Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales
CHAPTER VI.
MANAU GODODIN AND THE PICTS.
The name of Manau was applied by the Welsh to the Isle of Man. Thus, in
Nennius, "tres magnas insulas habet, quarum una vergit contra Armoricas et
vocatur Inisgueith; secunda sita est in umbilico maris inter Hiberniam et
Britanniam et vocatur nomen ejus Eubonia, id est, Manau." Thus the Latin
form was Eubonia, the Cymric, Manau; but it appears from Nennius that this name
of Manau was also applied to a district in North Britain, when he says that
Cunedda with his sons "venerat prius de parte sinistrali, id est, de
regione que vocatur Manau Guotodin."
The Irish name for the Isle of Man is Manand or Manann; and it appears from
the Irish Annals that a district on the north was likewise known by that name,
as they record in 711 a slaughter of the Picts by the Saxons in Campo Manand,
or the Plain of Manann, as distinguished from the island. It is, of course,
difficult to discriminate between the two places, and to ascertain whether an
event recorded is taking place in Manau or Manann belongs to the island or the
district. Events which really belong to the one are often attributed to the
other; and the fact that there existed a district bearing this
name, having become comparatively forgotten, has led to the
presumption in almost every case that the events recorded in connection with the
word Manau or Manann belong to the island. It may help us to discriminate
between. the two to refer to the legendary matter, both Irish and Welsh,
connected with this name of Manau or Manann.
From Manau in Welsh is formed the word Manawyd, and from Manawyd the personal
name Manawydan. From Manann in Irish is formed the personal name Manannan.
Manawydan in Welsh and Manannan in Irish are synonymous terms. In a curious
tract in the Irish MS., termed the Yellow Book of Lecan, is the following
account of the different persons bearing the name of Manannan:--
There were four Manannans in it. It was not in the same time
they were:
An account of Manannan mac Llyr is found almost in the same words in Cormac's
Glossary, and by other Irish traditions he is made the same person with Manannan
mac Alloid, as in the following stanza in an old Irish poem.:--
Manandan mac Alloit, a Druid of the Tuath De Danann, and in the time of the
Tuath De Danann was he. Oirbsen, so indeed, was his proper name. It is he, that
Manannan, who was in Arann, and it is of him it is called Eamain Abhlach.1
And it was he that was killed in the battle of Cuilleann by Uilleann Abradhruadh,
son of Caithir, son of Nuadad of the silver hand, in defending the sovereignty
of Connaught. And when his grave was dug, it was there sprang forth Loch Oirbsen
over the land, so that from him (is named) Loch Oirbsen. This was the first
Manannan.
Manannan mac Cirp, king of the Isles and of Manann, in the time of Conaire,
son of Edersecoil, was he. And it was he made the espousal of Tuaide, daughter
of Conall Collamracli, the foster child of Conaire, and from him is named Tuagh
Inbhir.
Manannan mac Lir, i.e. a celebrated merchant was he between Erin, and
Alban, and Manann, and a Druid was he also, and he was the best navigator that
was frequenting Erin, and it was he used to know through science, by observing
the sky, the period that the calm or the storm should continue, and of him the
one Manannan nominabatur et ideo Scoti et Britones eum dominum maris vocaverunt
et inde filium maris esse dixerunt ut deum et ideo adorabatur a gentibus ut deum
quia transformat se in multis formis per gentilitatem.
Manandan mac Atgnai was the fourth Manannan. He it was that came to avenge
the children of Uisnech, and it was he that had sustained the children of Usnech
in Alban, and they had conquered what was from Manann northwards of Alban, and
it was they that drove out the three sons of Gnathal, son of Morgann--viz.
Iathach, and Tuathach, and Mani Lamhgarbh--from these lands, for it was their
father that had dominion of that country, and it was the children of Usnech that
killed him--(Yellow Book of Lecan, Trin. Coll. Dub. H. 2. 16.)
