- Language and Society among the Insular Celts AD 400-1000 -
are they Cymry. Moreover we know from a contemporary English source, the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, that the land of the Cludwys is Cumbraland, the land of the Cymry,
Cumbria.51 Since, for Cormac, Combrec and Bretnas are synonyms, and, for
the English, the Britons of southern Scotland were Cumbras, Cymry, we can add the
further point that the language of the Cludwys was Combrec, Cymraeg.
The puzzle remains: a word whose literal meaning is 'the language of a district' is
used for the language spoken down the western side of Britain from Loch Lomond
to the Lizard. To make matters worse, a man of Cormac's time may well also have
regarded Breton as Combrec.^52
The most likely answer lies further back in time, in Roman and sub-Roman
Britain; and the clue is the word Deutsch (Old High German diutisk, thiutisk).53 In
786 two papal envoys, George, bishop of Ostia, and Theophylact, bishop of Todi,
were sent to England to secure reforms in the church. When they came to a council
of the Mercians, they had with them Alcuin and a man who was later his deacon,
Pyttel, probably also a Northumbrian. There the decrees which had been accepted
by a Northumbrian synod earlier in the same year were read out and explained both
in Latin and theodisce. The account of these proceedings survives in the form of a
letter from the bishop of Ostia to Pope Hadrian.^54 George had, for some time, been
resident in Francia and had undertaken his mission with the help of Wigbod, a Frank
sent as his companion by Charlemagne. 55 The context of his use of theodisc is thus
as much Frankish as it is English.
The best known Frankish example of the term is later, in the account given by
Nithard (ob. 844) of a treaty made between Charles the Bald and Louis the German
on 14 February 842, at which Nithard was himself very probably present. 56 Oaths
were sworn to confirm the treaty, both by the kings and by their supporters. On
both sides the leaders were Franks, but Charles swore his oath in teudisca lingua
(here German), while Louis swore in romana lingua ('the Roman tongue', in this
instance Old French). The purpose was to make the crucial oath intelligible to the
Frankish supporters of the other king. Both kings first addressed their own men in
their own language, Charles in the romana lingua, Louis in teudisca; similarly, when
their followers took the oath, Louis's men swore in teudisca while Charles's swore
in romana. The speeches were naturally meant to be comprehensible to their own
side, while the kings' oaths were intended to be understood by the other side.
5 I Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J.
Earle (Oxford 1892), i, s.a. 945; cf. 1000 (E); G.W.S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity: Scotland
1000-1306 (London, 1981), 11-13. I assume that the English used Cumbras of the
Strathclyde Britons because the latter used Cymry for themselves.
52 Just as Cynan of Brittany could be a leader of the Cymry.
53 L. Weisgerber, Deutsch als Volksname: Ursprung und Bedeutung (Stuttgart, 1953).
54 Epistolae Karolini Aevi, ii (==MGH Epistolae, iv; Berlin, 1895), ed. E. Diimmler, no. 3,
trans!' D. Whitelock, English Historical Documents. c. 500-1042 (London, 1955), no. 19I.
55 P. Wormald, 'In search of King aHa's "Law-Code"', in I.N. Wood and N. Lund (eds)
People and Places in Northern Europe 500-1600: essays in honour of P.H. Sawyer
(Woodbridge, 1991), 28-9.
56 Nithard: histoire des fils de Louis Ie Pieux, ed. Ph. Lauer (Paris, 1926), 100-8.713