This year 2017 is the 1500th Anniversary of the birth of Comgall, venerated as the Father of Monks by the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches and a significant figure in our Common Identity. Originally a soldier and not a nobleman, Comgall was born at Magheramorne, County Antrim in 517 of the People of the Dalaradian Pretani or ancient British. Having shown great promise in his early years of a vocation to the Christian ministry, Comgall was educated under St Fintan at Clonenagh among the Loigis Pretani of Southern Ireland, and is also said to have studied under Finnian at Clonard and Mobhi Clairenach at Glasnevin.
Following his ordination as a deacon and priest, Comgall was imbued with a great missionary zeal and founded many cells or monasteries before finally establishing Bangor on the coast of County Down under the patronage of Cantigern, Queen of Dalaradia, whose life he had saved. To distinguish it from the other Bangors in the British Isles it became known as Bangor Mór, ‘Bangor the Great’. Bangor means a wattled enclosure in Old British or Brittonic and there is an ancient City of that name in Wales.
The original language or languages of Ulster have long been subsumed but elements of the Old British or Brittonic tongue, now known as Cymric, Cornish and Breton, may be traced in the personal names of the oldest inhabitants, the Cruthin and Ulidians whose political influence declined following defeat by the Gaelic “Ui Neill” at the Battle of Moira (637) and Crew Hill (1004). This was the original tongue of Dalaradia, and indeed of the tribes such as the Brigantes, Manapii, Velaborii, Coriondii and Gangani, recorded by Ptolemy in his second Century map of Ireland or Brittania micra, Little Britain.
The Brittonic or Old British languages (Cymric or Welsh : ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig, Cornish: yethow brythonek/predennek, Breton: yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Celtic language family; the other is Gaelic or Erse The name Brittonic derives ultimately from the name Prettanike, recorded by Greek authors for the British Isles. Some authors reserve the term Brittonic for the modified later Brittonic languages after about AD 600.
The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic tongue, spoken throughout Great Britain south of the Firth of Forth during the Iron Age and Roman period. Brittonic was originally spoken in the British Middle Kingdoms straddling the Borders between modern England and Scotland, many of whose inhabitants, known as the Border Reivers, were forced into Ulster by James 1. These kingdoms were Strathclyde (Areclut) or modern Glasgow, Goddodin or modern Edinburgh, Aeron or modern Ayrshire, Rheged or modern Galloway, Dumfries and probably Cumbria, Elmet or modern Yorkshire, Bryneich , later Northumbria, Deifr or Dewr , a region between the River Tees and the Humber.
Brittonic was also spoken in Ireland before Gaelic or Erse and elements are still present in placenames particularly in Antrim and Down (Old Ulster or Ulidia) but also throughout the island. Prominent are Bangor, Lambeg, Glenavy, Tullycarnet, Ballymiscaw (Stormont), Castlereagh and Knockbreda In addition, North of the Forth, the Pictish Language is considered to be related; it is possible it was a Brittonic language, but it may have been a sister language. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries the language began to split into several dialects, eventually evolving into Cymric, Cornish, Breton and Cumbric.
Paul Tempan has identified the following place names in Ulster, which have unsatisfactory meanings in Gaelic: Drummillar ( Gaelic droim + Old British or Brittonic moel bre ‘bare hill’), Rathlin Brittonic or Cymric (Welsh). rhygnu “to rub/scrape”; Skettrick cognate with Cymric (Welsh) scethrog ‘rocky place’; letter (as in Letterkenny) cognate with Cymric (Welsh) llethyr ‘slope’; Breda < Bredach ‘ higher ground’ cognate with Brigantes; Teelin cognate with Cymric (Welsh) telyn ‘harp, bow’ ; Old name for Downpatrick, Dún dá Lethglais = ‘fort of Lleth Gadwal’, Old British or Brittonic form of ‘Cathal’s half’. But there are also Brittonic elements throughout Ireland, for example, the term Gaoth which occurs in Gaoth Barra and Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore) in Donegal, as well as Gaoth Sáile in Mayo.
The name Gael itself is derived from the Brittonic ‘Guidel’, modern Welsh ‘Gwyddel’, meaning ‘raider’, and would suggest that the newcomers had no common name for themselves until they had come into contact with foreigners. The Romans called them Scotti (Scots) or marauders. And prominent families here more recently spoke the tongue; families such as Welsh, Walsh or Wallace, Rice or Price (ap Rhyss), Lewis (Llywelyn) , Evans or Bevan (Ifan), Griffith or Griffin (Gruffudd) and Meredith (Morgetuid or Margetiud). We still use Cymric in our British passports, translating The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as Teyrnas Gyfunol Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon. The ancient name of Pretania is retained in the Cymric as Prydain.
Although no literature has survived of the old British language in Ulster, the Goddodin of Aneirin and the Odes of Taliesin, who wrote in praise of the war-like deeds of his Lord, Urien of Rheged in South-West Scotland, have survived. Cymric and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric is extinct, having been replaced by Gaelic and English speech. The Isle of Man and Orkney also originally spoke a Brittonic language, as did the whole of Ireland, later replaced with a Gaelic one. Due to emigration, there are also communities of Brittonic language speakers in England, France and Y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Argentina).
On 9th March, 1999, as an Ulster Unionist MLA , I gave a speech on Linguistic Diversity. I said then that Ulster sits at the north-eastern corner of Ireland, facing Scotland across a narrow sea. The characteristics of her language, since the dawn of human history, had been moulded by population movements, large and small, between the two islands. Therefore, we have had a wide range of dialects in the northern part of the island, including dialects of Gaelic and of the older Scottish tongue. When I read the part of the Belfast Agreement which deals with rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity, I was delighted with these words:
“All participants recognise the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland, the Irish language, Ulster Scots and ” —equally important, of course —“the languages of the various ethnic communities.”
Ulster-Scots had been particularly important to me because of my love for the literature of Scotland, from the times of the old Makars, who created the older Scottish tongue in its literary form, to modern poets, such as Burns, and the weaver poets of Ulster, including James Orr of Ballycarry, whom I considered to be the equal to Burns himself.
But, besides this interest in cultural, and especially linguistic, diversity, I have always had a love for the oldest tongue used in the British Isles, and from which the British Isles get their name. They were the Britonnic isles — the islands of the Pretani. This tongue receded dramatically in the face of successive invasions but it was the original tongue of Ireland and it was the original tongue of Ulster. It was also the language of the old Scots of the Lowlands and the Border Reivers. It is still present today in the British Isles in a much-reduced form. It is still used as a living language. I will read some of it: a translation of the passage in the Belfast Agreement I have just quoted.
“Mae pawb sy’n cymryd rhan yn cydnabod ei bod hi’n bwysig parchu, dirnad a goddef amrywiaeth o ieithoedd. Yng Ngogledd Iwerddon mae hyn yn cynnwys Gwyddelig, Scoteg Wlster, ac lieithoedd y gwahanol gymunedau ethnig sydd I gyd yn rhan o gyfoeth diwylliant Iwerddon.”
This language is known in its native land as Cymric. It is the oldest British tongue; it is the language of the Welsh. But it is also the oldest extant language of the British ethnic community in Britain and Ireland. And if we are to fufil to the letter the detail of the Belfast Agreement, this language, as part of the inheritance of the British ethnic community here, must be given due consideration in any Language Act.. It is an important aspect of our Common Identity and we will ensure that it is given due Respect, Equality and Integrity in our Society throughout the British Isles…
Diolch yn fawr i chi
Thank you very much.