The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Robert Vermaat]

Were the Angles and Saxons really isolated from their Continental brethren?

No, the Anglo Saxons traded extensively with germanic speaking areas on the continent, pottery from the Rhineland and quern stones from southern germany for example. However, these areas were also unaffected. It's the lack of evidence for trade between the Anglo Saxons and Britons which may explain why the plague did not enter the germanic speaking world.

Hi Harry,

I refer to my earlier post today – it cannot be assumed that the british were hit because they traded with the Med and the Germanic speakers were not hit because they did not trade with the Med.

You see, to me all this talking about British suffering from plague and Anglo-Saxons not, seems more to do with explaining why the British lost, or that no Briton spoke to no Saxon. No one seems interested to dig up any evidence if the plague was even real or not, or the supposed consequences existed in reality.

Again, I ask the questions:

- Did the Germanic speakers not trade with the Med at all, nor with other groups that traded with the Med? Were the Goths in Spain not affected? How about the Goths in Italy? The Franks?


- Do we even know for sure that this bubonic (Justinian) plague even made it as far as Britain?

- Do we even know that large amounts of Britons were affected by the plague?

- Is the plague described by Procopius the same as a plague reported by Irish and Welsh annals?
The plague that may have killed Maelgwn Gwynedd for instance was later described as Vad Velen, which I wrote something about here: http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artsou/gildwhen.htm

Plague
It has become usual for scholars to date DEB as close as possible to Maglocunus’s death, which is conventionally dated to AD 547. This date is provided by the Annales Cambrae (Welsh Annals, c. AD 955):

Annales Cambriae, annus ciii (AD 547)
Mortalitas magna, in qua pausat Mailcun rex Guenedotae

That Maglocunus is meant here is beyond doubt, but the year is not. However, the entry itself is suspect. It was almost certainly copied from the earlier Chronicle of Ireland, which originally mentioned a list of Leinster names (not Maglocunus). The Welsh copyist may have had authority to substitute these names, but this is unknown to us. If not, the whole entry is false and any discussion bound to be useless.

However, should we accept (but on no real basis) that the Welsh copyist indeed had access to reliable information, we can concentrate on the year itself. If we compare it with the date for the battle of Badon (AD 516), we would end up with a publishing-date for DEB in AD 560, which is 13 years too late (below, Badon). One of the years must be wrong, but which?

The Mortalitas magna is usually seen as the ‘Great Plague of Justinian’, which started in the east in AD 542, and which could easily have reached Britain by AD 547. But how sure are we that Maglocunus indeed died in that plague?

Yellow fever
There is a problem, because Procopius (ca. 550) mentions this plague as a bubonic plague, whereas (much) later tradition such as Welsh vernacular texts mention only a ‘Yellow Pestilence’ (Vad Velen), which is definitely different from the bubonic version. Maglocunus, cursed by Taliesin the poet, fled to a church in Rhos, were he was followed by Vad Velen. The doomed king peeped through the keyhole, saw the monster and died. The Story of Taliesin describes it as a curse:

Mabinogion, Hanes Taliesin
A most strange creature will come
From the sea marsh of Rhianedd,
As a punishment of iniquity,
On Maelgwn Gwynedd;
His hair and his teeth,
And his eyes being as gold;
And this will bring destruction
On Maelgwn Gwynedd

Alas, all references of this Vad Velen, come to us through Edward Williams, a.k.a. Iolo Morganwg (1745-1820), who, according to Ifor Williams, was "the greatest forger of Welsh documents ever known. The damage that man has done! Maybe he was mad - let us be charitable" (..). Early MSS of the Mabinogion do not include these references to Vad Velen, but there are other sources that do. One is the Vita Teiliavi (Life of St.Teilo, 12th century), which confirms the death of Maelgwn in a Pestis Flava, while a second MS of the Annales Cambriae mentions Hir hun Wailgun en llis Rhos (‘The long sleep of Maelgwn in the court of Rhos’). To sum up, we have no evidence at all that Maglocunus died of the bubonic plague, but only that he might have died in a pestilence that turn victims yellow. If not a plague, what could this disease be?

The ‘Yellow Pestilence’ is recorded for Ireland in the sixth century as the Cron Chonaill, which was mentioned by the Annals of Ulster for 548, which would fit the entry concerning Maglocunus. This disease was no plague, but might best be identified with ‘relapsing fever’, which occurs often together with a plague. Relapsing fever was common in Ireland together with famine, and its modern name is still fiabhras buidhe (yellow fever). And if we consider that famine fever can spread from people lacking food to those with plenty of it (as it spreads through lice), we might have found a good candidate for the death of the king of Gwynedd.

Which leaves us with a circular argument: We cannot prove that Maglocunus died in AD 547, nor that he died of plague, so his death may not have been confirmed by the Great Plague of Justinian in 542 at all. The date of 547-8 may be confirmed by Irish annals, but they speak only of Yellow Fever, while the Annales Cambriae speak of plague. Which leaves us with an unconfirmed date that is provided only by an untrustworthy source. With these attempts to date Maglocunus and the British kings finalized, we must come to the conclusion that it is not possible to date DEB to a few years before 547, for the simple reason that it is not possible to date the death of Maglocunus/Maelgwn Gwynedd to that year.