rature of the
Highlanders,' "cannot be well understood apart from early
Irish literature. The ballads of the two countries describe
the same struggles, the characters engaging in the strife are
the same and bear the same names."

Curiously enough, if Scotland gave Ireland the saint that in course of
time became almost its national symbol,--Patrick,--Ireland in turn
gave Scotland its dearest saint,--Columba. He was born in 521, near
Temple Douglas (_Tulach-Dubh-glaise_); in 545 founded a church in
Derry; later, the famous church at Kells; and in 563, after some
jealousy had been at work against him, he left for Ireland, and after
pausing at Colonsay, he went on to Ia, now known the world over as
Iona. Iona has become now the _locus classici_ of the Gaelic, not
to say the whole Scottish race. Recently, a writer of profound
imagination, Miss Fiona Macleod, has dated from its lonely shores the
dedication of that impressive book 'The Sin-Eater, and Other Tales,'
showing how it still keeps for those of the true faith its old
effect:--

"I mo cridhe, i mo ghraidh,"
(Isle of my heart, isle of my love,)

as Columba is said to have called it. His followers, the little sacred
circle of twelve, 'the Family of Iona,' had to be militant with a
vengeance: Milesian--or soldiering--as well as cleric, in their work;
and the old traditions are full of references to their fight against
the Feinne and the house of Ossian. But having so far prevailed as
they did, they became in turn the chroniclers of the very things they
had fought against. So in a sense, and a very real one, Iona is the
first centre of the literature of the Scots Gaels to which we can
point. The total effect of Columba, or Columcill, upon Gaelic life and
literature, Irish and Scots, was immense indeed; to gather whose force
one must read in the 'Book of Deer' and the old Irish MSS. on the one
hand, and the Latin hymnology of the Celtic church on the other.

But in speaking of Columba let us not forget the tender and beautiful
figure of St. Bridget,--another of that mysterious train, including
Merlin and St. Patrick, which has associations with Strathclyde--

"Bonnie sweet St. Bride of the
Yellow, yellow hair!"

St. Bridget, the St. Mary of the Gael, whose story has been retold by
Miss Fiona Macleod in 'The Washer of the Ford,' may first be found
depicted by the side of Patrick and Columba in the famous antique
relic, the 'Domhnach Airgid,'