The remainder of the tale is clearly at utter variance with the narrative of Adamnan. So far from the excommunication by the Synod of Taillte being followed by a sentence of exile from Ireland, he expressly tells us that it was not persisted in. He repeatedly alludes to Columba’s great affection for Ireland, and the yearning of his heart towards his early home; but not a word as to any prohibition against returning thither, or that his exile was otherwise than voluntary. He presents him to us as exercising a constant and vigilant superintendence over his Irish monasteries, and as repeatedly visiting Ireland, without a hint as to there being any reason for his refraining from doing so.[165] We must therefore entirely reject this part of the story. Adamnan had no idea that Columba was actuated by any other motive than that of a desire to carry the gospel to a pagan nation, when he attributes his pilgrimage to a love of Christ.[166] The old Irish Life knows no other reason than that ‘his native country was left by the illustrious saint and illustrious sage and son, chosen of God, for the love and favour of Christ.’ The author of the prophecy of Saint Berchan admits that he was responsible for the battle of Culdremhne:— With the youth himself was the cause of The great slaughter of the battle of Culdremhne; but assigns as one reason of his going, the subjection of the Dalriads to the Picts:— Woe to the Cruithnigh to whom he will go eastward; He knew the thing that is, Nor was it happy with him that an Erinach Should be king in the east under the Cruithnigh.[167] His real motives for undertaking this mission seem therefore to have been partly religious and partly political. He was one of the twelve apostles of Ireland who had emerged from the school of Finnian of Clonard; and he no doubt shared the missionary spirit which so deeply characterised the Monastic Church of Ireland at this period. He was also closely connected, through his grandmother, with the line of the Dalriadic kings, and, as an Irishman, must have been interested in the maintenance of the Irish colony in the west of Scotland. Separated from him by the Irish Channel was the great pagan nation of the northern Picts, who, under a powerful king, had just inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Scots of Dalriada, and threatened their expulsion from the country; and, while his missionary zeal impelled him to attempt the conversion of the Picts, he must have felt that, if he succeeded in winning a pagan people to the religion of Christ, he would at the same time rescue the Irish colony of Dalriada from a great danger, and render them an important service, by establishing peaceable relations between them and their greatly more numerous and powerful neighbours, and replacing them in the more secure possession of the western districts they had colonised. ----- Footnote 80: