by Dr. M. F. Brewster

Gildas

Who was Gildas? Mention the name to a British historian and you are likely to be told that he was a famous fifth or sixth century British monk who wrote about the last days of the Roman occupation of Britain and what happened afterwards. You might be told that he became known as Gildas Sapiens or Gildas the Wise, and that his writings were quoted by the Venerable Bede (father figure to all British historians). You might hear that he is most well known for his writing of "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae", his account of the ruin of Britain, much of which was a denunciation of contemporary British rulers and clergy for their evil ways and failure to convert the invading Angles to Christianity. He had had to flee to France where he died after founding a monastery.

St Kilda - A Person?

Who was St. Kilda? Most people in Scotland will tell you that there was no such person and that the name applies only to a remote island group to the north-west of the Outer Hebrides. Reference books mostly say that Kilda is a corruption of Hirta, the main island, that it is derived from the Norse word for well, or that it is the result of a Dutch map-maker's error. Inexplicable references to St. Kilda elsewhere, for example the stained-glass window picturing the saint in the old (site said to date from the 13th century) church at Lochbuie in the south of Mull, (the church is also dedicated to St. Kilda), are said to be the result of ignorant assumptions made by ancient uneducated people who did not know that St. Kilda did not exist as person.

St Kilda - The Island Group

The earliest full account of St. Kilda as an island group was written in 1697 by Martin Martin who stated that its inhabitants called the main island Hirt, but that all seamen called it St. Kilda. In his account he particularly describes Spanish and French seamen visiting the island and he states that the name appears as St. Kilder on a Dutch sea chart of 1663. He also describes the presence of three chapels on Hirta in those days. The main one was called Christ chapel and it contained a bronze crucifix on an altar. A second chapel was dedicated to St. Columba and a third to St. Brianan. Excluding the Catholic Irish saint, Brendan, Brianan has not been traceable as a saint's name (by me), but Trinian is listed as being a language variant of Ninian. Martin Martin says also that "the very large well near the town" was called St. Kilder's well and that from this "the island is supposed to derive its name". He noted that there was no "popery" in the islanders' religion. From this, one may conclude that he had found inhabitants with a reformed faith. Their main church was named after Christ, and they had two nearby chapels named after the two main traditional founders of Scottish Christianity, namely Ninian and Columba. One may also speculate that "St. Kilda" could have been thought of as an equally prominent saint when his name had been given to the main water supply for the township.

Gildas - The French Person

Who was Gildas? Ask a Frenchman in Brittany and you will be told that Gildas was Saint Gildas, revered for delivering Brittany (or Armorica as it was known in his day) from paganism and for establishing Christianity among the people who lived there. He was the founder abbot of the monastery and centre of learning at Rhuys. The abbey church founded by him continues today and the little town beside it carries his name, St. Gildas-de-Rhuys. When I asked about Gildas at one place in St. Gildas-de-Rhuys, I was politely corrected and told that I should not be sounding the "s".

Gildas - The Scottish Person - An Ancient Briton

Who was Gildas? Ask again in Galloway at Whithorn which is Scotland's most ancient Christian centre, founded by St. Ninian and predating the more famous Iona of St. Columba by nearly two hundred years. Few in Whithorn would tell you that Gildas probably studied and was ordained there. Yet the traditional story of this Whithorn centre tells of it being the site of the first stone-built place of worship in Scotland and dates its construction specifically to the year AD 397. Skilled stonemasons, brought from Tours in France, were working at Whithorn when news arrived that Martin of Tours had died. His date of death is accurately known and documented. This was some ten years or so before the collapsing Roman empire finally ended its military and civil occupation of Britain.

St. Ninian had been the son of the local chief. He had gone to Rome to learn about the Christian faith, and is said to have studied under Jerome. He had also, during his journey home through Gaul, trained under the famous Christian teacher, Martin of Tours, hence the connection with Whithorn noted above. Inspired by Martin to spread the Christian message among his own people, Ninian eventually returned home where he set up the "magnum monasterium", his great Christian Centre, which, during the fifth and sixth centuries, is said to have drawn students of the first rank from the schools of Erin (Ireland) and from the Southern Britons (Wales) to this White House, Candida Casa, Rosnat, Whithern, the Whithorn of today.

Gildas - Why the Interest?

By now a reader may well be wondering how a country doctor became interested enough in Gildas to look into all this? This was a strange story. Living and working in Wigtown, I was very much aware of the significance of nearby Whithorn in ancient Scottish history.

