Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/476

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NOTES AND QUERIES. 19* s. in. JUNE 17, m

SWANSEA: ITS DERIVATION. (9 th S. i. 43, 98, 148, 194, 370, 433, 486.)

THE unsatisfactory attempt to prove that this name is of Welsh origin rests in the first place upon the identification of the Castell Sein Henydd of the * Brut y Tywyssogion' with Swansea Castle. But the identification is assumed rather than proved. A comparison of the 1216 entry in the 'Brut' with the entry of 1215 in the 'Annales Cambrise' does not establish the identity of Castell Sein Henydd with the castle of Abertawe, which we know from two pas- sages in Giraldus Cambrensis was the Welsh name of Swansea Castle. In the ' Brut ' itself under 1113 the latter is called "a castle near Abertawe." So distinguished an authority upon Welsh topography as Mr. Egerton Pnillimore concluded that the Castell Sein Henydd was Saint Cenydd or Llangenydd, which is some miles distant from Swansea (Owen's 'Pembrokeshire,' i. 258, note 2). More- over, Giraldus Cambrensis pointedly says that Swansea was the English name and Abertawe the Welsh name of the castle.*

It is then assumed that Sein Henydd or a later form Sein Heny could only be repre- sented in Norman pronunciation as Sweineshe. This is backed up by selecting the form Sweinehe, though it is obvious from hundreds of examples of the name that this is a clerical error for Sweineshe.i PROF. SKEAT has exposed the baselessness of this assumption as to the Norman pronunciation. As a matter of fact there is no reason for believing that the Nor- mans of about the year 1100, the period of the conquest of Swansea, would have repre- sented Sein Henydd otherwise than by Sein Henith^l for there was no difficulty for them about the Welsh sounds, and they were then acquainted with terminations in th in French participles derived from the Latin -atus, in the words feith (faith) from fidem, deinteth, and other French derivatives from Latin


 * 'Itinerarium Kambriae,' i. c. 5 ('Opera,' vi.

. 172), " De montanisquoque de Brecheniauc Tawe uvius per castellum de Abertawe, quod Anglice

Sweynesia, dicitur in profundum dilabitur." In

lib. ix. c. 8 (p. 73), he mentions sleeping "in castro de Sweineshe, quodetKambricevl&ertaMt>evocatur."

t Similarly the form Sweynesche is a misreading of Sweynesehe, and Sweynelhe represents Sweyneshe, the long s having been misread as I, from which it is almost undistinguishable in twelfth and early thirteenth century hands.

Or Sein Henid as they would have spelt it, the Central and Northern French d then having the value of t h in such positions.

-tatem. MR. ROBERTS ascribes the change of the initial of Cenydd to Henydd to the " in- fluence of the Anglo-Saxon language," but such a change is alien to that language. His reasons .for this are that " in many Welsh words with an initial c the English have an initial h, as in corn, horn ; cantref, hundred caff'ael, have," &c. Surely he cannot intend to convey that the English words are of Welsh origin. The change of Indogermanic k to h in these Germanic words was completed long before the English settled in Britain, and cannot possibly be cited to support the change in Sein Henydd. The change in the latter case is really a Middle- Welsh one.

It therefore seems clear that Swansea, a town that grew up round the Norman castle, derives its name from the Old Norse Sweinn, but it is not necessary to assume that the Sweinn in question was a Norse pirate. The name was in use amongst the English long after the vikings had ceased to ravage these coasts, and it might be the name of one of the conquerors of Gower. There are many island names in ey round the Welsh coast, and in most cases a Norse origin is clear. The fact that there is no island at Swansea does not preclude a derivation from this Germanic word, but rather suggests a deriva- tion from the English form, for, as I have shown in 7 th S. iv. 349, the English word meant land surrounded by swamp or near water as well as island, and hence is fre- quently found in English names where there is no island. W. H. STEVENSON.

"To GREEN" (9 th S. iii. 368). In the fourth stanza of Gavin Douglas's Prologue to '^Eneid ' viii. (Douglas's 'Virgil,' 1573), one class of the poet's fellow-citizens is depicted as that which "grenis quhill the gers grow for his gray meyr " that is, though the heavens should fall on his neighbours, a man's own pasture is his main concern while another " grenis eftir a gus," or longs to serve a pampered appetite. Alexander Montgomerie, in stanza xxx vii. of * The Cherrie and the Slae ' ( 1 597 ), uses " grening " in the sense of longing or desire : Frae anes that thou thy grening get Thy paine and travel is forzet ;

which is an addition to such reassuring texts as " Haec olim meminisse iuvabit," and the rest. The opening stanza of ' The Ballad of the Ked-Squair,' in Allan Eamsay's 'Ever- green' (1724), has the statement that those who came seeking justice

Will never grein to come again. [n order to show that the word is not from Teut. greyden=appetere, but from Moes.-G.