Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886

"I do love these ancient ruins; We never tread upon them But we set our foot upon some reverend history;"

although here not an ivy-clasped gable, or even a mossy stone remains to claim the "passing tribute" of a sigh, or a vain regret for the golden days of our Irish Church. Yet its very barrenness of ruins made it dearer to my heart, for one never clings more fondly to the memory of a dear friend than when all mementoes of him are lost. As warned by the stroke of the town-clock, I hurried down to the station to be whirled away to Dublin, I thought that perhaps my fellow-readers of the MAGAZINE would bear with me while I gossiped for half an hour on the story of this grand old monastery, the mother-house of Iona.

You know where Derry is, or if you don't your atlas will tell you, that it is away up in the north of Ireland, where, situated on the shores of the Lough Foyle, coiling its streets round the slopes of a hill till on the very summit they culminate in the cross-crowned tower of St. Columb's Cathedral, it lies in the midst of a beautiful country just like a cameo fallen into a basket of flowers. The houses cluster round the base of the hill on the land side, spread themselves in irregular masses over the adjoining level, or clamber up the opposite rise on the brow of which stands St. Eugene's Cathedral, yet unfinished, and the pile of turrets which constitute Magee College. A noble bridge spans the Foyle, and through a forest of shipmasts one may see on the other side the city rising up from the water, and stretching along the bending shore till it becomes lost in the villa-studded woods of Prehen.

The massive walls, half hidden by encroaching commerce, the grim-looking gates, and the old rusty cannon whose mouth thundered the "No" of the "Maiden City" to the rough advances of James, in 1689, give the city a mediaeval air that well accords with its monastic origin. For, let her citizens gild the bitter pill as they may, the cradle of Derry--the Rochelle of Irish Protestantism--was rocked by monks--aye, by monks in as close communion with Rome as are the dread Jesuits to-day.

Fourteen hundred years ago the Foyle flowed on to mingle its waters with ocean as calmly as it does to-day, but its peaceful bosom reflected a far different scene. Then the fair, fresh face of nature was unsullied by the hand of man. "The tides flowed round the hill which was of an oval form, and rose 119 feet above the level of the sea, thus forming an island of about 200 acres."[1] A Daire or oak grove spread its leafy shade over the whole, and gave shelter to the red deer and an unceasing choir of little songsters. It was called in the language of the time "Daire-Calgachi." The first part of the name in the modern form of Derry, still remains--though now the stately rows of oak have given way to the streets of a busy city, and the smoke of numerous factories clouds the atmosphere.

One day, in the early part of 546, there visited the grove, in company with the local chieftain, a youth named Columba, a scion of the royal race of the O'Donnells. He was captivated by its beauty. It seemed the very spot for the monastery he was anxious to establish. He was only a deacon; but the fame of his sanctity had already filled the land, and the princes of his family were ever urging him to found a monastery whose monks, they hoped, would reflect his virtues and increase the faith and piety of their clan. This seemed the very spot for such an establishment. The neighborhood of the royal fortress of Aileach, that

"Sits evermore like a queen on her throne And smiles on the valleys of green Innishowen,"

promised security; the river an unfailing supply of fish; the woods material to build with; and, better than all, the lord of the district was his cousin Ainmire, from whom Columba had only to ask to receive. He did ask the island for God, and his request was joyfully complied with.

It was just three years after the deacon-abbot of Monte Casino had passed to his reward, that the young Irish deacon began his monastery. To erect monastic buildings in those days was a work of very little labor. A wooden church, destined in the course of time to give place to a more durable edifice--the seat of a bishopric--was first erected. Then the cells of the monks were put up. They were of circular form and of the simplest construction. A stout post was firmly planted in what was to be the centre, and a number of slighter poles were then placed at equal distances round it. The interstices--space however having been left for a door--were filled up with willow or hazel saplings in the form of basketwork. From the outer poles rafters sprang to the centre-posts, and across them were laid rows of laths over which a fibry web of sod was thrown, and the whole thatched with straw or rushes. The inside of the wall was lined with moss--the outside plastered with soft clay. A rough wooden bed--and in the case of Columba himself and many of his monks--a stone pillow, a polaire or leathern satchel for holding books, a writing-desk and seat, formed the furniture of this rude cell, which was the ordinary dwelling of monk and student during the golden age of the Irish Church.

