Several theories have been proposed for the location of Anlach— I. That Anlach stands for Hua Lagh, sons of Lugh, a Leinster family.

2. That Anlach is Caelbadh, who had a son Braccan, and was king of Ulster for one year, and was slain in 358.

3. That Anlach stands for Amalgaidh (now pronounced Awley). Amalgaidh was son of Fiachra of the Flowing Locks, brother of Dathi, who succeeded Niall of the Nine Hostages as king of Ireland in 405, whereupon Dathi surrendered to Amalgaidh the crown of Connaught. He reigned till 449, and had at the least three wives, and twenty-one sons are attributed to him besides daughters.

4. That the "Chormuc, son of Eurbre the Goidel, of Ireland," whose son Brychan is said to have been, in the Jesus College MS., is Cormac Caoch, son of Cairbre, younger son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, son of Eochaidh by Carthan Casduff, daughter of the King of Britain.

Cormac's wife, Marchell, was sole daughter of Tewdrig by an Irish-woman, a daughter of Eochaidh Muighmedhuin. This is the identification proposed by Mr. Henry F. J. Vaughan in Y Cymmrodor.1

Shearman, in his Loca Patriciana (Geneal. Table VIII), gives a pedigree of Brychan from Caelbadh, king of Ulster. He makes Caelbadh father of Braccan, who is father of Braccanoc, the husband of Marchell, daughter of Tewdyr ap Tudwall; and Braccanoc and Marchell are parents of Brychan, who marries Dwynwas or Dina, daughter of the King of Powys. As his authority he refers to the Naemsenchas, Leabhar Breac. The Bollandists, relying on Shearman, have adopted this pedigree. But the Naemsenchas in the Leabhar Breac gives no such pedigree, which seems to have been entirely drawn out of Mr. Shearman's imagination. Nor does Duald MacFirbiss, in his great work on genealogies, the Leabhar Genealach, give any countenance to this derivation of Brychan. It must be dismissed into the limbo of fantastic pedigrees.

The conjecture of Mr. Vaughan is unsupported by Irish authorities. The pedigree was as follows

(Iolo MSS., pp. 118, 140; Myv. Arch., p. 418); Aflech Goronawg (Iolo MSS., p. 78); Enllech Goronawc (ibid., p. 111); Afallach ap Corinwc (Peniarth MS. 132); Enllech ab Hydwn (Iolo MSS., p. 109); Anlach, son of Urbf (Vita S. Cadoci).

1 Vol. x, p. 86.

Eochaidh Muighmedhuin = Mongfinn and Carina (a Saxon).

Laoghaire, Cairbre. Amalghaid. Maine. Conall Cremthan, Enna. Conall Gul

This Cormac

Duald MacFirbiss says, in his Leabhar Genealach, 2 "Cairbre, son of Niall, left ten sons :-Cormac Caoch (the blind). Caoch had two sons, viz. Ainmire and Tuathal Maolgarbh, king of Eire."

The first of the proposed identifications is the most satisfactory. Marchell crossed from Porthmawr to Leinster; and it is precisely in Leinster that several of the children of Brychan have left their names as founders.

That a migration should take place from Ulster or from Connaught to South Wales is improbable. The set from Ulster was to Alba, and in Connaught the Milesians obtained as much land as they required, by exterminating or expelling the native Tuatha De Danann.

The name of Brychan, or Braccan, is somewhat suspicious, signifying the "Speckled" or "Tartan-clothed"; and it looks much as though he to whom it was applied was an eponym for that clan of the Irish Goidels who certainly did invade and occupy Carmarthen, Pembroke, and Brecknock. We know that these invasions and colonisations were frequent, and that for a time Britain was subject to the Irish Goidels, and obliged to pay tax to them. It was after the reign of Dathi, who died in 428, that the Irish hold upon Britain came to an end, or was gradually relaxed.

Rees conjectured that Brychan's father was captain of one of these Irish invading bands, a supposition that is supported by a passage in the Iolo MSS., wherein three invasions (gormesion) of Wales by the 1 Dathi was father of Oiliol Molt, 459-478. 2 P. 167. 3 Welsh Saints, p. 112.

4 P. 78.

Irish are mentioned, one of which was that of Aflech Goronawg, who took possession of Garth Mathrin by invasion; but, having married Marchell, the daughter of Tewdrig, king of that country, he won the good will of the inhabitants, and obtained it as his dominion in virtue of the marriage; and there his tribe still remains, intermixed with the Welsh."

Garthmadryn, according to the Iolo MSS.,1 had at one time been part of the district called Morganwg, but was severed in Brychan's time. His grandfather, "Tewdrig the Blessed," is there described as being "King of Morganwg, Gwent, and Garthmadryn."2

Old Brycheiniog was commensurate with the present county of Brecknock, less the Hundred of Buallt or Builth.3 The name Garthmadryn gave way to one derived from its new regulus, who was called Brychan Brycheiniog, with which compare Rhufon Rhufoniog and other similar formations. In the Book of Llan Dáv the district is called regio Brachani, and the people Brachanii.1

The Goidel invasion came probably from one of the harbours of Pembrokeshire or Carmarthenshire, and the Irish made their way up the valley of the Towy. Perhaps to them may be attributed the stone camp at Garn Goch, on an isolated rock commanding the river. Beneath it lies Llys Brychan. Then, pushing up to Llandovery, where the old Roman town of Loventium lay in ruins, they struck the Roman paved road, the Via Julia, that led over the pass of Mynydd Myddfai, above the River Gwydderig, to the Roman camp of the Pigwn; and so tramping on upon the road straight as a bowline, looked down on the broad, richly-wooded basin of the Usk. Crossing the little stream Nant Bran, they halted in the walled city of Bannium, with its stone gateways still standing, among the ruins of Roman villas and baths, and made that their headquarters. Here it was that Brychan was born; and a little further down the Usk, at Llanspyddid, before the doorway of the church, Anlach was buried.

These Irish invaders had entered on a fair land, well watered, the rocks of old red sandstone, crumbling down into the richest soil conceivable; and here they were well content to settle, and to bring into

1 P. III. 2 P. 118; cf. pp. 140, 147. These statements cannot be accepted. 3 In the beginning of the ninth century, Buallt and Gwrtheyrnion (in modern Radnorshire) formed a kingdom by themselves (see Owen's Pembrokeshire, i, p. 203).

4 Pp. 219, 256. In a Bonedd y Saint (which contains a list of his children) in the late eighteenth-century MS. known as Y Piser Hir, pp. 294-296, in the Swansea Public Library, Brychan, we are told, was 'Lord of Brecknock, Earl of Chester, and Baron of Stafford ! ”

subjection the natives, who probably offered little resistance. To the South shot up the purple Brecknock Beacons; away to the East the range of the Black Mountains, abruptly dying down, and forming a mighty portal through which, many centuries later, the Normans would pour and make Brecon their own.

To the North were only wooded hills, stretching away to the Epynt range a fair enclosed land, some twelve miles across, a happy valley as that of Rasselas, to all appearance, but one to be battled for from generation to generation so rich, so lovely, that it was coveted by all who looked upon it.

That Anlach was a Christian we must suppose, but of a rude quality. His wife was one, certainly, and his son Brychan was brought up in the Christian faith.

Within the walls of Bannium, now Y Gaer, on a hot summer, the grass burns up over the foundations of a villa, and reveals the plan, with atrium and semi-circular tablinum opening out of it, and chambers to which access was obtained from the atrium. It was the most notable building in Bannium-perhaps in the fifth century not wholly ruinous. And in it Anlach may well have dwelt; and in one of those chambers now under the sod, Brychan, who was to give his name to all that country, may well also have been born.

Of the life of Brychan we know nothing, save only what has been already related: how he was instructed by the Christian sage Drichan, and how he was sent hostage to the King of Powys.

