The two names that follow are as thorough evidences of the teachings of
the Roman Church as are the epithets of the Blessed Virgin, before
mentioned, and can, therefore, only be classed together, though it is
rather hard upon good Latin to be saddled with them, compounded as they
are of Latin and Greek.
The Latin _verus_ (true), and the Greek εἰκών (an image), were strangely
jumbled together by the popular tongue in the name of a crucifix at
Lucca, which was called the _Veraiconica_, or Veronica; and was that
Holy Face of Lucca by which William Rufus, having probably heard of it
from the Lombard Lanfranc, his tutor, was wont to swear. Another
Veronica is the same countenance upon a piece of linen, shown at St.
Peter’s. Superstition, forgetting the meaning of the name, called the
relic St. Veronica’s handkerchief, accounted for it by inventing a woman
who had lent our Blessed Saviour a handkerchief to wipe His Face during
the passage of the _Via dolorosa_, and had found the likeness imprinted
upon it.
In an old English poem on the life of Pilate, written before 1305, it
appears that the Emperor of Rome learnt that a woman at Jerusalem named
‘Veronike’ possessed this handkerchief, which could heal him of his
sickness. He sent for her, and
“Anon tho the ymage iseth, he was whole, anon,
He honoured wel Veronike, heo ne moste fram him gon;
The ymage he athuld that hit ne com nevereft out of Rome,
In Seint Peteres Church it is.”
Thence Veronica became a patron saint; and in the fifteenth century a
real monastic Saint Veronica lived near Milan.
Véronique is rather a favourite name among French peasant women, and
Vreneli in Suabia. Pott and Michaelis suggest that Veronica may be the
Latin form of Berenice, or Pherenike (victory-bringer); but the history
of the relic is too clear to admit of this idea. The flower, Veronica,
appears to have won its name from its exquisite blue reflecting a true
image of the heavens; and the Scots, who have a peculiar turn for floral
names, thus seem to have obtained it.
In 1802 an inscription, with the first and last letters destroyed, was
found in the catacombs standing thus, _lumena pax tecum fi_. A priest
suggested that _Fi_ should be put at the beginning of the sentence
instead of the end, and by this remarkable trick, produced _Filumena_.
There was a real Greek name Philomena, which had fallen into disuse, and
of course was derived from Love, but to please the ears of the Italians,
the barbarous Latin Filumen was invented.
Thereupon a devout artisan, a priest, and a nun, were all severally
favoured by visions of a virgin martyr, who told them the story of
Diocletian’s love for her, of her refusal, and subsequent martyrdom; and
explained that, having once been called Lumena, she was baptized
Filumena, which she explained as daughter of light! Some, human remains
near the stone being dignified as relics of St. Filomena, she was
presented to Mugnano; and, on the way, not only worked many miracles on
her adorers, but actually repaired her own skeleton, and made her hair
grow. So many wonders are said to have been worked by this phantom
saint, the mere produce of a blundered inscription, that a book, printed
at Paris in the year 1847, calls her “_La Thaumaturge du 19me Siècle_”
and she is by far the most fashionable patroness in the Romish Church.
Filomena abounds in Rome, encouraged by the example of a little
Filomena, whose mosquito net was every night removed by the saint, who
herself kept off the gnats. She is making her way in Spain; and it will
not be the fault of the author of _La Thaumaturge_ if Philomene is not
common in France. The likeness to Philomela farther inspired Longfellow
with the fancy of writing a poem on Florence Nightingale, as St.
Philomena, whence it is possible that the antiquaries of New Zealand, in
the twenty-ninth century, will imagine St. Philomena, or Philomela, to
be the heroine of the Crimean war.[89]
-----
Footnote 89:
Butler; _Philological Society_; Merriman, _Church in Spain_; _La
Thaumaturge du 19me Siècle_.
CHAPTER VII.
NAMES FROM HOLY DAYS.
SECTION I.
The great festivals of religion have supplied names which are here
classed together for convenience of arrangement, though they are of all
languages. Most, indeed, are taken from the tongue that first proclaimed
the glory of the days in question; but in several instances they have
been translated into the vernacular of the country celebrating them.
Perhaps the use of most of these as Christian names arose from the habit
of calling children after the patron of their birthday, and when this
fell upon a holiday that was not a saint’s day, transferring the title
of the day to the child. Indeed, among the French peasantry, Marcel and
Marcelle are given to persons born in March, Jules and Julie to July
children, and Auguste and Augustine to August children.
SECTION II.—_Christmas._
The birthday of our Lord bears in general its Latin title of _Dies
Natalis_; the latter word from _nascor_ (to be born). The _g_, which old
Latin places at the commencement of the verb and its participle,
_gnatus_, shows its connection with the Greek γίγνομαι (to come into
existence), with γένεσις (origin), and the Anglo-Saxon _beginning_.
This word Natalis has furnished the title of the feast to all the
Romance portion of Europe, and to Wales. There all call it the Natal
day; _Nadolig_ in Welsh. France has cut the word down into Noël, a word
that at Angers was sung fifteen times at the conclusion of lauds, during
the eight days before the feast, and which thus passed even into an
English carol, still sung in Cornwall, where the popular tongue has
turned the chorus into
“Now well! now well! now well!”
This cry of Noël became a mere burst of joy; and in Monstrelet’s time
was shouted quite independently of Christmas. Noel is a Christian name
in France; Natale, in Italy; Natal, in the Peninsula. Indeed, the
Portuguese called Port Natal by that title in honour of the time of its
discovery, but the Spanish Natal must be distinguished from Natividad,
which belongs to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a feast established
by Pope Sergius in 688, on the 8th of September.
That same 8th of September was chosen by the Greek Church as the
festival day of St. Natalia, the devoted wife who attended her husband,
St. Adrian, in his martyrdom, with heroism like that of Gertrude von der
Wart. He is the same Adrian whose relics filled the Netherlands, and who
named so many Dutchmen; but while the West was devoted to the husband
and neglected the wife, the East celebrated the wife and forgot the
husband. Natalia is one of the favourite Greek Christian names;
Lithuania calls her Nastusche and Naste; Russia, Natalija, Nataschenka,
and Natascha; and France has learned the word as Natalie from her
Russian visitors. Natalie, however, occurs at Cambrai as early as 1212.
Our own name for the feast agrees with one German provincial term
Christfest. Christmas now and then occurs in old registers as a
Christian name, as at Froxfield, Hants, in 1574, and is also used as a
surname; but Noel is more usual for Christmas-born children.
The Eastern Church did not originally observe the Nativity at all,
contenting itself with the day when the great birth was manifested to
the Gentiles, and for this reason there is no genuine Greek name for
Christmas-day, and Natalia, though now used as a Greek woman’s name, is
of Latin origin.
The Slavonic nations have translated Christmas into Bozieni, and their
Christmas children, among the Slovak part of the race, are the boys,
Bozo, Bozko, Bozicko; the girls, Bozena.[90]
-----
Footnote 90:
_Church Festivals and their Household Words (Christian Remembrancer)_;
Michaelis; Butler; Jameson; Grimm.
SECTION III.—_The Epiphany._
The twelfth day after Christmas was the great day with the Eastern
Church, by whom it was called Θεοφανεία, from Θεός and φαίνω (to make
known, _i.e._, God’s manifestation), or Ἐπιφάνεια (forth showing).
The ancient Greek Church celebrated on the 6th of January the birth of
Christ, His manifestation to the Gentiles, and the baptism in the
Jordan. Their titles, Theophania and Epiphania, were adopted by the
Latins, and when the Latin feast of the Nativity was accepted by the
Greek Church, _this_ latter was frequently called Epiphania, while the
true manifestation-day was called by a name meaning the lights, from the
multitude of candles in the churches in honour of the Light of the World
and the Light of Baptism.
But in the West, it was the visit of the Magi that gave the strongest
impress to the festival. Early did tradition fix their number at three,
probably in allusion to the three races of man descended from the sons
of Noah, and soon they were said to be descendants of the Mesopotamian
prophet Balaam, from whom they derived the expectation of the Star of
Jacob, and they were promoted to be kings of Tarsus, Saba, and Nubia,
also to have been baptized by St. Thomas, and afterwards martyred. Their
corpses were supposed to be at that store-house of relics,
Constantinople, whence the Empress Helena caused them to be transported
to Milan by an Italian, from whom a noble family at Florence obtained
the surname of Epiphania. Frederick Barbarossa carried them to Cologne.
By the eleventh century, these three kings had received names, for they
are found written over against their figures in a painting of that date,
and occur in the breviary of Mersburg. Though their original donor is
unknown, their Oriental sound makes it probable that he was a
pilgrim-gatherer of Eastern legends. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar,
are not according to European fancy, and are not easy to explain. The
first may either be the Persian, _gendshber_ (treasure master), or else
be taken from the red or green stone called _yashpah_ in the East,
ἵασπις in Greek, _jasper_ in Latin. This was the only one of these names
ever used in England, where it was once common. Gasparde is the French
feminine; in English the masculine is Jasper. It is extremely common in
Germany; and has suffered the penalty of popularity, for Black Kaspar is
a name of the devil, and Kaspar is a Jack Pudding.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │
│Jasper │Gaspard │Gaspar │Gaspare │
│ │ │ │Gaspardo │
│ │ │ │Casparo │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Bavarian. │ Illyrian. │ Lett. │
│Kaspar │Kaspe │Gaso │Kaspers │
│ ——————— │Kasperl │ ——————— │Jespers │
│ Frisjan. │Gaspe │ Lusatian. │ │
│Jaspar │Gappe │Kaspor │ │
│ │Kapp │Kapo │ │
│ │Kass │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Melchior is evidently the universal Eastern Malek, or Melchi (a king);
but he is in much less favour than his companion; though sometimes found
in Italy as Melchiorre, as well as in Germany and Switzerland in his
proper form, and in Esthonia contracted to Malk.
Balthasar may be an imitation of Daniel’s Chaldean name of Belteshazzar
(Bel’s prince). Some make it the old Persian Beltshazzar (war council,
_or_ prince of splendour). It is not unlike the Slavonic Beli-tzar, or
White-prince, called at Constantinople Belisarius; but indeed it is
probably a fancy name invented at a period when bad Latin and rude
Teutonic were being mixed up to make modern languages, and the Lingua
Franca of the East was ringing in the ears of pilgrims. However
invented, Balthasar flourished much in Italy, and in the Slavonic
countries, and very nearly came to the crown in Spain.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ Italian. │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │ Polish. │
│Baldassare │Baltasar │Bathasar │Baltasar │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Slovac. │ Bavarian. │ Swiss. │ Illyrian. │
│Boltazar │Hanser │Balz │Baltazar │
│ │Hansel │Balzel │Balta │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Hungarian. │ │
│Bal │Balsys │Boldisar │ │
│Balk │ │ │ │
│Baltyn │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Some of the Italians devoutly believed that Gaspardo, Melchiorre, and
Baldassare, were the three sons of St. Beffana, as they had come to call
Epiphania; but, in general, Beffana had not nearly so agreeable an
association.
In Italy the Epiphany was, and still is, the day for the presentation of
Christmas gifts; and it is likely that the pleasant fiction that la
Beffana brought the presents, turned, as in other cases, such as that of
St. Nicholas, into the notion that she was a being who went about by
night, and must therefore be uncanny. Besides, when the carnival was
over, there was a sudden immolation of the remaining weeks of the
Epiphany; and whether from thus personifying the season, or from
whatever other cause, a figure was suspended outside the doors of houses
at the beginning of Lent, and called la Beffana. It is now a frightful
black doll, with an orange at her feet, and seven skewers thrust through
her, one of which is pulled out at the end of each week in Lent; at
least, this is the case in Apulia, where she is considered as a token
that those who exhibit her, mean to observe a rigorous fast.
Some parts of Italy account for the gibbeting of the unfortunate
Beffana, by saying she was the daughter of Herod, _i.e._ Herodias; and
Berni (as quoted by Grimm) says in his rhymes:
“Il di Befania, vo porla per Befana alla finestra,
Perchè qualcun le dia d’una ballestra.”
At Florence, however, the story was told in an entirely different way.
There it is said that Beffana was the Christian name of a damsel of the
Epifania family before-mentioned: that she offended the fairies, and was
by them tempted to eat a sausage in Lent, for which transgression she
was sawn asunder in the piazza, and has ever since been hung in effigy
at the end of the carnival, as a warning to all beholders.
