EARLY CELTIC CHURCHES OF BRTTAIX AND IRELAND. 201 



" boat-loads" of students wlio poured over into Ireland to receive, 

 without payment, even for books or sustenance, the teaching tliat 

 Ireland was able to impart. 



""Why," exclaimed Aldhelm towards the close of the seventh 

 century, " does Ireland pride herself on a sort of priority, in that 

 such numbers of students flock there from England, as if here 

 upon this fruitful soil there were not an abundance of Argive and 

 Eoman masters to be found, fully capable of solving the deepest 

 problems of religion and satisfying the most ambitious students 1 " 



Amono- those who came were the Frankish Kino- Dasjobert II., 

 in the seventh century, and an exiled prince of Xorthumbria. 



Let me tell you a couple of incidents out of the saints' lives 

 which will illustrate these friendly relations between the 

 countries. Both Gildas the Historian and St. Cadoc, his almost; 

 equally famous contemporary, spent a great deal of time travel- 

 ling from place to place in Ireland. Like numerous other friendly 

 saints of foreign extraction their names are commemorated in 

 the martyrologies and litanies of Ireland. St. Cadoc, first 

 principal or Al)bot of Llancarvan, founded several churches in 

 Brecknockshire, Glamorgan and ]\Ioiimouth. He was baptized 

 and instructed by an Irish hermit named Tathai, who had settled 

 in Wales and founded the school of Caerwent, and who taught 

 him grammar, literature and the liberal arts for twelve years. 

 He must have instilled the love of his native countrv into his 

 young pupil, for shortly after leaving him Cadoc, afterwards 

 named " the Wise," save expression to a strong desire to sail to 

 Ireland and add to his knowledoe the learnino- that was at that 

 time only to be accjuired in Irish schools. Having built himself 

 " a strong boat besmeared with pitch," in other words, one of 

 those fragile currachs in which in those times men ventured forth 

 on the most perilous coasting voyages, he set sail from the 

 south of Wales and made'a "sea-sonable and prosperous voyage" 

 to Water ford. At the great monastery of Lismore he was 

 graciously received by the principal and remained with him for 

 three years, " until he succeeded in perfecting himself in all 

 the learning of the West." He returned, accompanied l »y a large 

 number of Irish and British clergy: but having accjuired land in 

 Ireland, he left a steward to collect his rents and manage his 

 property — ai4 early example of the evils of absentee landlordism. 

 On his return to Wales he planned to build a new church, and 

 Irish churcli architecture being apparently of a more attractive 

 kind in the sixth century than it can boast of being in the 

 twentieth, he sent to Ireland for an architect to build it for him. 



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