It is our proud boast as an English-speaking people that we can go back as far as Cædmon to the beginnings of our literature; yet how few British subjects realise that Gaelic was a literary language long before then in the hands of men like St. Patrick, St. Columba, and Dallan Forgaill, and that there are Latin MSS. still extant associated with Columba and the School of Iona which are almost as old as the very oldest existing codex of the Bible. It is worth our while to think of this, and of the remarkable man who, in the obscurity of his island home, recognised the value and permanence of his own work, giving utterance to a sentiment which the ages have amply verified: “Small and mean though this place is, yet it shall be held in great and unusual honour, not only by Scotic kings and people, but also by the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations, and by their subjects; the saints also even of other churches shall regard it with no common reverence.” And it is so. Systems and dynasties have since fallen, yet the fame of Iona still stands secure, and continues to attract the saint and the foreigner. CHAPTER IV ADAMNAN’S “VITA COLUMBÆ” Oldest Scottish book in existence—A sturdy survival—Criteria of age—Dorbene the copyist—Romantic history of the MS.—Now in Schaffhausen—Adamnan, a rare personality—Abbot and scholar—Influential career—Attitude to the two great questions that divided the Celtic churches—Pathetic estrangement—“Lex Adamnani”—A mighty social revolution—Death—His writings—“The Vision of Adamnan”—His _Life of Columba_ in three parts—Remarkable contents—Most valuable monument of the early Celtic Church—List of MSS. in which preserved—Latin _versus_ Gaelic. Many Scottish visitors visit Schaffhausen, on the Rhine in Switzerland, and perhaps few of them are aware that in the public library there, is deposited one of the rarest and most interesting relics of Scotland. It is a parchment MS. of sixty-eight leaves, each about eleven inches by nine. The volume looks as if in the original binding. Its sides are of beechwood, greatly worm-eaten and covered with calfskin, the sewing of the back very rude and curious, and the front would seem to have been formerly secured by clasps. This is not a Gaelic work, though Gaelic names appear in it. It is written in Latin in double columns. Capital letters abound, some of them of great size and adorned with red and yellow paint. The summaries at the beginning, the headings of chapters, and the colophon of the scribe are all in rubric which on the whole is wonderfully fresh and beautiful.