Welsh Name Research Articles

Crowd sourcing Welsh language data in the Covid era

Welsh language place names risk being forgotten as people choose to use English versions of street names, properties, towns and villages and even rename properties with English names. Many official datasets for historic buildings in Wales do not record the original Welsh names. This presentation will look at how we have adapted our projects to work online during the Pandemic, and how we are crowdsourcing Welsh names of Wales' built heritage and adding them to Wikidata. The talk will focus on the activities of our recent Wicipics project which saw the public contribute remotely, creating Welsh language data and sharing their openly licenced images of historic sites in their area. This session will also look at how we might use this data to enrich our historic record. For example, by combining with OpenStreetMap to develop a Welsh language map interface and by sharing our crowdsourced data with 3rd party websites and other Welsh heritage organisations.

The linguocultural semantics of the anthroponyms and toponyms in G. Martin’s novel A Game of Thrones and the peculiarities of their translation into Ukrainain

The article analyses the linguocultural features of the anthroponyms and toponyms in fiction and their translation into Ukrainian (linguocultural factor taken into account) basing on G. Martin’s novel A Game of Thrones. The main differences between fiction onyms and real life onyms existing in language are defined. Fiction onyms are influenced by such factors as the cultural and social code, historical information, fiction space, the author’s attitude to this or that phenomenon. It is established that in the analysed novel, the characters’ names contain information about the status and place of living of their owners: the names of those who live in the North are based on old English, Scottish and Welsh names, the wildings get Scandinavian ones, those who live in the South get variants of Roman, Greek and Arabic names. The author often makes speaking names and allusions to real historic personalities. It is pointed out that the world in which the characters of the novel exist has a medieval English colouring, so the characters’ names often look like real names of that period or are their derivatives. Complex toponyms often contain parts of words that can be found among the toponyms of Great Britain and carry certain historic information. A conclusion is drawn about the expressive linguocultural features of the proper names of the novel by G. Martin A game of Thrones which reflect the nationally specific cultural and historic information. Choosing translation means in each case is up to the translator who has to consider the linguocultural factor too, as the translation of fiction onyms is much more difficult than the translation of real proper names. In certain cases, the translation can be called more or less successful but there is no single strategy for rendering authorial proper names that carry semantic and cultural information.

The Names of Gawain in Medieval Arthurian Tradition

Generally seen as the source of English Gawain and its congeners, the Welsh name Gwalchmei is traced to an Old British *uolco-ma(g)ios ‘great falcon’, a derivation consistent with both the formal and semantic features of northwestern European heroic onomastics and the specifics of Gwalchmei’s status in Arthurian tradition. To be rejected, then, are explanations of the name as ‘hawk of the plains’ or ‘of May’. A second onomastic trail, marked by Latin Gualguanus and Walwen, French Gauvain, Dutch Walwein, English Gawain, leads to a hypothetical Indo-European compound meaning ‘wolf-killer’ and a consideration of tabu or language avoidance.

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Philosophical Basis of Sub-Creative Words

