Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/77

12S. I. JAN. 22, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

71 and (8) William Hook, who matriculated at Oxford from Brasenose, June 12, 1800, and became an Ensign in the Bedfordshire Militia in 1803.

published his 'Annales' soon after 114. In his Book XII. cap. xxxi. he speaks of the plans made by Publius Ostorius in 50 to regulate the affairs of the newly conquered districts in Britannia. The passage in mind ought to have been valuable both historically and geographically. But, owing to an unfortunate scribal mistake, the meaning and the references are obscured. No real solution of the difficulty was attained to until April 28, 1883, when Dr. Henry Bradley emended the passage in a letter to The Academy. Dr. Bradley's emendation is acclaimed by (ante, p. 35), and I am of the opinion that it should have been accepted and adopted by all scholars.

In 1885 Prof. Mommsen's 'Roman History' was published, and in the fifth volume the Roman provinces are described. In 1909 the translation of Mommsen's 'The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian,' made by Dr. William P. Dickson, appeared " with the author's sanction and additions." In vol. i. p. 178, note, the difficult passage in the ' Annales ' is considered. Mommsen there quotes, in- terpolates, and comments as follows :

(P. Ostorius) cuncta castris ad ...ntonam [MSS. read castris antonam] et Sabrinam fluvios cohibere parat.' So the passage is to be restored, only that the name of the Tern not elsewhere given in tradition cannot be supplied."

It would be less incorrect to say that the passage is shattered. It is certainly not "restored." Mommsen not only inter- polated " ad " in order to secure the regimen required by the river-names and by "fluvios," but also imported the suggestion that "... ntona," if we could but expand it, would yield the British name of the Tern. This is unsupported guesswork. In view of these considerations it is difficult to understand why Prof. Mommsen did not avail himself of Dr. Bradley' s palmary emendation of castris antonam into cis trisantonam. I admit that Dr. Bradley' s emendation falls short of perfection in one particular a phonological one ; but that is riot material to the real issue.

The shortcoming I refer to is this: Dr. Bradley did not reduce the scribal meta- thesis "castris" correctly. Both syllables should be emended. This turns "castris" into cistras, and for those who can accept this transmutation the cause of the scribal error and the full meaning of the phrase immediately become quite clear. I would read Tacitus thus : P. Ostorius cuncta cis Trasantonam et Sabrinam fluvios cohibere parat.

Some commentators have believed that " cuncta " authorizes the statement that the two rivers were linked together by camps. But " cuncta " means everything connected with the Roman acquisitions between the two rivers and the eastern and southern seas. Dr. Bradley' s emendation has made that quite certain, and the little point I am raising, apart from its phono- logical value, does not, in my estimation, detract in the least from the value of his conjecture.

If I am right, the Old British first-century name of the Trent was Trasanton-. How did that become " Trent " ?

The Cambro-Briton Nennius was writing in A.D. 837, and he accords the eagre (I am copying Dryden's spelling) of the river " Trahannon " the second place among the marvels enumerated in his tract ' De Mirabilibus Britanniss.' The scribe of the Harleian recension of Nennius bungled the name, and in the eleventh- and twelfth- century MSS. H. and K. trans hannon is the river-name. No other MS. yields trans, and the Durham MS. (scr. c. 1150) has trahannon. The explanation is quite simple : the Welsh tra, when it is a vocable, means trans, and the scribe applied his knowledge of that fact to his text and obscured it. The true syllabic division is Tras-ant-on-, and in Old Welsh earlier British s, when flanked by vowels, was lost ; cp. ' Lectures on Welsh Philology,' by John Rhys, M.A., 1879, Lecture II. p. 50. This rule postulates a form *trahanton, instead of trasanton, and from that have sprung both the O.W. Trahannon" and the Middle and Modern English "Trent."

First of all we will take the Welsh objection to intervocalic nt. A tooth is " dant," but " toothed " is dannheddog ; teilwng is "worthy," but "unworthy" is annheilwng. Similarly "ynNhywyn" means " at Towyn." In O.W. nh was not used in this way ; cp. fontanay O.W. finnauny Mid. W. ffynhaun > Mod. W. ffynnon. In a similar way Constantin-us became Custennin and, later, Cystennhin. Hence O.W. Trahannon