136 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ Vou. LIT. 
them to the faith of Christ. They are dwellers by the northern mountains. 
and their king gave him the Island which is called li, Iona. Therein are 
few hides of land, as men say. There Columba built a Monastery, and 
he was Abbot there thirty-seven years, and there he died when he was 
seventy-two years old.” 
The ecclesiastical influence and government of St. Columba extended 
very widely. The names of no less than thirty-seven Churches are given 
which were founded by him in Ireland, and in which his memory was 
specially venerated. [In Londonderry, Sligo, Louth, Kildare, Dublin 
Longford, Kilkenny, Galway, and other portions of Ireland, Churches and. 
Monasteries were founded by Columba, so that a very large portion of 
Ireland was visited by him, and acknowledged his ecclesiastical supre- 
macy. In the kingdom of the Scots, there were thirty Churches or 
Chapels that were more or less intimately associated with the name of 
Columba. Among the Picts there were twenty-one Chapels with which 
Columba had a similar relationship. In the Orkney Isles, in Caithness, 
Sutherland, Nairn, Aberdeen, Inverness, Perth, Renfrew, throughout the 
Hebrides and other portions of Scotland, Churches were founded by 
Columba and his followers, or at least owed allegiance to the apostle of 
the Picts. From the fact, therefore, that the influence of Columba and 
his successors in the Abbacy of Iona, extended so widely over Ireland 
and Scotland, may we not with all fairness draw the inference—that the 
Irish and Scottish Gaels were thus brought very closely together ; that 
as they owed allegiance to the same ecclesiastical superiors, their litera- 
ture must have been largely identical; that the education which was given 
in the Irish and Scottish monasteries must have been very much the 
same; and that the Irish and Scottish Gaels were almost, if not in reality 
one people, having the same literature and speaking the same language? 
That conclusion which seems to be legitimate enough, derives strength 
from the consideration, that the abbots of Joza who came after Columba, 
were many of them at least of Irish birth, were educated in Ireland, and 
held honourable and responsible positions in the Churches and Monasteries 
of that country before they succeeded to the Abbacy of Iona. The 
annals of Ireland record the names of forty-nine abbots or Coarbs of 
Iona, who exercised the functions of that office from 565 or 563, when. 
Columba took possession of Iona, until 1198 or 1202, when the last 
abbot, Gzollacrist, of whom any reliable account is given, wielded the 
power of abbot. A radical change passed about that time over the 
ecclesiastical and political affairs of Scotland ; and with that change, the 
great supremacy of Iona ceased. 
For more than six hundred years, abbots of Irish birth and education 