The following represent the principal printed Welsh lists of Brychan's children. There are, needless to say, more still in various MSS.

1. The Cognatio of Cott. Vesp. A. xiv (early thirteenth century): eleven sons and twenty-five daughters.

2. The Cognatio of Cott. Dom. i (circa 1650): thirteen sons and twentyfour daughters.

3. Jesus College, Oxford, MS. 20, known as Llyfr Llywelyn Offeiriad (first half of the fifteenth century): eleven sons and twenty-four daughters. 4. The Achau compiled by Lewis Dwnn, a Welsh herald, temp. Queen Elizabeth, printed in the Heraldic Visitations of Wales, vol. ii, p. 14, 1846, edited by Sir S. R. Meyrick fourteen sons and twenty-two daughters. 5. Myvyrian Archaiology, p. 419, from an Anglesey MS. written in 1579 : twenty-three sons and twenty-five daughters.

6. Iolo MSS., p. 111, from a Coychurch MS., compiled or transcribed by Thomas ab Ifan, circa 1670: twenty-four sons and twenty-six daughters.

7.

Iolo MSS., pp. 119-121, from another Coychurch MS., by the same: twenty-five sons and twenty-six daughters.

8. Iolo MSS., p. 140, from a Cardiff MS.: twenty-five sons and twentyeight daughters.

9. Cambro-British Saints, pp. 270-1, from Harleian MS. 4181, early eighteenth century: two sons and twenty daughters.

To these must be added :—

10. The list given by Nicolas Roscarrock, the friend of Camden, in his MS. Lives of the Saints, now in the University Library, Cambridge. He was assisted by Edward Powell, a Welsh priest, who had in his possession a number of Welsh pedigrees and calendars. Thirtytwo sons and thirty-one daughters-sixty-three in all-the most liberal allowance given him, we believe, in any list extant.

II. The list in the tract on the Mothers of the Saints " in Ireland, attributed to Oengus the Culdee: twelve sons in all.

12. The list given by William of Worcester: twenty-four children. 13. The list given by Leland: also twenty-four children.

Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of Brychan as "a powerful and noble personage,' says that "the British histories testified that he had four-and-twenty daughters, all of whom, dedicated from their youth to religious observances, happily ended their lives in sanctity."1 No doubt Fuller had this passage before him when he wrote, in his Worthies, of Brychan :

'This King had four-and-twenty daughters, a jolly number; and all of them saints, a greater happiness."2 He had, of course, no other conception of saintship than that of the Latin Church.

Caw, the founder of one of the Three Saintly Tribes, is also credited with having been the father of a numerous family-twenty-six sons and five daughters; but some of his sons followed a warlike life. Clechre or Clether, mentioned in the Life of S. Brynach, had 20 sons. But Welsh law, even down to the 13th century, made no distinction between children born in and out of wedlock.

The following is an alphabetical list of Brychan's children, as given in the Cognatio of Cott. Vesp. A. xiv, by much our earliest authority, with identifications from the later lists:

Sons :

1. Arthen.

2. Berwin (Berwyn, Gerwyn).

3. Clytguin (Cledwyn).

4. Chybliuer (Cyflefyr or Cyflewyr); son of Dingad in the Jesus MS.

5. Kynauc (Cynog).

6. Kynon (Cynon); son of Arthen in Cogn. Dom.

7. Dynigat (Dingad).

8. Papay (Pabiali).

9. Paschen (Pasgen); son of Dingad in Cogn. Dom. and the Jesus MS. 10. Rein (Rhun or Rhun Dremrudd).

11. Rydoch or Iudoc (Cadog).

Married Daughters :—

1. Aranwen (Arianwen), wife of Iorwerth Hirflawdd, king of Powys. 2. Kehingayr (Rhiengar), mother of S. Cynidr.

Itin. Kamb., bk. i, ch. ii.

2 Vol. iii, p. 514, ed. 1840.