the hound of Connaught; Munster’s hound is Cú Mumhan; Cashel’s, Cú
Chaisil. The river Shannon has Cú Sionnan; the mountain has Cú-sleibhe;
and, strangest of all, there is Cugan-mathair, hound without a mother.
Cú-Mhidhe, hound of Meath, is simply pronounced Cooey; but in the O'Kane
family has been turned into Quentin, and it may be concluded that a
similar process in Scotland changed the hound of Meath into the Latin
fifth, and accounts for the various Quentins.
Meath Cuchullin is the name of the hero with which Macpherson’s epic
opens: “Cuchullin sat by Tara’s wall, by the tree of the rustling leaf.”
His name is explained in the note, to mean, the voice of Ullin or
Ulster; Gath Ullin, voice of Ulster; but Ullin does not mean Ulster at
all. It was not the hero’s original name; but when young he killed a
wolf-hound belonging to Culain, the smith of Ulster. He answered the
owner’s complaints by saying, “I will be your hound,” and thus obtained
the nickname of Cú Culain, Culain’s dog. Cuchullin was a great hero, and
a Gaelic proverb, “as strong as Cuchullin,” is still in use. To
Cuchullin belongs the Keltic version of the story of the single combat
between the unknown father and son, only recognized too late by the
tokens left with the mother. In Persia and Ireland the son is killed; in
Greece, the father; in Germany alone the conclusion is happy!
As to the MacCuinns, they have dignified themselves as MacQueen in
Scotland, while their cousins in Ireland from O'Cuinn have become Quin.
SECTION V.—_Diarmaid and Graine._
Of all the heroes of the Feen, Diarmaid, whose name means free man, was
one of the most distinguished, and though not brought in by Macpherson,
his legend bears the same sort of relation to the main cycle, as does
the story of Orlando to the Court of Charlemagne, or that of Lancelot to
the Round Table.
Grainne was the daughter of Cormac MacArt, king of the fifth part of
Ulster, who built at Tara for her the Grianan of one pillar, or royal
palace. She was a lady of extremely quick wit, and gained the heart of
Fionn by her answers to a series of questions, which tradition still
preserves.
Fionn met with the usual fate of uncles in romance, for his nephew,
Diarmaid, fell in love with her too, and was the more irresistible, as
he had a beauty spot, which made every woman who saw it fall in love
with him. The young pair fled away together, and there is an extremely
long poem on their adventures and mutual affection, but fate at length
overtook Diarmaid. A great hunting took place, at which all the Feen
were present; in the course of which they came on the track of a
venomous boar, whose back was sixteen feet long, and soon after they
found some shavings of wood made by Diarmaid in cutting out dishes with
his knife. Having thus discovered his retreat, Fionn summoned his rival,
and commanded him to join in the hunt, in hopes that he would thus meet
his death; but Diarmaid killed the animal without receiving damage.
Fionn then remembered that Diarmaid, like Achilles and Siegfried, had a
fatal spot in his foot, and desired him to measure the boar by pacing it
against the hair. One of the bristles went into the fatal spot, and
Diarmaid fell dying; he asked for some water, and Fionn was bringing him
some from the stream between his hands, when he thought on Grainne, and
let it run through. Diarmaid died, and his corpse was brought home to
his wife, whose lamentation is given as a separate poem. Diarmaid was
also called Doun, the brown, and the clan descended from him were the
O'Duine. The heiress of this line, Aoiffe or Eva, married Gillaspick
Campbell, of an Anglo-Norman family, and Campbell has ever since been
the Lowland surname of the great clan; but in the North they are still
the sons of Diarmid; and their crest, the boar’s head, is in memory of
the fatal hunting.
Diarmaid continued in use both in Scotland and Ireland; and in
historical times it was Diarmaid, king of Leinster, who acted the part
of Paris, and ruined his country by the abduction of Dervorgil of Meath;
and then, when forced by the superior king to give up the lady, revenged
himself by calling in Earl Strongbow and the English.
Diarmid, or, as it is commonly called, Dermot or Darby, is still common
among the Irish. Where the saying about Darby and Joan arose, I cannot
discover. Darby is the form of Diarmid in Limerick and Tipperary;
Jeremiah, strange to say, is used for it in Cork and Kerry. Napoleon, in
his enthusiasm for the Ossianic poems of Macpherson, named two of his
heroes therefrom, but Diarmaid Murat died in childhood.
Grainne’s name has been equally popular with that of her lover. Ancient
Irish ladies constantly use it; the most celebrated being Grainne
O'Maille, a notable sailor chieftainess of the south-western coast,
whence she once sallied forth to pay a friendly visit to Queen
Elizabeth; and when the two high-spirited women were together, the
semi-barbarian was more than a match for the civilized queen.
Graine was soon after translated into Grace; indeed, the piratess was
also called Grace O'Malley; and ever since, Grace has been a favourite
national name in Scotland and Ireland, wherever Graine has been used; it
has been accepted for its English meaning and pleasant sound, and is now
very frequent.
SECTION VI.—_Cormac._
Cormac is a name that makes a great figure in the Ossianic poems, and
perhaps the son of _Corb_, _i. e._, a chariot, that is, a charioteer.
Cormac, king of Ulster, was the young ward of Cuchullin; and another
Cormac, called Cairbar, or the strong, was the father of a lady called
Morna, or more properly, Muirne, who when one lover returned from
battle, announcing that he had slain his rival, demanded his sword
stained with the blood, and then took revenge by plunging it into his
breast, and finally killed herself with it. A still more misty Cormac
figures in ancient pedigrees, as having been choked by the bone of an
enchanted salmon; and Cormac Cas is a more remote ancestor of the
O'Briens than the great Brien Boromhe himself.
Another Cormac is named in Irish calendars, as an abbot of eminent
sanctity in the days of St. Columba. He is further thought to have
visited Iona, and at home enjoys the credit of having endowed the sept
of the Hy Muireadach with “prosperity of cattle, the gift of eloquence,
success in fosterage, the gift of good counsel, and the headship of
peace and protection.” His name has since been common in Ireland.
Cormac used to be barbarously spelt Cormick and Cormuck, and the
MacCarthy family have substituted Charles for it. There is a long
Icelandic poem on a hero named Kormak, who, though his parents and
brothers have Norse names, evidently had Milesian blood as well as name,
for he is described as having dark eyes and hair, with a fair skin. He
was an admirable warrior and poet, but was the victim of hopeless love
for a lady named Steingerda.
Cairbre, strong man, is likewise one of the Ossianic names, as well as a
soubriquet of Cormac. Cairbre again is reckoned as the first of the
Milesians to settle in Ulster; and another Cairbre, son of Niall of the
Nine Hostages, bequeathed his name to the district now called Carbury.
Cairbre appears as the Irish sovereign who was the greatest foe of the
Fenians, and commanded at the battle of Gabhra, in which their force was
broken; and the son of Oisean, the grandson of Fionn, the beloved Osgar,
was treacherously slain, by a thrust in the side, by Cairbre himself.
The tears shed by the great Fionn were for his grandson Osgar, and for
his faithful dog Bran; and a great quantity of poetry has clustered
round the death of this young hero. Oscar Bernadotte, another of
Napoleon’s Ossianic godsons, recently sat upon the Swedish throne,
though amongst us, this, like others of the Fenian names, has descended
to dogs. It is explained as the bounding warrior, and the MacOscars, in
Ireland, have been turned into Cosgrove and Costello.
The like fate has befallen the object of Osgar’s love, Malvina, as
Macpherson calls her. The name is a mere invention of his own, formed
perhaps from Maol, a handmaid. It has been adopted by French women to
such an extent, that Malvine is one of the regular Parisienne’s names,
and it has further travelled to Germany. Thus Osgar and Malvina, though
with few namesakes in their own country, are the only Fenians who have
been commemorated in continental nomenclature.
Múirne means affection, and when Anglicized as Morna, is considered as a
Highland name.
SECTION VII.—_Cath._
Universal among the Kelts is Cath or Cad, a battle or defence, such a
prefix that is sure to flourish in every war-like nation.
Cathuil, a derivative of Cath, is a great chieftain attended by three
hundred followers; and Cathal, as the name became, continued in use
among the O'Connors, who translate it as Charles. The favourite hero
there was Cathal Crobhdearg, red-handed, who fought hard against the
English invaders; and, therefore, was described by them as a
blood-thirsty ruffian, and by native historians as pious and amiable,
probably being both characters in turn. His name was probably the parent
of the Scottish surname, Cadell; but a Welsh saint, named Cadell, a
battle-defence or shield, lived in the twelfth century. He had been a
fierce warrior, and a great enemy to the English; but during his
recovery from some severe wounds, he repented, went to the Holy Land as
a penitent, and finally became a monk, and the patron of many a Cadell
besides.
Cathbarr means tumult of battle. Cathbarr was so renowned a chief, that
to strike his shield with a spear was the summons to his clan to arm.
The Welsh made great use of the same prefix. Cadwallon, apparently from
_cadw_, to defend, has always been common among them. Cadwallon was the
brother of the Madoc of Southey, and a much earlier Cadwallon was the
father of Cadwaladyr, or battle-arranger, regarded by the two parties
much as Cathal was; for by the Saxons, Ceadwalla, as they call him, the
slayer of the good Edwin and Oswald, is regarded with unmixed horror,
while his own Cymric countrymen revere him as a glorious patriotic
prince, second only to Arthur, and worthy of saintly honours; indeed he
was canonized by Pope Sergius in 688, and is surnamed the Blessed.
Cadwaldr in Breton, and Cadwalladyr in Welsh, continue to the present
day. Cadwallader is also used in the Highlands, though, perhaps, this
may be a blunder for some Gaelic Cath.
Saints of this name were numerous. Among them was Cedd, as his adopted
people called him, the Good Bishop, whose Keltic ecclesiastical habits
were so distasteful to the fiery Wilfred of York, and who finally is
revered at Lichfield as “good St. Chad,” a form in which his appellation
lingered among the midland peasantry. The grandfather of Cadwalladyr was
Cadvan, whose Latin epitaph calls him “Catamarus, _rex sapientissimus_,”
and whose name means battlehorn. Another Caduan, or Cadvan, was a hermit
who migrated from Brittany to live on the coast of Caernarvonshire, on
the isle called Bardsey by the English, and Ynis Eolli, Isle of the
Current, by the Welsh. It was reputed a place of so much sanctity, that
it was called the Rome of Britain; and so many saints were buried there,
that it was a saying of the bards—
“Twenty thousand saints of yore,
Came to lie on Bardsey’s shore.”
Cattwg, or Cadoc, was of princely blood, founded a monastery, and
trained the veritable bard, Taliessin.
The Greek Adelphios was translated by the Welsh into Cadffrawd. Sir
Cados is one of gentle Enid’s enemies, in the French romance of her
constancy; but Cado, her son, in Welsh pedigree, swells the roll of
saints. Cadfar, or stout in battle, is almost certainly one of the
Armorican contributions to the Paladins of Charlemagne, in the shape of
Sir Gadifer, the Don Gayferos of Spanish ballad and of _Don Quixote_.
SECTION VIII.—_Fiachra_.
Fiachra, or Fiaghra, is, as the Fiach is in Irish, a raven. Fiachere
MacFhinn is a son of Fingal, who does his part among the traditions of
the Fenians; and another Fiachra was the father of the last pagan king
of Ireland, who, as Erse lore relates, reigned over Erin, Albin, and
Britain, and as far as the mountains of the Alps. He succeeded his uncle
Niall of the Nine Hostages, in 405, and went to the Alps to revenge his
death. Being still a pagan, he demolished a tower of sods and stones
sixty feet high, in which lived a saint, eleven feet from the light, and
was accordingly cursed by the saint, and killed by a flash of lightning;
but his servants put a lighted sponge in his mouth to imitate his
breath, by way of concealing his death for some time.
Fiachra was the name of a hermit who left home to seek for solitude in
France, and lived at Brenil, about two leagues from Meaux. He
particularly applied himself to the cultivation of his little garden,
and has ever since been considered as the patron of gardeners; and his
austerity was such, that no woman was allowed to come within his
precincts. He died about 670, and his relics began to obtain a
miraculous reputation, which increased so much, that, though little
known in his own country, France is full of churches dedicated to him.
Anne of Austria was particularly devoted to him; she thought the
recovery of her husband, and the birth of the great Louis XIV. himself,
were due to his intercessions; and she made a pilgrimage to his shrine,
remembering so well his objections to womankind, that she never
attempted to cross his threshold, but knelt before the door.
It does not appear, however, that the name of Fiacre was adopted by any
one in deference to this devotion, except, perhaps, the Fiak of
Brittany. All it did was to pass to the first hackney-coaches of Paris,
which, from being used as a commodious mode of going on pilgrimage to
the shrine of St. Fiacre, received the appellation they have had ever
since. It is a whimsical concatenation that has named the _fiacres_ of
Paris after the misty raven of the race of Fingal.
