Chapter CXXXIX: Section III: Bri

The root _brig_, meaning force or strength, is found in many branches of the Indo-European tongues. It is considered to be akin to the Sanscrit _virja_, strength, and is found in the Greek verb βρίθω (_britho_), to be heavy, or to outweigh, and the adjective βριαρός (_briaros_), strong. And thus it named the hundred-handed Titan, whom gods called Briareus, and men Ægeon, and who, in the Titanic revolution, was disposed of either in the Ægean Sea, or under Mount Ætna. Briennios, the surname of some of the eastern emperors, must have come from this root.

In the Keltic tongues it again appears in Irish as _bri_ or _brigh_, force or valour, and Bryn, height, answering to the Roman _virtus_ (a near connection, as we shall presently see), and the old French word _brie_, peculiarly expressive of the gay, light Gallic courage, was a now forgotten legacy from the ancient population. Thence came Brenhin, Bren, or Bran, or, as the Romans made it, Brennus, a king or chief—well known for the forays on Italy, and capture of Rome.

Another Brennus was the leader of a division of the great host of Gauls, that, about B.C. 279, came out of Pannonia, and made a backward rush towards the East. One of their bands settled in Asia Minor, and were the parents of the Galatians; but Brennus was less successful. He marched upon Delphi, promising his followers the plunder of the Temple; but was totally defeated by the Delphians; and finding his army destroyed, and himself severely wounded, put an end to his own life.

Next time Bran comes to light, it is altogether in Welsh setting. The _Triads_ and the prolific _Genealogy of Welsh Saints_, are the authorities for the existence of a prince of that name. Bran the Blessed, the son of Llyr Lledaith, and father of Caradwg, is, we are told, one of the three blessed princes of Britain, having brought home the faith of Christ from Rome, where he had been seven years as a hostage for his son Caradwg, whom the Romans put in prison after being betrayed through the enticement, deceit, and plotting of Cartismandua, or by her Welsh name, Avegwydo Foeddog, the daughter of Avarwy, who betrayed Caswallon. Her act is called by the _Triads_ one of the three secret treasons of Britain.

Now Caradwg is, without a doubt, the Caractacus of Roman history, and the captivity of his family exactly coincides with the time of St. Paul’s first journey to Rome. Moreover, as has been already shown under the head of Aristobulus, there is great reason to consider that Aristobulus, the friend of St. Paul, was the same as the Arwystli, whom the _Triads_ commemorate as among their first missionaries. A farm-house in Glamorganshire, called Trevran, house of Bran, is pointed out as the place where Bran used to reside, and it is near Llanilid, which is considered as the oldest church in Britain.

Such is the British account of the father of Caradwg. The Roman account is, that Cunobelinus was king of the Silures, and husband of Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, and was a prosperous and powerful prince in league with the Romans.

Cunobelinus is in like manner a title, though not of man. Cûn is, as will be shown in due time, a chief or lord. Bel or Belin was the Keltic god of light and of war, in whose honour British coins were struck in the heathen days of Bran, whose own name the Romans thought they were reading on his coins. Beli also meant war, and more than one king was called from him.

Bran the Blessed may thus be our old friend Cymbeline, a name repeated in Cornwall, but from literature, not tradition. Cartismandua, or Aregwydd, is the wicked queen, and Caradwg one of the sons.

As to Imogen, the real charm of the play, no British lady either accounts for or explains her name; but in German genealogies we fall upon Imagina of Limburg, in 1400; and there are various other instances of the like, so that Shakespeare may be supposed to have heard of one of them, and adopted her as the heroine of the old story of the deserted and betrayed wife, which he so strangely placed at the court of the last independent British prince. Or Imogen may be a Shakespearian version of Ygnoge, daughter of Pandrasus, emperor of Greece, and wife of Brutus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Anne of Brittany’s funeral oration, in 1514, her birth was deduced from this last.

Caradwg’s own proper name comes from the same root as the Greek χάρις, grace, and the Latin _carus_, dear. It means beloved, and has the Breton form Keridak. Caer Caradoc, in Shropshire, retains the name of his camp. He had a worthy namesake in Caradawc Vreichfras, or strong armed, called the pillar of the Kymry, and one of the three battle knights of Britain. Vreichfras means the strong arm, but the French trouveurs rendered it Brise-bras, the wasted arm; and told of an enchanter who fixed a serpent on the knight’s arm, from whose torture nothing could relieve him but that she whom he loved best should undergo it in his stead. His faithful wife offered herself; the serpent was just about to seize on her, when her brother smote off its head with his sword; but her husband thus never recovered the strength of his arm! Others, however, read Vreich-fras as _Fer-a-bras_, iron arm; and thus, perhaps, from some Breton romance, was one of the Hauteville brothers called William Ferabras. Hence, again, did the French and Italian romancers name their fierce Moorish champion Ferraù, or Ferragus, the same who lost his helmet, and possessed the healing salve, valued by Don Quixote as the balsam of Fierabras!

Caradwg’s wife, Tegan Euvron, or golden beauty, was mentioned by the _Triads_ as one of the three fair ladies and chaste damsels of Arthur’s court, possessing three precious things, of which she alone was worthy,—the mantle, the goblet, and the knife. Later romance and ballad have expanded these into the story of the three tests of the faithful wife; and Sir Caradoc and his lady remain among the prime worthies of the Round Table.

In the twelfth century a saint named Caradwg retired from the world in disgust at the violence shown to him by his master, Rhys, prince of South Wales, on learning the loss of two greyhounds that had been in Caradwg’s charge. He lived in various hermitages in Wales and left a well in the parish of Haroldstone, called by his name. Moreover, soon after his death, he was said to have suddenly closed his hand, in frustration of the designs of the historian, William of Malmsbury, who wanted to cut off his little finger for a relic. Our insular saints were decidedly of Shakespeare’s opinion, and had no desire to have their ‘bones moved’ or be made relics of.

