h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Coref,

I couldn't agree more. If you read my latest post on the BBC Devon 'Devolution' message board, you will see that I have mentioned the Wessex Society, and rejected their claim to Devon. Not only are the Wessex Society trying to shovel us into Wessex, but many of the Cornish posters on the BBC Cornwall 'Nationalism' site are trying to do the same thing (see Bert Biscoe's post). It suits the Cornish case for independence if there is a Cornish/Wessex border at the Tamar. I found the following definition of Wessex in an encyclopaedia:

WESSEX. The district of England which includes the modern counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset. It represents the ancient kingdom of the West Saxons, about the origin of which there has been considerable controversy. The West Saxons, having brought the British of Devon and Cornwall under their rule, began to hold a leading place among the English kingdoms.

Neither Devon nor Cornwall was ever an integral part of Wessex, and I get the impression that the Cornish told the Wessex Society to get lost. Their only claim to Devon seems to be that the Tudor cartographer John Speed lumped Devon into Wessex on one of his maps for some unknown reason, about 500 years after Wessex had ceased to exist. The most that one can say, is that Devon and Cornwall came under the domination of Wessex. Certainly at the time of Alfred the Great's death (900 AD), Devon was still being referred to by the Saxons as the land of the 'Wealcynn', i.e. Welsh (or foreign) folk.

Being a part of Wessex didn't make any sense then, and it certainly doesn't now, in terms of a regional assembly. Does the Wessex Society have a message board, or an E-Mail address, so that we can all write in to tell them to go and take a running jump?

Plymouth Exile

Plymouth Exile (et al),

The Wessex Society can be found by at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wessexsociety/

You have to 'join' the discussion group. There is no subscription, but you do need to spend a couple of minutes registering, and you do need to give them your email address.

To date my house has not been fired, so I think it relatively safe.

Coref

Coref (et al),

I have just consulted the recognised standard reference work on the history of Devon: "Devon" by Professor W.G. Hoskins.

I was looking for entries on 'Dumnonia' and 'Wessex' in the index.

For Dumnonia, there were 12 entries.

For Wessex, there were 0 entries.

I think that just about sums up the relative importance of Dumnonia and Wessex in Devon's history.


Plymouth Exile

Hi All,

Just to let you all know that I will be away from home next week (12th to 19th), so I will not be able to contribute to any of the various message boards on which we are promoting our cause, so please don't think I have chickened out. I should have a very happy week, as I will be back in glorious (Celtic) Devon.

I have just noticed that the Wessex Society message board has stopped showing any messages. Perhaps our intervention has just been too much for Nick Xylas. As it is almost exclusively Nick who seems to be the mouthpiece from their side, I took the trouble to find out something about him, so I entered "Nick Xylas" into Google Advanced Search. There were many hits. One in particular tells us a lot about where the guy is coming from, i.e. his own site on the 'Wyvern Universe'. It appears that he is of Anglo-Greek descent and appears to have something of an identity crisis. He likes to think of himself (on his mother's side) as being Anglo-Saxon and from Wessex, but on finding the John Speed map (from the Tudor period) showing the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (the first one to show Devon in Wessex), he discovered that where he came from (East Bristol) was shown as being in Mercia. He did not feel comfortable with this, so when he set up the Wessex Society, he manipulated the Wessex border to include both Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. Wyvern Universe is his own Tolkien style fantasy world, in which Scotland, Wales and Cornwall are still independent Celtic nations, and the Norman Conquest never happened, so the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy still exists, but with Nick's revised boundaries.

Although he persistently claims that he (and the Wessex Society) are entirely neutral when it comes to groupings for Regional Assemblies, it would appear that he is an Associate Member of the Wessex Regionalist Party (he cannot be a full member, as he was already a member of the Green Party). He seems to play an active part in the day-to-day business of both the Wessex Regionalists and the Wessex Constitutional Convention. He seems to attend conferences of Minor Parties, and is well known to Mebyon Kernow. He even gets a mention on that most vitriolic of Cornish Nationalist web sites 'Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn'. This is why I reckon that he is not as neutral as he claims, and that there is a hidden agenda. I would be interested to hear if you agree with my observations and conclusions.

Have a pleasant week, and keep up the good work.


Plymouth Exile

I have found what might be a relevant book that is in Plymouth Library

Title information

Class: 942.35
Author: Chanter, John frederick
Title: Celtic devon
Control number: D00121562X


Format: Hardback

Unfortunately it is a long walk from here (although I was only in Devon a week or so ago - damn!), so does anybody else know of this book and is it of any use?

