Cumbric - WikiHQ

Cumbric is an extinct Celtic Brythonic language or dialect that was spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", in what is now Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands. Place-name evidence suggests Cumbric may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales. The prevailing view is that it became extinct in the 12th century, around the incorporation of the Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland.

Linguists are undecided as to whether to classify Cumbric as a dialect of Old Welsh or as a separate language. Koch calls it a dialect but goes on to say that some of the place names in the Cumbric region "clearly reflect a developed medieval language, much like Welsh, Cornish or Breton". Moryn (Morien), lord of Cardew and Cumdivock near Carlisle; and Eilifr (Eliffer), lord of Penrith.

There is a village near Carlisle called Cumwhitton (earlier Cumquinton). This appears to contain the Norman name Quinton, affixed to a cognate of the Welsh cwm, meaning valley. There were no Normans in this area until 1069 at the earliest.

In the Battle of the Standard in 1138, the Cumbrians are noted as a separate ethnic group. Given that their material culture was very similar to their Gaelic and Anglian neighbours, it is arguable that what set them apart was still their language. Also the castle at Castle Carrock – Castell Caerog – dates from around 1160–1170. Barmulloch, earlier Badermonoc (Cumbric "monk's dwelling"), was given to the church by Malcolm IV of Scotland between 1153 and 1165.

A more controversial point is the surname Wallace. It means "Welshman". It is possible that all the Wallaces in the Clyde area were medieval immigrants from Wales, but given that the term was also used for local Cumbric-speaking Strathclyde Welsh, it seems equally, if not more, likely that the surname refers to people who were seen as being "Welsh" due to their Cumbric language.

Surnames in Scotland were not inherited before 1200 and not regularly until 1400. Sir William Wallace (known in Gaelic as Uilleam Breatnach – namely William the Briton or Welshman) came from the Renfrew area – itself a Cumbric name. Wallace slew the sheriff of Lanark (also a Cumbric name) in 1297. Even if he had inherited the surname from his father, it is possible that the family spoke Cumbric within memory in order to be thus named.

There are also some historical pointers to a continuing separate ethnic identity. Prior to being crowned king of Scotland in 1124, David I was invested with the title Prince of the Cumbrians. William the Lion between 1173 and 1180 made an address to his subjects, identifying the Cumbrians as a separate group. In 1262 in Peebles, jurymen in a legal dispute over peat cutting also have names which mostly appear Norman French or English, but possible exceptions are Gauri Pluchan, Cokin Smith and Robert Gladhoc, where Gladhoc has the look of an adjectival noun similar to Welsh "gwladog" = "countryman". In the charters of Wetherall Priory near Carlisle there is a monk called Robert Minnoc who appears as a witness to 8 charters dating from around 1260. His name is variously spelled Minnoc/Minot/Mynoc and it is tempting to see an equivalent of the Welsh "mynach" – "Robert the Monk" here.

Given that in other areas which have given up speaking Celtic languages, the upper classes have generally become Anglicised before the peasantry, it is not implausible that the peasantry continued to speak Cumbric for at least a little while after. Around 1200 there is a list of the names of men living in the area of Peebles; The term Brets or Britons refers to the native, traditionally Cumbric speaking people of southern Scotland and northern England as well as the Pictish speakers in Northern Scotland.

It seems that Cumbric could well have survived into the middle of the 12th century as a community language and even lasted into the 13th on the tongues of the last remaining speakers. Certain areas seem to be particularly dense in Cumbric place-names even down to very minor features. The two most striking of these are around Lanercost east of Carlisle and around Torquhan south of Edinburgh. If the 1262 names from Peebles do contain traces of Cumbric personal names, then it is plausible that Cumbric died out between 1250 and 1300 at the very latest.

Problems with terminology

Dauvit Broun sets out the problems with the various terms used to describe the Cumbric language and its speakers. The people seem to have called themselves the same way that the Welsh called themselves Cymry (most likely from reconstructed Brittonic meaning "fellow countrymen") and their land '. The Welsh and the Cumbric-speaking people of what are now southern Scotland and northern England probably felt they were actually one ethnic group. Old Gaelic speakers called them "Britons", , or . The Norse called them . However, in Scots, a Cumbric speaker seems to have been called – from the Scots "Welsh".

thumb|right|upright=1.5|The Cumbric region: modern counties and regions with the early medieval kingdoms

The Latinate term Cambria is often used for Wales; nevertheless, the Life of St Kentigern ( 1200) by Jocelin of Furness has the following passage:

John T. Koch defined the specifically Cumbric region as "the area approximately between the line of the River Mersey and the Forth-Clyde Isthmus", but went on to include evidence from the Wirral Peninsula in his discussion and did not define its easterly extent.