In fact, Beffana is the Italian bugbear of naughty children; and it is
no wonder that this strange embodiment of the gift-bringing day should
not be followed as a Christian name, though the masculine form,
Epiphanius, once belonged to a Father, born near Mount Olympus, in whose
honour is named Capa Pifani, a headland on that coast, and from whom
Epifanio sometimes is found at Rome.
The other form of the name of the day, Theophania, has been much more in
favour; indeed, in the days of Christine de Pisane, the feast-day was
called la Tiphaïne.
Theophano was a name in common use among the Byzantine ladies, and we
hear of many princesses so called—one of whom married the German
Emperor, Otho II., in 962, and was then called Théophania. Probably she
made the name known in Western Europe, but it is curious that its chief
home in the form of Tiphaïne, was in Armorica, whence, as the grumbling
rhyme of the Englishman, after the Conquest, declared,
“William de Coningsby,
Came out of Brittany,
With his wife Tiffany,
And his maid Manfas,
And his dog Hardigras.”
Tiffany took up her abode in England, and left her progeny. The name
occurs in an old Devon register, within the last two hundred years, but
seems now extinct.
The high-spirited wife of Bertrand du Guesclin, was either Theophanie,
or Epiphanie Ragueuel, but was commonly called Tiphaïne la Fée, on
account of the mysterious wisdom by which she was able to predict to her
husband his lucky and unlucky days—only he never studied her tablets
till the disaster had happened. Could she have first acquired her
curious title through some report of her namesake, the Fairy Beffana? In
a Cornish register I find Epiphany in 1672; Tiffany in 1682.
In an old German dictionary, the feast Theophania is translated
“Giperahta naht” (the brightened night), a curious accordance with its
Greek title. Indeed, before the relic-worship of the Three Kings of
Cologne had stifled the recollection of the real signification of the
day of the Manifestation, the festival was commonly termed Perchten tac,
Perchten naht (bright day, or bright night). Then went on in Germany
much what had befallen Beffana in Italy. By the analogy of saints' days,
Perahta, or Bertha, was erected into an individual character, called in
an Alsatian poem, the mild Berchte; in whose honour all the young
farming men in the Salzburg mountains go dancing about, ringing cattle
bells, and blowing whistles all night. Sometimes she is a gentle white
lady, who steals softly to neglected cradles, and rocks them in the
absence of careless nurses; but she is also the terror of naughty
children, who are threatened with Frau Precht with the long nose; and
she is likewise the avenger of the idle spinners, working woe to those
who have not spun off their hank on the last day of the year. Can this
have anything to do with distaff day—the English name for the 7th of
January, when work was resumed after the holidays? Herrings and
oat-bread are put outside the door for her on her festival—a token of
its Christian origin; but there is something of heathenism connected
with her, for if the bread and fish are not duly put out for her,
terrible vengeance is inflicted, with a plough-share, or an iron chain.
That Frau Bertha is an impersonation of the Epiphany there seems little
doubt, but it appears that there was an original mythical Bertha, who
absorbed the brightened night, or if the bright night gave a new title
to the old mythical Holda, Holla, Hulla, Huldr (the faithful, or the
muffled), a white spinning lady, who is making her feather-bed when it
snows. She, too, brings presents at the year’s end; rewards good
spinners, punishes idle ones, has a long nose, wears a blue gown and
white veil, and drives through the fields in a car with golden wheels.
Scandinavia calls her Hulla, or Huldr the propitious; Northern Germany,
Holda, probably by adaptation to _hold_ (mild). Franconia and Thuringia
recognized both Holda and Berchta; in Alsatia, Swabia, Switzerland,
Bavaria, and Austria, Berchta alone prevails.
Some have even tried to identify Holda with Huldah, the prophetess, in
the Old Testament, but this is manifestly a blunder. And, on the other
hand, Bertha is supposed to be a name of the goddess Freya, the wife of
Odin; but it appears that though Huldr may possibly have been originally
a beneficent form of this goddess, yet that there is no evidence of
Bertha’s prevailing in heathen times, and therefore the most probable
conclusion is that she is really the impersonation of the Epiphany, with
the attributes of Holda.
Tradition made her into an ancestress, and she must have absorbed some
of the legends of the swan maidens, for she is goose-footed in some of
her legends; and she is sometimes, as in Franconia and Swabia, called
Hildaberta or Bildaberta, either from the Valkyr, or as a union of both
Hilda and Bertha. The goose-foot has been almost softened away by the
time she appears as _Berthe aux grands pieds_ (wife of Pepin, and mother
of Charlemagne); and the connection with the distaff is again traceable
in the story of Charlemagne’s sister Bertha, mother of Orlando, who,
when cast off on account of her marriage, and left a widow, maintained
herself by spinning, till her son, in his parti-coloured raiment, won
his uncle’s notice by his bold demeanour.
Proverbs of a golden age when Bertha spun, are current both in France
and Italy, and in Switzerland they are connected with the real Queen
Bertha.
Be it observed that Bertha is altogether a Frank notion, not prevailing
among the Saxons, either English or Continental, nor among the Northern
races. It is therefore quite a mistake to use Bertha, as is often done,
as a name for an English lady, before the Conquest. One only historical
person so called was Bertha, daughter of Chilperic, King of Paris, and
wife of Ethelbert, of Kent, the same who smoothed the way for St.
Augustine’s mission. She was probably called after the imaginary
spinning ancestress, the visitor of Christmas night, but though bright
was a common Saxon commencement or conclusion, we had no more Berthas
till the Norman conquest brought an influx of Frank names.
The name was, indeed, very common in France and Germany; and in Dante’s
time it was so frequent at Florence, that he places Monna Berta with Ser
Martino, as the chief of the gossips. Since those days it has died away,
but has been revived of late years in the taste for old names; and
perhaps, likewise, because Southey mentioned it as one of the most
euphonious of female appellations. One of the early German princesses,
called Bertha, marrying a Greek emperor, was translated into Eudoxia,
little thinking that she ought to have been Theophano.[91]
-----
Footnote 91:
_Church Festivals and Household Words_; Maury-Essaisin; _Les Légendes
Picuses du Moyen Age_; _Die Stern du Weisen_; Routh; _Reliquia Sacra_;
Grimm; Brand; Stanhope, _Belisarius_.
SECTION IV.—_Easter Names._
The next day of the Christian year that has given a name is that which
we emphatically call Good Friday, but which the Eastern Church knows by
the title that it bears in the New Testament, the Day of Preparation,
Παρασκευή (Paraskewe), from πάρα (beyond), and σκεύη (gear or
implements). Thence, a daughter born on that holy day, was christened
among the Russians Paraskeva; and the name that has been corrupted by
the French into Prascovie, and which is called for short Pascha, is very
frequent in the great empire, and belonged to the brave maiden,
Paraskeva Loupouloff, whose devotion to her parents suggested Madame
Cottin’s tale of _Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia_, where the
adventures, as well as the name, are deprived of their national
individuality in the fashion of the last century.
The Passover was known from the first to the Israelites as Pasach, or
Pesach, a word exactly rendered by our Passover, and which has furnished
the Jews with a name not occurring in the Scripture—Pesachiah, the
Passover of God.
The Greek translators represented the word by Πάσχα. It is Pascha
likewise in Latin; whence all modern languages have at least taken some
of their terms for the great feast of the Resurrection that finally
crowned and explained the Jewish Passover.
Italy inherits Pasqua; Spain, Pascua; Portugal, Pascoa, terms that these
two nations pass on to other festal Sundays. Illyria has Paska; Wales,
Pasg; Denmark, Paaske; France, Pâques; and we ourselves once used
Pasque, as is shown by the name of the anemone or pasque flower.
About 844, Radbert, Abbot of Corbie, put forth a book upon the holy
Eucharist, in honour of which he was surnamed Paschasius; and, perhaps,
this suggested the use of words thence derived for children born at that
season.
Cambrai has Pasqua, Pasquina, Pasquette, from 1400 to 1500. Pasquale,
Paschino, Paschina, Pasquier, Pascal, all flourished in Italy and
France; and in Spain a Franciscan monk, named Pascual, was canonized.
Pascoe was married in St. Columb Major, in 1452; Paschal is there the
feminine; and many other instances can be easily found to the further
honour of the name. There lived, however, a cobbler at Rome, the butt of
his friends, who gave his name of Paschino to a statue of an ancient
gladiator that had been newly disinterred, and set up in front of the
Orsini palace, exciting the waggery of the idle Romans by his likeness
to the cobbler. Paschino, the gladiator, proved a convenient block for
posting of lampoons and satires, insomuch that the generic term at Rome
for such squibs became paschinado, whence our English word pasquinade.
I have seen Easter as a Christian name upon a tombstone in Ripon
Cathedral, bearing the date 1813; but as I have also seen it in a Prayer
Book belonging to a woman who calls herself Esther, it is possible that
this may be a blunder of the same kind.
There was, however, soon after the Reformation, an inclination in
England to name children after the vernacular titles of holy days. In
1675, Passion occurs at Bovey Tracey, in Devon; another in 1712, at
Hemiock; and Pentecost is far from uncommon in old registers. At Madron,
in Cornwall, in 1632, appear the masculine, Pentecost, and feminine,
Pentecoste; and in Essex, an aunt and niece appear, both called by this
singular festal name, in honour of Whit Sunday. In 1643, I find it again
at St. Columb Major. It means, of course, fifty, and is Greek.
Easter is called Λάμπα (the bright day) in Greek, because of the
lighting of candles that takes place at midnight in every church. Can it
be from this that the Eastern saint of the 10th of February, who
suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, was called Charalampios, Χαραλάμπιος, a
name which is still used in the Ionian Islands, and is imitated in
Russia as Kharalampia, or Kharalamm. Its component parts are καρα (joy),
and a derivative from λαμπάς (a torch); and we might explain it either
glad-light, or the joy of Easter.[92]
-----
Footnote 92:
Kitto, _Bible Cyclopædia_; _Church Festivals and their Household
Words_; Grimm, _Acta Sanctorum_; Pott; Michaelis.
SECTION V.—_Sunday Names._
Sabbath (rest), in Hebrew, distinguished the seventh day, set apart from
the service of the world in memory, first, of the cessation of the work
of creation, and next, of the repose of the Israelites after their
labours in Egypt.
While the Sabbath was still the sacred day, it does not appear to have
suggested any historical name, except that of the father of Joses
Barsabas, whose father must have been Sabas. In 532, however, was born
in Cappadocia, Sabas, who became one of the most distinguished
patriarchs of the monks in Palestine; and in 372, one of the first
converts to Christianity among the Goths, then stationed in Wallachia,
who had taken the name of Sabas, was martyred by being thrown into the
river Musæus, now Mussovi. The locality attached the Slavonians to his
name, and Sava is still common among them, as is Ssava in Russia.
Whether Sabea or Sabra, the king of Egypt’s daughter, whom St. George
saved from the dragon, was named with any view to St. Sabas, cannot be
guessed. I have seen the name in an old English register, no doubt in
honour of the exploit of our patron saint.
The day of rest gave place to the day of Resurrection, the Lord’s day,
as we still emphatically call it, after the example of the Apostles.
St. John called it Κυριακή ἡμέρα (the Lord’s day), and in this he has
been followed by the entire Greek Church, with whom Sundays are still
Kyriakoi.
It seems to have been the translators of the Septuagint that first gave
its highest sense to Κύριος (Kyrios), a lord or master, from the verb
κυρέω (kyreo), to find, obtain, or possess.
St. Kyriakos, or, as Rome spelt him, Cyriacus, was martyred under
Diocletian, had his relics dug up afterwards, and his arm given to the
abbey of Altdorff, in Alsace. From him came the Roman Ciriaco and the
French Cyriac, all of which may mean either “the Lord’s,” or “the Sunday
child.”
At the same time a little Kyriakos of Iconium, a child of three years
old, fell, with his mother, Julitta, into the hands of the persecutors
of Seleucia. The prefect tried to save the child, but he answered all
the promises and threats alike with “I am a Christian,” till, in a rage,
the magistrate dashed his head on the steps of the tribunal, and his
mother, in her tortures, thanked Heaven for her child’s glorious
martyrdom. Their touching story made a deep impression, perhaps the more
from the wide dispersion of their supposed relics, which were said to
have been brought from Antioch by St. Amator, to Auxerre, about the year
400, and thence were dispersed through many French towns, and villages,
in which he was called St. Quiric or St. Cyr.
