when she first arrived in Scotland in 1449. He mentions that the cemetery contained the bodies of many holy men, and was surrounded by a high wall. James IV came on 3 May 1504, and 10 May 1506 on board the Margaret. The royal treasurer's accounts mention that James IV wore new yellow breeches. The clerks of the Chapel Royal sang on the island, and James supported a hermit. On 24 August 1539 Mary of Guise and James V made a pilgrimage to the Isle of May. They took three ships, the Unicorn, the Little Unicorn, and the Mary Willoughby. It was believed that a visit to the shrine of St Adrian could help a woman become pregnant. In October 1540 James V commissioned a reliquary for a bone of St Adrian of May from the court goldsmith John Mosman, to be made from Scottish gold. Post-Reformation When the Scottish Reformation took hold in the 16th century, public devotion to the saints—and thus pilgrimages to the site—came to a halt and the Protestant bishop of St. Andrews soon decided to sell the island into private ownership. Slowly the island sank into ruin, with most of the surviving monastic buildings disappearing. Recently the island has become the site of archaeological excavations seeking the remains of the original monastic community which died at the hands of the Vikings. Veneration Ethernan Ethernan was a 7th century Scottish monk martyred by the Picts and believed to be buried on the Isle of May. which became the centre of his cult. He was honored in a number of places in Scotland, including Madderty and Aberdeenshire It appears that pilgrims came to the Isle of May to pray at his shrine for healing. At some point during the Middle Ages, Ethernan got conflated with Adrian of May, whose shrine attracted pilgrims for the next several centuries. His cult is most likely a misremembering of Ethernan from a time when the Picts had ceased to function as an ethnic group within Scotland and ancient martyrdoms in Britain and Ireland were commonly attributed to Vikings. References See also Ethernan Isle of May Priory Prior of May (Pittenweem) Medieval Scottish saints Year of birth unknown 875 deaths 9th-century Christian martyrs Martyred Roman Catholic bishops Scottish Christian monks