patriarchal tradition, assigning to each of the leading peoples of
Europe an ancestor who had left them the heritage of his name. This one
fact, to my mind, removes all suspicion of the genuineness of these
passages of Nennius, which have been sometimes regarded as
interpolations. With Geoffrey not only is the story greatly amplified,
but it is detached from its relations, and is no longer part of what may
fairly be called one organic whole. Nennius, therefore, gives us an
earlier form of the myth than Geoffrey. I think, too, that the essential
distinctions of the two accounts render it clear that the ancient
authorities of Nennius and Geoffrey are not identical, from which we may
infer that the original tradition is of far older date than either of
these early recorders.
But we may go still further. Whether the legend of Brutus is still
extant in an Armoric form, I am not aware, but it appears in Welsh MSS.
of an early date; the “Brut Tysilio” and the “Brut Gr. ab Arthur” being
important. It has been questioned whether, in effect, these are not
translations of Geoffrey; but there seems no more reason for assuming
this than for disbelieving the direct statement of Geoffrey himself,
that he obtained his materials from a Breton source. Bretons, Welsh, and
Cornish are not only kindred in blood and tongue, but, up to the time
when the continuity of their later national or tribal life was rudely
shattered, had a common history and tradition, which became the general
heritage. If the story of Brutus has any relation to the early career of
the British folk, we should expect to discover traces of the legend
wherever the Britons found their way. If this suggestion be correct, if
Geoffrey drew from Armoric sources, and if the “Brut Tysilio,” which is
generally regarded as the oldest of the Welsh chronicles, represents an
independent stream, the myth must be dated back far beyond even Nennius,
as the common property of the Western Britons, ere, in the early part of
the seventh century, the successes of the Saxons hemmed one section into
Wales, another into Cornwall, and drove a third portion into exile with
their kindred in Armorica. There is, consequently, good reason to
believe that the tradition is as old as any other portion of our
earliest recorded history or quasi-history, and covers, at least, the
whole of our historical period.
The narrative of Geoffrey does not give the myth in quite its fullest
shape. For that we have to turn to local sources. Tradition has long
connected the landing of Brutus with the good town of Totnes; the combat
between Corinæus and Goemagot with Plymouth Hoe. Like the bricks in the
chimney called in to witness to the noble ancestry of Cade, has not
Totnes its “Brutus stone”? And did not Plymouth have its “Goemagot”?
The whole history of the “Brutus stone” appears to be traditional, if
not recent. My friend, Mr. Edward Windeatt, informs me that it is not
mentioned anywhere in the records of the ancient borough of Totnes. I
fail to find any trace of it in the pages of our local chroniclers,
beyond the statement of Prince (_Worthies_) that “there is yet remaining
towards the lower end of the town of Totnes a certain rock called
Brute’s Stone, which tradition here more pleasantly than positively says
is that on which Brute first set his foot when he came ashore.” The good
people of Totnes, so it is said, have had it handed down to them by
their fathers from a time beyond the memory of man, that Brutus, when he
sailed up the Dart, which must consequently have been a river of notable
pretensions, stepped ashore upon this stone, and exclaimed, with regal
facility of evil rhyme:—
“Here I stand, and here I rest,
And this place shall be called Totnes!”
Why the name should be appropriate to the circumstances, we might vainly
strive to guess, did not Westcote and Risdon inform us that it was
intended to represent _Tout à l’aise_! We need not be ashamed of
adopting their incredulity, and of doubting with them whether Brutus
spoke such good French, or, indeed, whether French was then spoken at
all.
The stone itself affords no aid. All mystery departed when it was
recently lifted in the course of pavemental repairs, and found to be a
boulder of no great dimensions, with a very modern-looking bone lying
below. However, it is the “Brutus stone,” and I dare say will long be
the object of a certain amount of popular faith.[2]
-----
Footnote 2:
An old inhabitant of Totnes, named John Newland, states that he and
his father removed this stone from a well which they were digging
about sixty years ago, and deposited it in its present position. The
stone is precisely such a boulder as occurs in large numbers in the
deposit left by the Dart on the further margin of the alluvial flat or
“strath” at Totnes, and which is cut through by the tramroad to the
quay, near the railway station. Popular opinion is in favour of the
authenticity of the stone, but it can hardly have been the “rock”
referred to by Prince, already cited, “towards the lower end of the
town”; and for my own part, I am inclined to regard it as the “modern
antique” Newland’s account would make it, to which the old tradition
has been transferred. Moreover, there is yet current a local tradition
that Brutus landed at Warland. If this is not held to dispose of the
present “Brutus stone,” it certainly indicates an important divergence
of authorities.
