Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700

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Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 223

western and southern Aquitaine, he also appointed Franks (or at least men with

German names) as counts in some of the same cities. When Guntramn Boso

served as duke for the Austrasian cities in eastern Aquitaine, Romans served as

counts in some of the same cities. The challenge posed by the rise of the pre-

tender Gundovald is a particularly interesting example of the predictable failure

of these attempts at balancing aristocratic interests. Although he claimed to be

a son of King Chlothar, for a time Gundovald lived in exile in Constantino-

ple, until in 582 he returned to Gaul at the invitation of Guntramn Boso and

other leading notables of the kingdom of Childebert II. Initially, therefore,

Gundovald’s return seems to have been part of the schemes of Guntramn Boso

and his supporters against King Guntramn. But after Chilperic’s assassina-

tion Gundovald could serve other purposes. When King Guntramn and King

Childebert both tried to extend their control into Aquitaine, Mummolus, for-

merly a magistrate of King Guntramn, and the former Duke Desiderius (who

had previously fought against Mummolus) had Gundovald proclaimed king

near Limoges. From the cities that had once belonged to Sigibert, Gundovald

extracted an oath of allegiance in Childebert’s name; from the cities that had

belonged to Chilperic or Guntramn, he received an oath in his own name.

He also announced a plan to establish his residence at Paris. Gundovald there-

fore seems to have intended to promote himself as king of Neustria at the

expense of the infant Chlothar II, and to revive the alliance between Neus-

tria and Austrasia at the expense of Guntramn. More notables now supported

him, among them Waddo, formerly a count of Chilperic, Bladast, formerly a

duke of Chilperic, and various bishops, including Bertramn of Bordeaux. In

585 Guntramn ﬁnally defeated and killed Gundovald and some of his major

supporters.

The attempted usurpation of Gundovald illustrates the tendency for aristo-

cratic interests to take priority over royal concerns; it also demonstrates that the

Merovingians could not rely upon the loyalty of bishops either. The bishops of

Bordeaux were particularly irrepressible and acquired reputations for reigning

like kings in their episcopal sees. Bishop Leontius, for instance, possessed all the

right prerequisites for acquiring local authority. He had inherited ‘the sort of

noble ancestry that the senate at Rome once possessed’; he had fought in one

of the Frankish campaigns against the Visigoths; he had married a descendant

of a Roman emperor; he owned several lovely villas; and he had hedged his bets

by building churches for both St Vincentius, a distinctly royal saint, and St

Martin, a distinctly non-royal saint. So when he once announced to Charibert

his intention to replace the bishop of Saintes, he had his envoy claim to rep-

resent the ‘apostolic see’ (although this time the king neatly deﬂated Leontius’

Goffart (1957); Rouche (1979), pp. 70–7.

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224 raymond van dam

pretensions by assuming, through a contrived misunderstanding, that the mes-

senger was coming from Rome!).

His successor Bertramn was more directly

involvedin royal politics. In 577 he supported King Chilperic, who was annoyed

at Bishop Praetextatus of Rouen for having married Merovech and Brunehild.

After Chilperic’s assassination Bertramn supported the pretender Gundovald.

King Guntramn was particularly upset, not only because of the challenge to

his rule but also because, as he later pointedly reminded the bishop, he and

Bertramn were related (probably cousins) by marriage. During the sixth cen-

tury Merovingian kings occasionally allied themselves through marriage with

important Frankish aristocratic families; Guntramn himself had once been

brieﬂy married to the daughter of a Frankish duke. Guntramn had therefore

probably expected more loyalty from Bertramn, one of the ﬁrst Franks known

to serve as a bishop in southern Gaul.

Merovingian kings did not give up on Aquitaine. By the later sixth cen-

tury they began to invite young aristocratic sons to be educated at their courts,

almost as hostages against the good behaviour of their families, before appoint-

ing them to various positions. Three brothers from Albi, for instance, grew

up at the court of Chlothar II. One became court chaplain and then bishop

of Cahors; another became count of Albi and then prefect of Marseilles; the

third, Desiderius, was steward of the royal treasury before succeeding one

brother as prefect of Marseilles and then the other as bishop of Cahors.

For

the problem of establishing royal control in Aquitaine was not necessarily a

consequence of the survival of ethnic or regional awareness, as rather simply an

indication of the difﬁculty of controlling outlying regions from remote royal

courts in northern Gaul. The rise of the Merovingians marked a reversal in

political viewpoint rather than a decline in administrative effectiveness. With

their Mediterranean perspective Roman emperors had once worried about the

creation of an autonomous ‘Gallic Empire’ in northern Gaul; Merovingian

kings still worried about revolts, but now primarily in southern Gaul.

Despite their local connections dukes and counts sometimes fared no better.

‘No one fears the king’, some dukes once told Guntramn; but in addition, ‘no

one respects a duke or a count’. In particular, even in cities that were impor-

tant in Merovingian Gaul, such as Paris and Tours, bishops might become

more inﬂuential than kings or their magistrates. Already under Clovis Paris

had become an important centre of Frankish interests, and it had initially

served as the capital of the kingdom of Childebert, who in 556 supported the

Fortunatus, Carmina i.6–20, iv.10;Gregory, Hist. iv.26.158,‘apostolic see’.

Gregory, Hist. ix.33.451–4;Ewig (1974), pp. 52–6.

Vita Desiderii Cadurcae urbis episcopi cc.7–15.567–74;Durliat (1979). See also Fouracre, chapter 14

below.

Contrast between northern and southern Gaul: Van Dam (1992).

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Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 225

selection of Germanus as bishop. After Childebert’s death, however,subsequent

kings could not establish lasting control at Paris, and after Charibert’s death

in 567 his three brothers had partitioned the city and agreed that none would

enter it without the others’ permission. Paris may have remained a ‘royal city’,

but in contrast to the fragmented control by various kings only the bishop’s

power remained constant. Kings therefore competed for Germanus’ favour.

Chlothar, for instance, once requested Germanus’ assistance when suffering

from a fever; it vanished after he kissed the bishop’s cloak. Chlothar was hence

the only Frankish king during the sixth century who indicated his subordina-

tion to a bishop by allowing himself to be healed; most kings refused to send

even their ill infant sons to saints’ shrines for healing. Subsequently Germanus

obtained from Chlothar a pardon for some prisoners. Later too, when Sigibert

and Chilperic were ﬁghting over control of Paris, Germanus demonstrated his

autonomy by going to visit Guntramn instead. In this case his own family and

personal connections may have been decisive, since he had previously served as

abbot of a monastery dedicated to St Symphorien in his native city of Autun,

which was part of Guntramn’s kingdom. Guntramn clearly understood the

importance of this association, since he now celebrated the saint’s festival at

Autun.

After Germanus’ death in 576 Paris remained both attractive and tech-

nically off-limits to Frankish kings. Chilperic, for instance, may have wanted

Bishop Ragnemod to baptise his son, but he entered Paris only when pre-

ceded by saints’ relics that he hoped would ward off the curse for breaking the

treaty with his brothers. So despite its historical and geographical signiﬁcance

to the Merovingian kings, political feuds and episcopal domination kept Paris

peripheral to royal control for decades.

Tours was another city that remained on the edges of royal control through-

out the sixth century, in part because it had become a focal point of one family’s

attempts to maintain its local standing in central Gaul. When Gregory became

bishop in 573,henot only succeeded his mother’s cousin, he also noted that

almost all of his episcopal predecessors there had been his ancestors. Much of

this continued inﬂuence was of course a consequence of successful marriage

strategies; in Gregory’s case, his father came from a prominent family in the

Auvergne, and his mother from an even more prominent family in Burgundy.

These families had been able to protect their local standing despite the transi-

tion from Visigoths and Burgundians to Franks by placing family members as

bishops at Langres, Lyons and Clermont, as well as at Tours. Thus Chlothar

conceded this to be ‘one of the foremost distinguished families in the land’; and

Guntramn still had dreams about some of Gregory’s ancestors who had been

Fortunatus, Vita Germani cc.68–70,onChlothar; Gregory, Hist. viii.30.393–7, dukes’ comment and

Guntramn.

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226 raymond van dam

bishops in his kingdom. A second reason Tours remained peripheral to royal

control was, again, the feuding among the various Frankish kings. Since Tours

was just outside the nexus of capital cities, it usually ended up on the edges of

the various kingdoms. During the early years of Gregory’s episcopacy feuding

among kings caused much misery for both the city and its new bishop. Gregory

had in fact become bishop with the support of the Austrasian king Sigibert,

who was trying to stake his claim to Tours in the face of Chilperic’s opposi-

tion. After Sigibert’s assassination in 575 Chilperic regained control, and for the

next decade his and other royal armies periodically plundered the Touraine.

