Llyn Llion

[gomerian]

“Long before the Kymry came into Britain, the Llyn Llion, or Great Deep, (literally the abyss of waters,) broke up and inundated the whole earth.

"The Island afterwards known as Britain shared the general catastrophe. One vessel floated over the waters,--this was the ship of Nevydd Nav Neivion. In it were two individuals preserved--Dwy Yan (the Man of God), and Dwy Yach (the Woman of God). By the posterity of these two, the earth was gradually repeopled.

"The ship of Nevydd Nav Neivion was built in Britain, and was one of its three Mighty Works.

"For a long time after the subsiding of the Deluge, the Kymry dwelt in the Summer Land, between the Sea of Afiz and Deffrobani. The land being exposed to sea floods, they resolved under the guidance of Hu Gadarn, to seek again the White Island of the West, where their father, Dwy Van, had built the ship of Nevydd Nav Neivion, (literally the work of the Creator-Creators). They journeyed Westward towards the setting sun, being many in number and men of great heart and strength--(Cedeirn, mighty ones, giants). They came in sight of the Alps, and then part of their migration diverged Southward--these are the Kymry (Umbri) of Italy. The others, consisting of the three tribes of the Kymry, the Brython and the Lloegrwys, crossed the Alps. Along either side of the Alps, near the sea, part of the Lloegrwys settled; these are the Ligurians of Italy and Gaul. Pursuing their course still further they crossed the River of Eddies, the Slow River, the Rough River, the Bright River, (the Rhone, the Arar, the Garonne, the Loire,) till they reached Gwasgwyn, (Gascony, the Vine land). Thence they turned Northward, and part of the Brython settled in a land they named Llydaw ar y Môr Ucha, (the Land or expansion on the Upper Sea, Armorica). The Kymry still held onward until they saw the cliffs of the White Island. Then they built ships, and in them passed over the Hazy Ocean, (Môr Tawch) and took possession of the Island. And they found no living creature in it but bisons, elks, bears, beavers, and water-monsters. And they took possession of it not by war, nor by conquest, nor by oppression, but by the right of man over nature. And they sent to the Brythons in Llydaw, and to the Lloegrwys on the Continent, and to as many as came they gave the East and the North of the Island. And the Kymry dwelt in the West. These three Tribes were of one race, origin, and speech. These are the three Pacific Tribes of the Isle of Britain, because they came in mutual good-will, peace, and love; and over them reigned Hu the Mighty, the one rightful Sovereign of the Island. And they called the Island the White Island, (Ynys Wen), and the Island of the mighty ones. Its name, Britain, or Prydain, was not yet known.”
--R. W. Morgan, The British Kymry or Britons of Cambria

Deffrobani: "The word is not always written as a compound, or with the same termination. Geraint Vardd Glas has it "deffro Bain," as if the latter only was the proper name, the other being suggestive of the character of the locality, q. d. dyvro Bain, the district of Peneus {a river in Thessaly}."
--John Williams ab Ithel, Traditionary Annals of the Cymry, p.21
https: // archive.org/details/traditionaryann00willgoog

 

[gomerian]

To continue with Rev. Morgan's British Kymry:

"The three Pacific Tribes remained undisturbed in the enjoyment of their several patrimonies in Britain for five centuries. A second colonization then took place on the breaking up of the Trojan Empire in the East. The Empire of Troy was Japhetic; that is, its kings and people were of the same race and language as the Umbri of Italy and Britain. Hence on its dissolution, part of the survivors directed their course to the former, part to the latter country. The rest of Asia Minor was Semitic. Troy was regarded as the Sacred City of the race of Japhet in the East.
[22]
THE SECOND, OR TROJAN ERA.

The descent of the British People from Troy and the Trojans was never disputed for fifteen hundred years. The “Island of Brutus” was the common name of the Island in old times. The word tan is the old British or Japhetic term for land,--Brutannia (pronounced Britannia, the British u being sounded as e) is Brut’s or Brutus’ Land. The term is also of very ancient use in Asia, as Laristan, Peristan, Affghanistan. The only two national names acknowledged by the Ancient Britons are Kymry, and Y Lin Troia, the race of Troy. The Trojan descent solves all the peculiarities in the British Laws and Usages which would otherwise be wholly inexplicable.

The Trojan War is the Cardinal Point in Ancient History, from which we can trace events upwards for about four centuries, and downwards for about one hundred and forty years--in Greece, to Codrus and Neleus; but in Britain--for one thousand years, down to the era of Caswallon, and the Roman invasion under Julius Cesar. The Genealogies of all the British Kings and Princes trace up through Beli the Great, to OEneas, Dardanus, and Gomer.

