Archæologia Britannica (from Latin: Antiquities of Britain), the first volume of which was published in 1707, is a pioneering study of the Celtic languages written by Edward Lhuyd.
Following an extensive tour of Great Britain and Ireland lasting more than four years, Lhuyd began work on Glossography, the first volume of a planned four-volume set, Archæologia Britannica, which combined innovative methods of historical linguistics, language comparison, and field research, to establish a genetic relationship between the Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Gaulish languages. After a significant delay, the Glossography was finally published in 1707.
Due to Lhuyd's early death at the age of 49, the last three volumes were never produced or published, and many of Lhuyd's manuscripts and research notes were later lost, destroyed in two separate fires. As the only completed volume, the Glossography itself is often referred to as Archæologia Britannica.
Summary
Lhuyd's basic argument in Glossography is that languages develop from a parent language by various processes of linguistic change, such as transposition of sounds or syllables, acquisition of loanwords, mispronunciation, and use of different prefixes or suffixes. For example, he notes that sounds in one language may correspond to a different sound in another language, so for instance [k] in Greek, Latin, Welsh, and Irish is changed into [h] in the 'Teutonic' (i.e. Germanic) languages.
Lhuyd understood that different orthographic conventions in different languages may hinder comparison, and introduces a General Alphabet to facilitate direct comparison between languages. His methodology allows a systematic study of etymology, including a focus on regular sound changes, equivalence or similarity of meaning of cognates, and shared morphology, and emphasises that the basis of comparison should be the most basic parts of a language's core vocabulary.
Lhuyd realized that the Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Gaulish languages were closely related to each other, provided a number of phonetic correspondences that define the relationship between them, and proposed a genetic relationship between the Goidelic and Brittonic languages. Building on the earlier work of George Buchanan and Paul-Yves Pezron, he categorized these languages as a Celtic language family sharing a common origin.
Lhuyd attempts to explain the linguistic differences in the Celtic languages using a model where Goidelic (or Q-Celtic) languages are first introduced to Britain and Ireland from Gaul, followed by a second, later migration, also from Gaul, of Brittonic (or P-Celtic) speakers, a model that Barry Cunliffe describes as being "broadly accepted and discussed by historical philologists over the last 300 years."
Background
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the identity of the Greek Keltoi, and Latin Celtae and Galli, were discussed by scholars, with various national groups claiming descent from the ancient 'Celts' of antiquity, with no modern understanding of Celts as a linguistic group related to speakers of Brittonic or Goidelic languages. By the end of the sixteenth century, European intellectuals had begun to seriously debate whether Welsh and Irish, for example, were related languages. Scaliger had argued in the 1590s that these languages were unrelated. George Buchanan, on the other hand, had previously argued on philological grounds that the ancient Britons were Gaulish, and that Gaelic was also related to Gaulish, and he is often regarded as the first to recognize these languages as Celtic in the modern sense. Although several seventeenth-century writers supported this idea, the debate had not been conclusively resolved by the end of the seventeenth century.
In 1693, Edward Lhuyd, an antiquarian, naturalist, botanist, geographer, and philologist, and recently appointed Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, was invited to contribute to the Welsh sections of William Camden's Brittania, a survey of Great Britain and Ireland. His work on this revision motivated him to begin his own magnum opus, Archæologia Britannica, an envisaged comparative study of the shared characteristics of the languages, archaeology, and culture of Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, and Ireland.
Following the publication of Britannia in 1695, Lhuyd published A Design of a British Dictionary, Historical & Geographical: with an Essay entitl'd Archæologia Britannica, seeking subscribers to fund the research, fieldwork, and eventual publication of what was initially conceived as a multi-volume work, Archæologia Britannica or An Account of the Ancient Languages, Customs, and Monuments of the British Isles. Following the successful publication of the Design, Lhuyd printed a questionnaire, Parochial Queries, three copies of which were distributed to every parish in Wales, providing Lhuyd with preliminary data with which to plan his fieldwork. The questionnaire asks for various types of information, including plants, minerals, stones, birds, quadrupeds, and the weather.
Tour of Celtic countries
With his assistants Robert Wynne, William Jones, and David Parry, Lhuyd began his "great tour", lasting from 1697 to 1701. Lhuyd and his companions travelled Britain and Ireland for four years, studying and collecting manuscripts, ancient artefacts, and fossils, describing architecture and monuments, and recording local culture and spoken languages. The four-year long tour has been described as "made under the most difficult conditions of travel, and at great cost to [Lhuyd's] health and well-being."
Lhuyd's methodology included collection of primary data from native speakers, such as asking speakers to translate terms into their native languages.
North Wales (1696)
Lhuyd here initially conducted research from April to October of this year. Initial funding from subscribers allowed Lhuyd to go on a six-month tour. In June, Lhuyd met with Richard Richardson, with whom he studied botany in Snowdonia. Lhuyd also studied manuscripts at Bangor and Hengwrt, and visited eight or nine counties in total.
Wales (1697–1699)
Having trained others to take on his duties at Oxford and collected some funding, Lhuyd, along with his three assistants, began his tour in May 1697, travelling through Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean, and reaching Chepstow on 13 May.
After three months, Lhuyd arrived at Cowbridge, where he spent two months copying a manuscript. Lhuyd spent a total of one year in south Wales, then travelled to Cardigan, then to Hereford in August 1698. Lhuyd obtained a Welsh-Latin dictionary and hunted fossils while in Wales.
