[107]. It is hardly conceivable that Gildas, if he was a native of Strathclyde, as is generally supposed, could have used the language he does regarding the northern part of the island; but there is much confusion regarding his life, and great difficulty in ascertaining the real events of it. Usher came to the conclusion that there were at least two persons of the name, whom he distinguishes as Gildas Albanus and Gildas Badonicus, whose acts have been confounded together, and his opinion has been very generally adopted. Mabillon considered that there was only one Gildas. There are four lives of St. Gildas preserved. One by Caradoc of Llancarvan, printed in Stevenson’s edition of his writings; another in the Bodleian, printed by Capgrave; another by a monk of Ruys, printed by Mabillon; and a fourth in the British Museum, still in MS. (Egerton, No. 7457). It is, however, impossible to compare these lives without seeing that they relate to the same person. Gildas in his work states that the battle of Badon was fought in the year he was born, and that he was then forty-four years, which, as that battle was fought, according to the Annales Cambriæ, in 516, gives us 560 as the year in which he composed his history.
The confusion has arisen, in this as in everything relating to Welsh history, from not discriminating between his acts compiled before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history appeared, and those which bear the impress of that work. The third and fourth life belong to the former period; that by Caradoc of Llancarvan, and the second, which is substantially the same, to the latter.
In the fourth life he is said to have been born in Bretagne; to have been educated by St. Phylebert, abbot of Tournay; to have founded a monastery, which, by its description, answers to that of Ruys; and to have gone to Island, by which, however, Ireland is evidently meant—when it terminates abruptly. In the life by the monk of Ruys, he is said to have been born in ‘Arecluta fertilissima regione,’ which ‘Arecluta autem regio, quum sit Britanniæ pars, vocabulum sumpsit a quodam flumine quod Clut nuncupatur.’ His father, Caunus, had four other sons—Cuillus, who succeeded him; Mailocus, who founded a monastery at ‘Lyuhes in pago Elmail;’ Egreas; Alleccus; and Peteona, who became a nun. Mailocus is evidently St. Meilig, son of Caw, to whom the church of Llowes in Elfael, Radnorshire, is dedicated. Egreas, Alleccus, and Peteona are Saints Eigrad, Gallgo, and Peithien, children of Caw, to whom churches in Anglesea are dedicated. If he was born, therefore, in Britain, it is more probable that Arecluta was the vale of the Clwyd in North Wales, where St. Kentigern founded the church of Llanelwy, or St. Asaphs. He is said in this life to have been educated by Illtutus, and to have gone to Ireland in the reign of King Ainmere, and after going to Rome to have gone to Armorica when he was thirty years old, and founded the monastery of Ruys, where after ten years he wrote his history. This places the date of his leaving Britain for Armorica in 546, and his history in 556, and he is said to have died an old man in Armorica. Ainmere, king of Ireland, reigned according to Tighernac, from 566 to 569, and the Annales Cambriæ have at 565, ‘Navigatio Gildæ in Hybernia,’ and Tighernac has at 570 ‘Gillas quievit.’ He therefore probably died in Ireland, and the monk of Ruys has made his visit to Ireland precede his going to Armorica in order that he may claim Ruys as the place of his death.
The acts compiled subsequent to the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history identify Cuillus, his father’s eldest son, with Geoffrey’s Howel, king of Alclyde—transfer his birth to Strathclyde, where his father is in the one life Nau rex Scotiæ—in the other Caunus rex Albaniæ—increase his family from four to twenty-four sons—import the element of Arthur and his times into his acts; and finally take him to Glastonbury, where he dies after it has been besieged by King Arthur,—additions which have led to the solution of two Gildases, but which may more reasonably be rejected as spurious.
[108]. In ea prius habitabant quatuor et gentes; Scoti, Picti, atque Saxones, Britones.—Nennius, Hist. Brit. 2. Omnes nationes et provincias Britanniæ, quæ in quatuor linguas, id est, Brettonum, Pictorum, Scottorum, et Anglorum divisae sunt, in ditione accepit.—Bede, Ec. Hist. iii. c. vi. Gildas terms the latter people simply Saxones. Bede, in narrating their settlement, ‘Gens Anglorum sive Saxonum.’
[109]. Procopius makes the important statement that, after the departure of Constantine, although the Romans were unable to recover the island, the kingly government did not cease and the island fall into anarchy; but ‘that it remained subject to tyrants.’—Procop. Bel. Van. i. 2.
[110]. St. Patrick tells us in his Confessio that his father lived at Bannavem Taberneæ, and in his epistle to Coroticus that he was a ‘decurio.’
[111]. Interea fames dira ac famosissima vagis ac nutabundis hæret, quæ multos eorum cruentis compellit prædonibus sine delatione victas dare manus, ut pauxillum ad refocillandam animam cibi caperent, alios vero nusquam; quin potius de ipsis montibus, speluncis ac saltibus, dumis consertis continue rebellabant. Et tum primum inimicis per multos annos in terra agentibus, strages dabant.—Gild. de Excidio Brit. 17.
[112]. Ab aquilone; strictly north-north-east.
[113]. Pro indigenis.