Northumbrian Control of the Old North

After the Northumbrian Conquest in the mid 600s, we then have a period of around two hundred years where the areas of modern English Cumbria, the Scottish Borders, Dumfriesshire and Lothian are under Anglo-Saxon rule as part of the kingdom of Northumbria.  The extent of Anglo-Saxon cultural and political influence is found in church dedications to St Oswald and St Cuthbert (though in all probability Cuthbert was a Briton by origin).  This includes two Kirkoswalds in Ayrshire and a dedication to St Oswald at Cathcart [25].  Anglo-Saxon sculpture is found at Dunbar, Aberlady as well as Jedburgh and Melrose. Anglo-Saxon metalwork at Aberlady dates from the 8th-9th Centuries. In most cases, the Anglo-Saxons took over existing monastic British sites [23].

At Bewcastle the Anglo-Saxon cross dated from around 670. It is in the churchyard of St Cuthbert's and records in Anglo-Saxon runes that it was set up in memory of Alcfrith of Northumbria who became king in 670.  Further west is the Ruthwell Cross in Dumfriesshire, from the same period, also with an Anglo-Saxon inscription [26]. As well as these great crosses, there are examples of pre-Viking, Anglo-Saxon cross styles at Beckermet on the west coast of Cumberland and at Penrith.

This does not presume a wholesale Anglicisation, because the monuments are for the ruling elite, who would be Anglo-Saxon, but in addition, how a man carves a stone does not tell you what language he spoke, or what he felt his identity to be.  Alex Woolf discusses the history of the ideas that the Anglo-Saxons came en masse from the Continent and wiped out the Britons, or that only a warrior elite came and everyone else remained British. Woolf's point that a language that the English learned by the Britons would show a considerable influence from their Brittonic dialects if they only had their landlord or themselves to practice on [23]. However, I would note that they say that the English of the Scottish Highlands is the purest spoken anywhere and while Irish English has Irish influence on it, it is still Standard English rather than a Creole.

Woolf also quotes the West Saxon laws that give the rate of fines payable for Saxons and Welshmen. The Welsh (Britons) are worth less but there are Welsh nobles in the Saxon king's court who are still worth five times more than an English churl. Woolf notes that similar low wergeld for Britons is payable under the Northumbrian laws. Woolf says that the existence of Welsh nobles in an Anglo-Saxon court suggests that some areas under the Anglo-Saxon kingdom are still ruled by their British lords, albeit under the patronage of the Anglo-Saxons.

We know that the Anglo-Saxons had a series of monasteries across the area that was later the Kingdom of Cumbria. One of these was at Dacre, west of Penrith. Probably at Workington, Brigham. Certainly at Carlisle, and of course Whithorn. Ruthwell, Hoddom, Thornhill and Closeburn [27] Bailey believes that Northumbrian churches were being granted land west of the Pennines by the second half of the sixth century.

The Northumbrian lords ruled their new lands from fortified centres at Bamburgh and Dunbar, as well as from Yeavering and Millfield in Northumberland and Sprouston in Roxburghshire,  but they took over the native British systems of land organisation [10]

Bede wrote a history of the life of St Cuthbert [28]. Cuthbert was born around 634. He was a shepherd according to Bede in some "distant mountains" when he had a vision of angels related to the death of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne. After this he devoted himself to God and became a monk at Melrose. Bede visited Carlisle (in 685), which he says was corruptly called by the English Luel to speak to the English queen. Northumbrian control over Carlisle appears secure at this time and English speakers were present. Cuthbert also visited the English named hermit Herebert on an island on Derwentwater.

In 685, King Ecgfrith gave Cartmel and all its Britons to Cuthbert. Another Anglian cross with an Anglo-Saxon runic inscription was found at Great Urswick in Furness dating from the Northumbrian period.Ecgfrith also gave Carlisle to Cuthbert around this time. Potts notes that Anglo-Saxon chroniclers reports that the British fled or were cleared out and Anglo-Saxons planted in their stead. [29]

Simeon of Durham tells us that in 756 King Eadberht along with King Unust of the Picts received the Britons in alliance in the city of Alcwith, which the editor notes is the Alclut of Bede [30]. The Britons of Strathclyde clearly had some political autonomy but suffered at the hands of the Northumbrians. English language place-names and dedications of churches to Northumbrian saints - for example to St Oswald at Cathcart, which suggest that the expansion of Northumbrian power was accompanied by Anglo-Saxon settlement in what had been wholly British speaking territory [31]

