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The Britons in Southern Scotland*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Kenneth Jackson
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Extract

The archaeological background of the people of what is now Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde in the Roman period was a La Téne one, and specifically chiefly Iron Age B. This links them intimately with the Britons of southern Britain in the conglomeration of Celtic tribes who called themselves Brittones and spoke what we call the Brittonic or Ancient British form of Celtic, from which are descended the three modern languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. To the north of the Forth was a different people, the Picts. They too were Celts or partly Celts; probably not Brittones however, but a different branch of the Celtic race, though more closely related to the Brittones than to the Goidels of Ireland and (in later times) of the west of Scotland. Not being Brittonic, the Picts may be ignored here. Our southern Scottish Brittones are nothing but the northern portion of a common Brittonic population, from the southern portion of which come the people of Wales and Cornwall. Some historians speak of the northern Brittones as Welsh, following good Anglo-Saxon precedent, but this is apt to lead to confusion. The best term for them, in the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, as long as they survived, is ‘Cumbrians’, and for their language, ‘Cumbric’. They called themselves in Latin Cumbri and Cumbrenses, which is a Latinization of the native word Cymry, meaning ‘fellow-countrymen’, which both they and the Welsh used of themselves in common, and is still the Welsh name for the Welsh to the present day. The centre of their power was Strathclyde, the Clyde valley, with their capital at Dumbarton.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 29 , Issue 114 , June 1955 , pp. 77 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1955

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References

1 H. M. Chadwick, Early Scotland, p. 148.

2 cf. my Language and History in Early Britain, p. 335 f.

3 The Initium et Finis stone.

4 A full account will appear in the Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Selkirkshire now in preparation by the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments (Scotland).

5 Modem Philology, XLIII (1945), 44 ff.

6 ‘The Arthur of History’ in the forthcoming guide to Arthurian studies edited by R. S. Loomis.

7 It is not impossible that the name Llwyfenydd may survive in the name of the river Lyvennet which runs into the Eden not far above Penrith. Cf. Ekwall, English River Names, p. 276. EkwalPs doubts about Lemaniio- are unnecessary, as i- affection would be quite possible here, see Language and History in Early Britain, p. 616.

8 ANTIQUITY, XXIII, 48-9.

9 Cf. Wade-Evans, Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae, p. 315.

10 Edited by A. O. H. Jarman, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XIV, 106 ff.

11 See English Place-Name Society, XX, 52-3.

12 See Skene, The Four Ancient Books of Wales, 1, 172; Watson, The Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, p. 343.

13 Calchfynydd means ‘lime-mountain’, and Kelso is apparently named from the chalky cliff by the town, called Chalkheugh in the 18th century. With carboniferous limestone a well-known feature in the Lowlands, the logic of this proof is not apparent. Besides, the cliff is hardly a mynydd.

14 Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, new series, LI (1950), 80 ff.

15 Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History Society, XXVII, 82.

16 So Loth, Revue Celtique, XLVII, 389; Watson, op. cit., p. 132; Forster, Die Flussname Themse, p. 82. Following these authorities, I made the same mistake myself in Language and History in Early Britain, p. 9; and I wish to take the opportunity of correcting this error, and of thanking my colleague, Professor W. Croft Dickinson, for pointing it out to me.