What’s in a name?

After discussing the linguistic changes and yet continuity in Dalriada yesterday, lets look at the names for the Britons and Picts in the Early Historic Period. Fraser points out that the usual explanation that Pict means ‘painted people’ doesn’t really hold up historically or linguistically.

What do you call an inhabitant of Britain in the early Roman period?

• Prydyn (Brythonic)
• Cruithni (Old Irish)
• Britanni (Latin)

All three of these words denote a Briton. Fraser believes that terms for Britons and Picts were finalized after the Severen settlement in 211. He believes that only at this point when the Romans accepted their limits was there a need to differentiate civilized Britons from barbarian Britons. Fraser notes that both Old Welsh and Old Irish borrowed the Latin word Brittons for the inhabitants of the Roman province. He reminds us how proud Romano-Britons were of their Roman citizenship. For example, Patrick stresses that he and his accusers are fellow Romans. The spirit of fellow citizenship, initially Roman citizenship, is behind the term Cymry, which means fellow countrymen, in effect fellow citizens. We often like to think of the Romans as oppressing noble Britons who wanted their freedom, but there is certainly no evidence of this in late Romano-British written material. Quite the opposite, Roman citizenship is lauded and cherished. 400 years, twice as long as the United States has existed, is more than enough time for the Britons to embrace Romanitas.

This linguistic development seems to have rose in Roman Britain and doesn’t imply any unification among the Picts or even that the Picts initally accepted the term. (Pict seems to have developed out of Prydyn; Picti being the short form for Prydyn like Britto is the short form for Britanni) Fraser notes that it would have taken time for these terms to be universally accepted among the Romano-Britons, Barbarian Britons (Picts) and the Irish. We can see this in the Irish insistence to continue to call the Picts Cruithni, meaning Britons. The Irish just restricted their use of their ancestral term for Britain to the Picts and adopted the Latin name Britto/Britanni (Old Irish Breatain) for southerners.

I think this can also explain the fuzzy application of Briton and Pict in the northern frontier zone. We know archaeologically that ‘Pictish’ material culture is spread over what we usually consider an ethnic border. Pictish symbol stones and objects with Pictish symbols have been found south of the firths and probably shouldn’t be attributed to left-behind objects or carvings of Pictish raiders. How much were the Damnonii (Strathclyde) and Votadini (Gododdin) really different than that the Picts on the other side of the firth of Forth? Along this border was their language really that different? I doubt it.

Reference:

James Fraser. (2009) From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795. Edinburgh UP, p. 47-50.

The Horsemen

Tribes of Northern Roman Britain (Wikipedia Commons)

If you look at the map above, there is a tribe named the Epidii in the western isles of Scotland. This tribe as been a bit enigmatic because the name has never appeared on any maps or referred to in any writings after Ptolomy’s survey during the Flavian era. The name Epidii has as its root epos, meaning horse. As it stands it appears to be in the Brythonic language. I’ve always thought that it was strange that the men of Kintyre and the western isles would be known as horsemen, considering that this is unlikely to be good horse country. Although there are Pictish symbol stones with what look like sea horses: horse’s head and foreleg with a fishes tail. There are also many other types of symbol stones in Scotland with horses.  Fraser has recently written that there is continuity in the name for Kintyre.

In Gaelic, the word “reti and later riata, normally denotes a riding horse” (Fraser, p. 148). This is significant because Reti is the root word of Dalriada. (Dal Reti -> Dal Riata -> Dalriada) So Dalriada/Dal Riata reflects the name of the Roman era Epidii.  As Fraser showed in an earlier paper, the progenitor of the 6th-7th century royal family of Dalraida was known as Domangart Reti. (Aedan mac Gabran mac Domangart Reti) I have written before about the use of a regional name attached to a rulers name, such as Constantine Corneu, Maelgwn Gwynedd, Urien Rheged etc. This might suggest that Domangart’s family took control of Kintyre, or at least organized it, during his time. Domangart is the ancestor of Cenel Gabran of Kintyre and Cenel Comgall of Cowal. This does not necessarily mean that the Irish first came to the area in Domangart’s time. Frazer and others have noted that there is no archaeological disruption in the area throughout the era. Before I get away from the name is also worth noting that two ancient genealogical tracts, Cethri primchenela and Miniugud senchasa fher nAlban, that unite all of the kindreds (cenels) of Dalraida do so with an ultimate ancestor named Eochaid, “the Gaelic cognate (in later form) of Epidii” (Fraser, p. 148)

Fraser hypothesizes that the people of Kintyre and surounding islands converted from Brythonic speakers to Gaelic between the Flavian period and when they reappear in the written record as Dalraida.  Again he notes that this linguistic changed occurred when there was no accompanying archaeological change, no change in material culture. At the same time, there was a group of people in northern Ireland known by the name Cruithni, which means “Britons” in Gaelic. At some undated point, these ‘britons’ began speaking Gaelic. So we have Gaelic-speaking Britons in Ireland and people who supposedly came from Ireland converting territory in Britain to Gaelic. It is also worth noting that the Gaelic name for the Picts is Cruithni. So Irish authors used the same word to describe rulers in Ulster as in Pictland.

