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than Domnonia. The Cartularies of Landevennec, Quimperlé and Quimper give the following list of the princes :-(1) Rivelen Mor Marthou; (2) Rivelen Marthou; (3) Cungar; (4) Gradlon Mur; (5) Daniel Dremrud; (6) Budic et Maxenri duo fratres. [Horum primus rediens ab Alamannia interfecit Marchell 38 et paternum consulatum recuperavit.]39 (7) Jan Reith, Huc rediens Marchel interfecit; (8) Daniel Unva; (9) Gradlon Flam; (10) Cungare Cherovnoc; (11) Budic Mur, and six others to Alan Caniart, who died 1040, and to Hoel V, who died 1084.

The list is mainly fabulous. The contest of one king with Marchell, attributed in the Cartulary of Quimperlé to Budic, is attributed in that of Quimper to Jan Reith. According to the Life of S. Melor, Jan Reith did not succeed Budic, but preceded him, and was the father of Daniel. We must admit the existence of Grallo the Great, who ruled from about 470 to about 505. After him confusion reigns in the Catalogue. Budic certainly did not take refuge in Alamania. We have no means of determining who Grallo was, and whether Budic was of his family.

Budic had two sons, Miliau and Rivold. Miliau reigned for seven years, which were years of prosperity in the land. He was assassinated by his brother Rivold in or about the year 537, and Rivold then married his brother's widow, and obtained the assassination of his nephew Melor in 544. Rivold himself died in the same year; and then it was that Budic II, who had been a refugee in Demetia, returned to Cornubia and became king. We are now on safer ground. He seems to have lived till 570, when he left a son, Tewdrig, who was driven from his principality by Macliau, bishop of Vannes and count of Bro-weroc. Tewdrig, however, raised a body of men, attacked Macliau and killed him in 577, and recovered his principality. Of this there is nothing in the catalogue of princes, and we may well question whether any reliance can be placed on the names that occur earlier.

Daniel Dremrud may perhaps be recognised as the founder of Plou Daniel in Léon. Jan Reith is probably purely mythical.

After the death of Tewdrig the history of Cornubia remains a blank for a tract of time. If there were princes, they left no trace in history.

38 Gregory of Tours, in his Libri Octo Miracularum, Lib. i, mentions a barbarian chief of the name of Marchil Chillor, who besieged Nantes in 497. Is it possible that this can be the same man?

39 This passage is in the list in the Quimperlé Cartulary. That of Quimper agrees with that of Quimperlé.

The pedigree of the princes of Cornubia, for what it is worth, as made out from the Lives of S. Melor and S. Oudocui, is as follows:

Jan Reith, first
settler in Cornubia.

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The dynasties of Brittany have been thrown into the utmost confusion by historians attempting to construct pedigrees on the principle that all Brittany was subject to a single king from the latter part of the fifth century, and by acceptance of the fable of Cynan Meiriadog 40 as a basis for their reckonings. Taking Geoffrey of Monmouth's preposterous nonsense as if it were genuine history, they have proceeded to extravagances in no whit less absurd.

In the eighteenth century Gallet, a priest of Lamballe, drew up a genealogy of the house of Rohan, and with the object of flattering the family derived its descent from Cynan Meiriadog and from the family of S. Patrick.

Gallet was quite unaware that Brittany in the early period of its history was not an undivided kingdom, and that it comprised independent principalities and equally independent counties. In the manufacture of the genealogy he collected all the material he could, all the names of counts and princes he was able to find in the records

40 The fable of Cynan Meiriadog had its origin in this. Nennius says that after Maximus had taken soldiers from Britain to assist him against Gratian, he did not send them back to Britain, but he planted them from the pond on the Mons Jovis (the Gt. S. Bernard) to the city of Cantquic and to the western hill of Cruc Ochidient. The next to speak of this is Eudo, Bishop of Léon in 1019, and he names Conan Meriadoc. Then came Geoffrey of Monmouth and developed the whole story. See De la Borderie, Hist. de Bretagne, ii, 441–63. But he goes too far in saying le glorieux Conan Meriadec doit prendre place dans la brumeuse phalange des monarques imaginaires." He makes no allowance for genuine Welsh traditions.

of the duchy, and he set to work to link them together by imaginary ties.

