It is very possible—I may add to the proof concerning the word Bonaven—that it may have been written originally Bononen, for Bononenses Taberniae. Any one familiar with the form of the letters of the early Irish alphabet, indeed of almost all early manuscript, will readily comprehend how easily an o might be written for an a, an n for a v, and vice versâ, by a scribe ignorant of the exact locality, and copying from a half-defaced document. Any one who looks at the form of the letters in the alphabet of the "Book of Kells," given in Dr. O'Donovan's Grammar, will conceive at a glance how this might have happened.
Assuming, however, that Lanigan is correct in his conjecture as to Boulogne, I have endeavored to discover whether the other localities named in the "Confession" and "Hymn" can be identified with localities now existing within the proper circumscription of the Roman military occupation around that city, and of a certain and unquestionable antiquity. I need not inform the academy of the great military importance of Boulogne at the time of which we treat. It was the point from which England had been invaded. It was the principal military settlement of the Romans in Northern Gaul. Julian the Apostate had held his headquarters there shortly before St. Patrick's birth. The country all around is marked by roads and mounds, which exhibit the rigid lines and stern solidity of Roman construction. I learn from a recent essay by [{752}] M. Quenson, an accomplished scholar of Saint Omer, that eighty-eight different works have been written to settle the site of the Portus Itius, whence Caesar embarked to invade Britain, and nineteen different localities assigned. Since M. Quenson wrote, M. de Saulcy has again opened, and this time I think finally determined, that controversy. Perhaps I am so far fortunate that the absorbing zeal with which this difficult problem has been pursued, in a country of such zealous scholars, still leaves to a stranger somewhat to glean, in places far inland from the famous port which they have so long labored to identify.
The localities to which St. Patrick refers have, I find, all been preserved with the least alteration of their etymology that it is possible to conceive in the space of so many centuries; and this, I may add, is peculiarly wonderful in a country where so many Roman names have, by the friction of the much mixed dialects of northern France, been almost frayed out of recognition. Who would suppose, for example, taking some of the familiar names of the department, that Fampoux was the Fanum Pollucis, Dainville Dianae villa, Lens Elena, Etaples Stapulae, Hermaville Hermetis villa, Hesdin Helenum, Souchez Sabucetum, Surques Surcae, Ervillers Herivilla, Tingry Tingriacum? [Footnote 131] And yet regarding these names there is no doubt that the modern French is a corruption of the old Latin form. Of the localities, which I proceed to designate, I submit that each has kept its original name with far less violation of the ancient word. The Enon, the Nemthur, the Taberniae of St. Patrick are, to my mind, manifest in comparison with the majority of a hundred other localities in the Boulonnais which undoubtedly derive their titles from a Roman source.
[Footnote 131: The name of the neighboring village of Ardres has run through the following traceable variations since the Roman period: Horda, Ardra, Ards, Ardrea, Ardes, Ardres.]
In the first place, let us take the word Enon. The river Liane, which runs into the sea at Boulogne, was known to the Romans as the Fluvius Enna. It is so marked on the most ancient maps of northern Gaul. It is so written in Latin by Malbrancq. Near Desvres—once called Desurennes, or Desvres-sur-Ennes—there is marked a little village of the same name, called also Enna. I will not be said to strain language, which has survived so many centuries, very severely when I venture to identify St. Patrick's Enon with this undoubtedly Roman Enon.
Lanigan totally disbelieved in the existence of the town called Nempthor. I could not do so; nor underrate the importance of identifying it, if possible, in such an inquiry as this. But the difficulty of discovering this place was hitherto greatly increased by a mistranslation of its meaning, for which I believe Colgan is responsible. The word was always supposed to mean "Holy Tower"—Neim, holy, and Tur, tower—until Professor Eugene O'Curry, when compiling, some years ago, his valuable catalogue of the Irish MSS. of the British Museum, after a minute examination of the manuscript, which is the oldest copy of the "Hymn" in existence, came to the conclusion that the word should really be written "Emtur," as it is indeed, though by accident I take it, in some of the breviaries. "The place of St. Patrick's birth," he says, "is generally written Nemtur; but there is clear evidence that the N is but a prefix introduced to fill the hiatus in the text, and that Emtur is the proper form of the word." The word, then, means not holy tower, but the tower of some place or person indicated by the word Em. Some eight miles distant from Desvres, toward the north, still within the military circumscription of which it is the centre, there is such a place. The river Em, or Hem, flows past a village of so great an antiquity, that even in the ordinary geographical dictionaries the record is preserved that Julius Caesar slept [{753}] there on his way to embark for the invasion of Britain. [Footnote 132] The town contains a Roman arch and the ruins of a Roman tower, from which the village derives its name. The name is Tournehem, or, as it was written in Malbrancq's time, Tur-n-hem. The tower and the river show the derivation of the word at a glance. The exigencies of Irish verse simply caused their transposition. I have only to add to Mr. O'Curry's ingenious note on the subject the remark that the n was not, as he supposes, merely inserted to fill up a hiatus in the line, but was obviously a part of it. It is a copulative as common in Celtic words as de in modern French, and has precisely the same meaning. Ballynamuck, for example, means the town of, or on, the river Muck. Tulloch na Daly (whose swelling dimensions the French afterward curbed into the famous name of Tollendall) is a more apposite instance.