Manannan, son of Lir, from the Lake,
Both of them belong to the mythic people termed in Irish traditions, Tuatha
De Danann. The second people who are said to have colonised Ireland, according to the oldest
traditions, which seem to have furnished the account in Nennius, were the
Nemedians or children of Nemeid. They were driven out of Ireland by the pirates
called the Fomoire. They left in three bodies, commanded by the three
grandsons of Nemeid. Simon Breac, son of Starn, son of Nemeid, went to Thrace
with his band, and from him descended the Firbolg; Jobaath, son of Jarbhainel,
son of Nemeid, went to the north of Europe, and from him descended the Tuatha De
Danann; and Briotan Maol, the son of Fergus Leithdearg, son of Nemeid, went to
Dovar and Iardovar in Alban, and dwelt there with his posterity; and this colony
is mentioned in the Albanic Duan, where the Nemedians are said to have been the
second people in Alban. The third colony in Ireland were the Firbolg, and the
fourth the Tuatha De Danann, who came from the north of Europe to Alban, and
remained seven years in Dovar and Iardovar, whence they went to Ireland. There
they found the Firbolg and drove them out, a part of whom, according to Irish
tradition, passed over into Manann, Ili or Isla, Recra, and other islands. The
Irish Nennius mentions this occupation of Manann and other islands by the
Firbolg; and it is obviously the same event which is stated in the Latin Nennius
as one of the four settlements of Scots in Britain, "Builc autem cum suis
tenuit Euboniam insulam et alias circiter."
Fought many battles:
Oirbsen was his name; after hundreds
Of victories, of death he died.
The only other Irish traditionary notices of
Manann are that
Cormac Ulfata, a king of Ireland, said to have reigned in the third century, was
so named from having banished the Uladh, or Picts of Ulster, from
Ireland, and driven them to Manann; and that an ancient Irish tract in the Book
of Ballimote mentions Scal balbh Ri Cruithentuaith acus Manaind--that is,
king of Pictland in Alban and of Manann.
According to Welsh traditions, Manawydan was the son of a British king called
Llyr Lediaith. It is hardly possible to doubt the identity of the Manannan mac
Llir of the Irish legends, and Manawydan ap Llyr of the Welsh, and the epithet
Lediaith indicates that he was not of a people speaking a pure Cymric dialect.
There are three very significant words which are applied in Welsh to indicate
the mutual relation of languages. These are--Cyfiaith, where two tribes
have a common speech; Lediaith, or half-speech, where is a certain amount
of deviation or dialectic difference; and Anghyfiaith, the opposite of Cyfiaith,
where the languages are considered as foreign to each other; and the epithet of Llediaith
indicates that Llyr belonged to a race who spoke a peculiar dialect of Cymric.
One of the kings in the list of shadowy monarchs of Britain contained in the
Bruts is Llyr. He is the King Lear of Shakespeare, and the father of Gonorylla,
Ragan, and Cordeylla; but Creidylad, who is the same as Cordeylla, is by other
traditions the daughter of Llud Law Ereint. There seems, therefore, to have been
the same juggle between the names Llyr and Llud in the Welsh legends as between
Lir and Alloit in the Irish.
Cunedda is said in the Genealogia to have gone
with his sons from a regio in the north called Manau Guotodin, and in
the Welsh genealogies attached to Nennius his eldest son Typipaun is said to
have died "in regione que vocatur Manau Guodotin."
According to the Bonhed y Saint there were three holy families of
Britain. The second was the family of Cunedda. The third was that of Brychan. He
is said to have been the son of Anllech or Aullech, a Gwyddelian, who married
Marchell, daughter of Tewdwr, king of Garthmadrin, the region afterwards known
by the name of Brecknock which took its name from Brychan, and to have had
twenty-four sons and as many daughters. It has been supposed that there were
more persons than one of the name, and the families of different Brychans have
been combined by tradition in one; but be this as it may, some of the sons are
connected with Manau and several of the daughters with the Men of the North.
Thus Rhun Dremrudd and Rhawin, two of the sons, are said to have been slain by
the Saxons and Picts, and to have founded churches in Manau. Another son, Arthen,
was buried in Manau, and Rhun had a son Nevydd, who is said to have been a
bishop in y Gogledd, where he was slain by the Saxons and Picts. Of the
daughters, Nefyn was the wife of Cynvarch, and mother of Urien; Gwawr was the,
wife of Eledyr Lydanwyn, and mother of Llywarch Hen; Lleian was the wife of
Gafran, and mother of Aeddan; Nefydd was the wife of Tudwal, and a saint at
Llech Celyddon in the north; Gwrgon Goddeu was the wife of Cadrod Calchvynydd,
and Gwen was the wife of Llyr Merini, and mother of Caradawc. These
were all of the Gwyr y Gogledd, or Men of the North, and Corth or Cymorth,
another daughter, was wife of Brynach Wyddel, the father of Daronwy, and one of
the Gwyddel of Gwynedd. In the Cognatio de Brachan, in the Cotton Library
(Vesp. A. xiv.), the sepulchre of Brychan is said to be "in insula que
vocata Enysbrachan que est juxta Manniam."