The ancient British Church became acquainted with the mother and child
through the Gallic. Welsh hagiology owns them as “Gwyl Gwric ac Elidan;”
and Cwrig has been continued as a name in Wales, whilst, on the other
hand, the child is equally honoured in his native East—by Russia,
Armenia, Abyssinia, and even the Nestorian Christians. He is probably
the source of the Illyrian names Cirjar and Cirko.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Portuguese. │ Spanish. │
│Cyril │Cyrille │Cyrillo │Cirilo │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Italian. │ German. │ Russian. │ Illyrian. │
│Cirillo │Cyrill │Keereel │Cirilo │
│ │ │ │Ciril │
│ │ │ │Ciro │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Kyrillos (Κύριλλος) fell to the lot of two great doctors of the
Church—patriarchs, the one of Alexandria, the other of Jerusalem; also
to two martyrs, one a young boy, and thus it became widely known. The
Welsh had it as Girioel, which really is nearer the pronunciation than
our own Cyril, with a soft _C_. It is a name known everywhere, but more
in favour in the East than the West, and of honourable memory to us for
the sake of Kyrillos Lucar, the Byzantine patriarch, the correspondent
of Laud, and afterwards a martyr. Latterly fashion has somewhat revived
it in England; and the feminine, Cyrilla, is known in Germany.
Probably, however, this is only the diminutive of kyrios (a master), and
did not begin with a religious import.
The Latin equivalent for the Greek, Kyriake, was Dies Emera Dominica.
The immediate derivation of this word is in some doubt. It certainly is
from Dominus; but there is some question whether this word be from
_domo_ (to rule), a congener of the Greek δαμάω, and of our own _tame_;
or if it be from _domus_ (a house), a word apparently direct from the
Greek δόμος, from δέμω (to build); another branch from that same root,
meaning to rule or govern.
Dominicus, the adjective formed from this word, is found in the French
term for the Lord’s prayer, _l'Oraison Dominicale_, and it likewise
named the Lord’s Day, Dies Dominica; Domenica, in Italy; Domingo, in
Spain; Dimanche, in France. The first saint, who was probably so called
from being born on a Sunday, was San Dominico of the Cuirass, a recluse
of the Italian Alps, whose mortification consisted in wearing an iron
cuirass, which he never took off except to scourge himself. He died in
1024; and a still sterner disciplinarian afterwards bore the same name,
that Dominico whom the pope beheld in a vision upbearing the Church as a
pillar, and who did his utmost to extirpate the Albigenses; whose name
is connected with the foundation of the Inquisition, and whose
brotherhood spread wherever Rome’s dominion was owned. He is saint for
namesakes out of Romanist lands, but in these it occurs, and has an
Italian feminine, Domenica; for short, Menica. Perhaps this likewise
accounts for the Spanish Mendez and Mencia. This last may, however, be
from Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, whose name has never been
accounted for. It may be from some unknown language; but is sometimes
supposed to be from _moneo_, to advise. Monique is rather a favourite
with French peasants, and Moncha was Irish, but it has not been as
common as it deserves.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ Irish. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │
│Domnech │Dominique │Domenico │Domingo │
│Dominic │ │Domenichino │Mendez │
│ │ │Menico │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Portuguese. │ Slavonic. │ Hungarian. │ Servian. │
│Domingos │Dominik │Domokos │Dominic │
│ │Domogoj │ │Menz │
│ │Dinko │ │Menzel │
│ │Dunko │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
The Slavonians have, however, a name for their Sunday in their own
tongue—Nedele; and have formed from it the Nedelco of the Bulgarians;
the Nedeljko, Nedan, Nedo, and the feminine, Nedelijka and Neda, of the
Illyrians.
I am aware of no other names from the days of the week, except the
‘Thursday October Christian’ of Pitcairn’s Island, who was probably so
called in recollection of the Man Friday.
All Saints' Day has furnished Spain with Santos; and France, or rather
San Domingo, with Toussaint, unless this last be a corruption, or,
perhaps, a pious adaptation, of Thorstein—Thor’s stone, turned into All
Saints.[93]
-----
Footnote 93:
Grimm; _Church Festivals and Household Words_; Butler; Rees, _Welsh
Saints_; Facciolati; Michaelis.
PART V.
CHAPTER I.
SECTION I.—_The Keltic Race._
We now pass to a class of names whose associations belong almost
entirely to the modern world, yet whose history is far more obscure than
that of those on which we have previously dwelt.
From the Hebrew, the European family have derived their religion; from
the Greek, their ideas; from the Roman, their laws; from the Teuton,
their blood and their energy; but from the Kelt they have taken little
but their fanciful romance. In only one country has the Kelt been
dominant, and then with a Latinized speech, and a Teutonic name,
testifying to the large modifications that he must have undergone.
Among the rugged moors and cliffs which fence Western Europe from the
Atlantic waves, he did indeed preserve his freedom, but without
amalgamation with other nations; and in lands where he fell under
subjection, he was so lost among the conquerors as to be untraceable in
language or feature, and with the exception of the Gaul, has bequeathed
nothing of his character to the fused race upon his soil.
We trace the Hebrew nation with certainty from its majestic source; the
Greek shines on us in a dazzling sunrise of brilliant myth; the Roman,
in a grave, stern dawn of characteristic legend; but of the earlier
progress of the wild, impulsive Kelt we have but the faintest
indications.
Much as he loved his forefathers, keen as was his delight in celebrating
the glories of his race, oral tradition contented him, and very strong
was the pressure from the neighbouring nations before his bards recorded
anything in writing, even the long genealogies hitherto preserved in
each man’s accumulated names. The beauty of their legends did indeed
recommend them to the general store-house of European fancy, but though
the spirit may be Keltic, the body through which it comes is almost
always Teutonic.
SECTION II.—_The Keltic Languages._
The Keltic nations used languages which showed that they came from the
Indo-European root, and which are still spoken in the provinces where
they remain. They have no really ancient literature, and were left at
the mercy of wild tongues, so that their losses have been very great,
and the divergence of dialects considerable.
The great and distinguishing feature of the entire class is their
peculiar inflections, which, among other puzzling features, insert an
aspirate after the primary consonant, so as entirely to change its
sound, as for instance in an oblique case, _mor_, great, would become
_mhor_, and be pronounced _vor_, to the eternal confusion of people of
other nations, who, however the vowel or the end of a word might alter,
always trusted to know it by the main syllable. A large number of
guttural sounds distinguished these languages, and some of these were
annihilated by the ensuing aspiration; but when spelling began, the
corpses of the two internecine letters were still left in the middle of
the word, to cumber the writer and puzzle the reader, so that the very
enunciation of a written sentence requires a knowledge of grammar.
The vowels likewise sometimes change in the body of the word when it
becomes plural, and the identification of plurals and of cases with
their parent word is so difficult that few persons ever succeed in the
study of Keltic, except those who have learnt it from their mothers or
nurses, and even they are not always agreed how to write it
grammatically.
The Keltic splits into two chief branches, so different that Cæsar
himself remarked that the Gauls and Cimbrians did not use the same
language. For the sake of convenience these two branches are called by
philologists the Gaelic and the Cymric. The first is the stock which has
since divided into the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Irish of Ireland,
and the Manx of the little intermediate isle. In fact they are nearly
one; old Gaelic and old Irish are extremely alike when they can be found
written, and though they have since diverged, the general rules continue
to be the same; and some of the chief differences may be owing to the
fact, that while the Highlanders have adopted the Roman alphabet, the
native Irish still adhere to the Anglo-Saxon.
The Cymric is still spoken in Wales and Brittany, and only died out a
century ago in Cornwall. Welsh and Breton agree in so many points that
the natives of either country are said to be able to understand one
another, though they would be entirely unintelligible to an Irishman or
Highlander. Indeed it may be doubted whether Greek and Latin are not
more nearly akin than the two shoots of the Keltic tree. One great
difference is that the _p_ of the Kymric always becomes _k_ or _c_ hard
in the Gadhaelic: thus _plant_ or children in Wales, are the well-known
Gaelic _clan_; _Paisg_, Easter, is _Cisg_; _pen_, a head, is _caen_; and
the Cornish word _Pentyr_, the head of the land, or promontory, is the
same as the Scottish _Cantyre_.[94]
The Gauls had been completely Romanized in the South before they heard
of Christianity. They gave up Greek and Roman idols rather than Druidism
when they listened to the Gospel. It is thought that the first seeds
were sown by St. Paul, and that afterwards the Eastern Church at
Ephesus, under St. John, had much communication with them. Britain
probably owed her first gleams of light to the imprisonment of
Caractacus and his family at Rome; but however this might be, Gaul
furnished hosts of martyrs in the persecution, and Britain did her part
in testifying to the truth. Many districts long remained unconverted,
however, in both countries. St. Martin is said to have completed the
conversion of Gaul in the end of the third century, and in Wales St.
Germain still found a host to baptize in the fifth century. Indeed, the
predominance of heathen remains over Christian, have made antiquaries
very doubtful whether Britain could have been by any means universally
converted at the time of the fall of the Roman empire. It had, however,
sent forth one great missionary, namely, St. Patrick, from the northern
province of Valentia. He found a feeble Church in Ireland, but so
enlarged its borders and won all hearts, that from his time that island
was Christian in name, and filled with such clusters of hermitages and
convents as to win its title of the Isle of Saints.
This Keltic Church, with its eastern traditions, was the special
missionary Church of these little heeded times. From Ireland, St.
Columba went forth to Iona, whence he and his disciples gradually
converted the Picts; and though St. Gregory’s mission laid the
foundations of the polity of the Anglo-Saxon Church in Britain, there
were the Scottish Aidan, the Welsh Chad, and Gallic Birinus doing the
work quietly, in which the Roman monks had been less successful. From
Ireland again, St. Columbanus, St. Gall, and many others set forth to
complete the work of conversion in France and Switzerland, and many
churches and convents regard as their founders and patrons, obscure
Irish hermits forgotten in their own country. These have been the chief
diffusers of Keltic names, being called after some hereditary native
word, which their saintliness was to raise to high honour.[95]
-----
Footnote 94:
Max Müller; _Encyclopædia Britannica_; Villemarqué, _Legoindec’s
Dictionary_; Hanmer, _Chronicle_; Clark, _Student’s Handbook of Comp.
Grammar_; Prichard, _Celtic Nations_.
Footnote 95:
Knight, _Pictorial History_; Mazzaroth; Knight, _Celt, Roman, and
Saxon_; Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_; Jones, _Welsh Sketches_; _Irish
Poems_; Montalembert.
SECTION III.—_Keltic Nomenclature._
The Kelts were highly poetical and romantic in their nomenclature. In
general their names were descriptive; many referred to complexion, and
many more described either masculine courage or feminine grace and
sweetness. But, unfortunately, the language is so uncertain, and its
commentators are so much at war, that in dealing with these, after the
well-criticized ancient tongues, is like passing from firm ground to a
quaking bog, and in many cases there is but a choice of conjectures to
deal with.
The names to be examined are of various kinds. First, the historical
ones that have come through Latin writers, terribly disguised, but the
owners of them certain to have existed. These are usually more Cymric
than Gaelic, and Welsh and Breton writers find explanations for them. A
few truly mythological ones will be considered with these, and placed
according to the order—if order it can be called—assigned to their
supposed owners in the pedigree of Brut, in which England used to
believe on the word of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Welsh on that of
their native chronicle of Brut. Then follow a most controverted
collection, chiefly of the two Gaelic nations. They were the property of
a set of heroes called the Feen, who are the great ancestry of the
chiefs of the Scottish race in both islands, and who are said to have
performed fabulous exploits at some distant period, which gains some
sort of date from the poem representing Ossian, the last survivor of the
band, as extremely miserable under the teaching of St. Patrick. The fact
was probably that the floating myths of the Gael attached themselves to
some real adventurous band, and the date is no more to be depended on
than those of Geoffrey of Monmouth; but it gives a point by which to
arrange the names still in great part surviving both in Ireland and
Scotland, though often confused with those imported from other
languages.
After this follows the cycle of names made popular by the romances of
King Arthur’s court, which naturally find their place at the time of the
fall of the Roman power in England. These, as far as they can be
understood or interpreted at all, are Cymric, and some have become
tolerably well known throughout Europe.
The different classes connected with one or other of these will nearly
dispose of all the Keltic names worth notice. The remaining will chiefly
belong to the saints, in which Wales, Brittany, and Ireland were
particularly prolific. The odd thing is that all the Welsh saints were
in some way or other of royal birth, so that the royalty of Wales must
have been peculiarly pious. Brittany, likewise, had sundry hermits; and
Ireland deserved its title of the Isle of Saints, though, as will be
seen, some of them were of a strangely Irish order, and regarded as
strong cursing powers.
