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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
the religious bodies in Ireland. This life, united to won-
derful holiness and constant prayer, won for them a great
love among the natives of the country." Dymphna, as
the reward of her industry, became the patron saint not
only of the insane but also of Brabant. St. Begha or
Bee, who first crossed from Ireland to St. Bee's Head,
called after her, assisted with her own hands in erecting
at Hartlepool the mother convent of England, as her
countryman and spiritual director, Aidan, erected at
Lindisfarne the mother church of Northumbria. At
Lindisfarne the English were taught writing and the letters
used among them till the Norman conquest. From
Bangor and from among the Irish in Wales Alfred secured
professors when he sought to set up schools in England.
3. INCOMPARABLY SKILLED IN HUMAN LEARNING
To the time of the Conqueror England existed simply
as an intellectual dependency of Ireland. It was Irishmen
like Aidan, Finan, Colman, Maeldubh, and Fursa
who introduced the machinery of Christian civilization
into the land which Roman missionaries had trod with
fear and trembling. When the Danes destroyed the evi-
dences of progress in England it was Irishmen again,
themselves harassed by these same freebooters, who re-
paired the ravages. Almost every scholar of note in the
Anglo-Saxon era was trained either in Ireland or by
Irishmen in England. There was hardly a school in
England, outside that at Canterbury tho here Irishmen
were prominent
also in Theodore's time that was
not established and conducted by Irishmen or by men
who were Irish-taught What is now called Scotland
they simply made their own. The inauguration there by
Columcille of Aidan is the earliest recorded instance of a
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