Chilperic was also suspicious enough of Gregory’s loyalties to the Austrasian

court that in 580 he convened an episcopal council to hear an accusation that

Gregory was scheming to return Tours to Childebert. Gregory was in an awk-

ward position. Because the enormous prestige of St Martin, the patron saint

of Tours, made kings hesitant to visit the city, Gregory spoke with them only

when he visited their royal courts; yet the ceaseless feuding among kings pre-

vented Gregory from visiting often enough to acquire much inﬂuence. In 580

the threat to his episcopal authority was so great that even a besotted relic-

monger who happened to wander into Tours could threaten him with King

Chilperic’s vengeance.

ButGregory survived, and after Chilperic’s assassination Guntramn soon

returned Tours to Childebert. Since these two kings were generally trying to

work together, the marginal location of Tours made it possible for Gregory

to act as a broker. Gregory’s episcopal standing now also intersected with his

family’s inﬂuence, because the maternal side of his family had links in cities

such as Lyons and Langres that belonged to Guntramn’s kingdom, and the

paternal side in the Auvergne that belonged to Childebert’s kingdom. Both

kings furthermore respected the cult of St Martin. Guntramn once warned an

envoy not to desecrate the saint’s church at Tours, and Childebert perhaps con-

structed a church in honour of the saint. So during a visit to Childebert’s court

Gregory acted as the king’s spokesman in responding to envoys from Gun-

tramn. Eventually Gregory seems to have replaced bishop Egidius of Rheims

as one of the chief episcopal diplomats for Childebert, who sent him as an

envoy to Guntramn.

Because of the unique standing of their cities, bishops

such as Germanus of Paris and Gregory of Tours were hence well placed to act

as mediators among distrustful kings.

In the long run, however, the fates of Paris and Tours went in different

directions. Paris was too important a royal city to be ignored, and the burial

of deceased kings there led to the reassertion of the city as a prominent royal

residence. In contrast, although some Merovingian widows came to live at

Gregory’s family and episcopacy: Pietri (1983); Van Dam (1985), pp. 202–29;(1993), pp. 50–81.

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Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 227

Tours, the kings continued to keep their distance from the city of St Martin.

Even when they did earn the saint’s patronage by acquiring his cape in the

later seventh century, they kept the relic not at Tours, but at their own court.

The differing destinies of Paris and Tours nevertheless coalesced as indications

of an important shift in royal politics. At the end of the sixth century the

eminence of Guntramn and his alliance with Childebert II had demonstrated

the dominance of Burgundy and Austrasia; but the kings who reasserted the

importance of Paris and who acquired St Martin’s cape were from Neustria.

royalwomen: fredegund and brunehild

In the various sub-kingdoms neither the Frankish aristocracy nor the Roman

aristocracy nor even the ecclesiastical hierarchy was united in its policies or its

interests. Because a king’s resources, in comparison to those once at the disposal

of a Roman emperor, were quite limited, great aristocrats who accumulated

wealth and could raise a band of armed supporters posed genuine challenges.

Accumulated wealth could also elevate the power of women, in particular the

women who were related to or who married Merovingian kings. Through-

out the sixth century Merovingian wives and daughters had acquired ‘cities,

ﬁelds and revenues’ as dowries, morning-gifts, ordinary gifts or inheritances.

Like wealthy men they then used their resources as benefactions to cities and

churches or as rewards for their own supporters. Clovis’ widow Clothild, for

instance, gave some property to a priest at Clermont and acquired a reputation

for her generosity. After she left her husband Chlothar, Radegund used her

ownresources to found a convent and construct a church dedicated to the

Virgin Mary at Poitiers. Clothild hence became powerful enough to inﬂuence

the selection of some of the bishops at Tours; and Radegund not only remained

respected enough in Gaul to appeal to the kings to end their civil wars, she also

requested and received relics from the patriarch of Jerusalem and the Byzan-

tine court. In a culture in which the costliness and the magniﬁcence of people’s

tombs were meant to be eternal validations of their status, Radegund’s casket

was twice normal size.

