74 



On some Place-Names near Malmesbury, 



not almost assume that there was a language spoken here intelligible 

 enough to one familiar with Celtic dialects, who might hope to 

 find a useful field for his labours. Remember too how the saintly 

 Aldhelm — your saint here, and mine at Bradford — is said to have 

 written a notable book on matters in which the British Church, as 

 was alleged, acted contrary to the purity of catholic faith and practice, 

 on the reading of which many differences between the two churches 

 were healed. And then once more recollect how the church at Crick- 

 lade, is dedicated to a Welsh saint, S. Sampson, — a solitary example 

 as far as I know in Wilts, — and how Johannes Scotus — i.e., John 

 the Scot, (or Irishman) — is said to have taught here, an image (as 

 Leland says) having been set up in the abbey-church to his honour, 

 — and surely you have enough to justify you in coming to the con- 

 clusion, that Celtic teachers found an appropriate field for their 

 labours in a part of England included by the great Alfred in his 

 will under the title of Weala-cyn (= Welsh-kin). 



Some of you possibly may think that I am a little too sanguine 

 as to all my remarks carrying instant conviction. But please bear 

 this in mind that my own fore-fathers came from the Principality, 

 whither no doubt many of the Britons, when forcibly deprived of 

 their own inheritance by the Englishman, retreated for safety, and 

 that I do feel some just pride in having within me a few drops of 

 that " blue " blood, which once flowed in the veins of the subdued — ■ 

 but never disgraced — Cymry. 



W. H. Rich Jones. 



Bradford-on-Avon, 

 April, 1883. 



