Scottish Place-Name News No. 46
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No. 46 Spring 2019 The Newsletter of the SCOTTISH PLACE-NAME SOCIETY COMANN AINMEAN-ÀITE NA H-ALBA In Glen Doll, Angus, beside the White Water, a tributary of the South Esk. In his book on the names of The Glens of Angus, the late David Dorward noted that the name Glen Doll did not seem ancient. Although the name was on General Roy’s military survey of the mid 18th century, it was absent from Ainslie’s map in the 1790s. However, Ainslie showed a croft called Dole at the foot of the glen where it joins Glen Clova; Bartholomew maps of the 1960s still marked ‘Glen of the Doll’; and Dorward comments that the glen’s name was earlier pronounced ‘Dole’. Unsurprisingly he concluded that the origin was Pictish *dol (‘haugh, meadow’, adopted into Gaelic as dail and cognate with Welsh dôl; also dol in Cornish and Breton). 2 the text that translates: ‘This is The Gododdin. The current postal address of the Aneirin sang it’. These poems are attributed to Scottish Place-Name Society the sixth-century poet Aneirin, and according (registered charity SC033810) is: to conventional understanding, they are laments commemorating the warriors of the Guotodin c/o 12 University Gardens, Glasgow people and their allies who fell in the battle of G12 8QQ Catraeth in the late sixth or early seventh Membership Details: Annual century. The manuscript dates to c. 1250-1265. membership £6 (or £15 for three It was compiled in North Wales, and though the foundation that produced the work is years), to be sent to Peter Drummond, unknown, it might have been the Cistercian Apt 8 Gartsherrie Academy, Academy house of Aberconwy. The manuscript Peniarth Place, Coatbridge ML5 3AX. (See page 17 has recently been attributed to one of LA’s 12 for information on Life scribes, and because of the Gwynedd interest in Membership.) Peniarth 17, it has been suggested that this scribe belonged to Aberconwy (Mittendorf, Scottish Place-Name Society web site: 129; Huws, 75). http://www.spns.org.uk/ LA was written in two hands now known as A Newsletter Editor: Bill Patterson (e- and B. The hands are contemporary with one mail [email protected]) another, and exhibit thirteenth-century orthography. Scribe A wrote the majority of the manuscript. Scribe A’s orthography is COMMENT Middle Welsh. Scribe B’s text, however, The new V&A (or officially Victoria and preserves elements of archaic orthography and Albert) Museum on Dundee’s waterfront has language. Based on linguistic analysis of the B been a source of much public interest even text, two distinct sources can be traced in B before its opening last year. No doubt many (Isaac 1993: 83-9; Isaac 1999), and this has led SPNS members who live some distance from it some editors (e.g. Koch 1997) to categorize the will have made a mental note to visit it when B text as B¹ and B², B² being earlier. There is the opportunity arises. That occasion will arise little doubt that Scribe B was copying from an in the form of our spring conference in a earlier source (or possibly two), but the dating structure, designed by architect Kengo Kuma, of B’s lost exemplar(s) is problematic. Many of for which the word ‘distinctive’ is an the poems in the A text are also repeated, with understatement. Those who have some spare variations, in the B text, which implies that time for sightseeing before or after will have the these poems were derived from different chance to note some of the other changes exemplars with a common archetype. To being wrought along the riverside and around summarise the arguments for the dating of the the city centre. Some, with long memories of texts, careful analysis of the language and how unkind the mid 20th century was to the corresponding stanzas between A and B historic port city, will appreciate the efforts to indicates that the exemplar behind B’s text connect, forming once again a riverside city cannot be dated any earlier than the ninth or centre, handsome old streets and new human- tenth century, the latter being most likely scale places reclaimed from dereliction and (Charles-Edwards 1978: 50-1; Simon Evans, 81- traffic engineers’ concrete spaghetti. 