CHAPTER I.

Section I.—The Keltic Race.

We now pass to a class of names whose associations belong almost entirely to the modern world, yet whose history is far more obscure than that of those on which we have previously dwelt.

From the Hebrew, the European family have derived their religion; from the Greek, their ideas; from the Roman, their laws; from the Teuton, their blood and their energy; but from the Kelt they have taken little but their fanciful romance. In only one country has the Kelt been dominant, and then with a Latinized speech, and a Teutonic name, testifying to the large modifications that he must have undergone.

Among the rugged moors and cliffs which fence Western Europe from the Atlantic waves, he did indeed preserve his freedom, but without amalgamation with other nations; and in lands where he fell under subjection, he was so lost among the conquerors as to be untraceable in language or feature, and with the exception of the Gaul, has bequeathed nothing of his character to the fused race upon his soil.

We trace the Hebrew nation with certainty from its majestic source; the Greek shines on us in a dazzling sunrise of brilliant myth; the Roman, in a grave, stern dawn of characteristic legend; but of the earlier progress of the wild, impulsive Kelt we have but the faintest indications.

Much as he loved his forefathers, keen as was his delight in celebrating the glories of his race, oral tradition contented him, and very strong was the pressure from the neighbouring nations before his bards recorded anything in writing, even the long genealogies hitherto preserved in each man’s accumulated names. The beauty of their legends did indeed recommend them to the general store-house of European fancy, but though the spirit may be Keltic, the body through which it comes is almost always Teutonic.

The Keltic nations used languages which showed that they came from the Indo-European root, and which are still spoken in the provinces where they remain. They have no really ancient literature, and were left at the mercy of wild tongues, so that their losses have been very great, and the divergence of dialects considerable.

The great and distinguishing feature of the entire class is their peculiar inflections, which, among other puzzling features, insert an aspirate after the primary consonant, so as entirely to change its sound, as for instance in an oblique case, mor, great, would become mhor, and be pronounced vor, to the eternal confusion of people of other nations, who, however the vowel or the end of a word might alter, always trusted to know it by the main syllable. A large number of guttural sounds distinguished these languages, and some of these were annihilated by the ensuing aspiration; but when spelling began, the corpses of the two internecine letters were still left in the middle of the word, to cumber the writer and puzzle the reader, so that the very enunciation of a written sentence requires a knowledge of grammar.

The vowels likewise sometimes change in the body of the word when it becomes plural, and the identification of plurals and of cases with their parent word is so difficult that few persons ever succeed in the study of Keltic, except those who have learnt it from their mothers or nurses, and even they are not always agreed how to write it grammatically.

The Keltic splits into two chief branches, so different that Cæsar himself remarked that the Gauls and Cimbrians did not use the same language. For the sake of convenience these two branches are called by philologists the Gaelic and the Cymric. The first is the stock which has since divided into the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Irish of Ireland, and the Manx of the little intermediate isle. In fact they are nearly one; old Gaelic and old Irish are extremely alike when they can be found written, and though they have since diverged, the general rules continue to be the same; and some of the chief differences may be owing to the fact, that while the Highlanders have adopted the Roman alphabet, the native Irish still adhere to the Anglo-Saxon.

The Cymric is still spoken in Wales and Brittany, and only died out a century ago in Cornwall. Welsh and Breton agree in so many points that the natives of either country are said to be able to understand one another, though they would be entirely unintelligible to an Irishman or Highlander. Indeed it may be doubted whether Greek and Latin are not more nearly akin than the two shoots of the Keltic tree. One great difference is that the p of the Kymric always becomes k or c hard in the Gadhaelic: thus plant or children in Wales, are the well-known Gaelic clan; Paisg, Easter, is Cisg; pen, a head, is caen; and the Cornish word Pentyr, the head of the land, or promontory, is the same as the Scottish Cantyre.^[94]

The Gauls had been completely Romanized in the South before they heard of Christianity. They gave up Greek and Roman idols rather than Druidism when they listened to the Gospel. It is thought that the first seeds were sown by St. Paul, and that afterwards the Eastern Church at Ephesus, under St. John, had much communication with them. Britain probably owed her first gleams of light to the imprisonment of Caractacus and his family at Rome; but however this might be, Gaul furnished hosts of martyrs in the persecution, and Britain did her part in testifying to the truth. Many districts long remained unconverted, however, in both countries. St. Martin is said to have completed the conversion of Gaul in the end of the third century, and in Wales St. Germain still found a host to baptize in the fifth century. Indeed, the predominance of heathen remains over Christian, have made antiquaries very doubtful whether Britain could have been by any means universally converted at the time of the fall of the Roman empire. It had, however, sent forth one great missionary, namely, St. Patrick, from the northern province of Valentia. He found a feeble Church in Ireland, but so enlarged its borders and won all hearts, that from his time that island was Christian in name, and filled with such clusters of hermitages and convents as to win its title of the Isle of Saints.

This Keltic Church, with its eastern traditions, was the special missionary Church of these little heeded times. From Ireland, St. Columba went forth to Iona, whence he and his disciples gradually converted the Picts; and though St. Gregory’s mission laid the foundations of the polity of the Anglo-Saxon Church in Britain, there were the Scottish Aidan, the Welsh Chad, and Gallic Birinus doing the work quietly, in which the Roman monks had been less successful. From Ireland again, St. Columbanus, St. Gall, and many others set forth to complete the work of conversion in France and Switzerland, and many churches and convents regard as their founders and patrons, obscure Irish hermits forgotten in their own country. These have been the chief diffusers of Keltic names, being called after some hereditary native word, which their saintliness was to raise to high honour.^[95]

Section III.—Keltic Nomenclature.