Rín means a seal or sea-calf in Gaelic. Ronan is the derivative. He is a
hero whose death is lamented in the Ossianic poetry, and his name was
afterwards borne by a large number of Irish and Scottish saints, from
whom came Ronan in Scotland, Ronayne in Ireland, once with the feminine
Ronat.[98]
-----
Footnote 98:
O'Donovan; Macpherson; Maitland, _History of Scotland_; Cosmo Innes;
_Saturday Review_; Butler.
SECTION IX.—_Names of Complexion._
Names of complexion were very frequent among the various branches of
Kelts, often as mere affixed soubriquets, but growing from thence into
absolute individual names. _Dhu_ and _ciar_, the black; _dorchaid_, the
dark; _dearg_ and _ruadh_, red; _don_, brown; _boid_, yellow; _finn_,
white; _odhar_, pale; _flann_ and _corcair_, ruddy; _lachtna_ and
_uaithne_, green; _glas_, which is blue in Wales, green in Ireland, and
grey in the Highlands; _gorm_, blue; _liath_, grey; _riabhach_, greyish,
have all furnished their share of names and epithets.
Dougall and Dugald have been from time immemorial Highland names, and,
together with Donald, serve as the national nickname of the Gael among
the Lowlanders. Dowal is used in Ireland. Donald is the Anglicism of
Donghal, brown stranger, an early Scottish and Irish name, and likewise
of Domhnall, which is probably really the same, though the Irish
glossographers translated it a proud chieftain, and now have turned it
into Donat and Daniel, or Dan.
Donald is reckoned as the first Christian king of Scotland.
To Beath, life, may be referred Betha, an old hereditary English name,
and the Latinism of Bega or Begga, for a saint, called otherwise Hien or
Hayne. She was of Irish birth; but about 620, was imported by some of
the Keltic missionaries of the North of England, and St. Aidan
consecrated her at Whitby as the first nun in Northumbria. Leaving St.
Hilda to govern there in her stead, she founded the abbey, known by her
English name of St. Bees, and at present serving as a university. A
French St. Begga, whose mother was Northumbrian, was wife to a man whose
strange destiny was to be, first, Maire du Palais, then, Bishop of Metz,
and lastly to be killed in the chace. After his death, she founded a
monastery, which is considered by some to have been the germ of the
admirable institution of _béguines_, who did the work of sisters of
charity in the Netherlands long before the French order was established
by St. Vincent de Paul. Some, however, deduce them from a priest at
Liege, called Lambert le _bégue_, or the stammerer. Begga was probably
imported by the Danes to Scandinavia, where it is still in use, though
there it may be a contraction for either Bergljot or Brigitta. The
Venerable Bede himself, the father of English history, called Beda in
Latin, is referred to the Welsh Bedaws, another form of the word _life_;
but it has been more usual to explain his name by reference to the
Teuton verbs, meaning to bid or to pray. However, that several Keltic
forms did prevail is certain, especially among the churchmen of the
northern counties.
Macduff no doubt was so called from Dubhoda, Maormar of Fife. Another
Duff had exchanged the Gaelic Maormar for the English Earl, in 1115, and
Dubican was Maormar of Angus, in 939.
Among ladies the Irish had Dubhdeasa, dark beauty, Dubhchoblaith
(pronounced Duvcovla), or black victory, and Dubhessa, or black nurse.
Duvessa O'Farrell died in 1301; and this same appellation Spenser must
afterwards have heard in Ireland, when, struck, no doubt, by the _du_ at
the commencement sounding like _two_, as did the other Irish name Una
resemble _one_, he called his emblem of falsehood, or perhaps of the
Church of Rome, the false Duessa, while he gave the title of Una to his
lovely personation of the one truth, the one true undivided Church, the
guide of the Red Cross Knight. Irish antiquaries assure us that Una
means dearth or famine; but it hardly suits this etymology. Una is queen
of the fairies in the county of Ormond, in which character she appears
in one version of the story of the soldier billeted on a miser. The man
was amazed at his hospitable reception and entertainment, as he thought,
by the avaricious squire in question, until morning disclosed that the
fairy queen Una had raised the mansion and provided the supper, but from
the prime cow in the miser’s herd.
Una has continued in use among the Irish peasantry, though much
corrupted, being often pronounced Oonagh, and Anglicized as Winny, the
contraction of Winifred, the English version of the Welsh Gwenfrewi.
The female Christian name of Douglas, which belonged to one of the
unfortunate wives of Queen Elizabeth’s Earl of Leicester, was either a
free version of one of those varieties of ‘dark ladyes,’ or else was one
of the first specimens of a surname converted into a Christian name,
perhaps in compliment to Lady Margaret Douglas, the niece of Henry VIII.
and mother of Lord Darnley. Douglas was, without doubt, a territorial
designation from the dark vale and stream of Douglas; but the heralds
and genealogists of the gallant lineage of the bleeding heart made out
an ancestor, ‘Sholto Dhu Glas’ (see the dark grey man), and then Sholto
was adopted as a name in the Douglas family, and crept from thence to
others. I have found no instance of it before the seventeenth century in
looking through the peerage of Scotland, and the probable derivation of
the word would be _sioltaich_, a sower.
Duncan was either Donnachu, brown chief, or Donngal, brown stranger,
both which names were rife among the Scots, and Duncan has so continued
ever since. Duncan and Donald both occur as Keltic slaves in Iceland, in
the Saga of Burnt Njal; and, perhaps, not only the Irish, but even the
saintly Scottish David, may have been at first an Anglicized Domnhall.
Don stands alone as a name in Hanmer’s list of Finn’s warriors; Donnan
was an Irish name, and Donchada became Donoghoe, sometimes even now
baptismal, but best known as the O'Donoghoe, the great visionary
horseman of Killarney.
The word is really the same as our _dun_, though that has now come to
express a misty dark grey, while _don_ evidently means brown-haired, as
in the feminine Duinsech. Don, as it stands at the end of the name of
‘The O'Connor,’ simply shows that he is the head of the brown branch of
that sept, which anciently split into brown and red—O'Connor Don and
O'Connor Roe, like the black and red Douglases of Scotland.
Roe is the Anglicism for _ruadh_, the colour that goes by the same title
in all our cognate tongues, from the Greek ροδος to the Gadhaelic
_ruadh_, and Cymric _rud_, _rhud_. It plays the chief part in
nomenclature in Ireland and Scotland, where the true undiluted Gaels are
divided between the black and the red.
The Irish Ruadri, Ruadhan, Ruadhaic, the Scottish Ruaridh, and Welsh
Rhydderch, have all alike disguised themselves as Roderick, which is in
each case supposed to be the full name of those who in ordinary parlance
call themselves Rory or Roy.
In Welsh myths we meet with Rhwddlwan Gawr, the red bony giant, and in
Merddhyn’s time we come upon Rhydderch Hoel, or the liberal, the
champion of the Christian faith, who was the friend of St. Columba,
restored St. Kentigern to Glasgow, and was promised by the former that
he should never fall into the hands of his enemies, but should die with
his head on his pillow—a promise that a Saxon long after would have
scorned. He was a discourager of Druidism, and is reviled by Merlin. His
name may come from _rhydez_, the exalted.
Several less shadowy kings reigned in Wales, the most distinguished of
whom united all the three principalities till the year 877, and was
called Rydderch Mawr, or, as it is barbarously called in our histories,
Roderick Maur; much resembling what has been done with Roderick Dhu.
Dearbhforgail, or Derforgal, is translated by the Four Masters, ‘purely
fair daughter;’ but later critics make it ‘the true oath,’ from
_dearbh_, an oath, and _fior-glan_, true.
Dearbhforghal was a very tough name for the genealogists, and they had a
good deal of it, for it was very fashionable in the twelfth century both
in Scotland and Ireland, and was turned into Dervorgilla and Dornadilla
by the much tormented chroniclers.
Lachtnan, from the Erse _lachtna_, green, is less easily accountable,
unless it meant fresh and flourishing. It is now turned, in Ireland,
into Loughnan, and more often into Lucius. The Scottish name so like in
sound Lachlan or Loughlan, is however more probably from _laochail_,
warlike.
_Glas_, grey, blue, or green, changes its meaning wherever it goes; but
Glasan, in Irish, is its only Christian name, though it was a great
epithet in all its countries, and has resulted in many a surname of
Glass, besides the Highland Maglashan.
Cearan, or Ceirin, from _ciar_, black, was the name of one of the twelve
Irish bishops whom St. Patrick consecrated. He betook himself to
solitude in a place surrounded with bogs in Ireland, called from him
Saiger, or Sier Kieran; but a tribe of disciples followed him, and a
monastery arose; so, in search of loneliness, he fled to Cornwall, where
he lived in a cell, and taught the inhabitants so much, that they
ascribed to him even their knowledge of mining; and the 5th of March,
his day, was considered as the tinners' holiday, in honour of their
patron saint. His name, however, following the rule of the Cymric _p_
for a Gaelic _k_, has turned into Pirin, or Perran, and is, in this
form, not yet lost among the Cornish miners. His cell had a church built
over it, called St. Pierans in Sabulo, or in the sand, and now
Peranzabuloe. And in the sand it is, for it was absolutely choked by
drifting sands, and abandoned in favour of a new one. In 1835 it was
disinterred, and found to be a very curious specimen of ancient
architecture. Another Ceiran was the patron of the Scots who first came
from Ireland; and left his name to many a Kilkeran on the west coast. He
is sometimes called St. Queran.
Cear is the soubriquet of Caoinnach I. of Scotland, who was killed in
621, after a reign of three months. The meaning of the epithet is
questioned in his case, some calling it _ciar_, black; others, _cearr_,
left-handed. The king himself rejoices in many varieties of
name,—Caoinnach, in Irish, Coinadh; then, again, Conchad, Connadh,
Kinat, and Cinead; till, finally, it has settled into the national
Scottish Christian name of Kenneth in the Lowlands, Caioneach, in the
Gaelic, denoting a fair and comely, or mild-tempered or peaceable man.
Caoin and Caomh are closely related, and both mean kind or fair.
Caoimghin was that Irish saint who is commonly known as Kevin, and owns
one of the seven churches of Glendalough, as well as the cave, whence a
very modern legend, versified by Moore, shows him rejecting Kathleen’s
visit by hurling her into the lake.[99]
-----
Footnote 99:
O'Donovan; Macpherson; Maitland, _History of Scotland_; Cosmo Innes;
_Scottish Surnames_; _Saturday Review_; Butler; _Highland Society’s
Dictionary_; Pugh; Crofton Croker; _Irish Legends_; Chalmers; Hayes,
_Irish Ballads_.
SECTION X.—_Feidlim, &c._
Feidlim was a very early Irish name, meaning the ever good, and Feidhlim
Reachtmar, or the lawgiver, gained himself high reputation early in the
second century, from which time Feidlim flourished in Ireland as Felimy
or Felim, until a fashion arose of spelling it like a Greek word,
Phelim, and then one Sir Phelim O'Neill, who was deeply implicated in
the great Popish massacre of 1641, changed his name to Felix. He was
seized by the English army and condemned, but was offered his life by
Cromwell if he would inculpate King Charles, and on his gallant refusal,
was executed. His new name caused the Irish poet M’Gee to exclaim—
“Why when that hero age you deify,
Why do you pass _infelix Felix_ by?”
A later Phelim O'Neill, in the last century, who made the same change,
and called himself Felix Neele, was indignantly addressed in a Latin
epigram:—-
“Poor paltry skulker from thy noble race,
_Infelix Felix_, blush for thy disgrace.”
Felim once had a feminine Fedlimi, now either forgotten or transmuted
into Felicia.
Tadhg is translated a poet, and was always a favourite in Ireland, where
it has degenerated into Teague, Teige, or Thady, and then has been
translated into Timothy, Thaddeus, Theodore, Theodosius, according to
the fancy of the owner, though Tim is perhaps the most usual.
Mathew is in like manner the Anglicism of Mathghamhain, pronounced
Mahoone, or Mahon, and meaning a bear.
Here again we meet with that universal Amal, as in the Roman Æmilii and
Teutonic Amaler, and probably like them originally meaning work, though
the direct meaning of _Amuil_ in Gaelic is now, a hindrance, possibly as
increasing labour. Amalgaid was a good deal in use in the elder times.
The seven sons of Amalgith are said by Nennius to have been baptized by
St. Patrick, and the race formed a sept called the Ui Amalghaid, who
left their designation to the barony of Tir Awlay, in Ireland; while
their Scottish cousins became the memorable clan Macaulay, the sons of
labour. Awlay is the genuine Anglicism, not entirely disused in
Scotland; but in Ireland, intercourse with the Danish conquerors led to
the substitution of Amlaidh, as the Erse spelt the Danish Anlaff,
ancestor’s relic, the same name as Olaf, and now this is likewise called
Auley.[100]
-----
Footnote 100:
O'Donovan; Macpherson; Nennius; Munch; _Highland Society’s
Dictionary_.