As wives these royal women had acquired wealth and inﬂuence. Without

husbands they were perhaps even more threatening because of their potential

for creating rivals to the other kings through their support or even through

remarriage. Initially Clothild had remained involved in royal politics, ﬁrst by

Van Dam (1993), pp. 25–8.

Gregory, Hist. ix.20.436,Guntramn’s gifts to his daughter; Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis cc.14 and 16,

pp. 386–9,Fortunatus, Carmina Appendix 2,relics; Gregory, In Gloria Confessorum 104,pp.364–6,

casket. Women’s wealth: Wemple (1981), pp. 44–50;Halsall (1995), pp. 61–73.

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228 raymond van dam

encouraging her sons to attack the kingdom of the Burgundians, then by

scheming to ensure that her son Chlodomer’s young sons would inherit his

kingdom. But after Chlothar and Childebert, her other two sons, killed two of

these young boys, the dowager queen took the hint and removed herself from

royal politics by taking up residence in Tours, a city, as we have seen, that was

effectively outside royal jurisdiction. Sometimes kings married royal widows,

in part to acquire control over their treasures, in part to ensure that no one

else could lay claim to kingship by marrying them. Other royal women, both

widows and unmarried daughters, entered convents, either at a king’s insistence

or by their own choice. Radegund was the only Merovingian queen of the sixth

century who voluntarily abandoned her husband in favour of another ‘king’.

But although she may have offended Chlothar’s manliness by preferring instead

‘the embraces of the King of Heaven’,

as a nun she would no longer marry

a rival or produce an heir; so she too, despite her lingering inﬂuence, was now

marginal to royal politics.

In contrast, other royal women such as Brunehild and Fredegund did not

accept retirement in a cloister and tried to remain politically active even after

their husbands’ deaths. During the ﬁrst half of the sixth century Merovingian

kings had often taken wives from neighbouring royal dynasties among the

Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Thuringians or Lombards. The kings of Austrasia

in particular seem to have been expected to marry foreign princesses, and

in 566 Sigibert married the Visigothic princess Brunehild. Not to be out-

done, Chilperic then insisted upon marrying Galsuintha, Brunehild’s sis-

ter. These two marriages were some of the last with foreign princesses; and

when Chilperic’s marriage soon failed, he had Galsuintha killed and married

Fredegund. A later tradition claimed that Fredegund had previouslybeen aroyal

servant;

if so, then she was an example of an increasing Merovingian ten-

dency to limit the use of marriages as diplomatic tools. The early Merovingians

had been weak enough to try to enhance their power through marriages with

neighbouring royal dynasties, but by the later sixth century the Merovingians

were secure enough to select mistresses and low-born wives, especially if an ear-

lier marriage had been childless. Producing sons took priority over diplomatic

connections and alliances with aristocrats.

Brunehild and Fredegund therefore represented not only different

Merovingian kingdoms but also different marriage strategies. Yet both acquired

great wealth, and both also overwhelmed many of their powerful contempo-

raries, kings, aristocrats and bishops alike. Some aristocrats even conceded that

Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis c.4,pp.308–11;Brennan (1985); G

abe (1989).

Liber Historiae Francorum c.31,p.292. Royal marriage patterns: Ewig (1974), pp. 38–49;Wemple

(1981), pp. 38–43, 56–7.

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Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 229

Brunehild ‘controlled her husband’s kingdom’. But at the moment of Sigibert’s

greatest success in expanding his control over Paris, he was killed by assassins

sent by Fredegund. Chilperic’s ﬁrst concerns, signiﬁcantly enough, were about

wealth and women: he seized Brunehild’s treasures, sent her into exile, and

detained her daughters. His attempt to neutralise Brunehild was unsuccessful,

however, since she soon married Merovech, one of his own sons by a former

wife. So although Brunehild may have temporarily lost inﬂuence at the court of

her son Childebert II, she was still a nuisance to Chilperic. So was Fredegund.

She schemed against her stepsons; she pushed her husband to bring charges

against the bishop who had married Brunehild and Merovech; and she was

accused of adultery with bishop Bertramn of Bordeaux. The last charge was

particularly grave, since it cast doubt on legitimate royal succession. Chilperic

was fully aware of the implications: ‘an accusation against my wife is a scandal

for me’. The rumours about Fredegund lingered. Soonafter her husband’s assas-

sination she surprised King Guntramn by announcing (falsely, as it turned out)

that she was pregnant again, only a few months after the birth of Chlothar II.

