Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin & Christianity

Dear Michael,

Great to see this website, which I came across by accident whilst researching for a screenplay. I've read Dr Oppenheimer's book and found it not only interesting and well written but it answered many questions I already had about the origins of the English language.
There is another fascinating book with the unfortunate title of 'The History of Britain REVEALED - The shocking truth about the English language' by M.J. Harper. A terrible title, with a terrible cover and not written by a linguist, but an Applied Epistemologist. However, his conclusions are very similar. It 's worth a read if you haven't done so already.
Just a couple of thoughts on what I've read. In you debate about Catreath : (see section : negative reactions)

Catterick - in that kingdom - was in Roman Cataractonium, which was thought to be of Latin origin - "Waterfall-place". But of course there aren't any waterfalls. Recently the etymology has been explained as Battle-walls (ie, a fortified encampment) from a Celtic root (Cat = battle). Hence it was called "Catraeth" in Y Gododdin.
OK. 'Cat' could be 'cot', 'cottage' = house, dwelling and 'raeth' means council (German: 'Rat', Dutch: 'raad'). So Catraeth = 'main house for counseling'. The Roman must indeed have understood 'cataract' = waterfall.

The meaning of Catreath in Welsh is actually cat: battle traeth: shore/waterfront. Since there's no certainty it took place at Catterick anyway and if it is 'battle shore' then it certainly didn't take place at Catterick. Also. if one looks at the logistics of this battle taking place at Catterick then why did the Gododdin, supposedly from southeast Scotland, and the men of Gwynedd from northwest Wales cross half of Northumbria to do battle... and how would they have been allowed to get that far unopposed? If, as some think, this battle took place earlier (c. 570) then the men of Gododdin went through virtually the whole of Bryneich to get there and the men of Gwynedd through South Rheged, the North Pennines and Ebrauc. That's of course, assuming that we've got all these kingdoms in the right places. 
The men of Gododdin were mounted mercenaries. According to the poem, they 'feasted' for almost a year in Edinburgh. This sounds like... the guard of the local king which was extended by hiring men from Gwynedd (and probably the rest of Wales too). Those extra men were needed as the king planned to raid south and to return with booty. So the men of Gwynedd came in small groups, and as everybody was armed in these days, there was no problem. Cumbria was in those days probably independent, so the men could pass through without hindrance. As I explained on my website, by then the north-Germans (Anglians - I'll come to that later) had organized a very cost-effective defense system in the depth (contrasting to the old Roman 'wall-system'). The Gododdin riders must have been spotted early on and reached Catreath an estimated 10 days later. Allegedly, they were all exterminated in the battle, but that is highly unlikely. Horsemen can easily escape such an onslaught. Usually, there were only some 10% casualties on the battlefield itself (the real killing often happened when one side began to flee), so 90% surviving men of Gododdin must have fled back to the north. But, as I wrote, the 'Anglians' had plenty of time to organize their defense. They must have cut off the retreat completely even before the raiders reached Catraeth. The fugitives were gradually slaughtered on their way back. The few survivors (one version speaks about 1 person, an other version mentions 3 men) spread the false tale that all their comrades had fallen on the battlefield, for glory and honour. In reality, the local defenders, which were commanded by the experienced Anglians, didn't want those reavers ever be able to come back.
Nevertheless, Cumbria remained the main gap in that defense strategy. If the Scots (or Picts) could be stopped north of Yorkshire, then they could choose to take the passage south through Cumbria, to cross the Pennines and to emerge suddenly somewhere in the south of Yorkshire. This must have been the reason of the annexation of Cumbria by the Yorkshire lords. Then they were able to control this passage south (or north). Ptolemy mentioned Cumbrian cities as from the Yorkshire Brigantes. The occupation of Cumbria by its eastern neighbours must have been much older and pre-Roman. Probably for the very same reason: the protection of Yorkshire. The original Cumbrian population was too small to defend itself, let alone to forbid all passing through.

The author of the email uses Catraeth to prove the 'Celtic' character of Yorkshire. But I think that he's wrong. The modern name is Catterick. '-rick' means 'ruled land' or 'realm' (in this case: without a king). Many villages (also on the Continent) end with '-rick'. 'Cat' (cot) means 'house' or, by extension 'village', therefore 'Catterick' refers to the hamlet AND to the land around it. This corresponds with Catreath, where a council (reath) would make decisions for the surrounding lands (farms) as 90% of the population were farmers.