The Kelts were highly poetical and romantic in their nomenclature. In general their names were descriptive; many referred to complexion, and many more described either masculine courage or feminine grace and sweetness. But, unfortunately, the language is so uncertain, and its commentators are so much at war, that in dealing with these, after the well-criticized ancient tongues, is like passing from firm ground to a quaking bog, and in many cases there is but a choice of conjectures to deal with.

The names to be examined are of various kinds. First, the historical ones that have come through Latin writers, terribly disguised, but the owners of them certain to have existed. These are usually more Cymric than Gaelic, and Welsh and Breton writers find explanations for them. A few truly mythological ones will be considered with these, and placed according to the order—if order it can be called—assigned to their supposed owners in the pedigree of Brut, in which England used to believe on the word of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Welsh on that of their native chronicle of Brut. Then follow a most controverted collection, chiefly of the two Gaelic nations. They were the property of a set of heroes called the Feen, who are the great ancestry of the chiefs of the Scottish race in both islands, and who are said to have performed fabulous exploits at some distant period, which gains some sort of date from the poem representing Ossian, the last survivor of the band, as extremely miserable under the teaching of St. Patrick. The fact was probably that the floating myths of the Gael attached themselves to some real adventurous band, and the date is no more to be depended on than those of Geoffrey of Monmouth; but it gives a point by which to arrange the names still in great part surviving both in Ireland and Scotland, though often confused with those imported from other languages.

After this follows the cycle of names made popular by the romances of King Arthur’s court, which naturally find their place at the time of the fall of the Roman power in England. These, as far as they can be understood or interpreted at all, are Cymric, and some have become tolerably well known throughout Europe.

The different classes connected with one or other of these will nearly dispose of all the Keltic names worth notice. The remaining will chiefly belong to the saints, in which Wales, Brittany, and Ireland were particularly prolific. The odd thing is that all the Welsh saints were in some way or other of royal birth, so that the royalty of Wales must have been peculiarly pious. Brittany, likewise, had sundry hermits; and Ireland deserved its title of the Isle of Saints, though, as will be seen, some of them were of a strangely Irish order, and regarded as strong cursing powers.

The Gaelic race had the remarkable custom of calling their children the servant, the disciple, or the votaress of the patron saint, and it is not till recent times that the prefixes Giolla, Maol, and Cailleach have been entirely dropped, and their traces are often remaining in appellations in Ireland and Scotland.

The name was entirely personal, not hereditary; but the pride of ancestry caused the father’s, grandfather’s, forefather’s names, to the remotest generation, to be heaped upon one head, connected in Welsh by Mab, or, as it was contracted, Ap.

The Welsh, about the fifteenth century, found these pedigree names unmanageable in contact with ordinary society, and contented themselves each with one ancestral surname for good. Some incorporated their Ap, as Pryce, Ap Rhys, Pugh, or Ap Hugh; some, in English fashion, adding the possessive s to the end of the father’s name, like the hosts of Joneses and Williamses; others took some favourite name from the roll of ancestry, or called themselves after their estates.

In Gaelic the word Mac, the son, or O, or ua, the grandson, connected the person with the ancestor whose name was chosen.

The Keltic taste in names was of the grand order, generally in many syllables, and lofty in sense and sound, much in the style of the Red Indian. Thus we find Brithomar, the great Briton; Bathanat, son of the boar; Louarn, the fox; Carvilius, friend of power, among the Kymric nations of England and the Continent: and in less complimentary style, Mandubrath, man of black treason. This man of black treason was, in Britain, Avarddwy Bras, also called one of the three disgraceful men of Britain. It is said that Caswallon had murdered Avarddwy’s father, and afterwards set out on what the Triads call one of the three unwise armaments, which weakened the force of the country. The cause is romantically described by the Triads to have been, that his lady-love, Flur, had been carried away by a Prince of Gascony to be presented to Julius Cæsar; moreover, the Mabinogion says, he and his two friends went as far as Rome to recover her, disguised as shoemakers, whence they are called the three bold shoemakers of the Isle of Britain. The aid that he gave the Gauls does, in fact, seem to have attracted the notice of Cæsar, and the black treason was Avarddwy’s invitation to the Romans. He was the father of Aregwydd Voeddog, whose second name, derived from victory, was certainly the same as Boadicea, though her deed identifies her with Cartismandua. Caswallon, or Cassivellaunus, as the Romans called him, is sometimes explained as Cas-gwall-lawn, chief of great hatred, sometimes as lord of the Cassi. The Gaels have many grand men’s names, but, perhaps, have used the most poetry in those of their women. Feithfailge, honeysuckle ringlets; Lassairfhina or Lassarina, flame or blush of the wine; Lassair, or flame, the same in effect as the Italian Fiamma; Alma, all good, a real old Erse name, before the babes of September 1854, were called Alma, after the Crimean river, which probably bore a Keltic name; Bebhirn, or, as Macpherson writes it, Vevina, the sweet woman; Essa, the nurse; Gelges, white swan; Luanmaisi, moon fairness; Ligach, pearly.

Yet thirst had her namesake, Ita; Diédrè was fear; Dorvenn, sullen; Uailsi, pride; Unchi, contention.

All of these, and many besides, have entirely fallen into desuetude, and all the Keltic countries have a practice of adopting names from their neighbours, supposed to answer to their own, but often without the slightest affinity thereto.

Thus Anmcha, courageous, is supposed to be translated by Ambrose; Aneslis is rendered by Stanislaus; Fachtna, is Festus; Baothgalach, or rashly courageous, Boethius.

Corruptions must be permitted to our English tongues and throats, which break down at a guttural, so it is no wonder that Dorchaidha, or patronymic O'Dorchaidhe, should be sometimes turned into D'Arcy, sometimes D'Orsay, and sometimes into Darkey, which really translates the word; and sometimes Darcy; but it is rather hard when we have to read Archibald for Gillespie, and Edward for Diarmaid.^[96]

Section I.—Welsh Mythic Names.

