Celtic visions of EnglandDavid N. Dumville [625948]

5
“Celtic ”visions of EnglandDavid N. Dumville
Defining “the Celts ”
There was no medieval idea of contemporary celticity in the second half
of the Middle Ages. Insofar as the word “Celts ”might be used, it was in
reference to Antiquity, prompted by Classical Latin authors. We must
therefore understand that in proceeding under this banner we are impos-
ing our sense of a linguistically defined overarching identity (derivingessentially from the work of Edward Lhuyd [Llwyd], d. 1709) on the
cultural politics of an era innocent of that. Britons (Bretons, Cornish,
and Welsh) and Gaels (of Irish, Manx, and Scottish sorts) were each aware
of a common share of identity defined by heritage; Gaels shared mutu-
ally comprehensible language and social mores. But none could or did
celebrate their celticity.
Englishness was a more immediate and tangible identity because the
kingdom of the English had constituted a political focus since 927, and
the Norman Conquest did not call that kingdom into question. Celticityand Englishness are false partners: die Kelten and die Germanen (the terms
of nineteenth-century German scholars seeking the earliest cultures and“races ”of Europe) are commensurate, but not useful in the present
context. Bretons and Cornish and Irish and Welsh are such comparandafor the English at the beginning of our period, but many Bretons had
received French culture and, although the Cornish language and culture
endured, Cornwall was nonetheless but a county of England with no
realistic hope of escape from the embrace of conquerors whether English
or French in culture.
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The origins of Scottishness are contested –and it is arguable that
perceptions of Scottishness, thus defined, originated in Old
Scandinavian usage early in the Viking Age. In Old English, Scottas
were originally Gaels, as in Latin from the appearance of the wordScot(t)i in the late third century. Latin Scotti as“Scots ”can perhaps be
traced from the late tenth century, as also Scotia ;l e a v i n ga s i d et h e
continuing use of Scotti and Scotia for Irish and Ireland into the twelfth
century, we cannot be certain just when these terms came together with anew political and cultural identity created during 889 –900 in north-
eastern Britain. Over the course of the later Middle Ages, of all thepolitical focuses in Britain, Scotland, and Scottishness enjoyed the great-
est–indeed, almost permanent –mutation. The cultural heritage of the
kingdom of the Scots was the most complex of any Insular polity.
Nonetheless, for political continuities, where identities were different
over time, one might reflect on the campaign to Watling Street, during
939 –43, of a Gaelic-Scandinavian army, and that in 1745 which brought a
Highland Scottish army to Derby.
Mutual regard
How the English viewed “the Celts”
A useful starting point is Old English w(e)alh, plural w(e)alas (and adjec-
tive welhisc ), a person of Celtic or Romance speech, a person fit to be a
slave: speakers of West Germanic languages made this same distinctionelsewhere, notably in what is now Belgium. In Anglo-Saxon England it
was necessary to employ a w(e)alhstod ,“interpreter, ”if one desired verbal
communication. To what extent the early English found it necessary oruseful for Britons (the local W[e]alas ) and British ( welhisc ) identity to
survive has long been a matter for debate.
When the kingdom of England was formed in 927 (and called Saxonia
by a presumptively Frankish secretary in the new monarch ’s entourage),
and for 140 years thereafter, the Anglo-Saxons expected to dominate all
Britain –and probably Ireland too, in view of Viking Age politics.
Already in the last quarter of the tenth century, the chronicler (and
royal ealdorman ) Æthelweard formulated the idea that what was once
called Britain is now called England ( Britannia quae nunc Anglia dicitur )–
and thus originated millennium-long confusion of “English ”and
“British, ”
1“England ”and “Britain ”; this idea progressed strongly after
the Norman Conquest and reached its apogee in the 1130s in Geoffrey of108 David N. Dumville
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Monmouth ’s epoch-making History of“the passage of dominion ”
(to which we shall return).2
What most Anglo-Normans resisted, however, was any suggestion
that they had something in common with contemporary Britons other
than some Normanized Bretons; indeed, Geoffrey himself made this
very clear. In Wales, whether one ’s legal identity was Welsh or English
was a matter of some consequence –as it had been in England itself
and in border regions in the Anglo-Saxon period. This was, of course,
something that was also known –as between Scandinavian settlers
and native English –in late Anglo-Saxon England, and was of great
consequence between “French ”and English in the Anglo-Norman
period.
There had long been an ecclesiastical element in English life that
regarded Gaels as a potential or actual force for disorder. When the
Angevin Plantagenet dynasty was inaugurated by King Henry II
(1154 –89), Ireland began to receive closer attention from the “English ”
government. Once established as lords of Ireland, Henry ’s successors
found both the Irish natives and the culturally Anglo-French settler
population troublesome in varying degrees. In sum, these neighbors,
like the Welsh, were barbarians. The Scots, by contrast, occupied a more
complex space in the worldview of the inhabitants of post-ConquestEngland. There was a savage element among them (articulated most
clearly by twelfth-century northern English writers, such as Ailred of
Rievaulx, and slightly later by the poet of The Owl and the Nightingale ).
3
How Britons viewed the English
When discussing the Insular Celts, one would be unwise ever to attempt ageneralization of view, and this as true of Britons as of Gaels. For a
substantial period after 1066, Welsh writers referred to the Normans as
“French ”(Franci ,Ffrainc ). On the other hand, those Bretons who were not
Normanized viewed the Normans as just that: Nor(d)manni ,“vikings. ”
4It
may be that those who were Normanized shared Geoffrey of Monmouth ’s
disdain for the Welsh. In some measure Anglo-Norman settlers in Waleswent native, but this trend was by no means as pronounced as it was to
become in Ireland. One strand of Welsh poetic convention remained
vehemently anti-English, calling for the “Saxons ”to be ejected from
Britain. We can see the emergence over time of a less strident treatmentof the English: in the fourteenth century the outstanding poet Dafydd apGwilym lost no opportunity to poke fun at English figures in Wales. As in“Celtic ”visions of England 109
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any colonial context, the cross-currents of opinion were complex and
numerous: they were already so in the twelfth century.
