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

Einion

Sorry, I have been unable to find any reference to language in the Domesday Book except that it was written in Latin. This does not mean however that there were not pockets of Welsh speaking in those areas. Like the Romans before, the Normans were not interested in what language their newly won territory spoke, but more what it was worth. I will keep looking, and if I do find anything I will post here and eat my hat.

tb

I came across this interesting passage by Joyce Hill of the University of Leeds, regarding the relocation of the Anglo-Saxon episcopal see from Crediton to Exeter.

“My purpose is to examine the history of the Devon diocese in the late Anglo-Saxon period and to assess what can be learnt of its traditions of scholarship. The two focal points are Bishop Leofric, whose transference of the see from Crediton to Exeter gives us special insights into the state of the episcopal see, and the manuscript known today as the Exeter Book, one of the four great codices of vernacular poetry surviving from Anglo-Saxon England, whose point of origin in the south-west peninsula has been the subject of recent detailed investigation, notably by Patrick Conner and Richard Gameson. The article is therefore a survey of a cultural context, and at the same time an exemplification of how, when the surviving evidence is imperfect, as it often is for Anglo-Saxon England, that there are both opportunities and dangers in establishing hypotheses. My conclusion is that, contrary to Conner, the Exeter Book did not originate at Exeter, and that there was more discontinuity at Exeter, prior to Leofric’s arrival, than Conner believes. My contention is that Leofric transferred the see not so much because Crediton had been ravaged when Exeter had not—as he skilfully implies in his letter to Pope Leo—but because, as a cleric trained in Lotharingia, he saw Exeter, as former Roman civitas and still a fortified "city", as a more suitable place for an episcopal see than Crediton, which was a mere villula.”

Hill’s suggestion that there was ‘discontinuity’ at Exeter before Leofric hints that the Saxons had problems establishing their church, and maybe their political power too, in what may have been a predominantly British city, and that Leofric was a unifying influence. Her claim that the Exeter Book was not written in Exeter at all is also interesting. If this is true, it would be interesting to find out where it actually came from.

In writing directly to the Pope, rather than to the leaders of the English church, Leofric may have been trying to get around Saxon obstructions to his desire to get the see relocated to the region’s historic capital.

As I suggested in my previous post, maybe the Saxons tried to set Crediton up as an alternative capital to Exeter, hoping that British-dominated Exeter would wither away. Although Joyce Hill does not go as far as that, her opinion is that Leofric’s decision to move the see was motivated by Exeter being a more historically valid location than Crediton.

Recently there has been a new book published - entitled 'Secrets of the Hidden Source - In search of Devon's Ancient and Holy Wells' by Terry Faull (published by Halsgrove).

Many of Devon's Holy Wells (and there are over 200 apparently) are related to Devon's Celtic saints - and Faull provides a chapter on the Celtic Church in Devon.

I have heard it said that in the tenth century, when Exeter had both Celt and Saxon living within its city walls, that the Celts worshipped at St Petroc's church and the Saxon at St Sidwell. The earlier Celtic/British christianity was somewhat different from that of the Saxon, who had only recently given up their pagan beliefs and adopted christianity in the roman tradition.

Faull is convinced that St Sidwell was herself a Celt. He states that "The cult of St Sidwell was established in Exeter at the end of the 7th century (when the Saxons first arrived in the Exeter area) ... The legend of a holy virgin who was beheaded and of a spring of pure water issuing from the ground where she fell is also found in the life of St Urith..This story has parallels in Celtic mythology and the early date for these two established local Devon traditions does indicate that they were existing cults which were taken over by the Saxon church"

So the suggestion that Exeter had retained a largely 'British' Celtic identity, despite the Saxon presence, seems quite reasonable.

By the way, the book also provides insight in the life of Devon's Celtic Saints (including St Petroc - who is also a Cornish Saint - although there he is remembered in the misnamed 'Padstow' rather than the correct North Devon 'Petrockstow').