J. R. R. TolkienThe Philosophical Basis of Sub-Creative Words Jon Mentxakatorre Odriozola (bio) Keywords Tolkien, On Faery-stories, Barfield, Middle-earth, mythopoeic, sub-creative, poiesis, Elvish language, language creation, Elves, Frodo, Bilbo, naming, myth Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet Der Mensch auf dieser Erde friedrich hölderlin A poet, one might say, is someonewho tries to give an experience its Proper Name w. h. auden I. Introduction There is something in Tolkien’s stories in Middle-earth that makes them stand out from other fictional stories insofar as their inspiration was primarily linguistic. Welsh names on the wagons in Birmingham and Gothic adjectives he encountered introduced him into philology as a scientific discipline. These words led Tolkien to the study of languages simply and plainly for the intense aesthetic pleasure he obtained from them, free of their functional capacity or as vehicles of literature, as well as to the invention and use of a personal aesthetic language.1 So perhaps Tolkien is the only one in the history of Western literature following the primordial creative act: “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1). For him, words and their inner [End Page 105] beauty came first, and then stories unfolding these words.2 Therefore, his literary creations were the framework in which the meaning of these words could be developed, and became the place where his invented languages could exist. That is, in Tolkien’s works, the foundation is the poetic diction of beings and things, and the plot or the argument—the creation of (interrelated) stories of these beings and things—comes thereafter. This was difficult to understand in the second half of the last century: Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an “allegory.” And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentieimo, and that the phrase long antedated the book.3 Tolkien stated that through linguistic invention he discovered that languages carry within them the coordinates of a world in which words of these languages have a certain meaning and so are vehicles of truth.4 All languages, in their poetic diction, contain a mythological horizon that make them exist. As a consequence, the intrinsic relationship between language and mythology highlights how humans experience reality. Using spoken words, they experience their reality and so build a particular worldview, a unique culture, from those words. My article will reflect on this proposition from a philosophical point of view. Assuming that the mythopoeic basis of Tolkien’s work is linguistic,5 I aim to explore the philosophical basis of sub-creative words. That is, how languages are able to house beings or things and to demand the construction of a unique worldview (mythology) through its unfolding, as well as to describe the metaphysical nucleus behind the languages of a corpus of myths and fairy stories dedicated to England.6 First, the notion of perception of the world as a gift and of [End Page 106] languages as an art will be explored through two examples from Tolkien’s world. The naming of the wealth of reality in the beauty of sound and the form of words will have recourse to the theory of ancient semantic unity of his friend and fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield. This concept of languages, an enormous influence on Tolkien,7 was presented for the first time in Barfield’s History in English Words in 1926 and fully developed two years later in Poetic Diction.8 I will then explore the double path that Tolkien followed in light of the attempt or recovery of this diction in ancient semantic unity: language invention and creation from philology. Finally, I will draw from the most significant philosophical contributions of the last century that understand the essence of language as poiesis espoused by Martin Heidegger to examine Tolkien’s theory of sub-creation through language...

The four branches of the Mabinogi by Matthieu Boyd (review)

Reviews 189 Michaela Jacques [jacques@​ fas​ .harvard​ .edu] is a doctoral student in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is interested in Welsh literature, especially the poetic tradition in medieval and early modern Wales. The four branches of the Mabinogi, translated by Matthieu Boyd. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2017. ISBN 978–1–55481–319–3. 160 pp. $14.95 (paper). Michaela Jacques Harvard University This slim, attractive volume contains a new translation of The four branches of the Mabinogi , along with a brief introduction and contextual information. The main distinguishing feature of this version is that ‘its primary purpose is to make the text accessible and engaging for twenty-first-century undergraduate readers in North America’ (11). It should be emphasised, then, that the book is intended as a teaching tool for North American educators, and not as a scholarly resource. The introduction is short and general, and refers to (but does not cite directly) some of the scholarly debates surrounding the authorship and possible function of the text, early-twentieth century conceptions of its mythological origins, and the meaning of mabinogi. It is a good, succinct overview of some of the main questions surrounding the Four Branches. In the introduction, and throughout the book, Boyd’s prose is clear and cogent, and makes for easy and pleasurable reading. Its brevity and concision will allow for easy digestion by the busy or under-engaged undergraduate. The contextual information in the back of the book contains manuscript images, as well as reprints of sections of the Welsh laws, triads, and Gerald of Wales’ Descriptio Kambriae together with short introductions, and interspersed with expository notes about the relationship of each text to the Mabinogi narrative. This section is very good, and allows the audience access to texts that might not be readily available in smaller North American libraries. The commentary is again brief, but incisive. Turning to the translation itself, Boyd’s version must (by virtue of chronology, if nothing else) be compared to Sioned Davies’ 2007 Mabinogion, which contains not only the Four Branches, but also the seven other medieval Welsh prose tales traditionally grouped under this title, and which is still in print, at a similar price-point to Boyd’s. To justify its existence, Boyd’s Mabinogi must therefore achieve something distinct from its recent counterpart. It does this, in spades. The new translation is wholly unlike any version of the Mabinogi that has appeared to date. The most startling point of departure is in the translation of the Welsh names into English: to give just a few illustrative examples, Pwyll is rendered as Sage; Pryderi as Carey; Gwawl uab Clud as Flash son of Flame; Bendigeidfran as Benedict Crowe; Math uab Mathonwy as Goode son of Goodley; Lleu Llaw Gyffes as Blondie Goodarm; and so on. The translator recognises this as a deviation from previous work: an entire section of the introduction is titled ‘A note on the translation, specifically the names’ (11). This section tells us that ‘ultimately this translation tries to make the names as meaningful in English as they would be to a Welsh audience—or, at least, to provide an intelligible 190 North American journal of Celtic studies starting point to discuss (with the help of the notes) the full range of their meaning’ (11). These name translations are entertaining and sharp-witted, and the translator often comes up with ingenious English-language puns to match the Welsh. And the original context is not completely abandoned: the Welsh names are provided in brackets at the first appearance of each character, and the reader is given basic notes to explain possible alternative meanings, where required. The tone of the translation is also very different to other versions. It is heavily modernised , and to a casual reader, easier to follow. It is perhaps more likely that a student will carry out the entirety of a reading assignment in this edition than in the Davies version , where it is sometimes necessary to re-read portions to fully get the sense of them. Many of the modernisations are relatively seamless, if loose; however, others are jarring, such as the following remark by Gwydion...