The Trojan Colonization of Britain took place as follows:--

After the Deluge 680 years, and B.C. 1637, Iau and Dardan reigned over the Umbrian Empire in Italy. Dardanus having in a rencontre slain his brother Iau or Jasius, emigrated first to Crete, then to SamoThrace--lastly to Phrygia, where at the foot of the mountain which, after the mountain in Crete, he called Ida, he built Dardania. The King of Phrygia then reigning was Athus. He had two sons, Lud and Tyrrhi (Lydus and Tyrrhenus). Dardanus having exchanged his rights in Italy with Athus, for a part of Phrygia, Tyrrhi sailed with a large body of his father’s subjects and took possession of that portion of Umbria in Italy which belonged to Dardanus. From Tyrrhi, it was from that time called Tyrrhenia. Dardanus married Batea, daughter of Teucer King of Llydaw (Lydia), and was succeeded by Eric, the wealthiest Monarch of the East--Eric by Tros, who removed the Capital of the Empire from Dardania to Troy. Tros had three sons, Bi, Assarac, and Gwyn the Beautiful, (Ganymedi). Gwyn was waylaid by Tantallon, King of Lydia, and sent for safeguard to Jove King of Crete. Tros made war on Tantallon and his son Pelops, expelled them from Asia, and added Lydia to his Empire. Pelops settled in that part of Greece called after him Peloponesus--from him descended the royal families at Argos and Sparta, represented when the Trojan war broke out by Memnon and Maen (Agamemnon and Menelaus). Tros was succeeded by Ili, Ili by Laomedon. Tros reigned sixty years. To commemorate the splendor of his career, the Kymri of Italy, who had followed Dardanus, took the name of Trojans. His second son, Assarac begat Anchises, who wedded Gwen (Venus) the daughter of Jove, King of Crete. Their son was OEneas or Aedd,--the head of the royal Tribe of the Dardanidae, and patriarch of the Trojan lines of Rome and Britain. In the reign of Laomedon the citadel and walls of Troy were rebuilt by Belin and Nêv, architects of Crete, after the model of the Cretan Labyrinth, which was also an exact representation of the Stellar Universe. Laomedon was succeeded by his eldest son, Tithon, who, marrying Ida, or Aurora, abdicated in favour of his youngest brother, Priam. The son of Tithon and Ida was Memnon, King of India. In the reign of Priam the Trojan war broke out: the cause of it was this,--

Jason, nephew of Pelias, King of Thessaly, organized an expedition against Colchos in Asia, which was part of the Mother Country of the Kymri. The principal Chiefs under him were Hercwlf (Hercules) and Telamon. These anchored, on their way to join Jason, off Troy, but were peremptorily forbidden to set foot on Trojan ground by Laomedon. On their return from the Conquest of Colchos, Hercwlf, Telamon, and the other Greek Chiefs surprized and slew Laomedon and five of his sons, by a sudden attack on the City, carrying off also Hesione his daughter, who was afterwards wedded to Telamon, to whom she bore Ajax the Great. Priam on his accession to the throne immediately despatched an embassy to Greece, demanding the restoration of Hesione, and satisfaction for the outrage perpetrated by Hercwlf. The two most powerful Monarchs of Greece at the time were Memnon and Maen, the descendants of the Pelops who was expelled from Asia by the Kymry under Tros. Instigated by them, the States of Greece unanimously refused redress; upon which Priam appointed his son Paris to the command of a fleet, ordering him at all hazards to effect the liberation of Hesione; instead of which, he bore down at once towards Sparta, the capital of the territories of Menelaus, and seizing his wife, Helen--the loveliest woman of the age, carried her off, first to Egypt and then home to Troy--Menelaus being at the time absent in Crete. All Greece, on hearing of this act of just retribution, flew to arms. A confederate Armada of 1394 ships, under forty-eight Princes, was collected under Memnon, or Agamemnon, King of Argos, as Commander in Chief. The history of the war which ensued, the most celebrated of any in ancient or modem times, is given in its poetic form by Homer and Virgil, and in its historic, by Dares of Phrygia, and Dictys of Crete, contemporary authors who served throughout it, and afterwards accompanied Brutus into Britain. It lasted for ten years, during which time eighteen pitched battles were fought, and the flower of the Trojan and Greek chivalry perished for the most part in single combats. The heroes who distinguished themselves most on the Greek side were Achilles, Uliex, (Ulysses,) Ajax, Pedrocles, Meirion, Nestor, and Agamemnon--on the Trojan or Kymric, Hector, Troil, Paris, Memnon, OEneas, and Sarph (Sarpedon.) On the night of 21st June, 1184 b.c., in the tenth year of the siege, the Faction of Antenor and Helenus, which had always been averse to the war, threw open the Scoean gate, surmounted by a statue of the white horse of the sun, to the Confederate Army. For forty eight hours a battle of the most desperate description raged within the walls. The brave old King with most of his sons fell, fighting round the altar in his palace; the command then fell on OEneas, who, giving orders to fire the City in every quarter, to prevent its capture by the enemy, cut his way at the head of the Dardanidae, through sword and flame, to the Forest of Mount Ida. There, being joined by other Trojans to the number of 88,000, he prepared to return to his ancestors, the Kymry of Italy. Accordingly, after various adventures, he landed at the mouth of the Albula or Tiber, was cordially received by the reigning sovereign, Latinus, and presented with Llawen (Joy), or Lavinia. his daughter, in marriage.

