The same impression is given by Alcuin’s letter to the monks of Mayo, of whom he naturally knew more. When the Conference of Whitby went against the Scotic practices, Bishop Colman retired, first to Iona, then to Inisbofin, and then to the place in Ireland now called Mayo, where he settled the thirty Anglo-Saxon monks who had accompanied him, leaving the Scotic monks, formerly of Lindisfarne, in Inisbofin, “the island of the white heifer.” Bede tells us that Mayo was kept supplied by English monks, so that it was called Mayo of the Saxons. Curiously enough they kept up the practice of having a bishop at their head in succession to their first head, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. There were bishops of Mayo down to 1559. In Alcuin’s time Mayo was still a Saxon monastery. The Irish Annals of the Four Masters mention a Bishop Aedan of Mayo, in 768; but his real name was English, Edwin, not Irish, Aedan, as we learn from Simeon of Durham. Alcuin must certainly have mentioned his own visit to Ireland in his letter to the monks of Mayo, if such a visit had ever taken place. The letter was written late in his life. He tells them that when he lived in Northumbria he used to hear of them from brethren who visited England. He reminds them that for the love of Christ they had chosen to leave their own country, and live in a land foreign to them, and be oppressed by nefarious men. He urged them to keep zealously the regular life, as established by their holy predecessors; and to devote themselves to study, for a great light of knowledge had come forth from them, and had lighted many places in Northumbria. The lord bishop they must hold as a father in all reverence and love, and he must rule them and their life with all fear in the sight of God. The story of the migration from Lindisfarne to Mayo, as told by Bede (_H. E._ iv. 4), is so quaintly Irish in its main part, that it may fairly be told here in Bede’s words. After stating that Colman took with him all the Scotic monks of Lindisfarne, and thirty Saxons, and went first to Iona, he proceeds thus:—