SECTION XI.—_Names of Majesty._
Foremost among these names of greatness must stand _tighearn_, a king, a
word of most ancient lineage, recurring in the Greek _tyrannos_.
Tighearnach was an Irish saint, who flourished at the end of the fifth
century, and whose dish is still preserved at Rappa Castle, in Tirawley,
by the name of Mior Tigearnan, or the dish of St. Tiernan. Tigearnach
became common among Irish princes, and even appears in English history,
when Tigearnach O'Rourke was robbed of his wife. It was long in dying
out among the Erse population, and remains as a surname in the form of
Tiernay.
Tigern was also used by the Cymry. Vortigern, as has already been shown,
was Gwrthigern, the excelling king, and his far braver and better son
was Kentigern, head chief; whence he is sometimes called Categern, in
modern Welsh, Cyndeyrn.
Kentigern in the North, Cyndeyrn in Wales, was the name of an early
Pictish saint, who recalled his countrymen from Pelagianism, and is
regarded as the apostle and patron of Glasgow. Persecution obliged him
to take refuge in Wales, where he founded the church of Llandwy, being
guided, as saith the legend, to the spot by a milk-white boar, which ran
before him, and on arriving at the spot began to stamp and root up the
ground with his tusks. Returning to Glasgow, the saint thence sent
missionaries to Iceland, who no doubt were the teachers of the few
inhabitants whose descendants were long after found there by the Norse
settlers, and called by them _Papa_, from the title of their priests, a
title still lingering in many a bay and islet of the Hebrides, attesting
that there the Culdee clergy had been owned as the fathers of their
flocks. After a custom that does not seem to have been uncommon among
the Keltic saints, Kentigern used every night to sing through the whole
Book of Psalms, standing up to his neck in water. He obtained for
himself the epithet, Mwyngu, or Munghu, the amiable, by which he is best
known in his own city, and which has named both it and a large number of
the inhabitants and of his other countrymen, one of whom, namely, Mungo
Park, has made it memorable.
Wales had a feminine St. Kentigern, perhaps named after him; perhaps
derived from the Irish Caintigern, or fair lady.
Cean, head, the first syllable of the saint’s name, is found in all the
Keltic tongues, forming many geographical terms, generally in the form
of _can_ or _ken_.
Either this or _cian_, vast, was the Irish name Cian or Kean, hereditary
in the O'Hara family, but often supposed to be short for Cornelius. So
common was it once that fifty Cians were killed in the battle of Magh
Rath.
Tuathal, lordly, turned into Toole and O'Toole, are his descendants, and
the feminine, Tuathflaith, is entirely lost. The ladies had several of
these majestic names; Uallach, the proud; So-Domina, good lady, which
must have had a Latin origin; Dunflaith, lady of the fort; besides Mor,
which the Scots are pleased to translate by Sarah, and the Irish by Mary
and Martha, though it really means a large woman. Morrigu had been the
goddess of battle among the Tuath de Danan.
Martha, Maud, and Mabel, are employed to distinguish Meadhbh, Meave, or
Mab, one of the very oldest and most famous of Irish names. It would be
most satisfactory to take it from _meadhail_, joy; but this is far from
certain, and it may come from an old comparative of _mor_, great. But
Mirth is analogous with the meaning of Ainè, the other fairy queen; and
_mear_, or merry, has furnished another Irish name, namely, the
masculine Meaghar or Meara. Meadhbh was the daughter of Eochaid
Freidhleach, king of Erin, as it is said, A.M. 3922, and was so
brilliant a heroine of Irish romance, that Congal Claen bids the men of
Connaught, her husband’s kingdom, to “Remember Meave in the battle.”
Afterwards, like other favourite Irish heroines, she became queen of the
fairies; and some of the Irish settlers must have carried tidings of her
to England, when Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson made Queen Mab our
own peculiar possession, if knowing how to make the best use of her
establishes a claim. Meave, or Mab, has not entirely lost ground among
the Irish peasantry, though generally it has an equivalent.
Toirdelvach, tall as a tower, or, more properly, tower-like, must have
been taken from those riddles of Ireland, the mysterious towers,
scattered throughout the island, and generally supposed to have been
erected in the earliest period of Christian art, if art it may be
called.
Toirdelvach was king of Connaught at the time that Dermot M'Morough
carried off Devorgoil, and as supreme king of Ireland he punished the
offender; nor was it till after his death that the invitation to Earl
Strongbow was given. In English history, he is usually called Turlough,
the later form of the name, which is still in some use, though more
often turned into Terence, which has been oddly borrowed from the Latin
dramatist to translate the tall Irishman.
_Sealbh_, cattle or possessions (for in Gaelic they are the same; just
like _pecus_ and _pecunia_, _vieh_ and _fee_, cattel and chattels), is
the origin of Sealbhach, pronounced Selvach, owned by two kings of the
Scots, and of the feminine Sealbhflaith, lady of possessions, now become
Sally.[101]
-----
Footnote 101:
Diefenbach; O'Donovan; Davies; Jones, _Welsh Sketches_; Rees, _Welsh
Saints_.
SECTION XII.—_Devotional Names._
The early Gadhaelic Christians were too reverent to call themselves by
the same name as the objects of their devotion, whether Divine or human.
They were the servants, or at most the friends, of those to whom they
thus looked up. They used in this manner the prefixes, _Ceile_, the
companion or vassal; _Cear_, the friend; _Cailleach_, the handmaid; and
far more frequently _Giolla_ and _Maol_.
Giolla is the very same word as the Scottish vernacular _gillie_, a
servant; and in Ireland, the _giolla eachaid_, or horse servant,
resulted in the term gallowglass, which is so constantly used in English
narratives of Irish wars.
The primary meaning of Maol, or Mael, is bald; thus it came to mean one
who has received the tonsure, or a student of theology, and was given in
the sense of a disciple.
Cealleach originally meant a devotee, one living in a cell, and was once
perhaps a Druidess, but she afterwards was a female disciple, or nun,
and finally in Scotland has become only an old woman.
It will be endless work to go through all the list of servants and
disciples, and yet some of these present some of the most whimsical
facts in the history of names.
Gilla is sometimes used alone, and not only in the two Gaelic languages,
for we have it Latinized as Gildas, the doleful Welsh historian who
rates all the contemporary princes so soundly. Culdee, the term for the
first missionaries of Scotland, is also explained as Giolla De. This was
in use, with Cealleach De, the handmaid of God, but are both now
extinct; but not so either the servant or disciple of JESUS. Giolla Iosa
was used in both countries, but sank in Scotland into the homely surname
of Gillies, whilst in Ireland it was wildly transformed, in the person
of the primate of Armagh, at the time of the conquest, into the Greek
Gelasius, laughter; a curious specimen of the consequences of supposing
that Greek must be better than their natural tongue. Maol Ioso grew into
the Scottish Christian name of Malise, by which we know the Earl of
Strathern at the battle of the Standard, and again, the bearer of the
Fiery Cross in the _Lady of the Lake_. Nor has it ever become disused in
the Highlands. Giolla Christ was a Christian name in many Scottish
families of the old Keltic blood. In 1174, one Gilchrist was Earl of
Angus, and another, Earl of Mar; it has not, even to the present day,
fallen into disuse at baptism, and is a not uncommon surname. This may
perhaps have been the origin of some of the Christians, and others may
once have been Cealleach Christ.
The Archangel St. Michael was the subject of much devotion: Cara Michael
has now become Carmichael; but Gilliemichael was more common, and turned
into Gilmichal. The influence of the great Keltic mission at Lindisfarn,
on the North of England, is visible as late as the Norman Conquest; for
Domesday Book shows four northern proprietors, called respectively,
Ghilemicel, Ghilander, Ghillepetair, and Ghilebrid.
Votaries of the Twelve Apostles are not, however, very common. Ireland
shows Ceile Petair, and also, Mail Eoin; but what is remarkable, it has
no servant, male or female, to the Blessed Virgin. In Scotland only was
there Gilmory and Gilmour; both masculine, and now surnames. Maolmhuire
was the daughter of King Kenneth M'Alpin of Scotland, and marrying into
Ireland, was the mother of many kings.
Some persons were servants of all the saints, collectively; as
Giolla-na-naomh, very frequent in Irish genealogies. In the Highlands it
becomes Gille-ne-ohm, and thence has occasioned the modern surnames
Niven and Macniven. They are, probably, all connected with the Welsh
_nen_, sky.
This word, in Cymric, leads us to the name of Ninius, prince of
Cumberland, who there established Christianity, and of Nennius the
British historian; though these are too much disguised by the Latin to
be easily recognized. St. Ninidh, the pious, was one of the Twelve
Apostles of Ireland, and left a hand bell, which is still preserved in
the county of Fermanagh. Another bell, kept as a tenure of land, is
still extant in Galloway, and is said to have belonged to St. Ninian,
who is called by the Irish, Ringan, a prince of Cumbrian birth, who
became a monk, in 412 built the first stone church between the Forth and
Clyde, earned the title of Apostle of the Picts, and died in 432;
leaving Ninian and Ringan both to be Christian names in Scotland.
The great object of Keltic veneration was, however, St. Patrick. Nobody
ventured to be Patrick alone, but many were Giolla Phadraig, or Mael
Phadraig, and the descendants were Mag Giolla Phadraig, whence arises
the surname Fitzpatrick, translating the Mac, and omitting the Gillie.
Others, again, were Killpatrick; but it is not easy to tell whether this
Kil is the contraction of Gillie, or territorial, from the Cell or
Church of St. Patrick. The first syllable of Cospatric, or Gospatrick,
the Christian name of the Earls of Northumberland in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, is less easily explained; but I believe (on Mr.
Lower’s authority) it is the Gossoon, the boy of St. Patrick.
St. Patrick’s pupil, Bridget, had her votaries in large numbers, Giolla
Brighde, Gilbrid, Maelbridh, all now lost but for the occasional
surnames of Macbride and Kilbride, which last is sometimes the Church of
Bride. Possibly, too, the Scottish Gilbert may have been taken up as an
equivalent to Gilbrid.
The great St. Columba, who established the centre of his civilizing and
Christianizing efforts at Iona, had many a grateful disciple, as
Gillecolumb, or Maelcolum. The latter form rose to the throne of
Scotland in 936, when the father, who had thus dedicated his son to the
missionary saint, retired into a convent. The second Malcolm was the
persecutor of Lady Macbeth’s family, the third was Duncan’s grandson, he
of the Great Head, who, by the help of his sweet wife, St. Margaret, was
the first to lift Scotland out of her barbarism, and begin that
assimilation with the English which was in full progress at the time of
the death of his great grandson, Malcolm the Maiden, and perhaps was the
reason why no more kings were called by this Keltic name, so puzzling to
Latinizers, that in utter oblivion of St. Columb, they call it
Milcolumbus. However, the people of Scotland have kept it up, and in
1385, Sir Malcolm Drummond received 400 francs from France, and is
designated in the conveyance as Matorme Dromod! Callum is considered in
the Highlands as the form of Malcolm, and Cailein of Colin. Probably
Kilian, one of the Keltic missionary saints, popular in Germany, is
another pronunciation of the word.
Secundinus was another pupil of St. Patrick, whom the Irish first made
into Seachnall, and then termed their children Mael-seachlain, as his
pupils. The great Irish king, Malachy with the collar of gold, was thus
rendered to suit the weak Saxon capacity.
Cailleach-Coeimlighin and Gilla Coeimghin are the votaries of St. Kevin,
a very unpromising object of hero-worship, if we were to believe the
legend with which Moore and other moderns have quite gratuitously
favoured Glendalough. Cœimghin itself means fair offspring.
Giolla Cheallaigh was common in honour of Ceallach, a very local saint,
of royal birth, who was educated by St. Kieran. On his father’s death,
he was about to ascend the throne, when his tutor interfered, probably
considering this an infraction of his vows, and on his persisting, laid
him under a curse, after the usual fashion of Irish saints. He lost his
kingdom, and became a bishop, but resigned his see for fear of his
enemies, and retired to a hermitage on Lough Con, where, however, he was
murdered by four ecclesiastical students, whose names all began with
Maol. His corpse was hidden in a tree, where for once it did not show
the incorruptibility supposed to be the property of sanctity. The
murderers were all put to death on an eminence, called from them
Ardna-maol, or hill of the shavelings, and his admirers have resulted in
the surname O'Killy-kelly, or, for short, Kelly.
