Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 2 of 2)

by Sir John Rhys

But as to Gaul generally, it is not to be assumed that the Gaulish druids and all the other Gauls held the same opinion on these questions: we have some evidence that they did not. Thus the Gauls in the neighbourhood of Massilia[23], who would accept a creditor’s promise to pay up in the next world, can hardly have contemplated the possibility of any such creditor being then a bird or a moth. Should it be objected that the transformations, instanced above as Brythonic and Goidelic, were assumed only in the case of magicians and other professional or privileged persons, and that we are not told what was held to happen in the case of the rank and file of humanity, it is enough to answer that neither do we know what the druids of Gaul held to be the fate of the common people of their communities. No lever can be applied in that direction to disturb the lines of the parallel.

In previous chapters, pp. 45, 54, 61, 88, 97, 229, instances from Welsh sources have been given of the fairies concealing their names. But Wales is not the only Celtic land where we find traces of this treatment of one’s name: it is to be detected also on Irish ground. Thus, when a herald from an enemy’s camp comes to parley with Cúchulainn and his charioteer, the latter, being first approached, describes himself as the ‘man of the man down there,’ meaning Cúchulainn, to whom he pointed; and when the herald comes to Cúchulainn himself, he asks him whose man he is: Cúchulainn describes himself as the ‘man of Conchobar mac Nessa.’ The herald then inquires if he has no more definite designation, and Cúchulainn replies that what he has given will suffice[24]: neither of the men gives his name. Thus Celts of both groups, Brythons and Goidels, are at one in yielding evidence to the same sort of cryptic treatment of personal names, at some stage or other in their past history.

The student of man tells us, as already pointed out, that the reason for the reluctance to disclose one’s name was of the same nature as that which makes savages, and some men belonging to nations above the savage state feel anxious that an enemy should not get possession of anything identified with their persons, such as a lock of one’s hair, a drop of one’s blood, or anything closely connected with one’s person, lest it should give the enemy power over one’s person as a whole, especially if such enemy is suspected of possessing any skill in handling the terrors of magic. In other words, the anthropologist would say that the name was regarded as identified with the person; and, having said this, he has mostly felt satisfied that he has definitively disposed of the matter. Therein, however, he is possibly wrong; for when he says that the name was probably treated as a part of the man, that only leads one to ask the question, What part of the man? At any rate, I can see nothing very unreasonable in such a question, though I am quite willing to word it differently, and to ask: Is there any evidence to show with what part of a man his name was associated?

As regards the Aryan nations, we seem to have a clue to an answer in the interesting group of Aryan words in point, from which I select the following:—Irish ainm, ‘a name,’ plural anmann; Old Welsh anu, now enw, also ‘a name’; Old Bulgarian imeⁿ (for *i̯enmen, *anman); Old Prussian emnes, emmens, accusative emnan; and Armenian anwan (for a stem *anman)—all meaning a name. To these some scholars[25] would add, and it may be rightly, the English word name itself, the Latin nomen, the Sanskrit nāman, and the Greek ὔνομα; but, as some others find a difficulty in thus grouping these words, I abstain from laying any stress on them. In fact, I have every reason to be satisfied with the wide extent of the Aryan world covered by the other instances enumerated as Celtic, Prussian, Bulgarian, and Armenian.

Now, such is the similarity between Welsh enw, ‘name,’ and enaid, ‘soul,’ that I cannot help referring the two words to one and the same origin, especially when I see the same or rather greater similarity illustrated by the Irish words, ainm, ‘name,’ and anim, ‘soul.’ This similarity between the Irish words so pervades the declension of them, that a beginner frequently falls into the error of confounding them in medieval texts. Take, for instance, the genitive singular, anma, which may mean either animæ or nominis; the nominative plural, anmand, which may be either animæ or nomina; and the gen. anmand, either animarum or nominum, as the dative anmannaib may likewise be either animabus or nominibus. In fact, one is at first sight almost tempted to suppose that the partial differentiation of the Irish forms was only brought about under the influence of Latin, with its distinct forms of anima and nomen. That would be pressing the point too far; but the direct teaching of the Celtic vocables is that they are all to be referred to the same origin in the Aryan word for ‘breath or breathing,’ which is represented by such words as Latin anima, Welsh anadl, ‘breath,’ and a Gothic anan, ‘blow or breathe,’ whence the compound preterite uz-on, twice used by Ulfilas in the fifteenth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel to render ἐξέπνευσε, ‘gave up the ghost.’

