Flinders Petrie

“ On the other hand, Tysilio knew nothing of the two great storms, nor of Caesar’s difficulties; he does not name Mandubratius, nor any of the tribes named by Caesar; he lets out that Caswallon was personally defeated in Kent, and had to surrender; and he states that Caesar stayed the winter in London. It seems on every account to be entirely impossible to suppose that Tysilio, or his sources, were compiled from Caesar’s narrative. If not, then, as no other Latin narrative is known or would be applicable, we are bound to refer this strongly British account to a British source. ”

“ In naming the original authorities in this paper, the names of Tysilio, Nennius, and Gildas are merely used as brief labels, which are enough to specify certain known works. The questions of real authorship, of original dates of compositions, and of successive MSS. are quite outside of my scope here, which is only to call attention to the historical value of writings which are at present ignored. In any case the name of Tysilio has merely been given to a. chronicle by guesswork, but it is useful as a label.
It is a misfortune that the Celtic mind prefers literature to history. ”

“ Of the Roman campaigns in northern Britain there is scarcely a trace in Tysilio. Meurig apparently took part as ally with the Romans, for the repulse of the Pictish invasion is credited to him. There is no trace of the great revolt of Boudicca, either in Tysilio or Nennius, true to the western nature of the chronicle. Gildas, with his Roman bias, described it, as it suited his denunciations. All through these periods there is nothing in Geoffrey which is beyond a verbal amplification of Tysilio. ”

“ The later Romans, when there was little in the world left to plunder, impressed others by their power and tradition; but the plunder motive was the mainspring in the earlier time, and is here put forward. It is certainly not a mediaeval view of Caesar.
The gathering ground of the Britons is stated by Tysilio to have been at Doral, in Geoffrey Dorobellum. This Doral appears to be the British form of Durolevum; and as in Low Latin minuscule l might easily he mistaken for b, and u for ll, Durolevum could pass into Dorobellum. Durolevum was midway between Rochester and Canterbury. ”

“ His men ‘were little suited to this kind of enemy’, and the Britons arranged relays of fresh men to take up the fight. On all this skill in war Tysilio is entirely silent. It seems impossible that he had ever read of it, but it is natural that a British account would not dwell on methods which were usual. Caesar next describes his attack on the city, or forest fortress, of Caswallon, which he took. He states that Caswallon wrote to the kings of Kent to attack the base. Tysilio knew the other side, which was unknown to Caesar, that Caswallon himself went to Kent to make the attack. ”

“ This bears strongly on the mixture of race, which left many parts more Celtic than Saxon. Abstracting the later Danish migration, the most un-Celtic regions, Sussex and Hampshire, were mainly forest and without a fixed Celtic population. The Saxon dominated where there was least existing habitation. Another point strongly shown by the internal view given by Tysilio is the frequent and ready change of allegiance. In the tribal state a personal quarrel breaks the bond, which in the national state is too strong to be cut through. ”

“ The difficult question of the sources of Hector Boece here arises. He describes at length the rise of Carausius, and definitely names the Roman governor Quintus Bassianus. John of Fordun also names the governor Bassianus as sent by the emperors from Rome. It seems unlikely that these details were concocted four centuries ago out of the meagre and confused account of Bassianus in Tysilio and Geoffrey. If this be independent, we must grant original value to the sources of the Scottish historian. ”

“ These numbers are not in Tysilio; but, strikingly, Tysilio gives the numbers of the later female migrations as 1,100 and 6,000, just a tenth of those in Geoffrey’s copy. Yet these latter can hardly be his invention, as the 11,000 instead of 1,100 appear in the Brut chronicle in Brittany of about 940 (See note in Hodgkin R.C.P.S. p.12) . We must look to the historical conditions. The large migration of men is often referred to later, as a cause of the weakness in face of the Picts. It must therefore have been a large part of the fighting population. They required their women-folk to follow. ”

“ Caesar raised 800 vessels in the channel for his transports (v. 8) and could carry 150 men in each (iv. 22, 37) . Hence there is not the least difficulty as to 10,000 or 20,000 emigrants having been afloat at once in the channel. In triad 68 the British fleet is put at 360 ships of 120 sailors each, total 43000.
With regard to the mythical matter in Geoffrey, his own declarations seem to have been disregarded. In all the period that we have been noting there is nothing more than a florid expansion of Tysilio, except in a few fresh passages, mainly from Nennius and Gildas. ”

“ There is no reason whatever, therefore, to doubt Walter’s statement that he brought the book out of Brittany, nor Geoffrey's statement that he used Walter’s manuscript. The material plainly lies before us. ”

“ In triad 62 Lleurwg, the great-grandson of Caradog, ‘first gave land, and the privilege of the country (i.e. position of native free-men) to those who first dedicated themselves to the faith of Christ’, and he founded the first archbishopric, that of Llandav. ”