Available evidence

The evidence from Cumbric comes almost entirely through secondary sources, since no known contemporary written records of the language survive. The majority of evidence comes from place names of the north of England and the south of Scotland. Other sources include the personal names of Strathclyde Britons in Scottish, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon sources, and a few Cumbric words surviving into the High Middle Ages in southwest Scotland as legal terms. Although the language is long extinct, traces of its vocabulary arguably have persisted into the modern era in the form of "counting scores" and in a handful of dialectal words.

From this scant evidence, little can be deduced about the singular characteristics of Cumbric, not even the name by which its speakers referred to it. However, linguists generally agree that Cumbric was a Western Brittonic language closely related to Welsh and, more distantly, to Cornish and Breton.

Around the time of the battle described in the poem Y Gododdin, c. 600, Common Brittonic is believed to have been transitioning into its daughter languages: Cumbric in North Britain, Old Welsh in Wales, and Southwestern Brittonic, the ancestor of Cornish and Breton. Kenneth Jackson concludes that the majority of changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the fifth to the end of the sixth century. This involved syncope and the loss of final syllables. If the poem ultimately dates to this time, it would have originally been written in an early form of Cumbric, the usual name for the Brythonic speech of the Hen Ogledd; Jackson suggested the name "Primitive Cumbric" for the dialect spoken at the time. However, scholars date the poem to between the 7th and the early 11th centuries, and the earliest surviving manuscript of it dates to the 13th, written in Old Welsh and Middle Welsh.

Place names

Cumbric place-names occur in Scotland south of the firths of Forth and Clyde. Brittonic-looking names north of this line are Pictish. Cumbric names are also found commonly in the historic county of Cumberland and in bordering areas of Northumberland. They are less common in Westmorland, east Northumberland, and Durham, with some in Lancashire and the adjoining areas of North and West Yorkshire. Approaching Cheshire, late Brittonic placenames are probably better characterised as Welsh rather than as Cumbric. As noted below, however, any clear distinction between Cumbric and Welsh is difficult to prove.

Carlisle, Cumberland: recorded as in the Roman period; the word 'fort' was added later. The Welsh form is derived by regular sound changes from the Romano-British name.
Glasgow, Scotland: widely believed to derive from words cognate with
Lanark, Lanarkshire: from the equivalent of Welsh 'glade, clearing'.

| || *blagno- || end, point, summit; source of river|| Blencathra, Blencogow, Blindcrake, Blencarn, Blennerhassett, Plenmeller || *blayn

| || castrum (Latin) || fort, stronghold; wall, rampart || Carlisle, Carluke, Cardew, Cardurnock, Carfrae, Cargo, Carlanrig, Carriden, Castle Carrock, Cathcart, Caerlaverock, Cardonald, Cramond, Carleith || *cayr

| || *keto- || trees, forest, wood || Alkincoats, Bathgate, Dalkeith, Culgaith, Tulketh, Culcheth, Pencaitland, Penketh, Towcett, Dankeith, Culgaith, Cheadle, Cheetham, Cathcart, Cheetwood, Cathpair, Kincaid, Inchkeith || *cɛ̄d

| || *kumba- || deep narrow valley; hollow, bowl-shaped depression || Cumrew, Cumwhitton, Cumwhinton, Cumdivock

|*cumm

| , || *drosman- || ridge || Drumlanrig, Dundraw, Mindrum, Drumburgh, Drem, Drumaben

|*drümm

| || ecclesia (Latin) || church || Ecclefechan, Ecclesmachan, Eccleston, Eccles, Terregles, Egglescliffe, Eggleshope, Ecclaw, Ecclerigg, Dalreagle, Eggleston, Exley, possibly Eaglesfield || *eglēs

| || *landa- || clearing, glade || Barlanark, Carlanrig, Drumlanrig, Lanark[<nowiki/>shire], Lanercost || *lannerch

| || *mailo- || bald; (bare) mountain/hill, summit || Mellor, Melrose, Mallerstang, Watermillock || *mêl