In 759. Ethelwald known as Moll, which sounds suspiciously, but inexplicably .like the Welsh Moel, referring to his baldness - began to reign.  In 764, Frithwald, another Anglo-Saxon name, who was bishop at Whithorn, died.  Ethelwald Moll's son, Aethelred took the sons of an enemy from York and drowned them in Wonwaldremere  (?Windermere).  He allegedly killed another rival at Maryport. This source for the location of this act at Maryport seems unclear to me but it is reported on different websites [32].  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that his body was deposited at Tynemouth. It should be noted that throughout this century, Northumbria was in frequent civil war.

The Vikings raided Lindisfarne in 793 but did not disturb Cuthbert's relics. However, in 844, they killed Raedwald, King of Northumbria and the monks decided to move the relics for saftey to Norham. In 867 the Vikings captured York and killed the Northumbrian King. In 875, a Viking fleet was anchored in the River Team and the Bishop of Lindisfarne with Eadred the Abbot of Carlisle (note his Anglo-Saxon name) decided to move the relics again from Lindisfarne. They stopped at Melrose, Durham and in Lancashire and Yorkshire, allegedly wandering all over the lands held by the Northumbrians at that time.  The itinerary included Whithorn. Daniel Elsworth has recently argued that the relics did not cross the Solway to Whithorn but rather went crossed Morecambe Bay to the south  [33].

Raine [34] following Simeon [30] tells us that the monks carrying Cuthbert's relics eventually found their way to the mouth of the Cumberland Derwent at Workington and were planning on heading across to Ireland to escape the Norsemen but a storm arose and drove them back. Woolf dates this to around 880 [8] It was felt that the storm represented Cuthbert's will not to go overseas. If this is in any sense a true story, it suggests that in the late 9th Century, Cumbria west of the Pennines was seen as safe territory for the Northumbrians. Or at least safe Christian territory.

Taken together, the material Anglo-Saxon remains, the dedications to Northumbrian saints, the Anglo-Saxon place-names from this period, and what history that we have suggests that following the Northumbrian expansion into Berwickshire, Lothian, Dumfriesshire, Cumberland and Westmorland and even parts of Lanarkshire, resulted in a significant Anglicisation of previously British territory, similar to that which happened in Devon and Somerset and the Welsh border counties, but not in Wales, or to the same extent in Cornwall.

Woolf argues that the recovery of Anglian coinage from Whithorn dating to the mid 860s indicates that Northumbrian governmental control was maintained in that area until that time [8]. In 866, Danes attacked and took York. They had come from Ireland where they had been active since around 851 [8].  Traditionally this was the establishment of the Viking kingdom of York, though Woolf argues that it was not as clear cut [8]. Woolf says that the Vikings then used anchored in the mouth of the Tyne and from there attacked the Picts and Strathclyde. In 876 they sacked Carlisle, which of course up until then was probably still under Northumbrian rule. At this time the Vikings began to settle, at least east of the Pennines. 

After the Poetry, more history

While in other areas of Britain, some of the areas still have names belonging to the previous British tribes e.g. Gwynedd, Dyfed, Devon, Kent it is not clear how the land was divided following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The most likely scenario is of a break up into areas ruled by warlords. The area around Lothian had been the home of the Votadini and they gave their name to the later British kingdom of Gododdin. By the time we start getting saints lives - such as that of St Kentigern and references from the Welsh Triads the name is Lleuddiawn or Lothian - home of the eponymous King Lot, who appears in the Arthurian legends. He is Lleuddiawn Luydog "the Wealthy" king of Din Eidyn - Edinburgh and buried at Traprain Law.   [19]. The core of the kingdom of Strathclyde might be the previous territory of the Dumnonii and that of the Kingdom of Rheged - centred on Carlisle - that of the Carvetii, but we have no proof of this.

People have argued, often persuasively, that King Arthur belongs to this period and that he slowed the Saxon advance for a generation. A list of his battles is to be found in the Historian Brittonum.

The Historia talks about four kings who fought against the Anglo-Saxons in Northumbria. The first was Outigern (Eudeyrn in modern Welsh) who may be identical with Urien, Lord of Catterick and Rheged. The others were Rhydderch the Old (? of Al Clud), Gwallawg, of Elfed in modern Yorkshire - and cousin of Urien Rheged [20]and Morcant -( from Gododdin?)

