Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. If you want to understand the birth of Scotland, then you need to know the midwife. Now in BBC's 'Call the Midwife' they're nuns, but this one was a Monk, so I've brought you to Dunkeld Cathedral to tell you about the
Monk who made Scotland, and yes St Columba died 250 years before Scotland existed, so how could he have been the Monk that made Scotland? Well, fifteen hundred years after his death, we still have Catholic schools called St Columba, Protestant stained glass windows to him and whether you call it Londonderry or Derry, both Episcopalian Protestant and Catholic churches in that town are named after him. He's the most revered Saint in Scotland after St Andrew;
he's one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, inspired the monastery at Lindisfarne and even has a Lutheran Parish in England named after him. I think it's safe
to say that his influence went beyond the grave. Look, if you're interested in Scottish history, then hit the subscribe button at the bottom right hand side of the screen. Then you have to click the notification bell so that YouTube will tell you when I release new videos. In the meantime, let me tell you a story of the Saint of Scotland's birth. Liam McNamara did the fantastic drone work for this video, but when I asked him he'd never heard of St Columba. Now when a guy called Liam McNamara has never heard of a saint and a guy with a Presbyterian background takes two days to realise it's funny, you know that we're from Perth and not Glasgow. Now I don't need to know where you're from, but I would really like to know if you'd already heard about St Columba, if you're hearing these stories for the first time, or if you just never thought about him in this particular way, tell me in the comments section below. So the life of Columba. Born in 521 AD in Donegal, I always knew him as St Columba until I went to learn Gaelic and then I heard the name Colm Cille, the dove of the church, Colm Cille. He was quite posh you know, highborn in the line of Kings of Ireland no less, great-grandson of the famous Nial of the Nine Hostages, and royal blood of the northern half of the O'Nial family, they'd fight back and forth contesting kingship with the southern O'Nials as later Celtic Kings like Macbeth and Duncan would do right here in their turn. If this was Game of Thrones his house would be in the opening credits. Kingship would probably have come to him later in life but he chose the stone floors, poor food, and asceticism of a Monk. He studied under a couple of guys both called St Finian. He studied, he copied psalms and scriptures, oh wait till you hear about that controversy! He founded monasteries, performed miracles, and intervened in high affairs, but he still had the common touch to be loved by
all. Now here in Scotland we know of him because of his impact on our Pictish, Pagan ancestors, but we'll come to that later on. St Columba arrived in what we call Argyle around 563 AD with 12 pals. Now some say he came as a missionary to the Picts, some say that he came to minister to the already Christian Gaels of Dàl Riada, and others say that he came for isolation, but I have it on good authority and I'll tell you, because I know you're not a gossip, although if you shared this video it would be a great help! Anyway, don't say you heard that from me, but I was on Iona recently, and a really old, very white faced, almost translucent Monk told me what actually happened. Colm Cille had already established several monasteries in Ireland and he wanted them all to have accurate Bibles. Well years before his old teacher and mentor Finian had brought back a precious Bible from pilgrimage in Rome Colm Cille thinks I'll go to Finian's
monastery and he'll let me copy the book. Well his second sight couldn't have been working that day because you'll never guess, oh you did Finian said no, but what? He only wanted to copy it. Columba couldn't see what the problem was, so after dark when all the other Monks were in bed, he crept down to the chapel with ink, quill and parchment, and started to intricately copy the book in the gloaming light of a candle. Now there was no way that he was going to be able to copy the whole Bible so he just decided to copy the Psalms. Night after night he gave up his sleep to copy out the Psalm book in secret. Each successive night the struggle became harder, as weariness bore him down, but the wondrous light of his goal drew him on. Now one night, a young Monk saw the candlelight coming from the church, and he looked through a crack in the door to see Colm Cille dutifully copying. The young Monk went back to report to Finian. Now Finian knew what a grand job Colm Cille would make of the psalter, and he said nothing until the day that Colm Cille was due to leave, then he revealed that Colm Cille had copied the book without his permission, or knowledge and the beautifully transcribed book must stay. Well you can imagine!
