St. Neot’s hermitage was near the spring which is about half a mile west of the church and is known as St. Neot’s well. In his day there appear to have been two pools, one of them with an unique unfailing supply of three fishes, of which one only was to be caught in a day, and the other, a pool in which the saint was wont to stand daily while repeating the Psalter. Many stories are told of the saint’s sojourn by the well. The fox which stole his shoe, the rescue of the doe from the hounds, the theft of his working bullocks and the employment of stags for the ploughing of his land are sufficiently well known. By the advice of St. Neot King Alfred is said to have restored the English school at Rome. The saint continued to be abbot of his own foundation until his death, which took place on the 31st of July, 877. He was buried in the church which he had built on the site of the chapel of St. Guerir. About a century later his bones were fraudulently removed to the monastery of Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire. There are several points of interest. There does not appear to have been any marked difference between St. Neot’s eremitical career and that of others of Cornish origin. This may be owing to the late composition of the lives of many of the saints. The substitution of St. Neot for St. Guerir as the name-saint of the church has many precedents and would call for no remark here did it not afford a good example of what was also in Cornwall a fairly general practice, of which the proofs are not abundant—that of calling churches after the names of their founders.[100] At this point it is convenient to call attention to the story of _Tristan and Iseult_, which has been shown to be of Cornish origin and which assumed literary form probably towards the end of the eleventh century. Most of the places mentioned in the story are found in Cornwall and, although the actors in the drama are presumed to have lived some five centuries before their deeds were committed to writing, there are nevertheless inferences to be derived from the record of them which have a direct bearing upon our subject even if we suppose the setting of the story to have been, at the time, comparatively modern. The following episode is an example. During the sojourn of Tristan and Iseult in the forest of Morrois (Moreske), which then extended from the Fal to the Helford river, they meet with a hermit, Ogrin by name, who does not hesitate to give them some much-needed advice. He calls them to repentance and then listens patiently to Tristan’s excuses. It is not suggested that in admonishing them he is exceeding his duty. He is described as a hermit with a hermitage in the forest, a personage quite distinct from the parish priest, whose sphere of influence had already become a recognised geographical unit, as is shown by the following passage: