Note 104 — ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM.[16]

I confess I have still some doubt as to this island having received its name from a church founded by S. Columba-cill, or that he ever resided in it, and I should like to have your present opinion upon the matter. Fordun alone seems to me a very insufficient authority for a fact which is very improbable; and the legend of the seal, which I published, appears to me to be a better authority for the ancient name of the island—"Colmanus nomine, qui ab alijs Mocholmocus. Quia Colmôe & Colmân sunt diminutiva, a Colum. 1. Columba, et affectus vel venerationis causa additur mo; et hinc Mocholmocus," Colgan, vol. i. p. 155. Colgan's authority is of no value, as his statement is wholly founded on Fordun. This is proved by his notice of the monastery in his catalogue of the churches founded by Columba. "Colmis-inse Monasterium canonicorum Regularium in Æmonia insula inter Edinburgum et InverKithin. Fordonus, ibid." As the cautious Dr. Lanigan observes—"Colgan was, to use a vulgar phrase, bewitched as to the mania of ascribing foundations of monasteries to our eminent saints." Further, it should not be forgotten that Fordun tells us that in his time the island was called "Saint Colmy's Inche." See the passage quoted by Ussher, De Brit. Ec., p. 704. Now, I know of no instance of the corruption of Columb, or Columba, into Colmy, which appears rather a corruption of Colmoc or Colman.

If this be not the Insula Colmoci of the regal seal—"round seals have something royal"—where are we to find it? Not in Ireland, certainly, though our calendars record the names of two islands called Inch Mocholmoc, from saints of that name. One of these was in Leinster; the locality of the other is unknown. They also record the patron day of a St. Mocholmoc, na hainse, "of the island," at the 30th October. Could we find what was the patron day of the saint of Inche Colm it might help to settle the matter. One of the above saints is called Colman Ailither, or the pilgrim. Chattering in my discursive way, let me add that a Saint Mocholmoc appears to have been a favourite with the Danes of Dublin in the twelfth century, for we find in the lists of the Danish Kings of Dublin that of Donald MacGilloholmoch as reigning from 1125 to 1134; and another of the name is noticed by Regan as an Irish king, who lived not far from Dublin, and who offered his services to the English against the Irish and Danes in 1171. There was a Gillmeholmoc's Lane in Dublin, near Christ's Church, where, as Harris conjectures, he, or some of his family, inhabited. Did this royal Danish family adopt its surname in honour of St. Colman of Lindisfarne, of whom it must have heard a great deal during the Danish occupation of Northumbria, the kings of which were for a long time also kings of Dublin? Or may it have been from a remembrance of the shelter and honourable interment to their dead, given to their predecessors in the little island of St. Colme (or Colmoch!) something more than a century before—said island having derived its name from the Lindisfarne Saint, who may have occasionally occupied it as his desert or hermitage? I do not expect that you will not laugh at all this! but a hearty laugh is not a bad thing in this gloomy weather.—P.