Urien Rheged is said to have had the Anglo-Saxons besieged on the island of Lindisfarne (Metcaud in Old Welsh) for three days. He is also said to have been killed by Morcant, possibly a king of Strathclyde. Urien was killed in 574 or 585 [21]. His murderer is known by the as Llofan Llaf Difo - Llofan "of the destroying hand".

Rhydderch the Old may be Rhydderch ap Tudwal, in the Irish annals as Roderc son of Tothail, king of the Rock on the Clyde [11].

The Battle of Catraeth in around 600, is said to have been an attempt by the British kings to strike at the Anglo-Saxons in their colonies east of the Pennines, but it was a failure [15] .

In the early to mid 7th Century, Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, whose kingdom had been overrun for a while by the Northumbrians, defeated the Northumbrians at the battle of Hatfield Chase near Doncaster. This had been until captured by Edwin part of the British kingdom of Meigen. At this battle, King Edwin was killed and the Northumbrian advance was checked. However, the Northumbrians under King (later Saint) Oswald, recovered and in turn killed Cadwallon at the Battle of Heavenfield on Hadrian's Wall in around 633 [10]. Prior to the battle, the British had advanced up from York to the Wall which they briefly recovered from the Northumbrians. The Northumbrian King Edwin had been baptised at York in 627. Evidence from the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Somerset and Devon is that as the Anglo-Saxon kings took control they granted land to their followers - this evidence for a similar process no longer exists in the North, but it is possible a similar process occurred [22]

Breeze discusses the story recorded in the Historia Brittonum, that Rhun.  son of Urien Rheged baptised the Northumbrian King Edwin in 627 and that Rhianfellt, daughter of Royth (son of Rhun), grandson of Urien Rheged became the second wife of the Northumbrian king Oswiu (who died in 670) [21]. Breeze argues that Royth was the last independent king of the British kingdom of Rheged. Breeze corrects the name Royth to modern Welsh Rhaith, which seems plausible.  Koch notes that Catterick by 627 was a Northumbrian Royal Vill [20] It remained a centre of Northumbrian christianity, where James the Deacon baptised people in the River Swale.

The British collapse allowed the Anglo-Saxons to advance west over the Pennines and North into Berwickshire and East Lothian, capturing Edinburgh in 638 [22]. St Cuthbert was able to visit Carlisle in 685. By 680 the Northumbrians ruled over Strathclyde and by 700 had reached Withorn [22].

At the Battle of Nechtansmere in 685 however, the Northumbrians were checked by the Picts, but they still retained control over their territories in the south of Scotland and Cumberland.

 The Northumbrians annexed Kyle in 750 and captured Dumbarton in 756 in alliance with the Picts [8][22]

By comparison, there is no material evidence of Anglo-Saxons at St Albans until the early 600s. Ethelwerd  tells us that after the battle of Deorhamme in 577, the Anglo-Saxons took the British cities of Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath. Devon came under Anglo-Saxon control by the 700s. Cornwall's bishop did not come under the control of an English bishop until 870 [10], though the Cornish language survived much longer than Cumbric - no doubt due to the formalisation of the border at the Tamar, as the border with Wales had been formalised at Offa's Dyke around 680 [23]. If the Anglo-Saxons further south ran out of appetite for further expansion, that was not true in our area and no formal border was drawn with the Cumbrian Britons; This may be why their British identity did not survive as long here as in Wales, Cornwall or Brittany.

Before the Northumbrian conquest in our region, there were separate British kingdoms. Only the Kingdom of Strathclyde with its capital at the Rock on the Clyde at Dumbarton survived in any sense. The Britons themselves remained although Anglo-Saxon influence was strong and many of them must have given up their language to speak English, as the Britons further east had done. When British power returned in the form of the Kingdom of Cumbria, it was not to a wholly monoglot British population, but to an area that had varying pockets of Anglo-Saxon settlement. In some places, English must have become the primary language of the people during the Northumbrian occupation, but the British language, or Brittonic, or Cumbric did not die out until later.

The history of the British language follows the political fortunes of its speakers. British was a Celtic tongue very closely related to Gaulish and the Continental Celtic languages (Caesar tells us this) and also to Irish - though perhaps not as closely as to Gaulish (experts disagree).  There may well have already been a split between the Romanised British of those south of  the Antonine Wall and the Pictish speech north of it, though it is likely that it was a patchwork of mutually intelligible dialects from Cornwall to Caithness - much as the local dialects of Germanic speech across the German and Dutch borders or from Spain and Catalonia through the Occitan region to Northern Italy.

