Forbid the flames our vessels to deface,
Mark our afflicted plight, and spare a pious race.
“We come not hither with the sword to rend
Your Libyan homes, and shoreward drive the prey.
Nay, no such violence our thoughts intend.”
—Virgil, Æneid, I., lxix., 57.
The old Welsh poets commemorate what they term Three National Pillars of the Island of Britain, to wit: “First—Hu, the vast of size, first brought the nation of the Cymry to the Isle of Britain; and from the summer land called Deffrobani they came (namely, the place where Constantinople now is), and through Mor Tawch, the placid or pacific sea, they came up to the Isle of Britain and Armorica, where they remained. Second—Prydain, son of Aedd the Great, first erected a government and a kingdom over Ynys Prydain, and previous to that time there was but little gentleness and ordinance, save a superiority of oppression. Third—Dyfnwal Moelmud—and he was the first that made a discrimination of mutual rights and statute law, and customs, and privileges of land and nation, and on account of these things were they called the three pillars of the Cymry.”[323]
The Kymbri of Cambria claim themselves to be of the same race as the Kimmeroi, from whom the Crimea takes its name, also that Cumberland is likewise a land of the Cumbers. The authorities now usually explain the term Kymbri as meaning fellow countrymen, and when occurring in place-names such as Kemper, Quimper, Comber, Kember, Cymner, etc., it is invariably expounded to mean confluence: the word would thus seem to have had imposed upon it precisely the same meaning as synagogue, i.e., a coming together or congregation, and it remains to inquire why this was so.
The Kymbri were also known as Cynbro, and the interchangeability of kym and kin is seemingly universal: the Khan of Tartary was synonymously the Cham of Tartary; our Cambridge is still academically Cantabrigia, a compact is a contract, and the identity between cum and con might be demonstrated by innumerable instances. This being so, it is highly likely that the Kymbri were followers of King Bri, otherwise King Aubrey, of the Iberii or Iberian race. In Celtic aber or ebyr—as at Aberdeen, Aberystwith, etc.—meant a place of confluence of streams, burns, or brooks; and aber seems thus to have been synonymous with camber.
Ireland, or Ibernia, as it figures in old maps, now Hibernia, traces its title to a certain Heber, and until the time of Henry VII., when the custom was prohibited, the Hibernians used to rush into battle with perfervid cries of Aber![324] It is a recognised peculiarity of the Gaelic language to stress the first of any two syllables, whereas in Welsh the accent falls invariably upon the second: given therefore one and the same word “Aubrey,” a Welshman should theoretically pronounce it ‘Brey, and an Irishman Aubr’; that is precisely what seems to have happened, whence there is a probability that the Heber and “St. Ibar” of Hibernia and the Bri of Cambria are references to one and the same immigrants.