Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  The rest of the company approached.

  Diorbhall-ita reached the altar first, then Baithen and Fintenn, followed by the others. All knew their beloved father and friend was dying. Diorbhall-ita knelt down beside him and burst into tears.

  Columba’s eyes were wide. An expression of wonderful joy and gladness was spread over his countenance. The angels had at last been permitted to cross the waters and had now come to take him home!

  Diormait took his right hand and raised it that he might bless his assembled monks. Columba could not speak, but his hand moved slightly in gesture of blessing.

  A lengthy sigh sounded. What air remained in his lungs slowly exhaled. The earthly body of the man who would forever after be known as the Saint of Iona breathed its last. His eyes gently closed, as one drifting peacefully to sleep. While he lay in Diormait’s arms, the brightness and smile remained upon his face for several long seconds, then slowly faded.

  The whole church soon resounded with a Celtic outpouring of weeping and grief.

  The assembly sang their morning hymns and said their prayers, then carried the lifeless body back to its cell, where it lay for three days and nights. During those same days the rainless storm continued to blow over Iona. At the end of three days the body was wrapped in a clean shroud of fine linen, placed in the coffin which had been prepared for it, and was buried near the monastery.

  The storm ceased the moment the coffin was committed to the earth.

  Columcille, the dove of the church, had flown to his new home.

  Twenty-Six

  Many saints of God whose names would never be known but in the Book of Life continued Columba’s work of spreading the Christian gospel throughout Dalriada and Pictland.

  The land was largely converted to Christianity within two or three generations, a remarkable achievement, and quickly began to influence other parts of the isle called Britain, and eventually mainland Europe.

  It was a distinctive form of Christianity, to which still clung reminders of its nature-loving Celtic past.

  Though they no longer worshiped objects of the universe, Celtic Christians would always revere the awe-inspiring corner of the world which God had given them. The very vistas of loveliness and grandeur to which their eyes were accustomed pointed to the glories of the life to come. The Christian faith, whose sanctuaries of worship were to be found on windswept crags and desolate moors and promontories overlooking loch and sea or quiet bay, resonated with the inborn spiritual sensitivities within the heart of the Celt. The holy places revered by the people of Columba’s race were those fashioned by the finger of God, not constructed by the hands of men.

  No tradition rose up here of building temples in which to enclose their worship. They valued natural order and beauty above nearly anything but loyalty to clan and race. The Christianity Columba left behind would always find a deeper soul-harmony with the wind on the face than standing before altars of wood inlaid with silver and gold, upon which linens were spread. Columban priests were drawn to earth and sky more than to tabernacles and robes, incense or ceremony. They sought no finery with which to embellish and enshrine the holy presence.

  The Celtic church thus built for itself no temples of white marble, but rather plain churches of gray stone. Its worshipers found cathedrals elsewhere.

  They took for the dome of their worship the open vault of blue which God himself had stretched over their heads. In the place of unyielding marble floors, Celtic priests walked the lonely heath and rejoiced in the springy turf under their feet and the fresh breezes—sometimes cold—which met them on their way. For stained-glass windows—from a thousand breathtaking vantage points they possessed an outlook of the sea with which no place on earth could compare, with infinite gradations of blues and greens and whites, and the sunset to add its transcendent purples and oranges and reds to the majestic display. For tower and steeple and arch and pinnacle and spire, what could equal the rugged peaks of the Highlands, brown or green, purple or white in their due season?

  As Columba foretold, Fineach-tinnean, son of Aedh, lived to the age of ninety-two. His sister Anghrad and her husband Domhnall spent the whole of their lives in the Hebrides, mingling the Pict heritage of the former and the Scot’s of the latter with the Christian belief that replaced the paganism in both Celtic lands—and foreshadowing the political union that was gradually coming to the mainland. Their daughter Frangag married a southern Pict Christian, Rhaonuill. They named their son after his uncle, one of the first Pict Christian priests, Fineach.

  During the later years at the monastery he himself founded, with his sister and Domhnall already gone to follow the dove, and with Columba’s words of many decades earlier weighing heavily upon his spirit—May the Lord Jesus make you a son of his Father’s, and a worthy link in the chain of your clan’s heritage—Fintenn macAedh, Pict holy man and priest, ordered that a metal box be made for him. In it he would place the treasures of that heritage, to give into the hands of his niece Frangag and her husband Rhaonuill, himself now a grown man, to be passed down to their son and his own namesake, Fineach, in his time.

  Thus was the reliquary of Kailli fashioned for the aging priest—who represented one of the last men or women alive in Caledonia from the pre-Columban era—by his craftsmen monks, overlaid and engraved with silver designs of both Christian and Pictish symbols. It measured three hands long, by two wide, and approximately a hand and a half deep, with rounded silver top, hinged to open, with round brass rings on each end with which it could, with some effort, be lifted with two hands. A great deal of gold also went into the design.

