Deira, had defeated his northern
neighbour, and with a portion of the spoil hastened to fill the Roman
slave-market. Gregory the Great, in the days that preceded his
pontificate, passed one day through the market-place when it was crowded
with people, all attracted by the arrival of fresh cargoes of
merchandise; and he saw three boys set for sale. They were
white-complexioned, fair and light, and with noble heads of hair. Filled
with compassion, he enquired of the dealer from what part of the world
they had come, and was told "from Britain, where all the inhabitants
have the same fair complexion." He next asked whether the people of this
strange land were Christians or pagans, and hearing that they were
pagans he heaved a deep sigh, and remarked it was sad to think that
beings so bright and fair should be in the power of the Prince of
Darkness. He next enquired the name of their nation. "Angles," was the
reply. "'Tis well," he answered, playing on the word, "rightly are they
called _Angles_, for their faces are the faces of angels, and they ought
to be fellow-heirs with the angels of heaven." "And what is the name,"
he proceeded, "of the province from which they have been brought?" "From
Deira," was the answer. Catching its name, he rejoined, "Rightly are
they named _Deirans_. Plucked from _ire_, and called to the mercy of
Christ." "And who," he asked once more, "is the King of this province?"
"Aella," was the reply. The word recalled the Hebrew expression of
praise, and he answered, "Allelujah! the praise of God shall be chanted
in that clime!" And as Green so beautifully puts it in his "Making of
England," "he passed on, musing how the angel faces should be brought to
sing it." And brought to sing it they were when the evangelist Paulinus
found his way in the best sense, to the heart of heathen Northumbria.
Paulinus, whom men long remembered,

"Of shoulders curved, and stature tall,
Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek."

had come from Rome with Bishop Justus in 601, and laboured with
Augustine in the evangelization of Kent. When Ethelburga, daughter of
Ethelbert of Kent, Augustine's convert, became wedded to Edwin, the
still idolatrous King of Northumbria, Paulinus accompanied her as
chaplain, and at the same time as missionary among the rude
Northumbrians. The field of his labours was a wide one. For a long time
he made no progress until Edwin himself, moved by his escape from
assassination at the