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Iona

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

O. G. S. Crawford
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Extract

Iona is a small island off the west coast of Scotland. It is famous throughout the world as the adopted home of Columba, the virtual founder of the Church of Scotland. It was in this island that he founded his monastery in 563 ; and it was from here that Aidan, the founder of Lindisfarne, came in 635 to christianize Northumbria. Thousands of tourists visit Iona every year, and are duly conducted round the ruins during the short hour or two allowed by the steamer’s call ; yet how many realize that, of the remains they see, not even the oldest came into existence until about 500 years after the death of Columba?

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 7 , Issue 28 , December 1933 , pp. 453 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1933

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References

1 Skene, Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, 1867, 6 Google Scholar

2 Duke, The CoZumban Church, 118 Google ScholarPubMed

3 New Statistical Account of Scotland, vol.7, 1745 part 2,p.316;Google Scholar quoted by Reeves, p.423 (from ‘ The Wodrow Manuscript, Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh ’).Google Scholar See also Analecta Scotica (Edinburgh, 1834) 1, 114.Google Scholar

4 Compare the Viking boat-burials referred to in the Report of the Royal Commission (Scotland), ‘The Outer Hebrides, Skye and the small isles’, H.M.S.O., 1928, no. 686 (Island of Canna), p.299,fig. 310.Google Scholar

5 Sic, for ‘same, in (between) ’?

6 Adamnan, Lib. I, cap. 7 (Reeves, 32).

7 Reeves, 363.

8 Adamnan, Lib. 11, cap. 45.

9 Reeves, 169– 70. 363,423.Google Scholar

10 Reeves, 293.

11 Reeves, 436.

12 Ritchie, 1930, 32.Google Scholar

13 Reeves, 422.

14 On the Ordnance Map (Argyllshire 104 SE) it is called Dun only; but the adjacent valley is called Cul Bhuirg. Professor Watson tells me that ‘bhuirg’ is the Norse equivalent of the Gaelic ‘dun ’.

15 p. 107.

16 Reeves, 419.

17 Reeves, 418.

18 The material is granite, and is foreign to the immediate vicinity. They are probably erratics.

19 Quoted by Reeves, 418, from Pennant, 111, 258.

20 This apparently is the building referred to by Skene, Celtic Scotland, 1877, 11, 298, note 58 :-‘It was carefully examined this summer (1876) by the author and Mr James Drummond, R.s.A., and some excavations they made disclosed the foundations of a rude stone oratory, about 26 feet long by 14 broad, the wall being two feet thick’. It is typical of the methods of the period that the only account of this ‘careful examination’ should be relegated to a footnote in an unillustrated book. Near here was found a ‘heart-shaped granite boulder, 20x15½ inches, and having a cross with a nimbus rather rudely sculptured on it ’. (James Drummond, in Proc. SOCA. nt. Scot. 1875,x , 615, fig. 2).

21 e.g. to that of Kells, in 1084 ; Reeves, 366, 367.

22 Reeves, 366, on the authorityof the Book of the Four Masters

23 Codex D, 13th century, reads ‘Cnocan na naingheal’ Reeves, , 218.Google Scholar

24 111, 258, quoted by Reeves, p. 423 (edition of 1790, vol. I, p. 298).

25 Codex D, 13th century, reads Anderson, A.O., Early Sources of Scottish History, 1922, 1, 45.Google Scholar

26 Reeves 24, 143, 361; Clapham, , English Romanesque Architecture before the conquest, 1930, 51; references cited in both instances.Google Scholar

27 27 Adamnan, Lib. 11, cap. 29 ‘ Nam idem frater, vallum egressus monasterii ’ …

28 111, z 58. ‘North from the granary extends a narrow flat, with a double dike and foss on one side, and a single dike on the other’ (edition of 1790, vol. I, 296)

29 Reeves came to the same conclusion on, apparently, slightly different grounds, 361.

30 Only from this hill of all the three could Columba have seen a rain cloud advancing over the sea from the north ; on the other hand ‘ munitio’ is usually applied by Adamnan to hills with artificial forts on them, such as those of Brude (Reeves 73, 150) , ‘munitio Cethirni’ (pp. 91, 93), ‘ munitio de Broichano ’ (p. 147). Probably it is, as Reeves suggests, simply a translation of the word ‘dun ’ which elsewhere usually (but not always) has this meaning. There are no traces of any fort on Dun I, and it is certain that no such fort ever existed there.

* Immediately after this Martin says :-‘ A little further to the West lie the black Stones, which are so call’d, not from their Colour, for that is grey, but from the Effects that Tradition says ensued upon Perjury, if any one became guilty of it after swearing on these Stones in the usual manner ; for an Oath made on them was decisive in all Controversies’. I do not know to what stones he is referring ; perhaps someone with local knowledge may be able to discover them ?

31 Celtic Scotland, 1877, 11, 299.Google Scholar

32 Celtic Place-names of Scotland,, 1926, 87–90.Google Scholar

33 Anderson, A.O., Early Sources of Scottish History,, 1922, 1, 45;Google Scholar quoting from Whitley Stokes Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore p. 30[Anecdota Oxoniensia, Medieval and Modern Series, part 5, Oxford, 1890].Google Scholar

34 Adamnan mentions a cross stuck in a quern (molari infixa lapidi) ; but this was probably a wooden ‘staff-rood ’ (the name and suggestion are the late Mr W. G.Collingwood’s, see his Northumbrian Crosses, 1927, 5).Google Scholar