Lastly, we have in a poem, which is not in either of the Four Books, but is
placed by Stephens in the tenth century, mention of the Brithwyr du o Fanaw,
or Black Brithwyr from Manau.
That these notices of Manau or Manann in the Irish and Welsh legends do not
all apply to the same place seems plain enough, and it remains to find a clue to
disentangle them. That the second of the four Manannans belongs to the island,
and the fourth to the region in Alban, seems obvious. The first and third,
whether they are to be viewed as the same or different Manannans, equally belong
to the legend of the Tuatha De Danann; and as they occupied a district in Alban,
it is probable that they are associated with both island and region. The Manann
colonised by the Firbolg was certainly the island; on the other hand, Cunedda
came from the region in the north, and the family of Brychan, whose sons were
slain in Manau by the Picts and Saxons, and whose daughters married Men of the
North, also belongs to the region in the North.
The clue seems to be that the island was associated with the name of the
Scots, and the region with that of the Picts. Nennius includes the settlement of
"Builc cum suis," or of the Firbolg, in Man and other islands, among the
colonies of the Scots in Britain; and Orosius, who wrote in the fifth century,
says that "Mevania insula a Scotorum gentibus habitatur." On the other
hand, the Picts seem peculiarly connected with the region of Manau in the north.
Cormac drove Picts of Ulster to Manann, and it is connected with the kingdom of Cruithentuath,
or Pictland in Alban. Nennius calls the people whom Arthur defeated at Mynyd
Agned, or Edinburgh, Cath Bregion, and the Brithwyr are frequently
mentioned in the poems. The words which form the root of these epithets are, Brith,
forming in the feminine Braith, Diversicolor, Maculosus, and Brych--the
equivalent in Cymric of the Gaelic Breac--Macula. Both refer to the name
Picti, or painted; and Agned or Mynyd Agned probably comes from an obsolete
word, agneaw, to paint, agneaid, painted. It is singular enough
that in the pedigree of Cunedda, given in the Welsh genealogies as 977, it is
deduced from a certain Brithguein, grandson of Aballec, son of Amelach,
son of Beli Mawr, and the name of Brychan obviously comes from Brych.
The history of this region, so far as we can trace it, will likewise show the
connection of these painted men, or Picts, with it. The first event that seems
founded on some historic truth is the battle fought at Mynyd Agned, by which the
people called the Cath Bregion were defeated, and the establishment of Llew as
ruler over Lothian. He is the Lothus of the legends of Saint Kentigern, and is
said to have been buried near Dunpender Law, in East Lothian. His daughter
Thenew, the mother of Kentigern, after an attempt to put her to
death, in one legend on Dunpender, in another on Kepduff, now Kilduff, is cast
adrift in a boat from Aberlady Bay.
Some of the localities connected with this district also emerge in the
legends of Saint Monenna or Darerca of Killsleibeculean, in Ulster, who is
recorded by Tighernac as dying in the year 518. There are three lives of St.
Monenna, but they do not differ much in the leading incidents of her life. She
was born in Ireland, and associated eight virgins with her, and, according to
all of the lives, a widow (una vidua), with her son Lugar. In Scotland, she
founded, according to one life, a church in Galloway, called Chilnacase;
according to another life, three churches in Galloway; and the following
churches on the summits of several mountains in Scotland, in honour of St.
