d is
an admirable example of the careful methods of the Celtic Church. He was
not a Celt himself, he was an Angle. When the English branch of the Celtic
Church, settled at Lindisfarne and evangelizing Northumbria, had succeeded
in converting the son of the Mercian king, they sent him four priests as
missionaries to his people, a people who were in large part Angles. Of
these four priests, trained and sent by the Celtic Church for the
conversion of the English, only one was a Celt; the other three, including
Cedd, were themselves Angles. To send Anglian priests to convert Anglian
people was indeed a wise and broad policy; and it was, as it deserved to
be, eminently successful. It is a striking contradiction of the prevalent
idea that the Celtic Church was isolated, narrow, bigoted; unable and
unwilling to work with any but those of its own blood.

There are, then, these two main divisions before us, of the people who
occupied these islands when the Romans came, and still occupied them when
the English came, the Britons and the Celts[14]. We are not to suppose
that this is nothing more than a mere dead piece of archaeology. It is a
very living fact. A large proportion of those who are here to-day have
to-day--possibly some of them not knowing it--kept alive the distinction
between Briton and Celt. Every one who has spoken the name Mackenzie, or
Macpherson, or any other Mac, has used the Celtic speech in its most
characteristic feature. Every one who has spoken the name Price, that is,
ap Rhys, or any other name formed with ap[15], has taken the Briton's side
on this characteristic point. When you speak of Pen(maen)maur and the king
Malcolm Ceanmor you are saying the same words; but in Penmaenmaur you take
the Briton's side, in speaking of Ceanmor you take the Celt's. You will
not find a better example than that which we owe to our dear Bede. The
wall of Antonine abuts on the river Forth at Kinnell, a name which does
not seem to have much to do with the end of a wall. But Bede tells us that
the Picts of his day called it Penfahel, that is, head of the wall,
"fahel" being only "wall" pronounced as some of our northern neighbours
would pronounce it, the interesting people who say "fat" for "what." He
adds that the English, his own people, called it Penel, cutting the
Penfahel short. The Britons called it Penguaul. The modern name Kinnell is
the Celtic form of Penel.

Those being the people, and that the extent to which Chris