Again, Davies in his _Celtic Researches_ speaks of Colum as having on his settlement in Iona burnt a heap of druidical books. It is at any rate certain that druidical believers (helots perhaps) remained to Colum's time, even if the last druidic priest had left. In the explicit accounts which survive there is no word of any dispossession of the druidic priests. It is more than likely that the Pictish king, who had been converted to Christianity, and gave the island to Columba by special grant, had either already seen Irish monks inhabit it, or at least had withdrawn the lingering priests of the ancient faith of his people. Neither Columba nor Adamnan nor any other early chronicler speaks of Iona as held by the Druids when the little coracle with the cross came into Port-na-Churaich. Others have derived the name from _Aon_, an isthmus, but the objections to this are that it is not applicable to the island, and perhaps never was; and, again, the Gaelic pronunciation. Some have thought that the word, when given as _I-Eoin_, was intended, not for the Isle of John, but the Isle of Birds. Here, again, the objection is that there is no reason why Iona should be called by a designation equally applicable to every one of the numberless isles of the west. To the mountaineers of Mull, however, the little low-lying seaward isle must have appeared the haunt of the myriad sea-fowl of the Moyle; and if the name thus derives, doubtless a Mull man gave it. Again, it is said that Iona is a miswriting of _Ioua_, "the avowed ancient name of the island." It is easy to see how the scribes who copied older manuscripts might have made the mistake; and easy to understand how, the mistake once become the habit, fanciful interpretations were adduced to explain "Iona."