JANUARY 21 



duction to Britain. It so happens that there is good 

 evidence of the esteem in which leeks were held, even in 

 the more remote parts of northern Britain fifteen hundred 

 years ago. This admirable plant, it is almost certain, 

 was brought hither by the Roman conquerors. Celsus 

 and Pliny sounded its praise and wrote of the high 

 esteem in which it was held in Roman cookery. In 

 fact the Emperor Nero earned the nickname of 

 Porrophagus — the leek-eater — by his excessive fond- 

 ness for a dish of leeks. 



Now the last of the Roman garrison was withdrawn 

 from Britain in a.d. 407. Thirteen years previously, 

 in A.D. 394, Bishop Ninian was sent from Rome by 

 Pope Siricius as a missionary to convert the wild Picts 

 of Galloway. He is credited with success in the 

 enterprise; he built the little church at the Isle of 

 Whithorn, which became known as Candida Casa — the 

 white house — from the contrast of its stone and lime 

 walls with the dark wattle and daub habitations of the 

 natives, and founded a monastery three miles inland 

 at Whithorn. Six hundred years after Ninian's death 

 Ailred, Abbot of Rievaulx, compiled a life of the saint, 

 translating it into Latin from a manuscript, presumably 

 in Gaelic, which he described contemptuously as 

 having been composed ' by those to whom, on account 

 of the barbarism of their native land, the faculty of 

 speaking gracefully and elegantly was denied.' Excel- 

 lent Ailred ! Cordially grateful as we of a later time 

 must ever be for thy translation, we cannot but sigh 

 when we reflect upon the amount of local colour 

 whereof thou didst divest the original in carrying out 