Gildas, Dr Mary Walker, Wigtown, Myasthenia Gravis, and the De'il's Dyke

The late Dr. Mary Walker, a Wigtown native, was a London neurologist, famous for her discovery of the cause of myasthenia gravis, a rare muscle disease. In her spare time Dr. Walker had researched the history of the De'il's Dyke, (Devil's Wall) an ancient earthen rampart and ditch, which stretched for about a hundred miles through Galloway and Nithsdale, from Loch Ryan near Stranraer in the west, to the north shore of the Solway Firth near Annan in the east. This eastern finish is just opposite the end of Hadrian's Wall near Bowness on the south shore. Its line is marked on older editions of 1" Ordinance Survey maps and Dr. Walker described it as being eight feet broad at the base with a fosse on the northern or inland side. She wrote "the era and use of all the other Great Walls in the Kingdom being well known, it is singular that a work of such magnitude as the De'il's Dyke should have been overlooked by historians". In short, it seems to have been a small scale earthwork dyke in the style of the Antonine wall between the Forth and Clyde, a continuation of Hadrian's wall lost in the mists of antiquity.

Gilda to Kilda

Her paper on this subject was published many years ago (around 1964) by the Galloway Gazette and she mentioned Gildas as a source for some of her information. After visiting St. Gildas-de-Rhuys on holiday, I noted with some surprise that the French St. Gildas had the same birth date as Dr. Walker's Gildas the historian. On looking into this "coincidence", I found out that the French saint and the British historian were indeed the same person. I had had a lifelong interest in the isles of St. Kilda, and this had become an obsession after I had been there on a National Trust work party. After my pronunciation correction experience in France, it was only a short step from Gilda to Kilda.

Gildas and Gueltas, Historian or Saint, a Mystery to Unravel?

The subject burned in my mind. I had to find out more about this man. Tradition said that he was buried on the Isle d'Houat, a little island off the south coast of Brittany. There were many places bearing his name on the map of Brittany. I must try to visit them. My wife and I went to France. Our Breton landlady helped us to find more. A chance meeting with a Breton language expert gave me the saint's old Breton name, Gweltas or Gueltas. It can also be spelt Gueltaz. Even our Breton landlady had not known his name in that form, but, now knowing it, she found a completely new set of places named after the saint. There were now twice as many places to visit. Another chance conversation gave me contact with a French Gildas expert who kindly sent me a complete French bibliography. It seemed that an absolute mass of information available in France was almost ignored in Britain and vice versa. It was evident that Gildas was practically unknown as a saint in Scotland, which was his accepted birthplace. How could this be? Why had this happened? Was there a conspiracy to ignore him? Here was a "Scotsman", a missionary said to be responsible for establishing Christianity in a large part of France, a biblical scholar of great stature, and the only quotable historian of his time, ignored and forgotten in his native land. This seemed a great mystery. St. Gildas should be, as written in a French book, "Bretagne des Saints", the saint of the world of the Celts, "universel par excellence", born, educated, and ordained in Scotland, missionary to the north, prepared in Wales for monastic life, achieving this calling in Armorica (Brittany), and spending time in Ireland reforming the church founded by Patrick.

Gildas - The Unified Story of A Dumbarton Britton

When made up from an amalgam of many sources, British and French, the story of Gildas then goes as follows.

Gildas was born at Arcluyd, one of the sons of Caun, (or Nau), a chief of the ancient British kingdom of Strathclyde. Arcluyd was probably at or near present-day Dumbarton. This was the west end of Antonine's wall, the northern limit of the collapsed Roman empire, and it was in those days an important centre. The year of Gildas's birth is variously given as 493, 494, and 500AD, with his death as 565, 570, and 581. It is said that he studied at Whithorn where he was probably ordained to the priesthood by Nennio Mugint, a successor to St. Ninian. He was possibly married and widowed before going out as a missionary to preach in central and northern Scotland. While doing this he met with another missionary, Cadoc, with whom he went to the abbey of Illtyd, now Llanilltyd Vawr, Llantwit Major, near Barry in South Wales.