Neither man was going to budge! Eventually somebody suggested that they go to the highest earthly authority, Dermait, the King of Tara. Now Dermait might have been from the southerner O'Neils, but you still call him Colm Cille's cousin. That, combined with the fact that he was clearly in the right, meant that Colm Cille felt pretty confident. Now I can't tell you how long
the deliberation lasted, I can't tell you whether competing family claims, concern for feuds, the Solomonic wisdom, or the toss of a coin we're determining factors, but Dermait stated his conclusion, thus the calf belongs to the cow, as such, the copy belongs to the original and it must stay. The low down, dirty cattle rustler! Colm Cille stormed out in a fury, but he was
still a man of God and these things can be healed with time, and the invention of the printing press, but before much time had passed Dermait had a great games, I suppose the ancestor of Highland Games, where warriors would compete in strength and manly prowess, but in the process high spirits and ultimately anger led to one of the northern O'Nails hitting one of the southern O'Nails with such a blow that it killed him. Now, before revenge could be sought, the young lad headed for the sanctuary of the monastery of his kinsmen Colm Cille. Now, the tradition of sanctuary was respected by everyone, but Dermait arrived at the monastery, dragged the young man out of the sanctuary and had him killed on the spot to avenge his child. This was another outrage against Colm Cille. It was an affront to custom, and an offence against God. Colm Cille headed north to ask his kin group if they would face such an insult. They wouldn't. The two armies met at the Battle of Cul Dreimhne with Colm Cille standing on the side-lines, his arms raised to heaven in protection of
his people, so that whilst Dermait lost 3,000 men, the losses of the northern O'Nails were few. Now needless to say there was a public inquiry. The upshot was that Colm Cille was set the task of saving as many souls as he'd caused to be lost, but where was he gonna find enough sinners? That's right, Scotland! Now I say Scotland,
Scotland didn't actually exist at the time. When he came across the Irish Sea to Kintyre, he wasn't going from one country to another. Watch my video 'How Scotland got its Borders'. Now I don't have time to cover it all here. I'll leave a link at the end, but back in the 6th Century what's now Scotland was made up of four kingdoms; the southwest were Britons, southeast were Saxons, north east were the Picts and what we'd call Argyle was Dàl Riata, part of a kingdom that stretched across the Irish Sea and took in Hebridean Islands in the northern part of Ireland, so for Colm Cille coming across that stretch of water wasn't an emigration so much as a commute. Now obviously he had contacts and Conall MacComgaill, King of Dàl Riata gave him Iona to build his monastery on what was effectively the edge of Ireland. When Connal died, Columba consecrated Aedan mac Gabrain, another powerful Dalriadan King. Now when he moved from Dàl Riata, up the Great Glen to Inverness, or down to the mountains of Lorne to Tayside, that's when he moved to another land where a translator was needed to talk to the Picts. Now the Irish, the Gaels, Dalriadan Scots were part of one people, separated by the Irish Sea, and the Picts were similarly one people separated by the Cairngorm mountains. You'd the people Fortriu in the north and the people of Athol or
Tay here in the south. James E Fraser's book from Caledonia to Pictland covers the academics of it, and there's a link in the description. there's a link to Alex Woolf’s book from Pictland to Alba too. As our title suggests this was the birth of Scotland. Now the links are there if you want an academic read. I'm just here for the gossip. Colm Cille headed up the Great Glen to meet with the Pictish King. On the way he met the Loch Ness monster! Did you know that the first documented sight of the Loch Ness monster was recorded in the life of St Columba he was the birth of
Scotland. Anyway they're heading up the Great Glen to convert the Picts and they're coming along Loch Ness and some Pagan Picts were having a funeral. 'Who's the funeral for?' says Colm Cille. Oh for the guy who got eaten by the monster in the loch. Now I'm assuming that there were bits left that hadn't been eaten. I wasn't there at the time, so Colm Cille sees an opportunity to demonstrate the power of his God and he says to one of his followers go on, take off your cassock and swim in the loch. 'Why would I do that?' says the follower. 'Well' says Colm Cille, 'it'll lure the monster'. 'Right enough', says his follower, that makes sense and he jumps in the water, and sure enough up comes the monster just as a seabeast's about to take a bite, St Columba lifts his staff and says, 'Be gone!', and the monster disappeared back into the deep and ever since Nessie has been nervous
about coming up to the surface. He did other miracles; he cast a demon out
of a bucket of milk and made stilton cheese. When the King of the Picts barred the doors of his fort, Colm Cille made the sign of the cross and the doors miraculously opened. These and other miracles persuaded the Picts of the power of his God, so Pictish standing stones started to have
crosses in their design. Now if you read the slightly academic book that I mentioned by James Fraser, you'll see that he questions whether Colm Cille really evangelized to the northern Picts or rather minister to southern Picts, who'd already come into contact with Christianity. Apparently he and St Mungo, the Patron Saint of Glasgow exchanged staffs further up the river here at Loch Tay. Irish writings tell us that he was the teacher who would teach the tribes of the Tay. His blessing turned them, the mouths of the fierce ones who lived in the Tay, to the will of the King. Columba is
heavily associated with this place. Now the stories of his miracles and ministry were written by Adomnan, he was born 45 years after Colm Cille died. Now that's actually quite soon compared with biographies of William Wallace or Robert the Bruce, which takes me back to the making of Scotland. You see Scotland was made when Dàl Riata and Pictland came together and very quickly the languages and culture of those early Colomban Christian Gaels of Dàl Riata
took over from the now disappeared culture of the Picts. That happened in the period between Columba's death and the coming of Kenneth McAlpin, a Pictish King with a Gaelic name. Now whether Columba proselytized the Picts in person with a piece of pickled pepper or whether it was the Monks that he trained, his influence on that cultural shift and assimilation was huge. Now the other huge impact on the formation of Scotland was of course the Vikings. In 802, Vikings first attacked Iona and raided the monastery built by Columba. Now they come back again and again and again. In 825, the Monk Blaathmac was martyred, killed for refusing to give the Vikings the
location of the shrine to Colm Cille. Iona was too exposed to these heathen and Columba's relics had to be moved. Now when Colm Cille had crossed Irish Sea to Dàl Riata, it was part
of the larger kingdom of the Gaels. When his relics were taken from Iona for protection, some were taken to Kells in County Meath, some were brought here to Dunkeld to what had been southern Pictland. The birth pangs of Alba were here. One of the most definitive and
forgotten battles in Scottish history was in 839. Vikings wiped out most of the Pictish nobility and into that space came Kenneth McAlpin. Columba's relics were brought here to Kenneth's chosen spiritual base in the new kingdom of Alba. Dunkeld would be the main church and new home of Columba in Scotland. Now academics will argue was Kenneth McAlpin really the first King of
Scots or was it his sons or grandsons who should technically be given the title? The point is that whether we look back to his children, grandchildren or Kenneth himself, they all look back to the Monk that made Scotland, St Columba, or as they would have called him Colm Cille. Now the Gaelic for devotee of Colm is Mael Colm, and there will be four kings called Malcolm, who would follow Kenneth McAlpin to the Scottish throne. Lots of folks still have Malcolm as surnames or as what we used to call Christian names. I hope that you now have a little more devotion to or at least knowledge of Colm Cille. Now you have to watch my video' How did
Scotland get its Borders' and feel free to support the channel in the description
below. Tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.
