=6. Introduction of Christianity.=--These Scots were not pagans like the Picts of Alba, for Ireland had already been Christianized. The new comers brought the new faith to their adopted country, and through them it spread among the Picts, and also among the English of Northumberland. The great apostle of the Scots was _Columba_. He was Abbot of Durrow in Ireland, but was obliged to leave his own country, because he had been engaged in a feud with some of his kinsfolk, in which his side was worsted. He came over to the new colony on the coast of Alba, and _Conal_, who was then King of the Dalriads, welcomed him, and gave him _I_, or _Iona_, an islet about a mile and a half long and a mile broad, lying west of the large island of Mull. Here Columba settled with the twelve monks who had come with him, and here they built for the service of God a little wooden church after their simple fashion, and for their own dwelling a few rude huts of wattle, which in after-times was called a monastery, where they passed their days in prayer and study. But their missionary zeal was as great as their piety, and from their head-quarters on Iona they went cruising about among the adjacent islands, extending their circuit to the _Orkneys_, and even, it is said, as far as _Iceland_. =7. Conversion of the Picts.=--Columba himself undertook the conversion of the Picts. About two years after his arrival at Iona he set out on this important mission, crossed Drumalbyn, sought the court of _Brud_, the Pictish king, converted him, and founded religious communities on the same plan as that on Iona, on lands granted to him by the king or his dependent chiefs. The Church thus set up was perfectly independent of the _Bishop of Rome_ or of any other See, but it inherited all the peculiarities of the Church of the _Irish Scots_. The monks had a way of their own of reckoning the time for keeping Easter and of shaving their heads, trifles which were considered important enough to become the subject of a very long quarrel, and it was not till 716 that they agreed to yield to the Roman custom in both matters. According to their system of Church government, the abbots of the monasteries were the chief dignitaries, and had all the power which in the rest of Christendom was held to belong to bishops, while the bishops were held of no account except for ordaining priests, for which purpose there was one at least attached to each monastery. Columba, who was himself of the royal race, had so much influence among the Dalriads that his authority was called in to settle a dispute about the succession to the throne. The abbots of Iona after him continued supreme in all the ecclesiastical affairs of Alba till the middle of the ninth century, while the well-earned reputation for piety and learning enjoyed by the monks of his foundation was widely spread in continental Europe. About this time _Kentigern_ revived among the Welshmen of Strathclyde