Michael: one "in cacumine montis qui appellatur Dundevenel;" another
"in monte Dunbretan;" a third "in Castello quod dicitur Strevelin;"
a fourth "in Dunedene que Anglica lingua dicitur Edineburg," where she
left five virgins; and a fifth on the "Mons Dunpeledur." The first was
on Dundonald in Ayrshire, near the mouth of the Irvine, into which the Glen
flows, where Arthur's first battle was fought; and the three next were on the
three fortified rocks of Dumbarton, Stirling, and Edinburgh, where Arthur fought
three of his battles; while Dunpeledur, on which she founded another, is
associated with Llew or Lothus, on whom Arthur bestowed the territory of
Lothian. As Arthur was pre-eminently a Christian hero fighting
against pagan Saxons and apostate Picts, these foundations
appear to synchronise with the re-establishment of the Christian church there;
and as one of Monenna's churches was on Dunpender Law, it seems not improbable
that Thenew, the mother of Kentigern, was, in point of fact, one of the virgins
in that church. Kentigern must have been born about 518, which synchronises with
the date of Monenna's death; and one of her virgins, called Tannat, is said in
one of the lives to have died three days after her. Monenna's church was in that
part of Ulster called Dalaraidhe, and peopled by the Irish Picts; and her
foundations in Scotland being in Galloway and in the regions near Edinburgh,
show that her mission mainly was to the Picts of Galloway and of Manann.
The connection between the Picts of Ulster and the Picts of Manann, obscurely
shadowed forth in the legendary expulsion of the Ultonians to Manann, by Cormac,
king of Ireland, in the third century, appears to have existed at this time. An
old notice, in some of the Irish MSS. states that Baedan, son of Cairill, king
of Ulster, "cleared Manann of Galls or strangers, so that the sovereignty
belonged to the Ultonians thenceforth, and the second year after his death the
Gael abandoned Manann."2
Baedan died, according to Tighernac, in 581. In 577, he records, "primum
periculum Ulad an Eaman;" and, in 578, "abreversio Ulad do
Umania." The Annals of Ulster give these names as Eufania and Eumania. It
has been supposed that Eamania or Eaman, the old capital of Ulster, is meant; but
the expression "abreversio" could hardly be used with reference to a
place within Ulster, and the Irish annalists were not likely to pervert the name
of a place so celebrated as that of Eamania. These names Eumania and Eufania are
more probably attempts to express the Latin name Eubonia, and to refer to Manann,
and to the expedition by which Baedan cleared it of Galls. Two years after his
death the Gael are said to have left it; and, in 583, Tighernac records the
battle of Manann by Aedan mac Gabran, king of Dalriada, which likewise appears
in the old Welsh chronicle in 584 as "Bellum contra Euboniam." It was
therefore a battle fought between Aedan and the people of Manann.
The next event recorded in connection with Manann is the war between Penda
with the aid of the Britons, and Oswy, in which the former was overthrown and
slain, and the latter extended his dominion over the Britons, and wrested from
the Picts a part of their "Provincia." Bode tells us that in a year
which he does not specify, but which must have been after the year 653, Oswy was
exposed to the fierce and intolerable eruptions of Penda, king of the Mercians,
and promised to give him more and greater royal ornaments than can be imagined
to purchase peace, provided the king would return home and cease to ravage and
destroy the provinces of his kingdom; but that Penda refused to grant his
request, and resolved to destroy and extirpate all his nation. Whereupon Oswy
attacked him with a small army, though he had thirty legions led on by most
skilful commanders, the Pagans were defeated and. slain, the thirty royal commanders
were almost all of them killed; and he adds, "The battle was fought near
the river Winwaed." The same transaction is narrated by the author of the Genealogia,
but it is obvious that he is making use of two separate accounts; for the second
paragraph narrates what must have preceded the conclusion of the first, and in
the one the king of Mercia is called Pantha, and in the other Penda. By this
account, the thirty commanders were kings of the Britons, who go with Pantha on
an expedition as far as the city of Iudeu (usque in urbem quo vocatur
Iudeu), and Oswy gave to Penda all the wealth that he had in the city, even into
Manau (reddidit divitias cum eo in urbe, usque in Manau, Pendæ), and Penda gave
it to the British kings, and this was called Atbret Iudeu--the ransom of
Iudeu. Oswy then attacked Penda, and slew the thirty kings, Catgabail alone
escaping, and this was the "Strages Gai Campi." The one is the Anglic
account, the other is the Cymric. By the latter, Oswy bought off the attack upon
the city of Iudeu, and the city itself, and the battle which followed must have
been in or near Manau. The two accounts are not inconsistent, except in so far
as Bede says that Penda refused the redemption-money, while the Welsh account
says he took it and gave it to the British kings. Both agree that he was
attacked, and the thirty commanders slain. Bede does not say where this
happened, except that the battle was near the river Winwaed. The Welsh account
says it was in the north, and is corroborated both by Florence of Worcester, who
says that Penda invaded Bernicia, and by Tighernac, who says that he was
accompanied by thirty kings. Bede does not expressly say that Penda was slain in
that battle, but in the next section he adds that Oswy brought the war to a
conclusion by his slaughter, "in regione Loidis," on the 15th November
in the thirteenth year of his reign, which represents in Bede the year 655; and
the Chronicle of 977 implies that the two events were not the same, for it has
in 656 "Strages Gai Campi," and in the following year, 657, "Pantha
occisio."
