Table Of ContentCELT AND SAXON
STUDIES IN THE EARLY BRITISH BORDER
CELT AND SAXON
STUDIES IN THE EARLY
BRITISH BORDER
BY
KENNETH JACKSON
PETER HUNTER BLAIR
BERTRAM COLGRAVE
BRUCE DICKINS
JOAN & HAROLD TAYLOR
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
NORA K. CHADWICK
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1963
PUBLISHED BY
THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W.i.
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West African Office: P.O. Box 33, Ibadan, Nigeria
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1963
Printed in Great Britain at the University Presst Cambridge
{Brooke Crutchley, University Printer)
Prefatory Mote
This book is the third of a series devoted to studies of various
aspects of early Britain between the departure of the Romans and
the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The first volume,
Studies in Early British History, by six contributors, was published
in 1954 and reprinted in 1959. It was chiefly concerned with the
history of the foundations of British history and British culture
during the brief period when the Celtic-speaking peoples were the
rulers of our Island. The second volume of the series, Studies in the
Early British Churchy by four contributors, was published in 1958,
and was chiefly devoted to the nature of our sources for the intel
lectual and ecclesiastical life of Britain in the same period. The
present volume explores, in ten studies of varying length by eight
contributors, some records of the early contacts of the Anglo-
Saxon with the British kingdoms.
The object of the present book, as of its predecessors, is to offer
the results of some researches by scholars working in various
specialised fields, and from very different angles, on an obscure but
important period of our early history. I have explained in the
Introduction the nature of our widely divergent sources and the
variety of disciplines required for their critical use. In the present
state of our knowledge it would be misleading to attempt to give
a complete picture of the period, and to attempt to write a con
tinuous narrative would only darken counsel. I have felt that
progress in such studies can best be made by avoiding any attempt
to force consistency between the results of the various contributors.
I am responsible for the conception and plan of this book, and of
the series as a whole, but I have preferred to allow each contributor
to present unhampered the result of his own researches.
We are grateful to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press
for their encouragement throughout, and for being willing to
publish our books, and also for the splendid help which their
readers and staff have given us with the proofs and the printing.
In particular we thank Mr G. V. Carey for being willing to make
our index and for much help with the proofs. I myself owe a
v
33693
PREFATORY NOTE
special debt of gratitude to my fellow contributors for help with
my own work. I also owe them some apology for stressing the
relevance and importance of such Celtic sources as are sometimes
at variance with the more high-grade Saxon records of the period.
From this I absolve my colleagues, but remain unrepentant. Indeed
it might here be said, as of Grendel's bad deeds, swa he hyra ma
wolde.
NORA K. CHADWICK
CAMBRIDGE
May 1962
Contents
Introduction
by NORA K. CHADWICK page I
I On the Northern British Section in Nennius 20
by KENNETH JACKSON
II Some Observations on the Historia Regum 63
attributed to Symeon of Durham
by PETER HUNTER BLAIR
III The Earliest Life of St Gregory the Great, written 119
by a Whitby Monk
by BERTRAM COLGRAVE
IV The Conversion of Northumbria: A comparison of 138
sources
by by nora k. chadwick
V The Battle of Chester: A study of sources 167
by NORA K. CHADWICK
VI Bede, St Colrnan and the Irish Abbey of Mayo 186
by NORA K. CHADWICK
VII *Dewi Sant * (St David) in Early English Kalendars 206
and Place-Names
by BRUCE DICKINS
VIII Pre-Norman Churches of the Border 210
by JOAN and harold taylor
vii
CONTENTS
IX St Peter of Gloucester and St Cadoc of page 258
Llancarfan
by CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
X The Celtic Background of Early Anglo-Saxon 323
England
by NORA K. CHADWICK
Index 353
PLATES
Facing page 117
i (a) The Historia Regum, C.C.C.C. MS. 139, fo. 51 v; (6) and
(c) the Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae, U.L.C. MS. Ff. 1.27,
pp. 123 and 131
Between page 228 and page 229
11 Diddlebury
in Diddlebury
iv Font at Eardisley
Introduction
BY NORA K. CHADWICK
The object of the present book is to throw light on the sources for
our early history in the period of the foundation of the Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms and later. The problems on which our attention
has been chiefly focused are those arising from the relations of the
in-coming Teutonic peoples with the Celtic-speaking peoples who
must have formed the greater part of the population. We are study
ing the fusion of two peoples whose background, language, institu
tions and culture are totally different. We believe that a fuller
understanding of the historical sources and the problems to which
they give rise may be obtained by examining the records—in what
ever medium they may have been preserved—of the Celtic and
Teutonic peoples along the line of the Border country where for a
brief space the Celtic peoples halted the Teutonic advance, and
where, in the West at least, they have retained their national and
linguistic integrity.
Perhaps the best description of the present collection of studies
is to call it an interim report on our sources of information on the
intercourse between the old-established Celtic peoples and their
more recently established Teutonic neighbours along the line
which eventually became known as the Marches, or the Border, by
which we mean the debated line of demarcation betweëriTïhe~
^Tritons of southern Scotland and England in the north, and
between north-western England and Wales and England east of the
(Pennines and of the valleys of the Dee and the Severn on the west.
As the Taylors have said in their history of the early churches along
this Border, the object is: ‘to point the way for further investiga
tion*. It is hoped that the studies which concentrate on the earliest
historical records for the north may help to indicate the nature of
some of our lost materials, and that this will be a step forward to
wards establishing our early history. It will only be a first step. The
interpretation of these records, and the relative value to be attached
to the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon evidence, which is often at variance,
are very difficult to determine. Further study is badly needed.
i CCS
INTRODUCTION
In the present state of our knowledge it would obviously be
injudicious to attempt to construct a coherent picture of the impact
of the Anglo-Saxon on Celtic society. The period is rich in Latin
and Anglo-Saxon sources for Anglo-Saxon political and ecclesiasti
cal history, but for the relationship of the Anglo-Saxon ruling
classes with the Britons whom they conquered and absorbed, and
also with the unconquered Britons beyond their Borders, our
sources are far less ample, both in quantity and scope. This is per
haps inevitable and due to the relative scarcity of early written
records among the Celtic peoples of Britain. We have, of course, a
certain number of early Latin texts, such as the work of Gildas;
and the lost Northern sources used by Nennius much later make it
clear that Latin historical records were made in the North, prob
ably in the early seventh century.
Before the seventh century, however, the vernacular appears
hardly to have been written among the Celtic population except for
lapidary funerary inscriptions of the briefest nature commemorat
ing the names of the wealthier chieftains in the north and west of
the country. Except lapidary inscriptions the early British Church
among the * Men of the North*, as the Britons of southern Scotland
were called by the Welsh of Wales, has left no contemporary
written records, Latin or Welsh. Knowledge of historical persons
and events was for the most part transmitted by oral tradition,
carried on from generation to generation by a class of highly
trained bards. But the value of this oral tradition was relatively
high, and when Latin writing came to be applied to native historical
traditions, the oral traditions of our period, including all those
which had been introduced from the Britons of southern Scotland,
were written down in the southern Welsh kingdoms, which were
still independent. Their general quality justifies a position of
honour for them among the sources for the history of Britain in the
early Medieval period.
It is not to be looked for, however, that a conquered people
should have the experience or the resources to furnish numerous or
highly organised scriptoria, still less that the Saxon kingdoms
would have any inclination to finance their own archivists to place
on record the traditions or institutions of the subject population, in
so far as this was Celtic, or of the neighbouring Celtic peoples who
remained unconquered in the west. Consequently, our modern
historians of this period not unnaturally tend to pass by the small
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