Gildas

“ The wheels of the dreaded war-chariots seem to have rested on their axles; we scarcely meet with the record of a single revolt amongst the native tribes, excepting those beyond the wall of Adrian. Through the pages of Gildas we catch glimpses of strange miracles, and see the shadow of the cross falling over the old druidical altars, but nothing appears distinct; and although we may doubt many passages in the writings of this our earliest historian, it would be uncharitable to the memory of the dead even to entertain a thought that he wilfully falsified a single fact. ”

“ Writing at the end of the ninth century, Alcuin in his epistles twice refers to Gildas's book, and calls him the wisest of the Britons (Jaffé, ‘Monumenta Alcuiniana,’ in Bibl. Rer. Germ. vi. 206, 371) . Alcuin spells his name ‘Gildus.’ The twelfth-century manuscript of Gildas's history styles him in its rubrics ‘Saint Gildas the Wise.’ Gildas's statements gained wide currency from the use of his book by Bæda in the introductory chapters of his ‘Ecclesiastical History.’ Bæda speaks of him in one place as ‘Gildus, the historian of the Britons’ (Hist. Eccl. lib. i. chap. xxii.) . ”

“ Giraldus therefore follows Gildas, whom he wishes he could copy in his life and manners; becoming an imitator of his wisdom rather than of his eloquence—of his mind rather than of his writings—of his zeal rather than of his style—of his life rather than of his language. ”

“ Gildas when his remains are disturbed. I—I don't like it, Monsieur Darrel—"
"Bosh!" said I; "the poor wicked devil is where he can't get out. For Heaven's sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year of grace 1896?"
The mayor gave me a look.
"And he says 'Englishman.' You are an Englishman, Monsieur Darrel," he announced.
"You know better. You know I'm an American."
"It's all the same," said the Mayor of St. Gildas, obstinately.
"No, it isn't!" I answered, much exasperated, and deliberately pushed the skull till it rolled into the bottom of the gravel pit below. ”

“ Gildas from the convent the first thing she captured was my heart. For a long time I had refused to believe that any tie of blood linked this dainty blue-eyed creature with the Purple Emperor. Although she dressed in the velvet-laced bodice and blue petticoat of Finistère, and wore the bewitching white coiffe of St. Gildas, it seemed like a pretty masquerade. To me she was as sweet and as gently bred as many a maiden of the noble Faubourg who danced with her cousins at a Louis XV fête champêtre. So when Lys said that Yves Terrec had returned [16] openly to St. ”

“ Father Bribri overheard the words, and seeing Gildas approach holding in one hand a bottle of wine and water, and in the other a basket with glasses, called out to him as if he were at an inn:
"Waiter! This way, waiter! The old man here wants something to drink, if you please! He is thirsty!"
Surprised and touched by the civility of his companion on the mattress, the sergeant said to him:
"Thank you, my good old man; I may not decline, because I feel as if I would choke." ”

“ Hence, all that can be safely said of Gildas is that he was about as far removed from the seat of the Germanic invasions, in locality, as Beda, whilst in point of time he was nearer.
As a writer he is far inferior, being pre-eminently verbose, vague, and indefinite. ”

“ Two short treatises exist, purporting to be lives of Gildas, and ascribed respectively to the 11th and 12th centuries; but the writers of both are believed to have confounded two, if not more, persons that had borne the name. It is from an incidental remark of his own, namely, that the year of the siege of Mount Badon—one of the battles fought between the Saxons and the Britons—was also the year of his own nativity, that the date of his birth has been derived ”

“ The absurb legend of Nennius Audax appears in many mediæval chronicles; it gave the theme for some verses on the duty of all good subjects to defend their country from foreign enemies, in the seventeenth century (Harleian Miscellany, viii. 87–94) .
The reference to the ‘Historia Britonum’ under the name of Gildas by twelfth-century historians is explained by the frequent ascription of it in manuscripts to Gildas the Wise. When the absurdity of ascribing the ‘Historia Britonum’ to the well-known Gildas was observed, a Gildas minor was invented as its author. ”

