St Columb lecture by visiting academic

Gilbert from Glasgow University is currently working on an AHRC (Arts, Humanities Research Council) funded project titled ‘The Expansion and Contradiction of Gaelic in Medieval Scotland: the onomastic evidence.’

The lecture is entitled ‘Place Names and Saints’ Cults: a window on medieval Scotland’ and will begin with a study of the cult of St Serf moving onto place names referring to Columba and Columban saints.

The lecture will focus on how place names, referring to saints and their cults, can tell us about history and historical evidence.

Gilbert’s research interests include place names as historical evidence; early medieval literature in Scotland and Ireland; belief and culture in the early Gaelic Church; and the cult of saints.

He has published extensively including a series of volumes on the place names of Fife; Adomnan and seventh century law; and Early Medieval religious poetry.

The Annual Colmcille Lecture has been running for a considerable number of years, with a vast array of speakers, the interest it generates each year is considerable.

The lecture series is a celebration of the life and traditions of Saint Colmcille and an opportunity to highlight the longstanding historic and linguistic connections between Ireland and Scotland.

Guest lecturers in the past have explored and discussed our distinctive history, heritage and languages, focusing on place names, language historiography, the Annals and the legends of Colmcille.

The lecture will take place at the Tower Museum at 7pm. Admission is free and everyone is welcome, refreshments will be served following the lecture.

Colmcille was born in Donegal in the 6th century into the royal family of the Cenél Conaill, a powerful ‘national’ dynasty in Ireland during the 6th to 8th centuries which had provided several High Kings of Tara.

Legend has it that Colmcille could have become a high-king himself; he certainly became influential in the highest aristocratic and royal circles of his time, both in Ireland and Northern Britain.

Colmcille is remembered as a scribe and a poet and his monastic foundation on Iona, was significantly involved in the technical aspects of the spread of writing and literacy.

The Irish ‘annals’, for instance, were almost certainly initiated on Iona and the monastery also pioneered various other forms of writing about and recording the past.