| || *penno- || head; top, summit; source of stream; headland; chief, principal || Pennygant Hill, Pen-y-Ghent, Penrith, Penruddock, Pencaitland, Penicuik, Penpont, Penketh, Pendle, Penshaw, Pemberton, Penistone, Pen-bal Crag, Penwortham, Torpenhow || *penn

| || *prenna- || tree; timber; cross || Traprain Law, Barnbougle, Pirn, Pirncader, Pirniehall, Pirny Braes, Primrose, Prendwick || *prenn

| || *trebo- || town, homestead, estate, township || Longniddry, Niddrie, Ochiltree, Soutra, Terregles, Trabroun, Trailtrow, Tranent, Traprain Law, Traquair, Treales, Triermain, Trostrie, Troughend, Tranew; possibly Bawtry, Trafford || *treβ

| || *ɸrostos || promontory, headland, moor || Melrose, Primrose, Roose, Rosslyn, Rosside, Rosgill || *ros

| || *dubus || dark, black, deep || Glendue, Cardew, Dye, Dipple, Glendowlin || *düv

| || *brigā || hill, height, fort || Mellor, Carfrae, Mallerstang, Plenmeller || *βre

| || *moniyos || mountain, elevation || Mendick, Maelmin, Mindrum, Minto, Moniefoot, Menybrig, Mindork || *mïnïδ

Some Cumbric names have historically been replaced by Scottish Gaelic, Middle English, or Scots equivalents, and in some cases the different forms occur in the historical record.

Edinburgh occurs in early Welsh texts as and in medieval Scottish records as (Gaelic ), all meaning 'fort of Eidyn'.
Kirkintilloch began as a Cumbric name recorded as in the 10th century, but was partly replaced by the Gaelic words 'head' + 'hillock' later on

Counting systems

Among the evidence that Cumbric might have influenced local English dialects are a group of counting systems, or scores, recorded in various parts of northern England. Around 100 of these systems have been collected since the 18th century; the scholarly consensus is that these derive from a Brittonic language closely related to Welsh. Though they are often referred to as "sheep-counting numerals", most recorded scores were not used to count sheep, but in knitting or for children's games or nursery rhymes. Ascertaining the real derivation of these words is far from simple, due in part to the similarities between some cognates in the Brittonic and Goidelic languages and the fact that borrowing took place in both directions between these languages.

Another difficulty lies with other words which were taken into Old English, as in many cases it is impossible to tell whether the borrowing is directly from Brittonic or not (e.g. Brogat, Crag, below). The following are possibilities:

Bach – 'cowpat' (cf. Welsh 'dung', Gaelic )
Baivenjar – 'mean fellow' (Welsh 'scoundrel')
Brat – 'apron'. The word appears in Welsh (with meanings 'rag, cloth' and 'pinafore'), Scots and northern English dialects, but may be an Old English borrowing from Old Irish.
Brogat – a type of mead (Welsh 'bragget' – also found in Chaucer)
Coble – a type of small, flat-bottomed boat (also in Northeast England), akin to Welsh ceubal 'a hollow' and Latin caupulus; distinct from the round-bottomed coracle.
Crag – 'rocks'. Either from Brittonic (Welsh ) or Goidelic (Scottish Gaelic ).
Croot – 'small boy' (Welsh , Gaelic 'small person', 'humpback/hunchback')
Croude – a type of small harp or lyre (as opposed to the larger ; Welsh 'bowed lyre', later 'fiddle', Gaelic )
Lum – Scottish and Northern English word for 'chimney' (Middle Welsh )

Equivalence with Old Welsh

The linguistic term Cumbric is defined according to geographical rather than linguistic criteria: that is, it refers to the variety of Brittonic spoken within a particular region of North Britain so clearly views it as distinct in some meaningful respect.

It has been suggested that Cumbric was more closely aligned to the Pictish language The "Cumbric" of Lothian plausibly more nearly resembled the "Pictish" of adjacent Fife than the Welsh dialects spoken over 300 miles away in Dyfed. Alan G. James has suggested that Cumbric was a combination between unique Pictish and Brittonic dialect continuum, spoken to the north and south of Cumbria.