This defeat was followed by the subjugation of the greater part of the
Picts,
who had probably aided Penda and Cadwalla, and not only Manau and Galwethia, or
Galloway, became subject to Oswy, but a part of the "provincia Pictorum"
on the north of the Firth of Forth. This subjection lasted for nearly thirty
years, till the defeat of Ecfrid at Dunnichen in 686 enabled the Picts to regain
that part of their provincia which had been wrested from them. Manau and
Galloway seem, however, to have been considered still part of the Anglic
kingdom, and their Pictish population subject to them, as we find the Angles
establishing a Bishopric in Galloway after 686, and the Picts of Manann or Manau
obviously rebelling against them. In 698 Tighernac records a "battle
between the Saxons and the Picts, in which the son of Bernith, who was called
Brechtraig, was slain," and the Saxon Chronicle mentions the same
transaction under the year 699,--"In this year the Picts slew Beorht, the
alderman." He was probably their Saxon governor. In 711, Tighernac also
records "the slaughter of the Picts on the plain
of Manann (in campo Manand) by the Saxons, where Findgaine, the son of Deleroith,
perished by immature death;" and the Saxon Chronicle thus records the same
event in 710,--"In the same year the alderman Beorhtfrith fought against
the Picts between Haefe and Caere." Florence of Worcester says that "Berhfrid,
the prefect of King Osred, fought against and overcame the Picts." Here
again, Beorhtfrith appears as the Saxon Governor under the king of
Northumberland, and the name of the leader of the Picts is also given as
Findgaine, son of Deleroith. In the year 716, Osred, king of Northumberland, was
slain; and in recording this event, the Annals of Ulster add that Garnat, son of
Deleroith, obviously of the same Pictish family of Manann, died. In 729 a great
battle was fought between the army of Angus, king of the Picts, and the host of
Nechtain; and the annalist adds, that the "exactatores" of Nechtain
fell--viz. Biceot son of Moneit, and his son, and Finguine son of Drostan, Ferot
son of Finguine, and many others. This word "exactatores," or rather
"exactores," was a word expressive of a Saxon officer, and was the
Latin equivalent of "Gerefa," and the names show the connection of
these leaders with the Picts of Manann, with whom the name of Finguine was
especially connected.
We have no further notice of Manann. It owes its separate existence, and its
loose connection with the Anglic kingdom, to its inhabitants possessing a
community of race with the powerful kingdom of the Picts north of the Forth; and
after the termination of that kingdom, when the name of Pict was
merged in that of Scot, it too disappears as possessing any separate position from the
other inhabitants of Lothian.
It has been necessary to be thus minute in giving these notices of Manau or
Manann as its history as a separate region in North Britain has, in fact, to be
reconstructed, and it will enable us now better to determine its precise
situation and extent.