An Archaic Tale-Type Determinant of Chrétien’s Fisher King and Grail

Perceval mistranslates a Welsh name meaning ‘pierced-knee’: connotations are physical impairment, infertility, and generational dissociation. The Fisher King episode has analogues in Welsh and Irish tales of an elderly king wounded by a domestic object in a maritime setting. A graal or fish platter would be a natural accompaniment. (WS)

Gildas and the Schools of Cirencester

AbstractThe life of Gildas by an eleventh-century Breton monk mentions his education at ‘Iren’. Though often taken to mean ‘Ireland’, this is more probably a corruption of ‘Cerin’, the Old Welsh name of ‘Corinium’ or Cirencester. If so, it implies the survival in sixth-century Britain of traditional Roman schools.

The Hawk and the Wolf: Book One, the Matter of Britain (review)

Reviewed by: The Hawk and the Wolf: Book One, the Matter of Britain Tom Shippey Mark Adderley, The Hawk and the Wolf: Book One, the Matter of Britain. Marrero, LA: West Bank Publishing, 2008. Pp. xxii, 210. ISBN: 0–9789840–2–1. $26. The theme of the Matter of Britain is one of vast extent, ever-increasing complexity, and along with both, often unappreciated linguistic confusion. In date (and as retailed by Geoffrey of Monmouth, so that one cannot quite say, historically) it extends from the Fall of Troy to the domination of the English. To this twelfth-century formulation have been added the long development of the Arthurian romance, primarily by medieval French authors, with since the nineteenth century a rediscovery of Welsh and other Celtic sources, primarily the tangled tales of the Mabinogion and the doubtful witness of the Gododdin and the Merlin poems. Other contributions to the thick stew include Latin accounts of early Britain, such as Tacitus’s, the evidence of archaeology, and perhaps dominant in the mind of any modern re-handler of the legend, the many more recent versions produced by novelists and historians, all of them straining for a new account which shall be at once comprehensive, coherent, and convincing. Does this abundance, or perhaps plethora, of available material make life easier or harder for the re-creator, caught also between the drive to discover ‘the true story behind the legend’ (as so many blurbs and advertisements have claimed), and the reluctance to let go of myth and magic? Mark Adderley’s new rendition of the Merlin legend (of which The Hawk and the Wolf is only volume 1) takes one bold step in re-dating the story not to the familiar fifth- or sixth-century setting now canonical for Arthurians, but to the first century just before and leading up to the Claudian invasion. A vital scene in it is the Council when the leaders of the Island of the Mighty, as Britain is repeatedly called, decide how to respond to the demands from Rome for arrears of tribute. It is a big scene in Geoffrey and in all his translators and imitators, but there it is Arthur who responds and who decides to launch the invasion of Rome eventually checked by the treachery of Mordred. Adderley has kept some features of the scene—including the name Lucius, here the ambassador rather than the procurator who initiates the demand—but the peace/war debate has become a clash between the two brothers Coroticos and Cymbeline. Their names embody the whole tangled tradition, for Coroticos is a reconstructed British form, derived by philologists from the Roman accounts of Caractacus, while Cymbeline stays in anachronistically, instead of being replaced by (I would imagine) British *Cunobelinos, presumably because Shakespeare has made it too familiar to leave out. Another person present at the debate is the queen of the ‘Eicenni’, Boudicea, and her name seems to be a split-the-difference form. Kenneth Jackson has shown that her name must have been *Boudica, with a long medial -i-, but Boadicea, pronounced as spelled, has become too familiar [End Page 77] in popular history to disappear entirely. Finally, one more example of the kind of anachronism that thickened tradition produces is the name of Adderley’s central character, Emrys—otherwise Merlin, here so-called because of his totem animal, the ‘hawk’ of the title as Boudicea is the ‘wolf.’ Emrys, still familiar as a Welsh name, must derive from Latin Ambrosius, as in the fifth-century general Ambrosius Aurelianus whom Gildas credits with the first defeat of the Saxons. But if the setting is the first century before the adventus Romanorum, why would a British child be carrying a Roman name, especially a worn-down one? The answer is, I think, that Adderley very much wants the liberty to use the Celtic materials now so readily available, but to de-center them to a different historical period, which will also allow—but this is now guesswork as to future intentions—a much broader historical sweep, not excluding the transformation of the Island of the Mighty into the early modern Empire which, in its way, claimed to be...

The foulmart: what’s in a name?

One of the Medieval English names for the Polecat (Mustela putorius) was ‘foulmart’, a name that dates back at least to the 14th century (Onions, 1966). The species is considered to be native to Wales and to the rest of Britain, or at least its native status does not appear to be in question. However, it is one of three long-established and well-recognized mammal species in Wales whose Welsh name does not have a Celtic origin. The Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), the Fallow Deer (Dama dama) and the Polecat all have Welsh names of English or French derivation, respectively, cwningen, danas and ffwlbart. The first seems to derive from the Middle English (14th century) konyng, the second from the Old French (pre-13th century) dain, whilst the last appears to derive from foulmart (Thomas, 1966). Aybes & Yalden (1995) used British place name evidence to substantiate a number of claims regarding the past status of the Wolf (Canis lupus) and Beaver (Castor fiber). Since Celtic British, or its daughter language Welsh, has been in continuous use in the British Isles from the beginning of Iron Age times to the present day, whereas the earliest form of English only appeared in the 5th century, the provenance and derivations of Welsh words for our fauna and flora should reveal more about the status within these islands of the organisms that they represent than their English counterparts. The nomenclature of the Polecat has intrigued me for some years. How could a supposedly native mammal have acquired a Welsh name of English origin, especially in view of the fact that the Welsh words for the other small mustelids, Weasel (Mustela nivalis) (gwenci), Stoat (Mustela erminea) (carlwm) and Pine Marten (Martes martes) (bele), are all Celtic in origin, or of obscure origin? Could the fact that the other two introduced species have borrowed names indicate that the Polecat is also introduced (or at least reintroduced after a prolonged absence)? There could be a simple linguistic explanation for the adoption of a new name, such as the ambiguity of an earlier name. Or it may be by a purely sociolinguistic process that the name changed under foreign influence, just as modern Breton, for example, has lost the Celtic plural kon ‘dogs’ and uses instead the loanword chas (containing the same base as the French word for hunting). There could, however, be an ecological explanation for the change. Was the Polecat present in Britain at all during the first millennium? Could the Polecat have been a late Medieval introduction, perhaps either for harvesting Rabbits or for its pelt? Could our modern wild Polecat be in fact a feral reversion-to-type from introduced early ferret-type stock? The answers to these questions must hinge not only on linguistic inferences, but also on documentary or subfossil evidence that might show that the Polecat is both a natural postglacial colonist and has enjoyed continuous and unbroken occupation of some part of the Mammal Rev. 2002, Volume 32, No. 2, 145–149. Printed in Great Britain.