The Gaelic race had the remarkable custom of calling their children the
servant, the disciple, or the votaress of the patron saint, and it is
not till recent times that the prefixes Giolla, Maol, and Cailleach have
been entirely dropped, and their traces are often remaining in
appellations in Ireland and Scotland.
The name was entirely personal, not hereditary; but the pride of
ancestry caused the father’s, grandfather’s, forefather’s names, to the
remotest generation, to be heaped upon one head, connected in Welsh by
_Mab_, or, as it was contracted, _Ap_.
The Welsh, about the fifteenth century, found these pedigree names
unmanageable in contact with ordinary society, and contented themselves
each with one ancestral surname for good. Some incorporated their Ap, as
Pryce, Ap Rhys, Pugh, or Ap Hugh; some, in English fashion, adding the
possessive _s_ to the end of the father’s name, like the hosts of
Joneses and Williamses; others took some favourite name from the roll of
ancestry, or called themselves after their estates.
In Gaelic the word Mac, the son, or O, or _ua_, the grandson, connected
the person with the ancestor whose name was chosen.
The Keltic taste in names was of the grand order, generally in many
syllables, and lofty in sense and sound, much in the style of the Red
Indian. Thus we find Brithomar, the great Briton; Bathanat, son of the
boar; Louarn, the fox; Carvilius, friend of power, among the Kymric
nations of England and the Continent: and in less complimentary style,
Mandubrath, man of black treason. This man of black treason was, in
Britain, Avarddwy Bras, also called one of the three disgraceful men of
Britain. It is said that Caswallon had murdered Avarddwy’s father, and
afterwards set out on what the _Triads_ call one of the three unwise
armaments, which weakened the force of the country. The cause is
romantically described by the _Triads_ to have been, that his lady-love,
Flur, had been carried away by a Prince of Gascony to be presented to
Julius Cæsar; moreover, the _Mabinogion_ says, he and his two friends
went as far as Rome to recover her, disguised as shoemakers, whence they
are called the three bold shoemakers of the Isle of Britain. The aid
that he gave the Gauls does, in fact, seem to have attracted the notice
of Cæsar, and the black treason was Avarddwy’s invitation to the Romans.
He was the father of Aregwydd Voeddog, whose second name, derived from
victory, was certainly the same as Boadicea, though her deed identifies
her with Cartismandua. Caswallon, or Cassivellaunus, as the Romans
called him, is sometimes explained as Cas-gwall-lawn, chief of great
hatred, sometimes as lord of the Cassi. The Gaels have many grand men’s
names, but, perhaps, have used the most poetry in those of their women.
Feithfailge, honeysuckle ringlets; Lassairfhina or Lassarina, flame or
blush of the wine; Lassair, or flame, the same in effect as the Italian
Fiamma; Alma, all good, a real old Erse name, before the babes of
September 1854, were called Alma, after the Crimean river, which
probably bore a Keltic name; Bebhirn, or, as Macpherson writes it,
Vevina, the sweet woman; Essa, the nurse; Gelges, white swan; Luanmaisi,
moon fairness; Ligach, pearly.
Yet thirst had her namesake, Ita; Diédrè was fear; Dorvenn, sullen;
Uailsi, pride; Unchi, contention.
All of these, and many besides, have entirely fallen into desuetude, and
all the Keltic countries have a practice of adopting names from their
neighbours, supposed to answer to their own, but often without the
slightest affinity thereto.
Thus Anmcha, courageous, is supposed to be translated by Ambrose;
Aneslis is rendered by Stanislaus; Fachtna, is Festus; Baothgalach, or
rashly courageous, Boethius.
Corruptions must be permitted to our English tongues and throats, which
break down at a guttural, so it is no wonder that Dorchaidha, or
patronymic O'Dorchaidhe, should be sometimes turned into D'Arcy,
sometimes D'Orsay, and sometimes into Darkey, which really translates
the word; and sometimes Darcy; but it is rather hard when we have to
read Archibald for Gillespie, and Edward for Diarmaid.[96]
-----
Footnote 96:
Villemarqué; O'Donovan; _Highland Society’s Gaelic Dictionary_.
CHAPTER II.
ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
SECTION I.—_Welsh Mythic Names._
Welsh myths we say advisedly, for whether these were really Druidical
myths or not, they have become so much disguised by Welsh bards, down to
Christian times, that there is no knowing what was the original
framework. Our concern is with the names connected with these
traditions.
The primary personages of semi-divine rank in these traditions are Hu
Gadarn, or the Mighty, the sun god, and his wife Ceridwen. It is
believed that the two sacred islands of Iona and Mona were both
originally Ynysgwaw Hu, the island of the worship of Hu. Others,
however, say, that Iona was only I-thon, or isle of the waves.
The word Hu is not explained; but it has passed into a name in Wales and
Brittany. Old French has the name inflected as Hue, Hues, Huon, and the
feminine Huette; and the true Anglicized Welsh form is Hu or Hew, though
it is now universally confounded with the Teutonic Hugh, from _hugur_,
thought, with which it may be cognate, and the Welsh patronymic Ap Hu is
always spelt Pugh.
The _Triads_ speak of Aed Mawr, or Aedd, as father of Pridain, but he
may have been either a title of Hu, or else the god himself. Aodh is, in
fact, in sound and sense, closely related to the Greek αίθω (aitho), and
our heat is of the same kin.
Dr. Meyer thinks this Aed Mawr of the _Triads_ was the forefather from
whom the Ædui mentioned by Cæsar were called, and further derives from
him Cæer Aeddon, or Dun Aeddon, Dun Edin, or Edinburgh. Yet, on the
other hand, it is a part of our English faith that Auld Reekie is our
Northumbrian Edwin’s burgh.
Aed, Aeddon, Aodh, Aedhan, were far more popular names than those
derived from Hu. Aeddan is lamented by Aneurin as a British warrior
slain among the victims of Henghist’s treachery; and two Aoidhs reigned,
the one in Connaught, the other in Scotland, in 570; and to the latter
of these, called by Scottish historians Aidan, or Edan, they ascribe the
foundation of their capital; but it was at that time in the possession
of the Angles, and if called after any Aodh, it must have been after an
earlier one. The Irish Aodh is said to have been about to expel the
bards, but to have been prevented by the intercession of St. Columb.
At one time Ireland was afflicted with thirteen contemporary Aodhs; and
at least two so called reigned in Scotland—Aodhfin, or the white, the
Ethfine of historians, and Aoidh, or Eth, the swift-footed. So common
was the name among the Irish that one hundred Aodhs and one hundred
Aidans or Oédans were killed in the battle of Maghrath. The MacAodhas of
Ireland were once many in number; and became MacHugh or Magee; in
Scotland, Mackay; or were sometimes translated into Hughson or Hewson.
But the most interesting person so called is known to us as Aidan. He
visited Wales and Scotland, became a monk of Iona, and then went forth
as a missionary to the North of England. He was the friend of the
admirable Oswald, free of hand, king of Deira, who used to interpret his
Keltic speech to the Angle population; and his gentle teaching won to
the Church multitudes whom the harshness of former missionaries had
repelled. He is reckoned as first bishop of Lindisfarn, and has left his
name to sundry churches of St. Aidan. Aoidhne, or Eithne, was the Irish
feminine once distinguished, but now disused.
Aidan is still a female name among some Welsh families.
Another Irish St. Aeddan, who was bishop of Ferns about the year 632,
has a most curious variety of namesakes—some from his baptismal name,
others from his pet appellation Móedóg, that is M'Óedóg, namely Ma
Otdóg, my little Aodh. This strange custom of prefixing the possessive
pronoun, first person singular, to the proper name of a saint was very
general. Maodhòg, as it has since become, is still common in Wexford,
where the Irish language has disappeared. It is pronounced and written
Mogne, and is perpetuated in honour of the Saint of Ferns. Madog, or
Madawc, was the usual form in Wales, where it has always been in great
favour. Madawc, prince of Powysland, who died in 1158, in great favour
with Henry II. The Latin translation of Aidan, Aideus, or Aidanus, has
adhered to him in Basse Bretagne, but has there been cut down into Dé,
St. Dé being the appellation of a village there, the church of which is
dedicated to Mogne, is by Irish Protestants often Anglicized as Aidan,
by the Roman Catholics as Moses.
The leek is said to have been used by the Welsh in the worship of
Ceridwen, the wife of Hu. Afterwards a story rose that, in one of
Cadwallawn’s battles, his Welshmen marked themselves with leeks from a
garden hard by, and the story was later transferred to the Welsh troops
of the Black Prince in France.
Ced, or Cyridwen, shows no namesakes; but _buadh_, or _budd_, victory,
furnished for her the epithet of Buddug, or Buddud; and, perhaps, she is
the Boundonica mentioned by Dion Cassius as a Keltic goddess. Probably
it was either as a victorious omen, or else in honour of her, that the
name of Buddug was given to that fierce chieftainess of the Iceni, whose
savage vengeance for her wrongs has won for her a very disproportionate
fame, as much changed as her name, when we call it Bonduca, or, more
usually, Boadicea. It has not met with much repetition, yet we have
heard of a family so patriotic as to contain both Caractacus and
Boadicea. Buadhach was, however, long a man’s name in Ireland, and
Budhic was one of the early Armorican princes.
Gwion, an unlucky dwarf, destroyed by Ceridwen, seems to have left his
name behind him, whether it be as M. Pitre Chevalier explains it,
_esprit_, sense, or be connected with the Welsh _gwyth_, and Cornish
_gwg_, anger.
Aneurin mentions a knight named Gwiawn as having been slain in the
battle of Cattraeth; and Gwion is a knight of Arthur’s court, figuring
as Sir Guy among the knights of the Round Table, and furnishing Spenser
with his Sir Guyon, the hero of the second ‘Book of Courtesie’ in his
_Faerie Queen_.
Guy has since been a favourite name, but it has become so entangled with
the Latin Vitus that it is almost impossible to distinguish the Keltic
from the Roman name. It appears to have prevailed in France very early
as Guy, Guies, Guyon, in the feminine Guiette; and besides the Sicilian
infant martyr, Vitus, obtained two patrons, St. Guy, the Poor Man of
Anderlecht, a pilgrim to Jerusalem, who died in 1014; and the Italian,
St. Guido, abbot of Pomposa, in Ferrara, who died in 1042. Both lived
long after their name had become so popular, that it could not have
depended upon them. Queen Matilda, in her Bayeux tapestry, labels as
Wido, the Count Guy of Ponthieu, who captured Harold on his ill-starred
expedition to Normandy, and thus she evidently does not consider him as
Vitus.
Guy and Guido were both fairly frequent with us, until ‘Gunpowder
Treason’ gave a sinister association to the sound of Guido Fawkes, and
the perpetual celebrations of the 5th of November, with the burning of
Guy Fawkes in effigy, have given a meaning to the term of Guy, that will
probably continue long after the last tar-barrel has flamed and the last
cracker exploded over his doom.
Guido and Guidone were the proper Italian forms, much used in the whole
Peninsula, and appearing in Ariosto’s poem in the person of Guidon
Selvaggio, a rustic, uncivilized knight. From the sound it was long
imagined that the names came either from _guide_ or from _guidon_, a
banner or ensign; but there can be no doubt that either the Keltic Gwion
or the Latin Vitus was their true origin.
SECTION II.—_Lear and his Daughters._
Geoffrey of Monmouth made the eleventh of his kings, descended from
Brute, to be called Leir, and live at Leircester, or Leicester, on the
river Sore, somewhere about the time of the prophet Elisha.
He is one of the earliest authorities for the story of Lear and the
ungrateful daughters, whom he calls Gonorilla and Regan. He gives the
name of Cordeilla to the reserved but faithful daughter who could not
pay lip service, but redeemed her father’s kingdom when he was exiled
and misused by her flattering sisters. It was a very remarkable
conception of character, even thus barely narrated, without the lovely
endowments with which we have since learnt to invest the good daughter.
The sequel in Geoffrey’s chronicle related, that after his kingdom was
restored, old Leir died in peace at Leicester, and was buried by
Cordeilla “in a certain vault which she ordered to be made for him under
the river Sore, at Leicester, and which had been built originally under
the ground to the honour of the god Janus; and here all the workmen of
the city, upon the anniversary solemnity of that festival, used to begin
their yearly labours.”