Scotland had several instances of bishop’s servant, Gillaspick in
Scotland, or in Northern Ireland, Giolla Easbuig, the Keltic form of
_episcopus_. Gillaspich Campbell, already Scotticized enough to have
been christened by this Gaelic term, married Aioffe O'Duinne, the
daughter of the line of Diarmid; and thenceforth Gillaspick, or
Gillespie, was the hereditary Christian name in the family, till, in the
twelfth century, his fourth descendant called himself Archibald, and
thenceforth the heads of the house of Campbell have been Archibald to
the Lowlands, to their own clan, Gillespik. It is a curious fact that
Gillespie Grumach and his son, the two Covenanting Argyles, should thus
have proclaimed themselves ‘Bishop’s gillies.’ Gillespie has become a
frequent surname in Scotland.
Maelgwn, or Maelgwas, was his successor in Powys and Gwynned, and is
desperately abused by the indignant Gildas for all manner of crimes;
while even Taliessin, who praises his beauty, rebukes his
licentiousness. Three centuries later, a bard alleges that he hid
himself in a wood, waylaid and carried off the wife of King Arthur. In
the twelfth century, Caradoc, abbot of Llancarven, adds that Arthur
besieged him in his castle, and had challenged him to single combat,
when the sage Gildas and the abbot of Glastonbury interposed, and
obtained the lady’s restoration. Walter of Oxford adds that this Maelgwn
reigned after King Arthur, and finally died of terror in a convent,
having seen the Yellow Spectre, namely the plague, through the chinks of
the church door. Dr. Owen Pugh further tells us, that Jack-in-the-Green,
on May-day, was once a pageant representing Melva, or Melvas, king of
the country now called Somersetshire, disguised in green boughs, as he
lay in ambush to steal King Arthur’s wife as she went out hunting.
Maél-was, a servant boy, was translated into old Romance French as the
former, by the word Ancel, or Ancelot, otherwise L'Ancelot; Villemarqué
quotes a mention of the ‘_fable Ancelot et Tristan_,’ from the romance
of Ogier, to show that in earlier days Mael, or Ancelot, was mentioned
without the article, which has since become incorporated with it, so
that Lancelot has grown to be the accepted name, and so universally
supposed to mean a lance, that the Welsh themselves, re-importing his
history, called him Palladr, a shivered lance. Ancelot and Ancelin were
certainly early chivalrous names, the latter perhaps confused with the
Ansir or Æsir of the Teutons. Ancilée and Anselote are feminine names in
the register of Cambrai, of the dates of 1169 and 1304; and as there
most of the feminines are changed from those of men, it is evident that
Ancil and Anselot must once have existed there, either named from the
hero of romance, or translated from some Walloon Mael; and thence no
doubt the Asselin, Ascelin of our old Norman barons, and the Atscelina
Fossard, mentioned in a curious old tract on female names, as having
lived in the North of England. It is curious that even romance does not
profess that Launcelot was the true name of the knight, thus formed from
the Cambrian chieftain, though Galahad is there said to have been his
proper name, afterwards given to his worthier son. Launcelot was
bestowed on him by Vivian, the Lady of the Lake, who stole him in
infancy from his father, King Ban, and brought him up under her crystal
waves, till he was eighteen, when, as Sir Lancelot du Lac, he appeared
at King Arthur’s court, and became the principal figure there, foremost
in every feat of chivalry, the flower of knighthood; but in the noble
severity of the English romance, he was withheld from counsels of
perfection, by his guilty love for Gwenever, and lying spell-bound in a
dull trance when the holy vision of the Sanc-greal past by. Finally, he
broke with King Arthur, and opened the way to Mordred’s fatal rebellion
by his defection, too late repenting, and after Arthur’s fall becoming a
hermit and a penitent.
His story was told with deep warning in England, but in Italy it was
‘Lancilotto’ that Francesca di Rimini looked back to as the tale that
had been the spark to awaken fatal passion.
He has ever since been regarded as the type of penitence for misdirected
love and chivalrous prowess, and in consequence Lancelot, and its
contraction Lance, have never been entirely out of use in England,
though not universal.
CHAPTER IV.
NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
SECTION I.—_The Round Table._
It is a very remarkable fact, that the grand cycle of our national
romance and poetry, has been made to centre round the hero of a people
whom we have subdued, and were holding in our power with difficulty, at
the very time that minstrels were singing the adventures of the leader
who had for the longest time kept our forces in check.
Many a patriot has fought as boldly as Arthur, many a nation has held
out as bravely as the remains of the Britons; but as the “battle is not
to the strong,” so renown is not to the most able; and it was to a very
peculiar concatenation of circumstances that the Britons owed it that
their struggles in Somerset, Cornwall, and Strathclyde should have been
magnified into victories over Rome and half Europe, and themselves
metamorphosed from wild Cymry, with a little Roman polish and
discipline, into ideal models of chivalry.
That they did fight there can be no doubt. If the dismal groans of the
Britons were ever sent at all, it was but a small number who groaned. As
to the Anglo-Saxons, they had been coming even before the Romans, and
Carausius and his fleet held them in check for awhile; but there can be
no doubt that they came in much greater numbers, and with more intent to
settle, than in former times, in the decay of the empire. Moreover, the
resistance evidently became more resolute and valid, as the tide flowed
westward over the diagonally arranged strata of the island; the alluvial
lands to the east have no traditions of battles, but at the chalk downs,
the rounded hills have names and dim legends of fights and of camps, and
cities begin to claim to be the scene of Arthur’s court.
Westward again, with the sandstone hill and smiling valley, the tales
multiply spots where the court was held in perplexing multitude; river
upon river puts forth its old Keltic name of Cam, the crooked, and calls
itself the place of the last decisive fight. And when the moorland and
mountain are actually reached, and the heather stretches wide over the
granite moor, with the igneous peak of stone crowning the lofty crag,
there the Briton is still free, and points to his rocky summits as his
hero’s home.
To those fastnesses were the Cymry finally limited, if they would enjoy
their native government; and though many remained as serfs, and some as
clergy, in the open country, the national spirit was confined to those
who dwelt in the strongholds of the West. There did their bards sing and
tell tales, and compose _Triads_ on the past glories of their race, with
a natural tendency to magnify the exploits of their most able defender.
At the same time, the Armoricans on the other side of the water, some of
whom had, probably, according to their tradition, migrated from Britain,
told their own legends, and sung their songs on the chief who had
maintained the cause of their countrymen.
When the Normans settled in Neustria, their lively fancy caught up all
that was imaginative among those around them. It is from their arrival
that the first dawn of French literature dates, and it seems to have
been they who first listened to the Breton lays, and brought them
forward in the French tongue. At the central court of France, the Norman
trouvère met the Provençal troubadour, and their repertory of tales was
exchanged, the one giving his native Norse myths, tinctured with Keltic
heroic tales, the other the Greco-Roman and Arabic stories that had
travelled to him. And there, both sets of stories were steeped in that
mysterious atmosphere of chivalry, which could dream of no court that
was not based on the model of feudal France, no warrior without a horse
and an esquire, a cone-shaped helmet, and kite-shaped shield.
That true knights were all equal, was a maxim held, though hardly
carried out, in the eleventh century, and the floating notion of a
table, where all were on an equality, was ready to fix itself on the
golden age of chivalry. And when the Normans themselves became the
owners of Britain, and brought with them a fair sprinkling of Bretons,
no wonder they decided that the heroes, who, at least, were not Saxon,
should be their own property. Siegfried and Brynhild had fallen into
oblivion, and the British chiefs did veritably flourish on their native
soil. Geoffrey of Monmouth pretended to hunt up their history in Wales
and Brittany; Marie of France more faithfully reproduced her native lays
in Norman-French; and as fresh tales were discovered or invented,
metrical romances spread them far and wide, and began all to place their
scene at the court of Arthur. Most noted among these, was the story of
the San-grail, the cup of healing and lance of wounding, that may have
been a shadow of a mighty truth, but which became myth in many
countries, until, in the hands of the Cymry, they assumed to be the
veritable original Cup of Blessing of the Last Supper, and the lance of
the soldier at the Cross.
A relic-adoring age willingly believed, that to find these treasures was
the great task of the knights it had invented. Thenceforth, English
imagination beheld the glorious past as a feudal court, where all the
good Knights of the Round Table, now an order of chivalry, had bound
themselves to seek the holy relics, that could only be revealed to the
perfectly pure and worthy. Mallory’s beautiful book preserves the main
line of the allegory, though it is full of episodes, and it is the
veritable prose epic of the Round Table.
France and Lombardy likewise believed in the Round Table, but not with
the same national faith. As was natural, their poems centered about the
great Frank emperor, and what they wrote or told of the British knights
rather dealt in the less creditable adventures of individuals, than in
the ennobling religious drift of the main story.
However, it is these Round Table names that are the most widely known
and used of all the Keltic nomenclature, with a reputation almost
entirely romantic, and very seldom saintly. Among the Arthurian names
there is not one that is Teutonic; all are either genuine Cymric, or
else such modifications of Latin nomina as citizenship was sure to leave
to the Britons.
SECTION II.—_Arthur._
No Keltic name approaches in renown to that of the central figure of the
Round Table; yet, in the very dazzle of his brightness, his person has
been so much lost, that, as the author of _Welsh Sketches_ observes,
“Whereas Peter Schlemihl lost his shadow, Arthur has lost his
substance.”
To begin with his name. He may have been a Romanized Briton named from
Arctus, “Arthur’s slow wain rolling his course round the pole,” and
Arcturus, the bear’s-tail, far behind him in Boötes; and Arth, perhaps
from them, does indeed mean a bear in British.
Ard, the consonant softening into _th_ in composition, means high or
noble, in all the Keltic tongues but Welsh, and had been a name from
time immemorial in Ireland, as Scott knew when he made the Bertram
family tree bear fruit of Arths in fabulous ages. Art, a Milesian, is
said to have lived B.C. 233; Art MacCormac appears in the Ossianic
legends, “Art Oge MacMorne kept Dundorme;” according to Hanmer’s
catalogue of Finn MacCoul’s comrades, Art and Arth recur for ever in
Erse Highland pedigree; and in the end of the fourteenth century, Art
MacMorough was the great hero of Ireland, who slew Roger Mortimer, and
sorely puzzled Richard II., reigned in Leinster for forty years, and
cost the English treasury twelve million marcs; so that when he died,
“Since Brien’s death in Erin
Such a mourning had not been.”
Arthmael, bear’s servant or worshipper, was a Welsh prince, but here, as
in Ireland, all the Arths are now merged in Arthur.
Ardghal, or Ardal, of high valour, is an Erse name, and was long used,
though it has now been suppressed by the supposed Anglicism Arnold,
eagle-power. It explains the name of Arthgallo, who, in Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s legendary history, is the persecuting brother, whom Elidure’s
untiring love and generosity finally won from his cruel courses to
justice and mercy. _Artegal and Elidure_ was one of the best
ante-Shakesperian dramas; and Artegal was selected by Spenser as one of
the best and noblest of his knights-errant, representing Arthur Lord
Grey.
Ardrigh was an Erse term for the supreme monarch over their five lesser
realms, and is still applied by the native Irish to the king of
France,—much as the Greeks were wont to style the Persian monarch the
Great King. This most probably accounts for the term Arviragus, which we
picked up by the Romans, and applied to that son of Cymbeline who was
really the brave Caradwg. Ardheer is another form of this same title of
the highest chief, and the later critics tell us to consider this as the
origin of our hero.
He is not, indeed, mentioned by Gildas, unless he be the “dragon of the
island;” but his omission from that letter is only to his credit, and
the individuality of Arthur stands on the testimony of Welsh bards up to
his own date, and of universal tradition.
Arthur, or Arthwys, seems to have been the son of Uthyr, and Emrys, whom
he succeeded, bearing the title of Pendragon in his own tongue, and of
Imperator in Latin, which was the language of politics to the Britons. A
Silurian like Caradwg, his spirit was the same, and his hereditary
possessions would seem to have been on the Welsh border, with Caerleon
on Uske for their capital; but he was born at Tintagel in Cornwall, and
he was prompt in flying to the aid of the British cause in all quarters.
The West Saxons were his chief enemies, and his battles, twelve in
number, are almost all in the kingdom of Wessex; but he must also have
been acknowledged by the northern Britons of the old province of
Valentia, and have ruled over “fair Strathclyde and Reged wide” from his
fortress at Carlisle. After a brave reign of forty years, he at length
perished through the treachery of his nephew; but whether his last fatal
battle was fought in Strathclyde, Cornwall, or in Somerset, it seems
impossible to determine.
The Cymry mourned passionately. The Welsh bards made _Triads_, and the
Armoricans sang songs.
Nennius mentions Arthur in the sixth century.
In 720, a person called Eremita Britannus, or the British hermit, is
said to have written about King Arthur; the Welsh _Mabinogion_, or
children’s tales, were all centering on him; and when, in the early part
of the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth brought out his chronicle,
it was translated all over Europe, even into Greek, and furnished
myriads of romances, metrical and otherwise.
