Alcuin is claimed by the Irish as one of the many English youths who were brought up in Irish monasteries, and they name Clonmacnoise as the place of study. Dr. John Healy, the learned Roman Bishop of Clonfert, writes thus[151]:—“There is fortunately a letter of his still preserved, which shows quite clearly that he was a student of Clonmacnoise, and a pupil of Colgu, and which also exhibits the affectionate veneration that he retained through life for his Alma Mater at Clonmacnoise.” But the letter does not bear that interpretation, and, indeed, the learned bishop has to read Hibernia instead of Britannia in the only place where the island of Colgu’s home is named, or to understand an implied contrast between Britain and Ireland which would be too obscure in a perfectly simple matter. “I have sent to your love”, Alcuin says, “some oil, which now scarcely exists in Britain, that you may supply it where the bishops need it, for the furtherance of the honour of God.[152] I have sent also to the brethren, of the alms of King Karl[153]—I beseech you, pray for him—fifty sicles[154], and of my own alms fifty sicles; to the brethren of Baldhuninga to the south, thirty sicles of the alms of the king and thirty of my own alms, and twenty sicles of the alms of the father of the family of Areida and twenty of my own alms; and to each of the anchorites three sicles of pure gold, that they may pray for me and for the lord King Charles.” There is nothing here that points to Ireland except the name of the person to whom the letter is addressed, Colcu, whom Alcuin speaks of as “the blessed master and pious father”. The name Baldhuninga is very Northumbrian, the home of the family of Baldhun. The mention of anchorites has been supposed to look like Ireland, but we must remember that Alcuin himself, in singing the praises of the saints of the Church of York, tells of the life of only two persons of his own time other than kings and archbishops, and they were anchorites.[155] The gift of money from the father-of-the-family of Areida clearly comes from some one in Gaul who is very closely associated with Alcuin himself. It so happens that the Abbey of Tours had a small cell dedicated to St. Aredius, and the suggestion may be hazarded that the little family of monks there sent through their prior the twenty sicles which Alcuin doubled. It is evident that Colcu had conferred benefits on those in whom Alcuin was specially interested, and we may suppose that on some visit to Alcuin he had delivered a course of lectures by which the monks of St. Aredius had profited. He was probably a professor (his actual title was _lector_, a name still kept up for a public lecturer at the University of Cambridge) at the School of York. There was a famous Reader in Theology of the same name, or as much the same as any one can expect in early Erse, Colgan or Colgu, who lived and lectured at Clonmacnoise and died there in 794,