On the Ruin of Britain

Notes

1. Nonnulli .... alii .... alii . . . alii. Gildas describes the fate of his countrymen in this struggle, (1) Many were killed outright; (2) others were reduced to life-long slavery; (3) others took refuge in parts beyond sea; (4) others betook themselves to hilly districts and the rugged sea-coasts. These last are the reliquiae, the remnant, who before Gildas’ own time had, with the assistance of their British fellow-countrymen (cives) succeeded in wresting back several cities and districts from the terrible enemy. Two remarkable successes came at a time when a considerable part of the Saxons had returned to their own settlement. The first occurred under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus; the second came by the siege of Badon Hill; both exceeded all expectation or hope on the part of the British. At the time when Gildas wrote, there were many alive who had been eye-witnesses of the two events, who could not, he remarks, refrain from frequent mentioning of them. He himself was born in the very year of the later victory, forty-three years and one month from his time of writing; but the success to which the generalship of Ambrosius Aurelianus led was acquired at no considerable time before that, as it must fall within the memory of one life. If we take the year of Gildas’ birth as c. A.D. 500, then the battle of Badon Hill took place c. 456-7, and the successes of Ambrosius Aurelius may be put not far from A.D. 450.
2. Transmarinas petebant regiones. Gildas in these words certainly implies that there was an emigration of a considerable part of the Britons of this island to the continent. He has already intimated the same in c. 4, where he tells us that his information is derived not from native sources but from continental ones. What might have existed of the former had, he says, either been burnt by the enemy, or carried far away by that fleet which conveyed his countrymen into exile. This was the beginning of Britanny, or Armorica, but the emigration continued far on into the seventh century. Another view, maintained by many, maybe stated in the words of Dr. Freeman: “Here the ante-Roman population still kept its Celtic language, and it was further strengthened by colonies from Britain, from which the land took its later name of the Lesser Britain, or Britany” (Hist. Geogr. of Europe, p. 93). French writers, especially French Celtic scholars, hold a very different opinion. M. Loth, for instance, in his exhaustive History of the British Emigration in Armorica. thus sums up the conclusions of M. de Courson: “In every place where the insular Britons are not established, the names of places are Gallo-Roman; men’s names are Latin or German. The territory of Rennes and that of Nantes .... are of this kind. The old Vannetais, even, towards the end of the fifth century, presents the same character. The tyrant of Vannes, in the Life of St. Melanius, is named Eusebius, his daughter Aspasia, and the” villa “in which he resides Prima Villa. Everywhere, on the contrary, where the Britons are established, the names of men and of places present a Celtic character. Men’s names are the same as in Wales and Cornwall; the names of places are generally preceded by a British prefix, as in the island; tref (hamlet), ploi, plou, pleu, plo (plebs = Welsh plwyf, meaning at first a congregation, then the district inhabited by the congregation of any given church); caer (a fortified place, and, simply, a village); llan (a monastery, generally, then a church), etc. The terminations are equally distinct. The Britons do not derive names of places in -acum (-ac) from names of persons, a formation very frequent in a Gallo-Roman country. In a word, throughout the zone occupied by the immigrants, all is transformed, all is Celtic (Brito-Celtic): we are in Britannia; at Rennes and at Nantes we are in Romania” (p. 84). This account of the fact that a Brito-Celtic people are found settled on the peninsula which forms the extremity of the “tractus Armoricanus,” about the middle of the sixth century, is amplified by M. Loth. He notices at length the special characteristics of different Celtic languages, which make it impossible for us to regard the people of Britanny as a portion of the old Celtic inhabitants of Gaul surviving there: reference is made to the use of Britannia, etc., by Gregory of Tours in the Historia Francorum, to ancient Lives of Saints, which describe their crossing over from Britain to Lesser Britain (Britannia Minor) with crowds of companions, and to a large bulk of historic matter in ancient annalists and poetry. Taking all things together, a host of lines converge upon one fact: that from about A.D. 500 to 590 there was a strong stream of emigration to the continent. It had, probably, begun earlier, and it continued later, but during the whole lifetime of Gildas there were periods of emigration. Two of his old fellow-disciples, Samson and Paul Aurelian, left their native land and settled in Britany. (Vide L’Emigration bretonne en Armorique, par J. Loth. 1883.)
