themselves and those dependent on them the comforts of life.  Marriage also was allowed them, and most of them seem to have entered into that state.  True, their wives were not permitted to reside with them at the institution, but they had a residence assigned to them in an adjacent locality.  Near lona there is an island which still bears the name of “Eilen nam ban,” women’s island, where their husbands seem to have resided with them, except when duty required their presence in the school or the sanctuary.

Campbell, in his poem of “Reullura,” alludes to the married monks of Iona: 

    “...  The pure Culdees
       Were Albyn’s earliest priests of God,
    Ere yet an island of her seas
      By foot of Saxon monk was trod,
    Long ere her churchmen by bigotry
    Were barred from holy wedlock’s tie. 
    ’Twas then that Aodh, famed afar,
      In lona preached the word with power,
    And Reullura, beauty’s star,
      Was the partner of his bower.”

In one of his “Irish Melodies,” Moore gives the legend of St. Senanus and the lady who sought shelter on the island, but was repulsed: 

    “O, haste and leave this sacred isle,
    Unholy bark, ere morning smile;
    For on thy deck, though dark it be,
        A female form I see;
    And I have sworn this sainted sod
    Shall ne’er by woman’s foot be trod.”

In these respects and in others the Culdees departed from the established rules of the Romish church, and consequently were deemed heretical.  The consequence was that as the power of the latter advanced that of the Culdees was enfeebled.  It was not, however, till the thirteenth centurv that the communities of the Culdees were suppressed and the members dispersed.  They still continued to labor as individuals, and resisted the inroads of Papal usurpation as they best might till the light of the Reformation dawned on the world.

Iona, from its position in the western seas, was exposed to the assaults of the Norwegian and Danish rovers by whom those seas were infested, and by them it was repeatedly pillaged, its dwellings burned, and its peaceful inhabitants put to the sword.  These unfavorable circumstances led to its gradual decline, which was expedited by the subversion of the Culdees throughout Scotland.  Under the reign of Popery the island became the seat of a nunnery, the ruins of which are still seen.  At the Reformation, the nuns were allowed to remain, living in community, when the abbey was dismantled.

Iona is now chiefly resorted to by travellers on account of the numerous ecclesiastical and sepulchral remains which are found upon it.  The principal of these are the Cathedral or Abbey Church and the Chapel of the Nunnery.  Besides these remains of ecclesiastical antiquity, there are some of an earlier date, and pointing to the existence on the island of forms of worship and belief different from those of Christianity.  These are the circular Cairns which are found in various parts, and which seem to have been of Druidical origin.  It is in reference to all these remains of ancient religion that Johnson exclaims, “That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of lona.”