The Welsh Connection

There is strong historical evidence that during the lifetime of Gildas, there was, driven by Pictish and Anglo-Saxon incursions, a mass migration of population from (present day) Southern Scotland and Cumbria to Wales and Devon/Cornwall. At Illtyd Gildas became a monk and it is said that he spent some time as hermit on Flatholm and Steepholm, (Ronech and Echni in old literature), little islets in the nearby Bristol channel. A French paperback, "Gildas de Rhuys, Moine Celtique", a narrative account of his life with interspersed imaginative digressions, describes his early education as being with a hermit on the island of Oya or Roa (now joined to land by a causeway) near Barrow-in-Furness, but neither local history experts or the history department of Lancaster University knew of any record or tradition of this. It is probable that there could be confusion here with Burrowhead at the Isle of Whithorn, where even today there stands an ancient ruined chapel on the small "isle" joined to the mainland by a narrow spit. Tradition says that this chapel marks the site of the first Christian stone building in northern Britain.

Gildas - The Literary Scholar and Missionary

Gildas was an authority on the Bible, Virgil, and the works of St. Ignatius. He "translated" (likely means transcribed) the four gospels and the original manuscript of this still existed in the twelfth century. He was invited to Ireland by king Ainmire and spent some years there creating order in the church which Patrick had founded a century or more before. One of the French accounts suggests that before returning to France from Ireland, he returned to his native Scotland and visited Iona where he tried to persuade Columba to accept the authority of the Roman church but had no success. (The Scottish/Celtic church remained independent until the Synod of Whitby in 663).

Gildas - The Recluse

Gildas sought wild and lonely places and is said to have made frequent retreats to the solitude of the beautiful but then barren Isle d'Houat, which lies near Belle Isle, off the Quiberon peninsula in the north of the Bay of Biscay. He also had a remote hermitage on the Brittany mainland where he used to stay in a cave in a cliff on a bend in the river Blavet. Today this site is marked by a old chapel built into the cliff overhang. On visiting the place, one feels an uncanny sense of similarity to St. Ninian's cave near Whithorn.

Gildas and The River Blavet

The catchment area of the river Blavet is dotted with townships, hamlets, churches, chapels, wells and other sites associated with the saint, often with the name concealed in ancient Breton tongue disguise. In the free time available to me, it has been possible to visit a few of the many places associated with Gildas. The sheer incredulity or amazement among the local population induced by the unique phenomenon of a Scotsman tracking the wanderings of their venerated Scottish saint was matched only by the joy of the very old in finding the opportunity to pass on the mouth to mouth tradition of their own little patch. For instance, there was the little group of houses round a minuscule little chapel, tracked down only after the study of a large scale map. The nearest building was unoccupied. Ironically it was empty because it had been sold to someone from Britain for a holiday home. An elderly limping French lady appeared. Yes, this was one of the places where St. Gildas had been at when he travelled up the river Blavet to his cliff-side retreat. Soon there might be no permanent residents in the old houses. She would get the key and open the chapel. Its bell would be rung for the visitors from Scotland. An elderly man appeared. Inside, the chapel was a brilliant white and despite the smallness of its window, it seemed light and airy. In a little shelved niche stood a little St. Gildas. The bell duly tolled. The spring nearby was surrounded by beautiful flowering plants and the banking was a riot of colour among neatly clipped grass. Who would keep the spring and pass on the old tradition when the couple had gone? Grass would quickly hide the very ancient stone carving at the back of the spring, St. Gildas with his abbot's hat. What was this curious half-ruined "drystane" building across the road? It was the remainder of an ancient fourne or bakery, with stone fireplace and oven shelves for baking bread. The turf roof looked familiar and the building's end was rounded. Yes, it was. Here was a complete "gable-end" of a St. Kilda cleit* in the middle of Brittany. It could only be a funny coincidence? Interesting visits might continue to places like Port St. Gildas on Isle d'Houat, to Isle St. Gildas on the north coast, or even to a church in Paris.

* a cleit is a small unmortared drystane (open stone) turf-roofed building peculiar to the St. Kilda island group. Used by the original St. Kildans to store and dry peat, corn, cured fish, bird carcasses and fishing gear, there are over a thousand scattered throughout the island group.

The Mystery Solved? Gildas - The Heretic? Nearly Excommunicated?

After several years of investigation I had not found an answer to the anonymity of St. Gildas in British popular historical or religious literature. The answer came in a strange way when my wife offered a friend overnight accommodation for guests at a local wedding. In this way, out of the blue, I met a French university student, a guest at the wedding, who had been studying Roman law and what happened after the break up of the Roman Empire. Having come across St. Gildas in the course of her researches, she had encountered difficulty in accessing material which she knew was still in existence. She found that along with two other religious teachers, he had had his writings declared heretical by the medieval Roman church. Normally such offenders were excommunicated and all their writings were burned. For some reason this had not happened in the case of St. Gildas. Consumed by curiosity about this discrepancy, she had actually gone to research the Jesuit archives in Spain where apparently records of every person excommunicated by the papacy are stored. There she had found out that indeed St. Gildas had not been excommunicated, but that his theological writings and records, having been proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church, had been banned as not to be read or studied. Perhaps his title of saint was suppressed in the Celtic world of Great Britain, but survived to live on in the lore of Brittany, where the Breton Celts revered his founder missionary endeavours.