Welsh myths we say advisedly, for whether these were really Druidical myths or not, they have become so much disguised by Welsh bards, down to Christian times, that there is no knowing what was the original framework. Our concern is with the names connected with these traditions.

The primary personages of semi-divine rank in these traditions are Hu Gadarn, or the Mighty, the sun god, and his wife Ceridwen. It is believed that the two sacred islands of Iona and Mona were both originally Ynysgwaw Hu, the island of the worship of Hu. Others, however, say, that Iona was only I-thon, or isle of the waves.

The word Hu is not explained; but it has passed into a name in Wales and Brittany. Old French has the name inflected as Hue, Hues, Huon, and the feminine Huette; and the true Anglicized Welsh form is Hu or Hew, though it is now universally confounded with the Teutonic Hugh, from hugur, thought, with which it may be cognate, and the Welsh patronymic Ap Hu is always spelt Pugh.

The Triads speak of Aed Mawr, or Aedd, as father of Pridain, but he may have been either a title of Hu, or else the god himself. Aodh is, in fact, in sound and sense, closely related to the Greek αίθω (aitho), and our heat is of the same kin.

Dr. Meyer thinks this Aed Mawr of the Triads was the forefather from whom the Ædui mentioned by Cæsar were called, and further derives from him Cæer Aeddon, or Dun Aeddon, Dun Edin, or Edinburgh. Yet, on the other hand, it is a part of our English faith that Auld Reekie is our Northumbrian Edwin’s burgh.

Aed, Aeddon, Aodh, Aedhan, were far more popular names than those derived from Hu. Aeddan is lamented by Aneurin as a British warrior slain among the victims of Henghist’s treachery; and two Aoidhs reigned, the one in Connaught, the other in Scotland, in 570; and to the latter of these, called by Scottish historians Aidan, or Edan, they ascribe the foundation of their capital; but it was at that time in the possession of the Angles, and if called after any Aodh, it must have been after an earlier one. The Irish Aodh is said to have been about to expel the bards, but to have been prevented by the intercession of St. Columb.

At one time Ireland was afflicted with thirteen contemporary Aodhs; and at least two so called reigned in Scotland—Aodhfin, or the white, the Ethfine of historians, and Aoidh, or Eth, the swift-footed. So common was the name among the Irish that one hundred Aodhs and one hundred Aidans or Oédans were killed in the battle of Maghrath. The MacAodhas of Ireland were once many in number; and became MacHugh or Magee; in Scotland, Mackay; or were sometimes translated into Hughson or Hewson. But the most interesting person so called is known to us as Aidan. He visited Wales and Scotland, became a monk of Iona, and then went forth as a missionary to the North of England. He was the friend of the admirable Oswald, free of hand, king of Deira, who used to interpretinterpret his Keltic speech to the Angle population; and his gentle teaching won to the Church multitudes whom the harshness of former missionaries had repelled. He is reckoned as first bishop of Lindisfarn, and has left his name to sundry churches of St. Aidan. Aoidhne, or Eithne, was the Irish feminine once distinguished, but now disused.

Aidan is still a female name among some Welsh families.

Another Irish St. Aeddan, who was bishop of Ferns about the year 632, has a most curious variety of namesakes—some from his baptismal name, others from his pet appellation Móedóg, that is M'Óedóg, namely Ma Otdóg, my little Aodh. This strange custom of prefixing the possessive pronoun, first person singular, to the proper name of a saint was very general. Maodhòg, as it has since become, is still common in Wexford, where the Irish language has disappeared. It is pronounced and written Mogne, and is perpetuated in honour of the Saint of Ferns. Madog, or Madawc, was the usual form in Wales, where it has always been in great favour. Madawc, prince of Powysland, who died in 1158, in great favour with Henry II. The Latin translation of Aidan, Aideus, or Aidanus, has adhered to him in Basse Bretagne, but has there been cut down into Dé, St. Dé being the appellation of a village there, the church of which is dedicated to Mogne, is by Irish Protestants often Anglicized as Aidan, by the Roman Catholics as Moses.

The leek is said to have been used by the Welsh in the worship of Ceridwen, the wife of Hu. Afterwards a story rose that, in one of Cadwallawn’s battles, his Welshmen marked themselves with leeks from a garden hard by, and the story was later transferred to the Welsh troops of the Black Prince in France.

Ced, or Cyridwen, shows no namesakes; but buadh, or budd, victory, furnished for her the epithet of Buddug, or Buddud; and, perhaps, she is the Boundonica mentioned by Dion Cassius as a Keltic goddess. Probably it was either as a victorious omen, or else in honour of her, that the name of Buddug was given to that fierce chieftainess of the Iceni, whose savage vengeance for her wrongs has won for her a very disproportionate fame, as much changed as her name, when we call it Bonduca, or, more usually, Boadicea. It has not met with much repetition, yet we have heard of a family so patriotic as to contain both Caractacus and Boadicea. Buadhach was, however, long a man’s name in Ireland, and Budhic was one of the early Armorican princes.

Gwion, an unlucky dwarf, destroyed by Ceridwen, seems to have left his name behind him, whether it be as M. Pitre Chevalier explains it, esprit, sense, or be connected with the Welsh gwyth, and Cornish gwg, anger.

Aneurin mentions a knight named Gwiawn as having been slain in the battle of Cattraeth; and Gwion is a knight of Arthur’s court, figuring as Sir Guy among the knights of the Round Table, and furnishing Spenser with his Sir Guyon, the hero of the second ‘Book of Courtesie’ in his Faerie Queen.

