Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1918 — SAINT SURELY WOMAN HATER [ARTICLE]

SAINT SURELY WOMAN HATER

Colomba, it Must Be Admitted, Cartied His Aversion to the Feminine Sex to an Extreme. - - ■■ Women have been forbidden on several islands ruled by the Catholic clergy. One of the most famous of these is lona of Icolmkill, called also I or Hy, a small Island of the inner Hebrides, nine miles southeast of Staffa, and separated from the Island of Mull by a channel one and a quarter of a mile wide, called the sound of loe of Icolmkill; It is in Argyleshire, and has a population of about three hundred, whose only occupations are fishing and raising black cattle on the bleak moors. From earliest times the island has been accounted holy and it is still known to the Highlanders as Eilean nah Druineeh —the Sacred Isle of the Druids, for whose rites it was the chief seat. In 563 Conal Christian, king of the Northern Scots, granted it to St. Colomba. Brude, king of Picts, confirmed the gift upon' b el pg converted. Colomba built a chapel and a hospice of wicker and mud thatched with heather among the 360 gray Druidical monoliths, on which rude crosses were sculptured by early converts. Colomba’s aversion to everything feminine was such that he forbade even the keeping of cows on the island, for, he said, “where there is a cow there must be a female, and where there is a female there must be mischief.” Any married tradesman of lona must keep his wife on the neighboring “Woman’s isle.” While the lords of the isle were brought to lona for burial, their wives were buried on the Isle of Finlagah.