The outline of the Arthur of romance scarcely needs to be here traced;
the prince, brought up in concealment, establishing his claim by pulling
the sword out of the stone whence no one else could detach it; the
Christian warrior, conquering all around, and extending his victories to
Rome; the band of Knights; the vow and quest of the Holy Grail that
breaks the earthly league; the fall and defection of the two most
accomplished knights through unhallowed love, the death of one, and the
rebellion of the other, the lover of Arthur’s own faithless wife,—all
opening the way to the fatal treason of the nephew; and the last battle,
when the wounded king causes his sword to be thrown into the river, as a
signal to the fairies, who bear him away to their hidden isle. All this
is our own peculiar insular heritage of romance, ennobled as it has been
by old Mallory’s prose in the fifteenth century, and in the nineteenth
by Tennyson’s poetry, the best of all the interpretations of the import
of Arthur himself.
As to his name, it was not very common even in Wales. It only came forth
as a matter of romance, and was given occasionally either from fancy or
policy.
Constance of Brittany gave her little son this popular name, perhaps in
the hope that in time British Arthur would be restored to England, and
thenceforth Arzur, as the Bretons call it, was occasionally used in the
duchy.
An old prophecy of Merlin was said to have declared that Richmond should
come from Brittany to conquer England, and this prediction caused Henry
V. to refuse all requests to allow Arthur, Comte de Richemont, son of
the Duke of Brittany, to be ransomed when taken prisoner at Agincourt.
His name of Arthur no doubt added to the danger, and Henry’s keen
eyesight might have likewise detected in him the military skill which
made him so formidable an enemy to the English on his own soil, not
theirs.
When Richmond really came out of Brittany and conquered England, he
named his first son Arthur, but that son never wore the British crown,
nor did the infant Arthur of Scotland, so named by James V., survive to
be known in history. Arthur, however, had become an occasional name; but
it was reserved for the great Arthur Wellesley, whose name had perhaps
more to do with the old Art of Erse times than with the king of the
Round Table, to make it, as it is at present, one of the most
universally popular of English names. Even the French use it, for its
sound, it may be presumed, rather than for its recent distinction, and
they have ceased to spell it in the old form, Artus, and adopted our
own. The Italians know, but do not use, Arturo; however, the name
changes so little that Madame Schopenhauer’s husband was justified in
choosing it for his son as a useful name for a merchant, because it does
not alter in being translated.
The English feminine Arthurine is occasionally used.
SECTION III.—_Gwenever._
The staunchest supporters of Arthur’s existence give him three wives.
One of them was she who was stolen by Maelwas, the origin of Lancelot,
and she it is who is the dame of romance.
Gwen, the commencement of her name, is used in Welsh, in the double
sense of the colour, white, and of a woman, perhaps for the same reason
that ‘the fair’ so often stands for a lady in poetry. The word is
closely related to the _finn_ and _ban_, both meaning white in the other
branch of the Keltic tongue, and, save for the fulness of interest
belonging to both, all might have been treated of together. Gwen, the
feminine of Gwyn, white, becomes _wen_ in composition, and as such we
have already met it at the end of words.
Gwendolen is made by the Brut, and by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the daughter
of Corineus, Duke of Cornwall, and wife of Locrine, son of the original
Brutus. He deserted her for the sake of Estrild, a fair German captive,
and she made war upon him, in the course of which he was killed, and
Estrild and her daughter Sabrina, or Avern, made prisoners; whereupon,
the jealous and revengeful queen caused both to be drowned in the river,
thenceforth called Sabrina or Severn; in Welsh, Hafreu, where we may
hope that the damsel became the lovely nymph who “listened and saved”
the lady from Comus and his crew. Estrild is Essylt (or Iseulte) in the
Welsh which Geoffrey copied.
The Welsh saints give us St. Gwendolen or Gwen as the mother of Caradog
Vreichfras, the excellent Sir Cradocke of the Round Table. In the
_Triads_ and the _Mabinogion_, Gwendolen is a beauty of Arthur’s court,
and in the bardic enumeration of the thirteen wonders of Britain appears
the gold chess-board of Gwendolen, on which, when the silver men were
placed, they would play of themselves. Gwendolen, Gwen, and Gwyn have
never been disused in Wales. The first was the daughter of the last
native prince, and her name is increasingly in favour with the lovers of
archaisms.
Gwenhwyfar is the swelling white wave; but the ocean names of the
Britons are worth noting, when we remember that they also had Llyr, with
Bronwen and Creirdydlydd, all certainly mythical.
Without consigning Queen Gwenhwyfar to the regions of Regan, it is
likely that hers was a hereditary name descended from some part of the
ancient faith. A Welsh couplet describes her as—
“Gwenhwyfar, daughter of Gogyrfan the Great,
Bad when little, worse when great.”
And the various early tales in the _Mabinogion_, as well as the metrical
romances, always give the same character of the beautiful queen of light
conduct. In the _Morte d'Arthur_, guilty love for her paralyzes
Lancelot’s eyes when the San-grail passes before him, the same passion
drives him to his rebellion, and finally the repentant queen takes
refuge in the convent at Ambresbury, where Tennyson has described the
parting between her and Arthur in the most noble and beautiful of all
his poetry.
Guenever was her full English name, contracted into Ganivre, or Ganore,
a form that occurs in old Welsh registers. Jennifer, as they have it in
Cornwall, is still frequent there; but nowhere else in our island has
the name been followed. Scotland has a tradition of her crimes that
calls her Queen Wanders, or Vanora, and Boece actually imprisons her in
the great old fort on Barra Hill, in Perthshire; but abroad she met with
more favour, as Génièvre in France, and in Italy as Ginevra, or Zinevra.
Observing that the French call Gwenhwyfar, Génièvre, we can hardly doubt
that either this, or Gwenfrewi, holy calm or fair peace, must have been
the origin of their own Généviève, though the German etymologists try to
construe her as _gan_, magic, _vaips_, a crown. But Généviève was a
Gaul, born at Nanterre in 422, and could hardly have borne anything but
either a Keltic or a Roman name; and the whole family of Gwens were, as
has been shown, dear to the Cymric race, whose religion was the same in
Gaul and Britain. A shepherd-maid, like Joan of Arc, Généviève
anticipated her deeds of patriotism, though she wore no armour and
carried no sword. When Paris was besieged by the Franks, she, unarmed,
and strong only in her pious confidence, walked forth as the escort of
the citizens in search of provisions, and when the city was taken, her
heroic holiness so impressed the heathen Franks, Hlodwig and Hilderik,
that her entreaties in behalf of their prisoners were always granted.
When she died, in her 90th year, she was erected into the primary patron
saint of Paris, and has so continued ever since, leaving Généviève in
high esteem among Parisiennes of all degrees down from Anne Généviève de
Bourbon, the sister of Condé. The numerous contractions testify to the
popularity of the gentle patriot. Some of the German forms may, however,
be ascribed to the apocryphal Saint Genovefa, of Brabant, to whom has
attached the story, of suspicious universality, of the wife who was
driven by malicious accusations to the woods, there to give birth to an
infant, and to be nourished by a white doe until the final discovery of
her innocence. From whatever cause the name is widely used on the
Continent.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Breton. │ Italian. │
│Winifred │Généviève │Jenovefa │Genoveffa │
│Jennifer │Javotte │Fa-ik │ │
│ │Genevion │ │ │
│ │Vevette │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Russian. │ Illyrian. │ │
│Genovefa │Zenevieva │Genovefa │ │
│Vevay │ │Genovefica │ │
│Vefele │ │Veva │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Gwenfrewi was the Welsh nun whose head was cut off by a furious prince
called Caradoc, because she refused his addresses; whereupon, in the
usual fashion of Welsh saints, she caused a well to spring up on the
spot of her martyrdom. But unlike other such wells, it is intermitting,
and sufficiently impregnated with mineral substances to support its high
character to miraculous powers, and, in addition, the stones are marked
with red veins, which represent the blood of St. Wenefred, as our
Anglo-Saxon tongues have long since made her. Such undoubted wonders
made Winifred a most flourishing name in Wales, and it is occasionally
found in England, though usually through a Welsh connection, and so
spelt as to confuse it with the true Saxon masculine Winfrith, or friend
of peace. The Irish take Winny as the equivalent of Una.
In Breton, Guennolé, also called Wingallok, in Cornish, Gunwallo, was a
celebrated saint, and was the counsellor who saved King Gradlon in the
inundation. Guennola is the feminine, and is used, very correctly, to
translate the French Candide, as is Guennéan, the white spirit, for
angel, both the being and the name.
Dwynwen, or the white wave, was invoked as the patroness of lovers, and
became a Welsh name. It is just possible that an echo of this, on the
other side of the water, may be Damhnait, or Devnet, Latinized as
Dymphna, or Dympna, though the more obvious likeness in sound is
_damhna_, a reason. An Irish princess, so called, was obliged, about the
year 600, to fly from the persecutions of her father, protected by a
priest, a jester, and his wife, until near Antwerp her father overtook
her and cut off her head. Hanmer adds, “the Irish in the county of Lowth
do honour her; belike her father dwelt there:” and Dympna, or Demmy, is
not wholly extinct as a name.
This same _wen_, the poetical form of a woman, or fair one, enters into
the composition of two other saintly Keltic names. The first, St.
Mawdwen, or Modwen, was one of St. Patrick’s Irish nuns; and another
later Modwen, also Irish, came to England in 840, educated Edith,
daughter of King Ethelwolf, and founded an abbey at Polsworth. She was
rather a favourite saint; her name is traceable in various places; and
Modwenna continued in Cornwall. Perhaps it comes from _modh_, manners.
Cainwen is said to be Cain, the virgin. The first half means splendid or
beautiful things or jewels, and is connected with the Latin Candalus.
The Welsh declare that she was of princely birth; but being determined
to live a holy life, she travelled on foot beyond the Severn, and there
found a solitary place where no one had ever lived, because it was
infested with snakes and vipers, which she forthwith, by her prayers,
turned to stone, and they may still be picked up in a petrified state in
the fields. Keynsham, in Somersetshire, is, in fact, famous for
ammonites, which thus have given rise to another legend like those of
St. Cuthbert and St. Hilda. Camden himself saw one of these stones, and
was somewhat perplexed thereby.
She afterwards repaired to St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, where she
met her nephew, St. Cadoc, and there her name became attached to a well,
in the parish of St. Neots, arched over by four trees—oak, ash, elm, and
withy, all apparently growing from one root. The water was further
supposed to endow whichever of a married pair first tasted it with the
mastery for life. No one can forget that best of all Southey’s humorous
ballads, where the Cornishman confesses,—
“I hastened, as soon as the wedding was done,
And left my wife in the porch;
But, i' faith, she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church.”
Cornishmen, apparently, never forgave St. Keyne for the properties of
her well; for Carew, in his _Survey of Cornwall_, terms her “no over
holy saint;” and Norden thus vituperates her: “this Kayne is sayde to be
a woman saynte, of whom it (the well) taketh name; but it better
resembleth Kayne, the devil, who had the shape of a man, the name of an
apostle, and the qualitie of a traitor.” Gwenllian, white linen, is
still sometimes used.
Gwyn also signifies blessed or happy, and this _gwynnedd_ is an epithet
of some of the favourite kings. Gwynaeth, a state of bliss, is a female
name still in use, and often written Gyneth, though it gets translated
into Venetia, and, in the latter form, named the lady whom Sir Kenelm
Digby rendered famous.
SECTION IV.—_Gwalchmai, Sir Gawain, and Sir Owen._
No knight is more distinguished, either in the _Triads_ or in romance,
than Gwalchmai, perhaps from Gwalch, a hawk, and maedd, a blow.
In Welsh pedigrees, he is Arthur’s nephew, son of his sister Ernnos and
of Llew, king of Lothian and Orkney. He probably had a real existence,
for the _Triads_ celebrate him as one of the three golden-tongued
knights of Britain, one of the three learned ones of Britain, and one of
the three most courteous men towards strangers. In a Welsh poem, he is
represented as using his courteous tongue in behalf of his friend
Trystan; and in the _Mabinogion_, in the ‘Lady of the Fountain,’ he
takes such a prominent part, that the French romance is called that of
Sir Yvaine and Sir Gawaine. Walganus and Walwyn had Latinized the Hawk
of Battle, and have caused it to be confounded with the Teutonic
Walwine, slaughter-lover; but the Gwalchmai of Wales can be identified
with the Gawain, or Wawyn, of romance by his friendship with Trystan,
his relationship to Arthur, and his title in the romances of the _Flower
of Courtesy_.