It is clear that King Arthur occupied a messianic space in British
popular mythology, his return being directed at foreign oppression,
which chiefly meant the English. Already at the beginning of the twelfth
century we see Francophone observers commenting on this aspect of
British culture. In the late Middle Ages, the Bretons too found them-
selves in military conflict with the English and no doubt saw new reason
to hope for Arthur ’s promised role as deliverer from the Saxons.
From the end of the first generation of Norman military expansion
into Wales in 1093 (when, according to one contemporary Anglo-Norman
observer, “from that day kings ceased to bear rule in Wales, ”echoed by
the more dire remark of a later Welsh chronicler, “then fell the kingdom
of the Britons ”), we have a passionate Latin lament by a Welsh writer,
Rhygyfarch or (in Old Welsh) Ricemarch, for his conquered patria ,
Ceredigion.5This dispossessed member of an elite clerical family made
the horrors of conquest very clear. That his relatives would, within a
generation, recover much of their position is testimony to the shifting
fortunes of conquest in Wales, a long process that might not have been
anticipated in the fateful year of 1093.
The same decade gives us almost our last view of the Britons of the
North, Cumbras in Old English, whose kingdom of Strathclyde –
extending at its height from the Clyde valley southwards to the
Cumberland –Westmorland border –had over the course of the tenth
and eleventh centuries been pushed and pulled into an ever-closerrelationship with the kingdom of Alba/Scotia. The kingdom of
Strathclyde was dismembered by King William Rufus in 1092, with
Carlisle and the River Solway made the northern markers of Anglo-
Norman rule. But the eleventh-century Brittonic-speaking Strathclyders ’
voice has not carried into the modern world, and we can only guess at whattheir views might have been.
How Gaels viewed the English
The point already made about resisting generalization must be reiter-ated here. In this case there is a need to consider the Scottish dimension
of gaelicity, for the interactions of Irish Gaels and Scottish Gaels with
persons of English or Anglo-French culture varied a great deal.
Before 1166 there was no significant tradition of anti-Englishness
among the Gaels of Ireland. Once the events of 1166 –72 had unfolded,110 David N. Dumville
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such an outlook would develop into a long-lasting tradition: in this,
however, the “English ”were assimilated to a historically flexible cate-
gory of “Foreigners, ”Gaill , a conceptual space occupied by vikings from
the 790s to the 1170s. It must be remembered that the first “English ”
king who came to Ireland and claimed rule there was Henry II, the firstAngevin king of England, not English and only partly Norman. Again,
as in Wales, the first references to these intrusive foreigners were as
“French. ”Although in 1171 –72 most of the more than 600 kings in
Ireland accepted Henry II’ s lordship, either directly or through over-
kings, in practice no medieval king of England did enough to achieve
conquest. Much of the extension of English rule was left to private
enterprise. Settlement certainly took place, extensively in some areas.Initially –and eternally, in principle –there was much mutual depiction
as barbarians, outlooks caught already rather nicely in the writing ofGiraldus Kambrensis (Gerald of Wales). At a practical level, however,
local interaction led (in spite of governmentally dictated apartheid) to
mutual assimilation: many settlers went comprehensively native, to the
outrage of the government in London and its officials in Dublin. In the
thirteenth century “degeneracy ”became a significant issue and
remained so until the full conquest of Ireland in the 1650s. This meantthat a rift opened between settlers and government, a problem whoselegacy could long be seen in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, the Gaelic
Irish remained typecast as savages.
In Scotland, on the other hand, the proximity of Francophone culture
was a reality a century before the Irish had to deal with its politico-military
dimension. It is clear that this presented an acute problem for the kings of
Scotia , even though southern borders were often securely fixed, “the prod-
uct of a series of compromises between northern rulers, who failed toextend their power as far south as they would have wished, and southern
rulers who despite their greater wealth and potentially bigger armies
lacked the resources to subjugate and permanently occupy the northern
part of the island of Britain. ”
6For these Scottish kings, Gaelic in their
inherited culture, an additional complication was that “Lothian, ”the
southeastern quadrant of their extended kingdom, was English (NorthNorthumbrian) in speech. In the twelfth century the kings of Scots them-
selves embraced Francophone culture (initially because of their upbring-
ing as hostage-princes at the Anglo-Norman court), and they famously
began to import a new nobility both from continental Francophonie and
from Anglo-Norman England. The English language, as “Scots, ”an a t i v e“Celtic ”visions of England 111
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vernacular, spread west and north in Scotland from its heartland in
Lothian and became a major cultural competitor with Gaelic. The noto-
rious clash of “Highland ”and “Lowland ”values, Gaelic and Scots, was
one result, again with mutual accusations of barbarousness.
Honorary Celts?
How Insular Scandinavians viewed their neighbors
A significant strand in the complex world of Insular ethnicities was the
Scandinavian. Until the mid-1260s (and from at least the mid-1050s) the
kingdom of Norway extended from the Arctic Circle to the Isle of Man.
From 1153 the archbishop of Trondheim enjoyed a papally approved
province that included all the “Norwegian ”territories in what is now
Scotland, as well as the Isle of Man. There had been a Scandinavian
presence in the region since at least the 790s.
The Hebrides before the Viking Age were divided between Gaelic- and
Pictish-speaking peoples. The line of division probably ran between the
Inner Hebrides (Gaelic) and the Outer Hebrides (Pictish). With Argyll,
the British mainland territory facing the Inner Hebrides, and a modest
slice of northeastern Ireland, the latter islands comprised the early
medieval Gaelic overkingdom of Dál Riata. The Inner Hebrides were
settled, in varying density, by vikings whose descendants in the next
generation were to be bilingual in Gaelic and Scandinavian. The samephenomenon can be observed in limited areas of Ireland associated with
Scandinavian settlement. Initially, from the mid-ninth century, these
bicultural products of the Viking Age were known in Gaelic as Gall-
Goídil ,“Foreigner-Gaels. ”That compound became, in the Gaelic fashion,
a territorial name: thus, while originally it probably had a broad appli-
cation around the western coast of Scotland, eventually it settled on the
area of southwestern Scotland now known by the derivative Scots name
Galloway (the counties of Wigtown and Kirkcudbright).
