Cunedda, Cynan, Cadwallon, Cynddylan

168 Pages·2013·61.405 MB·English

by  Koch, John T.

Cunedda, Ernan,
Cadmallon, Cynadylan
Four Welsh Poems and Britain 383-655
Er cof am yr Athro D. Ellis Evans
23 xi 1930-_ 26ix 2013
Editions, Translations, and Commentary
by
Jown T. KocH
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Aberystwrth
2013
C O N T E N T S
First published 2013
© lohn .T Koch
Introduction.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in anyf orm or by any means, elec- I 'Marwnad Cunedda' and the End of Roman Britain
39
tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without written clearancef rom the University of Wales Centre
for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, The National Library ofW ales, II. Trawsganu Kynan Garwyn m[ab] Brock[fael],
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3HH. the Battle of Chester, and the Origins of Powys 105
John T. Koch has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act. 1988. to be identified as the author of this work. Maps.
A cataloque record of this book is available from the British Library.
III. A Turning Tide: 'Moliant Cadwallon
ISBN 978-1-907029-13-4 and the Imperium Britanniae . {6т
APPENDIX: G' WAITH GWEN YSTRAD'
2.2.1
IV. Marwnad Cynddylan: Martyrdom, Apostasy,
and the Welsh-Mercian Alliance
2.24
Abbreviations.
. 2 0 3
Bibliography. 208
Index
I N T R O D U C T I O N
PROLOGUE: ORAL TRADITION SURVIVING IN WRITTEN TEXTS
A LWBEashiRT cLyOnRfDo,r1d w hpoo edtriye:d iHne 1 9ddi91 , nuoste dit eto aanregu we owdrith tomee aabboo unt ottiahe
stop thinking about texts, he used to say. In a culture with a living
oral poetry on heroic subjects-and surely this would include the Celtic
world_there was a tradition (with its stock of characters, places, events,
and so on), traditional metrical forms, and traditional diction. And there
were the singers, each one putting their personal stamp on the material. The
singers did not transmit their poetry word-for-word, not because this was
too difficult, but for the opposite reason-anyone of normal intelligence can
memorize and recite texts. A master singer could only satisfy his patron and
audience and distinguish himself from rivals by doing something more, that
is singing an excellent version in an excellent performance. For modern
western readers, this will sound like preconditions for rapid creative
innovation. which would soon have obliterated a poem's earlier form. But
we are conditioned to think of the arts through the lens of developments
beginning in Paris in the 19th century. On the other hand, in the socio-
cultural context of what can be called pre-modern societies (meaning by this
a stage of development rather than a particular time), innovation took place
within the guiding framework of tradition.
We might think of such a tradition as 'rigidly defined'. However, this was
not by an imposition of rules-though various kinds of rules for poets and
catalogues of heroes and episodes might at some point have been system-
atized and codified. Rather, it was extensive and organically structured
information known universall and profoundly within its own culture. The
forms and contents of the tradition were preserved from singer to singer,
The most relevant of Lord's publications for the present study are Parry, Making of
Homeric Verse 465-78: Singer of Tales.
These discussions took place at Harvard between 1981 and 1989, most often in the
rooms of the Parry Oral Literature Collection in Widener C, sometimes resuming over
lunch, which Albert Lord preferred at noon or slightly earlier.
Welsh Cynfeirdd means 'first. 'early', or 'earliest poets'. On the term ni general, see
Koch, CCHE s.n. Cynfeirdd. The usage can be traced back as far as the collection title
YK ynveirdh Kymreig 'thee arliestW elsh poets'o f the 17th-centurya ntiquary Robert
Vaughan, on which see further Ch.I . The specific definitionu sed in this book is
spelled out ni sections below in this Introduction.