-----
But, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth himself, Totnes town could not
have been intended by him as the scene of the landing of Brutus. It was
when Brutus was “holding a solemn festival to the gods, in the port
where they had at first landed,” that he and his followers were attacked
by Goemagot and his party. There it was that Goemagot and Corinæus had
that famous wrestling bout, which ended in Corinæus running with his
gigantic foe to the next shore, and throwing him off a rock into the
sea. There is no sea at Totnes, no tall craggy cliff; and for Corinæus
to have run with his burden from Totnes to the nearest point of Start or
Tor Bay would have been a feat worthy even of a Hercules.
We are not surprised to find, therefore, that Totnes has her
rivals—Dover, set up by the Kentish folk, and Plymouth,[3] each claiming
to be the scene of the combat between Corinæus and Goemagot, and
claiming, therefore, incidentally, also to be the port in which Brutus
landed. I do not know that we can trace either tradition very far into
antiquity. They do not occur in the chronicles, where, indeed, the very
name of Plymouth is unknown. The earliest reference to that locality has
been generally regarded as the Saxon Tamarworth. I am not at all sure,
however, that Plymouth is not intended by Geoffrey’s “Hamo’s Port,”
which he assumes to be Southampton. Geoffrey, indeed, says that
Southampton obtained the “ham” in its name from a crafty Roman named
Hamo, killed there by Arviragus; but if the identification is no better
than the etymology, we may dismiss it altogether. On the other hand, the
name of the estuary of the Tamar is still the Hamoaze—a curious
coincidence, if it goes no further. There is nothing in the story of
Hamo itself to indicate Southampton or preclude Plymouth; only a few
references to Hamo’s Port occur in Geoffrey. One of these, where Belinas
is described as making a highway “over the breadth of the kingdom” from
Menevia to Hamo’s Port, may rather seem to point to Southampton; but
there is no positive identification, even if we assume the story to be
true. Again, “Maximian the senator,” when invited into Britain by
Caradoc, Duke of Cornwall, to be King of Britain, lands at Hamo’s Port;
and here the inference would rather be that it was on Cornish territory.
And so when Hoel sent 15,000 Armoricans to the help of Arthur, it was at
Hamo’s Port they landed. It was from Hamo’s Port that Arthur is said to
have set sail on his expedition against the Romans—a fabulous story,
indeed, but still helping to indicate the commodiousness and importance
of the harbour intended. It was at Hamo’s Port that Brian, nephew of
Cadwalla, landed on his mission to kill the magician of Edwin the King,
who dwelt at York, lest this magician might inform Edwin of Cadwalla’s
coming to the relief of the British. After he had killed Pellitus, Brian
called the Britons together at Exeter; and it would be fair to infer
that the place where he landed was likely to be one where the Britons
had some strength. Here, again, whatever we may make of the history, it
is Hamo’s Port that is the fitting centre of national life; and it is
the Hamoaze that best suits the reference.
-----
Footnote 3:
Bridport also, on the ground of its etymology, Brute-port (!).
-----
This legend of Brute the Trojan was firmly believed in, and associated
with these Western shores, by the leading intellects of the Elizabethan
day. Spenser refers to it in his:—
That well can witness yet unto this day
The Western Hogh besprinkled with the Gore
Of mighty Goemot.
Drayton verifies the legend in his _Polyolbion_, and tells us how—
Upon that loftie place at Plimmouth, call’d the Hoe,
Those mightie Wrastlers met;
and how that Gogmagog was by Corin—
Pitcht head-long from the hill; as when a man doth throw
An Axtree that with sleight deliurd from the Foe
Roots up the yeelding earth, so that his violent fall,
Strooke Neptune with such strength, as shouldred him withall;
That where the monstrous waues like mountaines late did stand,
They leapt out of the place, and left the bared sand
To gaze vpon wide heauen.