There is also a Welsh tradition that this battle/siege took place near the river Severn not far from Welshpool and not near Bath at all. In this little known Arthurian story it is called Caer Faddon, not Mynydd Baddon, so it doesn’t seem to come directly from Gildas. It is near Viriconium/Uriconio (Wroxeter) the site of Roman baths. Some argue that Wroxeter, or the hills near it are Caer Faddon.
Caer Faddon can be a ‘bath’-place in Welsh, providing it had hot springs (just continuing my reasoning). But Gildas added the qualification ‘montici’ – mons – as I wrote, most probably the translation in Latin of ‘burgh’. A strong indication that the place was fortified, and therefore, important. So Bath is still for me the most likely candidate for the battle, but I wouldn’t bet my head on it. The word ‘bath’, ‘bathing’, etc. only occurs in the Germanic languages, so it’s most probably a German substrate word. The only exception to that is the occurrence in the British-Brythonic languages. It’s highly unlikely that the word was of Brythonic origin and that is was later imported into the Germanic languages across the North Sea. If Brythonic in origin, then if would have existed in Gaul too. In France there is however no sign of ‘bath’, but plenty of ‘ax’, ‘aix’, and so on.

There's a great differences between 'Britons' , 'British' and Britannia. The Proto English of the Roman period would still think of themselves as Britons, or citizens of Britannia during and immediately after the Romans were here as they had a common identity in opposition to the Romans. Only later did they get an identity of 'English'.  correct !  (And this is a strange one anyway, as even the Saxons came to say they were 'English' and spoke 'English', not Saxon. Why did that happen?!). 
It must have something to do with reputation. The 'Germans' had nothing to do with Germanic (Deutsch)  speaking people. An ethnicity or language was not implied. I think that the qualification 'german' (man-with-weapons) referred to people from Saxony. Anglians came from Southern Schleswig (Northern Schleswig is Denmark), today a part of the German 'land' Schleswig-Holstein (north-Germany). They were Danes (south Jutes). West of them, upon the North Sea shores, lived the North-Fries. To the south were Saxons.  As I tried to prove in my website, neither of those people had a notable impact upon the proto-English language. But their reputations were very different.
The (German) Fries still have a reputation of being stupid. I heard this joke about them: The east-Fries declared war on the USA. Baffled, the American president telegraphed them: "Are you completely stupid? We can send more than 5 million men against you !" After a few days, the east-Fries replied: "The war is off. We realized that we have no room for so many prisoners of war"... It's understandable that the qualification 'Fries' was not so popular in Britain...
The Saxons could have been the 'real' Germans, rogue and merciless. During the Roman empire, they had a bad reputation. This reputation must have hindered them in Britain. So, once settled in Britain, they preferred to call themselves 'Anglians' (as the locals didn't understood the difference anyhow..). Even today, the Danes dislike the Germans, while the latter admire the Danes. Only the people of south-east Britain understood the difference, so the word 'Saxon' was maintained in the south.     
I believe that by c. 500 when Britannia was mentioned it wasn't the whole isle anyway and was mainly what had been Britannia Prima; a people who's myth believed them to be descended from Brutus and the inheritors of Britannia after the Romans left, so it follows that they thought the whole island was theirs by right, no matter what the ethnic make up of the island was. Besides all this, the Welsh poetry could refer to the lands immediately adjacent to what is now Wales (the Marches) which probably were lost lands in their eyes.
I think that the word 'Brit' (singular) meant 'soldier' (Caesar's time). The equivalent of 'German'. Both meaning 'man-in-arms'. It can refer to the southeast-British hooligans who regularly raided greater Cornwall.