In another section it seems that King Athelstan (10th century King of Wessex - and perhaps the first King of England) was 'forced to recognise the power of Celtic saints such as St Nectan when he acknowledged miracles attributed to (them)' such as the saving of an army from the plague [showing that parts of his army were clearly members of the Celtic church] and in AD 974AD when Athelstan founded an Abbey at Tavistock he 'took account of Celtic sensibilities when it was jointly dedicated to St mary and St Rumon - a celtic saint whose bones were brought from Cornwall to be placed in the shrine.."

The survival of 200+ 'Holy Wells' in Devon also suggests an survival of British/celtic beliefs because (as the book suggests) the Anglo-Saxons went to great lengths to prevent this form of worship - as part of the battle between the (Roman based) Saxon church and the Celtic based 'British Church'. The Norman's later relaxed some (but not all) of those restrictions. A number of these wells are still venerated, some still being dedicated with colourful 'clouties' by their patrons.

An interesting book.

"A Guide To The Saints of Wales and the West Country" by Ray Spencer says that Sidwell was martyred by pagans near Exeter, but doesn't mention the holy well. He doesn't specifically say that she was British, but does say that with her sister Wulvella, she is titular patron saint of Laneast in Cornwall, which strongly implies that she was.

Ozzie Exile,

It wasn’t Athelstan who founded Tavistock Abbey in 974 AD, as he had been dead for 34 years at that time. It would have been during the reign of Edgar (959-975). However (as you say), the bringing of St. Rumon’s bones to Tavistock from Cornwall, does indicate that it was felt that there was a need to play to a Celtic majority audience. It also demonstrates that the Saxon Kings were still dominant in Cornwall some 38 years after the supposed ‘Athelstan’s Settlement’ (upon which many of the Cornish Nationalists’ claims for independence are based), but in support of which there appears to be no validated documentary evidence. It only ever seems to appear in Cornish accounts.

Plymouth Exile,

You are correct (regarding Athelstan and the founding of the Tavy abbey) - my error, not Terry Faull's. The two points were made one after the other, but reading the section again I can see Terry does not talk of Athelstan in the second.

The abbey would have been started in the reign of Edgar, but the abbey's liberties were actually confirmed by Ethelred in 980AD.

Clearly not only did the Saxon's control most of Cornwall in the 10th century (the relics were moved from Ruan Lanihorne - which is near Truro in Western Cornwall) but of greater relevance to this debate is the fact that the Celtic community had survived in Devon - and had some significant influence - some 50 years after Athelstan set the boundary between Devon and Cornwall at the Tamar!

Of possible relevance to Nick is that the British Celtic Church was apparently influenced by the monastic traditions of the Orthodox Church - and that four of Devon's Celtic Saints (St Nectan, St Brannoc, St Urith and St Sidwell) are still remembered in the Orthodox Calendar of Saints (according to Terry Faull).

Actually, all Celtic and Saxon saints of the British Isles are recognised by the Orthodox Church. The general rule is that Western saints from before 1054 are included - a largely symbolic date which is seen as marking the official split between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, as it is when the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. In reality, the split was a much more complex historical process which took place over several centuries, but the 1054 date simplifies matters somewhat. There is a school of thought which says that the English church was more Orthodox than Catholic even after this date, and that the papally sponsored Norman invasion of 1066 marks the real date of the change in faith - many Englishmen fled to "Mickelgarth" (Byzantium) in order to join the Varangian Guard after 1066, and there was even an English Street there.

There is no evidence for the Anglo Saxon church being Ortodox in rite. The payment of Peter's pence, the pilgrimage of Alfred the Great to Rome, and above all the special interest paid to the Angles and Saxons by the papacy from St Gregory the Great's time (non sunt anglii, sed angeli) indicate quite the reverse. The church under the Angles and Saxons was very Roman in rite, and indeed England had the nickname the "dowry of Mary". The papacy supported the conquest for a number of reasons, 1 the alleged breach of holy Oath made by King Harold II. 2 - Stigand was in severe breach of church law, and 3 - the Normans in Sicily could have mad it very uncomfortable for the Pope if he hadn't agreed to William's request!

