Chapter CLII: Section XII: Devotional Names

The early Gadhaelic Christians were too reverent to call themselves by the same name as the objects of their devotion, whether Divine or human. They were the servants, or at most the friends, of those to whom they thus looked up. They used in this manner the prefixes, _Ceile_, the companion or vassal; _Cear_, the friend; _Cailleach_, the handmaid; and far more frequently _Giolla_ and _Maol_.

Giolla is the very same word as the Scottish vernacular _gillie_, a servant; and in Ireland, the _giolla eachaid_, or horse servant, resulted in the term gallowglass, which is so constantly used in English narratives of Irish wars.

The primary meaning of Maol, or Mael, is bald; thus it came to mean one who has received the tonsure, or a student of theology, and was given in the sense of a disciple.

Cealleach originally meant a devotee, one living in a cell, and was once perhaps a Druidess, but she afterwards was a female disciple, or nun, and finally in Scotland has become only an old woman.

It will be endless work to go through all the list of servants and disciples, and yet some of these present some of the most whimsical facts in the history of names.

Gilla is sometimes used alone, and not only in the two Gaelic languages, for we have it Latinized as Gildas, the doleful Welsh historian who rates all the contemporary princes so soundly. Culdee, the term for the first missionaries of Scotland, is also explained as Giolla De. This was in use, with Cealleach De, the handmaid of God, but are both now extinct; but not so either the servant or disciple of JESUS. Giolla Iosa was used in both countries, but sank in Scotland into the homely surname of Gillies, whilst in Ireland it was wildly transformed, in the person of the primate of Armagh, at the time of the conquest, into the Greek Gelasius, laughter; a curious specimen of the consequences of supposing that Greek must be better than their natural tongue. Maol Ioso grew into the Scottish Christian name of Malise, by which we know the Earl of Strathern at the battle of the Standard, and again, the bearer of the Fiery Cross in the _Lady of the Lake_. Nor has it ever become disused in the Highlands. Giolla Christ was a Christian name in many Scottish families of the old Keltic blood. In 1174, one Gilchrist was Earl of Angus, and another, Earl of Mar; it has not, even to the present day, fallen into disuse at baptism, and is a not uncommon surname. This may perhaps have been the origin of some of the Christians, and others may once have been Cealleach Christ.

The Archangel St. Michael was the subject of much devotion: Cara Michael has now become Carmichael; but Gilliemichael was more common, and turned into Gilmichal. The influence of the great Keltic mission at Lindisfarn, on the North of England, is visible as late as the Norman Conquest; for Domesday Book shows four northern proprietors, called respectively, Ghilemicel, Ghilander, Ghillepetair, and Ghilebrid.

Votaries of the Twelve Apostles are not, however, very common. Ireland shows Ceile Petair, and also, Mail Eoin; but what is remarkable, it has no servant, male or female, to the Blessed Virgin. In Scotland only was there Gilmory and Gilmour; both masculine, and now surnames. Maolmhuire was the daughter of King Kenneth M'Alpin of Scotland, and marrying into Ireland, was the mother of many kings.

Some persons were servants of all the saints, collectively; as Giolla-na-naomh, very frequent in Irish genealogies. In the Highlands it becomes Gille-ne-ohm, and thence has occasioned the modern surnames Niven and Macniven. They are, probably, all connected with the Welsh _nen_, sky.

This word, in Cymric, leads us to the name of Ninius, prince of Cumberland, who there established Christianity, and of Nennius the British historian; though these are too much disguised by the Latin to be easily recognized. St. Ninidh, the pious, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, and left a hand bell, which is still preserved in the county of Fermanagh. Another bell, kept as a tenure of land, is still extant in Galloway, and is said to have belonged to St. Ninian, who is called by the Irish, Ringan, a prince of Cumbrian birth, who became a monk, in 412 built the first stone church between the Forth and Clyde, earned the title of Apostle of the Picts, and died in 432; leaving Ninian and Ringan both to be Christian names in Scotland.

The great object of Keltic veneration was, however, St. Patrick. Nobody ventured to be Patrick alone, but many were Giolla Phadraig, or Mael Phadraig, and the descendants were Mag Giolla Phadraig, whence arises the surname Fitzpatrick, translating the Mac, and omitting the Gillie. Others, again, were Killpatrick; but it is not easy to tell whether this Kil is the contraction of Gillie, or territorial, from the Cell or Church of St. Patrick. The first syllable of Cospatric, or Gospatrick, the Christian name of the Earls of Northumberland in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is less easily explained; but I believe (on Mr. Lower’s authority) it is the Gossoon, the boy of St. Patrick.

St. Patrick’s pupil, Bridget, had her votaries in large numbers, Giolla Brighde, Gilbrid, Maelbridh, all now lost but for the occasional surnames of Macbride and Kilbride, which last is sometimes the Church of Bride. Possibly, too, the Scottish Gilbert may have been taken up as an equivalent to Gilbrid.

The great St. Columba, who established the centre of his civilizing and Christianizing efforts at Iona, had many a grateful disciple, as Gillecolumb, or Maelcolum. The latter form rose to the throne of Scotland in 936, when the father, who had thus dedicated his son to the missionary saint, retired into a convent. The second Malcolm was the persecutor of Lady Macbeth’s family, the third was Duncan’s grandson, he of the Great Head, who, by the help of his sweet wife, St. Margaret, was the first to lift Scotland out of her barbarism, and begin that assimilation with the English which was in full progress at the time of the death of his great grandson, Malcolm the Maiden, and perhaps was the reason why no more kings were called by this Keltic name, so puzzling to Latinizers, that in utter oblivion of St. Columb, they call it Milcolumbus. However, the people of Scotland have kept it up, and in 1385, Sir Malcolm Drummond received 400 francs from France, and is designated in the conveyance as Matorme Dromod! Callum is considered in the Highlands as the form of Malcolm, and Cailein of Colin. Probably Kilian, one of the Keltic missionary saints, popular in Germany, is another pronunciation of the word.

