Lawi-ok — The Cathach of St. Columba. 303 



supposition raises a fresh difficulty in O'Donnell's narrative. For it may be 

 asked, How can we believe that St. Finnian supported the Pagan hosts by 

 his prayers ? And in other records of the battle he is not named as having 

 taken part in it. It is, indeed, quite possible that this incident is a later 

 addition. It would be suggested by the tradition that the contest originated 

 in the quarrel between Columba and Finnian. But it should not be forgotten 

 that even in a battle which was essentially a contest between Christianity 

 and Paganism, individual Christians might have fought on the pagan side. 

 It was so at the battle of Clontarf,' when the hostility between Christian and 

 Pagan was probably more acute than in the sixth century. 



But it is argued that in making the battle of Cul Dremhne the cause of 

 Columba's "pilgrimage," O'Donnell contradicts Adamnan. " Adamnan," 

 writes Dr. Skene,^ " had no idea that Columba was actuated by any other 

 motive than that of a desire to carry the Gospel to a pagan nation, when he 

 attributes his pilgrimage to a love of Christ (pro Chrisio peregrinari uolens.)" 



One may, perhaps, venture to say that Dr. Skene's remark is scarcely 

 warranted by the words on which it is professedly based — " pro Christo pere- 

 grinari uolens."' For there is nothing in them which necessarily suggests 

 missionary zeal. The verb peregrinor does not do so. St. Brendan of 

 Clonfert, " not unmindful of the command given to Abraham, ' Get thee out 

 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a 

 land that I will show thee,' ardently desired to go on pilgrimage {peregre 

 proficisci)."^ But in the accounts of the voyage which was the accomplish- 

 ment of this desire there is no record that he preached the Gospel. His 

 quest was " a place of retirement amidst the ocean waves."" And in the 

 course of his wanderings he visited an old man living in pilgrimage in a 

 small island, who was certainly not a missionary." St. Columbanus also, 

 stirred as Brendan had been by the command to Abraham, went on 

 pilgrimage ;' but when he left Bangor, as Kruseh has shown," the conversion 

 of the heathen had only a secondary place in his thoughts. Many foreigners 

 came to Ireland as pilgrims, just as many Irish pilgrims went to Eome,' but 



1 Todd, " War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill," pp. 165, 191, 209. 



2 Skene, p. 183. 



^ Adamnan, Praef . 2. 



■•Vita Prima, 12 : Plummer, vol. i, p. 103. He and his companions are called pilgrims 

 in ^ 76 (p. 139), and in the Irish Life (Stokes), p. 259. 



^Plummer, vol. i, p. cxxii. Compare Irish Life, p. 252. 



"Irish Lite, p. 259. Cp. Vita Prima, 75 (p. 138). 



' Vita, i. 7 (B. Kruseh, " lonae Vitae Sanctorum," Hannovorae et Lipsiae, 1905, 

 p. 159). 



6 OjK cit., p. 33. 



^ Stokes, p. oviii. 



