Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
At early morning they left the cove of their convent; they spread their single sail, and plied their well-worn oars, crossing from Colombsay to Iona, or from the harbor of Bangor to the nearest shore of the Isle of Man. At noon they may have met a brother in the middle of the strait in his shell of a boat, bouncing over the water toward the point they had left.
They are doing very well with a subscription for a bell for the Free Church at Iona. The deer have been down at John Maclean's barley again. Would I like to visit the weaver at Iona who has such a wonderful turn for mathematics? and would I like to know the man at Salen who has the biographies of all the great men of the time in his head?"
Ulva lay, a great dark mass, under the crimson west, reflected in a glassy sea. We had already seen Staffa and Iona, pale in the distant Atlantic. Then the boat fetched us, and we floated as in a poet's dream, till the worst of inns brought one back to a sense of reality.
He searched narrowly around, and at length saw a small panel which seemed fastened by a concealed bolt. This he pushed back, the door opened, and Ranadar stood before Iona.
It undoubtedly began in an unconscious imitation of local architecture. For instance, in the British Isles, the building in earliest times was with wattles: practically walls of basket work. William of Malmsbury says that Glastonbury was "a mean structure of wattle work," while of the Monastery of Iona, it is related that in 563, Columba "sent forth his monks to gather twigs to build his hospice."
In accordance with an oft-repeated request, these lines are inscribed on the Iona cross carved in lava, which marks the grave wherein is laid to rest the earthly form of William Sharp: "Farewell to the known and exhausted, Welcome the unknown and illimitable." And this: "Love is more great than we conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions."
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it. Mr. Boswell's curiosity strongly impelled him to survey Iona, or Icolmkil, which was to the early ages the great school of Theology, and is supposed to have been the place of sepulture for the ancient kings.
In plan and exterior it is modelled on Iona Cathedral, and was built by the Cornish missioner, Robert Aitken, who influenced his people so powerfully that the granite was both given and wrought free of cost. A castellated wall with a fine arched gateway surrounds the building, which proves that under the right impulse the people may still become church-builders and will still attend church.
Scotland and Ireland have good reason to be grateful to the founder of Iona, for the interposition that preserved to us the music, which is now admitted to be one of the most precious inheritances of both countries. The proposed taxation Columbkill strenuously and successfully resisted.
The little isle of Earraid lies close in to the south-west corner of the Ross of Mull: the sound of Iona on one side, across which you may see the isle and church of Columba; the open sea to the other, where you shall be able to mark, on a clear, surfy day, the breakers running white on many sunken rocks.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking