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

Science is a wonderful thing. Shame it doesn't work most of the time. Placenames in the Cumbrian region - north of the Humber and Mersey and south of the Forth and Clyde have varied widely over the period between 1000 and 1500 AD. Spelling being determined by 'outsiders' making the most of local accents or just varying spelling according to the vague patterns of their day.
This has led to all kinds of foggy ideas. Certainly doesn't help researching on the internet via search engines that require exact spelling. Abbeyford can be found as Abbeyforth, Aberforth, Abberforth, Abberford or it's present Aberford. Now is that Celtic? There is a junction between two rivers there (aber). There was an abbey there. There was a ford there. But then again the Norman lord of the manor came from Abbeville. Um. Back to the printers!

Penbardd,

We have the same trouble in the south west.

Devon's (unofficial) patron saint is St Petroc - as used in numerous dedications, such as the Devon Town 'Newton St Petroc'. However other variations are 'St Petrock', as is the North Devon Town 'Petrockstow' (also known as 'Petrockstowe'), and Petrox (as in the Dartmouth's 'St Petrox' church).

In Cornwall there are also dedications to St Petroc - as in 'Padstow'. How Petroc transfigured itself into 'Pad' (Patrick?) I will never know.

As you say, the internet is an exact science often applied to the inexact!

In previous postings I suggested that a Latin dialect was being spoken in southern Britain at the end of Roman rule. But there is something else that may provide, in conjunction with this, a better explanation for the way England and its language evolved.

It appears that long before the Romans left Britain, Germanic mercenaries were being employed by the Roman army in Britain. These mercenaries, according to Roman custom, were granted land in return for their service.

Substantial numbers of Germanic-speaking people may have been settled in Britain centuries before the collapse of Roman rule, employed first as mercenaries by the Roman army, and then settling on lands granted as payment for their work.

While nobody knows for sure what happened, it may be that ‘Saxon’ England had nothing to do with Hengist and Horsa—mythological figures—but arose from a kind of military coup in post-Roman Britain. The post-Roman British government could no longer afford to pay the large number of Germanic mercenaries what they had been used to receiving under Roman rule, and the ‘Roman’ military, made up of Germanic mercenaries, took over the country.

The evidence for this idea rests on the Saxon Shore forts constructed on the south east coast of Britain during the late Roman time. A document called ‘Notitia Dignitatum’ apparently copied in the 15th century from a 5th century text refers to these forts being under the command of someone called the ‘Comes Litoris Saxonici’ or ‘Count of the Saxon Shore’.

There is a debate as to what these forts were for, and who constructed them. The simplest explanation is that these were fortifications manned by Saxon mercenaries under Roman command.

But were the Saxons a threat to late Roman Britain or were they already there? If they were not in Britain at the time, why use the phrase ‘Saxon shore’?

If the Saxons had already settled in southern Britain, long before the end of Roman rule, this changes the conventional idea of what happened when the Romans left. Rather than invading post-Roman Britain, the descendants of Saxon mercenaries just invited more of their own people to settle from the continent after the end of Roman rule. Given that the Saxon shore forts were established by 370, there is the possibility that a large Germanic speaking population had already settled in Roman south eastern England more than 100 years before the supposed invasions.

This raises the possibility that Anglo-Saxon, or ‘Old English’ was being spoken in south-eastern England under Roman rule. It would have been the language of the military garrisons, with Latin being spoken in town and Brythonic being spoken in the country.

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon may have been spoken in England long before the end of Roman rule, as a language of Germanic soldiers employed by the Romans who then settled on lands they were given as payment.

Maybe Anglo-Saxon or ‘Old English’ was not suddenly imposed by invasion. It may have co-existed with the Latin and Brythonic languages for two hundred years in Roman Britain. Many of the placenames that exist in England today may date to an earlier time. They may come from lands granted to Saxon soldiers who were employed by the Roman army, not as we are led to believe, from a later ‘total’ Saxon invasion and displacement of Celtic people.