This bilingual culture was exported by vikings from the Hebrides
(for which another Viking Age Gaelic name was Inse Gall ,“The Islands of
the Foreigners ”) in the earlier tenth century to Galloway, Cumbria
(southern Strathclyde), Man, and (most remarkably) to westernNormandy (the Cotentin peninsula in particular), where onomastic evi-
dence has been the key to its identification. I have argued elsewhere that
the Normans were heirs to a viking-view of the Gaels (of Ireland at least)
that characterized them as uniquely lazy and libidinous.
7We should no112 David N. Dumville
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more generalize about Scandinavian or vikings ’views than about those
of Insular Celts (and for much the same reasons), but it is worth remind-
ing ourselves that Scandinavians arrived in the Celtic-speaking world
(as generally across Europe) as raiders, conquerors, and settlers, used to
the advantages and self-confidence that accompanied successful aggres-
sion. There is some reason (including Old Norse literary works of the
thirteenth century) to think that this attitude persisted as long as
Scandinavian armies sought to enforce their leaders ’will in Britain and
Ireland –that is, to the mid-thirteenth century.
La Francophonie d ’Angleterre
“English ”and “French ”vernaculars in the “Celtic ”west
and north
The oldest extant Scottish law-text, Leges inter Brettos et Scottos (this Latin
title is for various reasons exceedingly difficult to translate convinc-ingly and unambiguously) was written in French, probably early in thetwelfth century. It contains English, Cumbric (Brittonic), and Gaelic
technical terms. Here is a reminder of part of the ethnic and linguistic
complexity of Scotland, culturally the most diverse of England ’s
Insular neighbors.
It is essential to remember that French (and Flemish and Scandina-
vian) continued to be spoken, read, and written in the “English ”colonies
in the thirteenth century: linguistic and literary interaction with the
local native languages and a translation literature were the result. For
the Celtic-speaking countries, England was an important source ofFrench culture from 1066 to the end of the Middle Ages. It was not the
only one, however.
While the universities of Oxford and Cambridge attracted students
from across Britain and Ireland, those in the Celtic-speaking coun-
tries, whether natives or colonists, who were able to seek a university
education might (and did) take themselves to Paris or an increasing
choice of regional French centers of higher learning. Scottish stu-
dents –both before and after the fifteenth-century foundation of
three domestic universities (St. Andrews in 1412, Glasgow in 1451,and Old Aberdeen in 1495) –studied in numerous French universities
as well as at Leuven, Copenhagen (founded 1475), in western and
northeastern Germany, at Cracow in southern Poland, in northern
Italy, and in Rome.“Celtic ”visions of England 113
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French culture
Two recent British historians have seen the expansion of English power
into the Celtic-speaking countries as aspects of much larger historical
processes. Robert Bartlett has written of a process of colonization in
which the successful peoples of Europe were engaged during the central
Middle Ages. John Gillingham, in a long and continuing series of
articles, now partially collected, has addressed many aspects of the ques-
tion of civility and barbarity in the same period: the slave-owning soci-
eties of the Islands (and Scandinavia) were confronted by a Continental
(and particularly French) outlook enjoying some different values that it
regarded as more civil, more modern, more Christian.8Both English and
“Celts ”on the receiving end of the civilizing mission may have had
reason to suspect hypocrisy. But the victors write the histories.
Within a century of 1066 the new elite, colonial though its origins
were, was beginning to call itself English, and the “Celts ”now had to
associate this civilizing mission with the English. It would be possible to
write Anglo-Celtic cultural relations in the later Middle Ages in terms of
the spread of French culture and Celtic reactions to that. For the imme-
diate purpose, two twelfth-century authors are of particular interest.
Geoffrey of Monmouth (Galfridus Monemutensis)
The Breton cleric, Geoffrey of Monmouth –presumably descended from
a settler established in a post-Conquest Breton colony in southeasternWales –passed his entire recorded career in the vicinity of Oxford. He
died as bishop (1152– 55) of Llanelwy/St. Asaph in northeastern Wales but
almost certainly had been unable to visit or govern his see. This honorary
Welshman made probably the largest single contribution to Anglo-Celtic
cultural relations of any writer of the second half of the Middle Ages. If
his Arthur inspired the young King Henry II, as has been argued, then
that contribution was rapidly influential at the highest political levels.
In the larger context of orally transmitted matière de Bretagne –the
“matter of Britain ”introducing persons, places, and events of British
Britain –Geoffrey ’s work was highly influential too in European vernac-
ular literature. His History had a major impact on Latin and vernacular
historiography throughout Britain for the remainder of the Middle Ages.If (as scholars thought for much of the twentieth century) Geoffrey’ s
History conveyed a message that the Normans were the heirs of the
ancient Britons in their domination of the island of Britain, that was114 David N. Dumville
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implicitly rejected by the “English ”elite of the late twelfth century. It
was only subsequently revived (before the Tudor period) in the context of
specific Anglo-“ Celtic ”political interactions of the later Middle Ages.
We owe to Geoffrey three works, all in Latin: The Prophecy of Merlin ,
subsequently incorporated into his History , his magnum opus in eleven
books, on the affairs of the Britons from their first peopling of theisland of Britain until their loss of dominion in the 680s and the
definitive capture of sovereignty by the English, with Æthelstan ’s
creation of his English monarchy and claim to all Britain, in the920s. Geoffrey ’s last work, a Life of Merlin in verse, returned him to
his first literary subject but in a very different mode: this last enjoyedrelatively little medieval circulation, unlike the other two, which werebestsellers.
9
Geoffrey ’s vision was a British one, a lengthy and often glorious
history of this eponymous people. It had the external form of a Latin
history. It contained all the stuff of romance. Its politics have proved
endlessly contentious, even after the decisive expositions by J. S. P .