The next year she had to gather three hundred notables and three bishops to

conﬁrm with oaths that Chilperic had been Chlothar’s father.

Once Brunehild revived her inﬂuence over her son Childebert, her rivalry

with Fredegund also reappeared. Childebert once tried to hold Frede-

gund responsible for the murders of both Sigibert and Chilperic; his aunt

responded by sending assassins. Upon Guntramn’s death Childebert inherited

his kingdom; upon his own death in 595 his older son Theudebert II inherited

the kingdom of Austrasia, and his younger son Theuderic II the kingdom of

Burgundy. Chlothar II and his mother Fredegund may have seized Paris, but

the alliance between Austrasia and Burgundy seemed formidable. Fredegund

died in 597.Even more devastating for Chlothar was his defeat by the com-

bined forces of Theudebert and Theuderic, who then reduced their cousin’s

kingdom to only a few cities. The kingdom of Neustria seemed on the verge

of disappearing.

After being expelled from Austrasia, Brunehild was meanwhile trying to

stabilise her own inﬂuence at Theuderic’s court in Burgundy. She encouraged

her grandson to be content with his many mistresses rather than to marry;

she connived at the deposition of an unfriendly bishop and the promotion of

her favourites, in particular aristocrats from Roman families;

and she urged

Theuderic to attack an army led by Chlothar’s son. She and her supporters

also urged him to attack his brother Theudebert, in deﬁance of the wishes of

Brunehild: Gregory, Hist. vi.4.267–8;Nelson (1978). Fredegund: Gregory, Hist. v.49.258–63, accu-

sation, vii.7.329–30, viii.9.376,rumours.

Deposition and assassination of Bishop Desiderius of Vienne: Sisebut, Vita Desiderii;Fontaine

(1980).

230 raymond van dam

other local notables. Theudebert then contemplated an alliance not only with

Chlothar,but also with King Witteric of the Visigoths in Spain and King Agilulf

of the Lombards in Italy. The proposed alliance with the Visigoths is another

indication of the waning of Brunehild’s inﬂuence, because although she was

related to an earlier Visigothic dynasty and although one of her daughters had

once married the son of a Visigothic king, she had nevertheless prevented the

consummation of a marriage between Witteric’s daughter and Theuderic that

aristocrats in Burgundy had arranged. In order to protect her own position

with her grandson she had antagonised both the Visigoths and some of the

Burgundian nobility. The most vocal opposition to Brunehild’s schemes came,

however, from Columbanus, an Irish monk who had founded monasteries in

eastern Burgundy and who refused to bless Theuderic’s bastard sons.

After

Brunehild ﬁnally arranged Columbanus’ exile, Theuderic defeated Theudebert

in 612 and rejoined Burgundy with Austrasia. As he began to raise an army

against Chlothar and his kingdom of Neustria, Theuderic appeared to be the

king who would reunite the Frankish kingdoms under his rule.

reunification

Theuderic died in 613, and as usual local aristocrats had the last word. In

Austrasia an aristocratic faction led by Pippin of Landen and Bishop Arnulf

of Metz, both great landowners in the Moselle valley, invited an alliance with

Chlothar. Brunehild was meanwhile trying to promote Sigibert II, one of

Theuderic’s sons, as sole king. Her rejection of the usual Merovingian practice

of dividing a kingdom among all surviving sons was presumably an attempt

to unite her supporters in both Burgundy and Austrasia. But Warnachar, a

Frank serving as mayor of the palace in Burgundy, combined with the notables

of Austrasia to betray Brunehild and her great-grandson to Chlothar, who

had them executed, but only after ﬁrst accusing his aunt of the deaths of no

fewer than ten Frankish kings. Surprisingly enough, the king of Neustria had

reuniﬁed the Frankish kingdoms. As one indication of his new prominence,

in 614 Chlothar was able to summon almost eighty bishops from Austrasia,

Neustria, Burgundy and Aquitaine to a council that met at his capital city of

Paris in the Church of St Peter once constructed by King Clovis himself. The

chronicler Fredegar supplied a facile comparison: under Chlothar II ‘the entire

kingdom of the Franks was reunited just as under the rule of Chlothar I’.