Only a few weeks elapsed from the time that the first tree was felled till the new community, or rather order, took up their abode in it, and the swelling strain of their vespers was borne down the Lough by the rippling breeze and echoed by the religious, whose convents, presided over by SS. Frigidian and Cardens sentinelled the mouth of the Lough at Moville and Coleraine. The habit of these monks--similar to that of Iona and Lindisfarne, consisted of "[2]the cowl--of coarse texture, made of wool, retaining its natural color and the tunic, or under habit, which was also white. If the weather was particularly severe an amphibalus, or double mantle, was permitted. When engaged at work on the farm the brethern wore sandals which were not used within the monastery."

Though their time was mainly devoted to prayer, meditation and the various other religious exercises, yet their rule made them apply every spare moment to copying and illuminating MSS. or some other kind of manual or intellectual labor, according as their strength and talents permitted. By this, people were attracted to the spot. Houses sprang up in the neighborhood of the monastery, that continually increasing in number, at length grew into a city, just as from a similar monastic germ have sprung nearly all the great German cities.

Columba in the busy years that elapsed between 546 and his final departure from Ireland in 563, looked upon Derry as his home. It was his first and dearest monastery. It was in his own Tyrconnell, but a few miles from that home by Lough Gartan, where he first saw the light, and from his foster home amid the mountains of Kilmacrenan, that, rising with their green belts of trees and purple mantles of heather over the valleys, seemed like huge festoons hung from the blue-patched horizon. Then the very air was redolent of sanctity. If he turned to the south, the warm breezes that swayed his cowl reminded him that away behind those wooded hills in Ardstraw, prayed Eugene, destined to share with him the patronage of the diocese, and that farther up, St. Creggan, whose name the Presbyterian farmers unconsciously preserve in the designation of their townland, Magheracreggan, presided over Scarrabern, the daughter-house of Ardstraw. Then turning slowly northwards he would meet with the persons, or relics, of St. O'Heney in Banagher, St. Sura in Maghera, St. Martin in Desertmartin, St. Canice in Limavady, St. Goar in Aghadoey, St. Cardens in Coleraine, St. Frigidian in Moville, St. Comgell in Culdaff, St. McCartin in Donagh, St. Egneach in the wildly beautiful pass of Mamore, St. Mura in Fahan, and his own old teacher, St. Cruithnecan in Kilmacrenan. All these, and many others, whose names tradition but feebly echoes, were contemporary, or nearly so, with him; and with many of them, he was united in the warmest bonds of friendship,--a friendship that served to rivet him the more to Derry. Even the budding glories of Durrow and Kells could not draw him away from his "loved oak-grove;" and at length, when the time had come for him to go forth and plant the faith in a foreign land, it was the monks of Derry who received his last embrace ere he seated himself with his twelve companions, also monks of Derry, in his little osier coracle, and with tearful eyes watched his grove till the topmost leaf had sunk beneath the curving wave.

When twenty-seven years after he visited his native land, as the deputy of an infant nation and the saviour of the bards, on whom, but for his kindly intercession, the hand of infuriated justice had heavily fallen, his first visit was to Derry. It was probably during this visit that he founded that church on the other side of the Foyle, whose ivy-clad walls and gravelled area the reader of "Thackeray's Sketch Book" may remember; but few know that it was wantonly demolished by Dr. Weston (1467-1484), the only Englishman who ever held the See of Derry; and "who," adds Colgan, "began out of the ruins to build a palace for himself, which the avenging hand of God did not allow him to complete."

Columba's heart ever yearned to Derry. In one of his poems he tells us "how my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my Irish oak grove." And one day when "that grey eye, which ever turned to Erin," was gazing wistfully at the horizon, where Ireland ought to appear, his love for Derry found expression in a little poem, the English version of which I transcribed from Cardinal Moran's "Irish Saints."

"Were the tribute of all Alba mine, From its centre to its border, I would prefer the sight of one cell In the middle of fair Derry.

"The reason I love Derry is For its quietness, for its purity; Crowded full of heaven's angels, Is every leaf of the oaks of Derry.

"My Derry, my little oak grove, My abode and my little cell, O eternal God in heaven above, Woe be to him who violates it."

With the same love that he himself had for his "little oak grove," he seems to have inspired the annalists of his race, for on turning over the pages of the Four Masters, the eye is arrested by such entries as,--

"1146, a violent tempest blew down sixty oaks in Derry-Columbkille." "1178, a storm prostrated one hundred and twenty oaks in Derry-Columbkille."