Secundinus was another pupil of St. Patrick, whom the Irish first made into Seachnall, and then termed their children Mael-seachlain, as his pupils. The great Irish king, Malachy with the collar of gold, was thus rendered to suit the weak Saxon capacity.

Cailleach-Coeimlighin and Gilla Coeimghin are the votaries of St. Kevin, a very unpromising object of hero-worship, if we were to believe the legend with which Moore and other moderns have quite gratuitously favoured Glendalough. Cœimghin itself means fair offspring.

Giolla Cheallaigh was common in honour of Ceallach, a very local saint, of royal birth, who was educated by St. Kieran. On his father’s death, he was about to ascend the throne, when his tutor interfered, probably considering this an infraction of his vows, and on his persisting, laid him under a curse, after the usual fashion of Irish saints. He lost his kingdom, and became a bishop, but resigned his see for fear of his enemies, and retired to a hermitage on Lough Con, where, however, he was murdered by four ecclesiastical students, whose names all began with Maol. His corpse was hidden in a tree, where for once it did not show the incorruptibility supposed to be the property of sanctity. The murderers were all put to death on an eminence, called from them Ardna-maol, or hill of the shavelings, and his admirers have resulted in the surname O'Killy-kelly, or, for short, Kelly.

Scotland had several instances of bishop’s servant, Gillaspick in Scotland, or in Northern Ireland, Giolla Easbuig, the Keltic form of _episcopus_. Gillaspich Campbell, already Scotticized enough to have been christened by this Gaelic term, married Aioffe O'Duinne, the daughter of the line of Diarmid; and thenceforth Gillaspick, or Gillespie, was the hereditary Christian name in the family, till, in the twelfth century, his fourth descendant called himself Archibald, and thenceforth the heads of the house of Campbell have been Archibald to the Lowlands, to their own clan, Gillespik. It is a curious fact that Gillespie Grumach and his son, the two Covenanting Argyles, should thus have proclaimed themselves ‘Bishop’s gillies.’ Gillespie has become a frequent surname in Scotland.

Maelgwn, or Maelgwas, was his successor in Powys and Gwynned, and is desperately abused by the indignant Gildas for all manner of crimes; while even Taliessin, who praises his beauty, rebukes his licentiousness. Three centuries later, a bard alleges that he hid himself in a wood, waylaid and carried off the wife of King Arthur. In the twelfth century, Caradoc, abbot of Llancarven, adds that Arthur besieged him in his castle, and had challenged him to single combat, when the sage Gildas and the abbot of Glastonbury interposed, and obtained the lady’s restoration. Walter of Oxford adds that this Maelgwn reigned after King Arthur, and finally died of terror in a convent, having seen the Yellow Spectre, namely the plague, through the chinks of the church door. Dr. Owen Pugh further tells us, that Jack-in-the-Green, on May-day, was once a pageant representing Melva, or Melvas, king of the country now called Somersetshire, disguised in green boughs, as he lay in ambush to steal King Arthur’s wife as she went out hunting.

Maél-was, a servant boy, was translated into old Romance French as the former, by the word Ancel, or Ancelot, otherwise L'Ancelot; Villemarqué quotes a mention of the ‘_fable Ancelot et Tristan_,’ from the romance of Ogier, to show that in earlier days Mael, or Ancelot, was mentioned without the article, which has since become incorporated with it, so that Lancelot has grown to be the accepted name, and so universally supposed to mean a lance, that the Welsh themselves, re-importing his history, called him Palladr, a shivered lance. Ancelot and Ancelin were certainly early chivalrous names, the latter perhaps confused with the Ansir or Æsir of the Teutons. Ancilée and Anselote are feminine names in the register of Cambrai, of the dates of 1169 and 1304; and as there most of the feminines are changed from those of men, it is evident that Ancil and Anselot must once have existed there, either named from the hero of romance, or translated from some Walloon Mael; and thence no doubt the Asselin, Ascelin of our old Norman barons, and the Atscelina Fossard, mentioned in a curious old tract on female names, as having lived in the North of England. It is curious that even romance does not profess that Launcelot was the true name of the knight, thus formed from the Cambrian chieftain, though Galahad is there said to have been his proper name, afterwards given to his worthier son. Launcelot was bestowed on him by Vivian, the Lady of the Lake, who stole him in infancy from his father, King Ban, and brought him up under her crystal waves, till he was eighteen, when, as Sir Lancelot du Lac, he appeared at King Arthur’s court, and became the principal figure there, foremost in every feat of chivalry, the flower of knighthood; but in the noble severity of the English romance, he was withheld from counsels of perfection, by his guilty love for Gwenever, and lying spell-bound in a dull trance when the holy vision of the Sanc-greal past by. Finally, he broke with King Arthur, and opened the way to Mordred’s fatal rebellion by his defection, too late repenting, and after Arthur’s fall becoming a hermit and a penitent.

His story was told with deep warning in England, but in Italy it was ‘Lancilotto’ that Francesca di Rimini looked back to as the tale that had been the spark to awaken fatal passion.

He has ever since been regarded as the type of penitence for misdirected love and chivalrous prowess, and in consequence Lancelot, and its contraction Lance, have never been entirely out of use in England, though not universal.

CHAPTER IV.

NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.