David's  name ;  in  fact,  his  whole  life,  as  we
have  it,  is  legendary,  and  it  is  with  the
greatest  difficulty  that  one  is  able  to  sift  the
few  facts  it  contains.  The  legends  are  all
calculated  to  enhance  his  glory,  and  manifest
his  pre-eminence  over  the  other  Welsh  saints,
and,  no  doubt,  justify  his  canonisation.
At  a  suitable  age  he  was  sent  to  be  in-
structed at  '  The  Old  Bush  '  or  Ty  Gwyn
(not  Whitland),  near  St.  David's,  a  monastic
school  presided  over  by  St.  Paulinus  (the
Welsh  saint  of  the  name),  with  whom  he
remained  for  ten  years.  Afterwards  he
became  a  monastic  founder  himself,  and,
among  other  monasteries,  founded  that  of
Ty  Ddewi  or  St.  David's,  his  principal
foundation,  where  he  gathered  round  him  a
number  of  disciples  or  monks,  bound  by  the
severe  rule  of  the  Celtic  Church.
He  was  a  man  of  retiring  disposition.
When  the  Synod  of  Brefi  was  held,  about
545,  to  enact  canons  of  discipline  for  the
clergy  and  laity — not  to  suppress  the  Pelagian
heresy,  as  generally  supposed — it  was  only
after  great  pressure  that  he  was  induced  to
attend ;  but  in  the  legend  of  the  rising  of  the
ground  under  him  into  a  hill,  his  biographer
could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  establish
the  apocryphal  supremacy  of  the  saint  and
his  see  over  the  entire  British  Church.  The
story  of  his  pilgrimage  with  SS.  Teilo  and
Padarn  to  Jerusalem  to  be  consecrated  bishop
by  the  Patriarch  is  a  fiction  invented  to
establish  the  independence  of  the  Welsh
Church  in  relation  to  the  see  of  Canterbury.
