At the outset, I thank my fellow-contributors to this volume, Richard Sowerby, Joseph- Claude Poulin, Caroline Brett, Ian Wood, Constant Mews, Jonathan Wooding and Karen Jankulak, for being so forthcoming with their contributions and patient with sometimes picky editorial requirements. Although I haven't met all of you, I have come to think of you as a group of friends with common interests. Special thanks are due to Caroline Brett for summarising so effectively the colloquy stage of this project (see the third footnote to my study) and cheerful encouragement at all stages and to Jonathan Wooding for help in drafting the submission to the publisher, not least in finding the right title for this volume of collected studies; moreover I join with Joseph-Claude Poulin in expressing remerciements to Constant Mews for translating his study's summary into English. Thanks are also due, far beyond the remuneration she received, to my colleague Penny Nash, a published scholar in her own right on a slightly later period, for her care and accuracy in creating a unified bibliography and index; to Rebecca Plumbe, une vraie informaticienne, Educational Designer, FASS eLearning, Teaching and Technology Innovation, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, for answering my computer enquiries; and to Linda Huzzey of Koolena Training and Mapping for drafting the final map.

Having for many years wanted to promote international scholarly discussion about the First Life of St Samson of Dol, the subject of this book, I am of course delighted at its publication. There is one regret, however. A main goal of the project is to bridge the gap over what, the Life tells us, the Insular Britons called ‘the Southern Sea’, which can be a difficult task; readers of the future, that's a topical reference! I set out to do so initially by the unusual method of inviting scholars who had published on the text to cross a far more southerly sea to a colloquy in Sydney. As it turned out, old age, illness and workload prevented the three French scholars from attending and it was left to Joseph-Claude Poulin (who is québécois) to uphold the French tradition of scholarship, which he does most ably, of course.