Guy has since been a favourite name, but it has become so entangled with the Latin Vitus that it is almost impossible to distinguish the Keltic from the Roman name. It appears to have prevailed in France very early as Guy, Guies, Guyon, in the feminine Guiette; and besides the Sicilian infant martyr, Vitus, obtained two patrons, St. Guy, the Poor Man of Anderlecht, a pilgrim to Jerusalem, who died in 1014; and the Italian, St. Guido, abbot of Pomposa, in Ferrara, who died in 1042. Both lived long after their name had become so popular, that it could not have depended upon them. Queen Matilda, in her Bayeux tapestry, labels as Wido, the Count Guy of Ponthieu, who captured Harold on his ill-starred expedition to Normandy, and thus she evidently does not consider him as Vitus.

Guy and Guido were both fairly frequent with us, until ‘Gunpowder Treason’ gave a sinister association to the sound of Guido Fawkes, and the perpetual celebrations of the 5th of November, with the burning of Guy Fawkes in effigy, have given a meaning to the term of Guy, that will probably continue long after the last tar-barrel has flamed and the last cracker exploded over his doom.

Guido and Guidone were the proper Italian forms, much used in the whole Peninsula, and appearing in Ariosto’s poem in the person of Guidon Selvaggio, a rustic, uncivilized knight. From the sound it was long imagined that the names came either from guide or from guidon, a banner or ensign; but there can be no doubt that either the Keltic Gwion or the Latin Vitus was their true origin.

Section II.—Lear and his Daughters.

Geoffrey of Monmouth made the eleventh of his kings, descended from Brute, to be called Leir, and live at Leircester, or Leicester, on the river Sore, somewhere about the time of the prophet Elisha.

He is one of the earliest authorities for the story of Lear and the ungrateful daughters, whom he calls Gonorilla and Regan. He gives the name of Cordeilla to the reserved but faithful daughter who could not pay lip service, but redeemed her father’s kingdom when he was exiled and misused by her flattering sisters. It was a very remarkable conception of character, even thus barely narrated, without the lovely endowments with which we have since learnt to invest the good daughter. The sequel in Geoffrey’s chronicle related, that after his kingdom was restored, old Leir died in peace at Leicester, and was buried by Cordeilla “in a certain vault which she ordered to be made for him under the river Sore, at Leicester, and which had been built originally under the ground to the honour of the god Janus; and here all the workmen of the city, upon the anniversary solemnity of that festival, used to begin their yearly labours.”

He further narrates that Cordeilla was dethroned by her nephews, and committed suicide in despair. To this story adhered both the old ballad-monger and Spenser, in the history studied by Sir Guyon; but Shakespeare loved his sweet Cordelia too well to stain her with self-murder, and, though omitting all allusion to Christianity, made her in all her ways and actions a true Christian, and never perhaps showed more consummate art than in producing so perfect an effect with a person so chary of her words.

Whence did Geoffrey get the story which has produced such fruits?

Lear (gen.), Lir, is the sea. He is also a mythological personage, a god in the elder Irish belief, and father of Mănănnán, the Erse Neptune.

Afterwards, later ballads humanized Lear, and made him the father of Mănănnán, one of the Tuath De Danan, or early conquerors of Ireland, and Lord of the Isle of Man, which is said to be called after him. There is a tradition in Londonderry that his spirit lives in an enchanted castle in the waves of Magilligan, and that his magic ship appears every seventh year. Moreover, the daughters of Mănănnán, granddaughters of Lear, were called Ainè and Aoiffè, and had a desperate quarrel about their husbands' excellence in hunting.

Wales, on its side, shows in the Isle of Anglesea a cromlech, called the tomb of Bronwen, daughter of King Llyr or Leirus. The tomb was opened in 1813, and an ancient urn, once probably containing ashes, was found there. It seems that a somewhat more substantial Llyr lived about the time of the Roman conquest, and was the father of Bronwen, who married the king of Ireland, was ill-treated by him, and received a box on the ear, which was one of the three fatal insults of the Isle of Britain. This lady is very probably the Bronwen of the cromlech; but the conjecture of the Rev. Edward Davies is, that in the story of King Lear, we may have the remains of an ancient myth.

It is certainly remarkable that the notion of Lyr, in connection with turbulent daughters or granddaughters, should be common to both Britain and Ireland. Mr. Davies explains Cordelia to have been originally Creirdyddlydd, the token of the overflowing, also called Creirwy, or the token of the egg. Creir is a token, the sacred article on which a man makes oath, whence it came to mean either a relic or a jewel. Creirdyddlydd might thus be the jewel of the sea, or the token of the flood. At any rate, Creirdyddlydd or Creirwy is a creation of ancient Welsh poetry, once mythical, the daughter of the sea, Llyr or Llud, on which Geoffrey seized for his history. Bronwen, or white bosom, is either another daughter of Lyr, or else Creirdyddlydd under another name, and is supposed to have been the British Proserpine. Both Bronwen and Creirwy are called Gwrvorwyn, man-maid, or virago, and it does not seem impossible that here we see the origin of Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril, as they have been adapted to English pronunciation, the token of the overflowing, the fair bosom, and the virago. Surely these are the daughters of the ocean, rebellious and peaceful. Dynwen, too, is the white wave, the patroness of lovers; and as we shall find by-and-by wave names are remarkably common among the Welsh.

Lear is also called Llwyd, the grey, or the extended, a fitting title for the sea, and which has passed on to form Lloyd, so common as a Welsh Christian and surname, and adopted in England as Floyd.

Creirdyddlydd has due justice done her in the Mabinogion, where we further learn that she remains with her father till the day of doom, and that in the mean time two kings, Gwyn ab Nudd and Gwythir mab Graidiawn, have a battle for her hand on every May-day.