When the notices of the slaughter of the Picts in 710 by the Irish annalists
and the Saxon historians are compared, they give us the situation of the
"Campus Manann"--a battle fought on it was "between Haefe and
Caere." It is impossible here to mistake the rivers Avon and Carron, which
flow within some miles of each other; and the Avon rises in a moor called now
Slamannan, and of old Slamannan Moor. This name is, in fact, Sliabhmannan,
the moor or plain of Manann. Mynyd Agned, or Edinburgh, was in it, where
the population of the region about it was called Catbregion. The Dovar
and Iardovar of the Irish legends formed the whole or part of it. Bede tells us
that of the two firths of the sea, one of which runs in far and broad into the
land of Britain from the Eastern Ocean and the other from the Western, though
they do not reach, so as to touch one another, the Eastern has in the midst of
it the city Giudi (orientalis habet in medio sui urbem Giudi), the
Western has on it, that is, on the right hand thereof, the city Alcluith, which
in their language signifies the "rock Cluith," for it is close by the
river of that name. Bede's city of Giudi is the same as Nennius' urbs Iudeu,
the, G falling away in Welsh in combination, and in an old tract in the
Book of Lecan ascribed to Angus the Culdee, who lived in the ninth century,
Cuilennros or Culross is said to be between the Sliabhnochel, or range of
the Ochils, and Muir-n-Giudan, or the Sea of Giudan (Reeves' Culdees,
p. 124), and we learn from Simeon of Durham that the see of Lindisfarne, which
marks the actual possessions of the Angles, extended to the river Esk, beyond
which they only possessed settlements.
Manau or Manann, therefore, in its widest sense included Slamannan, and the
western frontier proceeded in a line from thence to the Pentland Hills, so as to
take in the great moor formerly called Caldover Moor, consisting of what
is now the three parishes of West, Mid, and East Calder, and thus included that
mountainous region forming the west part of Linlithgowshire, embracing the
parishes of Torphichen, Bathgate, and Whitburn. It probably also included that
part of the range of the Pentland Hills called of old Pentland Moor, till it
came down upon the North Esk, which formed its eastern boundary to the sea. On
the northwest there lay between it and the Carron the district of Calatria or Calathros,
containing on the coast the parishes of Kinnell and Carriden, while from
Carriden to the Esk the coast would belong to Manann. At the point now called
the Queensferry, it approaches within a short distance of the opposite coast,
and the name of Clackmannan on the northern shore indicates that that district
likewise belonged to it. On some one of the islands in the Firth which lie
between the mouth of the Esk and Carriden was the City of Giudi or Iudeu, which
may have been founded by the people Bede terms the Jutes, while the fortified rock of Mynyd Agned or
Dunedin was the great stronghold of its Pictish inhabitants.
Lying as this region did in the intermediate part of the country where the
kingdoms of the Picts in the north, the Angles in the east, and the Cymry in the
west, approached each other, and the Pictish, Anglic, and Cymric populations
met, it could not but have had a mixed population. We see that an early colony
of Saxons bad obtained settlements in this part of the country. Arthur fought
several of his battles against them within its limits; and the king of Ulster
cleared Manand of Galls. Here also dwelt the Picts of Lothian, known
under the names of Brithwyr and of Catbregion. The former name
comes from Brith, which in its primary sense means speckled or spotted;
but in its secondary sense mixed, and may indicate a mixed people. Bregion comes
from Brych or Breac, and this word crops up here and there over
the district. Falkirk was in Gaelic, Eglais Breac, and in Saxon, Fahkirk,
the spotted or brindled church; Mynyd Agned, the Painted Mount; while
Caldovar Moss is bounded on the west by the river Brych. When Medrawd, the son
of Llew, rebelled against Arthur, it was with a mixed army of Picts, Saxons, and
Britons.
From this region Cunedda went with his sons, and gave a royal house to the
throne of Wales in the person of Maelgwn and his descendants. When this house
failed in the person of Cynan Tyndathwy, there is every reason to believe that
the same region gave a second royal house to Wales, in the person of Mervyn Frych, and that
he came from the region of Manau, and not from the island. His epithet of Brych
points to this. He was the son of Gwriad, who married Nest, daughter of Cadell
Deyrnllug, Prince of Powys, and Gwriad is the same name as the Pictish Ferat.
