Columba

Went to Long Tower Primary School.

And then I went to St. Colm's.

So you were close to the school.

Typical...

from each other because it's just but so so that was it school went along to our boys club very much involved in that uh you know there you learn how to you know just when you're in a boys club whatever people were playing you played yeah with indoor football how did you get on

academic late school

well i often say it was a wasted opportunity right i mean you hit sort of talking in their parents but i i would have passed 11 plus so we went to st columns two of my older brothers where St. Colm's one went, the Strand Tech one went, the St. Joseph's and done fairly well but I done my own levels and now this is your first excuse of failure so I done my own levels in 1972 at that stage school wasn't what it meant and then I was arrested in 1972

72 was, I think, out of all the troubles, was the most atrocities and things that happened, wasn't it?

There is a wee hill, but has these stunning beaches.

And then you've got the history of the abbey there, the Iona Abbey that St. Columba founded.

Totally different atmosphere.

I loved it so much that first time that as I was planning the trip with my friend Mindy, who was just here, she hadn't been there.

I'm going to call upon two saints for this.

First is St. Columba.

Saint Columba, and I did an episode on this years ago, he is one of the first historical recordings of the Loch Ness Monster.

He was traveling to evangelize the pagans throughout Scotland.

The year is 565.

A missionary named Columba is traveling through the land of the Picts, in the far north of what is not yet Scotland.

Everything we know about this comes from a book called The Life of Saint Columba, written by the abbot Abdeman, roughly a century later.

which makes it by a wide margin the oldest written account of a monster in this water and notice please what the account actually is it is not a fisherman glimpsing a hump it is a funeral in progress columba and his followers arrive at the banks of the river ness the river that pours out of the lock to find the local people burying a man.

When they asked what happened, they are told, he was swimming, and a beast in the water seized him and savaged him and dragged him under.

The regularity with which the bands pass under and over, even in the most complicated patterns, is very remarkable and errors are rarely to be detected the spirals which occupy the four panels at the ends and sides of the frame are also typical of this school of art the firmness and accuracy of their drawing testify to the excellent eyesight as well as to the steady hand and technical skill of the artist The prevailing feature of Celtic ornament, as shown in illuminated manuscripts, is the geometrical nature of the designs.

The human figure when introduced into the native Irish books is absurdly grotesque, for its delineation seems to have been beyond the artist's skill, or, more correctly, to have lain in another category and to have belonged to a style distinct from that in which he excelled at a later period figure drawing became a marked characteristic of english decorated manuscripts and english artists attained to a high degree of skill in this branch of their art bright colours were employed in the irish manuscripts but gold and silver are conspicuous by their absence and did not appear in the manuscripts of these islands until celtic art had been touched by continental influence the tradition that the book of kells was written by the great st columba himself reminds us that at this period nearly all books were the handiwork of monks and ecclesiastics and in all monasteries the transcribing of the scriptures and devotional works was part of the established order of things columba we know was a famous scribe and took great pleasure in copying books he is said to have transcribed no less than three hundred volumes and all books written by him were believed to be miraculously preserved from danger by water as an instance of this adamnan relates the following story a book of hymns for the office of every day in the week, and in the handwriting of St. Columba, having slipped, with the leathern satchel which contained it, from the shoulder of a boy who fell from a bridge was immersed in a certain river in the province of the laguenians leinster this very book lay in the water from the feast of the nativity of our lord till the end of the paschal season and was afterwards found on the bank of the river uninjured and as clean and dry as if it had never been in the water at all and we have ascertained as undoubted truth continues adamnan from those who were well informed in the matter that the like things happened in several places with regard to books written by the hand of st and he adds that the account just given he received from certain truthful excellent and honourable men who saw the book itself perfectly white and beautiful after a submersion of so many days as we have stated by irish missionaries the art of book-writing was taught to britain chiefly through the school of lindisfarne where was produced the famous lindisfarne gospels or the book of st cuthbert This magnificent work, which is one of the choicest treasures of the British Museum, was as highly esteemed by its contemporaries as by ourselves, though perhaps not for quite the same reasons.

Tradition has it that when Lindisfarne was threatened by the Northmen and the monks had to fly, they took with them the body of St. Cuthbert in obedience to his dying behest, and this book.

they attempted to seek refuge in ireland but their boat had scarcely reached the open sea when it met a storm so violent that through the pitching of the little vessel the book fell overboard sorrowfully they put back but during the night st cuthbert appeared to one of the monks and ordered him to seek for the book in the sea on beginning their search they found that the tide had ebbed much further than it was wont to do and by going out about three miles they came upon the holy book not a whit the worse for its misadventure by this says the old historian were their hearts refreshed with much joy and the book was afterwards named in the priory rolls as the book of st cuthbert which fell into the sea This notable volume is an excellent example of Celtic book art in the beginning of its transition stage, a stage which marks the approach to the two schools which were the result of the combination of Celtic and continental influences in the hands of intelligent and skillful Anglo-Saxon scribes, the Hiberno-Saxon and the English schools.

It's also interesting.

So you go back to like, you know, 565 AD with St. Columba who goes to evangelize the, the, the indigenous people.

Scotlanders up there in the Highlands.

The Highlanders.

And if you follow the story that he gives us over the coming decades into his own time in the early eighth century, it led to a golden age, stage by stage, kingdom by kingdom, tribe by tribe, the whole land was converted.

The mission of Augustine was joined by the mission of the Irish from the north with Aden and Columba and then later Cuthbert.

And with these two missions, this whole land was brought to Christ and it forged a new identity that had a oneness amidst all these different races and tribes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Celts, Picts, later Normans joined in, of course, and many others since down the years into our modern age, but knit together with an identity that was Catholic and Christian and immensely fruitful, creating holiness and saints and cultural fruits that we still value to this day.

Yeah, so many sort of fascinating points to pick on.