As far as I can find out, (and I only discovered this recently in 2008), only one Roman Catholic church in the United Kingdom has a dedication to Gildas named as a saint. The church of Rosneath St. Gildas and the village of Rosneath lie north-west of Helensburgh, sited on a little strip of land projecting south towards the Firth of Clyde between the Gareloch on the east and Loch Long in the west. The church falls under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow. The church has an informative website: - < http://www.stgildas.org.uk/ >.

Origin of the Name, St. Kilda

In Scotland, most speculation about the origin of the name of the St. Kilda group of islands always seems to be directed towards the north and Norsemen. Why not look to the south? Consider the prehistoric and pre-Roman standing stone culture that spread itself from Spain to Shetland along the western seaboard of Europe. Carnac in Brittany, the evident central metropolis of all standing stones, (with 4000 left out of an original estimated 10,000), seems to have had no problem in spreading its satellite monoliths and circles as far as the north-west of Scotland. In the fifth and sixth centuries, the lands inhabited by the Britanniae included north-west Spain, Brittany, Devon and Cornwall, Wales, and western/southern Scotland along with north-west England. Why should not the Celtic St. Gildas be known among the more recent-day Spanish and French sailors who fished the north and west of Scotland? As noted, Martin Martin said the island name was familiar to such sailors. The Dutch map maker would know of him as a saint as well. Fifth and sixth century missionaries are said to have reached the Faroe Islands and beyond, Ultima Thule. The Breton language, like Gaelic and other Celtic tongues, features mutations at the beginnings of words changing the sound of the word root as does "h" in Gaelic. G-K and Gw-Kw changes are among others listed in Breton language study books. The Gaelic name for St. Kilder's well on St. Kilda was tobar childas.

D'Houat, Horata, and Hirta

As already noted, St. Gildas sought remote and lonely places. The Romans gave the Isle d'Houat its Latin name Horata. I have not been able to find an exact Latin translation for the word horata, but Insula Hirta would mean the rough (or hairy) island. Surely these are strange and close similarities between two islands so widely separated in distance but having the shared St. K(G)ilda(s) connection also. In modern France the name Houat, at one time Horac, is said to come from the Breton for duck with a nearby island called the duckling (Hoedic); but could it have come from Horata?

Gildas Sapiens, the Historian and Scholar

With time for only a superficial dip into some readily available translations of the surviving writings of Gildas, I do nonetheless feel slightly irritated by those who dismiss some of his writings as "the rantings of a rabid priest", or his defensive wall description as ignorant because it does not fit Hadrian's or Antonine's walls. To this Galloway resident with some Christian knowledge, it seems that his fifth century Biblical scholarship corresponds very well with the present day versions of the Bible, confirming the general accuracy of scripture preservation over fourteen hundred years. His alleged muddle about the walls is exceedingly unlikely when he was born at the end of one of them, and Dr. Walker was clearly right that Gildas was describing the De'il's Dyke. It is all the more annoying to find that its line has been deleted from the latest ordinance survey maps.

Gildas, ?ignored

A few more questions could be asked. Does the Christian church in Scotland have a vested interest in having Columba and Iona promoted as the original source of Scottish Christianity when Whithorn was clearly first past the post in Roman times? Some do give Ninian his rightful place, but are they not too happy about remembering this other early saint? Do our national historians not wish too many people to know that, up until the eleventh century, their Strathclyde ancestors spoke the Welsh and not the Gaelic Celtic tongue. Does anyone in Scotland celebrate St. Gildas on his day, the 29th of January?

St. Gildas and Dumbarton

I suggest that Dumbarton should recognise a great son and that Scotland should recognise its neglected saint. Perhaps the most ancient St. Kildans remembered a third great saint of Scotland, when others had forgotten. Having used Christ, Columba, and Ninian to name their chapels, they used St. Kilda, Gildas, to name their well, and hence their island group. Knowing the saint's love of lonely places, someone took his favourite retreat, Houat or Horata, to name their island, Hiort or Hirta. It could even be that it was named Horata by these adventurous sixth century missionaries on their way to Ultima Thule.