He further narrates that Cordeilla was dethroned by her nephews, and
committed suicide in despair. To this story adhered both the old
ballad-monger and Spenser, in the history studied by Sir Guyon; but
Shakespeare loved his sweet Cordelia too well to stain her with
self-murder, and, though omitting all allusion to Christianity, made her
in all her ways and actions a true Christian, and never perhaps showed
more consummate art than in producing so perfect an effect with a person
so chary of her words.
Whence did Geoffrey get the story which has produced such fruits?
Lear (_gen._), Lir, is the sea. He is also a mythological personage, a
god in the elder Irish belief, and father of Mănănnán, the Erse Neptune.
Afterwards, later ballads humanized Lear, and made him the father of
Mănănnán, one of the Tuath De Danan, or early conquerors of Ireland, and
Lord of the Isle of Man, which is said to be called after him. There is
a tradition in Londonderry that his spirit lives in an enchanted castle
in the waves of Magilligan, and that his magic ship appears every
seventh year. Moreover, the daughters of Mănănnán, granddaughters of
Lear, were called Ainè and Aoiffè, and had a desperate quarrel about
their husbands' excellence in hunting.
Wales, on its side, shows in the Isle of Anglesea a cromlech, called the
tomb of Bronwen, daughter of King Llyr or Leirus. The tomb was opened in
1813, and an ancient urn, once probably containing ashes, was found
there. It seems that a somewhat more substantial Llyr lived about the
time of the Roman conquest, and was the father of Bronwen, who married
the king of Ireland, was ill-treated by him, and received a box on the
ear, which was one of the three fatal insults of the Isle of Britain.
This lady is very probably the Bronwen of the cromlech; but the
conjecture of the Rev. Edward Davies is, that in the story of King Lear,
we may have the remains of an ancient myth.
It is certainly remarkable that the notion of Lyr, in connection with
turbulent daughters or granddaughters, should be common to both Britain
and Ireland. Mr. Davies explains Cordelia to have been originally
Creirdyddlydd, the token of the overflowing, also called Creirwy, or the
token of the egg. _Creir_ is a token, the sacred article on which a man
makes oath, whence it came to mean either a relic or a jewel.
Creirdyddlydd might thus be the jewel of the sea, or the token of the
flood. At any rate, Creirdyddlydd or Creirwy is a creation of ancient
Welsh poetry, once mythical, the daughter of the sea, Llyr or Llud, on
which Geoffrey seized for his history. Bronwen, or white bosom, is
either another daughter of Lyr, or else Creirdyddlydd under another
name, and is supposed to have been the British Proserpine. Both Bronwen
and Creirwy are called Gwrvorwyn, man-maid, or virago, and it does not
seem impossible that here we see the origin of Cordelia, Regan, and
Goneril, as they have been adapted to English pronunciation, the token
of the overflowing, the fair bosom, and the virago. Surely these are the
daughters of the ocean, rebellious and peaceful. Dynwen, too, is the
white wave, the patroness of lovers; and as we shall find by-and-by wave
names are remarkably common among the Welsh.
Lear is also called Llwyd, the grey, or the extended, a fitting title
for the sea, and which has passed on to form Lloyd, so common as a Welsh
Christian and surname, and adopted in England as Floyd.
Creirdyddlydd has due justice done her in the _Mabinogion_, where we
further learn that she remains with her father till the day of doom, and
that in the mean time two kings, Gwyn ab Nudd and Gwythir mab Graidiawn,
have a battle for her hand on every May-day.
Cordula is set down in Welsh and German calendars on the 22nd of October
as one of the 11,000 virgins, her feast following that of St. Ursula. It
may be remembered that St. Ursula was said to be Cornish; and that her
only recorded companion should bear a Cymric name, is in favour of some
shade of foundation for her story. Kordula is in consequence a German
name. Kordula was a princess of Lingen in 1473; and Michel and Kordel
are two children in German household tradition so constantly falling
into mishaps as to have become a proverb for folly.
The Germans fancy Cordula is a diminutive of the Latin _cor_, a heart;
others have wildly made it the feminine of _Cordeleo_, lion heart, and
it has been confused with Delia, the epithet of Diana, from Delos, her
birthplace; but Creirdyddlydd is certainly its origin, and remembering
that in Welsh _d_ is softened and aspirated by being doubled, is not far
from it in sound. Cordelia is hereditary in some Irish families; but is
chiefly used for love of Shakespeare’s heroine of filial love.
Bronwen makes her appearance again in the romance of _Sir Tristram_,
under the name of Brengwain, the maid of Yseulte. When the Lady Yseulte
was sent from her home in Ireland, under the escort of Tristram, to be
married to King Mark, of Cornwall, her mother entrusted a love potion to
Brengwain to be given on the wedding night.
Unfortunately, a tempest arose on the voyage, and, in the consequent
exhaustion, “Swete Ysonde, the fre, asked Brengwain a drink.” And
Brengwain, bringing the magic cup by mistake, caused the fatal passion
between Yseulte and the knight.
Even the “hound that was there biside, yclept Hodain,” who licked up the
drops that were spilt of the philtre, became attached to the knight and
lady with the same magic love.
Bronwen or Brengwain has since been in use as a Welsh female Christian
name.
The names of the granddaughters of the Irish King Lear were Aine and
Aoidheal, a spark, and their dispute was whose husband was the best
hunter. Aine means joy or praise, and also fasting. Friday is
Diah-Aoine, or fasting day in Irish. Aine, the daughter of Eogah-hal,
was looked on as queen of the fairies of South Munster, and her abode
was said to be Cnoc Aine or Knockany, the Hill of Aine, in county
Limerick; Aoibhinn was queen of the fairies in Thomond or North Munster;
Una, of those in Ormond.
Aine continued to be a favourite name in Ireland for many centuries; but
in later times it has become the practice to Anglicize it as Anna and
Hannah, and possibly Anastasia, though this may have come more directly
from the Greek. In 705 reigned a Scottish king called Ainbhceallach the
Good. He is turned by different authors into Arinchellar, Armkelleth,
Amberkelletus, etc., and his right one is either joyful war, or agile
war, or if with the _b_, ferocious war. He was too good for his savage
people, and was dethroned at the end of a year, and is usually mentioned
by the few historians, who name him, as Amberkelleth.
It is evident then that Aine had come to Scotland with other Gaelic
names, and it is probable that this is the word that had come forth as
Anaple or Annabell in Scotland long before the period of devotion to St.
Anne. In 1158 Annabel Fitz Duncan, daughter to Duncan, Earl of Moray,
carried the name into the Lucie family; Annabella of Strathern appears
in 1244; Annaple Drummond was wife to King Robert III. of Scotland,
about 1390; and thenceforth Anaple has been somewhat common in Scotland,
while Anabla and Anabella are equally frequent in Ireland, and Annabella
is occasionally used in England as Anna made a little finer.
Aoiffe was more generally used than Aine, but most likely is the origin
of the Effie of Scotland, now always used as short for Euphemia, though
the Highland version of this name is now Aoirig, or Oighrigh. In other
places Aoiffe seems to have been turned into Affrica. In the beginning
of the twelfth century ‘Affrica,’ daughter of Fergus of Galway, married
‘Olaus’ the Swarthy, King of Man, and her daughter ‘Effrica’ married
Somerled, Thane of Argyle and Lord of the Isles, by whose genealogists
she seems to have been translated into Rachel. Africa is still used as a
female name in the Isle of Man and in Ireland. Aoiffe was the wife of
Cuchullin in the Ossianic poetry, and Evir Allin and Evir Coma, properly
Aoibhir Aluin and Aoibhir Caomha, the pleasantly excellent and
pleasantly amiable, both appear there.
The recognized equivalent for Aoiffe was, however, Eva, beginning almost
from the first Christian times, so that, until I found Aoiffe in such
unquestionably heathen company as Lear and Mănănnán, I had made up my
mind that she was the Gadhaelic pronunciation of our first mother.
Eva is found in the oldest documents extant in Scotland, and high in
their genealogies: Eva O'Dwhine carried the blood of Diarmaid to the
Anglo-Norman Campbells; Eva of Menteith married one of the first Earls
of Lennox; and Alan, the first High Steward of Scotland, married Eve of
Tippermuir, and made her the ancestress of the Stuarts; about the same
time that the Irish Aoiffe or Eva, for she at least is known to have
borne both names, was being wedded to stout Earl Strongbow.
Aevin, or Evin, is occasionally found in the house of Kennedy, but
Eveleen is by far the most common form of both names in Ireland, and has
held its ground unchanged. Eibhlin in Irish.
To our surprise, however, Aveline or Eveline make their appearance among
the Normans long before the marriage of the Earl of Pembroke. Aveline
was the name of the sister of Gunnar, the great-grandmother of William
the Conqueror; and Aveline or Eveline was so favourite a Norman name
that it well suits the Lady of the Garde Douloureuse in the _Betrothed_.
Avelina de Longo-Campo, as the name is Latinized in old chronicles,
married the last Earl of Lancaster, and was the mother of that heiress
Avelina or Eveline, who, though short-lived and childless herself,
carried to her husband, Edmund Crouchback, and the sons of his
subsequent marriage, the great county of Lancaster, which made the power
of the Red Rose formidable.
Eveline has never been frequent, but was never entirely forgotten in
England, (for instance, an Eveline Elstove was baptized in 1539,) and
was revived as an ornamental name by Miss Burney’s _Evelina_. At present
it is one of those most in vogue, but it ought not to be spelt with a
_y_, unless it be intended to imitate the surname Evelyn, the old French
form of the Latin _avellana_, a hazel. It was well that the tree-loving
author of the _Sylva_ should bear such a surname, and from him and his
family, men have frequently been christened by it; but ladies do not
follow the old Eveline of song and romance unless they use the true
feminine termination.
It is curious that several Keltic names should have come to us with the
Normans. They may either have been of the set interchanged with the
Northmen at some pre-historical time, or old Keltic ones picked up from
the Gallic inhabitants of Neustria, or from the Bretons on the border.
In the present case, the latter supposition is the most likely, as the
Scandinavians do not seem to have used Eveline. It may of course be
after all a diminutive of Eve, but the alternate use of the initial _A_
and _E_ seems to contradict this, and identify it with Aoiffe, daughter
of the Irish King Lear.
SECTION III.—_Bri._
The root _brig_, meaning force or strength, is found in many branches of
the Indo-European tongues. It is considered to be akin to the Sanscrit
_virja_, strength, and is found in the Greek verb βρίθω (_britho_), to
be heavy, or to outweigh, and the adjective βριαρός (_briaros_), strong.
And thus it named the hundred-handed Titan, whom gods called Briareus,
and men Ægeon, and who, in the Titanic revolution, was disposed of
either in the Ægean Sea, or under Mount Ætna. Briennios, the surname of
some of the eastern emperors, must have come from this root.
In the Keltic tongues it again appears in Irish as _bri_ or _brigh_,
force or valour, and Bryn, height, answering to the Roman _virtus_ (a
near connection, as we shall presently see), and the old French word
_brie_, peculiarly expressive of the gay, light Gallic courage, was a
now forgotten legacy from the ancient population. Thence came Brenhin,
Bren, or Bran, or, as the Romans made it, Brennus, a king or chief—well
known for the forays on Italy, and capture of Rome.
Another Brennus was the leader of a division of the great host of Gauls,
that, about B.C. 279, came out of Pannonia, and made a backward rush
towards the East. One of their bands settled in Asia Minor, and were the
parents of the Galatians; but Brennus was less successful. He marched
upon Delphi, promising his followers the plunder of the Temple; but was
totally defeated by the Delphians; and finding his army destroyed, and
himself severely wounded, put an end to his own life.
Next time Bran comes to light, it is altogether in Welsh setting. The
_Triads_ and the prolific _Genealogy of Welsh Saints_, are the
authorities for the existence of a prince of that name. Bran the
Blessed, the son of Llyr Lledaith, and father of Caradwg, is, we are
told, one of the three blessed princes of Britain, having brought home
the faith of Christ from Rome, where he had been seven years as a
hostage for his son Caradwg, whom the Romans put in prison after being
betrayed through the enticement, deceit, and plotting of Cartismandua,
or by her Welsh name, Avegwydo Foeddog, the daughter of Avarwy, who
betrayed Caswallon. Her act is called by the _Triads_ one of the three
secret treasons of Britain.
Now Caradwg is, without a doubt, the Caractacus of Roman history, and
the captivity of his family exactly coincides with the time of St.
Paul’s first journey to Rome. Moreover, as has been already shown under
the head of Aristobulus, there is great reason to consider that
Aristobulus, the friend of St. Paul, was the same as the Arwystli, whom
the _Triads_ commemorate as among their first missionaries. A farm-house
in Glamorganshire, called Trevran, house of Bran, is pointed out as the
place where Bran used to reside, and it is near Llanilid, which is
considered as the oldest church in Britain.