Whatever document came to hand and would serve his purpose, Gallet accepted it with impartial disregard of its historic value. He took Geoffrey of Monmouth in grave earnest. He looked at Colgan's Trias Thaumaterga, and picked out from his notes what he had to say about the sisters of the Apostle Patrick, and about his residence in Letavia. He got hold of Capgrave's Nova Legenda Angliæ. He read, besides, the Life of Gildas by the monk of Ruys, and that also furnished him with some names.

Unhappily Dom Morice, in most matters sensible, was led away by Gallet, and in his Histoire Ecclesiastique et Civile de Bretagne, Paris, 1750, he inserts a pedigree that identifies Cynan Meiriadog with Caw of Cwm Cawlwyd, and further marries him to Darerca, sister of S. Patrick.

The pedigree, as he gives it, will be found on the opposite page. The assumptions and absurdities of this pedigree are marvellous. Cynan Meiriadog, who accompanies Maximus into Gaul in 383, has to wife a sister of S. Patrick, and his grandson Grallo marries another sister. By her Cynan is father of Gildas, who died in 570.

Having ascertained from the Life of S. Cybi that Erbin was son of Geraint and father of Solomon, which is a mistake according to the Welsh genealogies, for by them Geraint was son, not father, of Erbin -he intercalates Conan Meriadoc, whom he identifies with Caw, between Geraint (Gerenton) and Erbin (Urbien). Next, he identifies Weroc I, who died in 550, but whom he throws back to 472, with Riothim, who assisted the Emperor Anthimius against the Visigoths in 468, and was defeated and killed. Moreover, he gives forty-one years for three generations. But the pedigree is so preposterous, that it does not deserve serious notice being taken of it. Yet it was accepted by Deric and printed with amplifications in his Ecclesiastical History of Brittany.

Moreover, this fictitious pedigree has infected the hagiologists of Brittany. For instance, Garaby, in his Vies des Saints de Bretagne, 1839, under Dec. 30, has Sainte Tigride, Reine de Bretagne, and relates how she was daughter of Calpurnius and Conchessa, sister of S. Martin of Tours, and continues, “Ses belles qualités la firent demander, en 382, pour épouse, par Grallon, compagnon d'armes de Conan, puis duc de Domnonia, comte de Cornouaille, et enfin, en 434, troisième roi de Bretagne."

It is astounding how the imagination of modern as well as ancient martyrologists runs riot. Grallo never had anything to do with

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Domnonia, and he never was sole king over Armorica. That Grallo, who actually died about 505, should have been companion in arms. in 383 with his grandfather, who was also his brother-in-law, is absurd, but the amazing thing is that sensible men writing ecclesiastical history and hagiography should not have seen these anachronisms and avoided them.41

The genealogy of the Counts of Bro-weroc, as well as can be made out, is as follows:

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Vannes, or Bro-weroc, was colonised from Britain at a very early period, but the first chief of whom we hear was Weroc I, who ruled from about 500 to 550. He was succeeded by his son Canao, who murdered three of his brothers and would have killed another, Macliau, if the latter had not fled for his life and taken refuge with Conmore, regent of Domnonia. Canao fell in 560, and was succeeded by his brother Macliau, who was killed in 577, and was in turn succeeded by his son Weroc II.

Such is the epitome of the early history of Domnonia, Léon, Cornubia and Vannes. This latter was not esteemed more than a county, as the British settlers did not obtain possession of the city itself till Macliau, who had got himself chosen bishop, united Bro-weroc under his rule along with the city itself on the death of his brother. But it relapsed after his death, for in 590 the Bishop Regalis complained that he was as it were imprisoned by the Britons within the walls of the city.

Venantius Fortunatus praises Felix, bishop of Nantes (550-582), for having "defeated the British claims, and maintained the covenant sworn to," and he speaks of the Britons as "ravishing wolves," and congratulates him at being able to hold them off. 42 There was no love lost between the bishops and denizens of the old Gallo-Roman

41 The pedigree in my Lives of the Saints of the Princes of Cornouaille and Domnonia is very inaccurate. At the time it was drawn up I lacked sufficient original material. (S. B. G.)

42 44

Pro salute gregis, pastor per compita curris. Exclusoque lupo tuta tenetur ovis, insidiatores removes, vigil arte Britannos." Ven.. Fort., Miscell., iii, c. 8.

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