As the areas of British speech were split up by wedges of Anglo-Saxon control, the British language developed into different dialects. Those Britons who migrated to Brittany, spoke Brezhoneg, those in the South West originally spoke Brethonek but then began calling their language Kernowek or Cornish. Those in the West changed the name of their language from Brythoneg to Cymraeg - the language of the Cymry. We do not know what the Cumbrians called their speech, but Kenneth Jackson coined the term Cumbric [4]. Edmonson notes that eventually everyone came to call the Cumbrians by a version of Cymry - for example Cuimrich in Gaelic, Cumbraland in English , Kumrar in Norse [7]. Everyone except the other Cymry - the Welsh - who continued to call them Cludwys "People of the Clyde" - though the poem Armes Prydein welcomes the Cludwys as well as the Cornish to join them to oust the Anglo-Saxons. Edmondson's explanation is that the Welsh couldn't call the Northern Britons Cymry because they were just some Cymry [7]. This would be in the same way that Welsh writers couldn't  define the men of Gwynedd or Gwent just by the name Cymry; they needed to be more specific. As Woolf says, for the Welsh (unlike for the English) it wasn't the ethnicity but the location of the Cumbrians that was their primary defining feature, so instead of calling them Cymry, which the Welsh may have taken as read, they called them Cludwys, as they would refer to the people of Gwent as Gwenhwys. Woolf speculates that had a Northumbrian met someone from Wales, he may have identified him too as "Cumbrian".

There is also a note in the book edited by John T. Koch, that there is some research that says the Britons had a common literary language up until around 1000. This means a common orthography and I think some of the spellings of the kings of Strathclyde and the 11th Century Dunegal Lord of Nithsdale suggest this common orthography was maintained in Cumbria. We don't know this of course and it would suggest there were continued cultural links between the Britons even after large parts of the island were under English control and settlement [24].

Cumbria in Early Welsh Poetry

If we understand that the Welsh, Bretons, Cornish and Cumbrians saw themselves as members of the same fractured people who had been disinherited by the incoming invaders, we can see why the Welsh kept fragments of poetry celebrating the deeds of the Britons of the north. Certainly, the history and literature give a picture of loss after loss for the British, as their land, their language and their identity were removed from Britain from east to west over decades and centuries with failure after failure of their best efforts to stop the Anglo-Saxons.

The academic who had the most influence on our understanding of the early heroic poetry was Sir Ifor Williams.

Williams presents his edited poetry of the bard Taliesin in Canu Taliesin [12]. Taliesin sings of Urien Rheged and his son Owain, as well as a king of Powys and Gwallawg  from Elfed near Leeds (Elmet in place-names there). Williams believed, and many have agreed with him that Urien's Rheged was centred on the Solway basin with its capital at Carlisle. His son Owain's court was thought to be by the Llwyfennydd - the Lyvennet beck in Westmorland, possibly at Crosby Ravensworth.  Williams finds references to the river Idon (the Eden) and to Gwen Ystrad, which he takes to be the Vale of Eden. Urien was called lord of Catterick in Yorkshire and also Lord of the Erechwydd, which Williams argued was the Lake District. The Taliesin poetry gives a picture of a bard moving around the courts of the rulers of the Brittonic speaking rulers of Britain from Leeds to Shrewsbury to Carlisle and able to compose for them in the same Brittonic tongue. It recalls the state of the Gaelic language a thousand years later when the bards could go from Munster to Caithness composing in Classical Gaelic for the lords that would give them food and patronage. In any case the British lands east of the Pennines, including Catterick were lost soon after Urien's time, and perhaps as a consequence of the collapse of the British alliance that had held the Anglo-Saxons in siege on Lindisfarne.

The other poet whose work was edited by Ifor Williams was Aneirin.  His Canu Aneirin [15] collected the poetry of the bard Aneirin, who, following Williams, was the court poet of Mynyddog Mwynfawr, king of the tribe of Gododdin, whose capital is thought to have been Edinburgh. Aneirin's works are a series of linked verses whose main job is to celebrate the heroism of the various fighters. It seems that these fighters are drawn from all parts of the Brittonic territories - from Pictland and Devon, Wales and of course the North.  William's view was that after the death of Urien, the British kings of Edinburgh realised the threat posted by the Northumbrians (a very real threat to them as the Anglo-Saxon capture of Edinburgh less than forty years later showed). They raised an army to strike at the enemy at Catraeth, which had so recently been in British hands. This view has (of course) since been disputed.