7; Padel, 132). The LA, particularly Y Gododdin, is controversial THE LLYFR ANEIRIN AND THE because most of the elegies appear to be set in the sixth- to seventh-century Old North. PLACE-NAMES OF Y GODODDIN However, the LA — the only manuscript to The Llyfr Aneirin (henceforth LA), now housed preserve the corpus — dates to the thirteenth in the National Library of Wales (Cardiff MS century. This is a large chronological gap, and 2.81), is one of the most celebrated but opinions on the antiquity of Y Gododdin are controversial collections of early Welsh poetry. divided. LA contains the famous elegies collectively For decades the assumed date of composition referred to as Y Gododdin, four interpolations was c. AD 600 (Williams 1938: xl-xlii; Jackson and four gorchanau. Y Gododdin is the standard 1978: 56-67). Some have recently argued that modern title derived from a rubric preceding 3 the majority of the poems were composed in Catraeth the Brittonic North from c.540-c.570, and only The most frequently mentioned place-name is later transferred to Wales (Dumville, 3-4; Koch Catraeth. It is recorded 23 times in the A text 1997: III, IX and xxx, lxxx). Others have argued and five in B. It is the name of a battle and also that the entire corpus is a later Welsh literary a place-name. The name occurs in the formulaic creation, reflecting on events of the Brittonic first line gwyr a aeth gatraeth ‘warriors went to Old North (Padel, 117, 132). Catraeth’ nine times in the A text; in all other Most of the place-names in LA have been instances it is also associated with a battle. The subject to orthographic modernisation, and few identification of Catraeth has been problematic, are identifiable. Regardless of the difficulty in but is now accepted to be Catterick on the interpreting the onomastic material, even a River Swale in North Yorkshire (Dunshea, 84). cursory reading of Y Gododdin demonstrates that Jackson (1978: 83) notes: the ‘identification of place-names were an important, even integral Catraeth with Catterick is unobjectionable feature of this style of poetry. Of the 134 philologically’. Catterick was strategically stanzas in LA (including the gorchanau and important as it guarded the major routes to the englynion) there are only 29 which do not record North: it was the location of a Roman fort, and place-names or folk-names. This is less than a is a military base even today. fourth of the entire corpus. The place-names Eidyn associated with the individual(s) commemorated were, therefore, an important feature of this Eidyn, recorded five times in B and seven in A, poetic tradition. is identified with Castle Rock in Edinburgh (Alcock, 165-6). The stanzas recording Eidyn The following section will consider the majority are independent of one another, namely, there of the place-names and folk-names that occur is not an equivalent stanza in A or B recording in both the A and B texts in Y Gododdin, then Eidyn. In Y Gododdin, Eidyn is depicted as a those that occur only in B because it is earlier, political centre in Guotodin territory and under followed by those in A. This article will Guotodin control. Some stanzas refer to a conclude with a brief discussion of the place- battle around Eidyn itself. LA 36 (B) records ‘at names and the text itself. the resounding of his shield there was flight, | The Guotodin innumerable men fleeing before the hill (vre) of The Guotodin people are recorded 20 times in Eidyn’. This implies a conflict at Eidyn, and the the A text and 11 times in the B text. The context implies that the Guotodin were the Guotodin are identified with the Votadini, an victors. Iron Age tribe first recorded by Ptolemy, who Nouant and Aeron locates them in Northumberland, Berwickshire, Koch (1997: xxx) suggests that Nouant is to be and Lothian to the Firth of Forth. The identified with the Novantae, an Iron Age tribe linguistic transition from Iron Age Votadini > located in south-western Scotland. The name ninth century Guotodin > MidW Gododin > Aeron, which also occurs in each stanza ModW Gododdin is unobjectionable (Jackson recording Nouant (with the exception of Gorchan 1953: 653; Jackson 1978: 69). Kynfelin), has been used to support this theory. The English Aeron has traditionally been equated with the The English are the main antagonists, and the River Ayr or Earn Water. However, these are Guotodin are never specifically depicted in not philological matches for Aeron, though conflict with other Britons (contra Koch 1997: either identification is possible if the Welsh xxxii-xxxiv). A variety of terms are used for the scribe confused this name with the River Aeron English, including Lloegr, Lloegrwys, Saesson and in Ceredigion (James, s.v. ajr). Eingyl. A distinction is made between the Gwanannon Bernicians (Brennych) and the Deirans (Deivyr), Gwanannon is unidentified. It has an -on suffix, which may be significant as the Anglo-Saxon which suggests it was possibly a river-name, and kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira did not in LA 19 (A) it is described as ‘the borderland amalgamate to form Northumbria until AD of the Guotodin’. Gwanannon is not identified 654. with any known river, nor do we know the extent of Guotodin territory.