[Footnote 132: "Ce lieu existait lorsque les l'egions romaines penétrèrent dans la Morinie, l'an de Rome 697, ou 57 ans avant l'ère valgaire, et consistait alors en un château fort garni de tours, d'où eat venu, selon Malbrancq, la dénomination de Tournehem du Latin à Turribus. César s'empara de ce château et y fit quelque séjour pour l'avantage de ea cavalerie. Environ deux siècles et demi après, c'est à dire en 218, Septime-Sévère, autre empereur romain, fit camper dans le voisinage de Tournehem (sur la montagne de Saint Louis) une partie de son armée destinée pour une expédition contre le Grand Bretagne, qu'll effectua glorieusement la même année."—P. Collet, "Notice Historique de Saint Omer suivi de celles de Therouanne el de Tournehem. " Saint Omer, 1830. Both M. Collet and Père Malbrancq, however, overlook the obvious derivation of the word—though both note the name of the river which flows through the town, and which M. Collet calls "la rivière de Hem ou de Saint Louis. " Again, M. H. Piers, in the "Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaries de la Morinie" (Saint Omer. 1834) says, '"César après s'être emparé des forteresses de la contrée s'y rendit de Ther ouanne, Sithieu et Tournehem, l'an 55 on 56 avant l'ère vulgaire, pour subjuguer la Grande Bretagne." In the same volume there is an interesting paper by M. Pigauit de Beaupré on the castle of Tournehem, which, he says, was partially rebuilt by Baldwin II., Count of Guines, in 1174, and continued to be a principal residence of the Dukes of Burgundy at so late a date as 1485. But the vastness and solidity of the works which he describes, some of them subterranean roads evidently used for communication with other fortified works, clearly indicate their Roman character. Baldwin, indeed, a prince far in advance of his age, seems to have attempted to revive Roman ideas, and rebuild Roman works wherever he found them within his dominions. The castle of Hâmes, near Calais, which he likewise rebuilt, and which he ceded to the English as part of the ransom of King John of France, was also, as M. Pigault de Beaupré shows, of Roman construction.]
I have yet to identify the Taberniae. To the eye, and on the old maps, they almost identify themselves. Desvres has all the characters of a great Roman military position—a vast place of arms, the tracings of fortified walls, the fosse, lines of circumvallation, and hard by on the forest edge the Sept Voies or Septemvium, the meeting of the seven great military roads leading from and to the other principal strongholds of the imperial power in northern and western Europe. Any one who examines in particular the "Carte des Voies Romaines du Département du Pas de Calais," published by the Commission of Departmental Antiquities, [Footnote 133] cannot fail to perceive that this now obscure village, which certainly never was raised to the rank of a Roman city, was nevertheless once a great nucleus of Roman power. The fragment of an ancient bridge is still known as the Pont de Caesar. The Septemvium, with its remarkable concentration of roads, is alone sufficient to indicate the importance of the place. There is one road leading straight to Amiens; one that reaches the sea by the mouth of the Canche; another that runs to the harbor of Boulogne; another that joins the roads from Saint Omer and from Tournehem, and carries them on to Wissante and Sangate, the supposed Portus Itius and Portus Inferior; the fifth road was to Tervanna and Arras; the sixth to Taruanna; the seventh to Saint Omer. Would so many roads, communicating with places of such military importance, have been concentrated by a race of such a centralizing talent as the Romans anywhere except at the cite of a great city or a great camp? On the ancient maps, indeed, the country which lies between Desvres and Boulogne, along the Liane, is simply marked Castrum.
[Footnote 133: "Statistique Monurnentale du Département du Pas de Calais. Publiée par la Commission des Antiquités Departementales. " Arras: chez Topino, Libraire, 1840.]