It was Sir Gawaine who in the ballad boldly adventured himself to wed
the “Loathly Lady,” and was rewarded by breaking the spell, and
discovering her loveliness. Gawaine was the hero of the great battle
with the giant Rhyence, and, though unsuccessful, was one of the
foremost in the quest of the San-grail, until warned by a dream how the
enterprise was to result. Finally, Sir Gawaine took his uncle’s side
first in the war with Lancelot, then with Mordred, and died of the
renewal of a wound received in battle with the former, writing on his
death-bed a letter that brought Lancelot to repentance.
His name, whether as Walwyn, Gawain, or Gavin, was popular in England
and Scotland in the middle ages; and in the last-mentioned shape named
the high-spirited bishop of Dunkeld, the one son of old Bell the Cat,
who could “pen a line,” and who did so to such good purpose when “he
gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page.” Nor is Gavin by any means extinct in
Scotland.
Sir Gawain is coupled in English romance with his intimate friend, Sir
Ywaine, as in French with Sir Yvaine; and in the Welsh story, in the
_Mabinogion_, he is Sir Owain. He there sets forth from court in search
of adventures, and falls in with a knight in black armour, whom he
conquers, and thereupon is conducted to a castle, where he becomes
guardian of an enchanted fountain, and husband of a lady in yellow
satin, with long yellow hair, and a hundred maids always embroidering
satin. Of course, when Sir Gawain came in quest of him, and he was
allowed to go back to King Arthur’s court, he forgot the whole affair,
until at the end of three years, he was recalled by his lady’s
confidential handmaid, Luned, and proceeded to atone for his
unfaithfulness by another severe course of adventures, during which he
delivered a black lion from a serpent, thus binding the faithful beast
to his service for ever, and after a due slaughter of giants, rejoined
his wife, and lived happy ever after. The French of the thirteenth
century knew him as Sir Yueins, le Chevalier du Lion; and even the
Scandinavians had his story in their _Ivent Saga_. In the _Morte
d'Arthur_, he is Sir Gareth, and brother to Gawain; but he must have
been his cousin, as he was the son of Urien, and of Arthur’s sister,
Morgwen. In the _Morte d'Arthur_, Luned is Linet, and in the French
romances she is Lunette. Her name seems to be derivable from _llun_, a
shape or form, and if so, would mean the shapely; but the hagiologists
identify it with that Elined, the daughter of Brychan, who suffered
martyrdom on the hill of Penginger, and was canonized as St. Almedha, a
name still to be seen on the sign of an inn at Knaresborough.
Owain, Oen in Brittany, continued popular in Wales, though, perhaps,
rather more usual at a late than an early period. The notable Owen
Glendower, as Shakespeare has taught us to call him, was really Owain ap
Gruffydd of Glendfrdwy, his estate in Merionethshire, where he kept a
grand household.
It was he who made Owen the most common of Welsh names, in honour of the
last Welshman who lived and died free of the English yoke.
Owain is so like the word _oen_ that in Welsh stands for a sheep or
lamb, that it is generally so translated; but it is most likely that
this is a case of an adaptation of a derivative from an obsolete word to
a familiar one, and that Owen ought to be carried much further back to
the same source as the Erse Eoghan, which comes from _êoghunn_, youth,
from _og_, young, and is translated, young warrior. It has the feminine
Eoghania, of course turned into Eugenia.
There were many Eoghans in Ireland. One of them, a king of Connaught,
when dying of his wounds, commanded himself to be buried upright, with
his red javelin in his hand, and his face turned towards Ulster, as
though still fighting with his foes. As long as he thus remained,
Connaught prevailed and Ulster lost; but the Ultonians discovered the
spell, and re-buried him in an opposite direction, thereby changing the
tide of success.
Eoghan, in Scotland, is pronounced Yō-hăn, and indiscriminately
translated by Evan, Ewan, and Hugh. Several of the early kings, who are
all numbered together in Scotland as Eugenius, were properly Eoghan, and
Evan or Ewan is certainly the right Anglicism, though Hugh is made to do
duty for these as well as for Aodh.
The same Eoghan seems in ăanother form to have supplied the Welsh Evan,
or Evan _may_ be intended for John. A certain Evan of Wales, claiming
the blood of the Welsh princes, who became a mercenary under Charles V.
of France, made a bold descent upon Guernsey, and was killed at the
siege of Mortain-sur-mer, by what Froissart calls a short Spanish
dagger, but his illuminator has made to look much more like a very large
arrow. Welsh history takes no cognizance of him, but he is thought to be
traceable in the national songs as Jevan Dovy.
Another translation of Owain is “apt to serve.” A British prince of
Strathcluyd was called Uen or Hoen.[102]
-----
Footnote 102:
_Mabinogion_; _Morte d'Arthur_; _Tracts on Antiquities of the Northern
Counties_, by R. D. D.; Cambro-Briton; Jones, _Welsh Sketches_;
Chalmers; Percy, _Relics_; Rees, _Welsh Saints_; O'Donovan; Hy
Fiachrach; Owen Pugh; _Highland Society’s Dictionary_.
SECTION V.—_Trystan and Ysolt._
The episode of _Trystan_ is one of the most celebrated incidents of
Arthur’s court, and has not failed to be treated by Davies as a
magnificent emblematic myth.
The _Triads_ begin by declaring that the three mighty swineherds of the
Isle of Britain were Pryderi, Coll, and Trystan.
Another adds,—
The third swineherd was Trystan, son of Tallwch, who kept the swine of
March, the son of Meirchion, while the swineherd was conveying a message
to Essylt, to appoint an assignation with her.
Again, he is one of the three heralds of Britain, also one of the three
diademed chiefs, also one of the three knights who had the conducting of
mysteries.
Besides, the three unchaste matrons of Britain are Penarwen, Bun, and
Esyllt Fingwen.
And the tale told by the Cymric race in Cambria and Armorica has
resounded throughout southern Europe. There the mighty swineherd is the
son of Roland and Blanchefleur, sister of Mark, king of Cornwall. Almost
at the moment of his birth, she hears the tidings of his father’s death,
and expires from the shock, calling her babe Tristan, or the sad. He
grows up to be an accomplished knight, and after various adventures, is
sent by his uncle, King Mark, to Ireland, to bring home the promised
bride Ysolt the fair.
The mother of Ysolt gives her maid, Brengwain, a magic draught, which
was to be administered to the pair on their bridal day, to secure their
mutual affection. A storm rises on the voyage, and, intending to refresh
her lady and the knight after his exertions and her alarm, Brengwain, in
her confusion, gives them the fatal draught, and their passion for one
another became the theme of the storytellers who preferred guilty love
to high aspirations. Tristrem was married to another Ysolt called of the
white hands, or of Brittany; he was dangerously wounded, and lay sick in
her castle in Brittany. Nothing could cure him but the presence of Ysolt
of Cornwall, and to her he sent his squire, with his ring, entreating,
like the father of Theseus, that if she came to him the sails of the
ship might be white, if she refused, the squire should hoist a black
sail.
She came, but the wife, Ysolt of the white hands, falsely told the sick
man that the sails were black; he sank back in despair and died, and
Ysolt died of grief beside him.
Such is the story told by Thomas of Ercildoune, in the thirteenth
century, as well as by hosts of romances.
Trust was really a Cymric name, and was called among the Picts Drust, or
Drest. There is a Trust or Drust, MacTallaghi among the Pictish kings,
who possibly may be the origin of Tristan, since many of the legends are
common to Strath Clyde, Wales, and Cornwall. The Pictish Pendragon, who
was elected at the time the Romans quitted Britain, was called by his
countrymen Drust of the Hundred Battles, and many of his successors bore
the same name, which means din, tumult, or loud noise, and thus may
poetically be translated as a proclaimer or herald. Trwst ap Taran
(tumult the son of thunder) was the poetical name of another of the
line. The influence of Latin upon Welsh, however, made _trist_ really
mean sad, so that it was there accepted as suited to the melancholy
circumstance of the hero’s birth; and Tristram, or sad face, became
identified with the notion of sorrow; so that the child of St. Louis,
born while his father was in captivity on the Nile, and his mother in
danger at Damietta, was named Jean Tristan. Never would the cheerful
Greeks have accepted such a name as Tristrem, Tristan, Tristano; but in
Europe it regularly entered the ranks of the names of sorrow, and it
was, no doubt, in allusion to it that Don Quixote accepted the
soubriquet of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. The earliest form of
the name was Adsalutta, a Keltic goddess, whose name occurs in two
inscriptions, one at Laybach and the other at Ratschöck in Istria. It is
identified by the learned with Esyltt, and connected with _Suraya_, the
Sungod of the Vedas.
Esyltt was the French Yseulte, or Ysoude, the Italian Isolta, and
English Ysolte, Isolda, or Izolta, and in all these shapes was frequent
in the families of the middle ages; recurring again and again in
registers, down to the seventeenth century: indeed, within the last
fifty years a person was alive who bore this romantic name in the form
of Izod.
Tallwch is the torrent, and seems to have been translated into Roland,
from the sound of rolling, when the Armorican bards laid claim to the
great Paladin of Charlemagne’s court, on the score of his having been
Warden of the Marches of Brittany, and wanted to make out that Roland
was a name of their own. They had thus caused Rowland to be considered
as a regular Cymric name.
King Mark himself was most probably a compromise between the Roman
_Marcus_ and the native _march_, which belongs to all the Kelts—nay,
Pausanias tells us, meant a horse, in the dialect of the tribe who tried
to take Delphi. Its fellow, _mar_, passed into Teutonic; named
Marshalls, as Marskalk, or horse servant; and lives among us as our
_mare_, in the feminine. Indeed, Marcus may itself be another instance
of the Keltic element in Latin.
Marchell was the daughter of Tewdrig, king of North Wales, and, in 382,
married Brychan, son of Cormac Mac Cairbre, one of the kings of Ireland.
Her name was, no doubt, a mixture of the Keltic March and the Latin
Marcella; and it was she who must have rendered the name of Marcella so
common in Ireland.
The more common Gadhaelic word is, however, _each_, first cousin to
_equus_, _aspa_, and many another word for the gallant animal.
Each was the saint who spent his life in Boyne Water, and was said to
have uttered the curse that caused the battle of Magh Rath, a libel
disproved by his previous death.
Each, in combination, has formed sundry names,—Eachmarchach, a sort of
reduplication; Eachmilidh, horse-warrior; Eachaid, horseman, the most
famous of them belonging to many kings, and rendered into
Latin—Eochodius, or Equitius, the last not so incorrect. Auhy, or Atty,
were the usual ways of rendering it; but these have been confounded with
Arthur, and the name is lost.
Several other Eochaids were kings of Scotland, but they are grievously
confused by Latinity, and, with the owners of the following name, turned
into Eugenius; Eochaidbuidhe, or the fair-haired, appearing as Eugenius
Flavus; and Eochoid Rinne Mhail as Eugenius Crooked Nose!
Another Eochaid has, by the capricious fancy of Scotland, been
transmitted to us as Achaius. He is said to have been an ally of
Charlemagne, and begun the custom of lending auxiliaries to the French,
numerous Scotsmen coming to honour and dignity for their assistance in
their conquest of Saxony. Achaius is also said to have married the
sister of the king of the Picts, and formed an alliance with him against
the Anglo-Saxons. While marching against the English forces, the cross
of St. Andrew suddenly appeared in the sky giving assurance of victory,
and, in consequence, was adopted as the ensign of the Picts, and
afterwards of the Scots.
The “double tressure, flory and counterflory,” that surrounds the field
where “the ruddy lion ramps in gold,” is also said to have been “first
by Achaius worn,” though he was probably innocent of all armorial
bearings, as he died in 819.
Eachan is the most usual form of the Highland name, and has for many
years been, by general consent, converted into Hector.
The feminine Eacha is an old Irish name.[103]
-----
Footnote 103:
Chalmers; Villemarque; _Mabinogion_; O'Donovan; Pugh; Pitre;
Chevalier; Sir W. Scott, Ed. of _Sir Trestram_.
SECTION VI.—_Hoel and Ryence._
The romances of Arthur give him, among his many nephews, one named Hoel,
Duke of Brittany, whose niece Helena was seized upon by the horrible
giant Ritho, and devoured upon the top of Tombelaine.
This Hoel does not seem to have been a real character. His name Higuel,
the lordly or conspicuous, was a common one in Wales and Brittany; and a
prince so called seems really to have fled to Arthur for aid against the
Franks, and to have returned with a fresh colony of Britons, by whose
aid he became king of Armorica.
He reigned for thirty years, and died in 545, Other Hoels reigned after
him, the third of whom is said to have been killed at Roncevalles.
In Wales, Hywel continued in favour, and Hywel-Dha, or the Good, who
reigned in the tenth century, is famous for having gone to Rome to study
law, by which he so profited as afterwards to draw up the famous code
that has thrown so much light on the manners of the Cambrian
mountaineers, the order of precedence in the king’s household, and even
the price of animals. He signs King Athelstan’s charter as
Hoel-Subregulus, or under king.
