V. A fifth group consists of importations. In the
year 919 or 920, on account of the devastations of
the Normans, Brittany was almost depopulated.
The Count of Poher fled with a number of his
Bretons to Athelstan, and he took with him Alan
his son, afterwards called Barbe-torte, who was Athelstan's godson. At this date Athelstan could do little
for them ; he did not ascend the throne till 924, and
it was not till 926 that he defeated Howel, king
of the West Welsh, as the Cornish and Devon
Britons were called, and forced him to submission.
In 935 Athelstan passed through Cornwall to Land's
End and Scilly, and possibly enough he may have
then allowed some of these fugitive Bretons to settle
in Cornwall ; and this explains the existence there
of churches bearing the names of merely local and
uninteresting saints, as S. Meriadoc at Camborne,
S. Moran, and S. Corentin of Cury. These foundations mean no more than that some of the Breton
settlers had brought with them the relics of their
patrons in Rennes, Nantes, and Quimper. But an
early Celtic foundation had quite another meaning.
Among the Celts churches were not generally called
after dead saints, but after their founders. The
process of consecration was this:—
A saint went to a spot where a bit of territory had been granted him, and fasted there for forty days and nights, and continued instant in prayer, partaking of a single meal in the day, that plain, and indulging in an egg only on Sundays. At the conclusion of this period the llan or cell was his for ever inalienably, and ever after it bore his name. Moreover,
