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90 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
is said that the curse was so efficacious that in time Tara was ruined and deserted.
In any case, humiliated for a second time by the High King and outraged and incensed, Colm roused his kinsmen in Donegal and Tyrone to join in arms with the King of Connacht against the High-King-whose army they met and defeated at Cooldrummon. Tradition tells, that so great was the slaughter, that at the close of battle, three thousand men lay dead upon the field. In the aftermath of the struggle, Colm, overtaken with grief and remorse went to his friend and former fellow-student, Molaise, confessing his crime and asking for pen- ance. According to the chronicles, Molaise, armed with the knowledge that after his love for his faith, Colm’s greatest passion was his love of country, thereby commanded that Colm should leave Ireland and never return to her emerald shores again; moreover, he also com- manded that Colm should convert to Christianity, as many people as had been killed at the battle of Cooldrummon. Another version of the story claims that Colm left Ireland “of his
own free will and because of his love of Christ”.
Colm spent the night before his departure lying on Leac na Cumha-‘The Flagstone of
Loneliness,’ in his birthplace of Gartan, and the following morning, the grieved monk took with him the biblical twelve companions and sailed away from his beloved homeland in a small coracle, heading in a north-easterly direction. They landed on the little island of Oronsay, in the southern Hebrides, ‘on an evening,’ it is said. Next morning, having climbed the three hundred and five feet to the top of Beinn Orasaigh, pronounced ‘Oransay’ by the local community, the highest point of the island, Colm saw low and dim on the horizon, Sliabh Sneachta –‘The Mountain of Snow’, the highest peak of the mountains of Innishowen in his native Donegal. Seeing this vista, Colm sadly determined that he must journey far- ther, for such a sight must never more meet his eyes. Then once again accompanied by his companions, he sailed onward to the tiny island of the Druids, the sacred island of I, now known as Holy Island, or more famously, Iona-the Iona of Colm Cille. Incidently, the word ‘Iona’ alluded to the Hebrew word for dove, while I in Gaelic represents the feminine, and as the eight letter of the Gaelic alphabet is I, signifying a yew tree, could this be a reference to the sacred yew trees under whose boughs Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Aramatheia preached-as did their followers?
An anonymous Gaelic writer, in an account of Iona in 1771, alludes to the probability that Christianity was introduced there before St. Columba’s advent, and that the island was already dedicated to the apostle St.John, for it was originally called L’Eoin, i.e. the Isle of John, whence Iona.
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