In 584 an event happened which appears to have opened up an additional field for Columba’s missionary labour. This was the death of his steady friend and supporter King Brude, who died in that year.[271] Adamnan seems to be at a loss to account for death having been allowed to overtake King Brude while the powerful intercession of the great saint might have been exercised on his behalf, and attributes it to the disappearance of a mysterious crystal which Columba had blessed, and which, when dipped in water, was believed to impart to it a curative virtue. It was preserved among the king’s treasures, but could not be found, though sought for in the place where it was kept on the day when King Brude died in his palace near the river Ness.[272] His successor was Gartnaidh, son of Domelch, who belonged to the nation of the southern Picts, and appears to have had his royal seat at Abernethy, on the southern bank of the Tay, near its junction with the river Earn. The only fact recorded of his reign is that he built the church of Abernethy two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months before the church of Dunkeld was built by King Constantin.[273] The statement is so specific, that it seems to embody a fragment of real history contained in some early chronicle, and places the date of the foundation of Abernethy during the first ten years of Gartnaidh’s reign. The nation of the southern Picts had, as we have seen, been converted early in the previous century by Ninian; and the Pictish Chronicle attributes the foundation of the church of Abernethy to an early King Nectan, who reigned from 457 to 481; but the Christianity established among them had no permanence, and they gradually fell off, till hardly even the semblance of a Christian church remained. What King Gartnaidh did, therefore, was to found a new monastic church where the earlier church had been, which, like it, was dedicated to St. Bridget of Kildare, and this not only took place during Columba’s life, but is, in the ancient tract called the _Amra Columcille_, directly attributed to his preaching, for in alluding to his death it contains this line: ‘For the teacher is not, who used to teach the _tuatha_, or tribes, of Toi;’ and the gloss upon it is, ‘The teacher who used to teach the tribes who were around Tai. It is the name of a river in Alban;’ and again, ‘He subdued the mouths of the fierce who were at Toi with the will of the king,’ which is thus glossed: ‘He subdued the mouths of the fierce with the _Ardrig_, or supreme king of Toi; though it was what they wished—to say evil, so it is a blessing they used to make, _ut fuit_ Balam.’[274] Gartnaidh is here called the supreme king of _Toi_, or of the Tay, and the people whom Columba taught, the tribes about the Tay, which leaves little doubt that the church of Abernethy on the banks of the Tay, at this time the chief seat of government, had been refounded in connection with his mission to the southern Picts.