The Battle of Brunanburh and Welsh Tradition

In his edition of the Old English poem The Battle of Brunanburh, Alistair Campbell rejected Max Forster's interpretation of cattybrunawc in an early Welsh poem as an allusion to the battle. However, it can be shown here that Forster was right. The form cattybrunawc, in a twelfth-century poem to St David, can be interpreted as cad Tybrunawc ‘the battle of Tybrunawc, the battle of the “Streamy House” (= Brunanburh)’. Here Tybrunawc is a place-name resembling Tig Guocobauc ‘Cavy House’, a Welsh name for Nottingham used by the ninth-century Asser of St Davids. The similar form kattybrudawt, in a tenth-century Welsh poem of political prophecy, must also mean ‘the battle of Brunanburh’. These two poems thus provide evidence for the fame beyond England of the battle of Brunanburh. The earlier Welsh poem may also contain an allusion to Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin. Although defeated at Brunanburh, he humiliated the English at Leicester in 940. If this Welsh poem does allude to him, it could be dated to 940 or very shortly after.

The British Martyrs, Aaron and Julius

The paper explains the sub-Roman British 'martyrs' cult of Aaron and Julius in terms of the syncretic adaptation of pagan traditions, suggesting close parallels from contemporary Gaul and a direct link with these in the person of St. Germanus of Auxerre. It suggests that 'lulius' (and other 'saints' of similar name) represents a continuation of the Indo-European tradition of divinities in *dyew-, while Aaron (and other 'saints') represents the adaptation of ultimately non-IndoEuropean traditions that have left their trace in the toponymy. Derivatives of our syncretic figures and their antecedents (or close relatives thereof) are identified in medieval Celtic literature. An attempt is made to correlate the evidence for cult traditions in the hagiography, other literary sources, and the toponymy: thereby explaining certain facets of all of these. Key Words: St. Aaron, St. Julius, Celtic paganism, early Christianity, IndoEuropean mythology It has long been the tendency to accept Britain's three recorded Christian martyrs as genuine without serious question.2 The degree of certainty might seem rather surprising, given the limitations of the evidence and the considerable number of, more or less certainly, 'bogus' martyrs from parts of the Christian world for which our records are much better. The evidence in the case of `Aaron and Julius' - to whom the discussion here will be limited - rests almost entirely on the single mention in the De Excidio of Gildas, conventionally believed to have been written about 540 but in any case not likely to pre-date the sixth century3': God therefore increased his pity for us .... as a free gift to us, in the time (as I conjecture) of this same persecution, he acted to save Britain being plunged deep in the thick darkness of black night; for he lit for us the brilliant lamps of the holy martyrs. The graves and the places where they suffered would now have the greatest effect in instilling the blaze of divine charity in the minds of beholders, were it not that our citizens, thanks to our sins, have been deprived of many of them by the unhappy partition with the barbarians. I refer to St. Alban of Verulam, Aaron and Julius, citizens of Caerleon (Aaron et lulium Legionum Urbis cives) and the others of both sexes who, in different places, displayed the highest spirit in the battle-line of Christ. A clue to the quality of Gildas's source of information, here, is given by the fact that he had to make a guess about the actual date of the martyrdom: moreover this guess is now generally considered to be incorrect, because the persecution of Diocletian to which he attributes their martyrdom is now considered not to have extended to Gaul and Britain. Gildas was clearly basing his guess on what he had heard and read about the history of Christianity in the rest of the Empire: we might well wonder to what extent the cult of martyrs in Britain, in general, owed its existence to imitation of the model provided by other parts of the Empire (or ex-Empire) rather than to deep-rooted native Christian tradition. The reference to `the graves and the places where they suffered' suggests that it is the current, or recent, existence of local cults on which Gildas based his account of British martyrs: not on any kind of historical record. This mention in Gildas, it is true, is backed up by the record in the Book of Llandaff (Rhys 1893: 225) of a territorium fanctorum martirum Iulij et aaron at Caerleon (a Welsh name equivalent to Legionum Urbis) in a twelfth century version of a charter from the ninth century (Davies 1979: 121). This has been thought likely to have reference to Bulmore, over the river from Caerleon, two miles to the East: it might be seen as a not un-typical location for an `extra-mural' church, built over the martyrs' grave.5 However this might also be a likely place for a rather artificial cult; based on the mention of the martyrs of Legionum Urbis in the work of the revered saint, Gildas, to have been established in the ninth century: the alternative (Smith 1979: 6-7) 'Carlegion' (or Legionum Urbis in Latin), Chester, will not have been chosen because that was now in the hands of the Saxons. …