His pedigree is deduced from Dwywc, a son of Llywarch Hen, and Llywarch Hen was
one of the Men of the North, and his mother was a daughter of Brychan. Mervyn is
said in the Cyvoesi to be o dir Manau, from the region of Manau, and not o
ynys Manau, from the island of Manau. This derivation of the kings of the
house of Mervyn Frych explains a passage in a tract contained in the text of the
Irish Nennius, preserved in the Book of Ballemote, but which is not to be found
elsewhere. After stating the first departure of the Romans, this text proceeds
to say that Sarran then assumed the sovereignty of Britain, and established his
power over the Saxons and Picts. That his eldest son was Luirig, and that
Mucertach mac Erca having taken his wife, she bore him four sons, two of whom
were Constantine and Gaidel Ficht, from whom descended the provincial kings of
Britain and the kings of Cornwall.3
This legend seems to apply to Manann, and if the house of Mervyn Frych sprang
from its mixed population, we can understand in what sense the kings of Wales
and Cornwall were said to be descended from Gaidel Ficht. Mervyn Frych married
Essyllt, the daughter of Cynan, the last king of the house of Maelgwn Gwynedd,
and inherited Powys through his mother, and acquired Gwynedd through his wife. His death is
recorded in 844, so that he died in the very year that the kingdom of the Scots
superseded that of the Picts, when all the old landmarks of the North British
districts were changed, and the memory of Manau Gododin, as a region in the
north distinct from the island of Manau, passed away for ever. Mervyn Frych was
succeeded by his son Rodri Mawr, who acquired South Wales through his wife, and
thus became king of all Wales. He divided Wales into three petty kingdoms among
his three sons--Anaraut, Cadell, and Mervyn--the eldest, Anaraut, obtaining
Gwynedd, with Aberfraw in Anglesea as his capital; Cadell, South Wales, with
Dynevor for his capital; and Mervyn, Powis, with Mathraval for his capital; and
the king of Gwynedd was to be supreme over the other two. He was succeeded by
his eldest son Anarawd, who died in 913, and he by his son Edwal foel, after
which Howel dda, son of Cadell, king of South Wales, obtained the dominion of
the whole of Wales, from 940 to his. death in 948. After his death a struggle
commenced between the descendants of Edwal foel and of Howel dda for supremacy
in Wales till the year 1000, when the sovereignty was usurped by Aeddan ap
Blegwred, and a period of confusion ensued both in North and South Wales, during
which Cynan, the rightful heir of North Wales, took refuge in Ireland, and Rhys,
the rightful heir of South Wales, in Armorica, and which was only terminated
when Rhys ap Tewdwr succeeded in establishing himself in South Wales, in the
year 1077, and Gruffudh, the son of Cynan, in North Wales, in 1080.
The kingdom of South Wales soon came to an end, in consequence of Jestin, the
Lord of Glamorgan, having called in the assistance of Robert Fitzhamon, a Norman
knight. Rhys ap, Tewdwr was defeated in battle and slain by him in 1090, and,
according to the Brut y Tywysogion, "then fell the kingdom of the
Britons," and Robert Fitzhamon, with his Norman knights, took possession of
Glamorgan, and "the French came into Dyned and Ceredigion, which they have
still retained, and fortified the castles, and seized upon all the land of the
Britons." This was true of South Wales only, as in North Wales the native
princes still ruled till the year 1282, when the death of Llywelyn, the last
prince of North Wales, was followed by the subjugation of all Wales by King
Edward the First.
Rhys ap Tewdwr had an only daughter, Nest, who had a son by King Henry the
First, Robert, Earl of Gloucester. By marriage with the daughter of Robert
Fitzhamon, he succeeded to all his possessions in South Wales; and, as the son
of Nest, the only daughter of Rhys, was regarded by the Welsh as representing in
some degree the princes of South Wales. He died in the year 1147.
Footnotes
1. The island of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, here called Eamhain Ablach, or
Eamania of the Apple Trees. Eamain is said in Cormac's Glossary to be derived
from Eomain, and that from Eo i. rind, or breast-pin, and Muin
i. braige, or neck. This word Muin is represented in Welsh by Mynyw, as
St. David's is called in Irish Cillemuine, in Welsh, Mynyw. I conjecture,
therefore, that Arran being called Eamain is the Insula Minau or Mynyw mentioned
in the life of Gildas.
2. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 127.
3. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 54.
1. The island of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, here called Eamhain Ablach, or
Eamania of the Apple Trees. Eamain is said in Cormac's Glossary to be derived
from Eomain, and that from Eo i. rind, or breast-pin, and Muin
i. braige, or neck. This word Muin is represented in Welsh by Mynyw, as
St. David's is called in Irish Cillemuine, in Welsh, Mynyw. I conjecture,
therefore, that Arran being called Eamain is the Insula Minau or Mynyw mentioned
in the life of Gildas.
2. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 127.
3. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 54.