“The Cruithni may have been British incomers from various parts of the west of outer Brigantia, Argyll, and the Hebrides. Later Gaelic ethnographers distinguished Dal Riata from the Cruithni in racial terms. If we set such pseudo-history aside, we are confronted by two neighboring Early Historic peoples, one based largely in Britain with a small presence in Antrim, and the other based in Ireland but known as ‘Britons’. Together they form a link between Argyll and north-east Ireland that scholars require to explain Gaelic in Argyll. Contrary to the conventional model and early medieval origin mythology, however, the link probably arose from inclusions into Ireland from Britain, and not the other way around. There is nothing at all unlikly about the proposition that the inhabitants of Argyll ‘went Gaelic’ along with the Cruithni in Ireland, even if precisely how, and moreover when, such a process could have taken place remains unclear.” (Fraser, p. 148-149)

Clearly the Early Historic period has much to teach us about linguistic change. It calls to mind how many Irishmen settled in southwestern Britain, in Wales and Dumnonia, only to leave no linguistic trace. Legend claims that the kingdom of Dyfed in Wales has Irish origins related in the tale, the ‘expulsion of the Deisi’, yet they eventually spoke Brythonic/Welsh. There are a few archaeological traces of Irish in Wales, notably ogham writing.

The northern examples of linguistic change in Kintyre and Antrim may be informative for the dominance of English in Bernicia and elsewhere that lacks a lot of early archaeological evidence of Germanic settlement. The archaeological evidence of Germanic settlement is a little more pronounced, but then we would expect Germanic settlement to be more of an abrupt change than from one Celtic culture to another Celtic culture.

References:

James Fraser (2009) From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795. Edenburgh UP

Bede’s use of gens

So I’m reading along in Fraser’s From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795, and I’m reading through the Roman period.  Not really my period of interest, so not much has really caught by attention.

Anyway, Fraser points out (p. 47) that Bede uses the term gens Pictorum which has been used for ages to indicate that the Picts were a single, sovereign nation. Fraser correctly cautions that this term should not be used imply homogeneity of the Picts. This brought to mind Bede use of the term gens Anglorum and we certainly know that the English were not a single kingdom or homogeneous in religion or politics.

An important question that as far as I know has rarely been addressed is how Bede uses these three terms: gens Anglorum, gens Pictorum, and gens Scottorum. What did Bede mean by these terms and how did he define them? I think we have to study these three terms together.  As far as I know, he doesn’t use a similar term for the Britons. If that is so, what does that mean as well? Synder notes in the Age of Tyrants (p. 76), that Continental writers used the term gens for the barbarian tribes, but always referred to the inhabitants of the Roman empire as cives (inhabitants of civitas) or as populi. Likewise Patrick always refers to his native countrymen as citizens and otherwise stresses their Roman citizenship. Synder notes that Gildas used the term gens but also used the term cives regularly, though by Gildas’ time it was no longer Roman citizenship that was stressed (or hoped for). Snyder goes on to note that the name Cymry (countrymen) has a similar meaning to cives/citizens. Gens are invaders; cives are rightful owners. So this is the British point of view, but what of the English point of view.

Is Bede following continental convention by not referring to the Britons as a gens or does he have other reasons or biases? As Fraser notes the only difference between the Picts and Britons is the degree of Romanization. The Picts are barbarian-Britons while the Britons are Roman-Britons. Bede would have probably also thought that gens had for lack of a better word, rights, and would he want to admit that for Britons? Note that in his origin story for the Picts he has them as the gens Scottorum in Hibernia/Ireland for the right to settle in northern Britain. Why are the Picts asking the Irish for permission to settle in Britain? It is obvious that he recognized that the Picts were a different people than the Britons, but why doesn’t he have them ask the Britons for permission. If it is because there are Scots in northern Britain in his time, then why does he have them ask the Irish of Ireland (rather than Scotland)? If the gens Pictorum asked the southern Britons for permission to live in northern Britain, then Bede would be acknowledging that they had the right to refuse the settlement of outsiders (like the English).

The one time that Bede refers to the British as a gens is the famous claim that there are four races in Britain that are unified by the fifth language, Latin. Only when the Britons are included with the other three are they referred to indirectly as a gens. Yet, here by claiming that these four gens live in Britain, Bede is equating all of their claim to live there. Stephan Harris has written on Bede’s use of gens vs. natio (nation) and believes that Bede sets the Angles apart as equal to the Britons.

We can observe that Angles speak their own language and have left no portion of their gens waiting on the continent — while the Saxons and Iutae have. This suggests that the Angles have moved as an entire people, as gens, as the Israelites did during the Exodus, not as a group of marauders, exiles, adventurers, or scouts, that is nations. Unlike the Irish, Picts, Jutes, or Saxons, the Angles have a rightful and consistent claim as the ordinary British gens. (Harris, p. 74)

Harris notes that when the Angles first arrive they are there to fight the northerners, the gens Pictorum, the barbarian outsiders. They are protectors of the indigenous Britons, those born in Britain, even though according to Bede, their ancestors came from Armorica/Brittany. So in Bede’s time, there were also indigenous Angles, those born in Britain, and they had an equal right to the land as the Britons. Of course, this is all very convoluted because by the time the Romans leave there are indigenous Britons, Picts (even by Bede’s scenario), and Scots in Britain.

If Bede believes a right to the land is partially built on the claim that the entire gens Anglorum is in Britain, what did he make of the British in Brittany? According to Bede, the Britons came from Armorica/Brittany to Britain. Therefore, the British were always a split people.

What a tangled web we weave…

I don’t know that there are any conclusions to come up with here other than that Bede’s terms gens Pictorum, gens Anglorum, and gens Scottorum must all be considered together. None of them indicate a race unified politically in any way. Language may be the best unifier and, once mostly Christian, then religion though of course there were significant regional differences.

I don’t know how much we can really make out of Bede’s use of Angles rather than Saxons, other than his regional bias. Both the British and Irish continued to refer to all the English as Saxons for centuries and the Welsh word for the English is still based on Saxon. If the whims of politics had gone in another way, Saxon (or Jute) could have easily become the root of their name. It just happens that Northumbria and Mercia both considered themselves Angles and they were dominant in the critical 7th and 8th centuries.

References:

Christopher A Snyder, An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons AD 400-600. Penn State UP, c. 2000.

Stephen J Harris. Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Routledge, 2003.