Such is the British account of the father of Caradwg. The Roman account
is, that Cunobelinus was king of the Silures, and husband of
Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, and was a prosperous and powerful
prince in league with the Romans.
Cunobelinus is in like manner a title, though not of man. Cûn is, as
will be shown in due time, a chief or lord. Bel or Belin was the Keltic
god of light and of war, in whose honour British coins were struck in
the heathen days of Bran, whose own name the Romans thought they were
reading on his coins. Beli also meant war, and more than one king was
called from him.
Bran the Blessed may thus be our old friend Cymbeline, a name repeated
in Cornwall, but from literature, not tradition. Cartismandua, or
Aregwydd, is the wicked queen, and Caradwg one of the sons.
As to Imogen, the real charm of the play, no British lady either
accounts for or explains her name; but in German genealogies we fall
upon Imagina of Limburg, in 1400; and there are various other instances
of the like, so that Shakespeare may be supposed to have heard of one of
them, and adopted her as the heroine of the old story of the deserted
and betrayed wife, which he so strangely placed at the court of the last
independent British prince. Or Imogen may be a Shakespearian version of
Ygnoge, daughter of Pandrasus, emperor of Greece, and wife of Brutus,
according to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Anne of Brittany’s funeral
oration, in 1514, her birth was deduced from this last.
Caradwg’s own proper name comes from the same root as the Greek χάρις,
grace, and the Latin _carus_, dear. It means beloved, and has the Breton
form Keridak. Caer Caradoc, in Shropshire, retains the name of his camp.
He had a worthy namesake in Caradawc Vreichfras, or strong armed, called
the pillar of the Kymry, and one of the three battle knights of Britain.
Vreichfras means the strong arm, but the French trouveurs rendered it
Brise-bras, the wasted arm; and told of an enchanter who fixed a serpent
on the knight’s arm, from whose torture nothing could relieve him but
that she whom he loved best should undergo it in his stead. His faithful
wife offered herself; the serpent was just about to seize on her, when
her brother smote off its head with his sword; but her husband thus
never recovered the strength of his arm! Others, however, read
Vreich-fras as _Fer-a-bras_, iron arm; and thus, perhaps, from some
Breton romance, was one of the Hauteville brothers called William
Ferabras. Hence, again, did the French and Italian romancers name their
fierce Moorish champion Ferraù, or Ferragus, the same who lost his
helmet, and possessed the healing salve, valued by Don Quixote as the
balsam of Fierabras!
Caradwg’s wife, Tegan Euvron, or golden beauty, was mentioned by the
_Triads_ as one of the three fair ladies and chaste damsels of Arthur’s
court, possessing three precious things, of which she alone was
worthy,—the mantle, the goblet, and the knife. Later romance and ballad
have expanded these into the story of the three tests of the faithful
wife; and Sir Caradoc and his lady remain among the prime worthies of
the Round Table.
In the twelfth century a saint named Caradwg retired from the world in
disgust at the violence shown to him by his master, Rhys, prince of
South Wales, on learning the loss of two greyhounds that had been in
Caradwg’s charge. He lived in various hermitages in Wales and left a
well in the parish of Haroldstone, called by his name. Moreover, soon
after his death, he was said to have suddenly closed his hand, in
frustration of the designs of the historian, William of Malmsbury, who
wanted to cut off his little finger for a relic. Our insular saints were
decidedly of Shakespeare’s opinion, and had no desire to have their
‘bones moved’ or be made relics of.
Caradwg, Caradoc, and Keriadek continue to be used in Wales, Scotland,
and Brittany.
_Cara_, friend, was sometimes prefixed to a saint’s name by the
Christian Gael, as Cara Michil, friend of St. Michael, as the name of
his devout client, and thus arose such surnames as Carmichael.
This pursuit of Cymbeline and his family has carried us far from Bran
the Blessed. Under this, his proper name, he stands forth in old Welsh,
romance as the original importer of the Sanc-greal. One very old and
wild version says that King Bran brought from Ireland a magic vessel,
given him by a great black man in Ireland, which healed wounds and
raised the dead.
In the twelfth century the Sanc-greal had assumed its Christian
character, and Bran the Blessed, as the first Christian prince of
Britain, was said to have received it from St. Joseph of Arimathea, and
guarded it to the end of his life. No wonder, therefore, that Brittany
loved and honoured his name.
Bran was a Pictish prince, killed in 839, in battle with the Danes, and
it is highly probable that St. Birinus, the Keltic apostle of Wessex,
was another form of Bran.
Brian has been from very old times a favourite Christian name in both
Brittany and Ireland, the first no doubt from the Christian honours of
the blessed Bran, the second from the source whence he was named.
The great glory of Brian in Ireland was in the renowned Brian Boromhe,
King of Leinster, or of the tribute, so called from the tribute, once
shaken off by Ulster, but which he re-imposed. He defeated the Danes in
twenty-five battles, and finally was slain in the great battle of
Clontarf, on the Good Friday of 1014. Around that battle has centered a
wonderful amount of fine legendary poetry on both sides.
Brian, or Bryan, is a very frequent Christian name, but according to the
usual lot of its congeners, has an equivalent, _i. e._ Bernard, chiefly
in Ulster, with which it has not the most distant connection.
Brien was always a favourite in Brittany, and is very common as a
surname with the peasantry there. The Bretons, who joined in the Norman
conquest, imported it to England. Two landholders, so called, are
recorded in Domesday Book; and during the first century of Norman rule
it was far more common than at present, when it is considered as almost
exclusively Irish. Some of our older etymologists have been beguiled
into deriving it from the French _bruyant_, noisy.
The feminine Brennone is given in German dictionaries, but it, as well
as Brennus, are there derived from old German, and explained as
protection, which is clearly a mistake.
Brieuc was a Breton saint; Breasal was once common in Ireland, and
survives in a few families, but is generally turned into Basil, and
sometimes to Brazil, in which shape the Manxmen frequently bore it.
_Brîgh_ or strength, is the most satisfactory explanation of Brighid,
the daughter of the fire-god, and the goddess of wisdom and song, skill
and poetry.
Cormac, king and bishop of Cashel, explains the word as a ‘fiery dart;’
but this looks like one of the many late and untrustworthy
interpretations of Keltic names.
Brighid was always a favourite female name in Ireland, and has become
one of the very few Keltic ones of European popularity. This was owing
to a maiden who was brought up by a bard, and afterwards became a pupil
of St. Patrick; and from a solitary recluse at Kildare, rose to be the
head of five hundred nuns, and was consulted by the synod of bishops.
She died in 510, and after her death, a copy of the Gospels was found in
her cell, too beautiful to have been written by mortal hand, “with
mystical pictures in the margent, whose colours and workmanship were, at
first blush, dark and unpleasant, but in the view marvellously lively
and artificiall.”
It was long kept at Kildare, and a little hand-bell, such as was much
used by the Irish missionaries, and which had belonged to her, and was,
therefore, called Clogg Brighde, or Bridget’s Bell, was exhibited to the
devout, in both England and Ireland, until it was suppressed by a
prohibition from Henry V., perhaps, because it tended to keep up a
national spirit.
She was one of the patron saints of Ireland, and was regarded with such
devotion, both there and in Scotland, that children were baptized as her
servants, Maol Brighde, Giollabrid; and to the present day, hers is the
favourite name in Ireland.
St. Bride’s churches are common, both in England and Scotland, and the
village of Llanaffraid, in Wales, records her in her Welsh form of
Ffraid. Bridewell was once the palace of St. Bride, and after its
conversion into a prison, spread its sinister name to other like
buildings. The Portuguese believe themselves to possess the head of St.
Bridget at Lisbon, and have accordingly more than one Doña Brites among
their historical ladies.
Sweden has also a St. Bridget, or rather Brigitta; but her name is in
her own tongue Bergljot, shortened to Berglit, and then confounded with
the Irish Bridget. It unfortunately means mountain-fright, or guardian
defect, though German antiquaries have twisted both Bridgets into
_Beraht Gifu_, bright gift. Be that as it may, the Swedish Brigitta was
a lady of very high birth, who, in her widowhood, founded an order of
Brigittin nuns, somewhere about 1363, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was
greatly revered for her sanctity. She named the very large class of
Norwegian, German, and Swedish Bridgets or Berets, who are almost as
numerous as the Irish.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ Irish. │ Scotch. │ French. │
│Bridget │Brighid │ Bride │Brigitta │
│Bride │Biddy │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ Swedish. │ German. │
│Brigida │Brites │Brigitta │Brigitta │
│Brigita │ │Brita │ —————————— │
│ │ │Begga │ Esth. │
│ │ │Bergliot │Pirrit │
│ │ │Beret │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Lusatian. │ Lettish. │ Lith. │ Lapp. │
│Brischia │Britte │Berge │Pirket │
│Brischa │Birte │Berzske │Pikka │
│ │Pirre │ │Pikke │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
SECTION IV.—_Fear, Gwr, Vir._
The free days of the Kelt were fast ending. He fell before Roman
discipline, though not without a worthy struggle.
In Cisalpine Gaul, Marcellus and Scipio themselves found Britomartus, or
Viridomarus, king of the Boii, so worthy an antagonist that Marcellus,
having slain him in single fight, dedicated his _spolia opima_ in the
temple of Jupiter Feretrius. In Spain, a Lusitanian hunter or shepherd,
named Viriathus, carried on a guerilla warfare with the Roman legions
for fourteen years. In Gaul, Cæsar mentions Virdumarus among his allies
the Æduans, and says that their chief magistrate was termed
_vergobretus_, and among his enemies, the Unelli and Arverni, he records
Viridovix, Vergosillanus, and Vercingetorix.
The last chieftain was one of the most gallant men who struggled in vain
against the eagles.
However, our concern is chiefly with his name. In fact, these _Virs_ of
Cæsar might have been placed in our preceding division, for they are
from the same root, _bri_, or force, and still more resemble the
Sanscrit _virja_, as well as the Latin _virtus_ and _vir_. Exactly
answering to _vir_, though coming in an independent stream from the same
source, the Gaelic man is _fear_, plural _fir_; the Cymric is _gwr_,
gen. _gyr_, plural _wyr_. Again, valour or virtue is in Welsh _gwyrth_,
and _gwr_ is the adjective for excelling.
Thus there can be no reasonable doubt, that the _ver_ or _vir_ of the
Latin version of these Keltic heroes was a rendering of the _fear_ of
the Gael, or of the _gwr_ of the Cymry, both not infrequent
commencements; and the double name of the hero of Cisalpine Gaul,
Viridomarus, or Britomartus, brings us back to the original root. It may
be that Britomartus referred to his great strength.
Vergobretus, the magistrate of the Ædui, is explained either as
_Fear-co-breith_, man who judges, or _War-cy-fraith_, man placed over
the laws; or, taking _gwr_ as excelling, and _brawd_, as justice, he
would be excelling in justice.
Viriathus must be referred to _fear_, man, and, perhaps, to _aodh_,
fire.
Vercingetorix himself may be translated into _Fear-cuin-cedo-righ_, man
who is chief of a hundred heads; and his cousin, Vergosillanus, is the
man either of the banner or the spear, according as _sillanus_ is
referred to _saighean_, a banner, or to _saelan_, a spear.
Here, then, are the tokens of kindred between the Gauls of the continent
and the Gael of our islands, for _Fear_, the frequent commencement in
both Ireland and Scotland, is assuredly the word that Cæsar rendered by
_Vir_, more correctly both in sense and sound than he knew.
Fearghus, man-deed, from _gus_, a deed, is the rendering of one of the
most national of Gaelic names, though Macpherson makes it Fearguth, man
of the word.
Bold genealogists place Feargus at the head of the line of Scottish
kings, and make him contemporary with Alexander the Great. Another
Fergus was son of Finn, and considered as even a greater bard than his
nephew, Oisean. Poems said to be by him are still extant, in one of
which he describes his rescue of his brother, Oisean, who had been
beguiled into a fairy cave, and there imprisoned, till he discovered
himself to his brother by cutting splinters from his spear, and letting
them float down the stream that flowed out of the place of his
captivity.
Fearghus, the son of Erc, a Dalriad prince, was, in 493, blessed by St.
