Snowdonia (Welsh: Eryri) is a mountain range in Gwynedd and Conwy, Wales
Author: Joanna Rycerz. Source: Pixabay
Owen Jones was born in Denbighshire, Wales. In the mid-1760S, he moved to London. He studied Welsh literature from childhood and collected old manuscripts. Assisted by the bard Edward Williams of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and the antiquarian William Owen Pughe, he published the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales in 3 volumes (1801–1807), a compilation of manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 14th century.
These manuscripts were deposited in the British Library in London. He cofounded the Gwyneddigion Society in London in 1770 to encourage the study of Welsh literature. He died in 1814 at his home in Upper Thames Street, London. The antiquarian William Owen Pughe (famous in his day) was later found to be a forger, but his contribution to the compilation of Owen Jones’s manuscripts came from his personal collection, which was genuine.
We will focus on a character described in these manuscripts: Hu Gadarn. He is the first chief of the Cymri who set foot in ‘Prydein’ (modern Britain). These Cymri came from the ‘Land of Summer’ and more precisely from ‘Deffrobani’. They crossed the Tawch Sea. Once on the island, they would have reached ‘Llydaw’. Two other chiefs accompanied them: Prydein ab Aedd Mawr and Dyvnwal Moelmud.
We will come back to the Summerland and Deffrobani, but the Tawch Sea could (conditionally) be the eastern part of the North Sea that connects present-day Germany and Britain. As for the island of Britain, these Cymri had named it Prydein (any tribute to Prydein ab Aedd Mawr?). The Llydaw still exists and is a natural lake in Wales. Finally, the manuscript distinguished three tribes (one for each chief?).
These tribes were peaceful and did not want to take over land through war. This is probably the reason why they settled in an area away from other populations of the time. The manuscripts show that they did not practise agriculture. It was Hu Gadarn himself who had taught them in this field and he had started to do so in the ‘Summerland’. However, a certain Coll, son of Colvrewi, had brought soft wheat and barley and a certain Elldud Varchawc developed ploughing. The first ‘horned’ oxen were those of Hu Gadarn.
These Cymri had no system of laws and customs (Dyvnwal Moelmud developed this). Worse, they had no ‘tradition’. They even decided to initiate a tradition through songs and music. The manuscripts mention the first three ‘composers’: Hu Gadarn himself, Tydain and Gwyddon Ganhebon.
It is probably between 450 and 350 BC. Agriculture and law systems were widespread at this time. Why is this population non-agricultural and devoid of laws and customs? Secondly, pacifism was rare at this time. Why is it so essential to this population?
Horned oxen may be a reference to buffaloes. The latter were (originally) domesticated in India (or even in South-east Asia). However, at that time they already existed in Africa and Eurasia.
The term ‘soft wheat’ is used in contrast to ‘hard wheat’ from the Mediterranean. The Greek philosopher Theophrastus stated in his History of Plants that the wheat of the Black Sea regions had the reputation of being softer, better able to withstand transport and to keep longer. Barley, on the other hand, had been grown in Africa, Europe and Asia for thousands of years.
The question arises: how can a population without agriculture be so good at maritime navigation (or even at building ships)? In short, ‘Something doesn’t add up’.
The ‘soft wheat’ puts us on the track of the Black Sea. But Herodotus, at the time, said that the weather there was winter (eight months a year). So, the Black Sea is no longer a candidate for the Summerland. Moreover, the Black Sea peoples not only had agriculture and systems of laws, but some of them already practised democracy before its official appearance in Athens.
One clue remains: ‘Deffrobani’. For some, this term referred to the peninsula of present-day Istanbul, but no manuscript supports such a hypothesis. For others, it is a derivative of the Greek ‘Taprobana’ which referred to an island in the Indian Ocean at the time when Alexander reached India. Depending on the author, it is either Ceylon or Sumatra (or even Borneo). That’s a long way to go. Finally, the Cymri are Indo-Europeans and these remote islands have never claimed any Indo- European populations.
Is it a dead end?
There is still the linguistic track. The Cornish and the Breton are two ‘sister’ languages. Both languages share with Gaelic about half of the syllables (excluding sound and syntax).
There are also some similarities between Cymric and the language of the Luwians who occupied the southern and western part of Turkey 3,500 years ago. Some authors even suggest that the city of Troy was not Hittite but Luwian. They were Indo-Europeans who would have been assimilated by other populations several centuries before the Cymri migration. That said, they practised agriculture and had a system of laws. In summary, a Luwian origin of the Cymri cannot be supported. Nevertheless, it remains a lead for the Summerland.
From our point of view, two hypotheses remain.
The first one ignores the geographical index (‘Deffrobani’) and the climatic clue (Summerland). In this case, the Cymri would have originated from the Black Sea or the Sea of Marmara (further south). This would explain their aptitude for maritime navigation. It remains to be explained why they were not suited to agriculture.
It is known that the Scythians overwhelmed the Cimmerians in the Black Sea in the 7th century BC. However, it cannot be excluded that Cimmerians also lived on the shores of the Marmara Sea. As a result, this population would have been caught between the Scythians, Greeks and Persians. It is even possible that the Greeks or Persians enslaved this population, as slavery was an institution in both societies. This could explain the inability to farm because when you work in villas for generations, you forget everything.
The Greeks took advantage of the departure of the Cimmerians from the Black Sea to deploy colonies in former Cimmerian territories although this brought them into direct contact with the Scythians. To deploy such ‘mushroom’ colonies, it takes manpower and personnel. And the Greeks at the time were not used to paying for it. Finally, we would go so far as to suggest that the Scythians had possibly taken over some Greek colonies and since they did not practise slavery, an entire Cimmerian population was starting over.
Moreover, one can bet that some Greeks’ ‘staff’ were sailors. The easiest (and safest) way to transit between Greece and its Black Sea colonies was via the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara.
A second hypothesis remains: the Cymri were originally from an island, in the Indian Ocean. On this island, agriculture was not necessary to feed everyone. The people were peaceful and did not see the need for a system of laws. Finally, the weather was exceptional and it was the Land of Eternal Summer.
In Welsh tradition, the Summerland is also a synonym for the afterlife (the Land of the Dead). That said, it cannot be ruled out that the Cymri had an earlier and sunnier geographical origin. The term ‘Deffrobani’ is a real mystery, but we can at least rule out a Cymri etymology. Speaking of etymology, the Greeks referred to the Cimmerians as ‘Kimmeroi’. The syntactic gap between Kimmeroi and Cymri is not so great…
We will end with an anecdote. According to a Welsh tradition whose manuscript(s), we have not been able to find, Hu Gadarn was the chosen one of the ‘god’ Diana. The latter is unknown to historians. Knowing that at that time, a hero could become a ‘god’ at the speed of light, let us look for a hero named Diana. This is another dead end. In that case, let’s look for a heroine. We found one: a Scythian princess. All this to say that a romance between the ‘goddess’ and the chosen one (of her heart) is not excluded.
Concerning the Scythians and the Cimmerians generally, historians have long thought that they were Slavs (a family of Indo-Europeans). However, population genetics has shown that the Indo-European populations of Britain and Western Europe were not Slavs. Consequently, the Scythians and Cimmerians were not either.