On account of their research activities during their travels in Wales, Lhuyd and his assistants were suspected of being Jacobite spies, conjurers, or tax collectors by suspicious locals. Despite this, Robert Gunther states that his numerous connections in Wales made him a "welcome enquirer everywhere."
Ireland and Scotland (1699–1700)
From Wales, Lhuyd and his team reached Ireland in July or August 1699, landing in Dublin, then travelled to Antrim and visited Newgrange and the Giant's Causeway. They then took the ferry to Scotland in late September or October, before returning to northern Ireland by boat in January 1700, visiting Ulster, Connaught, and Munster, arriving in Killarney in July.
In the Scottish Highlands, Lhuyd recorded "the Highland Tongue" (Scottish Gaelic) from native speakers, and also describes some small ancient glass charms he found. Lhuyd remarks in a letter that he learned very little Irish from the natives, learning most of that language from books.
According to Lhuyd, he was obliged to leave Ireland sooner than intended because of the "Tories of Kil-Arni."
Cornwall (1700–1701)
Probably directly from Ireland, or perhaps via Wales, Lhuyd arrived in Cornwall in August 1700. In Cornwall, Lhuyd was able to gather information about the Cornish language by listening to native speakers, especially the parish of St. Just, from local antiquarians such as Nicholas Boson and John Keigwin, and from three manuscripts he was able to study, Pascon agan Arluth, the Ordinalia, and Gwreans an Bys. Lhuyd's team also produced sketches and plans of antiquities and ancient monuments, including Boskednan stone circle and Chûn Castle.
According to Thomas Tonkin's account, Lhuyd and his assistants were arrested as suspected thieves, and brought in front of a justice of the peace, who then released them. Lhuyd and his team visited many places in Cornwall, including Penzance, Lambriggan, and Falmouth.
John Keigwin's reaction to Lhuyd's arrival in Mousehole is satirized in Alan Kent's Anglo-Cornish dialect play, Dreaming in Cornish:
Brittany (1701)
From Falmouth, Lhuyd arrived in Saint-Malo, Brittany in January 1701. Here, Lhuyd was able to procure two seventeen-century Breton dictionaries, one of which he could only obtain in exchange for his own copy of Davies' dictionary.
In Brittany, Lhuyd and his companions were jailed on suspicion of being English spies. According to Lhuyd, after arousing the suspicion of locals, his letters and documents were seized, his pockets searched, and he was imprisoned at Brest Castle for 18 days. After authorities found nothing treasonous in the seized documents, they were released, but then forced to leave the kingdom, as war "was already declar'd against the Empire, the Dutch, and the English." He eventually returned to England in March.
Itinerary Date Location1697MayForest of Dean13 MayChepstow15 JuneUsk18 JulySt. George, near Cardiff22 JulySt. Nicolas10 AugustCowbridge22 SeptemberLhan Dyvodwg25 SeptemberCowbridge20 OctoberSwansea20 NovemberCarmarthen20 DecemberLlandeilo16984 JanuaryTenby19 FebruaryScochburgh, near Tenby26 MarchCaldey Island2 AprilScochburgh, near Tenby1 MayScochburgh20 MayPembroke21 MayHaverfordwest19 JuneNarberth28 JuneLlan Bedr6 JulyCardigan3 AugustHereford19 SeptemberHay in Brecon18 OctoberNewtown26 OctoberMontgomery town22 NovemberGwersyllt28 NovemberLlanfyllin23 DecemberDolgelheu16992 JanuaryGwersyllt18 JanuaryDolgelheu4 AprilDolgelheu18 AprilGogerdhan25 May Tal y Cavan26 June FlintJuneConway1 August BeaumarisAugustDublin15 December Bathgate, near Linlithgow17001 FebruaryLondonderry12 March SligoApril Wales25 August Penzance27 August Lambrigan15 October St. Ives3 November Plymouth29 November Falmouth170114 January St. MaloJanuaryMorlaixFebruaryBrestMarchPoole10 MarchOxford
Proposed volumes
As originally conceived in Design, Lhuyd intended Archæologia Britannica to be divided into four volumes:
Volume I: "A comparison of the modern Welsh with other European languages", particularly Greek, Latin, Irish, Cornish, and Armorican (Breton). Volume II: A comparison of the customs and traditions of the Britons with those of other nations. According to the Welsh preface of volume I, this was intended to be a "Dictionary of history of ye Kings, Princes, Ancient nobility, ye Towns, Castles Churches and Saints and of all other very remarkable men and places, of ye British nation, mention'd in ancient records" Volume III: "An account of all such monuments now remaining in Wales as are presumed to be British; and either older or not much later than the Roman Conquest." Volume IV: "An Account of the Roman antiquities there and others of later Date, during the Government of the British Princes; together with Copies of all the Inscriptions of any considerable Antiquity."
On account of Lhuyd’s early death, only the first volume, Glossography, was eventually published.
Publication Glossography was completed in November 1703, at which time it was delivered to the printer. It was not published until 1707, however, due to a lack of suitable movable type for the complex orthography used in the volume, which consisted of an extended Latin alphabet combined with a variety of diacritics, meaning only one compositor could perform the task.
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