5 - Script in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall

Summary

It is difficult to present an accurate picture of book production in pre-Conquest Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. This is because so little identifiable material written in these regions has survived – fewer than twenty manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts pre-dating the twelfth century, compared with more than fifty from Ireland and hundreds from England. Very few of our surviving pre-1100 manuscripts written in Wales or Cornwall appear actually to have been preserved in those regions: they travelled to England, or further afield, at an early date. Scotland is in an even worse position, as not one manuscript written earlier than the twelfth century can with certainty be attributed to this region. The unfortunate end result is that our impression of Insular manuscript production tends inevitably to concentrate on Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England.

The earliest manuscript securely identifiable as a product of Celtic Britain was written in the early ninth century. This makes it two hundred or more years later than the earliest products of Ireland and England. For the long period before this date, when books must have been produced but no longer exist, we are forced to rely partly on guesswork. We do know that – as part of the Roman Empire – Wales, Cornwall and the southern part of Scotland would have been introduced to literacy in Latin.