Hywel was a name in frequent use among the Welsh princes, and ‘highborn
Hoel’s harp’ was frequently sounded, for various bards were so called.
Another Hoel was that unfortunate relative of Owen Glendower whom he was
said to have killed and hidden in the blasted tree.
The giant Ritho is evidently a relation of Rhitta Gawr, who, in the
Welsh stories, interfered to put a stop to a furious battle between two
kings named Nynniaw and Peibiaw, who had quarrelled about the moon and
stars. Rhitta Gawr defeated them both, and cut off their beards, and
afterwards the beards of seventy-eight more kings who collected to
avenge them. Of these eighty beards he made a mantle that reached from
his head to his heels, for he was the largest man in Britain, and wore
it as a warning to all to maintain law and order.
The romances of Arthur turned Rhitta Gawr into a fierce monarch called
Rhyence, king of North Wales, an aggressor instead of a defender of
justice, who, however, had his scarlet mantle purfled with the moderate
number of eleven royal beards, and politely demanded that of King Arthur
to complete the trimming, with what consequences no one acquainted with
King Arthur can doubt.
Whence come the names of Ryence and Rhittar? They connect themselves
closely with the universal words for ruler, the Gadhaelic _righ_, Teuton
_rik_, Latin _rex_, and the _rajah_ of India. _Rhys_ is, in Welsh, a
rushing man or warrior, and most likely comes from the same source; and
Rhesus, the chieftain, slain by Ulysses and Diomed, on the night of his
arrival before Troy, probably was called from some extinct word of the
same origin.
At any rate Rhys has ever since been a Welsh name, sometimes spelt in
English according to its pronunciation as Reece, and sometimes as Rice.
It has furnished the surnames of Rice, Rees.
In Brittany we meet a saint called by the diminutive of Rhys, Riok, or
Rieuk. His legend begins with one of the allegories that arose from the
prophecy, that the weaned child should put his hand on the cockatrice’s
den, for when he was almost an infant he was employed by the holy knight
Derrien, to lead away in a scarf a terrible basilisk, whom the saint had
tamed by making the sign of the cross over him. His parents were
heathens, but were convinced by this miracle; and he became, in after
years, a great saint, living for forty-one years on a rock on the
sea-coast, eating nothing but herbs and little fish, and wearing a plain
garment which when it wore out was supplied by a certain ruddy moss
growing all over his body. His name has continued in use in
Brittany.[104]
-----
Footnote 104:
_Mabinogion_; Pitre Chevalier, _Bretagne_; Mallory, _Morte d'Arthur_;
Jones, _Welsh Sketches_.
SECTION VII.—_Percival._
No name has had more derivations suggested for it than this. The Norman
family so called came from Perche-val, the valley of the Perche; but as
to the knight of romance, he was at first supposed to be Perce-val,
pierce the valley, on the principle on which Percy was hatched out of
Pierce-eye, and the story invented of the Piercie who thrust his spear
with the keys dangling on it into the eye of Malcolm Ceanômor at Alnwick
Castle. The romance of Perceforest was even named on the principle that
it was as suitable to pierce the forest as the valley. Mr. Keightley
derives the name from the Arabic _Parse_, or _Parschfal_, poor dummling,
who appears to have been the hero of an Eastern tale of a wonderful cup,
whence arose the mysterious allegory of the Holy Greal. A Provençal
Troubadour, named Kyot, or Guiot, professes to have found at Toledo a
book written in heathen characters by a magician, Saracen on the
father’s side, but descended by his mother from Solomon. His book is
lost, but two founded on it survive,—the German romance of Parzifal, by
Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the Norman French, Sir Perceval, of Walter
Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford under Henry II.
Equally old, however, is a Welsh legend of Peredur, who is perhaps
Pair-kedor, the warrior of the cauldron; Pair-cyfaill would then be
champion of the cauldron, or bowl; Peredur was certainly a historical
person, and may perhaps be the same as Perceval. Chrétien de Troyes has
a long poem on the story of Perceval, and his adventures are almost
identical with those of the Peredur of the _Mabinogion_.
The story of the orphan, stirred up to chivalry by the sight of the
knight whom he took for an angel, the same as that of Mervyn les Breiz,
here appears, and Perceval or Peredur shows some kindred with the
dummling of Persia by his ignorance and dulness till he comes to the
castle, where he sees the wounded king, the bleeding lance, and the
Greal or bowl of pure gold, that are the great features in his history.
Probably, the magic bowl was an Indo-European idea, but there seems to
have been Druidic traditions about a magic bowl, which Bran the Blessed
obtained from a great black man in Ireland, and which cured mortal
wounds and raised the dead. It was one of the thirteen wonders of the
Isle of Britain, and disappeared with Merddin in his glass vessel.
However, in the twelfth century, the ideas of this vessel had assumed a
Christian form. It was the bowl used at the institution of the Holy
Eucharist, and the lance was that of Longinus the centurion, brought to
Bran by Joseph of Arimathea, and thenceforth its quest became the emblem
of the Christian search for holiness through the world, only gratified
by gleams here, but with full fruition hereafter. Perceval, once the
companion and guard of the sacred Grail, gradually descended from his
high estate, and became only a knight of the Round Table, high and pure
of faith and spotless of life, but only on the same terms as the rest,
and though not failing in the quest, still inferior to Galahad.
It is curious that his other name, Peredur, has by the sound been turned
into Peter. One Robert de Barron tells, that from Bran, the Grail
descended to Alan, and thence to Petrus his nephew; and a story of the
Breton peasantry still gives the adventures of Perronik, like the
original Peredur, an idiot at first, but sent to the Castle of Caerglas
to fetch a diamond lance and golden cup, which would raise the dead by a
touch.
The later French romances spoilt the nobleness and purity of Perceval’s
character, but he is always one of the best of the knights, and succeeds
in finding the Sanc-greal. But Galahad, the pure and virgin knight, son
of Lancelot, and predestined to occupy the Siége Perilous at the Round
Table, resist all temptation, conquer all peril, and finally obtain full
fruition of the Greal, then, at his own desire, pass out of the world of
sin and care, has, in England, taken the place once the right of Peredur
or Perceval, though Wagner’s splendid ‘Parcifal’ has restored to him the
chief place. I suspect him, as before said, to have been the separate
produce of the story of Cattwg, first warrior, and afterwards hermit and
saint, and that Galahad may have been an epithet from his starry purity.
In the _Mabinogion_, Perceval has a ladye love, whom, however, he only
loves with distant chivalrous devotion, and who answers to his sister,
who in Mallory’s beautiful story gave the blood from her own veins to
heal a lady who could only be cured with the life-blood of a pure
virgin.
In the _Mabinogion_ her name is Angharad Law-eurag, or with the hand of
gold, and Angharad, or the free from shame, the undisgraced (from
_angharz_), was continued in Wales, but it is now generally considered
as the equivalent of Anne, and thus accounts for Anna being universally
called in romance the sister of Arthur, and mother of the traitor nephew
Medrawd.
The Welsh Angharawd, probably the source of Ankaret, which occurs in the
family of Le Strange in 1344, is generally supposed to mean an
anchorite; but as it has no parallel on the Continent, it is much more
likely to be the Welsh Angharad. Annan was, however, a separate name—for
the three sprightly ladies of Britain are Annan, Angharad, and Perwyr.
Myfanwy is one of the unaccountable feminine Welsh names, not yet
extinct among families of strong national feeling, though in general
Fanny has been substituted for it. It may possibly be Mabanwy, child of
the water, or else it may be My-manwy, my fine (or rare one).
The three primary bards of Britain were Plenydd, Alawn, and Gwron, whom
Mr. Davies explains as light, harmony, and virtue. Plenydd, it is
thought, is related to Belenus; and Alawn is erected by ardent Cymrians
into the mythic Greek Olen, who is said to have been the first writer of
hymns in hexameter, and whom the Delphic poetess, Boeo, calls a
Hyperborean; this name is said to mean the flute-player. At any rate, I
have found Alwn Aulerv in Welsh genealogies as brother of Bran the
Blessed, and this must be the real origin of the Breton Alan. Elian and
Hilarius were both used as its Latinisms.[105]
It is first found in early Breton history, then it came to England with
Alan Fergéant, Count of Brittany, the companion of William the
Conqueror, and first holder of the earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire;
and, indeed, one Alan, partly Breton, partly Norman, seems to have taken
up his abode in our island before the Conquest, and four besides the
count came after it. In the time of Henry I., one of these gentlemen, or
his son, held Oswestry; and as these were the times when Anglo-Norman
barons were fast flowing into Scotland, his son Walter married a lady,
whom Douglas’s _Peerage of Scotland_ calls Eschina, the heiress of Molla
and Huntlaw, in Roxburghshire; and their son, another Alan, secured
another heiress, Eva, the daughter of the Lord of Tippermuir; and,
becoming high steward of Scotland, was both the progenitor of the race
of Stuart, and the original of the hosts of Alans and Allens, who have
ever since filled Scotland. That country has taken much more kindly to
this Breton name than has England, in spite of Allen-a-dale, and of a
few families where Allen has been kept up; but as a surname, spelt
various ways, it is still common.
Like _mare_ in Latin, and _meer_ in Teuton, the Gaelic _muir_, Welsh
_môr_, and Breton _mor_, are close kindred, and watery names derived
from them abound.
King Arthur’s sister, Morgana, or Morgaine, Morgue la Fée, or La Fata
Morgana, as she is variously termed in different tongues, was Morgan
Maritime—the derivative from sea. From her, or from some lingering old
Keltic notion in ancient Italy, the Sicilian fisherman connects the
towers and palaces painted on the surface of the Mediterranean with La
Fata Morgana, the lady of the sea.
Morgwn was the native name of the heresiarch, who called himself by the
Greek equivalent Pelagius, and thus named the Pelagian heresy. Some
writers say that sundry heretic names lingered about the Spanish
Visigoths after their union with the Church, and instance both Ario, a
distinguished author, and Pelayo, the Asturian Robert Bruce, as
instances of names so borne. However this may be, Morgan has continued,
even to the present day, to be very common in Wales.
Morvryn may be sea-king. “Morolt with the iron mace,” as romance calls
him, the brother of Yseulte, who was killed by Sir Trystan, is called
Morogh by his own countrymen in Ireland. It is the contraction of
Muireadhach, or sea protector, a favourite Irish name, though, after
degenerating into Morogh, it was usually rendered into Morgan, and so
continues in modern Ireland. It is perhaps the same with Meriadek, or
Meiriadwg, the title of Conan, the chieftain who is said to have
colonized Brittany, and also with the Welsh Meredith, both as a
Christian and a surname. In Ireland, the sons of Morogh became
O'Muireadaig, and then contracted into Murray. Muredach is said to have
reigned over the Scots from 733 to 736, and is transformed into Murdach,
Murochat, Muirtec, Mordacus. It must have become mixed with
Muircheartach, from _ceart_ (a right), which has produced Moriertagh,
Murtagh, or Morty, as a Christian name in Ireland; but it is now made
into Mortimer. It is Murdoch in Scotland, once very common, and not yet
extinct, and the North, adopting it with other Keltic names, calls it
Kjartan.
Muirgis, once common in Ireland, is rendered by Maurice, or Morris, and
Murchada has become Murphy.
And there is a name, still very common in the North of England, that I
cannot help connecting with some of these, namely Marmaduke, which
appeared among the chivalry of England about the thirteenth century, and
has never become extinct. It is most likely a corruption of one or other
of the _sea_ names, in fact, it is not far from Muireadach; or it may be
the offspring of the Scottish title, Maormar, from _maor_, a steward or
officer, and _mor_, great, thus meaning the great officer of the crown,
the term which prevailed before the Saxon Thegn or Danish Earl displaced
it.[106]
-----
Footnote 105:
Villemarqué; Cambro-Britain; _Mabinogion_; Mallory, _Morte d'Arthur_.
Footnote 106:
Villemarque; Davies; Ellis; Cambro-Briton; Geoffrey of Monmouth;
O'Donovan; Chalmers; Munch.
SECTION VIII.—_Llew._
We find Llew, lion, naming Lleurwg ab Coel ab Cyllyn, also called
Llewfer Mawr, the great light, and correctly translated by the Latin
Lucius, the king who is said to have sent messengers to Rome to bring
home Christianity, though some think Lucius a mere figment of Roman
writers accepted by the bards.
Llew is the name given in Welsh genealogies to the king of the Orkneys,
who married King Arthur’s sister, and was the father of Gwalchmai.
Llewel, lion-like, formed Llewelyn, which is not very early in Wales,
unless the Sir Lionel of romance be intended to represent it. A Welsh
Llewelyn seems to have come over to Ireland with Richard Strongbow, and
his descendants, after passing through the stage of MacUighilins, are
now the Quillinans.