And this article of faith had then long been popular. Carew, in his
_Survey of Cornwall_, says: “Moreover, vpon the Hawe at Plymmouth, there
is cut out in ground the pourtrayture of two men, the one bigger, the
one lesser, with clubbes in their hands (whom they terme Gogmagog), and
(as I have learned) it is renewed by order of the Townesmen when cause
requireth, which should inferre the same to be a monument of some
moment.” Westcote, writing some half a century later, states of the
Hoe—“in the side whereof is cut the portraiture of two men of the
largest volume, yet the one surpassing the other every way; these they
name to be Corinæus and Gogmagog.” And there these figures remained
until the Citadel was built in 1671—a remarkable witness of the local
belief that Plymouth had played a prominent part in the affairs of
Brutus and his fellows.
We know when these figures ceased to be. Can we form any idea as to when
they originated? Their earliest extant mention occurs in the Receiver’s
Accounts of the borough of Plymouth, under date 1494–5:—
It. paid to Cotewyll for y^e renewying of y^e pyctur of Gogmagog a pon
y^e howe. vij^{d.}
Previous to this date there only remain complete accounts of two
years—those for 1493–4 and those for 1486—with a few fragmentary
entries; and as the Gogmagog did not come to be “renewed” every year,
there are no conclusions to be drawn from the absence of earlier
notices. The next entry is in 1500–1, when 8_d._ was paid for “makying
clene of gogmagog.” In 1514–15, John Lucas, sergeant, had the like sum
for “cuttyng of Gogmagog”; and in the following year we read of its “new
dyggyng.” In 1526–7, the entry runs: “Itm p^{d.} for Clensying and
ryddyng of gogmagog a pon ye howe viij^{d.}”; and about this time it was
renewed almost yearly. In 1541–2, the entry is: “Itm p^{d.} to William
Hawkyns, baker (evidently to distinguish him from William Hawkyns,
father of Sir John), for cuttynge of Gogmagog the pycture of the Gyaunt
at hawe viij.” In 1566–7, the price had gone up to twenty pence.
Probably this ancient monument had been neglected for some years before
the last vestiges disappeared in 1671. It is not likely to have been
renewed under the Commonwealth, nor do I think it was revived under the
Restoration. It is noteworthy that the official entries apparently refer
to one figure only, though we know from Carew and Westcote that there
were two. Fourpence a day was about an average wage for labourers at
Plymouth in the opening years of the sixteenth century, so that the
“pyctur” probably took about two days to cleanse, and therefore must,
indeed, have been of gigantic dimensions.
Some years ago I threw out the suggestion that as Geoffrey made no
allusion to these figures, “it must be assumed either that he did not
know of their existence, or that they did not then exist.” Believing the
latter the more reasonable conclusion, I suggested, further, “that they
were first cut in the latter half of the twelfth century, soon after
Geoffrey’s chronicle became current, or not long subsequently; unless,
as is possible, they had a different origin, and were associated with
the wrestling story in later days.” Finally, I put forward the
hypothesis, “that the legend, in the first place, did refer to something
that occurred in the fifth century at or near the Hoe, and with which
the Armorican allies, whom Ambrosius called to his aid about the year
438, were associated; that the Armoricans, on their return to Brittany,
between the fifth and twelfth centuries, under the mingled influence of
half-understood classical history and of religious sentiment working
through the romantic mind, it developed into the full-blown myth of
Brutus the Trojan; and that when it returned to England, and was made
known under the auspices of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Plymouthians of
that day, to perpetuate the memory of what they undoubtedly believed to
be sterling fact, cut the figures of the two champions on the greensward
of the Hoe.”
I am not inclined now to adopt this hypothesis so broadly as it was then
suggested. Probably the story did take shape in Brittany in some such
fashion, but I now believe we must look far beyond the fifth century for
its origin. There seems, however, little reason to doubt that the
“Brutus stone” of Totnes and the Gogmagog of Plymouth originated, like
the Gog and Magog of London City, in the popularity of Geoffrey’s book.
The name, of course, linked Totnes with the legend, but we have
absolutely no knowledge whatever of the reason why Plymouth (any more
than Dover) came into the story. Dover, indeed, has no case
what-ever—not even a “Gogmagog.”
What, then, are the claims of Totnes?
Now, as to Totnes, it is important, in the first place, to observe that
in all the early works, Totnes is generally alluded to as the name of a
district, and not of a town. For example, in the story of Brutus, as
given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, his hero “set sail with a fair wind
towards the promised island, and arrived on the coast of Totnes.”