[2] INTRODUCTION CUNEDDA, CYNAN, CADWALLON, CYNDDYLAN 3]
generation to generation. But they did not transmit texts verbatim. A predating the Odl Welsh period. Unlike the Homeric and South Slavic epics
superior performance of a traditional song required not merely preserving which were Lord's most prominent research areas, the Cynfeirdd were not
the tradition, but going more deeply into it and expressing it more fully in singing tales ni the Parry-Lord sense. None of that corpus told narratives, at
ways that the people of the culture would recognize. In the oral culture of least not directly. The Welsh poems are relatively short and stanzaic in
archaic Greece, they knew what a song needed to be for it to be recognized structure with obligatory end-rhyme and intense metrical ornamentation
as part of the Iliad. But that does not mean that they always or ever- anticipating the cynghanedd of later medieval and modern Welsh poetry in
heard our text of the Iliad. The Iliad was not a text, but living oral literature. the strict metres. The Cynfeirdd poetry's attitude is that the poet was the
If there was an Aneirin and he sang the elegies of Y Gododdin as Llyfr contemporary of the events described and that he knew the people. By
Aneirin says,4 he sang them a hundred times in a hundred different ways, contrast, Homer does not say that he drank Agamemnon's wine or grieved
none of which would be replicated verbatim in any of the texts in the for Patroklos as his own comrade. Nonetheless, the Parry-Lord oral-formu-
manuscript. This was not only, or even primarily, because of the linguistic laic theory si an impressive model and has thrown light on materials from
changes that Brythonic underwent in the intervening centuries. And we various linguistic cultures widely separated in time and space. Somehow it
could not get back to the original by textual criticism and historical should be possible, I thought, to make a better reconciliation of this power-
linguistic reconstruction. Rather, there was no original text. That was not ful theory and the evidence of the poetry attributed to Aneirin, Taliesin, and
the nature of oral poetry. the other Cynfeirdd. There was surely a living oral stage behind the Welsh
The songs collected by Albert Lord and his senior collaborator Milman poetic texts, but this had yet to be illuminated as Parry and Lord had
Parry5 in Yugoslavia were composed orally, from formulae and the tradition, illuminated Homer.
as they were performed. It was these recorded songs, their structures and Many years later, I returned to the four poems in awl metres 01 that are
techniques, that lent themselves to close comparison with the Homeric
epics. A heroic song of this type, within its oral medium, was to be under-
8 This change of model was suggested by Dumville's remarks at the Colowwm ar yr
stood as a living thing, capable of growth and self-repair until some insur-
Hengerdd at the National Library of Wales in June 1984 and published ni EWP 5-7. He
mountable discontinuity ended its life. I never heard him say it so provoc- proposed there that a prolonged purely oral transmission of YG ododdin was neither
certain nor necessary to explain the extant texts of Llyfr Aneirin. A second key
atively, but as I came to understand Albert Lord's thinking it was that a text
development was Wendy Davies's work on the witness lists of the Llandaf charters,
composed and long transmitted entirely in writing would have to be, by which showed that Early Medieval Brythonic was written extensively and
contrast, something dead. With linguistic reconstruction and textual critic- competently, at least for proper names, during the 7th and 8th centuries, before the
emergence and regular orthographic representation of the distinctive characteristics
ism one may seek to recover a textual archetype as an exquisite corpse,
of Old Welsh; see Davies, Llandaff Charters; BBCS xxvii/4.553-7; cf. also Sims-
viewing all changes that occurred subsequently as decay, entropy, and Williams, BBCS xxxviii.20-86. For my findings on traces of pre-Old Welsh spelling in
texts of the Cynfeirdd poetry, see Koch, SC xx/xxi.43-66; Gododdin of Aneirin.
corruption. Nietzsche thought along these lines when he turned his back on
I said this at the memorial round table discussion on Lord's work held at Harvard's
classical philology, likening his former colleagues in that field to dwarfs Centre for Literary and Cultural Studies in 1991. My main point at the time was that
straining to resurrect the colossal cadaver of classical antiquity. the implications of The Singer of Tales went beyond heroic traditions that obligingly
fulfilled a check-list of similarities shared with the Homeric epics and South Slavic
In the 1980s, I found Albert Lord's ideas difficult to apply to the Cyn-
heroic songs, that living oral traditions were always essential in understanding old
feirdd poetry for several reasons. Despite prevailing theories of centuries of heroic literature, even when there were great formal differences. The second major
oral transmission,? I was finding evidence of written texts of Y Gododdin obstacle to applying the Parry-Lord method 'neat' to the materials which preoccupied
Celtic studies during the 20th century was that the heroic tales ni Old and Middle Irish
were in prose, except for dramatic utterances by the saga characters in the rhythmic
rosc style. Following the approach of Chadwicka nd Chadwick's Growth of Literature.
