This is a split-off from a discussion on the CK Beta patch thread. This seemed to be the right place to put it rather than there as it is more historical than game related.
Let's skip a little history - it suffices to say that Dumnonia was one of the more resilient of the Celtic kingdoms. The Romans did not fully conquer it, nor did the Saxons. In 1066 Cornwall was still semi-autonomous although paying tribute for the privilege. The last major battle between the Saxons and the West Welsh was fought near Callington in 838, ending a war which started on the borders of Dumnonia in 577 AD.
I'm guessing that I don't have to make a case for Cornwall retaining Celtic culture - there are enough works on the subject as the Cornish seem to have rediscovered their Celtic roots over the past few years.
So I'm focusing on Devon and Somerset.
Somerset is an Anglo-Saxon name. 'Summer people' is a good enough translation referring to the farming practices of the Saxon immigrants from Wessex who settled the Somerset levels. Their main town was Somerton, just to the east of the river Parrett. Gradually they pushed westwards, but even in Alfred's will in c.900 AD, the people of Devon and Cornwall were considered to be 'Wealcynn'. The expansion was there but the Saxons had not achieved cultural dominance in those areas within the 62 years (for Cornwall) or the 190 years (for Devon if we take Exeter (taken c.710 AD as being the centre of Devon, it being the main settlement of the Dumnonian Kings) they had control over these lands.
Fast forward a few years more. The Saxons were giving land grants out for these occupied territories (more on this later). We come to a very unusual one in 974 AD (only 92 years before N-Day). Land grants tend to be written in Latin but the boundaries of the land being granted are given in English. These grants are so formulaic that some research is suggesting that the Saxons actually had some form of Chancery as individual scribes are being identified. Yet S 795 is different. It's from King Edgar to Ælfhere, his faithful minister for a grant of 3 hides (mansae) at Nymed (now Woolfin in Down St Mary, Devon). The odd thing is the formulation of the name. It reads like this "for the place which in the common tongue is called Nymed". Who's common tongue? Not the Saxon's - as Nymed is actually a Celtic name meaning holy place or sacred grove (just for info this is Limet in DB from 1086 and then Nimet Rollandi in 1242, and Nemethe Tracy in 1270). So the common tongue of an area which had been under Saxon control for 264 years was still Celtic... and I don't know of too many languages which die out within the space of 92 years barring total catastrophe.
Saxon laws are also in existance for this area which also reveal something odd about the social situation. Saxon law was divided into that for the rich and that for the poor. The 'Welsh' were dealt with under a seperate law (you'll see the carry over for this well into more modern times). Yet they made the laws for this area (West Saxon Law Code originated by Ines but included under Alfred's revisions) to apply for not just the Welsh, but rich Welsh and poor Welsh.
Placenames in this area are problematic. At first glance Devon and Somerset appear to be thoroughly anglicised. This has been compounded by research done by researchers who are experts in Anglo-Saxon but not so skilled in West Country Brythonic. Camel's Head, for instance, seems to be extremely English. Yet it has actually mutated down the years from 'camhyl' which means 'crooked estuary'. A good name formulation is that of cwm (valley) which is transliterated in a variety of fashions (eg Coombe, combe, come, cum). Often there is an English adjectival prefix or suffix. The extra bit can very often be shown to have been added sometime after N-day by looking at the early medieval land grants. Using just cwm you can trace very clearly the outlines of Dumnonia minus the eastern part of the kingdom (ie up to the River Parrett).
The rath system of farming is a clear sign of Celtic habitation. (Think of it as a fortified farmstead with a distinctive circular pattern to its farmed lands hence the English name 'rounds'). Land boundaries seem to have become fixed in the Saxon period and then codified by DB. The Saxons used a hide system of rectangular or square farming. This has given large parts of England its distinctive 'patchwork' appearance. Yet Ireland, Wales and Cornwall have always been known to have followed the rath pattern, indicating Celtic cultural dominance. Recent research is showing that this system extended to roughly the River Parett. (this is the link to the breakthrough article (/grumble not hyperlinking because it keeps ****ing deleting everything in the post and I'm a little bored of typing the same thing over and over again every time I try to be clever with hyperlinks /grumble off) http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba31/ba31regs.html).
Looking at the name of Devon, it cannot be chance that it retained it's Celtic name Dyfneint while other Saxon conquests took Saxon names.
