SAXON AND CELT.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 10, Issue 754, 9 March 1888, Page 2

SAXON AND CELT.

Aldhelm waa a bishop of the apostolic type. Ho sedulously visited all parts of his diocese, which at the west was ill-defined, but certainly included the greater part of Somerset. At a Council of the Saxon Church, which was held a. i). 700, Aldhelm waa commissioned to write a letter to G-eraint of Cornwall, to exhort him to adopt the Raman rule for Easter, &c. In this letter he refers to the un-Christian hatred *hown by the Britons of West Wales (as the Saxons called the Western Peninsula) to the Saxons. They would not pray in the same church or eat «-t the same table with a Saxon ; they would throw the food a Saxon h°d cooked to the dogs, and rinse the cup a Saxon had used with sand or ashes before they would drink out of it ; if a Saxon went to sojourn among them, they put him to a penance or quarantine of forty days before they would show him any kindness or act of good neighbourhood. Of this Aldhelm com. »]ains, as a man of peace and charity might complain. He acknowledges that the Welsh Christians held all the doctrines of the Catholic faith, but tells them that their want of charity will destroy the ben-fit they would other ivise receive from it. His earnestness and Ina's measures of conciliation seem to have had the desired * fleet. — " Somerset Scenes," by 0. E. Boger.