Jackson in The Oldest Irish Tradition: A Window on the Iron Age made detailed
As it says in the well-known rubric on page 1 of Llyfr Aneirin in the hand of the A comparisons of the tales of the Ulster Cycle with the Iliad, dismissing the poetry-
scribe: hwn yw &G odoSin, Aneirin ae cant 'this is YG ododdin that Aneirin sang'. prose disparity: Indeed, except for the fact that the telling is mainly in prose--and
5 Parry died tragically at the age of thirty-three in 1935. this is really a detail--this whole body of tales lie. the Ulster Cvclel is epic and ought
See Arrowsmith, Arethusa i.5-27; cf. Nietzsche, On the Future of Our Educational to be discussed on the same footing las Homer and Beowulf though too often it is
Institutions. ignored by students of epic literature' (p. 3).
Most importantly lackson's The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish Poem of 1969. 10 The general meaning of awl metre is 'long monorhyming stanzas. For a working
4 . INTRODUCTION CUNEDDA, CYNAN, CADWALLON, CYNDDYLAN 5]
the subject of this book: Chapter I 'Marwnad Cunedda', Chapter II Trawsganu the Brythonic of the 6th century.
Kynan Garwyn mab Brochfael, Chapter III 'Moliant Cadwallon', Chapter VI To say that it is now possible to reach a decisive conclusion about the
Marwnad Cynddvlan. 11 At this time, I decided not to focus primarily on the historicity of the four poems studied here would be going too far. However,
'Cynfeirdd problem', that is, the dates of composition and whether the there are recurrent observations. The four poems are hard to falsify as
poems' language and textual features were consistent with original com- reflecting a contemporary perspective on political and military realities of
positions contemporary with the people and events described. Instead, the the 5th to 7th centuries. fI we are careful to distinguish what little we do
main exploration here concerns how the information in the poems relates to know about the period from what we think we know, the poems are usually
the other documentary sources for the same people, places, and events. consistent with the facts. The facts in this connection are not limited to the
Unlike most of the heroes of Y Gododdin, those who are the subjects of the fairly meagre documentary evidence, but also what can be inferred from
present selection are otherwise known. We are not, therefore, limited to archaeology, especially if we eschew drawing simplistic and outmoded
constructing hypotheses regarding what the poems tell us about political ethnographic conclusions from material culture-making pots speak a
and military history largely on the basis of their own internal evidence. language and then swear an oath of allegiance to the Saxons or Britons.
Furthermore, the whole subject of the dating and authenticity of the When the four poems include information that we do not know from other
Cynfeirdd poetry has, in my view, reached a dead end, at least for the time sources, I have not found it possible to prove that this information is untrue
being. Very few people are actively working in the field. They do not agree or even especially improbable. On the contrary, the information unique to
about the dating and authenticity-nor even conceive of the problem in these poems often presents plausible ways to solve difficulties and fill gaps
quite the same way--and there is no reason to expect an imminent resolu- in the historical record. There is also enough in the way of archaisms of
tion. What is discouraging and at least somewhat unexpected about this language-and what look to be guileless misunderstandings in the scribal
state of affairs is that advances in Celtic historical linguistics--and these are transmission--to imply a long history. The spelling of individual words in
considerable-have not, thus far, provided a decisive way forward. In the the extant copies of all four poems suggest that these reflect written forms
second half of the 20th century, it was particularly Jackson's Language and going back at least as far at the Old Welsh period, i.e. the 9th-11th/12th
History in Early Britain of 1953 that appeared as though it might make centuries. One particularly fruitful line of enquiry is scrutiny of the words
possible more definitive and controlled conclusions when applied to the and names--their full range of attested meanings and etymologies. The
earlier philological work on the poetry. One trend that has occurred in the comparative Celtic or Latin etymology of words often yields a more suitable
meantime, however, is that various components of the integrated edifice of meaning than the attested usages in Middle and Modern Welsh, thus con-
LHEB have been questioned bit-by-bit and in places the need for revision sistent with a general conclusion of significant archaism of the language. 21 It
decisivelv demonstrated. Yet, LHEB was not revised overall by Jackson, who is also relevant that the attitude of the poems is consistently appropriate for
died in 1991, and nothing of comparable comprehensiveness and authority poetry performed at the court of the patron and in the presence of the
has come along since. There is no consensus about which of the piecemeal patron himself if it is not a marwnad 'elegy' 13 If this is a mask, it never slips.