Cordula is set down in Welsh and German calendars on the 22nd of October as one of the 11,000 virgins, her feast following that of St. Ursula. It may be remembered that St. Ursula was said to be Cornish; and that her only recorded companion should bear a Cymric name, is in favour of some shade of foundation for her story. Kordula is in consequence a German name. Kordula was a princess of Lingen in 1473; and Michel and Kordel are two children in German household tradition so constantly falling into mishaps as to have become a proverb for folly.

The Germans fancy Cordula is a diminutive of the Latin cor, a heart; others have wildly made it the feminine of Cordeleo, lion heart, and it has been confused with Delia, the epithet of Diana, from Delos, her birthplace; but Creirdyddlydd is certainly its origin, and remembering that in Welsh d is softened and aspirated by being doubled, is not far from it in sound. Cordelia is hereditary in some Irish families; but is chiefly used for love of Shakespeare’s heroine of filial love.

Bronwen makes her appearance again in the romance of Sir Tristram, under the name of Brengwain, the maid of Yseulte. When the Lady Yseulte was sent from her home in Ireland, under the escort of Tristram, to be married to King Mark, of Cornwall, her mother entrusted a love potion to Brengwain to be given on the wedding night.

Unfortunately, a tempest arose on the voyage, and, in the consequent exhaustion, “Swete Ysonde, the fre, asked Brengwain a drink.” And Brengwain, bringing the magic cup by mistake, caused the fatal passion between Yseulte and the knight.

Even the “hound that was there biside, yclept Hodain,” who licked up the drops that were spilt of the philtre, became attached to the knight and lady with the same magic love.

Bronwen or Brengwain has since been in use as a Welsh female Christian name.

The names of the granddaughters of the Irish King Lear were Aine and Aoidheal, a spark, and their dispute was whose husband was the best hunter. Aine means joy or praise, and also fasting. Friday is Diah-Aoine, or fasting day in Irish. Aine, the daughter of Eogah-hal, was looked on as queen of the fairies of South Munster, and her abode was said to be Cnoc Aine or Knockany, the Hill of Aine, in county Limerick; Aoibhinn was queen of the fairies in Thomond or North Munster; Una, of those in Ormond.

Aine continued to be a favourite name in Ireland for many centuries; but in later times it has become the practice to Anglicize it as Anna and Hannah, and possibly Anastasia, though this may have come more directly from the Greek. In 705 reigned a Scottish king called Ainbhceallach the Good. He is turned by different authors into Arinchellar, Armkelleth, Amberkelletus, etc., and his right one is either joyful war, or agile war, or if with the b, ferocious war. He was too good for his savage people, and was dethroned at the end of a year, and is usually mentioned by the few historians, who name him, as Amberkelleth.

It is evident then that Aine had come to Scotland with other Gaelic names, and it is probable that this is the word that had come forth as Anaple or Annabell in Scotland long before the period of devotion to St. Anne. In 1158 Annabel Fitz Duncan, daughter to Duncan, Earl of Moray, carried the name into the Lucie family; Annabella of Strathern appears in 1244; Annaple Drummond was wife to King Robert III. of Scotland, about 1390; and thenceforth Anaple has been somewhat common in Scotland, while Anabla and Anabella are equally frequent in Ireland, and Annabella is occasionally used in England as Anna made a little finer.

Aoiffe was more generally used than Aine, but most likely is the origin of the Effie of Scotland, now always used as short for Euphemia, though the Highland version of this name is now Aoirig, or Oighrigh. In other places Aoiffe seems to have been turned into Affrica. In the beginning of the twelfth century ‘Affrica,’ daughter of Fergus of Galway, married ‘Olaus’ the Swarthy, King of Man, and her daughter ‘Effrica’ married Somerled, Thane of Argyle and Lord of the Isles, by whose genealogists she seems to have been translated into Rachel. Africa is still used as a female name in the Isle of Man and in Ireland. Aoiffe was the wife of Cuchullin in the Ossianic poetry, and Evir Allin and Evir Coma, properly Aoibhir Aluin and Aoibhir Caomha, the pleasantly excellent and pleasantly amiable, both appear there.

The recognized equivalent for Aoiffe was, however, Eva, beginning almost from the first Christian times, so that, until I found Aoiffe in such unquestionably heathen company as Lear and MănănnánMănănnán, I had made up my mind that she was the Gadhaelic pronunciation of our first mother.

Eva is found in the oldest documents extant in Scotland, and high in their genealogies: Eva O'Dwhine carried the blood of Diarmaid to the Anglo-Norman Campbells; Eva of Menteith married one of the first Earls of Lennox; and Alan, the first High Steward of Scotland, married Eve of Tippermuir, and made her the ancestress of the Stuarts; about the same time that the Irish Aoiffe or Eva, for she at least is known to have borne both names, was being wedded to stout Earl Strongbow.

Aevin, or Evin, is occasionally found in the house of Kennedy, but Eveleen is by far the most common form of both names in Ireland, and has held its ground unchanged. Eibhlin in Irish.

To our surprise, however, Aveline or Eveline make their appearance among the Normans long before the marriage of the Earl of Pembroke. Aveline was the name of the sister of Gunnar, the great-grandmother of William the Conqueror; and Aveline or Eveline was so favourite a Norman name that it well suits the Lady of the Garde Douloureuse in the Betrothed. Avelina de Longo-Campo, as the name is Latinized in old chronicles, married the last Earl of Lancaster, and was the mother of that heiress Avelina or Eveline, who, though short-lived and childless herself, carried to her husband, Edmund Crouchback, and the sons of his subsequent marriage, the great county of Lancaster, which made the power of the Red Rose formidable.