Nennius does not mention any place of debarkation. Geoffrey makes
Vespasian arrive at the shore of Totnes, and, in quoting Merlin’s
prophecy to Vortigern concerning his own fate, says of the threatened
invasion of Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon, “to-morrow they will
be on the shore of Totnes.” Later in the same chronicle, the Saxons whom
Arthur had allowed to depart “tacked about again towards Britain, and
went on shore at Totnes.” Though the town seems rather to be indicated
here, it is not necessarily so.
However, it is certain that we are to understand the landing to have
taken place somewhere upon the south coast, for the invaders made an
“utter devastation of the country as far as the Severn sea.” Constantine
is said to have landed at the port of Totnes, which again may mean a
place so called, or the principal harbour of a district of that name. It
is clear, then, all things considered, that we are not dealing in these
older chronicles with the present Totnes, great as is its antiquity,
though the “Brut Tysilio” does go so far as to specify the place of
Constantine’s landing as “Totnais in Loegria.”
Now, Mr. T. Kerslake, of Bristol, who has applied himself with singular
acumen to the unravelling of sundry knotty points of our ancient
history, is inclined to hold that the Totnes of the chronicles was a
distinct place, and he has pointed out that the Welsh chronicles contain
“early forms of the names of this favourite British port that has got to
be thus confounded with Totnes.” In the “Brut Tysilio,” for example, the
place of the landing of Brutus is called “Talnas” (at least, this is the
printed form given in the Myvyvian Archæology); “Brut Gr. ab. Arthur”
reads “Totonys”; and in a third, the “Hafod Chronicle,” we have
“Twtneis.” Mr. Kerslake, therefore, treats “Talnas” as the earliest form
of the word, and thereon builds the hypothesis that “the name given by
the British writers to their port would resolve itself into ‘’t-aln-as’
and if Christchurch Haven should be conceded to be Ptolemy’s estuary of
Alaunus, it would also be the port called by the Britons ‘Aln’ or
‘’t-Aln-as,’ from which Vespasian advanced up to Alauna Sylva, or Caer
Pensauelcoit—the City in the Head of the High Wood.”
There can be little doubt, I think, that Mr. Kerslake is right in
regarding Penselwood as the site of Caer Pensauelcoit, given as Exeter
by Geoffrey of Monmouth, not apparently on the authority of his British
original, but, as in other cases, for his own gloss; and thenceforward
cherished most fondly as one of the worthiest memories of the
“ever-faithful” city by its chief men and antiquaries. If it was at
Totnes town, or in Torbay, into which some critics have expanded the
idea of the “Totonesium littus,” that Vespasian landed immediately
before his siege of “Kairpen-Huelgoit,” then there is considerable force
in Geoffrey’s comment, “quæ Exonia vocatur.” If Penselwood, on the
borders of Somerset, Dorset, and Wilts, were this “Primæval British
Metropolis,” then we must give up the idea that Vespasian landed at
Totnes town, or anywhere in its vicinity. However, it by no means
follows that there was such a place as Totnes in the Talnas sense, as
localised by Mr. Kerslake. Talnas is the single exception, so far as I
am aware, to an otherwise general concord of agreement in favour of
Totnes, at a date when Totnes town had not yet risen into such
prominence as to justify or explain its appropriation of this tradition.
The general sense of the language used when Totnes and the Totnes shore
are mentioned, lead me, as I have already said, to the conclusion that
it was rather the name of a district than of a town or port; and it was
evidently understood in this sense by Higden, who in his Chronicle
quotes the length of Britain as 800 miles,“a totonesie litore,” rendered
by Trevisa, “frome the clyf of Totonesse,” which I take to be only
another form of expression for the Land’s End.