  When it was completed, Fintenn placed inside it a small copy of each of the Gospels and a Psalter, all of which he had copied from ornate manuscripts by his own hand . . . the silver neck chain which had belonged to his uncle, King Brudei, and which Columba had given into his hands at his ordination as a priest at Iona . . . a small silver cross, some trinkets and neck ornaments of his mother’s . . . a few pieces of silver and smithed jewelry . . . a silver cup he had used many times in performing the communion ritual . . . several precious stones . . . his personal handwritten remembrances of the events of Columba’s encounter with his uncle, as well as his memories of his travels with the saint as a youth . . . and the stone from Iona that his cousin, the daughter of Pict King Brudei, kept for many years, then passed on to him, as a treasured and tangible reminder of the man who had shown his family and his people the way to salvation. It was held in great reverence by all who later possessed it.

  As for Diorbhall-ita, following Columba’s death, with the help of her nephew Fintenn, she returned to the mainland of Caledonia at age fifty-eight, where she established the first Christian nunnery in Caledonia. There both Pict and Scot women came to live lives dedicated to God, and to be taught by one who was a closer companion to the Saint of Iona than any of them knew. When walking alone in the Highlands several years thereafter, in the distance she spied a great light-hued stag. A tremble of thrill surged through her. She sensed the magnificent animal looking straight toward her, almost waiting for her to catch sight of it. In that moment she knew that Colum had sent it to her as a sign, that his spirit remained watching over the land to which he had given so much of himself.

  She lived to the age of eighty-six, and her passing was mourned almost as greatly as that of the one she still called her Dear Colum. For like him, she was greatly beloved. Thereafter, as Columba was considered its father, Diorbhall-ita, daughter of King Brudei of the Picts, was considered mother of the Caledonian church.

  Twenty-Seven

  In his eighty-seventh year, knowing the season of his bodily strength was slowly coming to an end, yet still feeling fit and capable, Fineach-tinnean macAedh planned one final pilgrimage to Iona.

  It was an appropriate year for remembering. The monks under his charge argued against the arduous journey, which could not help but be strenuous to his frame. It was something he must do, he insisted, in the spiritual tradition to which he had
dedicated his life.

  The land was changing. His own people, the former Caledonii, had, just in his own lifetime, been pushed farther and farther north and west. The Scots of Dalriada, and new tribes from the south, were exerting forceful influence, not always peaceful.

  Nor was the religious climate without change of its own, likewise not always peaceful. The church had greatly expanded under Bishop Aiden, who had created an abbacy in the south at Lindisfarne on almost the very order of Iona.

  There had been missions south into heathen England, to Glastonbury and Cornwall, and even across the Channel to the continent into Gaul and to the regions of the Rhine. Converts to Christianity flocked to hear the Irish and Caledonian priests. Truly had the Wanderer’s ancient and now forgotten pilgrimage progressed in a great round back toward the land of his origins.

  Along with such expansion, however, conflicts with the Roman Church grew as well. The pope sent representatives to Britain for the purpose of bringing the monasteries and churches into line, and to cure them of their independent ways.

  Disputes in Caledonia were no longer merely tribal or territorial, but also doctrinal. Mostly they were destined to be over matters of authority. For whatever their spiritual inclinations, the Celts had by no means laid down their fiery independence. As the Picts of old had resisted the Romans, so too did their descendants resist the religious domination of Rome.

  What the future held for this land of his birth and heritage, Fintenn did not know. He had never claimed the prophetic sight like the holy father from Iona. Even if he had, more and more as his years increased, he found himself looking back rather than forward.

  While Fintenn crossed the sound from Mull, as the rocky island became larger and larger in his view, he could feel the years tumbling away. He had planned his arrival for this day, to coincide with the anniversary, both sad and joyful at once. By the time he set foot on the familiar shores, he was a young man again!

  So many memories flooded the aging Pict priest, from the first moment he had set eyes upon the saint as a youngster of five, to the night of Columba’s death thirty-two years later. An atmosphere of holiness pervaded the entire isle as he walked slowly up from the sea toward the monastery with those who accompanied him.

  Everyone on Iona felt it too.

  Though the humble man was completely unaware of it—his thoughts were only upon Columba. For the others, Fintenn himself was the center of the aura. All the current resident monks had been in keen anticipation of his coming, for he, it was said, was the only man yet alive who had been on intimate terms with the saint himself.

  He was nephew to the Pict king, cousin to Diorbhall-ita, mother of the Caledonian convent. The saint had prophesied over him when he was but a child. He had been present at the palace of Brudei. He had traveled with Columba through Pictland in those early years. And he had been present the night of his passing.

  Truly this man himself was also a saint. In his presence they could not help but feel the same awe Fintenn felt toward the saint who had been his mentor.

  Unconscious of the honor in which he was held, Fintenn made his way inside the monastery. He walked reverently to Columba’s cell. A yet deeper sense of the saint’s presence came over him. In the small room where he had written and prayed, and where his body had lain, there Fintenn offered his greetings to Columba’s memory.

  His companions waited reverentially outside. This was a time, they sensed, for such a man as their guest to be allowed solitude with his prayers.

  Fintenn emerged ten minutes later, eyes wet with tears. He had been fondly reliving his last private conversation with Columba in the very room he had just left.