The suggestion that the pre conquest churches both Celtic and Anglo Saxon were anyway "not Latin" can really be put down to reformation propaganda by Henry VIII looking for justification for the biggest nationalisation in British history. The English church was the result of a crossing between the Celtic church (still Latin rite) and the Catholic Church itself. The monastic communitites of the Celtic churches were unique, in that the inhabitants could marry. The Church in Rome was against this as it meant Church property dissapearing out of the hands of the Church and livings becoming hereditary. At no point was this the case in the orthodox churches, where celibacy for monks and nuns was the rule even before St Benedict put quill to parchment.

The Anglo Saxons who went to Byzantium after 1066 went there not because it was an Orthodox society, but because it was the largest and closest place that was a) looking for and b) could afford mercaneries.

Each of the Latin rite churches of the 11th century did have it's own character, but the British Isles are simply too far from Greece/Turkey for Orthodoxy to have been an influence on either the Roman or "Celtic" churches, and it must be remembered that the Celtic churches did acknowlege the primacy of Rome.

Sorry, trying to reply to half a dozen postings at once! The monastic practices of the Celtic churches would have been influenced in part by by the Orthodox churches a monasticism started in the eastern empire (under Coptic rite) and spread westward. However, the monastries in the west that did evolve in this manner, did adopt over time the Rule of St Benedict as their constitutions. St Benedict himself was influenced by monasticism existing in the eastern medditerranean, but in a more austere form.

Hope this helps

Orthodoxy is more than just the Byzantine Rite. You have to remember that the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches were one before the See of Rome introduced such innovations as the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the addition of the "filioque" clause to the Nicene Creed. These innovations were rejected by many in the West at the time, including Popes. The Orthodox Church regards the Western churches and saints who rejected these doctrines as fully Orthodox.

Papal Infallibility only became doctrine of the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century. The Western (Catholic) church and the Eastern (Orthodox) church had been falling out since the 6th/7th century. The coronation of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor by the pope in 800AD, when the eastern emperor's still considered themselves the Emperors of Rome is a case in point. The adoption of the "filioque" in the crede predated the schism by thirty years and had been used in the western churches as early as the 6th century, although it's use was cause for the schism the straw that broke the camels back. In terms of practice and belief I must re-iterate that the English church together with the Celtic church was much more closly tied to Rome.

But this is a posting about Devon and not about the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches of 1000 years ago (and Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople lifted the excommunications on each others churches in the 1960s)

I was wondering if anyone here had heard or noticed a book called the "stories of English" by David Crystal (rrp 25 GBP hardback) At 25 quid and weighing in at about a kilo you can probably guess I did not buy it, but spent a good hour reading it in one of our local bookshops coffee shops. I can recommend the mocha.

Reading it he made a couple of interesting points. The gentleman is a professor of linguistics I think and an expert on the English language. One is what he calls the Celtic Connundrum. Why has English so few loan words? His answer is that the continental homelands of the Angles and Saxons is from the Région Nord-Pas-De-Calais in France (Flanders!!) to Denmark. The climate, landscape, wildlife and conditions of these territories is almost identical to that of South East England. DNA evidence suggests the survival of a large Celtic population in that part of our island. But if the rulers, especially if there was a large enough immigration to form a large minority especially one with power!, they did not need new words for these new objects ie "fox" as they already had them.

The other bit he said was the survival of Latin. There are, according to Dr Crystal, only about 100 - 200 Latin borrowings in Anglo Saxon English. About the same as in Welsh. To me at least this indicates no survival of Latin as a vernacular. It was like Latvia in the Russian Empire. Once the Russians left, the hearth language became once again the language of the street. Virtually all modern English's latin borrowings come via (Norman) French. And is also the reason why our Latin borrowings (castle etc) have a harder sound than standard French. Modern English also has many many more Latin borrowings than modern Welsh.

But this leaves me with another question. I have a Spanish magazine and in it is an article on the birth of the Spanish language. The oldest texts of what came to be modern Spanish come from La Rioja. Basque nationalists claim La Rioja as part of a Basque homeland (País Vasco, Communidad de La Rioja and Comunidad Foral de Navarra in Spain, Départment des Pyrenées Atlantique in France). The article says "por su modo de pronunciar el Latín, los vascos fueron los padres del castellano" (by their way of pronouncing Latin, the Basques were the parents of Castillian [Spanish]" [Article "Así nació nuestro idioma" {thus was born our language} MUY ESPECIAL, spring 2004, MADRID] Could it be that the British Celts, in their way of pronouncing, for want of a better word, Frisian, were the parents of what became English? Is it that English is Dutch learnt by the Welsh with half a dictionary of Norman French thrown in for good measure? After all, the Devon and Cornwall dialects of English more closly follow the word order and structure of Dutch than they do that of English itself!

