THE ANTIQUITY OF KILTS.

This has been the subject of many discussions, and has recently found a place in the columns of "NOTES AND QUERIES." I do not propose to take any part in the present discussion, but it may be of some service to historical students for me to introduce to public notice a much older authority than any that has yet been cited.

It is known to but few antiquaries out of the principality, that the ancient poetry of Wales throws more light on the immediate post-Roman history of Britain than any documents in existence. These poems vividly pourtray the social condition of the period, and contain almost the only records of the great contest between the natives and the Saxon invaders; they prove beyond a doubt that the Romans had left the province in an advanced stage of civilisation, and they supply us with the means of affirming decisively, that the vine was cultivated here to a very considerable extent.

The antiquity of these poems admits of no reasonable doubt; on that point the Vindication of Turner enables the antiquaries of Wales to make this assertion with confidence: and having recently translated most of our old poems, with a view to future publication, I feel myself warranted in assuming them to belong to the sixth and seventh centuries of our era. One of these bards, Aneurin by name, belonged to the British tribe, described by the Romans as Ottadini, and by themselves as the people of Gododin. This people were situated at the junction of England and Scotland, and the poems of this bard chiefly refer to that district; but as the bards were a rambling class, and as the bulk of the people from Chester to Dumbarton were the same race as the people of the principality, we are not surprised when we find this bard sometimes among "the banks and braes of bonny Doon," and sometimes in North and South Wales. In one of his verses he thus describes the kilt of a British chief:—

"Peis dinogat e vreith vreith

O grwyn balaot ban ureith."

These lines may be found in the Myvyrian Archæology, vol. i. p. 13. col. 1.; and a most unwarrantable translation of dinogat may be found in Davies' Mythology of the Druids; but the literal rendering would be this:

"Dinogad's kilt is stripy, stripy,

Of the skins of front-streak'd wolf-cubs."

Peis or pais is the word now used for the article of female attire known as a petti-coat, which in form bears a sufficiently close resemblance to the male kilt to justify me in using that word here. It also occurs in pais-arfau, a coat of arms, and pais-ddur, a coat of mail. The words vreith vreith have been translated word for word; in the Kymric language it is a very common form of emphatic expression to repeat the word on which the emphasis falls, as yn dda da for very good; but a more idiomatic translation would have been, very stripy. Vraith with us also stands for plaid, and in the Welsh Bible Joseph's "coat of many colours" is named siacced vraith.

Now I will not attempt to determine what relation this kilt stands in to the kilts of the Highlands, whether the Gael borrowed it from the Briton, or the Briton from the Gael, or whether the dress was common to both at the time in which Dinogad lived; but thus much appears to be clear, that we here have a kilt, and that that kilt was striped, if not a plaid; and it only remains for us to determine the period at which Dinogad lived. Most persons are acquainted with the name of Brochmael, Prince of Powys, the British commander at the battle of Bangor in 613, on the occasion of the dispute between Augustine and the primitive British church; Dinogad stood to him in the following relation:

BROCHMAEL
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CYNAN GARWYN
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—————————————————
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SELYF OR SALOMON.DINOGAD.

Of Dinogad himself there is but one fact on record, and that took place in 577. His brother Selyf fell at the battle of Bangor or Chester in 613. If we take these facts together, we may form a pretty accurate idea respecting the period at which he lived.

Viewing this matter from a Cambrian standpoint, I feel myself warranted in hazarding the following remarks. In the lines of Aneurin, the thing selected for special notice is the excess of stripe; and therefore, whether it was the invention of Dinogad, or whether he borrowed the idea from the Scots or Picts when he was at Dumbarton in 577, it is quite clear, from the repetition of the word vreith, that his kilt had the attribute of stripyness to a greater extent than was usually the case; while it is also equally clear, that amongst the Britons of that period, kilts of a stripy character were so common as to excite no surprise. We may therefore affirm,

1. That in the beginning of the seventh century the British chiefs were in the habit of wearing skin kilts.

2. That striped kilts were common.

3. That a chief named Dinogad was distinguished by an excess of this kind of ornament. And

4. That as the Kymry of North Britain were on intimate terms with their neighbours, it is highly probable that the Scottish kilt is much older than 1597.

T. STEPHENS.

Merthyr Tydfil.

NOTES ON JULIN, NO. 1.
(Vol. ii., pp. 230. 282. 379. 443.)

In approaching a subject set at rest so long since, I feel some apology due to you; and that apology I will make by giving you the results of my recent investigation of the question of Vineta v. Julin alias Wollin, made in Pomerania, and noted from personal testimony and Pomeranian chronicles.

But, first, to correct an erreur de plume of DR. BELL'S. He says, in stating the position of Vineta (Vol. ii., p. 283.), "opposite the small town of Demmin, in Pomerania." DR. BELL has mis-written the name: there is no such place on the Baltic. The real name is Damerow, on the Isle of Usedom. A little lower he remarks, speaking of Wollin, "No rudera, no vestiges of ancient grandeur, now mark the spot; not even a tradition of former greatness." In this I think DR. BELL will find (and, I am sure, will readily allow, in the same spirit of good faith in which I make my observations) that he is in error, from the following narrative.

