accused of insolence, rapacity, and of selling their services
to princes and nobles, instead of calling them to account for
their misdeeds.

Columba openly undertook their defence in the general assembly of
the nation. Himself a poet, he loved their art, and could not
consent to see his native country deprived of it. Such a deprivation
in his eyes would almost have seemed a sacrilege.

"He represented," says Montalembert, "that care must be taken not
to pull up the good corn with the tares, that the general exile
of the poets would be the death of a venerable antiquity, and of
that poetry so dear to the country, and so useful to those who
knew how to employ it. The king and assembly yielded at length,
under condition that the number should be limited, and their
profession laid under certain rules."

Dallan Fergall, the chief of the corporation, composed his "Amhra,"
or Praise of Columbkill, as a mark of gratitude from the whole
order. That the works of Celtic poets possessed real literary merit,
we have the authority of Spenser for believing. The author of the
"Faerie Queene" was not the friend of the Irish, whom he assisted
in plundering and destroying under Elizabeth. He could only judge
of their books from English translations, not being sufficiently
acquainted with the language to understand its niceties. Yet he
had to acknowledge that their poems "savoured of sweet wit and
good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry;
yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural
device, which gave good grace and comeliness to them."