In another of his books (_De Locis Sanctis_) the author informs us how he generally set about composing his literary efforts. He wrote the first draft on waxen tablets, revised and corrected it, and then from the text so prepared, a clean copy was neatly written out on parchment. Dorbene the Scribhnidh may have copied the _Life_ in Adamnan’s own time; if not quite so early, then shortly after his death. And whatever became of Adamnan’s original, Dorbene’s copy appears to have remained in the monastery till the beginning of the ninth century, when it was probably taken to Germany. At that time a strong tide of Scotic pilgrims set in towards Central Europe, owing no doubt to the Norse invasions, which rendered life and property insecure in Iona and elsewhere. In 825 Blathmac was murdered in the monastery, along with several of the brethren, because he refused to tell where the Columban relics were hid. The likelihood is that after that narrow escape one of the fleeing monks carried the book to St. Gall or Reichenau on the Rhine. At any rate it is significant that Walafridus Strabus, formerly Dean of the Irish monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, and then Abbot of Reichenau from 842–849, knew of the tragic event and wrote a poem in Latin on the death of Blathmac. And it was in this very house of Reichenau, that used to be frequented so much by Scotic missionaries, that the MS. was ultimately found. And quite casually too. Ages had elapsed when, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Stephen White, a learned Irish Jesuit in search of Gaelic documents on the Continent, luckily discovered it. He immediately transcribed the venerable codex, and gave Ussher, Colgan, and the Bollandists the benefit of his copy. Both the latter published the text—Colgan in 1647, the Bollandists in 1698. Thereafter, a second time the original vanished. When or how it was removed from Reichenau is not known, but it must have been before that monastery was suppressed in 1799. Once more it emerged, this time at Schaffhausen, rediscovered by Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich, the distinguished archæologist. Writing of the interesting find in January 1851, Dr. Keller tells the story of its reappearance, showing into what sorry neglect it had fallen before it reached its ultimate coign of vantage. “The present _proprietor_ of the MS. of St. Columba,” he says, “is the town-library of Schaffhausen. Here I found this codex in 1845 at the bottom of a high book-chest, where it lay pell-mell with some other MSS. and old books totally neglected, bearing neither title nor number.” It was twice borrowed by Keller, and on the last occasion in 1851 he made a valuable collection of facsimiles from it.