I have also come across an interesting reference at the DCC local studies website, from an outside (and disreputable) source, which briefly mentions ethnic origins.

http://www.devon.gov.uk/library/locstudy/nazi.html

Interesting, but they do not name their sources (war secrets?)

Ozzie Exile,

I think that 'Celtic Devon' by Chanter must be an old title, as it doesn't seem to be available through Amazon.

Perhaps Kerswell or Coref could borrow it from Plymouth Library, and let us exiles know if it is of interest.

The nazi document was interesting. It seems that if the Germans had invaded Britain, the people of Devon and Cornwall might have joined the Scots, Welsh and Irish in being treated as an inferior race.

Have you got your copy of 'A Handbook of West Country Brythonic' yet? If so, what do you think of it?


Plymouth Exile

Sadly the delivery of my copy has been delayed.

Now it looks like I will get it just in time for Christmas.

I have recently carried out a brief review of place names in Devon at the time of the Domesday book, and also (for comparison) surrounding counties.

I found some interesting evidence.

For example place names including the word 'combe' abounded in Devon.
No great surprise perhaps, but the extent is massive - I counted 64 entries.

I looked at our eastern neighbours. Somerset had 35 'combe' placenames (mostly in the west), Dorset 18, but then if you went further east they virtually stopped. 1 in Hampshire, 3 in Gloucestershire etc..

Now 'combe' is undoubtably a word of Celtic origin (refer cwm in Welsh), and the sheer and relative numbers in Devon emphahise its celtic past.

The Wessex Society crowd have argued that Devon was not celtic but rather part of Wessex. This seems to counter that argument nicely.

However surprisingly Cornwall had not one 'combe' place name recorded. I am puzzled by this, and recall seeing on a number of Cornish websites claims that the Cornobi (or Carnabi) were a distinct sub-grouping from the Dumnoni (Damnoni) tribe of Devon.

Does this lend credence to that argument - whilst keeping Devon Celtic?

I also ran other place names through the mill.

'cott' suffixes were relatively common in Devon (17), with 5 in Cornwall and 8 in Somerset. But none in Dorset. Those that do exist are in a narrow band running through north Devon (but not south) through parts of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, and even into Wales.

However Devon was by far the most popular abode (of course).

The same was true of the suffix 'worthy', where Devon had 29, Cornwall 3, Somerset 9, and Dorset nil. Gloucester, Berkshire and Wiltshire also have none.

A number of texts give 'cott' and 'worthy' as having an Anglo-Saxon derivation, but if so it seems odd that they would be used so often in Devon, and hardly at all in the Wessex 'homeland'.

It doesn't really add up does it?

I remember Plymouth Exile writing about this issue many months ago

Perhaps another explanation is needed

Coref,

That was a very interesting piece of work you carried out. I have looked at the same thing (incidences of the name 'combe' or 'coombe') on modern OS maps, and have found hundreds (if not thousands) in Devon. As you say, the density decreases as one goes east into Dorset and Somerset, but also (surprisingly) as one goes into Cornwall.

Firstly, if we consider the incidence of 'combe' in Devon, does the greatly increased number of 'combe' place names on modern OS maps compared with the number in the Domesday Survey, indicate post Domesday foundations of towns, hamlets and farms? If so, then the continued use of the word 'combe' may well indicate the continued use of the old Brythonic language well after the Norman Conquest. This would add further evidence to the references I have seen concerning the Celtic tongue being spoken in the British quarter of Exeter into the 13th Century and remnants of the language still being in use in some remote parts of Devon into the 16th Century.

Secondly, if we consider the surprisingly low incidence of 'combe' in Cornwall, it could be explained on modern maps by the possibility of it being replaced by the more modern Cornish word for a valley 'nans', but this does not explain the low incidence in Domesday. Certainly there was a Cornish equivalent to the Welsh 'cwm' in the word 'cum', but it does not seem to have been used very much in place names. The name 'Come to Good' is generally regarded as a corruption of 'Cum ty Coed' (The house in the wooded valley), and the original name for Falmouth was 'Pennycomequick' from 'Pen y cum gwyk' (The village at the head of the valley). Incidentally, the two uses of the same name in Devon are far older than the Cornish usage, which was 17th Century. There are also a number of farms in Cornwall whose names include the word 'combe', but nothing like as many as in Devon.

