CHAPTER IX - THE CYMRY AND THE SAXONS, A.D. 634—819

Summary

'Tis man's bold task the generous strife to try,

But in the hands of God is victory.

Pope'sIliad, book vii. lines 117, 118.

§ 1. The words Wales and Welsh are corruptions of Teutonic epithets applied to a land of Celtic strangers and to a strange people.

The Saxon settlers in Britain called the Cymry Bretwealhas, the Cymry of North Britain Strath-clædwealhas, and the Cornish people Cern-wealhas. The term Walcher seems to have been used by the Teutonic race as generally descriptive of a Gaul.

§ 2. The same love of liberty, the same vigorous efforts to retain it, the same persistent endeavour through successive centuries to regain it, characterize the Britons of Roman and of Saxon times. For nearly 200 years after the arrival of Hengist, the harassed people continued to elect a Pendragon, thus declaring their claims to national independence and supreme sovereignty.

The Northern Cymry, stoutly resisting all assailants, had proved themselves worthy of Venutius and their forefathers, and still held the districts lying between the Frith of Clyde and the estuary of the Dee, and westward of the Penine Chain, long known as the native kingdom of Strath Clyde and Cumbria.

The Britons of Cornwall and the chief part of Devon still lived under native princes, and attached themselves to the King of Gwynedd, whose dominions comprehended the whole of the country between Chester and Gloucester, and were bounded on the east by the rivers Dee and Severn.