- Chapter Thirty-Six -
eldest son will presumably not succeed to the kingship if his father predeceased his
grandfather.^30 We are dealing with a model of royal succession applied to a very
specific issue; the presence or absence of Irish settlers is, for this question, of no
concern.^31
By the tenth century, therefore, the Irish settlements may have ceased to be of
more than antiquarian concern even to those who told the story of Cunedda. That
is not to say, however, that relationships between the Irish and Welsh languages were
no longer of any interest. On the other side of the Irish Sea, Cormac's Glossary
(c.900) betrays considerable knowledge of Welsh; and it also shows how the relative
positions of the two languages had been transformed since the sixth century. As
befits a lexicographer, Cormac is interested in loan-words. Moreover he came closest
of anyone in the Middle Ages to realizing that Welsh and Irish are cognate languages
(it has to be remembered that while any well-informed person in the early Middle
Ages knew that English was related to the languages of Germany, no one made the
same connection between Irish and Welsh until the Renaissance).32 He maintains
that Irish brath is a loan from Welsh brawd, which he explains as meaning iudex,
'judge'.33 He makes the point by saying that brath is Combrec; in other words, he
uses an early form of the modern term for the Welsh language, Cymraeg, probably
borrowed into Irish no later than the early seventh century.34 On the Irish name
Cathal he wrote as follows:^35
Cathal is the name of a Briton. That is, it is Welsh (Combrec), i.e. Catell. Cat
in Welsh is cath in Irish (Scottica); ell is ail. Cathal then is ail chatha 'rock of
battle'.
The final etymology leaves something to be desired, but the equation of Cathal
and Cadell is plausible, while that of cad and cath is correct. The most interesting
thing about this passage, however, is the identification of the Briton with his language,
Combrec. Because Cormac thinks Cathal is a Welsh name, therefore he thinks it is the
30 On royal succession see J. Beverley Smith, 'Dynastic succession in medieval Wales', BBCS
33 (19^86 ): 199-^2 32.
3 1 Cf. the model offered by the Preface to the Life of St Cadog, Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae
et Genealogiae, ed. A.W. Wade-Evans, p. 24, and the more elaborate version in § 1 of the
Life of St Gwynllyw, ibid. p. 172.
32 The references to Welsh all belong to the shorter version of Cormac.
33 Sanas Cormaic (YBL), no. lIO (very possibly extracted from no. 850).
34 The earliest attestation in Welsh is early twelfth-century: Llyffr Du Caerfyrddin, ed.
A.O.H. Jarman (Cardiff, 1982), no. 4, line 3. The regular preservation of the old -mb-in
Combrec (compare OE Cumbraland alongside Cumerland) suggests that the word was
borrowed into Irish before -mb-> -mm-in British (a slow change beginning in the fifth
and ending in the seventh century, K.H. Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain
(Edinburgh, 1953), p. 51 1). The corresponding change in Irish is late eighth to ninth
century, but I have no examples of Irish Com(m)reg suggesting that Cormac's consistency
in spelling the word with -mb-reflects the earlier Old Irish pronunciation. Combrec is
thus likely to be have been borrowed into Irish during the period of maximum British
influence in the late fifth and sixth centuries.
35 Sanas Cormaic (YBL), no. 206.
36 Cf. Sanas Cormaic (YBL), no. 883 for Bretnas.
37 Sanas Cormaic (YBL), no. 124.