Note :- A slightly abbreviated form of the author's material above was previously published in April 1996, under the same title, as an article in the Number 20 issue of the "St Kilda Mail", the magazine of the St Kilda Club of the National Trust for Scotland.

A series of the author's photographs is in preparation for this web site as at 22. 12. 05..

Corrections and notes as at 5. 9. 06..

1. In the original versions of this article, the Breton name for Gildas, (Gweltas, Gueltas, or Gueltaz), was inadvertently and wrongly spelt with an 'o'. This has now been corrected.

2. In connection with Martin Martin's mention of continental fisherman having called the islands "St. Kilda", it has come to my notice that there was also a "Gildas" tradition among English Atlantic trawler men sailing out of Fleetwood in Lancashire. At the 2003 annual St. Kilda Club reunion Dr. Bill Mitchell, MBE, gave a talk entitled "Lancashire Links with St. Kilda". In Victorian times, the Fleetwood trawlers used to go to the St. Kilda area in order to harvest the abundant hake which could be caught in that area. Once clear of the Irish Sea, their custom apparently was to avoid the Scottish Western Isles by setting course in a straight line for the "Gildas", as the older fisherman called St. Kilda in their dialect. When I met Dr. Mitchell at a later date, he told me that the Fleetwood researches, on which his talk was based, had never been fully published, and that his material had been donated to the St. Kilda Club. He does however make some mention of this in his book entitled "St Kilda. A Voyage to the Edge of the World" which is noted in the reference and sources which follow below.

3. The De'il's Dyke. " - inclosed Novantia (or Galloway) by a wall and fosse stretching from Dornock --- ------- fortifying her so that she feared neither the Scots coming from Larne nor the Picts, nor the Saxons ravaging her coasts". This name was given to a series of earthworks that were thought to mark a frontier perhaps between Strathclyde Britons and the Angles in Galloway and running from Loch Ryan to near Annan on the Solway ….. The notion was put forward by the antiquarian Joseph Train (1779–1852) who had picked up on folk belief concerning a Deil's Dyke. Many sources, including Stilicho, the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1862-64) and Wikipedia.

References and Sources.

The following list includes the main historical and other information sources used in preparing the original 1996 article. The French language books were obtained during holidays in Brittany between 1980 and 1990. It must admitted that many of the French bibliography titles given to me (not listed) have so far been beyond my ability to access.

The list has been revised to include sources for some of the alternative suggested theories and possibilities which have been put forward elsewhere as explanations for the name origins of Kilda and Hirta, and some more recently found sources and information points have been added in.

Although long, the list is not meant to be exhaustive nor complete.

"The Story of St. Kilda" by Charles Maclean, Canongate Press 1972.

ISBN 0-86241-388-5

"St. Ninian" by Aelred Abbot of Rievaulx, edited by Ian McDonald, Floris Books 1993.

ISBN 0-86315-167-1

"The English Conquest", Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century" by Dr. N. J. Higham.

Manchester University Press, paperback 1994, ISBN 0-7190-4080-9

"Les Origines de la Bretagne" by Léon Fleuriot, Éditions Payot 1980.

ISBN 2-228-12711-6

"Teach Yourself Welsh" by T. J. Rhys Jones, Hodder & Stoughton 1991.

ISBN 0-340-49564-2

"Bretagne des Saints" by Florian Le Roy, Éditions André Bonne 1986.

ISBN 2-7019-0028-5

"Les saints veterinaires en Bretagne" by Glaoda Millour, Skol Vreizh (no.19) 1990.

ISBN 2-903313-29-6

"Petite Grammaire du Breton Moderne" (2nd edition) by Yann Desbordes,

Mouladourioù Hor Yezh 1990. ISBN 2-86863-052-9

"Elementary English-Breton Dictionary" (Geriadurig Saozneg-Brezhoneg) by R. Delaporte.

Mouladourioù Hor Yezh 1990. ISBN 2-86863-044-8

"Lexique Breton-Français et Français-Breton", by Laurant Stéphan/Visant Séité. (2nd Edition)

Éditions Emglio-Breiz 1980. ISBN 2-900828-65-1

"Irish History for Young Readers" by Rev. H. Kingsmill Moore, D.D., McMillan and Co. Ltd., London and by The Educational Depository, Dublin 1915. No ISBN

"Brittany" by Arthur Eperon, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1990. ISBN 0-330-31219-7.

