The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
fifty thousand calends of Maia before?)a
the Lord Cunedda1
conditor noster
filius Æterni,b son of Padarn Red Pexa,2 son of Tacitus, came south over the same terrain and by way of the terrain-gaps then modified or determined: for the viae are not independent of geology: that his hobnailed3 foederati, his twelve cantred-naming sons4 and himself, the loricatedc leader in his gaffer’s purple, might scrape from their issue caligaed the mud of Forth into Conwy.
David Jones notes
1 Cunedda, kin-eth-ah, th as in nether, accent on middle syllable .
2 The grandfather of Cunedda is known in the Welsh genealogies as Padarn Beisrudd. Beis is a mutation of peis, a coat, petticoat or tunic, and is known to derive direct from the Latin pexus, pexa, descriptive of a woollen fabric that had not lost its nap, thence something new and well cared for, and as a metonym it came to be used of the garment called the tunica.
The Welsh word rudd meant crimson red.
These considerations tend to support the view, now held by historians, that the family of Cunedda had a tradition of holding office under the Roman imperium. ‘Beisrud’ might possibly imply the tunica with the broad purple laticlave, associated with rank, or the all-purple tunica associated with military command, or with some other dyed garment of legatine significance.
3 The absence of archaeological evidence from the burial-places of sub-Roman Britain contrasts with the considerable evidence from the graves of the Saxon invaders. There is, however, one thing which archaeology has shown: a number of Britons of this period who died, or were buried, with their boots on, had hob-nails in their boots. We know also that the field-service boot (caliga) of the Roman army was similarly studded.
4 The Historia Brittonum gives the number of Cunedda’s sons as twelve, other evidence supposes nine. Six of these gave their names to Welsh cantreds or to lesser divisions of land.
additional notes
a The calends were the first day of the Roman month. Hence the winter calends and the May calends correspond to the two main seasons of winter and summer, either on an annual scale or as referring to the Great Cycle.
b conditor noster = our founder; filius Aeterni = son of Edern (Edern, father of Cunedda, was called Aeturnus in Latin). However, the fact that DJ has Aeterni instead of Aeturni, suggests that he also has in mind the Latin filius aeterni patris, i.e. Christ (son of the eternal father).
see also
For a perhaps less poetic and more historically accurate view of Cuneddin, see Wikipedia.
semantic structures
glossary
c loricated: covered with armour.
d caligae: army boots (Latin).
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