dissents are more and less compelling. As a result, it has become increas- It would be simplistic to take the evidence of these four poems as
ingly impossible to say that Celtic historical linguists collectively can give a completely factual. On the other hand, it is unsafe to write the history of
'straight answer' concerning early Welsh poetry and its compatibility with
12 It should be mentioned that we are now in a much better position to investigate
definition, see Koch, Gododdin xi N. 2, cxxxi-cxxxv. The word awdl si used both for these aspects of the noetry becanse of several advances in studies of medieval
such a stanza continuing a singlee nd-rhyme and also for poems composed of more Welsh, name studies, and historical lexicography. Foremost among these is the
than one such stanza (plurala wdlau). In these, the end-rhyme changes over the completion of the first edition of Geiriadur Prifusgol Cymru (the University of Wales
longer poem from one stanza (also awl) to the next. Despite this formal difference of historical dictionary of the Welsh language) in 2002, and the much fuller and more
metre, many of the three-line englynion, like the awdlau, also concern persons and exacting second edition for letters A and B that has been published in the sub-
events of the 5th to 7th centuries. This era figures prominently as the Heroic Age in sequentv ears.
the Welsh literature of the medieval period. 13 Marwnad Cynddylan (Ch. IV) is a special case. The poet addressest he king of Gwynedd
11 The italicized titles are those that occur ni the manuscripts. Those given in Roman as his host, but has fled from disaster and mourns the ruler of another country, as his
type inside single quotes are modern conventions. deceased natron
[6] INTRODUCTION CUNEDDA, CYNAN, CADWALLON, CYNDDYLAN [7]
Britain in the 5th to 7th centuries as though these poems did not exist. They However, to assume a close correspondence to any modern literary category
have not been proven to be fiction or that known historical events are risks shaping our thoughts anachronistically.
contrary to their testimony. Thinking of ti as a matter of literary genre, the The contrast of genre is particularly stark when we compare two series
poems in awl metres adopting a present perspective in the 5th to 7th of englynion which overlap ni their subject matter with two of the poems
centuries do not, as one of their defining characteristics, imagine their world studied here. Like 'Moliant Cadwallon', the perspective of the series of
so as to run wide of known historical facts. eighteen englynion known, incongruously, as Marwad Cadwallon ap Cadfan
In this respect, the four awdlau studied here differ markedly from the so- The Elegy of Cadwallon son of Cadfan' si that the hero is alive (!) and that he
called saga poetry composed in the three-line englynion metre and set in the and his warband are on the verge of attacking southern Northumbria, as
same period. Few modern researchers, and none working now, would take occurred in 633. However, the englynion differ in representing Cadwallon's
the saga englynion seriously as historical evidence. They involve details that career as a long series of military encampments, for which the Welsh word
are on first examination highly improbable-such as the poetic persona of used is (singular) Iluest, in all parts of Wales. There is no place for most of
Llywarch Hen being over 100 years old--and are not hard to falsify as this activity-either strategically or chronologically--within the brief and
history. There seems to be no obvious way to alter this picture and nothing urgent documented career of Cadwallon.
to be gained ni the way of historical understanding through vindicating the Similarly, the well-known and artistically excellent cycle of englynion in
saga englynion as history or compositions contemporary to the times in the voice of Heledd, sister of the hero Cynddylan, has much content in
which they are set. In most examples, the englynion have a dramatic quality common with Marwnad Cynddylan. But whereas the latter is consistent with
absent from the awdlau, as though the poet himself or herself was speaking the military history of the mid 7th century, the Heledd cycle has as its back-
from the midst of gripping circumstances--overlooking a ruined hall, for ground a devastating invasion of what is now Shropshire that probably
example--rather than performing, plausibly as himself, before a patron and never took place. The cycle is obviously not intended to be conventional
the patron's assembled retinue. For this reason, it is usually concluded that court poetry recited before the patron and his retinue. In it, Cynddylan is
the series of dramatic enqlynion set in Dark Age Britain-such as the well- dead, his dynasty extinguished, and Heledd laments before his dark and
known cvcles of verses delivered by the personae of Llywarch Hen and ruined court.
