Voyage to Iona

BELL CHIMES

HYMN

Tonight, we're remembering the journey of Colmcille.

And I want us just to pause for a moment on silence, as we remember...

..We thank you for Colmcille and...

And then, another beautiful poem

we have written.

"My Derry, my little oak grove.

"My dwelling and my little cell.

"O, eternal God, in heaven above,

"Woe to him who violates it!"

Colmcille's idea of the journey

on which some of you are about to embark

was an idea whose time had come,

and he pursued it with steadfastness and great bravery.

COLUMBA'S POEM

Let's go!

Disappointed not getting away this morning.

Though I have to sit here,

it was predicted that the wind will be blowing too strong

from the wrong direction.

The good thing, and what gives me heart,

tomorrow morning, we'll get away,

and the wind will be favourable for us.

'Please listen... The course that we're running today.

'Get across the...'

HE SINGS IN IRISH GAELIC

We're actually leaving Ireland, Rathlin Island,

and making a passage across the Channel to Scotland.

We're not going onto mainland Scotland,

we're going to an island called Islay.

It can be quite rough out here but, as you can see,

today is anything but that.

It's absolutely oily, flat calm.

This morning, we got a forecast for a bit of wind out of the south,

and it was there when we left the harbour this morning at Rathlin,

but it has died away completely, unfortunately.

THEY SHOUT

We have lost any wind we'd hoped for,

but we're making about sort of three and a half or four knots

here on the rower.

So we're covering the ground.

COLUMBA'S POEM

THEY LAUGH

I see you found my beauty case!

SHE CHUCKLES

THEY CHUCKLE

There's a spiritual dimension to all of this.

And I'm sure we're moving, you know, in the spirit of Colmcille.

The spiritual power is with us,

so I'd like to think that we will be finishing

and we will achieve what we set out to achieve - get off to Iona.

COLUMBA'S POEM

REPEAT PRAYER

REPEAT PRAYER

Peace be with you.

ALL: And with your spirit.

Good evening, everyone.

ALL: Good evening, father.

We're gathered here this evening on this feast day of St Columba,

here, in St Columba's Church...

THEY SING A HYMN

THEY SING IN IRISH GAELIC

COLUMBA'S POEM

Just throw it on the boat and you're ready to go.

HE CHUCKLES

THEY CHUCKLE

The last leg of the journey was quite a short leg,

just over ten miles, from Uisken Bay, which is on the south side of Mull.

Beautiful wee place, we pulled out of there, off the coast to land.

We had a bit of wind on the front of the boat, which we were expecting.

And then, we went up into a famous wee anchorage there

called the Tinkers Hole.

Beau... It's almost Caribbean-like in there.

HE CHUCKLES

OK, stop rowing!

BAGPIPE PLAYING

This hillfort is thought to have been one of the most important,

if not THE most important, political centre in the Scottish part

of the Kingdom of Dal Riata,

the kingdom within which Iona was founded in 563 AD.

So insofar as Columba dealt with the kings of Dal Riata

in their Scottish basis,

this is thought to have been the place

where he is most likely to have come.

Would you think that people here

would have known anything about Colmcille,

the people he belonged to back in Ireland?

Would have they had any understanding

of what was going on in Ireland?

Dal Riata is a kingdom that spans both the western part of Scotland

and the northern part of county Antrim, in Ireland.

And there's a lot of reasons to think that actually the kings of Dal Riata

spent quite a lot of time in the north of Ireland,

and they would have known the political geography

and the ins and outs of politics in the north of Ireland.

And, of course, Columba came from a very important family in the north of Ireland,

and it's inconceivable to me that these kings wouldn't have known his family

and wouldn't have known his kinsmen, who were kings.

There has been some dispute down the centuries about who exactly gave Iona to Colmcille.

Some people have said it might have been the Picts,

who, I suppose, lived in that direction.

But otherwise, Dal Riata...

What is your own view? What do you think are the facts?

Well, you're right. There's an 8th-century, very famous 8th-century account

from the English historian Bede that says that the island was given to Columba by the king of the Picts

as a result of or in connection with the conversion of the Picts to Christianity.

But the Iona Record which survives says

that a monastery was given to Columba

by the king of Dal Riata, Conall, son of Comgaill.

And there's no reason really to doubt the earlier tradition,

which is Iona's own tradition,

but it seems to me that the Dal Riata foundation is the most likely.

THEY SING

It was quite a dramatic entrance into the Sound of Iona -

the abbey is right in front of you.

The guys really got excited there

when they saw their goal within sight.

We have it, lads, we have it!

CLAPPING

HE SHOUTS

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Congratulations.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Hip, hip!

-Hurrah!

-Hip, hip!

-Hurrah!

-Hip, hip!

-Hurrah!

We give thanks for those who have voyaged to Iona

from the lands of Colmcille.

So we remember those who brought the gospel to these lands

and whose sails and abbeys were closed to wind and sea.

You have been faithful, oh, God, to your people through the ages.

And here we pledge our continuing friendship.

Amen.

# The peace of the Earth be with you

# The peace of the heavens too

# The peace of the Earth be with you

# The peace of the heavens too

# The peace of the rivers Be with you

# The peace of the oceans too

# Deep peace falling over you

# God's peace growing in you. #

James, as a Scottish historian, how important was Iona?