I look forward to any comments! I think.

ps.

if you are interested in the article in question about the Spanish language, please go to

www.muyinteresante.es click on muy especial, and then on "Los Orígines del Castellano" (the origins of Spanish) it is an abbreviated version of the article in the magazine. A new edition is coming out this month so it may be in previous issues (ediciónes anteriores). As the website is for a Spanish publishing house, dealing mainly with Spain and about Spain, it is ONLY in Spanish, and therefore only of use if you can read Spanish. Although those with Italian or Portuguese may find it ok.

You may also have worked out where my bit about the Spanish language in my first posting came from. ¡Te gusta, Madrid!

ps.

if you are interested in the article in question about the Spanish language, please go to

www.muyinteresante.es click on muy especial, and then on "Los Orígines del Castellano" (the origins of Spanish) it is an abbreviated version of the article in the magazine. A new edition is coming out this month so it may be in previous issues (ediciónes anteriores). As the website is for a Spanish publishing house, dealing mainly with Spain and about Spain, it is ONLY in Spanish, and therefore only of use if you can read Spanish. Although those with Italian or Portuguese may find it ok.

You may also have worked out where my bit about the Spanish language in my first posting came from. ¡Te quiero, Madrid!

Tivvyboy,

I think that is very likely the case with the British Celts. There used to be a weekly radio program in Welsh which I sometimes listened to, and as a result have become fairly familiar with the sounds of Welsh. I have often noticed that there is a great similarity between the sound systems of Welsh and English (particularly as spoken in Britain). I think it cannot be due to English influence on Welsh because it is not at all a Germanic sound, and it is not really French either. It seems quite clear to me that there is a strong element of Brythonic in every British accent I've heard (perhaps not so strong in RP).
It includes a rather heavy and clear pronunciation of 't', as well as many other consonant and vowel sounds common to Welsh and English, which may possibly be noticed more by people raised in English-speaking countries outside Britain.

Einion

I think we've hit on something! Though I am sure the others will correst us! (Or at least me) I was thinking of it today. English is the only Germanic language with a soft - "W". Which it shares with Welsh and French, but French, like all Romance languages finds it a difficult letter and tends to change it to "gu" (as does Spanish). Our hard "J" we share with French. But the most telling of all is "th". Listen to native speakers of any other language than English or Welsh and they have incredible difficulty with it. The French and Spanish make it a "z", the Germans and Dutch make it a soft "d". One of my Spanish teachers has said that it is the most difficult letter combnation to get right in English. Even the Irish (toirty tree for thirty three)stereotypically find it difficult. The combination is unique to English. And Welsh, after all the county Gwynedd is pronounced Gwynedth. And the th as in English exists in Welsh as such. And listening to Cornish and Breton, the other two P-Celtic languages, they have the sound too. The Goidelic celtic languages, (Irish, Gaelic and Manx) don't appear too.

I would still be interested to hear other opinions, but I think we may, and I repeat may, have hit on something.

Tivvyboy,

The 'th' sound is something I looked into a while back. Apparently it existed in Proto-Germanic and still does in Icelandic. However, I think its persistence in English may well be a sign of Welsh influence, and DNA tests in Iceland indicate that about (I think) 50 percent of its population is of Celtic origin, so it may be due to Brythonic influence there too.
I have seen a Middle English text in which the word 'only' was spelt something like 'unnethig', and I think I remember seeing the same variant spelling in other Middle English words. It is similar, for example, with the Welsh name 'Merlin', which was sometimes spelt 'Merddin'.
Also, the intonation of English seems (to me, at least) much more similar to Welsh than to the Germanic languages.

I think it was ExeValleyBoy who suggested that Devon's Celts may have used Latin in the post Roman period.

A possible comparison may be made to Brittany where (unknown to most) there are three surviving languages - French, Breton (Celtic) and Gallo.