“ About 1830 a popular metrical hymn on his merits was published at Vannes in Breton (Cannen Spirituel. Buhé Sant Gueltas) .
A much more detailed account of Gildas's life is to be found in the pages of the monk of Ruys. But apart from its late date and plainly legendary character, its statements harmonise so little with chronology that they can be safely disregarded. A second life of Gildas is also extant, which seems to have been the result of the renewed intercourse between Brittany and Wales in the twelfth century. ”

“ However, we are more concerned with facts than with dates, and it is an undoubted fact, stated by his biographer, Caradoc of Llancarvan, that Gildas was Regent or Rector of the great School of Armagh for several years, after which he returned to Wales from Ireland about A.D. 508, when he heard that his brother Huel had been slain by King Arthur, who, by the way, in sober history is by no means the “blameless King” he is represented to be in the romantic idyls of Lord Tennyson. ”

“ Is the light he brings commensurate with the darkness? What could he know? What does he tell? He tells so little that the question as to the value of his authorities is reduced to nearly nothing; and, of that little which we learn from his wordy and [117] turgid pages, the smallest fraction only is of any ethnological interest. Indeed, Gildas is most worth notice for what he leaves unsaid. The rebellion of Maximus he mentions; but he is not answerable for the migration from Britain to Brittany, on which (as already stated) so much turns. ”

“ The island of Britain, itself not extensive, was broken into petty principalities: we are told that there were nearly two hundred kinglings, the greater part of whom did not presume to wear crowns. Sometimes they united in their jealousies of some paramount tyrant, but they raged among themselves; and the passion of Gildas has figured them as “the Lioness of Devonshire” encountering a “Lion’s Whelp” in Dorsetshire, and “the Bear-baiter,” trembling before his regal brother, “the Great Bull-dog.” “These kings were not appointed by God,” exclaims the British Jeremiah ”

“ An indiscretion is no longer to be feared. If poor Gildas is afraid, I shall allow him to hide himself in some nook in the garret—or in the cellar. And now, first of all, to supper. After supper you and Velleda shall come up again with Jeanike to get everything in readiness for the hospital. We shall remain in the shop, Sacrovir and I, because we shall have a lot of company to-night."
The merchant and his family descended back into the shop and went to supper in the rear room, where their meal was hastily despatched. ”

“ Was the mead; and the inebriated warriors.
And here we naturally pause to inquire whether it is fair to gauge the habits of the day from extracts such as [Pg 17] these. May they not have been the heated effusions of the moment? May not these bards have cast the shadows of their own excited brains on all around? Alas! the pages of contemporary history, and the censures of the Church, too surely confirm the impressions of the poet. Thus, Gildas, the British monk, writing in the latter half of the sixth century (Epist. De Excid. Britann.) ”

“ Caw is represented as the father of a large family, variously given from ten to twenty-one sons, among whose names appears that of Gildas; but in those manuscripts in which the name of Gildas appears, that of Aneurin does not, and conversely when Aneurin's name is given Gildas's is not, and this circumstance has given rise to the theory that Aneurin and Gildas, the British historian, were identical. ”

“ Every age, to the ecclesiastical prophet as to the secular satirist, is an age of unbounded profligacy; of{3} vice such as the world has never before witnessed; of luxury advanced to heights hitherto untrodden; of license, wantonness, riot unbridled and unparalleled, insomuch that the city of Jerusalem, even when under the soft influences of Ahola and Aholibah, were really righteous and pure in comparison. No doubt Gildas lived in a most trying and most disappointing time. Things went wrong, and things went steadily from bad to worse. His people were defeated and driven continually westward ”

“ The declamations of Gildas, the fragments or fables of Nennius, the obscure hints of the Saxon laws and chronicles, and the ecclesiastical tales of the venerable Bede [130] have been illustrated by the diligence, and sometimes embellished by the fancy, of succeeding writers, whose works I am not ambitious either to censure or to transcribe. ”