Heledd and the englynion on the decapitated head and corpse of Urien One can understand the englynion of both the Heledd cycle and Marwnad
Rheged--were actually composed some centuries later than the events Cadwallon as deriving their information largely from Marwad Cynddylan
described.14 It is also thought most likely that the place of composition was and 'Moliant Cadwallon', respectively. 16 In both cases, the englynion poets
early medieval Wales, rather than north Britain or what is now the West apparently reinterpreted their sources innovatively or perhaps were merely
Midlands of England to the east of where Offa's Dyke was constructed in the reflecting popular misunderstandings of old court poetry. In both cases, pre-
8th century. It is hard to imagine these verses as the property of courts and dominant themes of englynion probably hinged on reinterpretations of the
court poets of dynastic kindreds claiming descent from the pitiful saga surviving awdlau. Thus, with the Cynddylan material, the fulcrums for the
personae. With Llywarch Hen, Heledd, and Urien, their dynasties are reanalysis were a line about brothers not returning to their sisters, 71 which
explicitly and tragically defunct. It may be this very fact that opened a probably actually alluded to the monks massacred at the battle of Chester,
creative opportunity for the poets for a more popular genre free from the but was misunderstood,18 and another group of lines saying that the poet
constraints of royal patronage. 15 We may think of a kind of historical fiction.
matter of metre.
16 With only the titles ni antiquarian catalogues, it is impossible to tell whether the lost
14 For a discussion of the genre and attitude of the principal saga englynion, as well as poemst o Cadwallon, Gofara Braint 'The (River) Braint Overflows' and I Gadwallon ap
texts and translations oft he material itself. see Rowland, EWSP. Cf. Ch. IV, pp. 255-7. Cadfan, brenin Prydain To Cadwallon son of Cadfan, King of Britain', also contributed
15 For the several surviving isolated or stray englynion, where it is unclear how the voice to the content of Marwnad Cadwallon or. rather. formed a cvcle of saga enalvnion with
of the poem is presenting himself, it is harder to draw conclusions. For example, the the battle list. See Thomas, BBCS xxi.309-16: Gruffvdd, AH2 5-7.
englyn concerning Cynddylan at the battle of Cogwy, on which see Ch. IV. The 17 Ch. IV, line 59: ni ddiengiso -r ffossawd brawd ar y chwaer 'from that defensive
englynion in Llyfr Aneirin do appear to belong, in attitude and content, to YG ododdin ditchwork no brother escaped to his sister'.
(see Gruffvdd, Celtic Florilegium 32-9); therefore, the difference is possibly only a 18 See Ch. IV.
[8] INTRODUCTION CUNEDDA, CYNAN, CADWALLON, CYNDDYLAN [9]
had once had brothers before disaster struck.19 These led to the fortuitous everyone today can meaningfully understand as 'English' = political and
literary development whereby the mourning poet became the bereaved military interests self-evident in this light. There is also a pervasive
sister of the hero. tendency to think that the languages and cultural identities of individuals
In the case of 'Moliant Cadwallon', a reference to the hero having pitched would somehow have been simpler, or even purer, in the 5th-7th centuries
tents, more than once, in Anglesey20 (which can be squared with Bede's than in subsequent ages. Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Gaels, and Picts are
statement that Eadwine of Northumbria took control of the island)21 led to imagined as existing in something like archetypal states at this minimally
an idea that was almost surely unhistorical, but more suitable for a national documented time before striding onto the stage of known history with its
hero, that Cadwallon and his warband (Ilu) had encamped for the night complexities (once again conceived of as entropy, decay, and corruption).
(gwest) in every corner of Wales-one llu-est after another. The fifteen Within the present scope ti must suffice merely to gesture towards two
lluestydd of Cadwallon in the englynion were, like the action of 'Moliant factors that have contributed to such thinking. First, the delusion of modern
Cadwallon', preliminary to an imminent invasion of Eluet in the north. Thus, European nationalism saw later prehistory and the post-Roman Dark Ages
the last line of Marwnad Cadwallon (kyueruy&om ny am Eluet 'we will this way. The racial myths and pseudoscience of British origins have never
meet for Elmet') echoes line i of 'Moliant Cadwallon' (o Gymru Sy gynneu been fully recognized for what they are or as sufficiently pernicious to
tan yn Tir Elued ' . . to kindle fire in the land of Elmet by the Cymry"). demand uncompromising debunking. Secondly, native writers of the insular
In saying that Cynfeirdd poetry in general--and the four poems studied early Middle Ages (such as Gildas, Bede, and the Gaels who framed the
here in particular-are hard to falsify as historical evidence, the contrast tradition that led to Lebar Gabála Érenn)22 applied to their peoples the
with the enalvnion shows that this is to be taken as a relative statement. model of the Israelites of the Old Testament. With this concept of a gens, the
There are nevertheless anomalies in the four awdlau, and doubts have been historical writer's group had to be conceived of as coherent enough for their
raised about their historicity in recent publications. However, it is my view collective destiny within world history to be explained as God's will.