Patrick, and led the great migration of Scots to Albin, together with
his brothers Loarn and Aonnghus, who each named their own district,
while he reigned over the whole region of the Scots,—that around Argyle;
whither he had transported the stone of dominion, that sooner or later
brought conquest to the race who possessed it. From these Fearghus or
Farghy in Ireland, Fergus in Scotland, and the feminine Fergusiana still
continue in use.
Fearachar is another Scottish form. Ferquard is given as prince of the
Scots in Ireland, at some incalculable time; and Fearchur or Ferchar was
the king of the Scots just after St. Columbus' death. He is Latinized as
Ferquardus; and this was the name of an Earl of Ross in 1231; and as
Farquhar has continued in favour in the Highlands. Feardorcha is the
blind man. Fardorougha is an incorrect modernism, and Ferdinand and
Frederick the supposed equivalent.
_Gwr_, or _Wr_, is the Cymric form of the same word, and the parallel to
Fergus among the Picts was Wrguist, or Urguist, a prince who lived about
800, and whose daughter was called after him, married the Scottish Eacha
or Fergusiana, and thus led to the union of the two races under her
descendant, Kenneth MacAlpin.
Gwrtigearn, excelling king, is a Silurian prince of doubtful fame.
Through Latinism we know him as Vortigern. It would seem that when the
usurpation of Maximus had involved the Roman empire in confusion, and
left Britain without any legions to defend it against the robber nations
round, that he made some attempt at a partial revival of national
spirit; but, failing this, entered into a treaty with the Anglo-Saxon
invaders, and was thought to have betrayed the cause of his country.
What these doings were is another matter. We all know the romantic
history of Vortigern’s letter to Henghist and Horsa; of his visit to the
Saxon camp; of Rowena and her cup; of the Isle of Thanet marked out by
strips of cow-hide; and of the treachery of the Saxons at Stonehenge.
There is nothing morally impossible in the story as it was dished up for
modern history, and it used to satisfy our ancestors before they had
found out that a small king on the Welsh border could hardly have dealt
with Thanet, and, moreover, that the Teutonic immigration had been going
on for many years past on the eastern coast.
As to the cow-hide and the massacre, they are said to be old Thuringian
traditions; and the Welsh seem to have either invented or preserved the
story of the fascinations of Rowena. At any rate, they named her; for,
alas for Saxon Rowena, there is nothing Teutonic in the word, and the
Kymric form _Rhonwen_, white skirt, betrays its origin. Rhonwen, or
Bradwen, is the name by which she is called in the _Gododin_, a poem
ascribed to the bard Aneurin, and, perhaps, containing some germs of
truth, though its connection with the Stonehenge massacre is hotly
disputed.
CHAPTER III.
GAELIC NAMES.
SECTION I.—_Scottish Colonists._
The strange and wild beliefs that prevailed regarding the original
settlement of ancient Ireland, have left strong traces on the names
still borne by the population, both there and in Scotland.
We need not go back quite to Adam’s great-grandson, and the wicked race
that sprang from him, and all perished, except one giant, who took up
his abode in a cave, and there lived till he was baptized by St.
Patrick; nor to Fintan, who was changed into a salmon during the time
that the flood prevailed, and afterwards gave rise to the proverb, “I
could tell you many things were I as old as Fintan.” A bard, so called,
was said to have existed, and a poem is attributed to him, which gives a
very queer account of the first settlers, though he does not there claim
quite such a startling experience.
Fomorians, Fir Bolg, men dwelling in caves, or, more probably, ravaging
men, and Tuath De Danan, _i.e._ chiefs, priests, and bards, are all
conducted in turn to Erin by tradition and poetry; but none equal in
fame or interest the tribe called Milesian, from whom the purest Irish
blood is supposed to descend.
The favourite legends start this famous colony from the East, where
Phenius, the head of the family, was supposed to have taught the
Phœnicians letters, and left them his name! His son, Niul, not to be
behindhand with him, named the Nile, having been sent on an embassy to
Egypt, where he married Pharaoh’s daughter! Whether her name was Scota
or not, authorities are not agreed; but all declare that it was her
father who was drowned in the Red Sea, and that a subsequent dispute
with the Egyptians caused either Niul or his son to migrate to Spain.
It is this Niul, or Niale, to whom the whole legion of Niales are to be
referred. The name, from _niadh_, means a champion, and was probably
carried backwards to the ancestor from the various Neills, who thought
they might as well claim the Nile as their namesake.
Neill of the Nine Hostages, was one of the greatest of the ancient
heroes; he was the last but one of the pagan kings of Ireland, and
himself most unconsciously imported the seed of the Gospel, for it was
his men who, in a piratical descent on the Roman colony of Valentia,
carried off the boy who, in after days, was to become the Apostle of
Ireland,—one of the many slaves by whom the Gospel has been extended.
Neill of the Nine Hostages was killed by an assassin about the year 405;
but his family, the Hy Neill, or children of Neill, became one of the
leading septs in the North of Ireland. Of them the story is told, that
on going to settle on the Ulster coast, one of them resolved to take
seisin of the new country by touching the shore before any one else, and
finding his boat outstripped, he tore out his dagger, cut off his right
hand at the wist, and threw it on the beach, so that his fingers were
the first laid on the domain. Such, at least, is the tale that accounts
for the O'Neill’s war-cry, _Lamhdearg Aboo_ (Red hand set on), and for
the red hand on the shield of the O'Neills and of Ulster, afterwards
given by James I. to the knights baronets, whom he created as
‘undertakers’ of the new colony of English, which he wished to found in
Ulster.
Ireland thus frequently used Neill, or Niall, and Scotland Niel, as it
is there spelt, but it is far more surprising to meet with it among the
Scandinavian races. It is evidence that there must have been some
considerable intercourse between Ireland and the North before the days
of the piracies of the historical ages. The old Irish legends constantly
speak of Norway as Lochlinn, or the land of lakes, and show visits
taking place between the inhabitants; and there are names to be found in
both countries, borrowed from one another, too far back to be ascribed
to the Norse invasions.
In the _Landnama Bok_, the Domesday Book of Iceland, no less than three
Njals appear, and the Njalssaga, the history of the noble-spirited yet
peaceful Icelander, who, even in the tenth century, had never shed
blood, and preferred rather to die with his sons than to live to avenge
them, is one of the finest histories that have come down to us from any
age. Njal’s likeness to the contraction Nils, has caused many to suppose
that it also is a form of Nicolas, but the existence of Nial both in
Ireland and Iceland before the conversion of either country contradicts
this. Nielsen is a frequent Northern patronymic, and our renowned name
of Nelson probably came to us through Danish settlers.
The Northmen apparently took their Njal to France with them, and it
there was called Nesle or Nêle. Chroniclers Latinized it as Nigellus,
supposing it to mean black; and in Domesday book, twelve landholders
called Nigellus appear, both before and after the Conquest, so that they
may be supposed to be Danish Niels, left undisturbed in their
possessions.
Nigel de Albini, brother to him who married the widow of Henry I., must
have been a genuine Norman Niel; and through the numerous Anglo-Norman
nobles who were adopted into the Scottish peerage, this form was adopted
in addition to the old Gaelic Nial, or as a translation of it, for the
young brother of Robert Bruce is called by both names, Nigel and Nial.
At present this Latinized Normanism of the old Keltic word is considered
as peculiarly Scottish, chiefly because it has been kept up in that form
in old Scotch families.
Fergus, Loarn, and Aonghus are said to have been the three brothers who
led the migration from Erin to Caledonia, and transferred the name of
Scotland from one isle to the other in 503, and Loarn and Angus gave
their names to two districts in Scotland.
Anguss was indeed a popular name both in Scotland and Ireland. It comes
from the numeral _aon_, one; it also conveys the sense of pre-eminence,
means excellent strength, and it is generally pronounced Haoonish in
Gaelic. Irish genealogists make Aongus Turimheach king two hundred and
thirty-three years before the Christian era; and we are afterwards told
of another Aongas, king of Munster, who had a family of forty-eight sons
and daughters, of whom he gave half to St. Patrick to be monks and nuns.
In Hanmer’s _Chronicle_, King Arthur visits Ireland and converses with
King Anguish, which painful title is precisely that which Henry VIII.,
in his correspondence, gives his brother-in-law, the Earl of Angus.
Angus is specially at home in Scotland, but there it has been called
Hungus and Ungus, likewise Enos, and is now generally translated into
Æneas, the christened name of many a Scot who ought to be Angus; and the
Irish are too apt to change it in the same way.[97]
-----
Footnote 97:
Hanmer, _Chronicle_; _Ossianic Society’s Transactions_; Taylor, _Hist.
of Ireland_; Dasent, _Nialsaga_; _Highland Society’s Dictionary_;
Ellis, _Domesday Book_.
SECTION II.—_The Feen._
A remarkable cycle of traditions are cherished by the Gaelic race
regarding a band of heroes, whom they call the Fiann, or Fenians, and
whose exploits are to them what those of Jason, or Theseus, were to the
Greeks.
Scotland and Ireland claim them both alike, and point to places named
after them and their deeds; but the balance of probability is in favour
of Ireland, as their chief scene of adventure, although they may also
have spent some time in Morven, as their legends call the West of
Scotland, since the Gaelic race was resident in both countries, and kept
together in comparative union by its hatred to the Cymry in both. This
supposition is confirmed by the semblance of a date that is supplied
through the conversion of the last survivor of the band by St. Patrick,
which would place their era in the end of the fourth century, just when
the migrations of the Scots were taking place, supposing these to have
lasted from about A.D. 250 to 500. Still, the Fian may be only one of
the ancient imaginations of the Gael, and either never have had any
corporeal existence at all, or else, genuine ancient myths may have
fixed themselves upon some forefathers, who under their influence have
been magnified into heroic—not to say gigantic—proportions.
These tales, songs, and poems lived among the story-telling Highlanders
and Irish, unnoticed, until the eighteenth century, when the Scottish
author, James Macpherson, perceived that they contained a mine of wild
beauty and heroic deeds, and were, in fact, the genuine national poetry
of his race.
He put his fragments together into the books of an epic, and wrought up
the measured metre of the Gaelic into a sort of stilted English prose,
rhythmical, and not without a certain grandeur of cadence and
expression; moreover, he left out a good deal of savagery, triviality,
repetition, and absurdity; and produced an exceedingly striking book, by
expanding the really grand imagery of the ancient bards, and, perhaps,
unconsciously imparting Christian heroism to his characters.
There had been some unscrupulousness from the first. Either from
nationality or ignorance, Macpherson had entirely ignored the connection
with St. Patrick, and made his heroes altogether Scottish, though
passing into Ireland; and when a swarm of critics arose, some
questioning, some mocking, he did not make a candid statement of what
were his materials, but left the world to divide itself between the
beliefs that the whole was Ossian’s, or the whole Macpherson’s. Had he
been truthful, he would have gained high credit, both as poet and
antiquary; but he brought on himself the reputation of an impostor, his
literary talents have been forgotten, and the poems themselves are far
less regarded than they deserve.
Be the truth what it may, the names of the Fianna were in constant use
long before Macpherson was heard of.
In Ireland and West Scotland, the early poems represent Finn and his
friends performing high feats of prowess.
Finally, the Feen either invaded Ireland, or became obnoxious to the
natives, and were set upon at the battle of Garristown, or Gabhra,
pronounced Gavra, loud shouting. The last survivor of them was the poet
Oisean, or Ossian, as he is now called, who was said to have lived till
the coming of St. Patrick, and to have been taken into his monastery,
where old Irish poems show him in most piteous case, complaining much of
fasts, and of the “drowsy sound of a bell.”
SECTION III.—_Finn._
Leader of the Fianna, and bestowing on them their very title, stands the
great Fion, the grand centre of ancient Gaelic giant lore; his full
title being Fionn Mac Cumhail, pronounced Coul. Fingal, the name the
Scots have known him by ever since the time of Barbour, is really a
confusion of Faingall, the toilers of the Gaul.
There is no doubt of the meaning of _fion_. It is the same with the
Cymric Gwynn, or Wynn, and like them signifies white, fair, or clear, as
in the name of Lough Fyne.
One very remarkable feature in the history of Finn is that the same
meaning of white attaches to it in ancient or poetical Scandinavian,
though not in the other Teutonic languages; nor is the name found in any
Teuton nation but the northern ones, except that in the Saxon chronicle,
Finn is Odin’s fourth forefather, whereas he is his grandfather in the
_Edda_.
