This little tale, retold rather than translated, is taken from the German of Professor Ebrard of Erlangen, to whom we are indebted for much information concerning the early Church of Ireland and Scotland, known in ecclesiastical history as the Culdean Church. This story (of a young girl originally known as Bilihild) carries us back more than a thousand years, to the first growth of Christianity, which now spreads as a mighty tree. In that time the Church of Ireland shone as a very star in the West. Her learned men were the pride of courts, and her missionaries carried the pure Gospel far and wide. Germany and Switzerland to a great extent were Christianized from Ireland. The early Church of Ireland was eminently a mission Church; and the manner in which she set to work was not without a tinge of colonization. Her messengers went forth by bands of twelves: twelve brethren under an abbot (a church leader or elder), with their wives and families, - forming the nucleus, as it were, of a community, - would found their cenoby in the wilds of some heathen land, bringing their influence to bear upon the people round about them – their charity, that is, winning them to the Lord; the cenoby growing and sending forth new bands of workers to found new settlements elsewhere.
It was the Culdean Church, and not Rome, which in this manner was chiefly instrumental in Christianizing the heart of Western Europe.
For derivation of the “Culdee,” setting aside others, we give Prof. Ebrard’s, from the Gaelic cele (fellow, or man) and De (God): at any rate, “men of God” the Irish missionaries were called by the heathen wherever they went.
Bilihild (known as the Princess Adelina in this publication) and Hedan are no fiction; the “men of God” occurring in these pages one and all are historic; and the little story, in the best and deepest sense, is true.

Julie Sutter