four years after Alcuin wrote this letter at the beginning of the year 790. It is of course tempting to suppose that this famous Irishman, the first Ferlegind or Lector recorded in the Irish Annals, was the Colcu to whom Alcuin wrote, the Colcu of whom Alcuin in a letter written at the end of this same year 790 said that he was with him and was well. That letter was addressed to one of Alcuin’s pupils, Joseph, whose master the letter says Colcu had been. On the whole, we must take it that our Colcu was too closely associated with Alcuin’s teaching and with Northumbria to be the Colgu of whom Bishop Healy says that though he was a Munster-man by birth he seems to have lived and died at Clonmacnoise. But it is another puzzling coincidence that Simeon of Durham records the death of Colcu, evidently as of one who had worked in the parts of which he was commissioned to write, in the year of the death of Colgu of Clonmacnoise, 794: “Colcu, presbyter and lector, migrated from this light to the Lord.” [Sidenote: Ep. 217. A.D. 792-804.] We have a letter of Alcuin’s addressed to “the most noble sons of holy church who throughout the breadth of the Hibernian island are seen to serve Christ the God in the religious life and in the study of wisdom”. In this letter Alcuin fully recognizes that in the old time most learned masters used to come from Hibernia to Britain, Gaul, and Italy, and did excellent work among the churches. But beyond that, the letter, which is far from a short one, is so completely vague that it is impossible to imagine that Alcuin had studied in Ireland, or had had the help, in England or in France, of one of the most famous of Irish teachers from one of the most famous of their seats of religion and learning. [Sidenote: Ep. 276.]