The Ethnology of the British Islands Part 8

XCIX. Annus.

C. Annus. Dormitatio Ciarani.

CI. Annus.

CII. Annus.

CIII. Annus. Mortalitas magna, in qua pausat Mailcun rex Genedotae.

CIV. Annus.

CXIII. Annus.

CXIV. Annus. Gabran filius Dungart moritur.

CXV. Annus.

CXVII. Annus.

CXVIII. Annus. Columcille in Brittania exiit.

CXIX. Annus.

CXX. Annus.

CXXI. Annus. [Navigatio Gildae in Hibernia.]

CXXII. Annus.

CXXIV. Annus.

CXXV. Annus. [Synodus Victoriae apud Britones congregatur.]

CXXVI. Annus Gildas obiit.

CXXVII. Annus.

CXXVIII. Annus.

CXXIX. Bellum Armterid. [Inter filios Elifer et Guendoleu, filium Keidiau, in quo bello Guendoleu cecidet; Merlinus insa.n.u.s effectus est.]

Cx.x.x. Annus. Brendan Byror dormitatio.

Cx.x.xI. Annus.

Cx.x.xV. Annus.

Cx.x.xVI. Annus. Guurci et Peretur [filii Elifer] moritur.

Cx.x.xVII. Annus.

Cx.x.xIX. Annus.

CXL. Annus. Bellum contra Euboniam, et dispositio Danielis Banchorum.

CXLI. Annus.

CXLIV. Annus.

CXLV. Annus. Conversio Constantini ad Dominum.

CXLVI. Annus.

CXLIX. Annus.

CL. Annus. [Edilbertus in Anglia rexit.]

CLI. Annus. Columcille moritur. Dunaut rex moritur. Agustinus Mellitus Anglos ad Christum convert.i.t.

CLII. Annus.

CLVI. Annus.

CLVII. Annus. Synodus Urbis Legion. Gregorius obiit in Christo.

David Episcopus Moni judeorum.

The notices between the brackets are not found in the Harleian MS.--one of three.

The years are counted from the commencement of the Annals, which, from circ.u.mstances independent of the text, is fixed A.D. 444. Hence, lvii and clvii, coincide with A.D. 501, and A.D. 601, respectively. It is not until the last quarter of the tenth century that the entries notably improve in fulness and frequency; during which period the table was probably composed,--the earlier dates being put down not because they were of either local or general importance, but because they were known to the writer. Such, at least, is the inference from the style. Lives of Saints may have furnished them all. They agree more or less with the Irish Annals, and, probably, are to a great extent taken from the same sources.

The _Annales Cambrenses_ contain few or no facts directly bearing upon the ethnology of Great Britain, except so far as the existence of a literary composition, of a given antiquity, is the measure of the civilization of the country to which it belongs.

One of its entries, however, has an indirect bearing. The value of Gildas depends upon the time at which he wrote. We have already seen that a small piece of autobiography in his history tells us that he was born in the year of the _Bellum Badonic.u.m_. Now the date of this is got from the Annales Cambrenses, A.D. 516. There is no reason to believe it other than accurate.

It were well if such a composition as the _Annales Cambriae_ were called (what it really is) a list of dates; since the word _chronicle_ has a dangerous tendency to engender a very uncritical laxity of thought. It continually gets mistaken for a _register_; yet the two sorts of composition are wholly different. That the habit of making cotemporaneous entries of events as they happen, just as inc.u.mbents of parishes, each in his order of succession, enter the births, deaths, and marriages of their parishioners, should exist in such inst.i.tutions as religious monasteries or civil guild-halls, is by no means unlikely.

But, then, on the other hand, there is an equal likelihood of nothing of the sort being attempted. Hence, when a work reaches posterity in the shape of a chronicle or annals, its antiquity and value must be judged on its own merits, rather than according to any preconceived opinions.

In mechanics _nothing is stronger than its weakest part_, and it would be well if a similar apothegm could be extended to the criticism of such compositions as the Annales Cambriae, and the Saxon Chronicle. It would be well if we could say that in chronological tables _nothing was earlier than the latest entry_. In common histories we do this. The common historian is always supposed to have composed his work subsequent to the date of the latest event contained in it--a few exceptions only being made for those authors whose works treat of cotemporary actions.

So it is with the annalist whose Annals, more ambitious in form than the bare chronicle, emulate, like those of the great Roman historian, the style of history. But it is not so when the notices pa.s.s a certain limit, and become short and scanty. They then suggest a comparison with the parish register, or the Olympic records, and change their character altogether. No longer mere chronological works, emanating from the pen of a single author, and referrible to some single generation, subsequent, in general, to a majority of the events set down in them, they are the productions of a series of writers, each of whom is a registrar of cotemporary events. By this an undue value attaches itself to works which have nothing in common with the register but the form.

Now, if genuine traditions are scarce, real registers are scarcer. In both cases, however, the false wears the garb of the true, and, in both cases, writers shew an equal repugnance to scrutiny. This is to be regretted; since with nine out of ten of the chronicles that have come down to us, it is far more certain that their latest facts are earlier in date than the author who records them, than that the earliest possible author can have been cotemporary with the first recorded events. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may ill.u.s.trate this. It ends in the reign of Stephen; yet the writer of even the last page may have been anything but a cotemporary with the events it embodies. It begins with the invasion of Julius Caesar. A cotemporary entry--the essential element of registration--is out of the question here.

The general rule with compositions of the kind in question is, that they fall into two parts, the first of which cannot be of equal antiquity with the events recorded, the second of which may be; and we are only too fortunate when satisfactory proofs of cotemporary composition enable us to convert the possible into the probable, the probable into the certain--the _may_ into the _must_. Even when this is the case, the proportions of the cotemporary to the non-cotemporary statements are generally uncertain--a question of _more_ or _less_, that must be settled by the examination of the particular composition under consideration.

Whatever may be the other merits of the _Annales Cambriae_, it has no claim to the t.i.tle of a register during the sixth century--and, _a fortiori_ none during the fifth.

Neither has the Saxon Chronicle. We infer this from the extent to which it follows Beda. We infer it, too, still more certainly from the following pa.s.sage--a pa.s.sage which, if made in the year under which it is found, would be no record but a prophecy.