224 HAUNTS OF THE SHEARWATER 



Great Skellig, where St. Finian, the friend and tutor of 

 Colurnba, with a few kindred spirits, settled in the days 

 when the object of the most devoted churchman was 

 ' not to draw, but to escape from congregations.' 



Their dry-stone beehive cells and oratories, inlaid 

 with white quartz crosses, and looking from below like 

 a cluster of upside-down Martins' nests; the gardens, 

 and wells which never run dry ; and the rudely-chipped 

 stones of the little banked-up graveyard, still stand in 

 carpets of thrift and stonecrop at the edge of the cliff 

 500 feet above the sea, much as they must have been 

 when, twelve hundred years ago, 'because of the ex- 

 treme blakeness of the scite and hazard of going to 

 and from/ the monastery was deserted for the more 

 convenient Ballinskelligs on the mainland opposite. 

 The chief colonists since then have been rabbits and 

 sea-birds. 



Under the slabs of the rude staircase which zig-zags 

 up the south-east face of the rock, laid, probably, four- 

 teen hundred years or more ago by long-forgotten 

 monks, Shearwaters and their smaller cousins, Storm 

 Petrels, nest in great numbers. 



A Puffin on the morning of our visit had laid an egg, 

 still warm when we found it, in a crack over the door 

 of the outer oratory, and half-way up the steps lay a 

 Storm Petrel with oil still fresh-running from mouth 

 and nostril. 



Change-grooves are apt to run in circles, and if the 

 Church crisis, which has lately loomed large in the 

 newspaper columns, becomes much more acute, some 



