This is the first of a series of ten 'cameo' articles that appeared in The Scottish Field magazine beginning in December 1990 issue. These articles were intended to be provocative and some fans may wish to refresh their understanding of the works of St. Ninian who toiled in the south of what is now Scotland about a hundred years before the focus of this episode or to reread Tranteržs own tale of St. Mungo and his mother, Thanea in Druid Sacrifice who are thought to have been working in Scotland contemporaneously with St Columba . . . Rory Mor.

     IT must have occurred to almost everyone who has read or listened to even the briefest excerpts of Scottish history that if some incident, accident or influence had not taken place or intruded when and where it did, how different would have been the subsequent chain of events, how changed our history itself.

     So many of the characters who created our nation's story came to sudden and often unexpected ends; how many unanticipated interludes took over. If these had not, what would have heen the outcome? And since, whether we like it or not, we are all part of history -- living history -- who knows how we all would have been affected? That is, if we had been here at all! Start at the very beginnng, let's take St. Columba.

     Columba, or Colm mac Felim O'Neil to give him his true name, was an eminent and highly-respected cleric of the Irish Celtic Church in the 6th century ( when much of the rest of what is now Britain was still pagan), Abbot of Derry and of princely blood. It was that princely connection which got him involved in the Battle of Cooldrevny between rival Irish kinglets. Not that he advocated the fighting; but when his kinsfolk and friends seemed to be losing to their anti-Christian opponents away there in Connaught, he intervened with advice, guidance and public prayer, cross held high. His side won, and he was accorded much credit.

     But there was a debit side also. For three thousand men died in that battle. And his fellow clerics, some of them undoubtedly jealous of his successes, declared him responsible for these deaths, and ordained that he should go, as a penance, and convert to Christianity as many men as had been slain at Cooldrevny. Since these critical clerics represented all the Irish Church, Columba decided not to trespass on their territories, but to cross the Irish Sea to Dalriada and Alba -- there was then no place then called Scotland -- to convert the Albannach or Picts.

     Columba had a tremendous character, with enormous driving power and unshakable faith. And against all the odds, based on Iona, he won this very different battle: bringing the Pictish nation, our ancestors, to Christ -- in the process even coming to grips with a monster in Loch Ness.

     If Columba had not thus exiled himself from Ireland, our land would probably have remained pagan for generations thereafter, as was the rest of mainland Britain; and who knows, we might still be called the Albannach instead of the Scots for this was the original uniting factor.

Coming next: ST. ANDREW