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GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH AND FRENCH SOURCES GEOFFREY of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae was, according to his own ac- count, taken from a book in the British language, a very old book librum vetustissimum which book had been found and brought to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, who discovered it in Brittany.' So Geoffrey tells us in his first and last chapters. Now it has often been thought that the librum vetustissimum was a sheer invention of Geoffrey's own and that he invented his own narrative. Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson3 has, however, given good reasons for believing Geoffrey's account of his source. I need not repeat them in detail Mr. Nicholson shows that Geoffrey is very largely a history of Cornwall and that Bretons and Brittany play an extremely conspicuous part in his narrative. Now in a previous article Science and the Celtic Tradition." I pointed out that a certain proportion of Geoffrey of Monmouth's narrative corresponded closely with the best archaeological and ethnological evidence, and therefore could not be a forgery. It obviously does contain a substratum of truth. I should like to add in this article a few considera- tions which seem to confirm Geoffrey's account of his source, i.e., that it was French. The map to which I referred in my pre- vious article was constructed by my colleague, Dr. Fleure. It showed what appeared to be a migration line to Britain, the migration line being marked by colonies of tall dark Armenoids." This par- ticular type is well-known to other ethnologists, and is so closely associated with coastal colonies that Professor G. Elliott Smith names it "the maritime Armenoid." The old mediaeval chronicles, Geoff- rey and others, call these people Trojans," and probably quite correctly since they formed an im- portant element in the Eastern Aegean and Mycenean world. Now the map shown to me contained some fourteen colonies of these maritime Armenoids distributed as follows (1) Italy, south of Merve (2) Narbonne (3) Straits of Gibraltar (4) North West Spain, neighbourhood of Corunna (5) Aquitaine (Garonne) (6) Brittany; (7) Devonshire, round Totnes; (8) South Wales, Caerleon-on-Usk (9) Pembroke (10) North Wales (11) East Coast of Ireland, Wicklow; (12) Extreme north of Scotland (13) Western Isles of Scotland and (14) Norway. 1 I. i. 2 XX. xii. 3 Cymmrodor XIX. Geoffrey's narrative taken as a whole, seemed to me to account for nine or possibly ten of these Geoffrey, of course, commences his narrative with Troy, which would be an extremely probable centre of distribution for the maritime Armenoids. Geoffrey is, as we soon discover, mainly a history of the Cornovii, and it is with their migrations that he is chiefly concerned, though he mentions other tribes as well. He first takes us with Aeneas to Italy,4 and we have there a colony of maritime Armenoids (1). He takes us by stages to the Pillars of Hercules and we have another there (3).5 He tells us that beyond the Pillars of Hercules there was a colony of Corineus by the Tyrrhene Sea. Now the sea on the west of Spain was usually called the Tyrrhene Sea by medi- aeval writers, and a colony of Cornovii beside it would be at Corunna (4).6 Geoffrey next informs us that his migrants arrive at the mouth of the Loire up which they sail and found a colony of Cornovii in Aquitaine.7 The original map showed a colony of maritime Armenoids in Aquitaine, but it was in the Garonne, not on the Loire. Dr. Fleure has, however, since informed me that that was an error in the mapping, that Col- lignon, from whom he took these particular data places it exactly on the lower Loire so that Geoffrey is precisely right (5). We are then told that our migrants proceed and land at Totnes" in Devonshire, which is precisely right for another colony (7). Later on Geoffrey describes how when a great invasion of Huns arrives from the east his southern tribes go up to Scotland to fight against these in- vaders, and we have a colony of maritime Armenoids in the extreme north of Scotland (12), which is marked Cornavii on early atlases of Britain,9 This movement may possibly, though not certainly, account for the colony in the Western Isles (13). Geoffrey again tells us that the invasions of Belinus (i.e. the Belgae) cause Brennus (i.e. the Brigantes) to leave the country to escape servitude, Brennus goes to Norway10 and this in mythologic lan- guage means a migration to Norway. We have a line of the maritime Armenoids (14) all along the Norwegian fjords Arbo, the discoverer of this particular type in Norway, says it certainly came 4 I. iii. 5 I. xii. 6 I. xii. 7 I. xii-xv. 8 I. xv. 9 II. i, ii. 10 III. i