Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

52
IONA.
most beautiful periods of Gothic architecture j their
soffits being fluted with plain and rude moulding.
The corded moulding separates the shaft from the
capital of the pillars, and is often prolonged through
the walls at the same level. The larger windows
vary in form, but are everywhere inelegant. There
is a second, which is here the clerestory tier ; the
windows sometimes terminating in a circular arch,
at others in trefoil bends; the whole being sur-
mounted by a corbel table." [' Highlands and Wes-
tern Isles,' vol. iv. p. 155. London: 1824.] This
church or cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin
Mary. The altar-piece, situated at the upper end
of the chancel, formed of Iona marble, exhibiting
one of the richest specimens of that fossil, 6 feet
long and 4 broad, had the doubtful and mischievous
fame of affording, by a splinter from it, preservation
from shipwreck, fire, murder, and other evils, and,
though seen in its last fragments by Pennant, has
by piece-meal demolition utterly disappeared. The
font and pavement are still entire. On the north
side of the site of the altar, is the monument of the
abbot Macfingon, or Macliinnon, formed of mica-
slate, containing hornblende, standing on four feet,
exhibiting a fine recumbent figure of the priest in a
high relief with his vestments and crosier, having
four lions at the angles, and bearing the inscription:
" Hie jacet Johannes Macfingone, Abbas de Ii, qui
obiit anno M. D. cujus animo propicietur Altissimus.
Amen." " Here lies John Mackinnon, abbot of
Iona, who died a.d. 1500, to whose soul may the
Most High be merciful." Opposite this monument,
on the south side of the choir, is another, apparently
of an older date, executed in a similar manner with
episcopal ornaments, but consisting of freestone, and
almost obliterated in its sculpture, commemorative
of the abbot Kenneth, who was a Mackenzie or a
Seaforth. In front of the site of the altar, and in
the middle of the choir, lies a fine monumental stone
of basaltes, cut in relievo into the figure of a man in
armour, representative, as is said, of one of the Mac-
leans of Dowart, who were for many ages the lords
of Mull, and having a sculptured shell by its side to
denote his maritime claims. Adjoining the south
wall of the choir, but on the outside, is the tomb-
stone of Lochlan Macfingon, the father of the abbot
whose sumptuous monument we have just noticed:
it is a plain slab, with the inscription: " Ha^c est
crux Lacolani M'Fingone et ejus filii Johannis Ab-
batis de y facta anno Domini mcccclxxxix." " This
is the cross of Lachlan M'Kinnon, and of his son
John, abbot of Iona, erected in the year of the Lord
1489."
Other ruins and relics are either very much dilapi-
dated, or of inconsiderable importance. Various
parts of the abbey may be traced ; but they are un-
interesting and without ornament. Four arches of
the cloister are distinct; three walls exist of what
was probably the refectory. The remains of the
bishop's house, also, are clearly traceable, but do
not deserve notice. Various little clusters of stone
and fragments of wall are supposed to have been
chapels. Buchanan says that there were on the
island several chapels founded by kings of Scotland
and chiefs of the Isles; but, as he joins the roman-
cers respecting the tombs of the kings and other
subjects, he fails to command unhesitating belief.
A causeway called Main-street, ran between the
cathedral and the nunnery, and was joined by two
others, called Martyr-street and Royal-street, which
are said to have communicated with the beach.
The remains of the causeway are, in some places,
sufficiently perfect; but, in others, they have, like
the removeable stones of the buildings, been carried
olf by th,e inhabitants for the erection of cottages
and enclosures. A current story says that there
were, at one time, 360 crosses on the island, and
that, after the Reformation, the synod of Argyle
ordered 60 of them to be thrown into the sea.
Whatever may have been the real number, traces
now exist of only 4. Pennant says that the cross
of Campbelltown was one of the Iona crosses; but
he is believed to have been mistaken. As to the
296 which remain to be accounted for, and even as
to the 60 which are alleged to have been submerged,
they very probably had never an existence. Had
the synod of Argyle been such zealous exterminators
of the relics of exterior Romanism as is pretended,
they would most likely have ordered the destruction
of all the crosses, and might likewise have tried to
beat down the cruciform cathedral, and would almost
certainly have stripped its interior of some of its
unequivocally popish garniture. Of the crosses
which remain, one is beautifully carved, this and
another are very perfect, a third has been broken off
at the height of about 10 feet, and a fourth exhibits
only its stump in a little earthen mound. Various
fragments, converted into grave- stones, appear, from
the devices and inscriptions which they bear, to have
certainly been votive. Among the ruins of the abbey
were certain black stones, no longer to be found,
and fondly believed by many persons to lie concealed
somewhere on the island, which are proverbial for
the solemnity of oaths sworn upon them, and are
spoken of as if they possessed a talismanic power of
giving a conscience to an assassin or a traitor.
Those who ascribe all knowledge to the Druids,
and so regard it as no romance that Iona was once
of nearly as great fame with them as afterwards with
the Culdees, make small scruple to put foul insult
upon both the followers of Columba and those of
the Pope, and suppose the stones to have been a
relic of Drnidical superstition, and the original oath
with which they were associated to have been taken
on the sacred stone of a temple. If asked authority
for their conjecture, they will perhaps find it quite
as easily as they can find the stones themselves.
Another stone in Iona is romanced to have had such
properties, that whatever helmsman stretched his
arm three times over it, in the name of the Blessed
Trinity, would never err in his steerage. Could
this also have been Druidical ? Numerous spots on
the island, slightly marked in some cases by natural
and in others by artificial features, are identified in
various ways with Columba, and, for the most part,
pointed out, as scenes of prodigies and saintly ex-
ploits. Even Columba's own successors, Cumin and
Adamnan, men who wrote within about a century
after his death, and were at the head of the Iona
establishment at the period of its greatest glory, be-
trayed, to a very surprising degree, the weakness of
magnifying the remarkable events of his life, and
even such an ordinary matter as his sowing grain on
the island, and seeing it in due season become a crop
of barley, into occurrences superhuman, and miracu-
lous. The cowled dotards of Rome who succeeded
them belonged to a fraternity who are noted for
their covering nearly all the parchment, and even
many rescripts of the Middle ages, with dreaming
legends of saints, quite as wild as the most absurd
romances ; and, set down amid such gorgeous mate-
rials as those of Iona, with the example before them
of the well-meaning but mistaking Culdee biogra-
phers of Columba, they could scarcely fail to be
carried round in such a whirl of creativeness, as
would prevent their getting a steady or correct view
of any one matter which they related to visiters or
sent down the current of tradition. The destruc-
tion or irrecoverable dispersion of an alleged great
library of Iona, ascribed to the execution of an act