76 CuurcH oF St. JoHN THE Baptist, DALRy. 
degree. Although not the first in point of fact, yet the first of 
whom we have any distinct notice was Ailred (Scottice for Hthelred), 
a native of Hexham, and Abbot first of the Cistercian Monastery 
of Revesby and afterwards of Rievaux, both in Yorkshire. He was 
by no means a stranger to Scotland, having 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 the sheltered and umbrageous 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 would 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 subsequent 
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 from 
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. Ninian—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 Iona 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. 