“ The integral evidence of the 'Gododin' and of the writings of Gildas seems sufficiently to refute this supposition. To quote Mr. Stephens: 'Gildas was a preacher of the Gospel: Aneurin was an odd compound of Christianity and paganism. ... The one was a virulent and bigoted monk, who delighted in reviling his countrymen; the other, without palliating the drunkenness which led to their defeat at Cattraeth, extols the bravery which half redeems their character. ... The one makes no allusion to the battle of Cattraeth, though it was one of the turning-points in the life of the other.’ Mr. ”

“ Maelgun was prince only of Venedotia for twenty-five years before he was acknowledged in 564, after the death of Arthur, chief king of the Britons in Wales, while St. David was primate, Arthur king of the Britons in general, Gurthmyll king, and St. Kentigern bishop of the Cumbrian Britons. "He had received a good education under the elegant instructor of almost all Britain," says Gildas, pointing out probably St. Iltutus. Yet he fell into enormous vices. Touched with remorse, he retired into a monastery in 552 ”

“ Again, therefore, the wretched remnant, sending to Aetius, a powerful Roman citizen, address him as follow:—"To Aetius,* now consul for the third time: the groans of the Britons." And again a little further, thus:—"The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned." ”

“ I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land fertile in tyrants."* I will only endeavour to relate the evils which Britain suffered in the times of the Roman emperors, and also those which she caused to distant states; ”

“ A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness, in three cyuls, as they call them, that is, in there ships of war, with their sails wafted by the wind and with omens and prophecies favourable, for it was foretold by a certain soothsayer among them, that they should occupy the country to which they were sailing three hundred years, and half of that time, a hundred and fifty years, should plunder and despoil the same. ”

“ While the enemy spoke, Gilda had a few seconds in which to reflect. Above all things she was a woman of sense and one who valued her own dignity; she knew quite well that the making of a scene outside an inn in a strange town and at this hour of the night could but result in a loss of that dignity which she so highly prized, seeing that she was entirely at the mercy of men who were not likely to yield either to her protests or to her appeals. ”

“ We must meet cunning with cunning, treachery if need be with treachery. Gilda—of course—must not remain at the mercy of brigands, but she must not be given her freedom to do us the harm which she hath already threatened. Remember this, Nicolaes," he added, placing his hand upon his friend's shoulder and forcing him to look straight into his own feverishly glowing eyes, "remember that, when all these troubles are over, Gilda will become my wife. The devotion of my entire life shall then compensate her for the slight wrong which fate compels us to do her at this moment. ”

“ Gilda listened to him in silence for awhile. She was collecting all her will-power, all her strength of purpose for the task which lay before her—the task of softening a hardened and treacherous heart, of rousing in it a spark of chivalry and of honour so that it showed mercy there where it now threatened injustice, cruelty and almost inhuman cowardice.
A brave man's life was in the hands of this man, who professed love for her; and though Gilda rejected that love with contempt, she meant, womanlike, to use that love as a mainspring for the softened mood which she wished to call forth. ”

“ Then came the news of the outrage upon your person, and all thoughts of my ambition and of my revenge faded before this calamity, and I have devoted every hour of mine existence since then to find you and to restore you to your home."
Bewildered, wide-eyed, Gilda listened to him. In all her life hitherto, she had never come into contact with lying and with deceit: she had never seen a man lying unblushingly, calmly, not showing signs of confusion or of fear. ”

“ My father, my brother, my friends, I shall avenge them all—that treacherous Stadtholder shall not escape from my hatred the second time. Then will I have power, wealth, a great name to offer you. Gilda, you will remember me?"
"I will remember you, my lord, as one who has passed out of my life. My playmate of long ago, the man whom I once loved is dead to me. He who would stain his hands with blood is hateful in my sight. Go, go, my lord, I entreat you, ere you make my task of helping you to life and safety harder than I can bear." ”