"The Life of Gildas", written in Latin by Caradoc of Llancarfan, has been dated to c. 1130-1150. A number of translations exist. One by David Parsons (2004) is available on the internet.

Also another source: by Hugh Williams, translator:-

"Two lives of Gildas, by a monk of Ruys and by Caradoc of Llancarfan". First published in the Cymmrodorion Record Series, 1899.

Facsimile reprint by Llanerch Publishers, Felinfach, 1990.

ISBN-10 0947992456, or ISBN-13: 978-0947992453

"Gildas de Rhuys, Moine Celtique" by Yvon Mauffret. Éditions Beauchesne, Paris. 1972. No ISBN

"The Solution to St. Kilda" by Kenneth C. Steven. The Scots Magazine.

New Series, Vol. 142, No. 2, February 1995, page 162.

"A Voyage to St. Kilda" by Martin Martin. (in 1697). 1753 (4th Edition). The Mercat Press : Edinburgh. Limited Edition facsimile reprint by James Thin, Bookseller, South Bridge, Edinburgh. 1970.

No ISBN.

"St. Kilda A Voyage to the Edge of the World" by W. R. Mitchell. 1990 and 1999. Lamberts Print and Design, Settle, for The House of Lochar, Isle of Colonsay, Argyll. PA61 7YR

ISBN 1 899863 56 7

"Sea-Road of the Saints" "Celtic Holy Men in the Hebrides" by John Marsden

1995. Floris Books.

ISBN 0-86315-210-4

"St. Kilda and its Church" by Bill Lawson. Esprint Ltd., Stornoway Business Centre. 1993. (A good summary of historical background and pre Martin Martin references in early records).

ISBN 1-872598-13-1.

"The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and other Principal Saints" by the Rev. Alban Butler. Henry & Co., (London and Dublin) (Vols. I & II) 1845. (Reprint of earlier multivolume original.) Sections on Gildas and Cadoc and others. No ISBN.

"In Search of St. Patrick First Bishop of Armagh" by Mary E. Pollard. Trimprint Ltd., English Street, Armagh. Date and ISBN (if any) not known.

"Words to the Wise" by Dr. Grant Hutcheson. British Medical Journal. Volume 313, page 152, 20th July 1996. (Describes G to K mutations of Germanic languages)

"Archaeological Light on the Early Christianisation of Scotland" by G. A. F. Knight.

Jas. Clark & Co., London. 1933. Volume 1, Chapters 5 - 8 and Chapter 11.

ISBN 0-1436-672915.

"The Oxford Dictionary of Saints" by David Hugh Farmer. Oxford University Press, 1973. Second Edition paperback reprint 1988. ISBN 0-19-282038-0

"Sources for the Early History of Ireland", Volume One, "Ecclesiastical" by James F. Kenney. compiled by general editor Austin P. Evans. (Columbia University Records of Civilisation.) Columbia University Press, New York. 1929. No ISBN.

"Gildas" "The Ruin of Britain and Other Documents". Vol. 7 of "Arthurian Period Sources", edited and translated by Michael Winterbottom. Phillimore & Co. Ltd.. Chichester. 1978.

ISBN 0-85033-296-6.

Part of a series, "History from the Sources", edited by John Morris.

"Vies de Bienheureux et des Saints de Bretagne" by M De Garaby

Editions J.-M. Williamson, Nantes. 1991. ISBN None stated.

"The De'il's Dyke and Gildas Sapiens" by Dr. Mary Broadfoot Walker. The Galloway Gazette Ltd.. Date unknown. No ISBN.

"Ancient Scotland" by Stuart Ross. Lochar Publishing Ltd., Moffat. 1991.

ISBN 0-948403-54-3

"Candida Casa" by W. Cumming Skinner. David Winter & Sons 1931.

No ISBN.

"Britain under the Romans" by S. E. Winbolt. Pelican Books 1945.

"Ancient Lives of Scottish Saints", Parts 1 & 2. (1. Life of Ninian by Alfred of Rievaux and two Lives of Columba, by Cuimine the Fair, and Adamnan. 2. The Lives of Kentigern by Jocelin, Servanus, Margaret, Queen of Scotland, by Turgot, and Magnus.) translated by W. M. Metcalfe from the principal Lives from Pinkerton's Vitae Antiqae Sanctorum Scotiae. Published 1895. Facsimile reprint 1998 by Llanerch Publishers, Felinfach.