>>If the Saxons had already settled in southern Britain, long before the end of Roman rule, this changes the conventional idea of what happened when the Romans left. Rather than invading post-Roman Britain, the descendants of Saxon mercenaries just invited more of their own people to settle from the continent after the end of Roman rule.<<

As far as I'm aware, that IS the conventional idea of what happened after the Romans left. I don't think anyone has believed the Horse and Horse story for at least 50 years.

I believe that it is generally understood that the Roman's employed many mercenary soldiers in its 'occupying army' - a number from Friesia. It is likely that Anglo-Saxon's were therefore present (to some degree) during Roman times, although how much 'Old English' was spoken I do not know.

When the Romans left Britain, the traditional view is that the British, recently released from Roman servitude but nervous about possible invasion and security, foolishly invited the Angles and Saxons to assist in the defence of their realm. I think Vortigen was one person who was responsible for this invitation.

However the image of a population of insecure and nervous Britons ex-slaves abandonded by their previous Roman masters may well be exaggerated. Rather than being 'abandoned' by the Romans and reverting to pre-Roman Celtic tribal systems it seems that many Roman systems and structures continued for some considerable time - even centuries.

The Romans left, but rather than reverting to pre-Roman Celtic trbal behaviours many British may well have tried to continue 'as before', but with a native Celtic rather than Roman hierarchy.

It also seems that this may not have just been true of South Eastern Britain. An example of this arguement (Centuries of Roman survival in the West) is shown in this link - the second article is relevant.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba32/ba32feat.html#dark

Other evidence to support this is in the continued use of Latin.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba33/ba33feat.html#howlett

(The third article is relevant).

In this context the 'invitation' for more Anglo-Saxon mercenaries in the immediate post-Roman period may simply have been seen as the continuation of a long standing Roman tradition to hire mercenaries from this area.

How wise this move was very much depends on your point of view.

Ozzie Exile,

Thanks for posting the British Archaeology articles, I came across the first one a few months ago when looking up information about post-Roman Britain. I recently found another very interesting one by Martin Henig from Oxford University.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba68/feat1.shtml

All these articles point to strong evidence that a sophisticated society survived in Britain for centuries after the Roman departure, and that this was not just a few individuals trying to cling onto Rome, but a well established and well educated society. Henig makes an interesting point;

“The so-called ‘darkness’ of the period between 400 and 600 in southern and eastern Britain is the result partly of archaeological neglect, partly of a long tradition of scholarship looking only for Germanic elements in the culture of the period. This is now changing. Metalwork, for example, is at long last being studied by scholars such as Ellen Swift and Helen Geake who appreciate the styles of the late Roman period as well as Germanic ornament.”

This is the problem of only looking for and finding what you expect to be there, and ignoring anything that does not fit in with the theory, or more correctly, the myth, of England’s exclusively Germanic origin.

To Nxylas, I say you are wildly optimistic about the demise of the Hengist and Horsa story. I took a GCSE history course at school, no more than 15 years ago, in which it was certainly still alive and well. Like most people, I did not take an advanced degree in early medieval history, and until recently, did not read extensively about the subject, and this early teaching was what formed my ideas for many years.

The point I was making about the Saxon mercenaries, that perhaps I did not make clear, is that it changes the date of Germanic migration and settlement to a much earlier period. If considerable numbers of Germanic people were settled in the 3rd and 4th centuries in Britain under Roman rule this has major implications for English history and language. These mercenary settlers presumably continued to use their own language among themselves, alongside Latin and native Celtic languages. This would mean that there was Germanic speech in Britain, and attendant cultural influence, a long time before the supposed ‘Dark Age’ invasions.

If by the last two centuries of Roman rule, as evidence suggests, a large part of the Roman army in Britain was drawn from Germanic-speaking continental mercenaries, it is highly likely that the locals learnt some of the soldiers’ language so they could trade with them. Many of these soldiers then settled in Britain on land given as payment for their services, and may well have become wealthy and influential in their own right.