My suggestion is that what we may call the Older Totnes is really the
ancient name for the south-western promontory of England, and perhaps
may once have been a name for Britain itself, in which case we can
understand somewhat of the motive which led early etymologists to derive
Britain from Brute or Brutus. The myth may be so far true that an elder
name was supplanted by that which has survived, and that it lingered
latest in this western promontory, perhaps as a name for the district
occupied by the Kornu-British kingdom in its more extended form. Whether
the modern Totnes is nominally the successor of the ancient title, the
narrow area into which this vestige of far antiquity had shrunk, may be
doubtful; for the name is as capable of Teutonic derivation as of
Keltic. In my _Notes on the Historical Connections of Devonshire
Place-names_, I pointed out that a Saxon derivation that “would fit
Totnes town quite as well as any other would be from ‘Tot,’ an
‘enclosure,’ and ‘ey,’ an ‘island’—Totaneys, allied to Tottenham, and
associated with the island by the bridge, one of the Dart’s most notable
features.” For the original Totnes I suggested: “Perhaps instead of
‘ness,’ a ‘headland’ (Scandinavian), we should read ‘enys,’ an ‘island,’
and Tot may be equivalent to the Dod or Dodi, which we have in the Dod
of the well-known Cornish headland, the Dodman.... Then we may read
Toteneys the ‘projecting or prominent island’; or, if ‘Dod’ is read as
‘rocky,’ the ‘rocky island.’” I am satisfied that it is somewhere in
this direction we have to look for the origin of the name, which would
seem, however, to be corrupted from its earliest form when we first
light upon it, and which may, indeed, be a relic of the giant race whom
the followers of Brutus extirpated.
The last sentence may sound somewhat strange, but my enquiries into this
curious story have led me to attach more importance to it than at first
sight it seemed to deserve. Stripped of the dress in which it was decked
out by Geoffrey, improving on his predecessors; deprived of its false
lustre of classicism; cleared from the religious associations of a later
day—this myth of Brutus the Trojan loses its personality, but becomes
the traditionary record of the earliest invasion of this land by an
historic people, who, in their assumed superiority, dubbed the less
cultivated possessors of the soil whose rights they invaded “giants,”
and extirpated them as speedily as they knew how.
Moreover, though Totnes town has to surrender its mythical hero, it
preserves a record of an elder name for this England of ours than either
the Britain of the later Kelts or the Albion of the Romans; and if that
name be indeed a survival from these early times, makes certain what the
general aspect of the story renders highly probable—that it was into
this corner of Britain the pre-Keltic or Iberic inhabitants of our
island first entered, and that it was here their rude predecessors—who
to the diminutive Turanians might indeed appear as “giants”—made their
final stand, just as in later days the non-Aryan invaders had to fly
before the Kelt, and the Kelt in turn before the Saxon, until the
corners of the island became the refuge not only of a gallant, but of a
mingled race, with one language, one faith, and a common tradition.
Thus much, indeed, I think we may safely infer from the local
associations of the story, supported as that inference is by the yet
current traditions of the giant enemies of the Cornish folk.
THE ROYAL COURTENAYS.
BY H. M. IMBERT-TERRY, F.R.L.S.
When in that incomparable romance, _Les Trois Mousquetaires_, the source
and parent of every historical novel of to-day, the author, Alexandre
Dumas, wished to impute to the leader of his trinity of heroes the
possession of a high and exalted chivalry, he called him Athos.
Probably the intention was to institute a comparison between the lofty
attributes of the character and the altitude of the celebrated Greek
mountain. Possibly, however, the talented Frenchman may have bestowed
this title on the chief personage of his story because he, the author,
conceived that no more fitting designation could be given to the
embodiment of distinguished and aristocratic qualities than the actual
name borne by the founder of one of the most illustrious families that
has adorned the brilliant roll of French nobility, has given Emperors to
the East, and subsequently established in this land of Devon a noble
house which is inseparably connected with the traditions and history of
the county.
In the continuation of Aimon’s _History of France_, an ancient chronicle
of the thirteenth century, it is stated that the Châtelain of Chateau
Renard had a son, named Athos, who rendered himself famous by his deeds
of daring, and, in the reign of King Robert of France—A.D.
1020—fortified the town of Courtenay.
[Illustration:
Okehampton Castle, 1734.</sc>
(_From an Engraving by S. and N. Buck_)
]
Transcription: _This Castle, was built by Baldwin de Bronys, & was at
first call’d Ochementon; it descended to Rich. de Rivers or Riparus, &
from him to his Sister Adeliza, who marrying one of the Courtenays, it
came into that Noble family, & so continued til K.E.IV. seized it, for
their adherence to the Hous^e of Lancaster. K.H. VII. restord it to the
Courtenays, but K.H.VIII. again alienated it & dismantled the Castle &
Park, yet Ed. Courtenay in Q. Marys Reign obtain’d a Restoration, but he
dying without Issue Male, it came by a female into the Mohuns Barons of
Mohun & Oakhampton, & by the like failure of y^e male it came by
marriage to Christopher Harris of Heynes Esq^r._
_S. & N. Buck, delinm et Sculp. 1734._