that in examining the poems ni greater depth the disparities between them However, even when we get slivers of information about individual lives
and what is otherwise known of the period become less and not more. There lived in the Migration Period, we see what mixed-up times these were. The
are solutions to most of the problems that are not far-fetched and do not cultural, religious, and linguistic complexities of the identities of the
create more new problems than they resolve. Rather, the reverse is often the brothers and successors Oswald (r. 634/5-642) and Oswiu (r. 642-670) of
case: a single solution solves both the problem at hand and unexpectedly a Bernicia are discussed in Chapter III, as is also the ambiguous cultural back-
second one, sometimes a third, filling gaps to permit a more coherent ground of Gwynedd's first dynasty. As discussed in Chapters III and IV,
picture of the period. Penda of Anglian Mercia is another key figure who frustrates any simplistic
Particular doubts that have been raised about the poems' historicity are cultural generalization. A lifelong pagan, but consistently a friend to
discussed individually in the relevant chapters. However, there are some Christian Britons, his name lacks a clear Germanic etymology, but is easily
recurrent patterns of thought that have been bases for scepticism, which can construed in Early Medieval Brythonic, meaning 'having good chiefs', 32 thus
be noted as a general point in this Introduction. The greatest stumbling perfectly suiting the over-king that he was.
blocks are persistent ideas about the available cultural identities of the Limiting ourselves to one further example, the Uorteporius denounced ni
period and what sort of political and military actions would have been likelv the De Excidio Britanniae of Gildas24 is either the same person as, or a close
as a consequence of those identities. It is still common to assume equival- kinsman of, the VOTEPORIGIS PROTICTORIS memorialized o n the inscribed
ences such as: furnished post-Roman burials in eastern England = Anglo- stone of Castell Dwyran, Carmarthenshire.25 This name, or closely related
Saxons = monoglot speakers of Old English = a cultural identity that
22 The Irish 'Book of Invasions': see Carey, CCHE s.n. Lebar Gabála Érenn: legendary
historv of the Celtic peoples'
19 Ch. IV. line 45: brodir am bulad I' used to have brothers'. 23 See G. Jones, Nomina xxi.29-62; CCHE s.n. 'Penda': cf. Sims-Williams, Religion and
20 Ch. III, line 22: ossid(d) art y Mon, ry-phebyllas 'if there is a high place in Anglesey, Literature in Western Enaland 26.
he has pitched tents oni t. 24 DEB $31.
21 HE i1.5. 25 Edwards, Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones II.202-6.
[16] INTRODUCTION CUNEDDA, CYNAN, CADWALLON, CYNDDYLAN
names, Vorteporius and VOTEPORIGIS, are Ancient Brythonic. Uorteporius is therefore carefully consider various possibilities in interpreting the insist-
called by Gildas Demetarum tyrannus 'absolute ruler' or 'tyrant of the ent usage in 'Moliant Cadwallon'.