Probably by accident, Aneirin's Gododdin preserved one or two fragments almost certainly not written by Aneirin. One is a similarly heroic verse describing the victory of Owain I of Strathclyde over the Gaels of Dal Riada and their king Dyfnwal Frych - or Domhnall Breac in Gaelic which took place in 642, and so is much later than the battle of Catraeth, which took place around 600.  The verses of Gododdin must have come down to Wales after being collected with other poetry in the North.

Also included within the Gododdin verses is a lullaby that sings of a father gone hunting in the mountains and bringing fish from the falls of the Derwent. Given the geography this might be the Cumberland Derwent and the reference to falls and mountains makes one think of Borrowdale.

In the poetry another ostensible author is Llywarch Hen, is Urien's cousin who took Urien's decapitated head to history after he had been killed at Aber Lleu at Lindisfarne, possibly where the River Low runs into the sea [16]. This has of course been disputed. Also disputed is the claim that Llywarch was the author. Much of the poetry laments the fall of the east of the kingdom of Powys, modern Shropshire , to the Anglo-Saxons.

One of the most famous of the early kings of Strathclyde is Rhydderch Hael "the generous" who reigned in the late 500s [11]. Rhydderch was a contemporary of Urien Rheged. Rhydderch is supposed to have given support to St Kentigern. In this same period Clydno Eidyn was a lord of Edinburgh. 

The Britons resisted and early Welsh poetry recalls these epic struggles with figures like Owain Rheged, whose seat is argued to be Carlisle, his son Owain and his cousin Llywarch Hen, who was king of Powys. The Llywarch Hen poetry  talks of the burning of Pengwern in Shropshire and a picture unfolds of Anglo-Saxon invaders moving gradually west and north across the island, taking land from the Britons.

In terms of geography, the Welsh poetry gives us many names that no longer exist. Rheged of course, Arfynydd and Argoed. Llwyfennydd may be Lyvennet, but other names such as Calchfynydd have been claimed for Kelso. Din Eidyn is almost certainly Edinburgh and we know that Alclud is the Rock on the Clyde. Carlisle as Lugubalium or Luel or Caer Liwelydd is not named by the Welsh poets. Lliwelydd is a personal name that occurs in Welsh from the British *Lugovalijon - strong in the power of the god Lug or Lleu.

Breeze discusses the name Rhosedd [17]. The place mentioned in Welsh poetry is, he feels, Rosset, in Great Langdale.

Tim Clarkson gives and overview of the development of the kingdom of Al clud from its origins as the tribal lands of the Damnonii [11]. He says that from the late 5th Century a vibrant new kingdom ruled from its base on Dumbarton Rock, the Rock of the Clyde. Clarkson refers to the widely held theory that the British Saint, evangelist to the Irish, St Patrick was a native of Strathclyde. Clancy cites Irish sources which state that Patrick's parents were from Strathclyde [18] Patrick died between 470 and 493. Patrick wrote a letter to the British king Coroticus for raiding and taking slaves in Ireland. Coroticus is thought to have been a king of Al Clud. Clarkson raises the possibility that Patrick's Coroticus may be the northern king whose name appears in the king lists as Ceretic Guletic, where Guletic means prince or ruler [11].

As well as the poetry, the later medieval Triads of the Island of Britain,  mnemonics used by the bards to remember characters and points of history, mention a whole host of characters and places from the Old North [19]. These will be discussed at greater length below.

After the Romans (briefly)

When our region comes into history via the Roman writers, it is populated by the Britons. The Romans dealt with their rulers - Cartimandua and her husband Venutius.  We know the names of some of their tribes, e.g.  - Novantae, Selgovae, Carvetii. We have traces of their religion in monuments to their gods Coccidius, Belatucadros, Coventina and Epona. Place names suggest gods known from Welsh and other Celtic sources - Maponos and Lugos.  From Vindolanda we have the deprecatory comments of Romans referring to the wretched little Britons [9].