Now the lessons which the words here grouped together contain for the student of man is, that the Celts, and certain other widely separated Aryans, unless we should rather say the whole of the Aryan family, were once in the habit of closely associating both the soul and one’s name with the breath of life. The evidence is satisfactory so far as it goes; but let us go a little more into detail, and see as exactly as we can to what it commits us. Commencing at the beginning, we may set out with the axiom that breathing is a physical action, and that in the temperate zone one’s breath is not unfrequently visible. Then one may say that the men who made the words—Welsh, enaid (for an earlier anatio-s), ‘soul’; Irish, anim (from an earlier stem, animon); Latin, anima, also animus, ‘feeling, mind, soul’; and Greek, ἄνεμος, ‘air, wind’—must have in some way likened the soul to one’s breath, which perhaps first suggested the idea. At all events they showed not only that they did not contemplate the soul as a bone, or any solid portion of a man’s frame, or even as a manikin residing inside it: in fact they had made a great advance in the direction of the abstract notion of a spirit, in which some of them may have been helped by another association of ideas, namely, that indicated by speaking of the dead as shades or shadows, umbræ, σκιαί. Similarly, the words in point for ‘name’ seem to prove that some of the ancient Aryans must have, in some way, associated one’s name with the breath of life. On the other hand, we find nothing to show that the name and the soul were directly compared or associated with one another, while the association of the name with the breath represents, probably, a process as much earlier as it is cruder, than likening the soul to the breath and naming it accordingly. This is countenanced to some extent by the general physiognomy, so to say, of words like enaid, anima, as contrasted with enw, ainm, nomen, name. Speaking relatively, the former might be of almost any date in point of comparative lateness, while the latter could not, belonging as they do to a small declension which was not wont to receive accessions to its numbers.

In what way, then, or in what respect did early folklore identify the name with the breath? Before one could expect to answer this question in anything like a convincing fashion, one would have to examine the collector of the folklore of savages, or rather to induce him to cross-examine them on the point. For instance, among the Singhalese[26], when in the ceremony of name-giving the father utters the baby’s name in a low whisper in the baby’s ear, is that called breathing the name? and is the name so whispered called a breath or a breathing? In the case of the savages who name their children at their birth, is the reason ever advanced that a name must be given to the child in order to make it breathe, or, at least, in order to facilitate its breathing? Some such a notion of reinforcing the child’s vitality and safety would harmonize well enough with the fact that, as Mr. Clodd[27] puts it, ‘Barbaric, Pagan, and Christian folklore is full of examples of the importance of naming and other birth-ceremonies, in the belief that the child’s life is at the mercy of evil spirits watching the chance of casting spells upon it, of demons covetous to possess it, and of fairies eager to steal it and leave a “changeling” in its place.’ Provisionally, one must perhaps rest content to suppose the association of the name to have taken place with the breath regarded as an accompaniment of life. Looked at in that sense, the name becomes associated with one’s life, and, speaking roughly, with one’s person; and it is interesting to notice that one seems to detect traces in Welsh literature of some confusion of the kind. Thus, when the hero of the story of Kulhwch and Olwen was christened he was named Kulhwch, which is expressed in Welsh as ‘forcing or driving Kulhwch on him’ (gyrru kulhỽch arnaỽ[28]); Kulhỽch, be it noticed, not the name Kulhwch. Similarly when Brân, on the eve of his expedition to Ireland, left seven princes, or knights as they are also called, to take charge of his dominions, we have an instance of the kind. The stead or town was named after the seven knights, and it is a place which is now known as Bryn y Saith Marchog, ‘the Hill of the Seven Knights,’ near Gwyđelwern, in Merionethshire. But the wording of the Mabinogi of Branwen is o achaỽs hynny y dodet seith marchaỽc ar y dref[29], meaning ‘for that reason the stead was called Seven Knights,’ literally ‘for that reason one put Seven Knights on the stead.’ In Guest’s Mabinogion, iii. 116, this will be found rendered wrongly, though not wholly without excuse—‘for this reason were the seven knights placed in the town.’ It is probable that the redactor of the stories from which the two foregoing instances come—and more might be cited—was not so much courting ambiguities as adhering to an old form of expression which neglected from the first to distinguish, in any formal way, between names and the persons or things which they would, in modern phraseology, be said to represent[30].