Keep up the good work
Many thanks,
Mxx Wxxxxx
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Thanks Michael,

I've been having more thoughts on other parts of the site:
I thought that Bath was written as Baðon in Anglo-Saxon, which means it would be pronounced Bathen and not Baden? You also say that Badon has no meaning in Welsh, but baddon means bath and we should remember that Old Welsh didn't use the dd... which is why we have Gododin of the 'original' and Gododdin in the modern translation. I have to say though, it makes a lot more sense that this was a siege of a city and not a hill!
Unfortunately I know very little about Welsh, in particular about old Welsh. I salute the man who does know.
But I can comment : d,t,th were often interchanged. Example: (Engl.) there, (Dutch) daar, (Germ.) dort. It depended upon how the author wrote and which dialect he used. National languages are a very recent invention. So Bath could be pronounced Bathen in one region or Baden in another and written down accordingly. Gildas clearly wrote Badon (Latin knows no th). Compare: (singular) Brit (meaning, but I have no proof, man-in-arms) , (plural) Britten (now written Briton - which nowadays is a forgotten plural), their land: Britannia (cfr. Caesar). So, aphonic vowels at the end of a word like 'o', 'a' and 'e' were interchanged in writing, but the pronunciation was for all very similar. This had to be the same for Bath.
I also believe that baddon, bath was an imported word in Welsh. Maybe already at the time of Gildas.  I found no equivalent in continental Brythonic nor in the Occitan (Latin) languages. I personally believe that 'bath' is related to 'water' which in oldest proto-Germanic would be: 'ghwater'. In Occitan, aqua , probably initially pronounced 'aghwa' (soft g  - we pronounce Q and K or C the identical way, but there must be a reason for the character Q). Both have their origin in PIE as the oldest PIE language we know of, Hittite, also knew the word 'wa-a-ter'. This word was even the key to decipher the language. Anyhow, languages and their evolution, are still not completely understood despite attempts to catch this evolution in linguistic laws. Those 'laws' are then applied as if they were mathematical formulas. That's how old words can be 'reconstructed' (today it's fashionable to do so with the help of a computer). But I think that the old population hadn't read these linguistic manuals. In other words: it's not that simple. An important guide for me is the original spread of words, like the word 'land', which is an archetypal Germanic word. But I discovered that (old) Welsh had many imported words (llan). The word 'kant' (cant) is also a German substrate word (Kent), and means 'side', 'edge'. But again: it's not so simple. Even the Latin vocabulary consisted for some estimated 25% of foreign loanwords, especially from Greece.  Note that English has a very limited number of Welsh words. It seems that Welsh has far more words of English origin.
In conclusion: bath is most probably of Germanic origin, but will we ever know for sure?

Whilst I am all behind this theory, the one major problem I have, and I don't think that you explained it but excuse me if you have, is why the east went back to the pagan religion of the Anglo-Saxons from the state Christianity.  Is this because the east wasn't as entrenched in Christianity as the west, or do you believe it to be another reason?

Mxx

In my opinion: the east didn't go back to paganism. Let's not forget that Christianity was accepted by only 50% of the British population ( 75% in Italy) and that Christianity had become the religion of power during the 4th century. Most of the upper-class, public servants, the Roman army, and most of their numerous servants were Christians (there was no middle-class left). Only people from the pagi remained pagan. But with the 'independence' of the east, thanks to Anglo-Saxon input, the grip of Rome upon religion faded. Anything from Rome was dropped! Pelagianism is the proof. Pelagius can be considered to be the first protestant ("No need for Rome!"). Because of that all, paganism became tolerated again in the east. And not only in the east! Gildas' text points in the same direction, and he wrote for his Welsh people.  Even the Welsh were not free of sins!
The Anglo-Saxon soldiers themselves remained only partly pagan. Some of them were converted to uncontrolled Christianity. The 'pope' (called Archbishop of Rome) sent missionaries, not so much to convert people, but to regain control (and taxes!). Striking is that those missionaries (->Saint Germanus) meddled more with politics than with religion. During the Empire, Christianity was an issue. After the fall of the Empire, it was no longer an issue. It's only much later, when the ruling class rediscovered the political power of Christianity, that Christianity became important again. Compare with Clovis and his alleged conversion. The 'going back to paganism' is Christian propaganda. For Gildas, the Anglo-Saxons were the worst possible race, so they had to be pagan.
The bottom line is that 'Anglo-Saxon rule' was far more liberal than before AND after.

Happy to have answered you.
Michael.