I would say it's one of the two or three most important religious centres

in these islands, in Britain or Ireland.

In the period, you know, Canterbury and Clonmacnoise possibly, and Iona,

they're all sort of at the very top of the list of important places

in terms of the cultural influence,

in terms of the political influence that they had,

in terms of the kind of reach.

This is one of the only churches

that has a reach both into Britain and into Ireland,

so it's very important.

And speaking of course about the records,

we have the annals that, as far as we know, began here in Iona.

This is very important for Irish historians

and Scottish historians as well, of course.

Yes, absolutely, yes. For whatever reason, the Iona Chronicle,

that was maintained in the 7th century and the 8th century here,

became the foundation of all of the mediaeval chronicles of Ireland

and possibly outside of Ireland, as well.

And so, if that hadn't happened,

then, our understanding of Irish history and Scottish history would be very different.

Why do think this place became so important?

One of the factors is the...

In the earliest phase, anyway, the men who led this monastery

were people from very important and very well-connected families from Ireland.

In addition to that,

they had the support of some of the most influential

and significant political leaders in this area.

So what do you think the kind of historical legacy of Colmcille and Iona was?

Columba and Iona go together. Columba founds Iona

and I think, in a sense, really, his legacy flows through Iona.

The bishops of the isles, some of them, were buried here.

They thought this was a place where important people should be buried

and various dignitaries and worthies form aristocratic families in the islands, and from Ireland,

and from Scandinavia were all buried here.

There are legends that early Scottish kings were buried here,

which are much more difficult to substantiate.

But the bottom line is that Iona towered

in the mindset and in the perceptions

of the political elites and the ecclesiastical elites of Scotland.

COLUMBA'S POEM

Gilbert, I suppose this is what we call the dining room

of the Augustinian monastery of Inchcolm.

Cos Inchcolm is really Inis Colm.

It's the island of Columba and, clearly, there's been a dedication.

We don't know when this dedication first appeared.

I think it first appears in the 12th century.

So older than this monastery that we are in now?

This is a later rebuild of an earlier monastery.

Of course, we are on the east coast of Scotland here.

Somebody would find that surprising,

but Columba's influence really spread right through Scotland.

-It really did. And out of Scotland into what is now England...

-Yeah.

..into Northumbria, as it then was the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the north east of England.

-Down the road towards Lindisfarne, in fact, Iona's daughter house...

-Yeah.

..there's Abbey St Bathans, and Baithene is the second abbot of Iona,

who only ruled for a year, but he was the second abbot.

So we can maybe see this not as a territorial expansion,

but as a linear expansion of Columban influence.

All these dedications of Columba's followers

all over Scotland and the north of England sort of feeds the Irish tradition

that Columba came here to convert the Scots.

Columba came here, he came to Argyle, to the west coast of Scotland,

from a Gaelic-speaking political, cultural environment

to another Gaelic-speaking political, cultural environment.

And there's no reason to suppose that the Gaels of Scotland

were any different in their religion from their cousins in Ireland.

If you were to attempt to write a life of Colmcille,

could you pull if off, could you do it?

I could. It'd be great, and it would be about 14 lines as long.

The fullest record we have that was detailed,

a narrative record we have of Colmcille, is Adomnan, his successor,

who's writing 100 years after Colmcille died.

What he tells us about Colmcille I think should be read

as much about himself and how he sees his role.

To give an example, he describes a young woman

being chased across a plain by some violent creature,

comes to Columba and hides under his cloak

and this persecutor of the innocents spears the young woman under Columba's cloak and she dies.

Columba curses him and laments that his honour, the honour of God,

had been violated by this man.

Now, this persecutor of the innocents,

it may be that Columba did actually protect people who were being persecuted,

but Adomnan wrote a law called the Lex Innocentium,

the Law Of The Innocents,

specifically devised to protect women and children and clergy

from violence in a very violent world.

The metaphor of Columba's cloak providing protection

for a defenceless creature and being violated

is exactly what the law is about.

Now, should we see this as a historical memory of real St Columba

or should we see it as Adomnan's sense of who he is

and what his task is as Columba's successor?

So, in a sense, all we know of Columba...

-..I hesitate to say this, he's really a fiction of Adomnan's imagination.

-Yeah.

This is St John's Cross here, it's only a replica of the original,

the original is now broken and in the museum at the back of the monastery.

But we think that this cross,

which was made about 750 or thereabouts,

is the first of the Celtic, true Celtic crosses which has the ring.

And it was really put...

The cross itself was a composite made of a number of bits of stone

and the ring was put in as a later addition to support the arms.

So these are extremely important in the history of,

if you like, Celtic art, Irish art, the art of these islands.

BELLS CHIME

COLUMBA'S POEM

I know the calendar can have its own sensibilities

in this part of the world,

but it is an honour to address you

on such an auspicious day, the 9th June.

This is the feast day of St Columba,

who very specially symbolises the historic linkages

and deep bonds between Britain and Ireland.

Born a prince in Donegal, exiled in Iona

and honoured today in the Central Lobby of the Palace of Westminster,

his monks provided not just an Irish national treasure,

the Book of Kells,

but also a British national treasure, the Lindisfarne Gospels.

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