Tatlock, given final form in 1950. Geoffrey was one of relatively few
medieval authors who had read Gildas ’admonitiuncula –his“little warn-
ing, ”as with considerable understatement Gildas calls his “letter ”onThe
Ruin of Britain (a non-authorial but apt title).10None who read this work
escaped its message, that the Britons through their inherited addiction
to sin were heading for destruction unless moral re-armament could be
achieved. Those who came after, beginning with Bede, knew that the
Britons had failed the test and that the English had destroyed their
civilization and seized control of much of the island. Geoffrey ’s vision
comprehended Gildas ’in most of its elements. But the Britons ’glorious
(pre-)history set forth by Geoffrey was entirely novel. This was defended
by a rampart of a characteristically twelfth-century sort, a vernacular
source procured from Brittany by Geoffrey ’s colleague, Walter, arch-
deacon of Oxford, who alone owned it, and which Geoffrey faithfullyrendered into Latin. This source was a phantom. The content was asmendacious as the authority. The History is full of outrageous historical
jokes, developed in cheerful quasi-Goliardic irreverence by exploitinggaps in existing literature. Geoffrey closed his work by thumbing his
nose at the leading Insular historians of his generation. He may even
have arranged for one of them, Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, to
encounter a copy of it at Le Bec in January 1139; a letter by Henry survives,
expressing wonder at its narrative.
11“Celtic ”visions of England 115
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Geoffrey catapulted British identity to the center of the British and
Anglo-Norman historical, literary, ecclesiastical, and courtly stages as the
Anglo-Norman world descended into a fifteen-year civil war. When a
new stability was achieved through a treaty (1153) that established Henry
Plantagenet as the royal heir, soon to succeed and long to rule (1154 –89),
the court became a famous literary center. One of King Stephen ’s last acts
was to award Geoffrey an unattainable, perhaps even a joke, bishopric in
Wales. But Geoffrey ’soeuvre was already bestselling and his place in
literary history assured. Thanks to him, the ancient Britons, KingArthur, Merlin, and much else achieved such celebrity: Geoffrey ’s game
was won in England!
Geoffrey ’sHistory also contained many political messages for his con-
temporaries, not least about the evils of civil war –a Gildasian theme. His
patron, Henry II ’s uncle, Robert, earl of Gloucester, deserves study in this
context: through him, Geoffrey had access to a “legitimist ”Anglo-
Norman political culture that was strong in south Wales and southwest-ern England, and Robert ’s own court attracted a literary circle.
Geoffrey ’s vision of the English was, in British terms, clear-sighted
and partly conventional. Where, in terms of Brittonic literary tradition,
it was unconventional, was in his view of the Britons as politically and
(once Christianized) even morally businesslike. Over time, the Englishhad taken Gildas ’message to heart: this was manifested in the kingdom
of England and in their aspirations to rule all Britain, a project sincebrought significantly closer to fruition by Norman successes in relation
to Wales and Scotland. But the Normans were now the ones who must
pay heed to Gildas –or, instead, to Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Geoffrey ’s vision of the passage of dominion of Britain was contested
in his own day, as was superbly demonstrated by R. William Leckie in
1981.
12The power of Geoffrey ’s historiography was such that it became
dominant in Wales, albeit with some of the adjustments necessary torender it less toxic to thirteenth-century Welsh sensibilities. Geoffrey
was famously rude about Welsh degeneracy from ancient British stand-ards, corrupted by association with the English; it was the Bretons who
had retained the governing ideals of a glorious past. Welsh adaptations
and translations went some way to neutralize this, as well as to adjust
Geoffrey ’s characters and narratives to the conventions of Welsh litera-
ture. What is very striking is that the principal vernacular chronicle ofmedieval Welsh history begins in the 680s, when the Britons lost the rule
of the island: the medieval title given to this work, which first extended116 David N. Dumville
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to the effective loss of Welsh independence in 1282, was Brenhinoedd y
Saeson, “The Kings of the English ”–in other words, this was a historical
account of the period in which the English were the rising power that
finally extinguished British (viz., Welsh) independence. The author of
this text, writing about 1300, had fully received Geoffrey’ s overarching
historiographical message. Geoffrey ’s vision of the English included
their definition and command of a final era of native British history.
Giraldus Kambrensis
We have already encountered “Gerald of Wales ”(1146 –1223). That name
was but one of this remarkable chameleon ’s self-identifications. He was a
churchman who found a cause. He became a writer who could notrestrain his creative urge or his more turgid second and third thoughts.
His was a mighty ego. And yet, apart from his own writings (which are
voluminous, even though some works are lost), there is little trace of his
life in external contemporary record.
13
Giraldus emerged from a bicultural family of the highest rank in
colonial Wales. His mother was the daughter of a Welsh princess whohad become a mistress of Henry I, his father and grandfather were
Norman barons. He was early destined for the Church and received the
best Parisian university education. While he presented himself as a
reformer, his family connections (one might unkindly speak of nepo-
tism) delivered him office within the diocese of St. Davids. In him we
find a classic subject for post-colonial analysis. He was self-reflexive,
interrogating his different or competing identities and their implica-
tions, even laying out opposing blueprints of how Anglo-Norman and
Welsh high politics should be played. He sought to sell “the west ”as an
exotic and interesting Other, much preferable to the fascination with
“the east ”(whose characteristics he portrayed as deeply unattractive) so
widespread in an age of crusading.
