Welsh Journals

WHEN DID BRITONS BECOME BRETONS? A NOTE ON THE FOUNDATION OF BRITTANY THE foundation of Brittany by settlements from Britain has been accepted as historical fact. The migrations lack any direct contempo- rary evidence, but the indirect evidences are decisive-change of name; change of language; new place-names (many derived directly from south-west Britain); persistent and ancient traditions. It may be taken as certain that they had already taken place on a considerable scale by the late sixth century. Contemporary writers in Gaul, notably Gregory of Tours, referring to events which the context clearly shows to be occurring to Brittany, employ terms, Brittania and Brittani, which they have hitherto used exclusively for the main island and its people. Gregory first uses these terms for events occurring in the year A.D. 547, and he makes many similar later references. Nowhere does he use the older names for this part of Gaul and its inhabitants, Armorica and Aremorici.1 An ecclesiastical record survives which seems to show us the change in progress. The Council of Tours of A.D. 567 issued an instruction forbidding the consecration of bishops in the peninsula without the authority of the Metropolitan. It uses both the new name (Brittania) and the old (Armorica); and to distinguish between the newcomers and the older inhabitants, it calls the latter Romans.2 Accepting the certainty of sixth-century settlements, this note examines the evidence for settlements of a decisive character at earlier dates. According to an old story going back to Nennius, the first settle- ments of Britons in the peninsula were made near the end of the fourth century by survivors from the forces which Maximus took from Britain to Gaul in A.D. 383 in his successful attempt to make himself Emperor of the West. The basis of the story in Nennius would seem to be the statement by Gildas in his De Excidio Britanniae that those who went to Gaul with Maximus never returned; but Gildas says no more. Since the historical statements in his tract are everywhere highly confused, he may be referring here to the final withdrawal of Roman forces not many years later than the Maximus episode.3 There is also a well-known conjecture of Ferdinand Lot that the first serious migrations to Brittany were caused by raids and settle- 1 Gregory of Tours. Historia Francorum, Mon. Germ. Hist.; Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, 1, 1937-1952: Trans. O. M. Dalton (Oxford. 1927). Vol. II. Mansi, Concilia, IX, 789 ff. 8 Gildas. De Excidio Britanniae. Ed. H. Williams (2 vols.. London. 1899 and 1901). c. 14.