Demetae (i.e. of Dyfed)'. His polity thus continued the Romano-British Some scepticism about the antiquity and authenticity of the Cynfeirdd
ciuitas of the region and the indigenous group of the pre-Roman Iron Age. poetry has been based on expectations about what poetic language and
PROTICTORIS is an ot very good spelling of the genitive of a Roman title, but metres should have existed at the period before the earliest evidence that
one is tempted to see it here doing double duty also as a translation of the survives in contemporary copies. The best we can accord such bases for
Brythonic name, which meant something like 'Protector-King'. Aspirations doubts is to say that we do not know what the usage had been in the 5th-
of Romanitas are also implied by the genealogies, where Gildas's 7th centuries, though these matters are of course worth further investiga-
Vorteporius appears as Old Welsh Guortepir map Aircol.26 The father's tion. However, even a preliminary consideration of such proposed 'sceptic-
uncommon Old Welsh name derives from the Latin Agricola, which friendly' diagnostic criteria shows them to have questionable validity. For
resonates with the Romano-British past as the name borne by the famous example, a line of thinking sometimes surfaces that Brythonic poetry com-
general and provincial governor of the later 1st century and a Pelagian posed in the 6th or 7th century should show a higher proportion of morpho-
bishop who flourished in the early 5th century. However, the dynasty was of logical and syntactic characteristics reminiscent of the grammar of Old Irish
relativelv recent Irish origin. Vorteporius/Guortepir map Arcol is known than any of the extant material does show. This would include such features
from the parallel Irish pedigree as Gartbuir mac Alchoil.2 The stone of as the reflexes of old inflected cases of the noun and the syntax of the verbal
VOTEPORIGIS also carries along its edge in the ogam script the genitive form complex (absolute and conjunct endings, suffixed relatives, infixed
of the name in Primitive Irish, VOTECORIGAS. The inscribed stone also has a pronouns and other evidence of loose composition of preverb and verb).28
circumscribed cross on it, the positioning of which implies that it was part These objections may be countered along two general lines. First, what is
of the original layout. So we see that the ruling kindred of Dyed, at about being demanded (for Welsh poetry to be accepted as reflecting compositions
AD 500-545, had embraced badges of Christian, Brythonic, Roman, and Irish of the pre-Old Welsh period) are features that are generally absent from
cultural identity and were eager to proclaim all that. Welsh, Cornish, and Breton at the stage of shared linguistic development. A
The linguistic situation in Dyed was at that time no doubt more comparison of the grammars of the medieval languages will show--pretty
complicated than what it would become two centuries later, by which time much at every turn-just how far the Brythonic dialects had evolved
secular Latin and Irish had probably died out. Attestations show us that the together beyond this. Surely such features are absent from Brythonic but
group names Brython < Brittones and Cymry < *combrogi no doubt existed present in Goidelic due to the rapid socio-linguistic changes that resulted
already in the 6th century. But against the background of the rapid cultural from the centuries of Roman occupation in Britain and the massive
and linguistic change, we cannot conclude that these names then meant bilingualism of that period. An earlier set of post-Proto-Celtic innovations
'Britons' and 'Welsh people' in senses familiar to us. To judge from what probably goes back to later prehistory when numerous later La Tène
'Moliant Cadwallon' says seven times versus what it never says once, the cultural innovations reached Britain from Gaul, but petered out before
poet identified his hero with the Cymry and not with the Brython. However, reaching Ireland. Since the absolute and conjunct opposition does not have
that this Cadwallon was therefore anachronistically a Welshman and not a an agreed upon explanation 29 we do not know when it arose or on what
Briton is only one possible conclusion and not the most likely one. Cumbria
on the modern map (Cumberland before 1974) is enough to remind us that
28 Some of Greene's critique of Jackson's Gododdin was along these lines; see SC vi.1-11
the close association of Cvmry with the double peninsula west of Offa's Dyke Some of these considerations were revived by Padel in his contribution to the St
is something relatively recent. As discussed in Chapter Ill, there is Andrews 'Beyond the Gododdin' conference in 2005, published in 2013.
29 For an extensive and fairly recent survey of the theories of the origin of the absolute
additional place-name evidence in the Midlands and north of England to and conjunct phenomenon, see McCone. Oriains and Developmento f the Insular Celtic
show that Cymry was once a common group identity there too. We should Verbal Complex, which argues strongly in favour of the explanation of that author.
[have more recentlv attemnted a briefer overview and fourfold taxonomy of the
competing theories (Koch, Tartessian (2nd edn.\ 295-303): 1. absolute and conjunct
26 OW Genealogies $2. from Indo-European primary and secondary; 2. particle theories (Cowgill, &c.); .3
27 Bartrum. EWGT 4. 'enclitic-deletion' theories: .4 the prosodic theorv.
[12] INTRODUCTION CUNEDDA, CYNAN, CADWALLON, CYNDDYLAN [13]
node of the Celtic or Indo-European family tree. The full extent of the Old older orthographies. So it seems more promising to understand the metre as
Irish opposition of absolute and conjunct verb forms probably reflects at organized according to regular patterns of accented phrases. Secondly, at least
least some spread by analogy within Goidelic. Secondly, as occasional as far as we can judge from the written sources and the range of evidence
throw-backs from before the stage of Common Brythonic, the Cynfeirdd considered by Jackson in LHEB, the period of the 5th to mid 6th centuries was
poetry does ni fact show several morphological and syntactic archaisms of the time of the wholesale syllable losses in Brythonic, apocope and syncope.