Topographia Hibernica ,“The Topography of Ireland, ”was his first and
most masterly work (albeit progressively degraded in subsequent edi-tions). While it has been reviled by Irish readers since at least the six-
teenth century for its colonialist attitude, he showed much sympathy
with the Irish while, nonetheless, finding them exotic, strange, and in
many respects primitive. Through him we learn something of Irish
perceptions of the invaders. His epigrammatic summations could be
masterly: “Given only to leisure, and devoted only to laziness, they
think that the greatest pleasure is not to work, and the greatest wealth“Celtic ”visions of England 117
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is to enjoy liberty. This people is a barbarous people …Their natural
qualities are excellent. But almost everything acquired is deplorable. ”
Giraldus ’Norman-Welsh family was heavily involved in the first wave of
conquest and settlement in Ireland, becoming major founding figures in
the new colony. Insofar as their stake in Ireland depended in part on grants
from an Irish overking in whose interest they had taken up arms, they
could not afford wholeheartedly to call into question the rights of the
native elite. At the same time there is no gainsaying the bloody and
desperate ruthlessness of their campaigning in Ireland. Giraldus reported
a conversation with the archbishop of Cashel, Tatheus (Muirges Ua
hÉnna), in which Giraldus made the hostile observation that “no one
had ever in that kingdom won the crown of martyrdom in defence of
the church of God. ”Acknowledging what his rubric calls “a sly reply, ”
Giraldus wrote: “the archbishop gave a reply which cleverly got home –
although it did not rebut my point: ‘It is true, ’he said, ‘that although our
people are very barbarous, uncivilized, and savage, nevertheless they havealways paid great honor and reverence to churchmen, and they have never
put out their hands against the saints of God. But now a people has come
to the kingdom which knows how, and is accustomed, to make martyrs.
From now on, Ireland will have its martyrs, just as other countries. ’”
14
It may be argued that Giraldus provided the Francophone and
Anglophone worlds (overlapping as they did) with the very prismthrough which they looked at the Gaels for the rest of the Middle Ages.
Indeed, Protestant Britain maintained the colonialist vision of the Irish
long thereafter. In the process, many of that shrewd but conflicted
observer’ s perceptions have been rendered toxic. No medieval British
writer can provoke a more vehement reaction in modern Ireland: henevertheless deserves close study. It is part of the complexity of the
colonial picture that some of his writing was translated into medieval
Irish, but probably for the benefit of “degenerate ”colonial families.
Civility and incivility
Civility: from Gerald of Wales to the Elizabethans
Modern scholars have detected civility –and the want of it –as a theme of
Anglo-Celtic contacts in the later Middle Ages and the early Modernperiod. The “civility ”of the English (as inheritors of French culture)
and the “incivility ”of the Britons and Gaels (the Scots –or at least their
leaders –were rendered civil by effective politico-military action in the118 David N. Dumville
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late eleventh century) is an opposition less easy to perceive from the
Celtic side. Many Britons and Gaels were in varying degrees “anglicized ”
by the presence of French-speakers in their midst, but, as I have alreadynoted, many settlers became “degenerate ”(as the Britons of Wales had
done, in Geoffrey ’sHistory , through contact with the English!) by virtue
of adopting the mores of their Celtic neighbors in the new colonies.
Relatively little theorizing of this process was achieved until the Tudor
age; but Giraldus Kambrensis may be held to have made a start in his
self-analysis, writing which was a contribution both to anthropology
and to autobiography –as well as a gift to modern post-colonial studies.
However, core –periphery differences, old-fashioned prejudice against
one’s neighbors, and specific complaints –whether ecclesiastical, polit-
ical, or social, but all deemed to be moral –contrived to catch the Welsh,
Irish, and (eventually) Scottish Highlanders and (western) Islanders(both groups of whom were Gaelic-speakers in this period) in the prism
of incivility.
Prophetic visions: politics and prophecy
The Insular Celtic literatures, both vernacular and Latin, are from anearly date full of political prophecy. One significant slice of Brittonic
prophecy was anti-English. On the other hand, Old English literature
seems largely devoid of such prophecy (although the same cannot be said
of pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin writing). The later medieval situation in
England was very different from the earlier. The medium of transference
(for this is what seems to have happened) was “The Prophecy of Merlin ”
at the center of Geoffrey ’sHistory . It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that
Prophetia Merlini was based on non-Celtic sources. Nevertheless,
Geoffrey ’s work seems to have encouraged pursuit of Welsh texts of
that sort and to have validated the vigorous development of the formin English writing (whether in English, French, or Latin) in the later
Middle Ages.
It is already apparent in tenth-century Welsh literature that one
aspect of such prophecy was the expectation or hope of return of mes-
sianic figures, notably Arthur, a belief held by Britons of Brittany,
Cornwall, and Wales. This was, for example, mocked by William of
Malmesbury in 1125.
15It was already a bone of contention between
Bretons and French. The idea grew with the reception of Arthurianlegend in the literary mainstream and may be held to have coalescedwith the Grail legend, many of whose elements were Gaelic in origin.“Celtic ”visions of England 119
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Almost nothing survives of Breton (and Cornish) literature of the central
Middle Ages, but we may be sure that it, with Welsh and probably Gaelic
literature, had a profound impact on that of Francophone Europe during
the twelfth century in particular, sometimes directly, sometimes by
mediation. La matière de Bretagne put a new spotlight on the Britons.
Perhaps the myth of return no longer seemed wholly absurd, but it wasstill politically dangerous. The name of Arthur was absorbed into the
Plantagenet royal dynasty, though not entirely happily.
By the beginning of the thirteenth century, Welsh littérateurs in par-
ticular had learnt to respond with enthusiastic engagement, in reception
of Geoffrey ’sHistory and of French-language Arthurian romance. Cross-
cultural interaction of other related literary forms would follow, notably
flyting. There is much reason to think that, in Wales at least, there was a
market for foreign stimulus, particularly where that might be held to
validate native literary themes and genres.
Documentation and justification
In the written forms of justification of rights, the traffic was almostwholly one way, from Anglo-French to Celtic, during this period. Celtic
antiquity might be used, as at Glastonbury Abbey and (most spectacu-
larly) in the creation of the bishopric of Llandaf, to justify a claim to
jurisdiction or property or pilgrimage. It is worth noting, however, that
in the case of Llandaf the stated provocation to action was the wreckage
created by Anglo-Norman colonial lords in south Wales.
The work of Gildas or the prophetic utterances of Merlin might be
quoted with serious political and historiographical intent. The lost Celtic
source might (as most spectacularly by Geoffrey of Monmouth) beinvoked in history or romance or (perhaps especially) hagiography.
