The Chronicle of the Early Britons - Anno Mundi

1 The Chronicle of the Early Britons - Brut y Bryttaniait -according toJesus College MS LXIan annotated translationbyWm R Cooper MA, PhD, ThDCopyright: AD 2002 Wm R CooperOther books by Wm R (Bill) Cooper:After the Flood (1995)Paley s Watchmaker (1997)William Tyndale s 1526 New Testament (2000)Wycliffe s New Testament 1388 (March 2002)AcknowledgementsMy thanks must go to the Principal and Fellows of Jesus College, oxford , for their kindpermission to translate Jesus College MS LXI, and to publish that translation; with special thanksto D A Rees, the archivist at the College; and to Ellis Evans, Professor of Celtic Studies at Jesus,who scrutinized the of ContentsIntroduction ..vTranslator s Note .. viAbbreviations .. viThe Chronicle of the Early Britons .. 1 Prologue .. 1 Appendix I - Family tree of Ygerna (Eigr).

2 70 Appendix II - After the Flood .. 71 Bibliography .. 72vIntroductionThere lies in an oxford library a certain old and jaded manuscript. It is written in medievalWelsh in an informal cursive hand, and is a 15th-century copy of a 12th-century original (now lost).Its shelfmark today is Jesus College MS LXI, but that has not always been its name. For someconsiderable time it went under the far more evocative name of the Tysilio Chronicle , and earlierthis century a certain archaeologist made the following observation concerning it. The year was1917, the archaeologist was Flinders Petrie, and his observation was that this manuscript wasbeing unaccountably neglected by the scholars of his day. It was, he pointed out, perhaps the bestrepresentative of an entire group of chronicles in which are preserved certain important aspectsof Early British history, aspects that were not finding their way into the published notices of thosewhose disciplines embraced this all, he opined, it is not as if this Chronicle poses any threat or particular challenge to theaccepted wisdom of the day.

3 On the contrary, it illuminates parts of Early British history that areotherwise obscure, and in one or two places sheds light where before there was only complete andutter darkness. So exactly why this Chronicle was so neglected in Flinders Petrie s day, and indeedwhy it continues to be omitted from any serious discussion more than eighty years on, is one ofthose strange imponderables of there are a thousand reasons why historians pay no great heed to this ancient record,but that is no sufficient cause why it should go unread at all. Whether this passage or that ishistorically reliable or no are matters for scholars to wrangle over, and this they may do to theirhearts content. Indeed, certain points of this Chronicle s historicity are considered in theappropriate chapters of After the Flood (see Appendix II).

4 But, degrees of historicity or otherwisenotwithstanding, the most important consideration of all is that our ancient forebears believed itto be a true and honest account. This is how they saw their world and the past which led them toit, and this is the literary heritage that they have taken such pains to pass down to us. For thatreason alone, their work should be read and admired - yes, and studied too - and towards that endthe following translation of the manuscript has been see no good reason why these ancient voices should be consigned to such oblivion when theyhave such a rich story to tell - a tale which weaves a veritable tapestry of kings and battles,triumphs and disasters, about which not one of us has heard at our school desks and which havewaited many centuries to be told.

5 It is a history that begins with the Fall of Troy. It tells of fortuneand cunning, of heroism and cowardice, of chivalry and murder, of loyalty and betrayal. Itconcerns the birth of a people, the settling of an island, the succession of their kings, and thetimely correction of their sins under the chastising hand of God. We hear of Romans and Saxons,of Picts, Scots and Irish, of witchery and plague, of idleness and plenty, invasion and , kings and tyrants walk side by side over its pages, and there can be few accounts fromany age or nation that can come near to challenging this ancient Chronicle either for high dramaor the sheer power of its the reader or student who wishes to delve further into the Chronicle , there are copiousfootnotes added which deal with points of linguistic, historical, geographical and other of these notes will answer questions, whilst others, it is greatly hoped, will raise them.