The English have broken it down into Leoline. Llewelyn the Great of
Wales was a contemporary of King John, and from this time the name has
been much in use, partly from affection to the last native prince,
Llewelyn ap Gruffyd, who perished at Piercefield. It is now usually
Anglicized as Lewis for a Christian, Lewin for a family, name.
The old records of Brittany give a most graceful story of the saint who
made Hervé a favourite in the duchy.
Hyvernion, a British bard, was warned by an angel in a dream to come to
Armorica in quest of his wife. Near the fountain of Rivannon, he met a
beautiful maiden drawing water, who, when he accosted her, sang “Though
I am but a poor flower by the wayside, men call me the little queen of
the fountain.” Perceiving that she was the damsel of his vision, he
married her, and they had one child, who was born blind, and was named
by his parents in their sorrow, _Houerf_, or bitter. His worm-eaten
oaken cradle is still shown in the parish of Treflaouenan, as a relic,
for the blind child became both monk and poet, and according to his
maxim, ‘It is better to instruct a child than to gather wealth for him,’
he composed numerous simple and religious poems, which have been sung by
the Breton peasantry through the twelve hundred years that have passed
since the death of the blind bard; one of them, on the duties of a
Christian child, is exceedingly beautiful. Arianwen, Silver woman, was
another Welsh saint, whose name has continued in use.
Houerv, or Hervé, is not accepted in the _Roman Calendar_, but he was
enthusiastically beloved in the country for which he had “made ballads,”
and Hervé has been the name of peer and peasant there ever since his
time. Hervé came over to us among the many adventurers who “came out of
Brittany.” Two landowners so called are mentioned in Domesday Book, and
the widely-spread surname of Harvey can hardly be taken from anything
else, though some derive it from Heriwig, army war, a Teutonic word.
Here let us mention a Breton name, Tanneguy. There was a saint so called
who founded an abbey at Finisterre, and who is claimed as a relation by
the family of Du Chastel. It is curious to find Sir Tanneguy Du Chastel
figuring among the heroes of Froissart, and making his old Christian
name renowned.
But the local saints of the Kelts are far past enumeration, such as St.
Monacella, or Melangell, whose Welsh name perhaps means honey-coloured
or yellow. She was a little nun, who saved a hare hunted by Brocmael,
prince of Powys, and is buried at Pennant Melangle. Also there was St.
Sativola, or Sidwell, as she is called at Exeter, whose head was cut off
by a mower with a scythe, and who had a well marking the spot, till the
railway made away with it; but at least she appears in her own church,
with her head in one hand and a scythe in the other, and she has a
window in the cathedral. Once she had namesakes, but they are all gone
now.
Einion is said to signify an anvil, in Welsh, though the word most like
it in Dr. Owen Pugh’s dictionary is _einioes_, life. St. Einion was one
of the early saints of the Cymry, after whom is named a spring at
Llanvareth in Radnorshire. Another Einion was grandson of Howell Dha.
The name is sometimes rendered by Æneas.
PART VI.
TEUTONIC NAMES.
CHAPTER I.
THE TEUTON RACE.
SECTION I.—_Ground occupied by the Teutons._
The great mass of modern European nomenclature springs from the class of
languages which it is convenient collectively to call Teutonic.
Nothing shows the identity of the entire Teutonic race more than the
resemblance of the names in each of the branches. Many are found in each
of the stems—Gothic, Scandinavian, and High and Low German—the same in
sense, and with mere dialectic changes in sound, proving themselves to
have sprung from a name, or from words, current in the original tribe
before the various families parted from it. Others are found in some
branches and not in others; but there are comparatively very few
belonging to a single tongue, and the analyzation of one into its
component words is never safe till the same name has been sought for in
the cognate languages. All the more popular of these personal names have
gone on a little in the rear of the spoken language of the country,
undergoing changes, though somewhat more slowly. Then, perhaps, some
famous character has, as it were, crystallized his name for ever in the
form in which he bore it, and it has been so continued, ever after, in
his own country, as well as imitated by others, who often have adopted
it in addition to their own original national form of the very same.
The Teutonic names were almost all compounds of two words. Sometimes a
single word was used, but this was comparatively rare. For the most
part, families were distinguished by each person bearing the same first
syllable, with other words added to it to mark the individual, much in
the same way as we have seen was the custom of the Greeks. Some
families, like the royal line of Wessex, would alternate between Æthel
and Ead; others between Os and Sieg and the like. The original compounds
forming names were expressive and well chosen; but it seems as if when
once certain words had come into use as component parts of names, they
were apt to be put together without much heed to their appropriateness
or signification, sometimes with rather droll results. Their names were
individual, but every man was also called the son, every woman the
daughter, of the father; a custom that has not passed away from some
parts of Norway, the Hebrides, or even the remoter parts of Lancashire,
where, practically, the people use no surnames. A family was further
collectively spoken of by the ancestor’s or father’s name, with the
addition of _ing_, the derivative or patronymic; as, in France, the sons
of Meervig were the Meerwingen; the sons of Karl, the Karlingen; not
Merovingians and Carlovingians, as Latinization has barbarously made
them. Remarkable features, or distinguished actions, often attached
soubriquets to individuals, and these passed on, marking off families in
the genealogical songs of the Scallds; and from these derivations, as
well as from the fertile source of territorial terms, have most of our
modern surnames arisen.
The words whence names were compounded were usually the names of deities
and those of animals, together with epithets, or terms of office,
generally conveying good auguries. They were usually connected with some
great hero belonging to the various cycles of myth, in which the Teuton
imagination revelled, and which, for the most part, under Christian
influence, descended from the divine to the heroic, and then to the
fairy tale.
These Teutonic centres of legend may be considered as threefold. There
is the great Scandinavian mythological system, as elaborate and as
poetical as that of the Greeks, and which belonged in part, at least, to
the Goths, Franks, and Saxons, though their early conversion deprived it
of five hundred years of development; and Louis le Debonnaire
unfortunately destroyed the poetry that would have shown us what it had
been among them.
Next, there is the cycle of Romance, represented in Scandinavia by the
latter part of the elder Edda and by the Volsunga Saga, in Denmark by
the Vilkina Saga, and in the centre of Europe by the Nibelungenlied,
where old myths have become heroic tales that have hung themselves round
the names of Attila the Hun and Theodoric of Verona, who in Germany is
the centre of a great number of ancient legends, once doubtless of
deified ancestors.
Thirdly, we have the grand poetical world, in which Charlemagne has been
adopted as the sovereign, and Roland as the hero—the world of French
romance, Spanish ballad, and Italian poetry, which is to continental
chivalry what the Round Table is to our own.
CHAPTER II.
NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
SECTION I.—_Guth._
It is hard to class this first class of names under those of mythology,
for they bear in them our own honoured word for the Deity; and though
some arose when the race were worshippers of false divinities, yet under
the same head are included many given in a Christian spirit.
Some philologists tell us, though they are not unanimous in the
explanation, that this name is from the same source as the Sanscrit
_Svadáta_, self-given or uncreate, and as the Zend _Quadata_, Persian
_Khoda_, and our own Teuton term for Deity—the Northern _Gud_ and Gothic
_Guth_, whence the High German _Cot_ and low German _God_. Others
explain it as the creating or all-pervading. Others, again, derive it
from _od_, possession, and in early Christian times there was a
distinction between _God_ (mas.) and the neuter _god_, an idol. It is
equally doubtful whether this divine word be the origin of the
adjective, _guth_, _gut_, _cuot_, _gode_. Whether they are only cognate,
or whether they are absolutely alien, and the adjective be related to
the Greek ἀγαθός—wherever they come from, the names derived from either
God or good are so much alike, as to be inextricably mixed, so that they
must be treated of together.
The North is the great region of these names; but they are not very easy
to distinguish from the very large class beginning with _gund_, war, as
in pronunciation, and latterly in spelling, the distinctive letters, _n_
and _u_, get confounded or dropped.
It is probable, however, that among those from _Gud_ we may place
_Gudhr_, which was owned by one of the Valkyrier, the battle maids of
northern belief, and must, with her, have meant the brave, or the
goddess; Guda was known in Scandinavia; and Germany used the name, till
it was translated into Bona or Bonne, and thus passed away.
In the northern version of the _Nibelungen_, the second heroine is
Gudruna. The last syllable means wisdom, or counsel; it is the same as
_rune_, the old northern writing, and alludes to the wisdom that Odin
won at so dear a rate. Gudruna may then be translated divine wisdom, a
name well suited to the inspired priestesses, so highly regarded by the
Teutons. It was very common in the North; eighteen ladies so called
appear in the Icelandic _Landnama_; and it was so universal there, that
Johann and Gudruna there stand for man and woman, like our _N._ or _M._
In Norway, likewise, Gudruna is common; and, near Trondjem, is
contracted into Guru; about Bergen, into Gern or Gero. High German
tongues rendered it Kutrun.
The _Landnama-bok_, which gives all the pedigrees of the free
inhabitants of Iceland for about four hundred years, namely, from the
migration to the twelfth century, gives us Gudbrand, divine staff, now
commonly called Gulbrand; Gudbiorg, divine protection; Gudiskalkr, God’s
servant, or scholar, which is the very same as Godeskalk, the name
assumed by the first Christian prince of the Wends of Mecklenburg, who
was martyred by his heathen subjects, and thus rendered Gottschalk a
German Christian name; in Illyrian, Gocalak; and known even in Italy as
Godiscalco, just like Gildas or Theodoulos. Gudleif is feminine,
Gudleifr masculine, for a divine relic; and this last coming to England
with the Danes, turned into a surname as Gulleiv, then shortened into
Gulley, and lengthened into Gulliver—a veritable though quaint surname
for the Lemuel Gulliver whom Swift conducts through Laputa and
Brobdignag, with coolness worthy of northern forefathers.
Gudleik, divine service, is, perhaps, repeated by our St. Guthlac; but
both these may come from _gund_. Gudmund contracts into Gulmund, divine
protection. Five ladies called Gudny appear, which latter termination is
a common feminine form, and comes from the same word as our _new_. If an
adjective, it would mean young and pretty; if a noun, it stands for the
new moon, a very graceful name for a woman. Guni is the contraction used
in the North.
Gudfinn and Gudfinna must be reminiscences of Finn, whom we shall often
meet in the North. Gudrid and Gudridur mean the divine shock or passion,
from the word _hrid_ or _hrith_, one that is constantly to be met with
as a termination in northern names, and which has sometimes been taken
for the same as _frid_, with the aspirate instead of the _f_. Guri is
the contraction.
Gudveig’s latter syllable would naturally connect itself with the _wig_,
war, that is found in all the Gothic tongues; but Professor Munch
translates it as liquid—divine liquor—the same meaning as Gudlaug and
the masculine Gudlaugr; _laug_, from _la_, liquor, or the sea. Divine
sea, would be a noble meaning for the Gulla or Gollaa to which Gudlaug
is commonly reduced in Norway.
Gudvar is divine prudence or caution, the last part being our word
_ware_; in fact, every combination of the more dignified words was used
with this prefix in the North, and it was probably the Danes who
introduced this commencement into England, for we do not find such in
pedigrees before the great irruption in Ethelred I.’s time.
In spite of the romantic story of Earl Godwine’s rise into honour from
acting as a guide to a Danish chief, it is certain that he was of an
honourable family, of Danish connection, and thus he probably obtained
his name, which would mean God’s beloved, and thus translate Theophilos.
Few are recorded in history as bearing the same; but there must have
been some to transmit the frequent surname of Godwin and Goodwin, the
latter connected to our minds with the Goodwin Sands, which were really
once the estate of the ambitious earl. Godin is the remains of the same
in French. It is found at Cambrai, in 1065, belonging to the “Echanson
d'Ostrevant.” The old French word _godeau_ meant a cup, and, as Godin
soon became a surname of a family which carried a cup in their arms,
there might have been a double allusion to the office of the ancestor
and to the sound of the name. Godine and Godinette were also in use
there, but were considered as feminines to Goderic—a very old word,
which, strange to say, was, at Cambrai, equivalent to _fainéant_, or
‘ne’er do weel,’ it must be supposed in allusion to some particularly
discreditable Goderic, as everywhere else it signifies divine ruler. Our
own St. Goderic was an Anglo-Saxon abbot, and the name, which means
divine rule, grew so common among the English, that the Norman nobles
called Henry I. and his Queen, Godric and Godiva, in derision of the
lady’s English blood. Goderic does, indeed, swarm in Domesday Book, and
has left the surname Goodrich.
“The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl who ruled
At Coventry,”
really existed, and was probably Godgifu, the gift of God, like
Dorothea, as _ive_ or _eva_ was the Norman rendering of _gifu_. Her
namesakes are in multitudes in Domesday, and, in 1070, one lived in
Terouenne, a pious lady, tormented, and at last murdered, by her
husband, on which account she was canonized as St. Godeleva.