St Columba

Iona Abbey today

In 563AD, a forty two year old Irish monk sailed to Scotland. He passed the Mull of Kintyre, Gigha, Islay and Jura, Colonsay and Oronsay, before, only when the mountains of Ireland had at least receeded beyond the horizon, settling on Iona and founding a monastery. According to legend he had been convicted in Ireland of copying a book without its owner’s permission, a dispute which led to a vicious battle. For dabbling in such secular matters, he was banished by the Celtic church, and thus arrived in Scotland with his twelve disciples, bringing Christianity to Britain.

Columba (Colum Cille in his own language, Gaelic) was a political figure as well as a religious one and travelled quite widely in Scotland, though there is no definite historical record of his activities on Skye. Be that as it may, the island is full of legends and tales of the saint and his miracles. Macleod’s Tables are known in Gaelic as Healabhal Mhor and Bheag, which may come from the Norse ‘helgi’ – holy. The legend is that when Columba came to the area the hills had pointed summits. Columba found no hospitality from the locals and was denied shelter by the chief, upon which the earth shook and the summits of the two hills had been flattened – to become a bed and table for Columba. More historically plausible is that he was said to have founded a monastery on an island in a loch at Kilmuir. The lake, Eilean a Loch, was the largest freshwater loch on Skye before being drained in the seventeenth century, but there are still ruins of monastic cells to be seen on the site of the old island, though they are very difficult to reach as they are surrounded by marshland today.

Columba’s journey from Ireland was repeated by further Celtic saints, and St Donan (who founded his monastery on Eigg), St Moluag (monastery at Lismore) and St Maelrubha (monastery at Applecross) gave their names to places on Skye. But, following the Synod of Whitby in 1664 which decided in favour of the Roman church’s dating of Easter and against that of the Celts, the Celtic church went into a long decline.