An instance has been already mentioned of a man’s name being put or set on him, or rather forced on him: at any rate, his name is on him both in Welsh and Irish, and the latter language also speaks of it as cleaving or adhering to him. Neither language contemplates the name, however closely identified with him, as having become an inseparable part of him, or else as something he has secured for himself. In the neo-Celtic tongues, both Welsh and Irish, all things which a man owns, and all things for which he takes credit, are with him or by him; but all things which he cannot help having, whether creditable or discreditable, if they are regarded as coming from without are on him, not with him. Thus, if he is wealthy there is money with him; but if he is in debt and owes money, the money is on him. Similarly, if he rejoices there is joy with him; whereas if he is ashamed or afraid, shame or fear is on him. This is a far-reaching distinction, of capital importance in Celtic phraseology, and judged by this criterion the name is something from without the man, something which he cannot take credit to himself for having acquired by his own direct willing or doing. This is to be borne in mind when one speaks of the name as identified or closely bound up with one’s life and personality. But this qualified identification of the name with the man is also what one may infer from savage folklore; for many, perhaps most, of the nations who name their children at their birth, have those names changed when the children grow up. That is done when a boy has to be initiated into the mysteries of his tribe or of a guild, or it may be when he has achieved some distinction in war. In most instances, it involves a serious ceremony and the intervention of the wise man, whether the medicine-man of a savage system, or the priest of a higher religion[31]. In the ancient Wales of the Mabinogion, and in pagan Ireland, the name-giving was done, subject to certain conditions, at the will and on the initiative of the druid, who was at the same time tutor and teacher of the youth to be renamed[32]. Here I may be allowed to direct attention to the two following facts: the druid, recalling as he does the magician of the Egypt of the Pentateuch and the shaman of the Mongolian world of our own time, represented a profession probably not of Celtic origin. In the next place, his method of selecting names from incidents was palpably incompatible with what is known to have been the Aryan system of nomenclature, by means of compounds, as evinced by the annals of most nations of the Aryan family of speech: such compounds, I mean, as Welsh Pen-wyn, ‘white-headed,’ Gaulish Πεννο-ουινδος, or Greek Ἵππαρχος, Ἄρχιππος, and the like. Briefly, one may say that the association of the name with the breath of life was probably Aryan, but without, perhaps, being unfamiliar to the aborigines of the British Isles before their conquest by the Celts. On the other hand, in the druid and his method of naming we seem to touch the non-Aryan substratum, and to detect something which was not Celtic, not Aryan[33].

Perhaps the reader will not regard it as wholly irrelevant if here I change the subject for a while from one’s name to other words and locutions in so far as they may be regarded as illustrative of the mental surroundings in which the last paragraph leaves the name. I allude especially to the exaggerated influence associated with a form of words, more particularly among the Irish Celts. O’Curry gives a tragic instance: the poet Néde mac Adnai, in order to obtain possession of the throne of Connaught, asked an impossible request of the king, who was his own father’s brother and named Caier. When the king declared his inability to accede to his demand the poet made the refusal his excuse for composing on the king what was called in Irish an áir or áer, written later aor, ‘satire,’ which ran approximately thus:—

Evil, death, short life to Caier!