the Forth; and we may infer that, while the great body of them spread over Fife and the neighbouring districts, some resorted to an eremetical life and were slain by the Danes.^[595]

In the meantime the security of Iona was threatened by new enemies. These were the Norwegian Vikings who occupied the Western Isles about the middle of this century, and continued to do so from time to time, till their permanent settlement in the Orkney Islands, towards the end of the century, led to a more continued possession of the Isles; and in the year 878 it appears to have been necessary to remove the relics of St. Columba from Iona to Ireland for safety. These consisted not only of the Mionna, or reliquaries, which had been so frequently taken to Ireland, but also of the shrine which contained the remains of his body; for we are told that in this year ‘the shrine of Colum Cille and all his reliquaries were taken to Ireland to escape the foreigners,’^[596] and two years later Feradach, son of Cormac, abbot of Iona, dies.^[597] He was, no doubt, the successor of Cellach, the abbot of Kildare, but his pedigree is unknown, and there is nothing to show whether he was connected with any other religious house. The line of Conall Gulban, however, the ancestor of the tribe of the patron saint, now comes in again, but merely to give to the abbacy of Iona its last independent abbot for many a long year. Flann, the son of Maelduin, whose death as abbot of Iona is recorded in the year 891,^[598] was a descendant of Conall Gulban; but one of the same tribe, Maelbrigde, son of Tornan, having been in 888 elected abbot of Armagh, the abbacy of Iona seems to have fallen under his rule also, and thus he is described as ‘coärb of Patrick and of Columcille’ in the Martyrology of Donegal, which adds that he was ‘a man full of the grace of God, and a vessel of the wisdom and knowledge of his time.’^[599] His death is recorded in 927.^[600]

In his time, however, the shrine of St. Columba must have been restored to Iona, as we learn from the Life of St. Cadroë, a work of the eleventh century. Cadroë was a native of Scotia, or Scotland,^[601] and was born about the year 900.^[602] His father was Faiteach, a man of royal blood; his mother, Bania, of similar wealth and nobility. She had been previously married and had sons by her first husband; but after her marriage with Faiteach she continued childless, till, with her husband, she applied to the merits of St. Columba, and, going to his sepulchre and passing the night in prayer and fasting, had hardly slept, when they saw themselves in a vision holding two different candles, which suddenly united into one light, and a man of shining apparel appeared and told her that her tears had stained her stole and assisted her prayers in the sight of God, and that she should bear a son called Kaddroë, a future light of the church, who should have courage like his name; a warrior in the camp of the Lord, he shall go up unconquered against the opposing wall, prepared to stand in battle for the house of Israel.^[603] They awake full of joy, and after a time the woman has a son whom, according to the divine command, they called Kaddroë. When the child is old enough, his father’s brother Beanus, an aged priest, wishes to put him to school, but the father objects, and insists that the child must be dedicated to him who gave it. The mother then has another child called Mattadanus. They then go a second time to the tomb of St. Columba, and offer to him the second boy, and deliver the eldest to Beanus to be educated.^[604] The expressions used of the sepulchre and the tomb of St. Columba imply that they went to Iona; and the small cell at the west end of the abbey church, now called the tomb of St. Columba, is, as we have seen, in all probability the remains of the oratory in which the shrine of St. Columba was kept, and to which it must have been restored when the parents of St. Cadroë passed the night in prayer and fasting before it. And this connection with Iona is further indicated; for, when the boy reaches an age to require more advanced instruction, he is sent to Armagh, the metropolitan town of Ireland, to be further trained, at a time when, as we have seen, the abbacy of Iona was under the rule of the abbot of Armagh.