A Book of North Wales

by S. Baring-Gould

Then came rushing from the East great hordes of fair-haired, round-headed men, with blue eyes. Their original homes were perhaps the Alps, but more probably Siberia. This new race was the Celt. It was divided into two branches, the Goidels and the Brythons, and the Goidels came first. Considerable difference as well as affinity exists between the dialects spoken by each. Where a Brython or Britton would speak of his head as “pen,” the Goidel or Gael would call it “ceann,” pronouncing the c hard, as k. So “five” in Manx is “queig,” but in Welsh “pump.” A like difference was found in Italy, where the Roman would name a man Quinctius (Fifth), but a Samnite would call him Pontius.

The Gael is now represented by the Irish, the Manx, and the Highlander: the Britton, so far as language goes, by the Welsh and Breton.

Where such names are found as Penmon in Anglesey, Pentire in Cornwall, Pen-y-gent in Yorkshire, there we know that the Britton lived long enough to give names to places. But where we find Kenmare, Kentire, Kinnoul, there we know that the Gael was at home.

Now we find it asserted that the Goidels overran Wales before they swept into Ireland, and that the Brittons penetrated as a wedge into Powys between two masses of Goidels.

But the place-names in North and South Wales are purely British, and not Gaelic. That the latter were at one time in both North and South Wales is indubitable, but they were not there long enough to stamp the mountains and rivers, the headlands and lakes, with names in their tongue. That was done by the Brittons who overflowed the whole of Wales from north to south.

Owing to the weakness of Britain, that had been in part Romanised, and which was ill-defended by a few legions, the island became a prey to invaders. It was fallen upon from all sides.

The Irish or Scots, as they were then called, poured down upon the western coast; the Picts broke over the wall from the north, and the Scandinavians and Germans invaded the east and north-east.

In 240 the Irish king Cormac MacAirt invaded Britain and assumed a nominal sovereignty over it. It was probably about this time that the Irish Gaels effected a lodgment on the coast of Wales and occupied Anglesey and all the northern fringe of the fair lands by the sea and the whole of Southern Wales.

That they were in the land we know, not only from the testimony of Welsh ancient writers, but from the number of inscribed stones they have left behind them, some with the Ogam script, bearing distinctly Irish names. All these inscribed stones belong to the period after the occupation from Ireland, and none go back to an earlier date, and give any grounds for supposing that the original population of North and South Wales were Gaels. The Scots or Irish held these parts till an event took place which led to their expulsion.

The incursions of the Picts had made residence in the land between the Roman walls, i.e. from the Clyde to Solway Firth, altogether unendurable, and a chief there named Cunedda, with his sons and a great host of followers, descended on North Wales to wrest it from the Irish. This they succeeded in doing. Cunedda and his sons were Brittons. After a series of contests they drove the Irish first out of Gwynedd, and then out of Anglesey. Finally they turned them bag and baggage out of South Wales as well. Thenceforth the Gaels never again obtained a foothold for any length of time in Wales.