Caradwg, Caradoc, and Keriadek continue to be used in Wales, Scotland, and Brittany.

_Cara_, friend, was sometimes prefixed to a saint’s name by the Christian Gael, as Cara Michil, friend of St. Michael, as the name of his devout client, and thus arose such surnames as Carmichael.

This pursuit of Cymbeline and his family has carried us far from Bran the Blessed. Under this, his proper name, he stands forth in old Welsh, romance as the original importer of the Sanc-greal. One very old and wild version says that King Bran brought from Ireland a magic vessel, given him by a great black man in Ireland, which healed wounds and raised the dead.

In the twelfth century the Sanc-greal had assumed its Christian character, and Bran the Blessed, as the first Christian prince of Britain, was said to have received it from St. Joseph of Arimathea, and guarded it to the end of his life. No wonder, therefore, that Brittany loved and honoured his name.

Bran was a Pictish prince, killed in 839, in battle with the Danes, and it is highly probable that St. Birinus, the Keltic apostle of Wessex, was another form of Bran.

Brian has been from very old times a favourite Christian name in both Brittany and Ireland, the first no doubt from the Christian honours of the blessed Bran, the second from the source whence he was named.

The great glory of Brian in Ireland was in the renowned Brian Boromhe, King of Leinster, or of the tribute, so called from the tribute, once shaken off by Ulster, but which he re-imposed. He defeated the Danes in twenty-five battles, and finally was slain in the great battle of Clontarf, on the Good Friday of 1014. Around that battle has centered a wonderful amount of fine legendary poetry on both sides.

Brian, or Bryan, is a very frequent Christian name, but according to the usual lot of its congeners, has an equivalent, _i. e._ Bernard, chiefly in Ulster, with which it has not the most distant connection.

Brien was always a favourite in Brittany, and is very common as a surname with the peasantry there. The Bretons, who joined in the Norman conquest, imported it to England. Two landholders, so called, are recorded in Domesday Book; and during the first century of Norman rule it was far more common than at present, when it is considered as almost exclusively Irish. Some of our older etymologists have been beguiled into deriving it from the French _bruyant_, noisy.

The feminine Brennone is given in German dictionaries, but it, as well as Brennus, are there derived from old German, and explained as protection, which is clearly a mistake.

Brieuc was a Breton saint; Breasal was once common in Ireland, and survives in a few families, but is generally turned into Basil, and sometimes to Brazil, in which shape the Manxmen frequently bore it.

_Brîgh_ or strength, is the most satisfactory explanation of Brighid, the daughter of the fire-god, and the goddess of wisdom and song, skill and poetry.

Cormac, king and bishop of Cashel, explains the word as a ‘fiery dart;’ but this looks like one of the many late and untrustworthy interpretations of Keltic names.

Brighid was always a favourite female name in Ireland, and has become one of the very few Keltic ones of European popularity. This was owing to a maiden who was brought up by a bard, and afterwards became a pupil of St. Patrick; and from a solitary recluse at Kildare, rose to be the head of five hundred nuns, and was consulted by the synod of bishops. She died in 510, and after her death, a copy of the Gospels was found in her cell, too beautiful to have been written by mortal hand, “with mystical pictures in the margent, whose colours and workmanship were, at first blush, dark and unpleasant, but in the view marvellously lively and artificiall.”

It was long kept at Kildare, and a little hand-bell, such as was much used by the Irish missionaries, and which had belonged to her, and was, therefore, called Clogg Brighde, or Bridget’s Bell, was exhibited to the devout, in both England and Ireland, until it was suppressed by a prohibition from Henry V., perhaps, because it tended to keep up a national spirit.

She was one of the patron saints of Ireland, and was regarded with such devotion, both there and in Scotland, that children were baptized as her servants, Maol Brighde, Giollabrid; and to the present day, hers is the favourite name in Ireland.

St. Bride’s churches are common, both in England and Scotland, and the village of Llanaffraid, in Wales, records her in her Welsh form of Ffraid. Bridewell was once the palace of St. Bride, and after its conversion into a prison, spread its sinister name to other like buildings. The Portuguese believe themselves to possess the head of St. Bridget at Lisbon, and have accordingly more than one Doña Brites among their historical ladies.

Sweden has also a St. Bridget, or rather Brigitta; but her name is in her own tongue Bergljot, shortened to Berglit, and then confounded with the Irish Bridget. It unfortunately means mountain-fright, or guardian defect, though German antiquaries have twisted both Bridgets into _Beraht Gifu_, bright gift. Be that as it may, the Swedish Brigitta was a lady of very high birth, who, in her widowhood, founded an order of Brigittin nuns, somewhere about 1363, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was greatly revered for her sanctity. She named the very large class of Norwegian, German, and Swedish Bridgets or Berets, who are almost as numerous as the Irish.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ Irish. │ Scotch. │ French. │
│Bridget │Brighid │ Bride │Brigitta │
│Bride │Biddy │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ Swedish. │ German. │
│Brigida │Brites │Brigitta │Brigitta │
│Brigita │ │Brita │ —————————— │
│ │ │Begga │ Esth. │
│ │ │Bergliot │Pirrit │
│ │ │Beret │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Lusatian. │ Lettish. │ Lith. │ Lapp. │
│Brischia │Britte │Berge │Pirket │
│Brischa │Birte │Berzske │Pikka │
│ │Pirre │ │Pikke │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