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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
19. Third Devastation by Picts and Scots
As they were returning home, the terrible hordes of Scots and Picts eagerly come forth out of the tiny craft (cwrwgs)1 in which they sailed across the sea-valley2, as on Ocean’s deep, just as, when the sun is high and the heat increasing, dark swarms of worms emerge from the narrow crevices of their holes. Differing partly in their habits, yet alike in one and the same thirst for bloodshed —in a preference also for covering their villainous faces with hair rather than their nakedness of body with decent clothing—these nations, on learning the departure of our helpers3 and their refusal to return, became more audacious than ever, and seized the whole northern part of the land as far as the wall, to the exclusion of the inhabitants.
The famine
To oppose their attacks, there was stationed on the height of the stronghold, an army, slow to fight, unwieldy for flight, incompetent by reason of its cowardice of heart, which languished day and night in its foolish watch. In the meantime the barbed weapons of the naked enemies are not idle: by them the wretched citizens are dragged from the walls and dashed to the ground. This punishment of untimely death was an advantage, forsooth, to them that were cut off by such an end, in so far as it saved them, by its suddenness, from the wretched torments which threatened their brethren and relatives.
Why should I tell more? They abandon their cities and lofty wall: there ensues a repetition of flight on the part of the citizens; again there are scatterings with less hope than ever, pursuit again by the enemy, and again still more cruel massacres. As lambs by butchers, so the unhappy citizens are torn in pieces by the enemy, insomuch that their life might be compared to that of wild animals. For they even began to restrain one another by the thieving of the small means of sustenance for scanty living, to tide over a short time, which the wretched citizens possessed. Calamities from without were aggravated by tumults at home, because the whole country by pillagings, so frequent of this kind, was being stripped of every kind of food supply, with the exception of the relief that came from their skill in hunting.
Notes
- Curucus, or curuca. Irish, curach; Welsh, corwc; Modern Welsh, corwg, corwgl, cwrwgl, whence English coracle. In Adamnan’s Life of Columba, we read that timber for building was to be conveyed over sea in boats (scaphis) and cwrwgs (curucis). The term, though originally denoting, as now in Wales, a skiff made of osier twigs covered with ox-hide, must be taken as denoting also the rude Celtic ship. The Martyr. Dungall. Aa. Ss. Mart., iii, p. 268 B, says: “in those parts there was at that time (sixth century) a mode of navigating by the use of osier twigs covered with ox-hide, which was called in the Irish tongue (Scotica lingua) currach.” But the curaci, used by Columba and his friends, were provided with sail-yards (antennae), sails (vela), and rigging (rudentes). Adamnan’s Vita Columbae, ii, 45, Reeves’ ed., pp. 176, 177.
- Tithicam vallem, an adjective formed from Tethys or Tithis: “et infesto spumavit remige Tethys,” Claudian. Celtic writers seem to have had a liking for this word, so frequently used by Claudian for “the sea.” We find Gildas’ adjective in the Vita S. Winwaloei, Anal. Boll., vii: Muro utrimque circumdatus tethico. Nennius, Hist. Britonum, c. 37, reads: et legati transfretaverunt trans tithicam vallem. The Irish Liber Hymnorum, printed by the Henry Bradshaw Society (1898), gives the Hymnus S. Columbae, Altus Prosator, of which v. 118 runs:
“per metas tithis ignoti orientalis circuli”
“through the bounds of Ocean, the unknown eastern horizon.”
The Life of Teilo, in Gwenogfryn Evans’ edition, p. 111, has the same word = sea: Et continuo illud in medio tethis ad magnum scopulum in nomine Domini irretivit. Reeves, in his Adamnan’s Vita Columbae, says that tithicam (or tethicam) vallem is “evidently a poetic expression denoting a marine valley, i.e., a strait or firth;” but this hardly tallies with the next words in alto Titane = “on the ocean deep.” Can it imply any more than that a person in a boat or ship on the open sea feels as if he were in a valley—a sea valley? - Condebitorum reversione:—This word is peculiar to Gildas. Beda, in the immediate context, quoting Gildas almost verbatim, yet omitting this phrase, seems to have supplied its equivalent in the word socii. H. E. i, 12.