- Language and Society among the Insular Celts AD 400-1000 -
name of a Briton. He is wrong in fact: Cathal is good Irish, and, moreover, it is his
habit of explaining correspondences between Irish and Welsh by supposing borrow-
ings from Welsh into Irish which prevents him from perceiving that the languages
themselves are cognate. Nonetheless we have one crucial conclusion: for him British
nationality is linguistic; Britishness has to do with Combrec.
The equation of Combrec with the language of the Britons, also called Bretnas,36
is found elsewhere in CormacY The implications of this usage are worthy of con-
sideration. Cymraeg is derived from Cymro, and the latter is the person of the same
bro, by contrast with the allfro, the person of another bro. Yet the normal meaning
of bro was 'district'.38 One might therefore suppose that Cymraeg should have meant
'dialect', the language of a local district, whereas in fact it can be used as much of
the British language of southern Scotland as of Welsh (Cormac identifies Combrec
with Bretnas, the language of the Britons, and there is no doubt that the men of
Strathclyde were Britons and also Cumbrians, 'Cymry'). In other words, Cymro
corresponds to the wider but rarer sense of bro, as in bro Frython, 'the land of the
Britons', rather than to the commoner and more local sense, such as bro Gadfan, 'the
district of Cadfan' (around his church at Tywyn).39 What is therefore especially in
need of explanation is why Cymry should invariably correspond to the wider sense
of bro and never to the more local one. It is not the case that the wider sense of bro
is the older one; on the contrary, the more local sense is indubitably 0lder.4o
38 Bro does not seem to be a normal term either of Middle Welsh narrative or legal prose: it
is never used in the Four Branches, in Culhwch ac Olwen, Breudwyt Ronabwy or Llyfr
Cyfnerth. In Llyfr Iorwerth it is only used once, in a proverb (§ 81/9: ny eyn em bro ny
radho guyr, 'there is no room in a bro for one who does not concede justice'). In Llyfr
Blegywryd, ed. S.J. Williams and J. Enoch Powell (Cardiff, 1942), it occurs only in the
phrase maenawr vra as opposed to maenawr wrthtir (71. 16-7); here it means 'lowland'
as opposed to 'upland'. It is not even used in the lists of countries in Delw y Byd. On the
other hand it is quite common in the early poetry, often followed by (a) a personal or (b)
a place-name, or (c) preceded by a possessive pronoun: (a) e.g. bra Gaduan, Gwaith
Llywarch ap Llywelyn 'Prydydd y Moch', ed. E.M. Jones and N.A. Jones (Cardiff, 1991),
no. 12, line 36; (b) e.g. Carno 6ro, 'district of Carno', ibid. no. 28, line 3; (c) e.g. Llyfr Du
Caerfyrddin, ed. Jarman, 18. 147 = T. Jones, Proceedings of the British Academy 53 (1967),
126-7, hydir y wir in y bro, 'whose justice was strong in his land'. When the proper name
requires it, the area denoted by bro can be extensive: e.g. broyd Asya ac Affrica, 'the lands
of Asia and Africa', Red Book Poetry, 1229. 23-4; bro Frython, 'the land of the Britons',
Myfyrian Archaiology, 222 a 16. The second meaning distinguished in GPC, namely
'boundary', is not well attested: in Canu Aneirin, line 574, Heilyn achubyat pob bra, bro
may equally well be 'land'; in Judith 3: 8, efe a ddifwynodd eu holl frooedd hwynt, brooedd
translates Greek horia (sg. horion), originally 'boundaries', but often used in the
Septuagint and in the New Testament for 'district' or 'neighbourhood' (in the NT it is
translated by cyffiniau, terfynau, tueddau, parthau, goror). Although the NT translation
tends to preserve the older meaning of horia, it cannot be inferred that the translation of
Judith did likewise.
39 See n. 38.
40 It explains the development of breyr 'noble' (from *brogorix, 'king of abro'). Compare the
Cornish name Pembro, which probably marks the edge of a district, O.J. Padel, Cornish
Place-Name Elements (English Place-Name Society, lvi/lvii; 1985),32, and the Breton use711