precisely the sort demanded,30 but these have tended to be ignored by the As a theoretical matter, it is hard to see how a metrical system based on
sceptics or explained away, as pseudo-archaic 'confections' or the like. counting syllables could have arisen at a time when the syllabic structure of
On the side of metrics, it has been proposed that the Cynfeirdd poetry the language was in flux and the number of syllables in a given word probably
can be proved to be later than the period of its subject matter, if we recon- differed from register to register, dialect to dialect, and generation to
Struct the words in the extant texts phonologically to the forms they had in the generation. It si also hard to imagine how Ancient Brythonic syllabic metres-
pre-Old Welsh period and find that this produces a more irregular syllable if these had once existed--could have been transmitted through the period of
count from line to line. 31 It should be pointed out that over the period from the sweeping syllable losses, which would have amounted to a Babel-like situation
mid 6th century down even to present-day Welsh syllabic stability has been in which no one could agree how many syllables there were in any
the norm. Therefore, most lines will have the same number of syllables in the polysyllabic word or line of poetry. On the other hand, what could be heard as
extant texts, fi reconstructed mechanically into Old Welsh, fi reconstructed in an accented phrase probably remained relatively stable through these
pre-dialectal Early Medieval Brythonic, or fi put into Modern Welsh changes.
orthography. Nonetheless, some syllables were lost or gained by phonological Recapitulating what was said above, it is difficult to falsify the four
changes over these centuries. Applying such a test as a dating criterion poems studied here-and the Cynfeirdd poetry generally--as historical
involves two questionable suppositions. First, it must be supposed that the evidence for the times that are their subjects. It is also difficult to invalidate
metrical principles of both the Old Welsh and the pre-Old Welsh periods were them as reflections of the Brythonic language of those times. Focusing more
based on counting syllables per line, rather than accented phrases. Secondly, ti on the historical associations of the poems than the fraught Cynfeirdd
must be supposed that, had syllable-counting metres developed secondarily problem (dating and authenticity), I had expected nonetheless that it would
during a period when older poetry was transmitted, it would have been be possible in the end to draw conclusions-perhaps even decisive
beyond the abilities of the poets and copyists of the later period to notice the conclusions-about the tenacious philological problem. However, an alter-
problem and fix it, or fix it even unconscious as they were so conditioned by native possibility that is hard to exclude envisions a class of professional
the norms of their own time. As editors of syllabic poetry will know, it is not poets in medieval Wales, probably enjoying royal patronage, but also
hard to adjust lines to meet the required length by adding or deleting monastic learning, with an extensive knowledge of their patrons' ancestors,
unaccented monosyllables--conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and old political doctrines of their patrons' dynasties, and traditions of famous
preverbs. Many words have longer and shorter variants and elided forms. On poets who sang before those ancestors, as well as the traditional metrical
the basis of this argument on metrics thus far, we conclude that we do not forms and linguistic forms appropriate to those poets. Unless the argument
know whether the Brythonic poetry was syllabically regular or not, or how for later composition is not just about date, but includes the idea that the
centuries of oral and written transmission might have affected this. But two poems are untraditional, ignorant, or have content that has been altered to
further points strengthen the counter-argument. First, the texts that survive of suit later political circumstances, the opposition of early and late becomes
the Cvnfeirdd poetry are, in the main, not syllabically regular and they do not blurred and arguably meaningless. It is more a question of a conservative
become more syllabically regular when every word in every line is put into and continuous tradition versus an innovative and discontinuous one.
If we are thinking, for example, of Marwnad Cynddylan as a fixed text-
whether it was first composed in ink on parchment or was a fixed sequence
30 See Koch, BBCS xxxvili.111-18; Gododdin of Aneirin. of about 500 words to be transmitted as exactly that--then the sciences of
31 Isaac, CMCS xxxvi.61-70.
textual criticism and historical linguistics should be able to distinguish such