Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
_Nao, for Naw, for Ship_ (Vol. iv., pp. 28. 214.).--I am obliged to
GOMER for his reference to Davies. In the cited passages from Taliesin
and Meigant, _heb naw_ means without being able to swim. The word _nawv_
drops its final letter in order to furnish the rhyme. That appears, not
only from the rejection of the word by all lexicographers, but from one
of the manuscripts of Meigant, which actually writes it _nawv_. I esteem
Davies's translation to be Daviesian.
By way of a gentle pull at the torques, I will observe, that I am not in
the habit of proving that people "did _not_ possess" a thing, but of
inquiring for the evidence that they did. And when I find that tattooed
and nearly naked people used coracles, and do not find that they used
anything grander, I am led to suspect they did not.
My answer to the Query, whether it be probable that British warriors
went over to Gaul in coracles is, "Yes, highly so." Rude canoes of
various sorts convey the expeditions of savage islanders in all seas.
And the coracle rendered the Scots of Erin formidable to the Roman
shores of Gaul and Britain. I do not see that the Dorsetshire folk being
"water-dwellers" (if so be they were such) proved them to have used
proper ships, any more than their being "water-drinkers" would prove
them to have used glasses or silver tankards.
No doubt the name [Greek: naus] is of the remotest heroic antiquity, and
the first osier bark covered with hides, or even the first excavated
alder trunk, may have been so termed; in connexion with the verbal form
_nao_, contract. _no_, _nas_, pret. _navi_, to float or swim. But to
"advance that opinion" as to Britain, because two revolted Roman
subjects in this province used the word in the sixth and seventh
centuries after Christ, would be late and tardy proof of the fact; even
supposing that the two bards in question had made use of such a noun,
which I dispute.