My suggestion is that it was Roman military policy that first brought Germanic speech to England, that it was developing here in its own way many years before the last legions departed, and that its subsequent dominance originates from a post-Roman military coup initiated by Saxon mercenaries supported by long established, Germanic speaking, settlements of their predecessors that had grown up around the Latin-speaking Roman towns during Roman rule. I believe Romano-British society survived this usurpation, and gradually assimilated the new military rulers of Britannia into its civic culture.

ExeValleyBoy,

It seems that the Saxons began raiding Gaul and Britain around the 200's A.D, and subsequently many were taken on as mercenaries, largely being placed on the 'Saxon Shore' in order to protect it from further piratical raids.
But archaeological and other evidence suggests that the main period of settlement was from (if I remember rightly) about 440 or 50 to approximately 470/80 which was, of course, well after the Romans had left Britain, but highly unlikely that it was because the Britons were helpless without Roman aid (in fact some historians believe that many British rulers were restless to throw off the Roman yoke).

I think the Hengist and Horsa story probably has some truth in it (as do many ancient myths), but that it is perhaps a generalisation and mixture of a few isolated events which have then been applied to the whole history.
It seems incredible that a legend like this could be taken as if it were a verified historical event. I doubt that many other myths have been taken so seriously.

But it appears that most Saxons in the period of major settlement basically came as uninvited guests, and Britain's rulers, although often resisting and subduing these bands, generally found it best to make alliances with them and let them settle without too much fuss as long as they did not continue raiding.
This apparently was also the general pattern in most of the late Roman world.

I have already recorded (on another thread on this board) that I have recently received a copy of an interesting article entitled 'Celtic Devon' and written in 1925 by J F Chanter, then president of the Devonshire Association.

Here is another titbit from that document related somewhat to my earlier posting on land grants.

It is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that in AD682 Centwine (King of Wessex) "Drove the British as far as the sea" (My version of the ASX translates this passage as "This year also Centwin pursued the Britons to the sea").

Where this actually occurred has been long debated.

A number of sources (on the web) suggest that this was around Bideford, assuming that the Saxons had driven a bridgehead into Devon/Dumnonia in the flatter land between Dartmoor and Exmoor.

However Chanter suggests that this was not likely to have been the case. He cross correlates this story with the various land grants at the time and notes that there was no Saxon land grants in North Devon at this time - indeed none until the early ninth century. Instead he notes that there was a land grant in the Quantocks shortly thereafter from Centwine in favour of Glastonbury Abbey.

I have checked the various land grants at the time and I can find no error with Chanter's theory. Either the 'drive to the sea' was a temporary victory (so that Centwine was unwilling or unable to grant land for the area won - indeed for any land in the general area - or indeed ANYWHERE IN DEVON), or the victory was not near Bideford at all but much nearer the Devon/Somerset border.

As I intimated there are many more points in this article to discuss and I will raise them for discussion here in due course.

I neglected to mention (in my earlier post) that the ASC (Anglo Saxon Chronicle) is itself less than reliable in respect to its recording of history.

I reproduce the following passage from a website on discussions between Bishop Asser of Wessex and King Geraint of Dumnonia.

22. There is, of course, no guarantee that everything of import was actually written down in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - there may have been more warfare between Wessex and Dumnonia than is recorded. For instance, prior to the entry for 710, the last actual engagement with Britons referred to in the Chronicle is the non-specific entry for 682, in which Centwine is said to have 'put the Britons to flight as far as the sea' (Swanton 2000: 38-9). This is the only battle recorded for Centwine in the Chronicle. Yet, Aldhelm writes in his Carmina Ecclesiastica that Centwine waged war in three battles (Lapidge & Rosier 1985: 48).

http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/4/Grimmer2.html

This link also provides some interesting insights into the general situation in the dark ages. One can only presume that Centwine lost the other two battles!!

In my earlier posting (above) for 'Bishop Asser' please read 'Bishop Adhelm'. D'oh!!

