handbook of the origin of place-names in wales and monmouthshire

The city of Chester is still popularly called Caer, from the ancient wall that has encircled it for ages. Chester— a Saxonized form of the Latin castrum, a fort, and one of the six words recognised as directly inheritedfrom the Roman invaders — is a common prefix and suffix in English place-names; as Colchester,Manchester, Chesterford, Chesterton. In the Anglian and Danish districts we find " Chester " is replaced by"caster"; as Doncaster, Lancaster, &c, but both forms are allied to castrum, which is a Latinization of theCeltic caer. As the Latin castrum will always be an etymological souvenir to future generations of the Romanincursions, and the havoc they committed here ere " Britannia ruled the waves," even so the Celtic wordcaer, which is found in so many Welsh and a few English place-names, will ever be an historical finger-post,pointing to the necessity which was laid upon our forefathers to defend themselves against foreign bands ofinvaders. The word is also a standing proof in England that the dominion of the ancient Kymry wassometimes considerably more extensive than that of little Wales. If the reader will be so fortunate as to find amap of England which was published in the time of Ella, the first Bretwalda of the Saxon race, the recurrentcaer would make him almost imagine he was perusing the map of Wales. There he would find Caer-legion,Chester, which is still called Caerlleon; Caer-Badon, Bath; Caer-Glou, Gloucester; Caer-Ebrawe, Eboracumof the Romans, and the Saxon York ; and Caer-Lundene, London, &c. In course of time the vowel e waselided, hence we have such examples as Carmarthen, Cardiff, Carlisle, Carsey, Carsop, Pencarow(Pencaerau), Carew, &c.Carn, Carnedd, or Cairn, means a heap of stones. These cairns or tumuli are found in large numbers inWales. They were, according to some, either family cemeteries or monuments raised to commemorate therelics of a number of heroes who fell in defence of their country. But others are inclined to think they werethrown, as tokens of disgrace, over executed malefactors. Dr. Owen Pugh says — " The carneddau and thetumuli of earth were the common monuments that the ancient Britons erected in honour of their great men.Which of the two kinds was probably determined by the circumstance of the country being stony orotherwise. These modes of interment continued in use many years after the introduction of Christianity ; butwhen the custom of burying in churches became general, the former ways were not only disused, butcondemned as fit only for the great criminals. When the carnedd was considered as the honourable tomb ofa warrior, every passenger threw his additional stone out of reverence to his memory. When this heap cameto be disgraced by being the mark where the guilty was laid, the custom for everyone that passed to fling hisstone still continued, but nowise a token of detestation. "Professor Rhys, in his " Celtic Britain," gives a graphic description of the removal of one of these cairns in thevicinity of Mold, in 1832. " It was believed," he writes, " in the country around to be haunted by a spectre ingold armour, and when more than 300 loads of stones had been carted away the workmen came to theskeleton of a tall and powerful man placed at full length. He had been laid there clad in a finely-wroughtcorslet of gold, with a lining of bronze : the former was found to be a thin plate of the precious metal,measuring three feet seven inches long by eight inches wide. Near at hand were discovered 300 amberbeads and traces of something made of iron, together with an urn full of ashes, and standing about threeyards from the skeleton. The work on the corslet is believed to have been foreign, and is termed Etruscan byProf. Boyd Dawkins. The burial belongs to an age when cremation was not entirely obsolete in this country,and we should probably not be wrong in attributing it to the time of the Roman occupation. On the whole, theduty of commemorating the dead among the Celts may be supposed to have devolved on the bards, towhom we are probably indebted for the seventy or more triplets devoted to this object and preserved in aWelsh manuscript of the twelfth century. The last of them, which, remarkably enough, has to do with a gravein this same district of Mold, runs as follows, when freely rendered into English: -“Whose is the grave in the great glade ?Proud was his hand on his blade —There Beli the giant is laid."Castell, frequently contracted into cas, is the Welsh for a castle, a fortified residence.It is difficult to ascertain the exact time when castles were first introduced into Wales.The Romans probably began to erect fortresses in the territories conquered by them, and the Saxonsfollowed their example ; but strong castles of defence were comparatively few here ere the commencementof the Norman Conquest. Feudalism gave rise to castles in the sense of fortified residences, and it is fromthe advent of the Normans to our land we must date the castle as an institution. A large number was alsoerected during the reign of Edward III. and his immediate successors. " That old fortress," said Mr.Gladstone, pointing with his stick to the remains of Hawarden Castle, " is one of the emblems of the difficultyOrigin of Place-names in Wales & Monmouthshire Page 6