In the great Anglian poem of _Beowolf_, Finn is king of the Frisians,
but is conquered by the Danes, strangely enough, under Henghist; another
poem, called the _Battle of Finnsburh_, records the strife—Finn lost
half his kingdom, but the next year he killed Henghist; then being set
upon by the other Danes, lost his crown and life. It is likely that, old
as the poem is, it has been much altered, and that it really existed
before the Anglian colonization of our island; indeed, there is reason
to suppose that it was in memory of the burgh of this Frisian Finn, that
Finsbury manor in the city of London acquired its name.
Finn is a giant in Norway, compelled by the good Bishop Laurence to
erect the church at Lund, after which he was turned into stone by way of
payment, wife, child, and all, as may still be seen. Again in Denmark as
a trolld, he did the same service for Esbern Snare, building Kallundborg
church, on condition that if his name was not guessed by the time the
church was finished, his employer should become his property. As in the
German tale of _Rumpel Stitzchen_, the danger was averted by the victim,
just in time, overhearing this amiable lullaby in the hole of a rock—
“Be still, my babe, be still,
To-morrow comes thy father Finn,
Esbern’s heart and eyes for a toy thou shalt win.”
Next morning Esbern saluted Finn by his name, as he was bringing the
last half-pillar, whereupon he flew away, pillar and all, wherefore the
church only stands to this day on three pillars and a half!
Finn alone, and in combination, is rather a favourite in the North. The
_Landnama-bok_, which gives the Icelandic genealogies from the
settlements there in the ninth century down to the middle of the
thirteenth, has five men named Finnr, two, Finni, and three ladies
called Finna; and in the three countries in the, mainland it has been
equally common, even to comparatively recent times, when Finn Magnusson
was one of the chief authorities for Scandinavian antiquities. Among the
compounds of the name, the Swedes have Finngaard, which their
pronunciation contrives to make sound like Fingal, with what is called
the “thick _l_;” and in modern times it is so spelt in allusion to
Macpherson’s hero. The name Finnketyl, or Finnkjell, with the feminine
Finnkatla, is explained as the cauldron or vessel of some semi-divine
Finn. Kettles are rather common in the North, but almost always belong
to some divinity of high rank. Finn has his weapons, as Finnbogi, or
Finbo, a white bow; Finngeir, a white spear; his sport, as Finleik,
white game or reward; his forest, as Finnvidr, or white wood; as well as
his guardianship, as Finn-vardr, or white ward, all represented in
northern nomenclature, in a manner analogous to those of the national
deities.
All this makes it highly probable that Finn was an idea borrowed from
the Gael by the Norsemen, especially as the hammer of Thor is sometimes
to be heard in Scottish legend resounding in the hand of Finn. Fionn is
still a name in Ireland, but in English is translated into Albany; and
in Scotland Fionnlaoch, white soldier, has become Finlay.
There are many other Keltic names connected with Finn in the sense of
white, such as Finghin, or the fair offspring, which became Finian or
Fineen; and as such was the name of two saints, one a friend of St.
Patrick, and that teacher of St. Columb, who, when Columb had written
out the Psalms from a book lent by him, claimed the copy on the plea
that it was the offspring of his manuscript. Nevertheless, St. Columb
took care that St. Finan should be duly revered in Scotland, where he
has various churches, and one royal namesake, for probably he was the
real original of the Finnan, whose reign is placed B.C. 134. Another St.
Finghin is patron of Ulster, and left his name to be a favourite in the
families of M'Carthy, O'Sullivan, and O'Driscoll, until Finghin M'Carthy
Anglicized himself as Florence, in which he has ever since been imitated
by his countrymen, though the change did not bring him much good
fortune, as his enemies represented that his alias showed sinister
intentions; and for other more definite misdeeds, he was thirty-six
years imprisoned in the Tower of London. It was a mistake in Lady Morgan
to make Florence M'Carthy a woman, for Florence and Flory in Ireland
were always men. We do find a Florence mentioned as contemporary with
St. Patrick; but this is doubtless meant as a translation of Finghin.
The ladies, however, have not been behindhand in spoiling their
derivative from Fionn. Fionn-ghuala, or white shoulder, was a
tough-looking name enough, though no one need complain of it as
Finnuala, as it actually is spoken, still less as Fenella. Early Keltic
maidens used it frequently, and it is found in all manner of shapes in
genealogies. In the clouds at the opening of Scottish history, we find
Fynbella, or Finella, recorded as the cruel Lady of Fettercairn, who, in
994, killed King Kenneth III.
Another Fynbella was Lady of the Mearns in 1174; Finvola is found in the
M'Leod pedigree twice in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The
Macdonnells called her Finwald in 1497. Finvola and Finola thickly stud
the Irish pedigrees; and it was perfectly correct in Scott to make
Fenella the name of the little wild dumb sprite, whom he placed in the
Isle of Man as a daughter of the house of Christian. In almost all its
original homes, however, Fenella has been discarded, having been ousted
by its supposed equivalent, Penelope (a weaver), and only in a few Irish
families is it still retained, and then in the form of Nuala. In
Scotland it has turned into the well-known Flora or Florie.
The other feminine forms of Finn have entirely passed away. They were
Finbil and Finscoth, white blossom and white flower, answering to the
Blanche-fleur of Romance, which it is possible was really meant as a
translation; Findelvh, fair countenance; Finnabhor, of the fair eyelids;
Finni, the fair; and Findath, fair colour.
SECTION IV.—_Cu, Cun, Gal._
We have treated the name of Fionn alone, because that is, comparatively,
plain sailing, while the second syllable of the name by which we call
him is beset with interminable perplexities.
If he was only Fingal, it would be easy enough to translate him by
‘white courage;’ but unluckily we know that this was a Lowland
contraction, used indeed in Barbour’s _Bruce_, in the fourteenth
century, but not the original form. He was Finn Mac Cumhail; or,
according to Hector Boece, in 1526, Finn, _filius Cœli_, Finn, the son
of Heaven; thus making him—as every mythic worthy from Hercules to
Arthur has been made—an astronomical parable.
In the first place, it may be observed that Cumhail is in pronunciation
nothing but Coul, or Coyl. That murderous letter _h_ has destroyed the
_m_, and itself into the bargain, and their only use is to testify to
what the etymology of the word has been.
Here we unite with the other branch of the language in a most curious
manner, for Col, Coel, or Coll, was a highly mythic personage in Kymric
legend, connected with the original population of Britain.
He is one of the three great swineherds of Britain, in the _Triads_, the
other two being Pwll and Tristram; also, he is one of those who
conferred benefits upon Britain, and appears in company with Hu Gadarn.
The title of the swineherd is accounted for in the Welsh tale of a sow
called Henwen, the old lady, who was placed under his charge, and came
swimming straight for Britain, with Coll holding by her bristles,
wherever she swam. There were predictions that Britain would suffer harm
from her progeny, and Arthur therefore collected his forces to oppose
her landing; but at Aber Tarrogi she came to the shore, and at
Wheatfield in Gwent she laid three grains of wheat and three bees,
whence corn and honey are the great pride of the district. At Dyved she
produced a barleycorn and a pig, to the subsequent benefit of Dyved beer
and bacon. She favoured Lleyn with rye, but on Snowdon she bestowed the
wolf and the eagle, and on Mona a kitten.
Without going back, like Mr. Davies, to make the sow either into the
ark, or a Phœnician ship, it is worth observing that there are traces in
Ireland of some pig myth. There is a famous poem called _The Hunting of
the Pig_, resulting in its being slain at Muckamore; and _muc_, a pig,
and _torc_, a boar, are constantly found in old names of places, as if
the swine cult had been of a higher kind than that at present received
by the species.
Not wholly substantial is the next British Coel-ap-Cyllin, who with Bran
the Blessed, and his own son Lleurig, makes up a triad of promoters of
Christianity in Britain.
We are scarcely sure of more than his existence; not quite that he left
his name to Colchester, and far less that he is the father of the
Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.
Col or Gall was the name of a companion of St. Columbanus, and, like
him, one of the great missionary saints of Ireland, who finished the
imperfect work of conversion of the Kelts, scattered in the borders of
France, Germany, and Switzerland. His name of St. Gall is still attached
to the great monastery near the Lake of Constance.
The prefix _cu_ is, in its primary meaning, a dog, and is thus declined:
_cu_ (nom.), _con_ (gen.), _coin_ (dat.); thus showing its kindred with
the Sanscrit _çvan_, Greek κυων (cyon), and Latin _canis_, the _chien_
of France, and _cane_ of Italy; _hund_ and _hound_ elsewhere. Only the
land of the magnificent wolf-hound would have made his designation
(elsewhere a term of scorn) into the title of the brave warrior, and
thence into that of a chieftain. And so again it is the Kelts of Britain
that transmuted the mungoose and snake of the Indian legend into the
faithful dog and wild wolf of Bedgelert, the grave of the hound. Caleb,
and an occasional Danish Hund, have alone elsewhere endured the name of
the most faithful of animals; but in Gaelic it is a most favourite
prefix. By the author of the _Annals of Ulster_, it is literally
translated _Canis_, making us wonder whether, in the Scala family, Cane,
so famous in Dante’s time, could have been a rendering of some ancient
Celtic Cu.
Conn, when standing alone, as in the case of Conn of the Hundred
Battles, means wisdom.
Several of the most distinguished Fenians have this prefix, and have
handed it on to a great number of successors. Conghal would seem to have
been the proper name of Finn’s father; and, in Macpherson’s poem, a
Congal reigns over Ulster, as many a Congal assuredly did both before
and after his time.
Connal, or Connel, a name sometimes said to mean friendship, is given to
one of the Ossianic heroes, who makes a great figure in Macpherson’s
epic, and is said to have named Tirconnel. The name continued in great
favour, and the popular tales of the Highlands describe a certain
ingenious Conall, whose adventures are a most curious mixture of those
of Ulysses and Sindbad the Sailor, and are related in the same way as
those of the Three Calenders and other worthies in the _Arabian Nights_.
History says that Congal Claen, king of Ulster, slew Suibne, king of
Ireland, but was then attacked and defeated by Domnall II., Suibne’s
successor; that he then fled to Donald-brec, or the Freckled, king of
the Scots, and brought him to Ireland to be defeated at Magrath, in 637.
An Irish saint, called Congal, founded the Great Abbey of Ben-chor, in
Ulster, answering to Ban-chor, in Wales, and thus formed the nursery of
the great missions of the Irish Church in the sixth century.
Conan of small renown, as Macpherson calls him, was an unfortunate
Fenian, who always served as the butt of the rest, and is called in
other legends Conan Maol, the bald. He is in character a good deal like
the Sir Kay of Arthur’s court. The M'Connans now have borrowed the
English names of Kenyon and Canning. His name comes to light in the
Cymric branch, in the person of the British Conan, or Kynan Meriadech,
who is said to have led a migration of Britons to Armorica, and to be
the patriarch of the Dukes of Brittany. Of him is told the pretty tale
of the spotless ermine, that took refuge under his shield, and was
spared by him, its skin thenceforth forming the cognizance of Brittany,
with the motto, _Malò mori quàm fœdari_.
He is also said to have been the intended husband of St. Ursula; and, at
any rate, suggested the name of many a Conan among the Breton princes,
until the father of the unfortunate Constance, a name very possibly
given as a supposed feminine to Conan, since Constantine has devoured
all manner of varieties of _cu_ and _con_, and thus occasions the
numerous occurrences of this imperial designation as labels to the grim
portraits in the hall at Holyrood, who, after all, look more like Roman
Constantines than Caledonian Congals, Conaires, or Conchobars.
Connchobhar is also translated as Cornelius and Charles. Here _conn_
means strength, and _cobhair_, aid, or if the spelling ought to be
Conchobhar, it would be wolf-dog aid, and it is a word as variously
rendered by those who wish to retain its native form as by those who try
to change it into an ordinary name. Macpherson calls it Conachar, and
thence we have the assumed name of the unfortunate young chieftain whom
Sir Walter Scott placed in the deadly fight between Clan Chattan and
Clan Kay, to exemplify the struggle between constitutional timidity and
fear of shame. Conchabhar, who reigned in Scotland in 847, and Cunechat
or Conquhare, who was Maormar of Angus in the tenth century, are both
forms of Connchobhar, which in the North-East of Ireland is vulgarly
called Crogher and Crohoore. The last is said to be the best
representation of the spoken word; but Connor is the usual version, and
much the most euphonious to English ears; but then it is said also to
represent Connaire, one endowed with strength, _aire_ being a word added
to form an adjective, and Conmor, also in use in the days of the
Fenians. Indeed, Ireland had many royal Connors, one dignified as the
Great; but Conchobar. Conmor, and Connaire, are all confused in them.