Columba's Arrival
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