The words 'cott' and 'worthy' present more of a problem. As you say, they are often regarded as being Anglo-Saxon in origin (meaning a small hut and enclosed land respectively), but it is also possible that in some instances, they are corruptions of the Brythonic words 'coet' (wood) and 'wartha' (higher or upper). Your evidence would seem to indicate that the Celtic derivations may be more numerous than the Anglo-Saxon ones; otherwise one would expect to find more instances in Wessex. Sometimes it is possible to determine the most likely origin from the local topography. The same is true of place names containing the word 'ford'. If the place is at a point where a river or stream was clearly forded, then that is the most likely derivation, but if it occurs at the summit of a ridge (nowhere near a stream or river), the derivation from the Brythonic 'fordh' (a road or track) has to be considered.

Corruptions of Brythonic names are to be found all over Devon, such as the small tributary valley on Dartmoor called 'Drizzlecombe', from 'Dour isel combe' (Shallow water valley), and Nine Maidens stone circle is reckoned to be a corruption of 'Ni Men' (Sacred stones). The same root 'men' is thought to be the origin of Exmoor's highest sea cliff 'Great Hangman', i.e. 'An men' (The rock).

Do you have a copy of 'A Handbook of West Country Brythonic (Old Devonian)' by Joseph Biddulph yet? It is well worth getting when investigating place names.

Are you still in the Wessex Society forum? Our friend Nick Xylas kicked me out for accusing one of their respondents of being a hypocrite, when he stated that Sussex should have its own assembly, but that Devon would be well looked after as a part of Wessex. Anyway, I have decided that they are a tin-pot organisation, which nobody is going to take any notice of. Nick Xylas seems to be something of a one-man band, who accuses us of Celtic romanticism, while he is clearly a Saxon romanticist, which is far less realistic, as the evidence is that the Celts are in the majority, even in Wessex.


Plymouth Exile

Plymouth Exile

Your last posting contained some interesting work.

I haven't ordered the book yet - but I think I will.

As to the Wessex Society - I have pretty much given up on them as well.

It seemed to be just Nick Xylas holding the fort, with the occaisional burst from Hippy Hatchet Head, and only one of two other postings.

I did note your 'expulsion' - as Nick Xylas tried to 'moderate' your final posting - but stuffed up - so it appeared despite him!

I did see some postings from a 'Petroc', and don't know who he/she is, but Petroc did side with us (ie Devon is not part of Wessex), and appeared to live in London.

Good on him.

Nick didn't really have any good counter arguments to the points raised, but neither do I trust that we persuaded them to go away.

Perhaps they will temper their views in future, and recognise that a number of Devonians hold different views, but...we can only wait and see.

As you say, I doubt they are in any way influencial, and generally not worth bothering with.

Coref et al,

The great thing about the 'Handbook of West Country Brythonic' is that it presents the language as it was at the end of the dark ages, which is perhaps more relevant to the derivation of place names than modern Cornish or Welsh. I certainly found it to be a fascinating little book and well worth the few quid it cost.

The trouble with Nick Zylas (and also the more extreme Cornish Nationalists) is that they are only prepared to believe what they want to believe, i.e. that which fits their pre-conceived notions. In both cases, this equates with there being a distinct Celtic/Saxon border at the Tamar. As soon as you refer to the modern genetic evidence, which shows conclusively that the people, who currently occupy the lands to the East of the Tamar, are 'predominantly Celtic', the blinkers go on and they suddenly have insurmountable problems understanding the word 'predominantly'.

The attitude which got up my nose most was that Nick would only believe that Devonians didn't see themselves as a part of Wessex if we raised a 50,000+ petition saying so (like the Cornish one). I tried to point out that the Wessex group had accepted the wishes of the Cornish not to be a part of Wessex long before their petition and that in any case, the petition told us nothing about the views of the large majority of Cornish people who didn't sign it. At least the BBC Devon devolution board reflects the views of anyone who cares to post to it, and I have yet to see any views (from a Devonian) in favour of either a mega South West or Wessex.

I don't suppose you had the opportunity of inviting 'Petroc' (in London) to join this forum. I suspect that he is a patriotic Devonian.

Have any of you seen the following newspaper article presenting evidence for a Dumnonian beach party, complete with Byzantine wine, near Bantham? They even think that there may have been a Dumnonian palace near by.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=87228


Plymouth Exile

Inspired by the celtic devon discussion, I have produced a homepage on the subject 'Dewnans - Celtic Devon'.

I have plagiarised a number of ideas I have picked up here, from friends, from relatives (esp my brother), and relied on a sometimes hazy recollection of books read in my younger days.

The url is

http://www.users.senet.com.au/~dewnans/

It is very 'fresh off the press' and probably has a large number of typo's, errors etc...

I intend to add to it with time (subject to the limit my ISP imposes)

Any helpful suggestions or threats of legal action etc.. are probably best addressed via the email response provided.

If anyone has a homepage with any relevant info I am happy to have links to and from.

Cheers