Ozzie Exile,

Accounts that Centwine conquered large swathes of North Devon, when he “drove the Britons as far as the sea” in AD682, are not only pure conjecture, but also poor historical deduction. Firstly (as you say), no geographical locations were given by the ASC, and secondly, if the Saxons had gained control of North Devon in AD682, why would Ine have been fighting against Geraint in AD710 much further East, around the Devon/Somerset border?

Again in this later encounter, it has been assumed by many historians that Ine defeated (and even killed) Geraint, and that this event marked the Saxon conquest of Devon. However, there is no evidence for this, as the ASC merely states that the two fought and does not state who the victor was. If Ine had defeated Geraint, it is highly probable that the ASC would have proclaimed this as a great victory, so the lack of such a statement would seem to infer that Ine did not prevail. Further evidence that this battle did not result in a westward expansion of Wessex is provided by evidence that Ine constructed a frontier fortress at Taunton following his battle with Geraint. Taunton would hardly have marked the frontier if Centwine had conquered North Devon as far as Bideford, or if Ine had defeated Geraint and conquered the whole of Devon.

It would appear that much of Dark Age history is characterised by the attempts of later historians to make sense of the few surviving sources (i.e. interpret them fit the accepted wisdom of the period) by means of extrapolation. Even the accuracy of the sources themselves can be questioned. For instance the ASC was written during the reign of Alfred, and many of the accounts of earlier events were the result of, at best, pure guesswork, and at worst, pure myth. Many such unwarranted extrapolations have been passed down to the present era as ‘verified’ orthodox history.

I have long been intrigued about how long the British/Celtic Language survived in Devon.

Just over a year ago a colleague showed me an extract from 'The Book of Cornwall' by Rev Sabine Baring-Gould (a Devon historian of the early 20th Century) which stated "In the reign of Edward I, Cornish was spoken in the South Hams of Devonshire".

As Edward I was King of England from 1272 until 1307 this suggested a strong survival of Celtic identity well beyond Athelstan and well beyond the Norman invasion.

I have just recently come across another source of evidence - this time by an address by the President of The Devonshire Association the Rt Hon Sir Henry Duke in 1922 entitled "The Place of Damnonia in British England".

Duke is convinced the name should be Damnonia rather than Dumnonia (which he claims was a misspelling by Ptolemy), but he is clearly talking about the same place.

In part the article states

"...Such a relationship accords with the assertion various writers have made on the continuance of British occupany and of the British tongue in South and West Devon to a time well within the reigns of the Plantagenets. Risdon, for example, says that the Celtic tongue was spoken throughout the South Hams in Edward the First's time".

This passage not only gives us evidence of the survival of the Celtic tongue in the South Hams it also adds West Devon.

Duke mentions Risdon, and I believe that he is here referring to Tristram Risdon who lived between 1580 and 1641 and was author on one of the earliest studies on Devon "The Chorographical Description, or Survey of the County of Devon" which was written between 1610 and 1630.

A attach a link to his biography.

http://www.widegrin.com/devon/risdon_biog.htm

What is also interesting is that the Celtic history of Devon was a very popular theme amongst Presidents of the Devonshire Association. Not only is there Duke's article (above), but I am also aware of articles by then President J F Chanter [Celtic Devon] in 1925 and (rather more recently) President C Ralegh Radford in 1947 [The Dumnonii]

Do you have a link to the address itself?

nxylas,

I do not have a link to Sir Henry Duke's address - I had to obtain a hardcopy from the Exeter Local Studies Library.

However it can be obtained from the Library direct. Photcopied and posted to Australia cost a pricely £5.

Other articles on the subject - such as that on Celtic Devon by J F Chanter - can be obtained from the same source.

The contact website for them is

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

Do you have a scanner with OCR? If so. maybe you could put it up on the Celtic Devon website.

I will have to check copyright regulations.

In any event the adress is quite lengthy so this may not be feasible.

Are Bere, Beare, Beara Celtic Place Names?

Variations of these place names appear across Devon. They are regarded as Old English.