Eveline has never been frequent, but was never entirely forgotten in England, (for instance, an Eveline Elstove was baptized in 1539,) and was revived as an ornamental name by Miss Burney’s Evelina. At present it is one of those most in vogue, but it ought not to be spelt with a y, unless it be intended to imitate the surname Evelyn, the old French form of the Latin avellana, a hazel. It was well that the tree-loving author of the Sylva should bear such a surname, and from him and his family, men have frequently been christened by it; but ladies do not follow the old Eveline of song and romance unless they use the true feminine termination.

It is curious that several Keltic names should have come to us with the Normans. They may either have been of the set interchanged with the Northmen at some pre-historical time, or old Keltic ones picked up from the Gallic inhabitants of Neustria, or from the Bretons on the border. In the present case, the latter supposition is the most likely, as the Scandinavians do not seem to have used Eveline. It may of course be after all a diminutive of Eve, but the alternate use of the initial A and E seems to contradict this, and identify it with Aoiffe, daughter of the Irish King Lear.

Section III.—Bri.

The root brig, meaning force or strength, is found in many branches of the Indo-European tongues. It is considered to be akin to the Sanscrit virja, strength, and is found in the Greek verb βρίθω (britho), to be heavy, or to outweigh, and the adjective βριαρός (briaros), strong. And thus it named the hundred-handed Titan, whom gods called Briareus, and men Ægeon, and who, in the Titanic revolution, was disposed of either in the Ægean Sea, or under Mount Ætna. Briennios, the surname of some of the eastern emperors, must have come from this root.

In the Keltic tongues it again appears in Irish as bri or brigh, force or valour, and Bryn, height, answering to the Roman virtus (a near connection, as we shall presently see), and the old French word brie, peculiarly expressive of the gay, light Gallic courage, was a now forgotten legacy from the ancient population. Thence came Brenhin, Bren, or Bran, or, as the Romans made it, Brennus, a king or chief—well known for the forays on Italy, and capture of Rome.

Another Brennus was the leader of a division of the great host of Gauls, that, about B.C. 279, came out of Pannonia, and made a backward rush towards the East. One of their bands settled in Asia Minor, and were the parents of the Galatians; but Brennus was less successful. He marched upon Delphi, promising his followers the plunder of the Temple; but was totally defeated by the Delphians; and finding his army destroyed, and himself severely wounded, put an end to his own life.

Next time Bran comes to light, it is altogether in Welsh setting. The Triads and the prolific Genealogy of Welsh Saints, are the authorities for the existence of a prince of that name. Bran the Blessed, the son of Llyr Lledaith, and father of Caradwg, is, we are told, one of the three blessed princes of Britain, having brought home the faith of Christ from Rome, where he had been seven years as a hostage for his son Caradwg, whom the Romans put in prison after being betrayed through the enticement, deceit, and plotting of Cartismandua, or by her Welsh name, Avegwydo Foeddog, the daughter of Avarwy, who betrayed Caswallon. Her act is called by the Triads one of the three secret treasons of Britain.

Now Caradwg is, without a doubt, the Caractacus of Roman history, and the captivity of his family exactly coincides with the time of St. Paul’s first journey to Rome. Moreover, as has been already shown under the head of Aristobulus, there is great reason to consider that Aristobulus, the friend of St. Paul, was the same as the Arwystli, whom the Triads commemorate as among their first missionaries. A farm-house in Glamorganshire, called Trevran, house of Bran, is pointed out as the place where Bran used to reside, and it is near Llanilid, which is considered as the oldest church in Britain.

Such is the British account of the father of Caradwg. The Roman account is, that Cunobelinus was king of the Silures, and husband of Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, and was a prosperous and powerful prince in league with the Romans.

Cunobelinus is in like manner a title, though not of man. Cûn is, as will be shown in due time, a chief or lord. Bel or Belin was the Keltic god of light and of war, in whose honour British coins were struck in the heathen days of Bran, whose own name the Romans thought they were reading on his coins. Beli also meant war, and more than one king was called from him.

Bran the Blessed may thus be our old friend Cymbeline, a name repeated in Cornwall, but from literature, not tradition. Cartismandua, or Aregwydd, is the wicked queen, and Caradwg one of the sons.

As to Imogen, the real charm of the play, no British lady either accounts for or explains her name; but in German genealogies we fall upon Imagina of Limburg, in 1400; and there are various other instances of the like, so that Shakespeare may be supposed to have heard of one of them, and adopted her as the heroine of the old story of the deserted and betrayed wife, which he so strangely placed at the court of the last independent British prince. Or Imogen may be a Shakespearian version of Ygnoge, daughter of Pandrasus, emperor of Greece, and wife of Brutus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Anne of Brittany’s funeral oration, in 1514, her birth was deduced from this last.

Caradwg’s own proper name comes from the same root as the Greek χάρις, grace, and the Latin carus, dear. It means beloved, and has the Breton form Keridak. Caer Caradoc, in Shropshire, retains the name of his camp. He had a worthy namesake in Caradawc Vreichfras, or strong armed, called the pillar of the Kymry, and one of the three battle knights of Britain. Vreichfras means the strong arm, but the French trouveurs rendered it Brise-bras, the wasted arm; and told of an enchanter who fixed a serpent on the knight’s arm, from whose torture nothing could relieve him but that she whom he loved best should undergo it in his stead. His faithful wife offered herself; the serpent was just about to seize on her, when her brother smote off its head with his sword; but her husband thus never recovered the strength of his arm! Others, however, read Vreich-fras as Fer-a-bras, iron arm; and thus, perhaps, from some Breton romance, was one of the Hauteville brothers called William Ferabras. Hence, again, did the French and Italian romancers name their fierce Moorish champion Ferraù, or Ferragus, the same who lost his helmet, and possessed the healing salve, valued by Don Quixote as the balsam of Fierabras!

