76 Chukch of St. John the ]]ai'ti8t, Dalry. 



degree. Although not the lirst iii point of fact, yet the first of 

 whom we have any distinct notice was Aih-ed (Scottice for Etheh-ed). 

 a native of Hexham, and Abbot first of the Cistercian Monastery 

 of Eevesby and afterwards of Rievaux, both in Yorkshire. He was 

 by no means a stranger to Scotland, liaving been brought up at 

 the court of King David I., and educated with his son, Prince 

 Henry. Of his visit to " Witerna," as he calls it, Abbot Ailred, 

 has left a personal, but all too partial, record. In the twelfth cen- 

 tury such a journey must have been a serious matter, the mode of 

 travelling slow and tedious, the road a mere horse or foot track 

 carried through a wilderness of moorland and mountains, which, 

 to one accustomed to tlie sheltered and umbrag-eous valleys of the 

 south, must have appeared in the highest degree sterile and for- 

 bidding. Emerging on the broad valley of the Cree, a glimpse 

 would be caught by Ailred of those gleaming waters, never again 

 to be lost sight of while he sojourned with his friend. Bishop Christian. 

 There at " Witerna" he Avould see the new Cathedral, founded by 

 Fergus, Lord of Galloway, in all its pristine splendour, an elaborately 

 decorated example of Romanesque architecture, adorned as the 

 Candida Casa itself could not have been, nor yet any subse({ueut 

 addition. His eyes must thus have seen, and his thoughts been 

 familiar with many things which, put on record by an intelligent 

 observer, would have proved of priceless value to all after ages. 

 Of Ninian's Candida Casa he could have told us the exact site, its 

 dimensions and general character, and especially the state in which 

 it was found after the lapse of nearly eight hundred years fi'om 

 its first erection. He might, with some facts, now forever perished, 

 have bridged the gulf of four hundred years from the days of the 

 Anglo-Saxon episcopate of the eighth century to the revived suc- 

 cession of Fergus. Yet, apart from that Life of St. Xinian — to 

 write which was probably the chief object of his visit — there 

 remains but the topographic vision of a great peninsula, extending- 

 " far into the sea on the east, west, and south sides, closed in by 

 the sea itself," surrounded on every side save the north by a vast, 

 desolate, ever-weltering waste of water, while at its furthest 

 extremity, near this ocean's verge, like an lona of the mainland, 

 stood the object of his quest. Such seems to have been Abbot 

 Ailred's first and last impressions of the locality he had travelled 

 so far and with so much toil to see. 