“The constantly recurring beer, which is found in the varying forms bera, berah, beer, bear and bere. It enters into the names of only seven parishes, Aylesbeare, Beer (E Devon), Beer Ferrers, Kentisbeare, Loxbere, Rockbeare and Shebbear; but it is found in at least eighty other instances in every part of the county. ...The word is plainly the Saxon beera, 'a grove'" (Worth 1888 p 293)”

I’m not so sure about the ‘plainly’. Beer, in east Devon, is a village next to a rocky promontory with spectacular cliffs. In Gaelic place names the word ‘ber’ apparently means a prickle, spit or a point. That much more accurately describes the location of Beer. I know Gaelic is the ‘wrong’ Celtic language, but the same applies to the West Country ‘tor’ which is spelt identically in Gaelic and means “steep rocky height” and also appears in many Irish place names.

In Cork, Ireland, there is a district called the Beara peninsula, a Bere Island and a the main town there is called Castletownbere. While the town name is clearly English, I am sure in Ireland the ‘bere’ element would be attributed to a Celtic origin.

In this following view on the subject, the writers connect the Devon ‘bere’ to the Saxon ‘wudu’, meaning wood.

"Bearu in the forms Beara, Beare, Beer(e), etc., is very common in Devon (as common as wudu) and one of its most characteristic place name elements. Over 100 examples are found in early documents. The same element, with similar phonological development, but in far less frequent use, is found in Somerset, Dorset and E Cornwall." (Gover et al 1932 p 675)

And, I would add, in Ireland too.

But, unless you expected to find only English names, and no Celtic influence, there is no reason to connect ‘bere’ with ‘wudu’. It is a case, again, of only seeing what fits in with your theory. The same accusation could be levelled at those seeking Celtic explanations, but for years, in terms of Devonian place names, it seems to me that the argument has only gone one way, in favour of Old English explanations, to the exclusion of all else.

exevalleyboy,

I think you are correct in asserting that not all placenames with a 'beer' component refer to the Saxon word for grove.

Not only is 'ber' used in Irish, but also in Welsh where it means promontory.

Bere Alston and Bere Ferrers (in West Devon) are clearly situated in such a position - as is Beer.

Sadly Ekwall (who carried out the first 'authoritative study' of Devon's placenames) had a policy of assuming a possible Anglo-Saxon derivation where one existed (however improbably) rather than looking for other (more plausible) derivations.

here is an extract of a posting I made in June (posting 81 above)

"In early English toponymic scholarship, the default hypothesis for an etymology was English. The most Celtically-inclined of the first generation of place-name scholars and the one with competence over the widest range of languages, Eilert Ekwall, advised that once scholars had studies the names of rivers, hills and forests, they "..would do well to try as hard as possible to explain place-names belonging to other categories [ie ie mainly names of inhabited places RC] with the help of Germanic material. The fact that a name is difficult to explain or has an unusual appearance should not be taken to point to a pre-English origin, unless there is some special circumstance to render it plausible".

Returning to the subject of groves Devon also has a Celtic placename for groves - specifically sacred groves - and that is Nymet. There are numerous 'Nymet' placenames in Devon.

Obviously placenames should be interpreted with reference to their specific circumstances rather than leaping to conclusions as it seems Ekwall was wont to do.

Just realised it has been two months since I last posted!

I have been having a look at the posts since I last posted, and come up with some ideas. At university, during the last decade, Hengst and Horsa were still taught as part of period 400 - 1000. I studied medieval history and a bit of archaeology as part of my degree. Now, they were not presented as fact, BUT they were not fiction either. It is too easy to dismiss foundation stories of a culture/civilization as fiction, and the further back you go people's historical myths have an element of truth.