Athelstan may have expelled the Welsh from Exeter in 927 AD. But it seems they only went as far as leaving the city walls, as their new settlement was around the area of the modern St.David's railway station. Link to map here:
http://www.exeter.gov.uk/maps/exeter.htm
Leofric (archbishop of Exeter under Edward the Confessor, and whom some believe to have been Welsh himself) says that Exeter in his time had Welsh and Saxon living as equals within it. There still remains a quarter bearing the name of the Welsh within Exeter. (The argument about Welsh quarters not meaning Welsh settlement is not very convincing. Hereford had a large Welsh community; they even had a set position in the English armies coming into Wales from Hereford - the vanguard, presumably to ensure loyalty. Chester's Welsh town is a little different - it gained its name because it was the portion of the city which consistently got burnt to the ground by my forefathers ).
Linguistic research has revealed a dialectal continuum stretching from Cornwall to, yeah, the banks of the Parett (Linguistic Atlas of Britain, 1977). Somerset dialect from west of the Parett contains an astonishing amount of Welsh vocabulary, especially relating to farming.
Reports of West Country Brythonic surviving in Southern Devon until the C14th are made by the Tristram Risdon in c.1630 in his survey of Devon which is the first work on the medieval history of the area.
The genetic research conducted by the UCL team turned up some interesting results. Although unable to distinguish between Anglo-Saxon and Danish descent it clearly showed that there was a diminishing amount of Germanic heritage if one went east from Cornwall. Not allowing for more recent immigration, one is looking at the Germanic heritage for Cornwall as being (roughly) 20%, Devon 25% and Somerset 30%. Wessex itself is slightly more predominantly Celtic than Saxon (which is not to be surprised at when even the West Saxons themselves proclaimed that they were both Saxon and Welsh at the same time and in the same document!). As you go east, though there are some anomalies (Danish blood probably) the Saxon population grows denser. It seems that the this region of Britain was sparsely settled by the Saxons. This is the link to the original study although further research has also been carried out : http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/capelli-CB-03.pdf
It's interesting to see how the West Country Celts seemed to support each others rebellions. The Blackheath revolt of 1497, led by a Cornish man, was supported by people up to the boundary of the Parett. But by 1549, the Prayer Book Rebellion was supported only by the Cornish and the original West Devonish insurgents (the Earl of Somerset was in charge of putting down the revolt but he used foreign mercenaries to do it). In passing, language played a part in this rebellion as the people in Devon, as well as Cornwall, could not understand the English as well as wanting a traditional Latin service.
I haven't detailed cultural aspects which continued post-Saxon era (eg wrestling) because that's not something I know a great deal about
I'm now shattered and can't be bothered proofing this properly, but I'll edit it later if there's anything glaringly wrong.
Zebedee
Let's skip a little history - it suffices to say that Dumnonia was one of the more resilient of the Celtic kingdoms. The Romans did not fully conquer it, nor did the Saxons. In 1066 Cornwall was still semi-autonomous although paying tribute for the privilege. The last major battle between the Saxons and the West Welsh was fought near Callington in 838, ending a war which started on the borders of Dumnonia in 577 AD.
I'm guessing that I don't have to make a case for Cornwall retaining Celtic culture - there are enough works on the subject as the Cornish seem to have rediscovered their Celtic roots over the past few years.
So I'm focusing on Devon and Somerset.
Somerset is an Anglo-Saxon name. 'Summer people' is a good enough translation referring to the farming practices of the Saxon immigrants from Wessex who settled the Somerset levels. Their main town was Somerton, just to the east of the river Parrett. Gradually they pushed westwards, but even in Alfred's will in c.900 AD, the people of Devon and Cornwall were considered to be 'Wealcynn'. The expansion was there but the Saxons had not achieved cultural dominance in those areas within the 62 years (for Cornwall) or the 190 years (for Devon if we take Exeter (taken c.710 AD as being the centre of Devon, it being the main settlement of the Dumnonian Kings) they had control over these lands.
Fast forward a few years more. The Saxons were giving land grants out for these occupied territories (more on this later). We come to a very unusual one in 974 AD (only 92 years before N-Day). Land grants tend to be written in Latin but the boundaries of the land being granted are given in English. These grants are so formulaic that some research is suggesting that the Saxons actually had some form of Chancery as individual scribes are being identified. Yet S 795 is different. It's from King Edgar to Ælfhere, his faithful minister for a grant of 3 hides (mansae) at Nymed (now Woolfin in Down St Mary, Devon). The odd thing is the formulation of the name. It reads like this "for the place which in the common tongue is called Nymed". Who's common tongue? Not the Saxon's - as Nymed is actually a Celtic name meaning holy place or sacred grove (just for info this is Limet in DB from 1086 and then Nimet Rollandi in 1242, and Nemethe Tracy in 1270). So the common tongue of an area which had been under Saxon control for 264 years was still Celtic... and I don't know of too many languages which die out within the space of 92 years barring total catastrophe.
