Several successive settlements of the Irish in Caledonia
can be faintly traced from the middle of the third till
the beginning of the sixth century. About the year 503,
they had succeeded in establishing a flourishing
principality among the cliffs and glens of Argyle. The
limits of their first territory cannot be exactly laid
down; but it soon spread north into Rosshire, and east
into the present county of Perth. It was a land of stormy
friths and fissured headlands, of deep defiles and snowy
summits. "'Tis a far cry to Lough Awe," is still a lowland
proverb, and Lough Awe was in the very heart of that old
Irish settlement.

The earliest emigrants to Argyle were Pagans, while the
latter were Christians, and were accompanied by priests,
and a bishop, Kieran, the son of the carpenter, whom,
from his youthful piety and holy life, as well as from
the occupation followed by his father, is sometimes
fancifully compared to our Lord and Saviour himself.
Parishes in Cantyre, in Islay, and in Carrick, still bear
the name of St. Kieran as patron. But no systematic
attempt--none at least of historic memory--was made to
convert the remoter Gael and the other races then inhabiting
Alba--the Picts, Britons, and Scandinavians, until the
year of our era, 565, Columba or COLUMBKILL, a Bishop of
the royal race of Nial, undertook that task, on a scale
commensurate with its magnitude. This celebrated man has
always ranked with Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget as
the most glorious triad of the Irish Calendar. He was,
at the time he left Ireland, in the prime of life--his