Now, of course Roman Britain survived the ending of Roman rule. Although there is no evidence of an independence movement in Britania in that last century of Roman rule. On the contrary all the evidence suggests the opposits, that the leaders of Roman Britain were almost begging Emperor Honorius in Ravenna to send the troops back. "You are on your own". And then went back to his chickens. Remember that Caracalla had given Roman citizenship to every free born inhabitant of the Roman Empire two centuries earlier, and the entire free population (virtually) of Britannia could claim the magic words "Civis Romanus Sum"

Now it is my opinion that a civilization is like a plane. It flies ok as long as there is fuel in the tank. When the fuel runs out, it will glide, but gradually lose height (aspects of the civilisation) until it crash lands. The aspects of Roman rule, local senates etc would have continued. The use of mercanery troops as well. From the last century of the Republic, Rome had expanded too far to be solely controlled by an entirly Roman Army. Or even an Italian one. There was too much territory and too few Italians.
The confoederati troops. There were troops from Batavia in Britannia. Evidence from Hadrian's Wall shows that they were there. Where is Batavia? The Netherlands. Where is the continental homeland of the Angles and the Saxons? The Netherlands. But all Roman legions, including the Batavians, were withdrawn by Honorius. So the post Roman governments may have called in mercaneries from where Rome had employed them. But gradually the society lost the means of paying them, there is evidence of loss of a cash economy over the 100-200 years following the withdrawel. So possibly when the money ran out there was a military coup.

Now, sometime in the seventh century a plague shot across the known world. It is known from Byzantine sources, from Arab sources. It followed the trade routes. There is evidence that the west of our island was still in trade with the post roman states on the continent. This is the point that the post Roman British plane finally crashed. The punishment inflicted by God mentioned in the sources we have. If there were saxon states in the east trading with the North Sea world, they would have been in a better position than Celtic states still trading with a post Roman world. This is considered the point at which the Anglo Saxon conquest sped up, when the Viking raids started.

Now to names. Every town, city, village, country in Western Europe, and beyond, has more than one name. Caeresk, Isca, Exeter are all the same place. Conquerers have a tendancy of naming places they conquer according to their own traditions. These get mangled by the natives, or renamed to suit pronounciation of the conquered. Eg, Bathurst in the Gambia was renamed Banjul after independence as it was easier to say and what the Gambians and their Senagalese neighbours had been calling it all along. Remember, a lot of Devonians, myself included pronounce Exeter as if it was written Egsedr. (now doesn't that look Welsh!) Names were also written by the literate, which most of the population weren't. Roman Europe had a level of literacy which would not be seen again until the 19th and 20th centuries. A lot of Devon's village names have the surname of the Norman baronial family who had lands there after 1066, but this doesnot mean they were founded then. Tiverton, which as you may guess is my home town, is first mentioned in the eigth century, but look at a map and tell me there was no settlement there before? Prime real estate in the red heart of the county? Me thinks not! If rendered into Welsh, Tiverton becomes Dwyffordd-dinas. (Rough translation, and making it a city!) but see how easy Dwyffordd becomes Tiverton, rendered to the new rulers speach paterns. And both, thanks to their Indo European roots mean the same thing - two ways/ two fords.

This probably answers no bodies questions, but I have been thinking about it all whilst being away, and also felt I had to say hello again to you all!

¡SALUD!

Certainly the name ‘bere’, as found in Bere Alston and Bere Ferrers, is generally recognised as being from the Brythonic ‘ber’ (‘a promontory’) by almost all place name specialists (e.g. Coates and Breeze). I suspect that at least some of the other place names in which ‘bere’ or ‘beer’ is found in Devon, also have this derivation, such as the obvious promontory at Beer Head.

The word ‘tor’ occurs in both Gaelic and Brythonic. There are a number of ‘tor’ names in the South West of the Island of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, where granite is the predominant country rock. It is used in exactly the same way as it is in Devon and Cornwall to name the granite tower formations (Welsh ‘twr’ means ‘tower’). Tor, as used in Devon, Cornwall and Mull, is not from an Old English word meaning pointed hill as claimed by some place names specialists (e.g. Gelling), as some of the Dartmoor tors (e.g. Vixen Tor) are actually located in valleys, where the meaning ‘pointed hill’ would be totally inappropriate, and an Old English derivation for Isle of Mull rock formations would be absurd.