St. Columcille recognized the need of securing permanence for his work by obtaining the conversion of the Pictish rulers, and thus he did not hesitate to approach King Brude in his castle on the banks of the River Ness.  St. Comgall and St. Canice were Columcille’s companions on his journey through the great glen, now famous for the Caledonian Canal.  The royal convert Brude was baptized, and by degrees the people followed the example set them.  Opposition, however, was keen and aggressive, and it came from the official representatives of Pictish paganism—­the Druids.

Success, too, attended Columcille’s ministrations among the Dalriadans, and on the death of their king, Aidan Gabhran, who succeeded to the throne, sought regal consecration from the hands of Columcille.  In 597 the saint died, but not before he had won a whole kingdom to Christ and covered the land with churches and monasteries.  Today his name is held in honor not by Irishmen alone, but by the Catholics and non-Catholics of the land of his adoption.

There are other saints who either labored in person with Columcille or perpetuated the work he accomplished in Caledonia; and their names add to the glory of Ireland, their birth-land.  Thus St. Moluag (592) converted the people of Lismore, and afterwards died at Rosemarkie; St. Drostan, St. Columcille’s friend and disciple, established the faith in Aberdeenshire and became abbot of Deer; St. Kieran (548) evangelized Kintyre; St. Mun (635) labored in Argyleshire; St. Buite (521) did the same in Pictland; St. Maelrubha (722) preached in Ross-shire; St. Modan and St. Machar benefited the dwellers on the western and eastern coasts respectively; and St. Fergus in the eighth century became apostle of Forfar, Buchan, and Caithness.

Distant islands:  But Irish monks were mariners as well as apostles.  Their hide-covered currachs were often launched in the hope of discovering solitudes in the ocean.  Adamnan records that Baitan set out with others in search of a desert in the sea.  St. Cormac sought a similar retreat and arrived at the Orkneys.  St. Molaise’s holy isle guards Lamlash Bay, off Arran.  The island retreats of the Bass, Inchkeith, May, and Inchcolm, in the Firth of Forth, are associated with the Irish saints Baldred, Adamnan, Adrian, and Columcille.  St. Maccaldus, a native of Down, became bishop of the Isle of Man.

Remarkable, too, is the fact that Irish monks sailed by way of the Faroe Islands to distant Iceland.  These sailor-clerics, who settled on the southeast of the island, were spoken of by later Norwegians as “papar.”  After their departure—­they were probably driven away by Norwegian pagans—­these Icelandic apostles “left behind them Irish books, bells, and croziers, wherefrom one could understand they were Irishmen.”

But St. Brendan, the voyager, is the most wonderful of the mariner monks of Ireland.  He accomplished apostolic work in both Wales and Scotland, but his seafaring instincts urged him to make missionary voyages to regions hitherto unknown.  Some writers, not without reason, have actually maintained that he and his followers traveled as far as the American shore.  Be this as it may, the tradition of the discoveries of this Irish monk kept in mind the possibly existing western land, and issued at last in the discovery of the great continent of America by Columbus.