3. Celeumatis vice. In a copious note on κέλευσμα (or κέλευμα, a later form) by Blomfield, Glossarium in Persas (Aesch.), p. 151, v. 403, which gives apt illustrative passages as to the meaning of the Greek word, Isidore is quoted: Aliter; celeuma est carmen quod navigantes canere solent, vel clamor nauticus, id est, vox nautarum. Celeuma in this passage of Gildas has a similar meaning, implying the sailors’ joyous song when at work, or in nearing port. Jerome, Epp. 14, 10, shows this meaning well: expandenda vela sunt ventis, et quaestionum scopulis transvadatis lactantium more nautarum epilogi celeuma cantandum est.
4. Domum: this can only mean the place assigned to them by treaty in Britain, not their original home on the Continent. The sentence, therefore, implies an ebb in the flood of Saxon conquest.
5. Verg. Aen. ix. 24.
6. Ambrosio Aureliano. Ambrosius Aurelian has become known in Welsh literature as Emrys Wledig, or, as the Historia Britonum gives the name, Embreis Guletic. According to Gildas, he is (1) a Romanus, a member of one of the few old aristocratic families then remaining in Britain; (2) his ancestors had worn the imperial purple: he may have been a descendant of some tyrannus that had assumed the title of Augustus in Britain; (3) he was a vir modestus, which implies kindness of disposition with unassuming manners: the mention of this quality goes far to prove that the information had come to Gildas from some one personally acquainted with the victorious leader; (4) his descendants, grandchildren probably, were intimately known to Gildas. Ussher (Antiquities, vol. v, c. xiii, p. 513) has drawn attention to the false reading indutus for indutis, which the first edition of Polydore Vergil introduced. In this way Ambrosius Aurelian himself assumed imperial power “for the struggle” (collisioni for collisione) against the Saxons. But, though one codex, A, reads indutus, the way in which Beda paraphrases Gildas shows plainly that he must have read indutis: occisis in eadem parentibus regium nomen et insigne ferentibus. H. E., i, 16. With Beda agrees the Historia Britonum of Nennius, which makes Ambrosius say that his father was of consular rank (c. 42). The Irish version of Nennius adds an interpretation of Guletic, in Latin, as meaning king of the Britons (rex Britonum). Maximus is also styled Maxim Guletic (Archiv fur Celt. Lexicogr., i., s. 206), but, in the case of both, its implication appears to be that of a commander. Geoffrey of Monmouth absurdly makes him the son of the tyrannus Constantine, whom he represents as king of Britain, along with Constans the monk and Uthur ben dragon: “Ac or wreic honno y bu idaw tri meib. Sef oed y rei hynny, Constans ac Emrys Wledic ac Uthur ben dragon” (Brut., p. 126). We seem to have here a reminiscence of both Gildas and Orosius. In Gildas, Geoffrey found that the family of Ambrosius had worn, the purple, which may well mean that he was descended from one of the many tyranni who had assumed the title of Augustus in Britain. Orosius, on the other hand, furnishes the romancist with a father for Ambrosius in the person of the tyrannus Constantine. He had a son Constans, that from a monk became a Caesar, but this son was killed in Spain in A.D. 412, and Constantine himself in the previous year. [Adversus hos Constantinus Constant em filium suum—pro dolor!—ex monacho Caesarem factum—in Hispanias misit—Oros. Hist., vii, 40, 7.] Yet according to Geoffrey’s story, Emrys and Uthur must have been men in years long before Constans left his monastery, that is, long before 411, nevertheless, the former lived to conquer the Saxons about the year 450! This is still worse if we fall into the mistake of taking Geoffrey’s Constantine, as he himself suggests, to be Constantine the Great.