Caradwg’s wife, Tegan Euvron, or golden beauty, was mentioned by the Triads as one of the three fair ladies and chaste damsels of Arthur’s court, possessing three precious things, of which she alone was worthy,—the mantle, the goblet, and the knife. Later romance and ballad have expanded these into the story of the three tests of the faithful wife; and Sir Caradoc and his lady remain among the prime worthies of the Round Table.

In the twelfth century a saint named Caradwg retired from the world in disgust at the violence shown to him by his master, Rhys, prince of South Wales, on learning the loss of two greyhounds that had been in Caradwg’s charge. He lived in various hermitages in Wales and left a well in the parish of Haroldstone, called by his name. Moreover, soon after his death, he was said to have suddenly closed his hand, in frustration of the designs of the historian, William of Malmsbury, who wanted to cut off his little finger for a relic. Our insular saints were decidedly of Shakespeare’s opinion, and had no desire to have their ‘bones moved’ or be made relics of.

Caradwg, Caradoc, and Keriadek continue to be used in Wales, Scotland, and Brittany.

Cara, friend, was sometimes prefixed to a saint’s name by the Christian Gael, as Cara Michil, friend of St. Michael, as the name of his devout client, and thus arose such surnames as Carmichael.

This pursuit of Cymbeline and his family has carried us far from Bran the Blessed. Under this, his proper name, he stands forth in old Welsh, romance as the original importer of the Sanc-greal. One very old and wild version says that King Bran brought from Ireland a magic vessel, given him by a great black man in Ireland, which healed wounds and raised the dead.

In the twelfth century the Sanc-greal had assumed its Christian character, and Bran the Blessed, as the first Christian prince of Britain, was said to have received it from St. Joseph of Arimathea, and guarded it to the end of his life. No wonder, therefore, that Brittany loved and honoured his name.

Bran was a Pictish prince, killed in 839, in battle with the Danes, and it is highly probable that St. Birinus, the Keltic apostle of Wessex, was another form of Bran.

Brian has been from very old times a favourite Christian name in both Brittany and Ireland, the first no doubt from the Christian honours of the blessed Bran, the second from the source whence he was named.

The great glory of Brian in Ireland was in the renowned Brian Boromhe, King of Leinster, or of the tribute, so called from the tribute, once shaken off by Ulster, but which he re-imposed. He defeated the Danes in twenty-five battles, and finally was slain in the great battle of Clontarf, on the Good Friday of 1014. Around that battle has centered a wonderful amount of fine legendary poetry on both sides.

Brian, or Bryan, is a very frequent Christian name, but according to the usual lot of its congeners, has an equivalent, i. e. Bernard, chiefly in Ulster, with which it has not the most distant connection.

Brien was always a favourite in Brittany, and is very common as a surname with the peasantry there. The Bretons, who joined in the Norman conquest, imported it to England. Two landholders, so called, are recorded in Domesday Book; and during the first century of Norman rule it was far more common than at present, when it is considered as almost exclusively Irish. Some of our older etymologists have been beguiled into deriving it from the French bruyant, noisy.

The feminine Brennone is given in German dictionaries, but it, as well as Brennus, are there derived from old German, and explained as protection, which is clearly a mistake.

Brieuc was a Breton saint; Breasal was once common in Ireland, and survives in a few families, but is generally turned into Basil, and sometimes to Brazil, in which shape the Manxmen frequently bore it.

Brîgh or strength, is the most satisfactory explanation of Brighid, the daughter of the fire-god, and the goddess of wisdom and song, skill and poetry.

Cormac, king and bishop of Cashel, explains the word as a ‘fiery dart;’ but this looks like one of the many late and untrustworthy interpretations of Keltic names.

Brighid was always a favourite female name in Ireland, and has become one of the very few Keltic ones of European popularity. This was owing to a maiden who was brought up by a bard, and afterwards became a pupil of St. Patrick; and from a solitary recluse at Kildare, rose to be the head of five hundred nuns, and was consulted by the synod of bishops. She died in 510, and after her death, a copy of the Gospels was found in her cell, too beautiful to have been written by mortal hand, “with mystical pictures in the margent, whose colours and workmanship were, at first blush, dark and unpleasant, but in the view marvellously lively and artificiall.”

It was long kept at Kildare, and a little hand-bell, such as was much used by the Irish missionaries, and which had belonged to her, and was, therefore, called Clogg Brighde, or Bridget’s Bell, was exhibited to the devout, in both England and Ireland, until it was suppressed by a prohibition from Henry V., perhaps, because it tended to keep up a national spirit.

She was one of the patron saints of Ireland, and was regarded with such devotion, both there and in Scotland, that children were baptized as her servants, Maol Brighde, Giollabrid; and to the present day, hers is the favourite name in Ireland.

St. Bride’s churches are common, both in England and Scotland, and the village of Llanaffraid, in Wales, records her in her Welsh form of Ffraid. Bridewell was once the palace of St. Bride, and after its conversion into a prison, spread its sinister name to other like buildings. The Portuguese believe themselves to possess the head of St. Bridget at Lisbon, and have accordingly more than one Doña Brites among their historical ladies.

Sweden has also a St. Bridget, or rather Brigitta; but her name is in her own tongue Bergljot, shortened to Berglit, and then confounded with the Irish Bridget. It unfortunately means mountain-fright, or guardian defect, though German antiquaries have twisted both Bridgets into Beraht Gifu, bright gift. Be that as it may, the Swedish Brigitta was a lady of very high birth, who, in her widowhood, founded an order of Brigittin nuns, somewhere about 1363, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was greatly revered for her sanctity. She named the very large class of Norwegian, German, and Swedish Bridgets or Berets, who are almost as numerous as the Irish.