For the Celts, however, the vision of England could only be a modern-
izing one, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, and as a source of inva-
sion. Geoffrey of Monmouth treated modernity (as he treated almost
everything) with ambiguity, but the twelfth-century Western embrace of
novelty contained further implications for the “Celts. ”Their elite culture
justified itself by constant appeal to ancient tradition. Their vision of theoutside world, and especially of England, could thenceforth only be of a
species of globalization, a process of relentless change driven from out-
side. The Anglo-French might also appeal to long-established rights and
customs, but these would characteristically be cast in specific and pro-fessionalized documentary forms. Authentication was therefore of a120 David N. Dumville
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different order. When that culture arrived in the Celtic world some
misunderstanding and mutual incomprehension were inevitable, even
where (as in Ireland) there had been some penetration by “European ”
documentary forms before invasion, domination, and settlement.
What all these cultures shared was the use of hagiographic narrative
to justify their local saints and their churches’ property and status. In
Welsh saints ’Lives in Latin, in versions of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, we meet local saints of Morgannwg and Tegeingl (in southeastand northeast Wales, respectively) as defenders of their lands and rights
by spectacular miracles directed against Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians,
and French/Normans, as well as natives. It is doubtful that these stories
were efficacious against Normans in the earlier years of conquest, butattitudes on both sides could change: while one Norman knight ’s wife
was rendered infertile for sacrilege against the female martyrGwenfrewy –“For it was right that [she] should thereafter be encom-
passed by mocking and derision, jeering and opprobrium ”–the author
of the closing chapter of the Life of St. Illtud could display his sympathy
with Angligenis et Normannigenis ciuibus (“English-born and Norman-born
citizens ”) rather than with the north Welsh.
Exoticism and the cult of saints
Norman invaders of England and the Celtic-speaking countries found thelocal saints unattractively exotic –the “uncouthness ”of their names was
much mentioned –and attempted either suppression of their cults or an
interpretatio franca or both. However, attitudes soon changed, and native
cults were embraced but thus transformed. There has been some study ofthe two-way spread of saints ’cults in the Insular world in this period, but
little evidence has been found for the adoption of post-Roman foreign
saints in Gaeldom before the Friars reached Ireland in the mid-thirteenthcentury. Even so, the cults of native saints proved to be tenacious, although
the literary evidence is thin, especially in the Brittonic world, until, and
beyond, the later end of our period. Celtic saints were, however, adopted
and mutated in England, and it is clear that (as in the pre-Conquest period)
the results sometimes attracted pilgrims –both “Celts ”and others.
Nevertheless, one aspect of the exotic incivility of Irish saints was
remembered wherever Giraldus ’Topographia Hibernica was read. Book II
of the work closed with a chapter entitled, “That the saints of this
country seem to be of a vindictive cast of mind. ”“This seemed to me a
thing to be noticed, that, just as the men of this country are during this“Celtic ”visions of England 121
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mortal life more prone to anger and revenge than any other people, so in
eternal death the saints of this land who have been elevated by their
merits are more vindictive than the saints of any other region. ”
Education
For inhabitants of the Celtic-speaking countries, access to a university
education was to be had elsewhere in Christendom, whether in England
(first at Oxford, but from the thirteenth century also at Cambridge), or in
France or Italy –or, later, in the Low Countries, in Germany, Denmark, or
Poland. Only in the fifteenth century did an Insular alternative open, atSt. Andrews in Scotland in 1412 (and subsequently at Glasgow and OldAberdeen). All this was in principle ecclesiastical education.
Another type of education for “Celts” might be had through child-
hostageship in England (or in the varying Continental territories of
the kings of England). This is first seen clearly (after the Norman
Conquest) in relation to Scotland, when children of King Mael Colaim
III (1058 –93) –a troublesome serial invader of northern England –
began to be taken from Scotland. This brought about nothing lessthan a cultural revolution in Scottish governance and elite self-
perception, led by Scottish royals raised under the auspices of the
Anglo-Norman court. Similar policies caused many Welsh royals to be
brought up in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,although we see more examples of (or represented as) imprisonment
of rather older royals. Female members of Welsh royal dynasties could
be treated as wards of the king of England and given suitable marriages.
In time the same would be true of the Irish experience. Except during
the Scottish Wars of Independence, however, there was a qualitative
difference in Anglo-Scottish relations: while the kings of England
always considered themselves to be the lords of the kings of Scotland,
rulers in Wales and Ireland (neither of which countries had a monarchy)
were clearly always much smaller fry and might be viewed as enjoyingfewer rights. Certainly, in the early Modern period Irish royals educated
in noble households in England were collectively a major transmitter of
modern and “civilized ”ideas to Ireland.
Law
All the Insular peoples had highly developed legal systems and thoughtby 1066. The various Insular Celtic legal cultures reflected societies that
differed fundamentally from the West Germanic in two principal122 David N. Dumville
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respects: Celtic societies either did not know or had only recently come to
include nucleated settlement; and they did not for the most part know
executive kingship. Anglo-Celtic interaction before 1066 had increas-
ingly made the Welsh and Scots sensible of the power of English kings.
When –after the involvement of Anglo-French kings in both those
countries and in Ireland –the “Celts ”had tasted a newer and perhaps
more dangerous “English ”power, both royal and baronial, they realized
what savagery and mischief might come from those claiming to be morecivilized. In this regard, we have already encountered the lament of
Rhygyfarch ap Sulien for Ceredigion. Giraldus Kambrensis reported an
Irish ecclesiastic ’s pointed comment on the same experience.
While Welsh and, in Ireland, Gaelic legal systems remained intact,
they became those of oppressed subjects in conquered territories.Eventually, some natives would petition the king for grants of English
law. In the territory of the king of Scots, English law had had a profound
impact in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, without a conquest ever
taking place. In Wales we see the native law responding to the challenges
of contemporary European jurisprudence; there is some reason to think
that some similar developments occurred in Gaeldom, but the matter has
barely been studied. The resulting paradox, a familiar colonial one, is
that, just as English power could be seen as oppressive and arbitrary,England was also (with the universities and the papacy) a source of new
legal ideas that provoked thought among native “Celtic ”elites.
