of wood, they ignite of themselves, which the inhabitants attribute to the merits of the boy.[392] Then they go to the borders of Scotia,[393] where Columba, the first bishop of Dunkeld, receives the boy and educates him with a girl, a native of Ireland, named Brigida, who tells him that the Lord destines him for the Angles in the east of this province, but reserves her for the western population of the land of the Irish. Here he excites the envy of three southern clerics from the region of the Angles.[394] They then go to the island which is called Hy, or Iona, where they remain some time with the religious men of that place. Then they visit two brothers-german of the mother, Meldanus and Eatanus, who were bishops in the province of the Scots, in which each had an episcopal seat; and these take the boy and place him under the care of a certain religious man in Lothian, while the mother goes on a pilgrimage to Rome. In this place in Lothian a church was afterwards erected in his honour, which is to this day called Childeschirche, and here the book of the nativity of St. Cuthbert, taken from the Irish histories, terminates.[395] Childeschirche is the old name of the parish now called Channelkirk, in the upper part of the vale of the Leader; and the Irish Life thus lands him where Bede takes him up. It is certainly remarkable that Bede gives no indication of Cudberct’s nationality. He must surely have known whether he was of Irish descent or not. He is himself far too candid and honest a historian not to have stated the fact if it was so, and it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this part of his narrative was one of those portions which he had expunged at the instance of the critics to whom he had submitted his manuscript. Unfortunately Bede nowhere gives us Cudberct’s age. He elsewhere calls him at this time a young man, and he says that his life had reached to old age.[396] Cudberct resigned his bishopric in 686, and died in 687. He could hardly have been under sixty at that time, and it was probably on his attaining that age that he withdrew from active life. This would place his birth in the year 626, and make him twenty-five when he joined the monastery at Mailros. The Irish Life appears to have been recognised by the monks of Durham as early as the fourteenth century,[397] and it is perfectly possible that these events may have taken place before Bede takes up his history, though they are characterised by the usual anachronisms. Dunkeld was not founded till more than a century after his death, and, as it was dedicated to St. Columba of Iona, he no doubt appears here as its bishop half-a-century after his death.[398] The Brigida there mentioned is also obviously intended for St. Bridget of Kildare, who belongs to a much earlier period; and the Bishop Eatanus, his mother’s brother, is surely no other than Eata, abbot of Melrose, and afterwards bishop of Lindisfarne. The