Nearly 1,500 years after Columba made the journey from Ireland to Scotland, the ferries are getting faster and the flights cheaper. The saint himself gives his name to a cultural initiative linking governments in Dublin and Edinburgh. But the links are soon to turn much more political, with the British-Irish Council stepping up the momentum of change by several gears.
Five months ago the Irish Government opened a consulate in Edinburgh - as it did in Cardiff - to develop links for the new forum. Two weeks ago Sinn Fein announced it was looking to open an office in Edinburgh and to build bridges to a rather different brand of nationalism in Scotland.
A week before that the Ulster Unionists landed at Edinburgh Airport, with deputy leader John Taylor leading a delegation of the party's assembly members. Unionists, as he pointed out, are keen to make sure east-west links are up and running quickly, to balance the pace of North-South links in Ireland. He was pressing for the first British-Irish Council to meet within two weeks of the expected first North-South Council meeting.
His reckoning is that attendance will be one of the first acts of the new Scottish first minister. Either Labour's Donald Dewar or the Scottish National Party's Alex Salmond will be selected by the middle of May, allowing him to take his place with the new leader of the Welsh executive in Cardiff - almost certainly Labour's Alun Michael - to sit at the inaugural meeting with Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair, David Trimble and the heads of government of the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey and Sark.
This is about as imbalanced a forum as it is possible to conceive. The disagreement over its name should perhaps be a warning. Ulster Unionists like the official name, the British-Irish Council, for their own reasons, but the word British is eschewed by both Scottish and Irish nationalists. To them, this is the Council of the Isles - though Taylor warns that this part of the Belfast Agreement is not to be changed.
There is a high expectation that it will be merely a talking shop, able to act only by consensus, with potential for many junketing air miles. But making the formal link to the Scottish parliament is being held up as a way of setting an example for Ireland.
Scotland has its own sectarian divide, but it is manifested mainly at football matches. Partly because issues of Scottish identity have arisen and partly because the Troubles have been a warning to Scots not to go down the sectarian road, the religious issue has been all but excised from politics over the past generation.
This is about as close to foreign affairs as the Edinburgh parliament will be allowed to go. Scottish nationalists in particular have a distinctive new take on the way the British-Irish Council could develop. The SNP is running neck and neck with Labour in polls ahead of the May 6th ballot, and the forum offers the potential of a mediation panel, ensuring as amicable as possible a divorce between Scotland and the rest of the UK.
By this argument, Ireland's role is partly to be an example to the Scots as a self-confident, small nation within Europe, but also to ensure that the Scots have some company in their dealings with London, putting Scotland's first minister on a par with the Taoiseach.
The SNP has been arguing for an Association of British States for the past 30 years, modelling it on the Nordic Council of Scandinavian countries.
"The proposal adds a much needed, wider and internationalist dimension to the devolution of power to Scotland - a bridge perhaps between the devolved parliament and an independent one," Mr Salmond said on visit to Co Mayo last year.
Scottish Labour hopes the council can co-ordinate policy against drugs. Nationalists want to push it further, to link transport more effectively, particularly to address the threat to Stranraer as a major jumping-off point for Northern Ireland. Stranraer, these days, has a nationalist MP.
Salmond has set out an agenda to share experience of distinctive traditions. He has suggested Ireland and Scotland could jointly project their common cultural heritage to the world through international marketing. There could be a shared digital television channel, he says, focusing on Gaelic languages.
Last week, the SNP leader was in Brussels outlining a common Celtic interest in joining the euro currency. With the bold assumption that he could win a referendum on in Scotland (polls have them markedly less sceptical than the English, though still tied for and against), and that Northern Ireland and Wales could be similarly persuaded, the SNP leader seemed to think the English and their reluctance to join up could somehow be overcome through the British-Irish Council.
"The Council of the Isles in this issue is of particular importance," he said. "If there is genuinely new democracy within the present UK, perhaps the diversity of views that may emerge might be expressed as part of the view of the UK as a whole, rather than be ignored."
The most immediate question is where the British-Irish Council should be based. The Irish Government would prefer it not to have a headquarters, but to have officials working on it in different capitals. Glasgow in Scotland and Douglas on the Isle of Man think differently, lobbying aggressively to be home to the new body.
A natural home, if somewhat inaccessible, would be the tiny Hebridean island of Iona, where more than 1,400 years ago St Columba landed from Ireland, established the roots of Scottish Christianity, and forged a lasting bond between the two countries.
Iona, indeed was nearly chosen as the council's lyrical name, standing for the Islands of the North Atlantic. But, as so often, poetry lost out to politics.