Gallo is a 'langue d'oil' based on Latin and was/is spoken in eastern Brittany, whilst Breton is now spoken further west, with French spoken throughout, but exclusively in the far eastern region.

Where did this language come from. Although Brittany was named after the migrating Celts from Britain it already had a Celtic people - known to the Romans as 'Amorican'. I presume that this may have been their adopted language in the post Roman era. Breton was once spoken throughout Brittany (in the 10th century) but it may never have been used exclusively.

The placenames of Eastern Brittany are somewhat different in nature to those of the west, although there are a handful of 'tre', 'lan' and other celtic derivations. Further west the placenames are more obviously Celtic.

Possibly coincidentally the northeast of Brittany was named after Devon (and called Domnonee) and it is this area that Gallo has survived best.

Despite their linguistic differences most inhabitants of Brittany would consider themselves Breton.

Does this comparison hold anything useful for Devon?

Possibly not, as Amorica was far more romanised than our own Dumnonia. Nevertheless it should be remembered that a number of Devon's standing stones are inscribed in both Latin and Ogham script.

Given the trading links that existed between Devon and Cornwall and Brittany (and Devon's links to Dumnonee) could Latin have also been used by Devon's Celts to a greater degree than we now realise??

Here a re a couple of websites referencing Gallo.

http://www.uoc.edu/euromosaic/web/document/breto/an/i1/i1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany

Ozzie Exile,

My interest in Romano-British cultural survival focussed initially on south east England, where the evidence points to its strongest survival. To briefly repeat my point, I believe Latin language survival to be a credible explanation for the apparent ‘disappearance’ of Brythonic; that, by the time the Saxons arrived, Brythonic had long ceased to be the dominant language in south-eastern Britain.

But I must add an important point about the use of Latin in that era. In all parts of the Roman empire there was an important distinction between town and country. To the Romans the countryside was ‘pagus’, an unpoliced, uncultured zone where city dwellers rarely strayed. The ‘pagans’ of the countryside likewise had little to do with the Romanised, Latin-speaking city dwellers.

As elsewhere, in the towns and cities of Roman Britain, Latin speech would have been predominant and probably carried on long after the empire fell. This idea is supported by the fact many older English towns and cities have kept names that are Romano-British in origin or contain some Latin or Celtic elements. The south east, and the mid-west areas of Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, retain a good number of Latin influenced place names, even down to level of quite small settlements. The neighbouring mid-west was, in the fifth century, a well established area containing many affluent Romano-British villas.

Devon’s placenames are either wholly Brythonic (in the Welsh-Cornish sense) or wholly Anglo-Saxon; there are very few of the exotic Celtic-Latin or English-Latin compounds you find further east, like Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire, or Cerne Abbas, Minterne Parva and Alton Pancras in Dorset.

This suggests, as it is today, Devon was sparsely populated in comparison to regions further east. If there was Latin speech in Devon, it would have been in Exeter, or Excester, its modern name being a Romano-British mixture like Dorchester. (As I said before, I think the ‘cester’ or ‘chester’ element in English names is not a Saxon invention but a surviving Romano-British construction. Otherwise we would surely be seeing places called Exeborough or Dorborough.)

However, Roman Exeter was not peripheral. It was one of the major Romano-British cities, and the architectural remains, of which only the walls remain above ground, are quite impressive. Beneath the cathedral lies buried a substantial basilica, and under the cathedral green are the remains of a large bath house. To me this indicates that, in the Exeter area at least, there would have been a substantial Latin speaking or bilingual (Brythonic and Latin) population in Roman times.

Place names and archaeology indicate that the Saxons were at first a farming people and felt more at home in the country than the city. Both Exeter and London share a satellite growth of Saxon villages around the Romano-British urban core, that now comprise the London boroughs, and in Exeter, places like Alphington, Pinhoe, Digby and Sowton. It is almost as if the Saxon settlers were wary of the old Romano-British cities, and until their own later acculturation into Roman civic culture, kept well outside of the walls in small, agrarian settlements. The later Saxons moved into what remained of the old cities, and eventually established themselves there.