A New Explanation of the Name of London

The history of attempts to explain the name of London is charted, and it is concluded that none of them succeeds in making any headway with the problem. A tentative new solution is proposed which explains it as a probably Celtic place‐name derived from a Celticized river‐name originally forming part of the Old European stratum of European toponymy, in the sense established by Hans Krahe. Topographical arguments are used to support the proposal, as well as arguments from pre‐English naming patterns for rivers and their estuaries. The proposed etymology also succeeds in accounting for the Middle Welsh name of the city,Llundein, without any of the special pleading associated with current explanations.

Ethnic jokes and social change: The case of the Welsh

Ethnic minorities and immigrants in most societies tend to become the subject of jokes told by the dominant majority. The Welsh, England's nearest neighbouring people, an aboriginal remnant of the autochthonous inhabitants of Britain have been the subject of English jokes for well over 400 years. When under the Tudors, a dynasty with a Welsh name and a tinge of Welsh descent, Wales was merged with England both legally and politically by the Act of Union of 1536, the Welsh became England's oldest and most prominent ethnic minority and significant numbers of them migrated from their peripheral homeland to the more central areas of England.’ At this point jokes about the Welsh began to proliferate1 based on a well‐defined comic stereotype, though one that was to change significantly over time. This article traces the history and assesses the character of these jokes

The Funeral Wake in Wales

AbstractOf all the activities associated with death and burial customs in Wales, the funeral wake must surely be the most interesting. Compared with its well-documented counterpart in Ireland, Welsh scholars have paid little attention to this equally significant custom.The comlnon Welsh name for a wake was gwylnos or wylnos (pl.gwylnosau or wylnosau), and the saying was that you were going to cadw wylnos (to hold a wake). There were many dialectical variations on the word gwylnos, with onglos heard in Llanwenog, Cardiganshire, winglos in north Pembrokeshire and wynglos in the Llŷn peninsula, whilst literary reports preferred a more spohisticated term such as arwylnos or noswyl.

Observations on the epidemiology of prostatic hyperplasia in Wales.

SUMMARY Analysis of the data on benign prostatic hyperplasia in Wales shows an excess of this condition in the Principality as a whole, an excessive differential death–rate within Wales related to the proportion of Welsh–speaking men in the population, and an excess of men with Welsh names in the geographically localised region of Swansea. Jt is concluded that there is a greater susceptibility, mediated by genetic factors, to prostatic hyperplasia among Welshmen.