Concepts of authority
It follows that at the start of our period concepts of authority were very
different in England and among the “Celts. ”This is not to say that divine
authority was denied or that Holy Writ had a lesser status in either type
of society. But expression of legal, or academic, or ecclesiastical, or royal
authority could be couched in very different forms. The learned elites of
Gaeldom, in particular, could express themselves in highly technical
language in modes of thought that must have caused astonishment to
colonial administrators. Authority came from very ancient right: “the
backward look ”is the phrase (it was Frank O ’Connor ’s) often used to
characterize it.
The particularist character of the Insular Celtic societies caused for-
eigners to be regarded both as one more complication in a particularist,
Balkanesque political landscape or as a major threat to one’ s civilization,
depending on one ’s particular angle of vision. The latter would lead to“Celtic ”visions of England 123
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appeals to the papacy (and even other European powers) for succor. We
find such appeals from Wales already in the twelfth century and from
Ireland beginning in the thirteenth century. The Scottish Church and the
Scottish monarchy both found reasons in the second half of the Middle
Ages to appeal to Rome for protection from English embrace.
Narratives of “Anglo-Celtic ”relations?
After Geoffrey of Monmouth, Ailred of Rievaulx, and GiraldusKambrensis, only “national ”narratives are found in the Insular zone,
one might say. This would not be wholly accurate –and one must always
be alert to the importance of local histories –but the statement points up
a problem that does not seem to be resolved in historiography or inpolitical or historical sociology until the Early Modern period. If the
English were (by being a colonial power) so very important to the Insular
Celts throughout the later Middle Ages, why do they not loom larger in
“Celtic ”historiography in the period? Is “the backward look ”a sufficient
explanation?
Is it the case that among the Britons the centuries since 700 were merely
more of the same and that everything that needed to be said could be
expressed in terms of the passage of dominion in the fifth to seventh
centuries? In the second half of the eighth century (and without any
obvious major territorial change) Clawdd Offa ,“Offa ’sD y k e , ”became the
effective cultural boundary, the eastern limit of Welsh law, which appliedfor the rest of the Middle Ages in spite of numerous political shifts. Wales ’
land boundary had, in other words, been defined forever by the English.
In Britain, every historical writer after the reception of Geoffrey of
Monmouth might employ a sub-Galfridian discourse. Geoffrey had car-ried almost everyone with him in the essentials of his British narrative.
Anglo-Scottish relations might easily be expressed in these terms, and
from both sides, although the Scots added a dose of Gaelic national
origin-legend to flavor the historiographic stew. For the late medieval
Bretons, for whom the English became a troublesome enemy, the story
(while Galfridian) was different again.
In Ireland the narrative was very different. As one of conquest, it was
written in Latin and French by the invaders, and with some fanfare, butonly at the beginning of the process. The detailed narrative record is to be
found in annalistic chronicles, both native and colonial, concerned with
specifics rather than the sweep of history. In Irish, traditional tales and
pseudohistories were rewritten –and in them Gaill had their place,124 David N. Dumville
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particularly in the stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill –throughout the later
Middle Ages: it is arguable (but difficult to demonstrate) that these were
intended to be read in relation to contemporary issues.
Geography, government, and identity
The problem of “British history, ”medieval and modern
For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, “The British History ”was
that bequeathed by Geoffrey of Monmouth and controverted by Polydore
Vergil in the early sixteenth century. When, in 1799, the English histor-
ian Sharon Turner ventured to use medieval Welsh poetry in writing
Anglo-Saxon history (almost certainly the first English scholar to do so),
he was treated to a barrage of criticism by those who believed all
“British ”(and probably “Celtic ”) writing about history to be pseudohis-
torical. His response in 1803 was a brilliantly polemical monograph,
which should remain required reading for all English historians and
which demonstrated his mastery of the Welsh sources.16
Nevertheless, the English tradition of historiography remained deter-
minedly contemptuous of Celtic sources until in the second half of the
twentieth century a succession of scholars of “Celtic ”ethnicity but with
credibility among English historians –G. W. S. Barrow, R. R. Davies, and
Brendan Bradshaw (and more recently Robert Bartlett) –forced “the
British problem ”into English historical debate. This has various dimen-
sions: contemplation of medieval concepts of “Britain ”; taking British
history as a whole; problematizing Britain in relation to Ireland rather
than the other way round; and, indeed, problematizing England as the
central or sole player in medieval Insular culture (as Scott Waugh ’s
chapter in this volume also notes).
The problem of a narrowly Anglocentric modern historiographical
tradition was mirrored by an introverted traditionalism among writerson Welsh history who found it impossible to shed the Galfridian heritage
and, indeed, to restrain themselves from adding new fantasies to it.
While the writing of evidence-based history of ancient and medieval
Celtic Britain began before 1900, it was only in the twentieth centurythat it started to dominate. Even so, the learned A. W. Wade-Evans
(1875 –1964) remained unrepentantly attached to a version of the medie-
val “British history, ”while some students of Welsh literature still seem
reluctant to shake off related delusions. And Breton historiography is yet
flirting (to put it no more strongly) with Galfridianism.“Celtic ”visions of England 125
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The legacy of Geoffrey of Monmouth, some 850 years after his death,
remains astonishing. The creative genius that he manifested has com-
plicated the understanding of British history, not least by seeming to
provide something for all national players. Yet it was he who had the
pan-British vision, even though its ultimate basis was ethnic. His work
provided one foundation for the writing of the history of Britain in the
later Middle Ages. (Although Ireland played its part in his great narra-
tive, the Irish historiographic tradition never succumbed to
Galfridianism.) But it would be a brave scholar who would say what
Geoffrey ’s“Celtic(?) vision of England ”might have been.
