Saint Columba and the ‘golden age’ of ancient Dalriada

Last week, I explained that, with respect and affection, I am dedicating this series to a great Scot and lover of our history, Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond.

The memorial service at St Giles’ Cathedral on Saturday was appropriate and fitting for the man who I believe will one day be seen as the harbinger of the regaining of our independence. Thanks to all who helped to organise the service and congratulations to all who took part. Now let’s get on with the history because that is what Alex would want.

I will continue my tale of Dalriada of the Scoti today, and in the weeks to come I will write about the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, then Strathclyde of the Britons, Galloway of the Gaels and the Norse kingdom that comprised Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, Caithness, part of the west coast and the Isle of Man.

READ MORE: Dalriada of the Scoti, an ancient kingdoms where Scotland began

Though I consider it to be Anglo-Saxon in origin, I have done my research and will add Bernicia in the south-east of the country to make it a round half-dozen, and thanks to reader Frank Spratt for suggesting it.

As I always point out, I am a writer about history and not a professional historian and always try to acknowledge original sources of material but there are not a lot of contemporaneous accounts of Dalriada – except for one major memoir, as we shall see. I showed last week how this lost ancient kingdom began in Ireland and involved a people later named as Scoti by the Romans occupying the province of Britannia.

The Gaelic-speaking Scoti were intrepid seafarers and feared warriors but they had not moved out of Ireland much before the middle of the 4th century. By the end of the 5th century, they had settled in what is now Argyll – a name which means coast of the Gaels – where Fergus Mor became “ri” or king of the Scoti.

It took some decades to sort out the governance of Dalriada, but eventually there were three subdivisions – the Cenél nGabráin named after a grandson of Fergus Mor comprised Kintyre, Cowal and probably Bute and Arran; the Cenél Loairne, covered Lorn, Ardnamurchanand Mull; and the Cenél nOengusa comprised Islay and Jura. Later on, the Cenél Comgall came along and they took charge of Bute and Cowal.

Fergus Mor (above) made his capital at Dunadd, a hill fort dating from prehistoric times near Kilmartin. Other main fortifications were created at Dunollie just north of Oban and Dunaverty at Southend, the southernmost tip of Kintyre.

Dunadd was still at the centre of all things Dalriadan when one of the greatest Irishmen of all time arrived in Dalriada.

There is simply no understating the importance of St Columba of Iona to the development of this nation of ours. Given his traditional birth date of December 5, 521, it is astonishing to think that Columba was already in his 40s when he and 12 companions arrived at Dunaverty in 563.

BORN into a noble family in what is now Donegal, it is likely that he was known by another name before adopting Colm Cille as his religious name – it means dove of the church, while Columba is also derived from the Latin for dove.

As a youth, Columba had entered the monastic school at Movilla near Newtownards in what is now County Down, and here was his first link to Scotland as the school’s founder Finnian had studied under St Ninian in Galloway.

A different Finnian founded Clonard Abbey and became Columba’s chief mentor – such was Finnian of Clonard’s influence on the early church in Ireland that Columba and 11 other students would become known as the 12 Apostles of Ireland.

We owe much of our knowledge of Columba to the “Life” written by Abbot Adomnan (Eunan) of Iona, who wrote it about 100 years after Columba lived. Adomnan’s book was a hagiography but does contain sufficient facts that I have no reason to doubt most of his assertions about Columba, and it is also an extremely useful source of information on Dalriada.

Tall, powerfully built and a mesmeric preacher, Columba moved around Ireland converting thousands to Christianity and founding several religious institutions such as a monastery at Derry. He eventually decided to start a mission to Scotland, which at that time had a few scattered pockets of Christianity as a result of missionaries from St Ninian’s foundation in Galloway and monks from Ireland.

The Picts who occupied the north and east of the land were still following pagan rites and Columba became determined to convert the Pictish tribes – a difficult task as they did not speak Gaelic or Latin, as far as we know, because the Pictish language itself has long been lost.

We don’t know exactly what sparked his move to Dalriada but tradition has it that he fell out with Finnian of Movilla over a copy of a psalter. This feud escalated and may even have caused a battle in which many men died.

He was also involved in an incident where he gave sanctuary to a local noble who had fatally injured an opponent during a game of hurling, only for the local sub-king to ignore the rules of sanctuary and execute Columba’s guest.

Whether through shame at these events or because he was called to what became known to historians as the Hiberno-Scottish mission, Columba and his companions made for Dalriada where his kinsman, Conall mac Comgaill, then the King of Dalriada, gave him the island of Iona. In short order, Columba founded his monastery and school, the latter becoming very famous for its literary work.