But after 350 years the Britons became Romanised . In the lowland areas of South and East Britain, it is very possibly, if not probably that the Britons started speaking Latin as a first language, as they did in Gaul. In our area (as in Wales and Cornwall) the population kept its British language, though they borrowed many hundreds of words from the Latin of the occupiers. Towards the end of Roman rule and after the Imperial armies left, local warlords appear to have seized power and started dynasties in the areas they grabbed. The warlords took up Roman names and adopted Roman fashions. They wanted to be associated with Rome [10] The Romanisation appears to have gone as far north as the Antonine Wall that bisects modern Scotland. Welsh legends report that a Romanised warlord called Cunedda from Lothian was sent to drive the Irish from Wales and they founded there the kingdom of Gwynedd. It was Gwynedd of the Welsh kingdoms that had the strongest interest in the Britons of the

North and here was preserved some of the poetry and the traditions of the North.

It has been argued that the first ruler of the North after the Romans left was Coel Hen "The Old" or Old King Cole. His name is Latin, like the names of many of the early Britons like Padarn Peisrud, a ruler in Lothian, who perhaps wore the red tunic of the Romans - pais rudd - "red pinny" as a badge of office [11], [12]. The ruling houses of the kingdoms in what is today Southern Scotland and Northern England traced their descent from Coel the Old.

The Picts and the Irish raided into the former Roman province and the Romans defended it but as is well known, left Britain to her own defence in 412.  The Britons used Germanic mercenaries to fight the Picts and Irish and the story goes that these Germanic people, whom we know as the Anglo-Saxons, betrayed their British paymasters during what the Welsh call Brad y Cyllyll Hirion  - the treachery of the long knives. The Saxons get their name from their characteristic long knife the seaxa. After this the Anglo-Saxons came over and settled in greater numbers. First in Kent and the South East of England but then up the east coast to found early settlements at Driffield in Yorkshire and then at Bamburgh  (Din Guairoi to the Britons) in Northumberland in about 547.

The British monk Gildas (died 570) according to his life written by the monk of Ruys in Brittany [13], was born near the Clyde. He wrote a book called De Excidio Britanniae, reporting the destruction of Britain at the hands of the invaders and blaming the sins of the British kings and tyrants. Gildas says he was born in the same year as the Battle of Badon Hill, which is one of Arthur's battles against the incoming Saxons and dated between 490 x 520.   Gildas says this was forty-four years and one month since the landing of the Saxons. Bede used Gildas' history as a basis for his early chapters. 

Another British Historian, Nennius in his History of the Britons, dated around 830, gives the list of the battles of King Arthur [14]. Though this is c. 260 years after the death of Gildas, Gildas was aware of at least one of the battles (though he does not name Arthur). No Anglo-Saxon historian mentions Arthur or his defeats of their people. 

The Historia Brittonum names the poets famous among the British in the reign of the Northumbrian kind Ida, who captured Din Guairoi at Bamburgh from the British.  These were  Neirin (Aneirin), Taliesin, Bluchbard and Cian "Guenith Guaut" [14]

Confusing Terminology

The Welsh used the term Yr  Hen Ogledd "The Old North" for the British speaking kingdoms of what is now Southern Scotland and the north of England.  An area that overlaps with, but is not identical with, the later medieval polity and its wider culture province of Cumbria.

The names used are confusing. Academics dispute everything, it is after all how they make a living, but to clarify my current understanding, I would summarise by saying

1. The inhabitants of the island of Britain before the Romans came were the Pritani - (hence the modern Welsh Prydain for Britain )  In English they are simply Britons.

2 The Romans called the Britons Brittones but restricted that name to those tribes within their zone of control. Those Britons to the north of Roman control, they called Picts. The Welsh call these un-Romanised Britons, Prydyn, a continuation of the original Celtic name for the whole population, but themselves they call Brythoniaid, which comes from the Latin Brittones.

3. The language the ancient Britons spoke was called British, refreshingly simple. However, academics differentiate British from its daughter language Brittonic, which was the much changed language spoken by the Britons by the time the Romans departed in 410. Brittonic is an academic Anglicisation of the Welsh Brythoneg.

4. The Britons were then subject to invasion by the Germanic tribes, who became the English. The English conquests separated the Brittonic speaking area into three - Cornwall, Wales, and greater Cumbria, with a fourth group leaving for Armorica over the English Channel and making that land into Brittany.

Because Cumbric left no written records we guess (often intelligently and with good reasoning) at its differences from Welsh, but we don't know.  This is why you will also see the language of the Cumbrians, or the Men of the North, described as Old Welsh.

Woolf makes the point that Cumbrians was probably the normal term of the Northumbrian English to describe the Britons in the North, no matter whose rule they were under [8].