Talk:Six Old English Chronicles/Nennius's History of the Britons (Annotated)

serious historical text please.
Hello, is there a serious and rigorous text relating to the history of britons? This is a Tale, not a historical text, and I am looking for the later. Thanks.

Not a serious text
You're right, this isn't a serious historical text. It's a translation of an ancient text from the ninth century, which at the time it was written, was believed to be historical. I'm sure you can find history books on Britain at your local library, or by going to Wikipedia. Wikisource is for public domain editions of texts, some fictitious, and some not.

How much of this is Rev. Gunn's?
I'm just wondering, what part of this text comes from Rev. Gunn's work? It looks to me like his edition stops at what's Chapter 56 in this edition, but all chapters up to and including that in this edition seem to come from the Giles translation available on the Medieval Sourcebook. I don't see anything here which comes from Gunn's work.
 * Due to your concerns that this may be a construct, and not a replication, I have added fidelity template to the work. If you believe that it is just not Gunn's work, then we can look to remove his name from the translation, and put an annotation to that effect here. — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:35, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I've looked into this further by reviewing the scan of the original book on Google Books, which is listed in the sources. I've found that the text in this publication is a revision of Gunn's original translation. Giles is the revisionist, and the translator of some of the chapters which were not translated by Gunn. This edition is credited to Giles, even though it's based on Gunn's translation. --Arlo (talk) 00:27, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Neither Gunn nor Giles translates Mirabilia section
Just want to clarify. It appears that even though Giles edited the Latin text of the Mirabilia section, he did not translate it. I have found an old public domain dated translation here:. I am going to go ahead and append its translation to provide the currently missing Ch. 74-75, the miracles of Mona (Anglesey) and Ireland. Note I also have padded up the bibliography in the Reference section of the Historia Brittonum FYI. --Kiyoweap (talk) 00:13, 8 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Funny: «Nennius is commonly ascribed to be its author, since the preface is written in his name in certain manuscripts. However, more recent scholarship (Dumville, 1985) dismisses the Nennian preface as a late forgery, and argues for characterizing the work as an anonymous compilation[1][2] (See #Authorship and Dating).»
 * (..nor Nennius wrote, eh?)Lincoln Josh (talk) 15:41, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I have removed this section because it does not appear in this edition. I'll add the Cambrian quarterly magazine and Celtic repertory separately afterwards. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Were the Saxons too few or too great in number?
In chapter 36, the Britons tell the Saxons to go home since they have grown unmanageable in their multitude. But in the next chapter the "crafty" Hengist's rejoinder is that though they are few in number, more men can brought over from the Saxon homeland (which for some reason is Scythia). What's going on here? Zacwill (talk) 22:38, 30 September 2016 (UTC)