Thanks to Adomnan, we know that Columba wasted no time in beginning his work as a missionary to the Picts and as well as the numerous miracles he performed – including the banishment of a murderous monster to the depths of Loch Ness – Columba and his missionaries appear to have been successful in their work.

The saint himself seems to have been responsible for the conversion of Bridei, King of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu.

Iona’s role as Dalriada’s main centre of literacy in the sixth and seventh centuries meant the Scoti were a more advanced people than the Picts and the other tribes around Scotland.

The people of Dalriada were also trading with other parts of these islands and beyond – artefacts of continental origin have been found around Kilmartin and Dunadd.

Another legacy of Columba’s insistence on education and literacy is the extraordinary Book of Kells, often described as Ireland’s greatest treasure but which was begun on Iona in the late eighth century.

By the time of his death on Iona on June 9, 597, at the age of 75, Columba had been principally responsible for the conversion to Christianity of most of Dalriada and Fortriu, and it was monks from Iona, principally St Aidan, who founded Lindisfarne Abbey in 634.

As Holy Island, it would become one of the greatest centres of Christianity for centuries while many other “daughter” houses across these isles emanated from Iona.

If you want evidence of Columba’s legacy, consider that Iona Abbey was the burial ground of most of Scotland’s kings for centuries and just look at the many churches, schools and other places named after him, including St Columba’s Hospice in Edinburgh.

READ MORE: The story of the King of Scots that never was

He was also for a time acclaimed as the patron saint of Scotland and his relics were contained in the Brechbennoch that was carried by the Scots at the battle of Bannockburn – it is now known as the Monymusk Reliquary and is in the National Museum of Scotland.

Columba’s life and activities coincided with the start of what historians now term as the “golden age” of Dalriada. That epoch, however, contained the start of conflicts that would doom Dalriada.

There is no doubt that under King Áedán mac Gabráin who reigned from around 574 to 609, Dalriada was at its most powerful. It ruled the sea off the west coast of Britain and raided as far north as Orkney and as far south as the Isle of Man.

We know quite a lot about the king because he is mentioned in the Life of Columba by Adomnan, and there are other sources in the Irish chronicles and even in the ancient Welsh annals where he was given the nickname “the wily”.

Áedán mac Gabráin certainly seems to have had ambitions to expand his Scottish kingdom, and at the same time the Irish part of Dalriada was beginning to fade out of importance. The trouble for King Áedán was that Dalriada was hemmed in by the kingdoms around it, Fortriu of the Picts to the north and east, and what later became Strathclyde to the south, a Brythonic kingdom centred on Alt Clut, or Dumbarton as we know it – the name means fort of the Britons.

Occupying what is now the south-east of Scotland and what is now Northumberland was the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia whose king Aethelfrith wanted to seize the Brythonic territories to his west.

The only way to stop him was to fight him, and according to the Venerable Bede, in the year 603 Áedán mac Gabráin led an army, presumably consisting of his warrior Gaels and the Britons of Strathclyde, to confront Aethelfrith at a place called Degsastan.

As there are absolutely no archaeological remains of this battle, we do not know where it took place, but it is reasonable to assume that it happened somewhere in what is now the Scottish Borders.

Even allowing for Bede’s bias, it is clear that the Bernicians won the battle and that Áedán mac Gabráin’s army was decimated. But it was something of a pyrrhic victory for Aethelfrith as he suffered the loss of his brother and many of his troops so that he seems to have stayed in Bernicia and only occasionally raided outside his own kingdom.

Áedán mac Gabráin for his part maintained an uneasy peace with his neighbours and seems to have gone on ruling Dalriada until his death which is recorded as having happened in 609. His successors were perhaps more warlike but certainly not warriors in the class of mac Gabráin, and his grandson Domnall Brech is recorded as having lost vital battles in the 630s.

There is also some evidence of internal strife within Dalriada with its sub-kings in charge of the four divisions of the territory. The Cenél nGabráin and the Cenél Comgall were the dominant factions but with Iona’s abbots siding with the former, the Cenél nGabráin became de facto rulers of Dalriada.

The history of Dalriada took many twists and turn in the late 7th and early 8th centuries, with the kingdom at one point becoming a client state of King Oswy of Northumbria.

The Picts of Fortriu, about whom I will write next week, were also becoming much more interested in their neighbours, both through conquest – the Pictish king Oengus mac Fergus is said to have taken over Dalriada in the 730s – and intermarriage.

However it happened, the Scoti and the Picts became closer, so much so that the Gaelic language began to become dominant across the land north of the Forth and Clyde.

The influence and power of Dalriada had been on the wane for more than a century when in 843 King Kenneth mac Alpin welded the Scoti and the Picts together to form a new joint kingdom which became Alba, forerunner of the Scotland we know and love today.