Section IV.—Fear, Gwr, Vir.

The free days of the Kelt were fast ending. He fell before Roman discipline, though not without a worthy struggle.

In Cisalpine Gaul, Marcellus and Scipio themselves found Britomartus, or Viridomarus, king of the Boii, so worthy an antagonist that Marcellus, having slain him in single fight, dedicated his spolia opima in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. In Spain, a Lusitanian hunter or shepherd, named Viriathus, carried on a guerilla warfare with the Roman legions for fourteen years. In Gaul, Cæsar mentions Virdumarus among his allies the Æduans, and says that their chief magistrate was termed vergobretus, and among his enemies, the Unelli and Arverni, he records Viridovix, Vergosillanus, and Vercingetorix.

The last chieftain was one of the most gallant men who struggled in vain against the eagles.

However, our concern is chiefly with his name. In fact, these Virs of Cæsar might have been placed in our preceding division, for they are from the same root, bri, or force, and still more resemble the Sanscrit virja, as well as the Latin virtus and vir. Exactly answering to vir, though coming in an independent stream from the same source, the Gaelic man is fear, plural fir; the Cymric is gwr, gen. gyr, plural wyr. Again, valour or virtue is in Welsh gwyrth, and gwr is the adjective for excelling.

Thus there can be no reasonable doubt, that the ver or vir of the Latin version of these Keltic heroes was a rendering of the fear of the Gael, or of the gwr of the Cymry, both not infrequent commencements; and the double name of the hero of Cisalpine Gaul, Viridomarus, or Britomartus, brings us back to the original root. It may be that Britomartus referred to his great strength.

Vergobretus, the magistrate of the Ædui, is explained either as Fear-co-breith, man who judges, or War-cy-fraith, man placed over the laws; or, taking gwr as excelling, and brawd, as justice, he would be excelling in justice.

Viriathus must be referred to fear, man, and, perhaps, to aodh, fire.

Vercingetorix himself may be translated into Fear-cuin-cedo-righ, man who is chief of a hundred heads; and his cousin, Vergosillanus, is the man either of the banner or the spear, according as sillanus is referred to saighean, a banner, or to saelan, a spear.

Here, then, are the tokens of kindred between the Gauls of the continent and the Gael of our islands, for Fear, the frequent commencement in both Ireland and Scotland, is assuredly the word that Cæsar rendered by Vir, more correctly both in sense and sound than he knew.

Fearghus, man-deed, from gus, a deed, is the rendering of one of the most national of Gaelic names, though Macpherson makes it Fearguth, man of the word.

Bold genealogists place Feargus at the head of the line of Scottish kings, and make him contemporary with Alexander the Great. Another Fergus was son of Finn, and considered as even a greater bard than his nephew, Oisean. Poems said to be by him are still extant, in one of which he describes his rescue of his brother, Oisean, who had been beguiled into a fairy cave, and there imprisoned, till he discovered himself to his brother by cutting splinters from his spear, and letting them float down the stream that flowed out of the place of his captivity.

Fearghus, the son of Erc, a Dalriad prince, was, in 493, blessed by St. Patrick, and led the great migration of Scots to Albin, together with his brothers Loarn and Aonnghus, who each named their own district, while he reigned over the whole region of the Scots,—that around Argyle; whither he had transported the stone of dominion, that sooner or later brought conquest to the race who possessed it. From these Fearghus or Farghy in Ireland, Fergus in Scotland, and the feminine Fergusiana still continue in use.

Fearachar is another Scottish form. Ferquard is given as prince of the Scots in Ireland, at some incalculable time; and Fearchur or Ferchar was the king of the Scots just after St. Columbus' death. He is Latinized as Ferquardus; and this was the name of an Earl of Ross in 1231; and as Farquhar has continued in favour in the Highlands. Feardorcha is the blind man. Fardorougha is an incorrect modernism, and Ferdinand and Frederick the supposed equivalent.

Gwr, or Wr, is the Cymric form of the same word, and the parallel to Fergus among the Picts was Wrguist, or Urguist, a prince who lived about 800, and whose daughter was called after him, married the Scottish Eacha or Fergusiana, and thus led to the union of the two races under her descendant, Kenneth MacAlpin.

Gwrtigearn, excelling king, is a Silurian prince of doubtful fame. Through Latinism we know him as Vortigern. It would seem that when the usurpation of Maximus had involved the Roman empire in confusion, and left Britain without any legions to defend it against the robber nations round, that he made some attempt at a partial revival of national spirit; but, failing this, entered into a treaty with the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and was thought to have betrayed the cause of his country.

What these doings were is another matter. We all know the romantic history of Vortigern’s letter to Henghist and Horsa; of his visit to the Saxon camp; of Rowena and her cup; of the Isle of Thanet marked out by strips of cow-hide; and of the treachery of the Saxons at Stonehenge. There is nothing morally impossible in the story as it was dished up for modern history, and it used to satisfy our ancestors before they had found out that a small king on the Welsh border could hardly have dealt with Thanet, and, moreover, that the Teutonic immigration had been going on for many years past on the eastern coast.

As to the cow-hide and the massacre, they are said to be old Thuringian traditions; and the Welsh seem to have either invented or preserved the story of the fascinations of Rowena. At any rate, they named her; for, alas for Saxon Rowena, there is nothing Teutonic in the word, and the Kymric form Rhonwen, white skirt, betrays its origin. Rhonwen, or Bradwen, is the name by which she is called in the Gododin, a poem ascribed to the bard Aneurin, and, perhaps, containing some germs of truth, though its connection with the Stonehenge massacre is hotly disputed.