Alba Historical

  In search of  Hinba It's perhaps as important as lona - but where is it? The location of the island of Hinba is one of the great mysteries of Scottish history. Hinba is mentioned in Adomnan's Life of Columba in connection with some of the most significant episodes in the saint's life. It was there that the Holy Spirit appeared to Columba in the form of a divine vision, commanding him to ordain Aedan mac Gabrain as king of Dal Riata. He was also told many secrets, made clear on the obscurities of Scripture, and allowed to see into the past and future. The saint received some of his most prestigious visitors on Hinba including four Irish saints for whom he celebrated mass there. But Hinba also had its darker side. The island was used by the early Christians as a penitentiary. During one visit to the religious recluses there, called anchorites, Columba ordered that they be allowed an indulgence of food. To his displeasure, this was refused by one Neman mac Cathair. The saint

 Saint Columba The 9th of June, in 597 AD, was a Sunday. An old man went out into the fields on the island of lona and blessed a barn by making the sign of the cross. The man was Columba. He was 75, and had spent 34 years away from his native Ireland, an 'exile for the love of God.' The lona monks worked hard in the fields as well as at their prayers. They shipped timber in from the Scottish mainland to build their dormitories. They ploughed and harvested, milked cows, made tools, baked bread, hunted seals for meat, and cut reeds for thatch. Columba was pleased their barn was full of grain and that they would have bread all year. But for the abbot himself, there was little time left on the island given to him by King Conall. On that Sunday, Columba was preparing to die. Back home in Donegal, he had been born to wealth and power. In his father's family, immediate kin ruled in the north and relatives ruled in the Irish midlands. The extended family shared the kingship of Tara