The Britons in Southern Scotland

The archaeological background of the people of what is now Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde in the Roman period was a La Téne one, and specifically chiefly Iron Age B. This links them intimately with the Britons of southern Britain in the conglomeration of Celtic tribes who called themselves Brittones and spoke what we call the Brittonic or Ancient British form of Celtic, from which are descended the three modern languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. To the north of the Forth was a different people, the Picts. They too were Celts or partly Celts; probably not Brittones however, but a different branch of the Celtic race, though more closely related to the Brittones than to the Goidels of Ireland and (in later times) of the west of Scotland. Not being Brittonic, the Picts may be ignored here. Our southern Scottish Brittones are nothing but the northern portion of a common Brittonic population, from the southern portion of which come the people of Wales and Cornwall. Some historians speak of the northern Brittones as Welsh, following good Anglo-Saxon precedent, but this is apt to lead to confusion. The best term for them, in the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, as long as they survived, is ‘Cumbrians’, and for their language, ‘Cumbric’. They called themselves in Latin Cumbri and Cumbrenses, which is a Latinization of the native word Cymry, meaning ‘fellow-countrymen’, which both they and the Welsh used of themselves in common, and is still the Welsh name for the Welsh to the present day. The centre of their power was Strathclyde, the Clyde valley, with their capital at Dumbarton.

Welsh Names

Welsh Names

Cerdic and his Ancestors

King Cerdic of Wessex (more accurately, of the Gewissae) is perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the whole of British history. He appears as a chieftain with an Anglian pedigree but an indubitably Welsh name, having Jutish kinsfolk, with whose aid he establishes a Saxon kingdom, which nevertheless seems to remain archaeologically British (i.e. non-Teutonic) for a half-century or more after the supposed date of his conquests. Such a series of anomalies may be treated either as evidence of Cerdic's mythical origin, or as the hallmarks of a reality which is under no obligation to be lucid and uncomplicated. In either case, he symbolizes a chapter of half-forgotten history, obscure but crucial.

Gawain, Gwri, and Cuchulinn

In a chapter of my Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance I attempted to prove that the repeated correspondence between the adventures of Cuchulinn in Irish saga and those of Gawain in Arthurian romance could be accounted for only on the hypothesis that the intermediate Welsh figure was Gwri; and that this hypothesis was the key to many things in Arthurian nomenclature. My statement of the case, though it has convinced a number of the most competent judges, suffered from the fact that the interpretation of one Welsh name was questionable, and of another erroneous, that it involved the inconclusive and unessential derivation of the name Cuchulinn from a hypocoristic form of Curoi, and that the argument did not start from the most advantageous point of departure. In the following article I endeavor to remedy those defects.

Starlings as Distributors of “Gapes.”

(1) Of 482 starlings examined during the period November 1925 to February 1926, 169 were infested with the Gapeworm (S. trachealis): the percentage of infected birds being 35 per cent. This confirms the previous observations when the writer found 14 infected birds out of 38.(2) There is a suggestion of a gradual increase, towards March, in the percentage of starlings infected.(3) The average length of the gapeworm in starlings is much the same as the average length of the gapeworm of chickens.(4) Welsh names for gapes are given.(5) Gapes among chickens occurs in Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire from March to August; in young turkeys in May and June; and in adult turkeys and pheasants throughout the year.(6) Starlings, turkeys and pheasants act as a bridging, between November to March when few or no young chickens occur for the propagation and distribution of the gapeworm.(7) Cases are instanced of (a) a sudden outbreak of gapes among chickens kept in an area where no turkeys have been kept, (b) heavy losses among pheasants on an estate which starlings had previously frequented in very large flocks.(8) Owing to the higher percentage of infection and its wider migrations, the starling is here considered as a more effective distributor of the disease than turkeys. Other wild birds, such as pheasants, thrushes, rooks and jays, also play a part in spreading the gapeworm and the disease this worm causes.