“Great Britain ”and “The British Isles ”
When Great Britain (viz., the island of Britain) was first so called is amatter of uncertainty –perhaps in the eleventh century in a forged
document attributed to St. Dunstan (d. 988). In the twelfth century thelonger-standing differentiation of “Greater Britain ”(Britannia Maior ) and
“Lesser Britain ”(Britannia Minor , viz. Brittany, a name of relatively recent
application in English to Continental Bretagne ,Breizh ) became popular,
and it was the former of these that was at length shortened to “Great
Britain. ”This term was not, as is widely believed in the “Celtic ”coun-
tries, a British (or, indeed, English) assertion of self-aggrandizement. It
does reflect the important place that the concept of “Britain ”had in
British/Brittonic, Scottish, and English political thought from theMiddle Ages: it was repeatedly transformed –in 1536, 1603, 1707, and
1801 –by the various unions with the “Celtic ”countries.
“The British Isles, ”on the other hand, first appears as a descriptor
in ancient Greek ethnography to mean the sum of Ireland, Britain, and
their lesser islands; it is not impossible that it represented a wider
ancient Celtic understanding of Britishness than is immediately appa-
rent in later sources. For obvious reasons, “The British Isles ”as a concept
has been anathema to Irish nationalist opinion in modern times. As aresult of failure of British educational tradition it is now unintelligible,
in its received meaning, to British youth who take it to mean merely
Britain and its minor islands, finding it incomprehensible that Ireland
should be included.
These terms indicate how imperium and English (and ultimately
British) power have become indelibly imprinted on the political con-
sciousness of the Insular Celtic peoples. The visible origins of a notionof an English-dominated Britain lie in the mid-seventh century (and126 David N. Dumville
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may be argued to have arisen from Gaelic inspiration); they grew
further in the rhetoric of English monarchical government from the
mid-tenth century. When the Normans became heirs to that govern-
ment, they (and perhaps at first their churchmen, as also in the seventh
century) rapidly came to think that they too deserved Insular imperium .
Nation, state, and big government
England was the first nation-state of the European Middle Ages, setting a
trend that reached its apogee (and perhaps its downfall) in the period
1789 –1945. Since the sixteenth century, historical writing has been con-
ceived largely in terms of nation-states; failed nation-states and nationswithout states were increasingly written out of history. All of the Celtic-
speaking countries come into this category. Only Ireland has succeededin forcing its way into the club of nation-states, with nationalists in the
others wishing to emulate its success (if without the same amount of
grief). Scotland was an independent nation from its creation (at contested
dates) to 1603, albeit with periods under English dominance: it is, none-
theless, in the terms stated above, a failed nation-state. The result of such
history, in which the Celtic-speaking nations were subsumed into
England (or Britain) or France, has been to encourage “Celtic ”writers
to attempt to cast their (ancient and) medieval histories in terms ofsuccessful nations with either monarchies or (on the German model)imperial overkingdoms. This should be a perfect subject for post-
colonial analysis, but weaknesses of post-colonial theory and the per-
ceived political power of the nation-state model have inhibited such
development. This latter model is a highly relevant constraint on an
effective analysis of the medieval “Celtic ”cultures and an understanding
of medieval “Celtic ”visions of England and the English.
17
Notes
1.The Chronicle of Æthelweard , ed. and trans. A. Campbell (Edinburgh, 1962).
2.Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain , ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil
Wright (Woodbridge, 2007).
3.Aelred of Rievaulx, “Relatio de Standardo, ”inChronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II
and Richard I , 3, ed. Richard Howlett, 179– 99, Roll Series 82 (1886); trans. Marsha L. Dutton
and Jane Patricia Freeland, The Historical Works (Kalamazoo, MI, 2005), pp. 245 –70;The Owl
and the Nightingale , ed. and trans. Neil Cartlidge (Exeter, 2001), lines 907 –12.
4.I use the lower case spelling to indicate that this is a common noun not an ethnic term;
see David Dumville, “Images of the Viking in Eleventh-century Latin Literature, ”in“Celtic ”visions of England 127
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Michael Herren, C. J. McDonough, and Ross G. Arthur (eds.), Latin Culture in the Eleventh
Century , Publications of The Journal of Medieval Latin 5 (Turnhout, 2002), 1:250 –63, at 250
n. 2, reprinted in his Celtic Essays, 2001 –2007 , 2 vols. (Aberdeen, 2007).
5.Michael Lapidge, “The Welsh –Latin Poetry of Sulien ’s Family, ”Studia Celtica 8/9
(1973 –4), 68– 106, at 88 –93. For the Anglo-Norman and Welsh chroniclers ( “John of
Worcester ”and the Brenhinaedd y Saeson, respectively), see *R. R. Davies, First English
Empire (2000), pp. 4 –8.
6.Geoffrey W. S. Barrow, “The Anglo-Scottish Border: Growth and Structure in the
Middle Ages, ”in Wolfgang Haubrichs and Reinhard Schnider (eds.), Grenzen und
Grenzregionen , Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte
und Volksforschung 22 (Saarbrücken, 1993), 197– 211, at 197.
7.Dumville, “Images of the Viking. ”
8.See *Bartlett, The Making of Europe (1993), *Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century
(2000).
9.As well as the Latin text and English translation by Reeve and Wright, see also the
English only edition by Michael A. Faletra, The History of the Kings of Britain: Geoffrey of
Monmouth (Peterborough, Ontario, 2008), which includes a translation of The Life of Merlin
and other materials.
10.Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and other Works , ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom
(Chichester, 1978).11.Partly translated in Faletra, History , pp. 287 –88.
12.See *Leckie, The Passage of Dominion (1981).
13.See *Bartlett, Gerald of Wales (1982).
14.Giraldus Kambrensis [Gerald of Wales], The History and Topography of Ireland , trans. John
O’Meara (1982), pp. 115 –16.
15.William of
Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings , ed. and
trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998 –9),
1:520 –21.
16.Sharon Turner, A Vindication of the Genuineness of the Antient British poems of Aneurin,
Taliesin, Llywarch Hen and Merdhin, with specimens of their poems (1803), handily available on
Google books.17.I should like to express my gratitude to the Editor and to Dr. Clare Downham for their
perceptive and helpfully encouraging readings of drafts of this chapter.128 David N. Dumville
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