- Language and Society among the Insular Celts AD 400-1000 -
ninth-century Juvencus manuscript (Cambridge University Library Ff. 4. 42). This
reveals the existence of a group of scholars, including Irishmen as well as Britons,
whose primary language for scholarly purposes was Latin, but who accepted Welsh
as a written language at least for the purpose of glossing and entering marginalia.^86
The latter include the Juvencus englynion, the earliest Welsh verse to survive in a
manuscript close to the date of composition. Another, perhaps overlapping, group
of scholars was patronized by Merfyn Frych, king of Gwynedd, whose family
probably came, as we have seen, from the Isle of Man, where Irishman and Briton
may have lived side by side for centuries.^87 A further symptom of the status of Latin
solely as a learned language is the relatively good grammar and innocence of
Late Latin rhetorical preciosity shown by the two main Welsh writers of the ninth
century. The Historia Brittonum from the first half of the century and Asser from
the second both show a good command of Latin, considerably superior to many of
their English contemporaries.^88
In some circles, then, a scholarly Latin survived. There were, however,
churches of which this cannot be said. Ninth-and tenth-century inscriptions from
Margam, Merthyr Mawr and Llanilltud Fawr (all in Glamorgan) suggest a highly
imperfect grasp of Latin. Moreover, one or two of the errors made indicate that such
knowledge as remained stemmed in part from sources outside Wales. An inscription,
perhaps of the late ninth century, from Llanilltud Fawr has PROPE[RA]BIT
for praeparauit.^89 An inscription from Margam has PROPARABIT.9o The use of b
rather than u suggests continental influence (compare avoir and habere). Another
Llanilltud inscription was commissioned by the abbot, Samson, as an act of inter-
cessory prayer for himself and for the king, Ithel; it thus lacked nothing in solemnity
of purpose, yet it demonstrates fundamental ignorance of Latin grammar.^91
86 M. Lapidge, 'Latin learning in Dark Age Wales: some prolegomena', in Proceedings of the
Seventh International Congress of Celtic Studies, Oxford, 1983, ed. D. Ellis Evans et al.
(Oxford, 1986), 97-101; A. Harvey, 'The Cambridge Juvencus glosses - evidence of
Hiberno-Welsh interaction', in Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on
Language Contact in Europe, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1988, ed. P. Sture Ureland and G.
Broderick (Tiibingen, 1991), 181-98, esp. 190-4. Harvey's paper is an attempt to sift the
evidence for scribes in the MS who knew both Irish and Welsh, as opposed to a group of
scribes some of whom knew Irish, some Welsh. The uncertainties are great especially
because of the difficulty in knowing when a gloss has been copied and also in distin-
guishing hands which only occur in a few glosses. The suggestion (p. 190) that the main
scribe Nuadu need not have known Irish because some Anglo-Saxons bore names of
British origin (Ca:dmon and Ceadwalla) seems to me very weak: the issue is whether
Welshmen bore Irish names, not whether, in very different circumstances, some
Englishmen bore British names.
87 M. Lapidge 'Latin learning in Dark Age Wales', 92; N.K. Chadwick, 'Early culture and
learning in North Wales', 94-103.
88 N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), 171-4.
89 ECMW, no. 220.
90 ECMW, no. 233.
91 ECMW, no. 223.