The gentleman who has kindly given me, by word of mouth, the following particulars, is a native of Wollin, and of one of the most ancient and noble families in that island, a relative of that Baron Kaiserling who was the Cicero of Frederick the Great, but of an elder branch of that family, the Counts of Kaiserling. M. de Kaiserling states that, when a young man, in his native town, he took a delight in reading the records of its bygone glory, and in tracing out the ruins in the neighbourhood of the town, extending to the distance of about one English mile from its outskirts. The foundations of houses and tracks of streets[1] are still exposed in the operations of agriculture, and any informant has in his possession several Byzantine and Wendish coins which he at that time picked up. He has likewise seen a Persian coin, which was found in the same neighbourhood by a friend. Having been led by circumstances to examine the evidence pro and con. in this question, he has come to the conclusion that Wollin and Julin or Jumne are identical. He treats the story of Vineta as a nursery tale and a myth.

[1] Particularly the Salmarks (Wendish for Fishmarkets), as they were called.

From the recently-published work on Wollin (Die Insel Wollin und das Seebad Misdroy. Historische Skizze von Georg Wilhelm von Raumer: Berlin, 1851) I extract the following account of Wollin in 1070, as I think it important to have all the best evidence attainable:[2] —

"Adam of Bremen, a contemporaneous historian, has left us a curious description of Wollin as it appeared at the time of its merchant greatness; yet he was himself, most probably, never there, but compiled his account from the narratives of sailors, from whose mouth he, as he says, heard almost incredibilities about the splendour of the town. He describes the famous city as the chief staple place of the trade of the surrounding Slavonians and Russians: also as the largest of all towns at this end of Europe, and inhabited by Slavonians, Russians, and various pagan nations. Also many Germans from Lower Saxony had come to the town, yet it was not permitted them to appear openly as Christians; though the political interests of a trading place, then as now, caused all nations to be allowed the liberty of incolation (Niederlassungsrecht) and toleration. The peculiar inhabitants of the place, particularly those who held the government, were mostly pagans, but of great hospitality, of liberal and humane customs, and great justice. The town had become very rich, by means of the trade of Northern Europe, of which they had almost the monopoly: every comfort and rarity of distant regions was to be found there. The most remarkable thing in Wollin was a pot of Vulcan, which the inhabitants called Greek fire.[3] Probably we should understand by this, a great beacon fire, which the Wolliners sustained by night on account of navigation, and of which a report was among the sailors that it was Greek fire; but it is also possible that in the trade with the Orient, which the discovered Arabic coins prove, real Greek fire was brought to Wollin in pots. A tricaputed idol of a sea-god, or Neptune, stood in Wollin, to denote that the island Wollin was surrounded by three different seas: that is to say, a green one, the Ostsee; a white one, under which we should probably understand the Dievenow; and one which was retained in raging motion by continual storms, the Haff. The navigation from Wollin to Demmin, a trading place of the Peene, is short; also from Wollin to Samland, in Prussia, eight days only were necessary to go by land from Hamburgh to Wollin, or by sea, across Schleswig; and forty-three days was the time of sailing from Wollin to Ostragard in Russia. These notices point to the chief trade of Wollin by sea, that is, with Demmin, Hamburgh, Schleswig, and Holstein, Prussia, and Russia.

"So magnificent was ancient Wollin, according to the narrative of the seamen; yet it must not be considered exactly a northern Venice, but a wide-circuited place, chiefly, however, of wooden houses, and surrounded by walls and palisades, in which (in comparison with the then rudeness and poverty of the countries on the Ostsee) riches and merchandise were heaped up.

"And now it is time to mention the fable of the drowned city Vineta. While an old chronicler, Helmold, follows Adam of Bremen in the description of the city Wollin, he puts, through an error of transcription,[4] in place of Julinum or Jumne, which name Adam of Bremen has, Vineta; such a place could not be found, and it was concluded, therefore, that the sea had engulfed it. The celebrated Buggenhagen[5] first discovered, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, a great rock formation in the sea, at the foot of the Streckelberg, on the island of Usedom,[6] and then the city Vineta was soon transplanted thither; and it was absurdly considered that a rock reef (which has lately been used for the harbour of Swinemünde, and has disappeared) was the ruins of a city destroyed by the waves a thousand years ago: indeed, people are not wanting at the present day, who hold fast to this fable, caused by the error of a transcriber. In the mean time it has become a folk tale, and as such retains its value. A Wolliner booth-keeper recounted me the interesting story, which may be read in Barthold's History of Pomerania (vol. i. p. 419.),—a rough sterling Pomeranian (ächt-pommerschis) fantastical picture of the overbearing of the trade-enriched inhabitants of Vineta, which God had so punished by sending the waves of the ocean over the city. The town of Wollin, to which alone this legend was applicable, is certainly not destroyed by the sea, nor wholly desert: but if they deserved punishment for their pride in their greatness, they had received it in that they had quite fallen from their former glory."—Pp. 22-25.

[2] Likewise, repetition must be excused, as it is here scarcely avoidable.

[3] "Olla Vulcani quæ incolæ Græcam vocant ignem de quo etiam meminit Solinus," adds Adam of Bremen. Solinus speaks of oil, or rather naphtha, from Mœsia; and it is not improbable that the Wolliners imported it for their beacons in pots.

[4] The oldest MSS. are said not to have this error.

[5] A native of Wollin, by the bye.

[6] Close by Damerow.

As I wish thoroughly to dispose of the question, I shall divide my communication on Julin into two parts, of which the above is the first. I reserve my own remarks till all the evidence has been heard.

KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE.