Their white bodies, their fair faces, their golden hair was noted by a deacon who passed by.

"From what country do these slaves come ?" Gregory asked the trader who brought them.
The slave-dealer answered "They are English," or as the word ran in the Latin form it would bear at Rome, "they are Angles." The deacon's pity veiled itself in poetic humour.

"Not Angles but Angels," he said, "with faces so angel-like! From what country come they ?" "They come," said the merchant, "from Deira." "_De ira!_" was the untranslatable wordplay of the vivacious Roman--"aye, plucked from God's ire and called to Christ's mercy! And what is the name of their king ?" They told him "AElla," and Gregory seized on the word as of good omen.

"Alleluia shall be sung in AElla's land," he said, and passed on, musing how the angel-faces should be brought to sing it.
While Gregory was thus playing with AElla's name the old king passed away, and with his death in 588 the resistance of his kingdom seems to have ceased.

His children fled over the western border to find refuge among the Welsh, and AEthelric of Bernicia entered Deira in triumph.