I agree that with Brittany, the Dumnonee area (that corresponds to Devon) and its Latin Gallo dialect, may suggest the influence of Latin language and culture on the Devonian Celts was greater than we currently think. If this is the case, it is likely that Roman Exeter was the source of this influence.

As an afterthought, Barnstaple’s alternative name ‘Barum’ has a distinctly Latin ring to it. Any thoughts or information on where it came from?

ExeValleyBoy,

Although many townsmen in south-east Britain may have spoken Latin as a first language, it does'nt appear to have been dominant (at least in the sense of what was spoken by the rulers) judging by the names of post-Roman British kings (such as Gwyrangon, king of Kent in the 400's A.D.).
But it certainly appears to have been widespread amongst the ruling class as a second language, and was probably an important part of their education.

When you speak of the 'disappearance' of Brythonic, are you talking in terms of its apparent lack of influence on English, or are you saying that there seems to be little historical evidence of its survival into Saxon times?

ExeValleyBoy,

You may be interested in a summary of a lecture, obtained from another forum, as it focuses on the common language of the Britons of the lowland zone at the end of the Roman occupation. It certainly ties in very nicely with your own thoughts.


P Schrijver: What Britons spoke around 400 AD

”It is possible that the low land population of Britain was largely Latin speaking by 400AD. His evidence for this is based almost exclusively on the British Celtic language of the highland zone and the influence of low land speech on this. It appears that there is an import of loan words, followed by grammar, which is followed by morphology. There is a sliding scale between loan words and language – dominant languages do not normally import loan words. However, there is a Latin influence on highland Celtic, which dates from after 410. There are inscriptions that show Late Latin influence, there are also 800 or so Latin loans words in British. These all appear to have gone through all of their developments before 400. Similarly loan words stop at this time. However, in the highlands the syntax and the like continues during the shift into Brythonic.
There are only a few examples of what the people of low land Britain spoke during this period. The Bath pendant is interesting, as it appears to be much closer to the language spoken in Latin Gaul than that spoken in the Celtic Highlands. However, this completely fails as evidence, should it prove to have been written by someone from elsewhere.
A rough conclusion would be that before 400AD lowland Celtic was becoming Latinised, even perhaps well on its way to becoming Latin. The immigration of lowland Celts to the highlands is responsible for the development of language in these areas. It is perhaps wrong to look for evidence of a Brythonic influence on Old English, when we should perhaps be looking for Latin connections.”


I think that this idea has a lot going for it, as it would avoid the problem of why the Anglo-Saxons did not acquire more Brythonic words in their language. It has always been assumed that the Romano-Britons of the lowland ‘Roman Villa’ belt continued to speak a Celtic dialect throughout the Roman occupation, but unless anyone can enlighten me on this, I know of no documentary evidence for this assumption. As far as I am aware, all recorded official documents of this period were compiled in Latin, and the British (Celtic) dialects were presumed to be spoken-only dialects.

If the Romanised lowland region of England had gradually adopted a British influenced dialect of Latin as common everyday speech, this would have been the language which the majority of the Germanic settlers came into contact with during the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, during their steady expansion throughout lowland England. Therefore they would not have encountered much of the Brythonic speech, which would have been confined to the highland zone in the West. It is known that the number of Latin loan words, which found their way into Old English (although still few in number), was somewhat greater than the number of Brythonic loan words. Did these Latin loan words come across to Britain with the settlers, or were they absorbed into the language as it evolved into Old English in Britain? If the answer was the latter, it is feasible that they could have acquired these words from a British influenced dialect of Latin, which the Anglo-Saxons found in place. It is also known that the Brythonic speech of the highland zone survived longer in the West, and as the Anglo-Saxon settlements in this zone were later and sparser than those in the lowland East, it would only be reasonable to suppose that the majority of loan words would have derived from the common speech in the eastern lowland region. One only has to consult maps of England to find that the supposed Celtic loan words into Old English (such as ‘combe’) are found most commonly in the Brythonic West (most of all in Devon), specifically as place names, and do not seem to have entered into the general vocabulary of Old English (according to Coates). Perhaps one should therefore ask whether these words ever were loan words, or merely Brythonic words used by the relatively few AS settlers in the West as well as by the Brythonic people themselves.