"Dr. Smith's Smaller Latin-English Dictionary" and "Dr. Smith's Smaller English-Latin Dictionary" 1870 and 1891. Published by John Murray, Albemarle St., London. (Abridged versions of "A Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary" by William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D. and T. D. Hall, M.A. and of the similar "A Complete Latin-English Dictionary"). Also many other Latin books.

"Historical Atlas of Britain". Edited by Nigel Saul. Section VII. "Independent Britain". Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., in association with the National Trust.

ISBN 0-7509-0313-9

"Steep Holm" by Stan and Joan Rendell. Alan Sutton Publishing Inc., Stroud. 1993.

ISBN 0-7509-0323-6

"Flat Holm" by D. H. Worrall and P. R. Surtees. South Glamorgan County Council. 1984. No ISBN.

"Flat Holm" "Bristol Channel Island" by Bob Jory and friends. 1995. Wincanton Press. This otherwise interesting account of the island does not consider any tradition prior to the tenth century, but it does have a brief description of the monastic site.

ISBN 0-948699-50-7

Guide Booklets.

"Belle-Ile, Houat et Hoëdic" by Yvon Mauffret. Editions Ouest-France. 1978.

ISBN 2-85882-104-6

"Le Pays d'Auray" by Alain-François Lesacher. Editions Ouest-France. 1989.

ISBN 2-7373-0103-2

"Houat" "Hoedic" (sic) by D. Moizo. Editions Jos Le Doare - 29150 Chateaulin. 1990. Says the Latin/Roman name was 'Siata'. (If this were preceded by a Gaelic definite article and aspirated, it would presumably become Hiata.) ISBN 2-85543-070-4

Guide to the Abbey-Church of St. Gildas de Rhuys, in French, English and German. "The Treasure of the Abbey-Church of St. Gildas de Rhuys" given on payment of abbey entrance fee. Publisher not stated.

"St. Kilda Mail".

The magazine of The St. Kilda Club, the National Trust for Scotland.

No. 3. 1978 Page 2 St. Kilda - "Canonisation by Spelling Error" by A. B. Taylor.

No. 7. 1983 Page 44. Picture of St. Kilda Church window, Lochbuie, Mull and a request for any member to shed light on this "strange piece of ecclesiastical history".

No. 9. 1985 Page 3. "Stop Me if You've Heard This One" by W. W. Gauld

No.10. 1986 Page 25. "Why is it called St. Kilda?" by Wally Wright. Excerpt from a 1946 article in "The Bulletin", then a Glasgow national daily newspaper, now no more.

No.12. 1988 Pages 32-35. "In the Lee of Rockall" by W. W. Gauld.

No.13. 1989 Pages 27-28 "St. Kilda and St. Brendan". Early accounts of St. Kilda by Dr. Jeffrey C. Stone

No.14. 1990 Pages 48-49. "Hector Boece's Account of St. Kilda" (1526) by W. W. Gauld.

Copyrighted translation of Latin text. Notes mention of "Hirth" in the "Chronicle of the Scottish Nation" by John of Fourdoun (c1385)

No.15 1991 Page 16 "The Dun Gap" by Mary Collins. Pont's Map (1654) 'Cheules Yrt' (Kyles of Hirta)

No.20 1996 Pages 6-14 "Gildas the Wise" by Dr. M. F. Brewster. Expanded version with errors corrected on this web site. Page 45 "St. Kilda's Church at Lochbuie, Isle of Mull" by David Jeffries. See also back cover.

Books with Gildas information recommended to me in France included:-

"L'emigration bretonne en Armorique" by Joseph Loth, Rennes 1883.

"Mélanges d'histoire bretonne" by Ferdinand Loth, Paris 1907.

"Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae" by C. Plumer. 2 Vol.. Oxford reprint 1968.

"Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et genealogie" Ed. by A. W. Wade-Evans Cardiff 1944

This book list would not be complete without mentioning leaflet material made available to me for perusal at the Flat Holm Project, (Pierhead, Barry Docks, Barry, Vale of Glamorgan. CF62 5QS), at Llantwit Major, at Piel Island, at Barrow-in-Furness and at Furness Abbey.

Postscript.

1. Who was Gildas? Who was St. Kilda? The questions remain unresolved. Was the early 5th century Gildas of Brittany, South West England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland one single person? There could have been more than one person of that name at that time; but the known dates fit too well.

In using our modern terms to describe these places, one must remember that such areas' boundaries did not exist, and that language may have governed understanding and spread of oral tradition as much as geographical areas and place names.

