304 Beozviilf and Widsith 



The second runs ihus^ : 



In this account of the Holy Places, I have, as far as I could, followed 

 trustworthy histories, and especially that of Arculf, a bishop of Gaul, 

 which the presbyter Adamnan, one most learned in the Scriptures, has 

 written in three books in the Latin language. The prelate I have 

 mentioned, leaving his own country, from his desire after the Holy 

 Places, went to the Land of Promise, and there stayed some months 

 in Jerusalem [probably in 670], using an aged monk, Peter by name, 

 equally as guide and interpreter, and visited in his course all the places 

 he had so vividly longed to see, not to speak of Alexandria, Damascus, 

 Constantinople, and Sicily. But when he wished to revisit his native 

 country, the ship in which he sailed was, after many wanderings, brought 

 by a contrary wind to our island of Britain,^ and at length after many 

 dangers he came to the venerable man of whom we have spoken, 

 Adamnan, to whom he gave an account of his journey and what he 

 saw, and whom he thus taught to become the writer of a most excellent 

 history. 



Of the third account I give only the conchiding portion" : 



And he made a work, as I have said, which is of much use, and 

 specially to those who are so far distant from those places in which 

 the patriarchs and the apostles lived that they can learn as to them only 

 what they can inform themselves about by reading. Now Adamnan 

 brought this book to King Aldfrith, and by his liberality it was read 

 by men of humbler station. The writer also was himself presented 

 by him with many gifts, and sent back to his country. 



The circumstances under which Aldfrith received this gift 

 throve a certain light upon his character and upbringing. The 

 year before his accession to the throne was, as we have seen,* 

 signalized by an apparently unprovoked^ assault of his immediate 

 predecessor, Ecgfrith, upon the Irish, This is related, from the 

 Irish point of view, by the biographer of Adamnan, from whose 

 account I extract a few sentences*': 'The north Saxons went to 

 Erin and plundered ; . . . and they carried off with them a great 



^ Ibid., -p. 87. 



* Cf . Eccl. Hist. 5. 15: 'to the western shores of Britain.' 



' P. P. T. S., p. xiv. 



■* See above, p. 286. 



^ Stevenson and Moberly believe that the invasion was provoked by the 

 harboring of Aldfrith among the Irish (see Plummer 2. 260; Oman, p. 308, 

 note i). 



" Reeves, pp. cli, clii. 