There is evidence to the contrary, however, including the place names Powmaughan and Maughanby (containing Welsh Meirchion) mentions that devoicing appears to be a feature of many Cumbric place names. Devoicing of word final consonants is a feature of modern Breton and, to an extent, Cornish. Watson notes initial devoicing in Tinnis Castle (in Drumelzier) (compare Welsh dinas 'fortress, city') as an example of this, which can also be seen in the Cornish Tintagel, din 'fort'. Also notable are the different English names of two Welsh towns named Dinbych ('little fort'); Denbigh and Tenby.

There is also a significant number of place names which do not support this theory. Devoke Water and Cumdivock (< Dyfoc, according to Ekwall) and Derwent (< Common Brittonic Derwentiō) all have initial . The name Calder (< Brit. *Caletodubro-) in fact appears to show a voiced Cumbric consonant where Welsh has Calettwr by provection, which Jackson believes reflects an earlier stage of pronunciation. Jackson also notes that Old English had no internal or final , so would be borrowed with by sound substitution. This can be seen in names with c, k, ck (e.g. Cocker < Brittonic *, and the occurrence in Gospatrick's Writ of the word wassenas 'dependants',

It is noteworthy that the toponym Brenkibeth in Cumberland (now Burntippet; possibly bryn, "hill" + gwyped, "gnats") may display this syllable anglicized as -k-. The name, however, may not be Brittonic at all, and instead be of Scandinavian origin.

Trailflat (Dumfriesshire), near Tinwald, which contains the same element as above.

Definite article

The modern Brittonic languages have different forms of the definite article: Welsh yr, -'r, y, Cornish an, and Breton an, ar, al. These are all taken to derive from an unstressed form of the Common Brittonic demonstrative *sindos, altered by assimilation (compare the Gaelic articles). but there is evidence in Cumbric for an article in -n alongside one in -r. Note the following:

Tallentire, Cumbria (Talentir 1200–25): 'brow/end of the land' (Welsh tal y tir)
Penicuik, Midlothian (Penicok 1250): 'hill of the cuckoo' (Welsh pen y cog)

and Derwennydd both occur in poems of supposed Cumbrian origin whose rhyme and metre would be disrupted if the ending were absent.

Of additional relevance is that Guto Rhys demonstrated "some robust proof" of the presence of the -ydd ending in the potentially closely aligned Pictish language. There are also some exceptions to this sound change in Breton, including pri ("soil"), the cognate of Welsh pridd.

Use of the name element Gos-

One particularly distinctive element of Cumbric is the repeated use of the element or (W. 'boy, lad; servant, attendant') in personal names, followed by the name of a saint. The practice is reminiscent of Gaelic names such as Maol Choluim "Malcolm" and Gille Crìosd "Gilchrist", which have Scottish Gaelic (Old Irish 'bald, tonsured; servant') and ('servant, lad', < Old Irish 'a youth').

The most well-known example of this Cumbric naming practice is Gospatric, which occurs as the name of several notable Anglo-Scottish noblemen in the 11th and 12th centuries. Other examples, standardised from original sources, include Gosmungo (Saint Mungo), Gososwald (Oswald of Northumbria) and Goscuthbert (Cuthbert).

Vowels

In Welsh, Cornish and Breton, proto-Brythonic /*ɛ̄/ and /*ē/ developed into rounded diphthongs. While the development of these vowels in Cumbric is unclear, Whalley argues evidence that rounding occurred in Cumbric is very limited. The sounds usually occur as in place names (e.g. Dalkeith, Culcheth) with /*ɛ̄/ occasionally appearing as in late names (e.g. Culgaith, Kincaid).

Regarding evidence to the contrary, Whalley notes that 'Plenploth' (recorded as Plenploif in 1593) may contain *pluiv 'parish', possibly demonstrating a shift from /*ē/ to /*ui/. However, Whalley further notes the numerous instances of *eglēs ‘church’ throughout the Cumbric region, which preserve /*ē/. Similarly, while Watson derives the place names Knockcoid, Wigtonshire and Knockycoid, Ayrshire from *cɛ̄d 'wood', Whalley points to the lack of rounding in potentially late names in Cumberland, adding that it is 'rather suspicious' that both that *coid forms lie in the region of earliest Gaelic influence in the South-West of Scotland.

There is some evidence that Brythonic /*ū/ was fronted but retained its rounding in Cumbric—this would explain instances such as Culgaith, Culcheth which may contain Br. *cūlo- ‘nook’ and the early reference to Dunbar as Dyunbær.