6 Eitherway, interest and inquiry will be stimulated towards a most important yet too little known aspectof our literary heritage, and if the present translation contributes something at least towards thatend, then I shall consider its job well R Cooper,Ashford,Middlesex. vi*Translator s NoteWelsh texts of any century present the English translator with a problem or two concerningpersonal and place names, and there are hundreds of these in the Chronicle that we are about toread. At the best of times, English readers find Welsh names impossibly difficult to pronounce,and the immediate task is always to render the names so that the English reader will not constantlytrip over them. In my own attempt to solve the problem, I came to admire the ingenuity ofGeoffrey of Monmouth who made a Latin version of the same Chronicle at oxford in the , it is exceedingly rare these days to find even grudging praise being offered to Geoffrey,yet I do not hesitate to pay him the present compliment at least, for Geoffrey s achievement wasto Latinize the Welsh names in such a way as to make them pronounceable to his own readers ofthe Early 12th century, and so successful were his efforts that I make no apology whatever forborrowing many of his renderings.

7 After all, the problem is exactly the same today as it was in , for example, would a modern English reader make of the name Gwrvyw? Like his 12th-century Latin-reading counterpart, he would baulk at guessing its pronunciation. That alone wouldgreatly spoil his reading, and there is a whole sea of such names for him to wade through. ButGeoffrey solved the problem beautifully in this case with the rendering Gorboduc. This I haveshamelessly and there, however, I did find it expedient to abandon even Geoffrey s ingeniousrenderings, for he would sometimes give a Latin rendering which was as difficult to pronounceas the Welsh. For example, he takes the Welsh Gwychlan and turns it bravely into the subject who owned this name was a Dane, I have abandoned Geoffrey here altogether andsimply given the original Danish form, which is Guthlac.

8 This and similar cases should presentthe modern reader with no difficulty at names were much easier to deal with, for where these can be identified I have simplygiven their modern forms. Kaer Benhwylgoed, for example, is present-day Exeter; Kaer Gradawcis Salisbury; Kaer Vynnydd y Paladr is likewise Shaftesbury. Each modern place name, however,is accompanied on its first appearance by a footnote which supplies the original Welsh , where, for the sake of intelligibility, I have had to add English words where no Welshoriginal exists, I have followed the time-honoured convention of enclosing them within squareparentheses []. And where italicized proper names appear, these are given in place of theinordinate number of pronouns that litter the text, and which would otherwise have renderedobscure many parts of the narrative.

9 After all, it helps to know just who is doing the talking or thedeed!Wm R Cooper*AbbreviationsThroughout the footnotes only two abbreviations are used. The first, LXI, refers to JesusCollege MS LXI, of which this present work is a translation; whilst the second, GoM, refers toGeoffrey of Monmouth s Historia Regum Britanniae, a Latin version of the Chronicle which bearsrepeated comparison with the Jesus College manuscript. The works of all other authors whosenames alone appear in the footnotes, are given in the Chronicle of the Early Britons - Brut y Bryttaniait -1[The Chronicle of the Early Britons ][Prologue] 1 Britain, the fairest of islands, whose name of old was Albion,2 which lies in the Western Oceantwixt Gaul3 and Ireland,4 is eight hundred miles in length and two hundred broad, supplying theneeds of its people with unending bounty.

10 Its wide plains and rolling hills fill the land, and intoits harbours flow the goods of many nations. It has forests and woods wherein are found allmanner of creatures and wild beasts, and bees gather nectar from its flowers. It has beautifulmeadows at the foot of rugged mountains, and pure clean springs with lakes and rivers teemingwith all manner of fish. There are three great rivers:5 the Thames,6 the Humber,7 and the Severn,8and these embrace the island like three great arms, along them being carried the trade and produceof lands across the ancient times there beautified the land three and thirty great and noble cities,10 of whichsome are now desolate, their walls cast down. But others are still lived in, and contain sacredplaces within them for the worship of God.