from Greek or Iberian (or Runic, which has been suggested). That the cipher implies that the alphabet for which its symbols are substituted was in use can hardly be questioned. As the date of the oldest ogam stones cannot be determined, we cannot fix a date for the introduction of Roman writing. But there can be no question that the older stones are pagan, and the inference is clear that this writing was introduced independently of Christianity. CHAPTER IX P. 187.—Bishop Nynias, generally called Ninian, see Bede, _H. E._ iii. 4. This passage in Bede furnishes the only trustworthy tradition about Nynias. His expression _ut perhibent_ shows that his information was oral. Bede does not fix the date of Nynias further than by the vague _multo tempore_ before St. Columba, and by the statement that the church which Nynias built was dedicated to St. Martin. The usually accepted date, _c._ 400 A.D., depends on the statement in Ailred’s _Vita Niniani_, c. 2, that Nynias visited St. Martin (and obtained at Tours masons to build his stone church). There is no evidence that the _Life_ composed by Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx in the twelfth century, was based on any ancient documents unknown to Bede; Ailred seems to have drawn his material, mainly legendary, from traditions in Galloway, and, with the exception of the visit to Martin, he adds nothing that can pretend to be a historical fact to the brief notice of Bede. The personal contact of Nynias with Martin, however, may be a genuine tradition; and it furnishes the most probable explanation of the connexion of Martin’s name with Candida Casa. But we have an independent testimony that the conversion of the Picts of Galloway must have been at least early in the fifth century—namely, their description as _apostatae_ in Patrick’s _Letter against Coroticus_, which shows that they had been converted and fallen away before the middle of the fifth century. [The fullest collection of everything bearing on Nynias is Forbes’s _Lives of St. Ninian and St. Kentigern_, 1874. A more recent edition of Ailred’s _Vita_ will be found in Pinkerton’s _Lives of the Scottish Saints_, revised by W. M. Metcalfe, vol. i. 1889. For a criticism on Ailred, see J. Mackinnon, _Ninian und sein Einfluss auf die Ausbreitung der Christenthums in Nord-Britannien_, 1891. See also Plummer’s note on Bede, _H.E._ iii. 4.] _Ib._—Candida Casa, Whitern, was known in Ireland in the sixth century as Magnum Monasterium or Rosnat, and had a high reputation as a monastic school: see passages in Colgan, _Acta Sanctorum Hib._ i. p. 438. This reputation led to the rise of a legend that Nynias founded a church in Ireland and died there. A lost Irish life, known to Ussher (_Brit. Eccl._ vi. 209) contained this story, and Nynias appears in Irish Martyrologies under the name of Moinenn “my Nynias” (_Mart. of Tallaght_, ed. Kelly, p. xxxiv.; _Mart. Dung._ ed. Todd, p. 249).