The Ruin of History (A Reply to 'The Ruin of Britannia') Author(s): E. W. B. Nicholson Source: The Celtic Review, Vol. 2, No. 8 (Apr., 1906), pp. 369-380 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30069879 Accessed: 03-06-2016 15:54 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Celtic Review This content downloaded from 192.122.237.41 on Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:54:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE RUIN OF HISTORY 369 THE RUIN OF HISTORY (A reply to 'The Ruin of Britannia') IN The Celtic Review for July and October 1905 Mr. A. W. Wade-Evans aims at showing that the De excidio et conquestn Britanniae which bears the name of Gildas 'was composed about 700,' and that the invective by which it is followed is alone the composition of Gildas, and was written by him 'before 502.' And as part of his argument he seeks to prove that Vortigern invited the Saxons in 428. I shall here show that the 428 date hopelessly breaks down, and that each of Mr. Wade-Evans's preliminary contentions also collapses. He begins with the Annales Cambrice, 'and the important event from which the Annales Cambrice compute appears to be St. Germanus's 2nd Advent to Britannia, which it fixes in the year which would be in our reckoning A D. 445 . .Annus I is 445 . Annus CCCLXIII is 807, and so on.' Now (1) the Annales do not give the number 445 at all, while both Mommsen and Mr. Phillimore, their latest editor, reckon their Annus I. as 444; and (2) they do not mention Germanus at all. It is merely Mr. Wade- Evans's assumption that they date from the 2nd Advent of Germanus, and, to those who abide by Bede's dating, it is manifest that they begin with the supposed year either of Vortigern's accession or of the Saxon landing. Finally, the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities and the Dictionary of National Biography both place Germanus's 2nd Advent in 447. He proceeds to say that the compiler of the Annales had before him several chronicles computing from different eras, and jumbled up their entries without reducing their dates to a common era. He gives 'three examples out of the many': (1) 'It is universally admitted that St. Patrick died in 461. ... Now the Annales Cambrice place it'-his death-' opposite Annus xIIi., which in the era of 445 gives a wrong date, viz., 445 + 12 = 457 ; but which in the era of 449 gives the right date, viz., 449 + 12 = 461. Therefore this event was extracted from a chronicle which computed from 449." Patrick's death was an Irish event, and is dated 488 by the Annals of Innisfallen, 489 by the Chronicon Scotorum, 492 by the Annals of Ulster, and 493 by the Four Masters. Here are four divergent dates within a period of 1 It was doubtless stated by tradition or in some early chronicle that Patrick died 58 years after coming to Ireland, and this was misinterpreted as referring to his mission to Ireland (about 432), instead of his captivity (about 403). I find that Prof. Bury has the same explanation. 457 was given for the death of Sen Patraic (Bury, p. 284), and was the year of Patrick's retirement (ib., p. 206). This content downloaded from 192.122.237.41 on Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:54:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 370 THE CELTIC REVIEW six years; does Mr. Wade-Evans really suppose this arises from four different eras having been adopted within that period I A glance over Dr. Whitley Stokes's edition of Tigernach in the Revue Celtique would have shown him that similar divergences among the Irish chronicles are incessant. To account for these it is not necessary to pos- tulate the concurrent use of a number of eras, varying only a year or two from each other, and none of them known ever to have been used at all. It is enough to seek their origin in well-known causes. One of these may have been the different dates at which the Roman consular and the Christian ecclesiastical year began. Another very common one was the omission or miscopying of numerals. In a number such as CCCLXXVIII., for instance, it was quite easy to drop or repeat a [, an x, or an I. Where ink was faint or corroded, or vellum dirty, it was easy to read c as L, X as V, L as I, U as II. If Mr. Wade-Evans will look at p. 145 of Mommsen's edition of the Historia Brittonum, he will find in the various readings of the MSS. a series of such mistakes, where there can be no allegation of the use of different eras. The number of years between Adam and the Babylonian transmigra- tion according to Jerome's translation of Eusebius's Chronicle-which can hardly fail to have been the ultimate basis of computation-should be IIIIDCLXX, yet every MS. on this page gives IIIIDCCcLXXVIIII, or adds another x. Some scribe had let his eye slip to adjacent numbers, from which he had inserted additional figures; thus the superfluous viii is the end of the number before that which he was copying. (2) The Annales place the death of Cadwaladr opposite Annus ccxxxvIrf, i.e. according to Mr. Wade-Evans, 238+444=682; according to Mr. Phillimore, 238+443=681. Mr. Wade-Evans quotes the authors of The Welsh People (p. 127) as saying, 'If, from the few data we have to rely on, the matter is traced out, there can be no doubt that the year 681 is too late, and that in all probability it was in or very near to 664 Cadwaladr died.' 'We know from Nennius,'1 says Mr. Wade-Evans, 'that he died in a pestilence . between 642 and 670, and also that a great pestilence commenced in 664 . Now Annus ccxxxviII in the true era of the Invitation is 428+237 = A.D. 665.' Now the entry of the plague is in all three of the MSS. included in the Rolls edition of the Annales, but the death of Cadwaladr is only in A, the other two (B and C) having instead varying forms of a statement that he fled to Brittany-a statement taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth. And, although these other two MSS. are of the late thirteenth century, and are only partially transcripts of the Annales, 'they are both largely based . on a MS. (or MSS.) of those Annales that is now lost, and was in places a 1 He should have said ' the Historia Brittonum,' which is earlier; Nennius omits all this matter. I have in Keltic Researches similarly confused the Nennian redaction with the earlier form, and abase myself accordingly but nothing has turned on the point. This content downloaded from 192.122.237.41 on Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:54:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE RUIN OF HISTORY 371 more correct transcript than the now unique existing one' (Mr. Phillimore in Y Cymmrodor, xi. p. 139). I suggest that the original text of the Annales had only the entry of the plague, and that a later scribe, saying to himself, 'This must have been the plague in which Cadwaladr died,' added the statement of his death. (3) 'Opposite Annus CLxxxvi the Annales place this dark entry-' Guidgar comes and returns not,' which Annus makes 445 + 185 = 630. It obviously refers to some early well-known settlement whose best remembered leader was 'Guidgar.' The only known settlement of the kind of which we are reminded is that of Wihtgar and Stuf in the Isle of Wight in 514.' And he proceeds to explain by what com- bination of errors an event which took place in 514 was ascribed to 630. It is really enough to point out that the Annales have not mentioned any other Anglo-Saxon settlement, that the elements of the name Guidgar (i.e. wood-lover) appear in Welsh pedigrees in Guid-cun, Guid-gen, Cyn-gar, and that 'comes and does not return' is far more likely to refer to a Cumbrian or Breton paying a visit to Wales and stopping there than to a Jute invading the Isle of Wight. On these considerations alone Mr. Wade- Evans's case ought to be ruled out of court. But his explanation of how the dislocation of 116 years was brought about is far too instructive to be missed : 'Two mistakes were made. A scribe had before him the date 'A.D. DCXIV,' i.e. 514. The first mistake was to read Dc as 600 instead of 500 (that being once a common way of writing 500). Having thus obtained the number 614, he proceeded to compute in the era of St. Germanus's 1st Advent, viz. 429. In other words, if 429 is made the Annus I, then 614 will be 614 - 428, which is Annus CLXXXVI as above.