  He now walked to the church.

  There he prayed, then slowly sought the temple of open spaces. He passed the venerated slab of stone cut from that great slab which he himself had first seen, as a young boy, on that first memorable journey into the Highlands with Columba’s missionary party, and upon which Aedan had been made king. He paused before it, stooped down, and ran his hand back and forth across its rough surface, wondering again, as he had so many times, whether the legends of it told by the old Pict bard were true. After a few moments he rose and continued on his way.

  Slowly Fintenn now made his way along the pathway, which had become a pilgrimage-walk already to many others, to Columba’s grave.

  There he stood in solemn silence for many minutes.

  When at length he turned away, those monks of the abbey who had been standing behind him saw a strange unearthly glow in the old man’s eyes. The time had come for him to begin being made ready for his own passage to that new kingdom where he and Columba and Diorbhall-ita, and all who believed, would reign as saints together.

  The date was June 9, 647—fifty years to the day following Columba’s death.

  Fintenn remained with the brethren of Iona four weeks, during which time he taught them many things of the bygone days, when the Christian faith of Caledonia was in the first days of its infancy.

  Then Fintenn departed the isle never to return.

  He himself died five years later. The monks of Iona and Kailli-an-Inde mourned. Few others in Caledonia knew the name Fineach-tinnean, son of Aedh, nor were aware of his passing.

  1. Pronounced Dee-ah-leeta, as might in English be spelled Dialeta. Diorbhall is the Gaelic form of Dorothy, which means “God’s gift.”

  2. Also known as Columcille and Columba.

  3. A form of the old Irish Gaelic name of the island (Hi, or Ia, or sometimes merely I), whose adjectival form in Latin, Ioua, was misread Iona, which is Hebrew for “dove.”

  4. Cul ri Erin—“turned toward Ireland.”

  5. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains swell and shake.

  The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved—but he uttered his voice and the earth melted.

  The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the Lord. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. (Psalm 46, selections)

  12

  Roots, Past and Present

  One

  Andrew set down the book and sighed. What a story! Might God truly be that personal and real and mighty?

  It was a compelling tale. It could not help but get into you . . . maybe even change you.

  Were the accounts actually true?

  Could they be true?

  Did such miracles . . . really happen?

  Columba’s story reminded him of his friend Duncan MacRanald. What was it about the Scots, Andrew wondered, that gave rise to such faith?

  Andrew stood, full of the story, and slowly descended the hill. It was nearly dark, or as least as dark as it was going to get on this summer night so far north. But sleep was far from him. The whole island was still. The only sounds that met his ears were those of the faintly splashing sea surrounding him in the distance.

  With thoughts of Columba still swirling in his brain, Andrew recalled Duncan’s words of several days earlier.

  . . . belief isna the same as givin’ yer whole heart t’ the Lord t’ make o’ ye what he will. When that day comes . . . ye’ll jist be happy an’ content t’ du God’s will. Ye’ll be a man in the eyes o’ him that made ye . . .

  Andrew had heard the term God’s will many times in his life—especially from Duncan himself. But he had never paused to consider what it might mean in an individual way. Did God really have a personal will for each man and woman? That’s what Duncan seemed to mean about finding God’s will. He spoke of God as a personal friend who was always trying to do his very best for each of his creatures.

  How much of what Duncan had told him of God through the years had gone in one ear and out the other? Had he been too young, too immature, too spiritually in
sensitive to heed his words . . . or had the time simply never been right?

  What did it mean—God’s will . . . for him? Was there really such a thing as God’s will for Andrew Trentham?

  If God had a certain will for Duncan MacRanald . . . or for Colum O’Neill who later was called a saint . . . or for a prostitute who became a woman of purity and established a convent . . . why not for him too?

  He could feel strange stirrings within him. Was it simply from being in this remarkable place? Toward what was it leading?

  Were there more kinds of roots than merely racial and ancestral? What role did spiritual roots also play in one’s life and sense of identity—roots that extended all the way back . . . to one’s origin?

  Even if by some unbelievable string of circumstances it turned out one day that he discovered himself linked by blood, sprung after countless centuries from the Celtic seed of the Wanderer himself . . . was that enough? Even such a remarkable fact would still not address the primal, causative, foundational question of roots—of who he was at the source, at the utter core of being.

  For where had they all come from in the beginning?

  The phrase repeated itself in his brain.

  . . . in the beginning.

  Where else had they all originated but out of the life-producing heart, the very breath of God himself—the Creator of the heavens and the earth . . . the Creator of man and woman?

  That was the beginning.

  And that too, Andrew could see, was the import of this tiny island. That was the essence of Columba’s story, maybe the Wanderer’s story too . . . the significance of all the stories . . . the meaning of history itself.

  Stories had to have a beginning, a source, as the name of the Wanderer’s daughter-in-law implied.

  In that awesome, terrifying, wonderful phrase in Genesis, In the beginning God created—in those five words was contained the energy and power that had set all humanity in motion, out of which had sprung the Wanderer and all that came after him, right down to Columba . . . and now to him, too, to Andrew Trentham as well!