The Celtic language dialects spoken or understood in Rheged (Cumbria and Galloway), Wales, Isle of Man, Pictland (Northern and Eastern Mainland Scotland), Orkney, Shetland, Southwestern England, Brittany and Northwestern Spain were classed as "P" forms, nowadays known as Welsh, Manx, Pictish, Cornish, Breton, and so on. They had enough in common to be readily understood by travellers from other P areas.

On the other hand, the Celtic language dialects spoken in Ireland, in Western and Northwestern mainland Scotland and in the Scottish Hebridean Islands were classed as "Q" forms, nowadays known as Scottish or Irish Gaelic, which could not readily be understood by "P" speakers, and vice versa. Manx dialects probably shared a "P" and "Q" element.

2. It seems to me that in recent years more and more references to Gildas and/or St. Gildas are cropping up everywhere. One might easily get the impression that St Gildas ancient sites exist all over the country, and also that the saint's chequered reputation in Roman Catholic church history has been forgotten, or is not known, or is being ignored.

The following is an attempt to explain this.

Many modern-day "St. Gildas" dedications and name associations with British Catholic churches and other place names might be interpreted as indicating Gildas associations dating back to his lifetime. In fact, the vast majority of these "St. Gildas" titles have appeared here during the past hundred years, and can easily, in almost all instances, be linked back to the consequences of a religious persecution in France.

Differences had arisen between the French presidents of the third republic and Pope Pius X regarding the future of the Vatican's relationship (diplomatic and ecclesiastical) and the authority status of the Roman Catholic church in France, (by then politically a freethinking republic).

The dispute had become increasingly acrimonious, and it had led to the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church and to the takeover of its properties and institutions by the French government (1901-7). Those Catholics who disagreed with, or who did not cooperate with, the resulting legislation were met with ruthless implementation of the new laws. Church schools were closed, education was secularised, and, after initially being banned from teaching, some 20,000 priests and nuns were actively expelled from France.

The Sisters of St. Gildas were and are an ancient (six centuries or more) French order of nuns whose convents and schools were most widespread in Brittany, where Gildas was still revered as St. Gildas, unlike his ranking in most other European centres.

Despite its stated guarantee of freedom of belief, the French republic was seen as, and was, engaging in active state religious persecution. Its new civil policies made it difficult for the Sisters of this venerable order to stay and work in France. Some did stay, but others, who had escaped previous expulsions, went à l'étranger (abroad). A welcoming England, aware of their refugee predicament, was their commonest destination.

Despite its being precipitated by the depressing new environment in France, the migration came to be positively viewed as a God-given opportunity for worldwide missionary outreach by those who felt that they could no longer truly follow their evangelistic and teaching vows in France.

Many instances exist of St. Gildas namings resulting from this migration to Britain.

As just one illustrative example, the writer has arbitrarily chosen the present day St. Gildas R. C. Junior School in Crouch Hill in London.

This school is now registered with the local authority, but the dedication name originates from an earlier private convent school founded there in 1915 by the Sisters of St. Gildas.

These Sisters in London had originally come from one group, probably from Nantes, or Saint-Gildas-des-Bois, of French nuns (and some brothers) who had fled to England for sanctuary. Their first centre in England was at Langport in Somerset. More centres had soon followed in other towns and cities, as well as in Ireland.

Crouch Hill, and the school in London, had been an outreach from Langport.

More information and detail about the complicated English, Irish, and international centres of spread can be found at:-

< http://www.soeurs-de-stgildas-nantes.cef.fr/angleterre.htm >

It would seem that, in mainland Britain nowadays, the Roman Catholic Church does not choose to remember that Gildas had nearly been excommunicated, that study of his writings was proscribed, and that traditionally he has not been generally venerated as a saint outside Wales and Brittany.

Revised 30th May 2012.

The photographs mentioned in the 2005 revision still await processing.

Acknowledgements dating back to the 1980s are also due:-

1. to John Carter. His second-hand book shops made Wigtown a noteworthy book centre long before it became Scotland's book town. In particular, his stock of discards from Glasgow University following a cull of the History and Celtic departmental libraries, enabled me to access and buy books which I would not otherwise have found or known about.

2. to my wife Donna and her group of researchers who gathered local history material for the use of teachers in local Wigtownshire schools. Her editing, co-ordinating capacity, and persistence in the research, resulted in a book for each community school in the Machars. Again the information unearthed is not otherwise readily available.

The above material is under consideration for publication by a third party and may be subject to copyright restriction.

	Rock formation off Port St Gildas
	Sunset from Ile D'Houat
	School, Port St Gildas