Saxon laws are also in existance for this area which also reveal something odd about the social situation. Saxon law was divided into that for the rich and that for the poor. The 'Welsh' were dealt with under a seperate law (you'll see the carry over for this well into more modern times). Yet they made the laws for this area (West Saxon Law Code originated by Ines but included under Alfred's revisions) to apply for not just the Welsh, but rich Welsh and poor Welsh.
Placenames in this area are problematic. At first glance Devon and Somerset appear to be thoroughly anglicised. This has been compounded by research done by researchers who are experts in Anglo-Saxon but not so skilled in West Country Brythonic. Camel's Head, for instance, seems to be extremely English. Yet it has actually mutated down the years from 'camhyl' which means 'crooked estuary'. A good name formulation is that of cwm (valley) which is transliterated in a variety of fashions (eg Coombe, combe, come, cum). Often there is an English adjectival prefix or suffix. The extra bit can very often be shown to have been added sometime after N-day by looking at the early medieval land grants. Using just cwm you can trace very clearly the outlines of Dumnonia minus the eastern part of the kingdom (ie up to the River Parrett).
The rath system of farming is a clear sign of Celtic habitation. (Think of it as a fortified farmstead with a distinctive circular pattern to its farmed lands hence the English name 'rounds'). Land boundaries seem to have become fixed in the Saxon period and then codified by DB. The Saxons used a hide system of rectangular or square farming. This has given large parts of England its distinctive 'patchwork' appearance. Yet Ireland, Wales and Cornwall have always been known to have followed the rath pattern, indicating Celtic cultural dominance. Recent research is showing that this system extended to roughly the River Parett. (this is the link to the breakthrough article (/grumble not hyperlinking because it keeps ****ing deleting everything in the post and I'm a little bored of typing the same thing over and over again every time I try to be clever with hyperlinks /grumble off) http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba31/ba31regs.html).
Looking at the name of Devon, it cannot be chance that it retained it's Celtic name Dyfneint while other Saxon conquests took Saxon names.
Athelstan may have expelled the Welsh from Exeter in 927 AD. But it seems they only went as far as leaving the city walls, as their new settlement was around the area of the modern St.David's railway station. Link to map here:
http://www.exeter.gov.uk/maps/exeter.htm
Leofric (archbishop of Exeter under Edward the Confessor, and whom some believe to have been Welsh himself) says that Exeter in his time had Welsh and Saxon living as equals within it. There still remains a quarter bearing the name of the Welsh within Exeter. (The argument about Welsh quarters not meaning Welsh settlement is not very convincing. Hereford had a large Welsh community; they even had a set position in the English armies coming into Wales from Hereford - the vanguard, presumably to ensure loyalty. Chester's Welsh town is a little different - it gained its name because it was the portion of the city which consistently got burnt to the ground by my forefathers
).Linguistic research has revealed a dialectal continuum stretching from Cornwall to, yeah, the banks of the Parett (Linguistic Atlas of Britain, 1977). Somerset dialect from west of the Parett contains an astonishing amount of Welsh vocabulary, especially relating to farming.
Reports of West Country Brythonic surviving in Southern Devon until the C14th are made by the Tristram Risdon in c.1630 in his survey of Devon which is the first work on the medieval history of the area.
The genetic research conducted by the UCL team turned up some interesting results. Although unable to distinguish between Anglo-Saxon and Danish descent it clearly showed that there was a diminishing amount of Germanic heritage if one went east from Cornwall. Not allowing for more recent immigration, one is looking at the Germanic heritage for Cornwall as being (roughly) 20%, Devon 25% and Somerset 30%. Wessex itself is slightly more predominantly Celtic than Saxon (which is not to be surprised at when even the West Saxons themselves proclaimed that they were both Saxon and Welsh at the same time and in the same document!). As you go east, though there are some anomalies (Danish blood probably) the Saxon population grows denser. It seems that the this region of Britain was sparsely settled by the Saxons. This is the link to the original study although further research has also been carried out : http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/capelli-CB-03.pdf
It's interesting to see how the West Country Celts seemed to support each others rebellions. The Blackheath revolt of 1497, led by a Cornish man, was supported by people up to the boundary of the Parett. But by 1549, the Prayer Book Rebellion was supported only by the Cornish and the original West Devonish insurgents (the Earl of Somerset was in charge of putting down the revolt but he used foreign mercenaries to do it). In passing, language played a part in this rebellion as the people in Devon, as well as Cornwall, could not understand the English as well as wanting a traditional Latin service.
I haven't detailed cultural aspects which continued post-Saxon era (eg wrestling) because that's not something I know a great deal about
I'm now shattered and can't be bothered proofing this properly, but I'll edit it later if there's anything glaringly wrong.
Zebedee
Last edited:
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