entertained. This looks like a display of temper; yet, strange to say, this bishop (Saint Dagan) is said by Irish authorities to have been remarkable for his meekness.[1] Probably he considered that eating under the same roof with them would be equivalent to the making of a league.
In one respect the Britons and the Irish were very different. The former had carried their hate of the Saxons so far as to deliberately withhold from them any knowledge of the Christian religion. 'We will not preach the faith,' they said, 'to the cruel race of strangers who have treacherously driven our ancestors from their country, and robbed their posterity of their inheritance.' The Irish, on the other hand, were in the full enthusiasm of missionary enterprise; their labours among the Picts had been crowned with a brilliant success, and they now began a similar work in the north of England.
Oswald, King of Northumbria, had once as a refugee been hospitably entertained in the island of Iona. When he found himself with the reins of government in his hands, he asked that a teacher should come from thence to instruct his people in the religion of Christ. Bishop Corman, who was first sent, met with no success, and soon returned, reporting that he had not been able to do any good to the nation he had been sent to preach to, because they were uncivilized men, and of a stubborn and barbarous disposition. A young man in the assembly, hearing this report, gave a gentle rebuke to the disheartened labourer. 'I am of opinion, brother,' said he, 'that you were more severe to your unlearned hearers than you ought to have
- ↑ See Card. Moran, Irish Saints in Great Britain, p. 211.