Chlothar I had been the sole Frankish king for a mere three years – the

only three years after Clovis’ death during which there had been one king.

Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani i.18–19.86–90;Prinz (1981); Rich

e(1981).

Fredegar, Chron. iv.42.142;Ebling (1974), pp. 235–8.

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 231

Regionalism, local autonomy, and the power of great aristocrats and proud

bishops had characterised Merovingian Gaul during the sixth century, and

remained inﬂuential thereafter. Chlothar II therefore had to pay a price for

this reuniﬁcation, ﬁrst by reappointing Warnachar as mayor in Burgundy and

Rado in Austrasia, then a decade later by appointing his son Dagobert I as

king in Austrasia, although under the inﬂuence of Pippin and Bishop Arnulf.

The Merovingians attempted to assert their authority especially in Neustria,

in particular by patronising the cult of St Dionysius (St Denis), whose church

and monastery outside Paris became a principal site for royal tombs. But aristo-

crats, Frankish, Roman and Burgundian, also began to use similar methods for

promoting their own families. The new style of Irish monasticism introduced

by Columbanus and others in eastern and northern Gaul gave them the oppor-

tunity to found and endow monasteries in the rural countryside far outside the

cities that bishops dominated. Since they remained the seigneurial lords for

these new foundations, members of their families became inﬂuential abbots

and monks, sometimes after having held royal magistracies, sometimes too

before going on to become bishops. Eventually some of these men were vener-

ated as saints, whose holiness then validated the prominence of their families

too.

The ‘reuniﬁcation’ of the Frankish possessions hence also marked, not so

paradoxically, explicit recognition of the power of local aristocrats and of the

distinctive identities of the various sub-kingdoms and other important regions.

Chlothar II, Dagobert I and their successors may have preferred comparisons

with the paradigm kings from the Old Testament, David and Solomon, but the

more appropriate biblical analogy for Merovingian Gaul by the early seventh

century would be the situation after Solomon’s death, when two kingdoms

maintained an uneasy control over the many distinct tribes of Israelites.

Foraslightly different perspective, see Fouracre, chapter 14 below.

St Denis: Semmler (1989); ‘self-sanctiﬁcation’: Prinz (1965), pp. 489–503, also Fouracre, chapter 14

below.

Epistolae aevi Merowingici collectae xv,pp.457–60, episcopal promotion of David and Solomon in

the mid-seventh century; Eddius Stephanus, Vita Wilfridi c.33,pp.68–9, comparison of Dagobert ii

to King Rehoboam.

chapter 9

THE CELTIC KINGDOMS

Wendy Davies

Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, south-western Britain (Cornwall and

Devon) and Brittany were the principal Celtic countries in the sixth and sev-

enth centuries, although some other parts of western Europe still had a Celtic

vernacular language at that time. This was certainly the case in north-west Spain

and in parts of England, but may also have been so in central France. These

Celtic countries are deﬁned linguistically: they are the areas in which Celtic

languages were normally and primarily used. The languages themselves fall into

two broad groups, Brittonic (a type of P-Celtic) and Goidelic (Q-Celtic), the

language groups of Britain and Ireland respectively. During this period some

distinctions between the constituent Brittonic languages developed, but these

were relatively slight and did not prevent communication across the group;

Primitive Cumbric, therefore, the language of southern Scotland and north-

west England, was little different from Primitive Welsh, which was itself little

different from Primitive Cornish.

Primitive Breton was at this stage indis-

tinguishable from Cornish, although it remains a matter of debate whether

Breton was introduced to north-west France by immigrants from Britain or

whether some dialects were the natural (or reinforced or brittonised) continu-

ation of the P-Celtic Gaulish that had once been spoken over much of western

Europe.

The main Pictish language, the language of eastern and northern

Scotland, appears to have been a rather different form of P-Celtic (possibly

closer to Gaulish) and may or may not have been immediately intelligible to

speakers of Cumbric to the south. Though we might expect some regional

differences within it, speakers of the Goidelic group were largely conﬁned to

Ireland and spoke a single Primitive Irish.

However, Irish was also spoken in

parts of western Britain: south-west Scotland especially, but also west Wales

and west Cornwall.

Jackson (1953), pp. 3–11.

Falc’hun (1963); Jackson (1967), pp. 21–36;Fleuriot (1980), pp. 55–78.

Koch (1995).

232