Antenor, sailing with six thousand Trojans up the Adriatic, founded Padua and the Kingdom of Gwynedd, or Venetia, in Italy.

Helenus, with a large body, settled in Albyn, or Albania, in Greece, where he was afterwards joined by Brutus.

OEneas, by his first wife Creusa, a daughter of Priam, had Julius Ascanius. From the second son of Ascanius Julius, descended the family of Julius Cesar, and the Emperors of Rome. The eldest son of Ascanius was Sylvius Ascanius. He married Edra, niece of Lavinia, who bore him Brutus, the founder of the Trojan Dynasty of Britain.

The issue of the second marriage of OEneas and Lavinia was Silvius OEneas, from whom descended Romulus, the founder of Rome.

In his fifteenth year, Brutus accidentally slew his Father, in the chase. He was ordered by his Grandfather, in consequence of this deplorable event, to quit Italy. Assembling three thousand of the bravest youths of Umbria, he put himself at their head, and sailed to his countrymen in Albania, afterwards called Epirus.

There in conjunction with Assaracus, another Trojan Prince, he raised the standard of Independence against Pandrasus, who had succeeded Agamemnon in the Sovereignty of Greece. A series of victories on the Trojan side resulted in a peace; Pandrasus giving his daughter, Imogene, in marriage to Brutus. The coasts of the Mediterranean were at this time studded by settlements founded by the Greek leaders at the siege of Troy; for Greece had been completely exhausted and disorganized by her enormous efforts during the ten years’ war, and for more than two centuries a state of anarchy succeeded that of the old heroic civilization. Brutus aware that a Trojan Kingdom could not be established in Albania, except at the cost of incessant hostilities, resolved on emigrating with all his people to the Northern seat of the mainstock of his race--the White Island. The resolution was unanimously approved of. A Navy of three hundred and thirty-two vessels was constructed--arms and provisions supplied--the Pedestal of the Trojan Palladium consigned to the care of Geryon the Augur, and the whole population embarked on board. The Crimean colonization took place by land, across the Continent of Europe--the Trojan was conducted by sea.

Coasting the Southern' shore of the Mediterranean, Brutus arrived the third day at Melita, then called Legetta. Finding on it a Temple of Diana, or Karidwen, he consulted her Oracle on the future destinies of his family and nation.
...
On the ninth day they passed the Philistoean Altars, and thence sailed on to Mount Azara. They gave the Coast the name of Moritania (the land along the sea), which it yet retains. They then steered through the Straits of the Libyan Hercules, now those of Gibraltar, into the Atlantic, then called the Tyrrhenian Ocean. On the South coast of Spain they came upon four other Trojan Colonies, under Troenius. These were readily persuaded to join them. The combined emigrations sailing Northward were again joined by a body of Greeks, part of a Cretan Colony, that under Teucer had settled in Calabria. They then anchored off the mouth of the Loire. The Great Plain between the Alps and the Atlantic had by this time been thickly peopled by the descendants of the Alpine and Auvernian Kymry; these called themselves Kelts or Gael, and the country Gaul, or Gallia. The meaning of Gael is “a Woodlander,--a man of a forest land.” The lowlands being then everywhere covered with dense timber, the highlands alone were cleared and dry. The King of the Gael was Goffar. His Ambassador being killed in a rencontre with Troenius, Goffar made war on Brutus. In the first battle Goffar was defeated, and Subard his General slain. Brutus advancing through Gascony threw up his camp in the centre of Goffar’s own domains. A second engagement was fought, in which Brutus lost his nephew Tyrrhi. In honor of him, he built an immense tumulus, where now stands the city called after Tyrrhi, Tours. Goffar, being a third time routed, submitted to the terms imposed upon him by the conquerors. The fleet, repaired and revictualled, sailed next year round the Horn of Armorica, and finally anchored off Talnus, in Torbay..."
https: // archive.org/stream/TheBritishKymryOrBritonsOfCambria

 

[gomerian]

DRUIDICAL USE OF LETTERS.

"Julius Caesar adverts to the subject in the following passages.
"Nor do they (the Druids) deem it lawful to commit those things which pertain to their discipline to writing; though generally in other cases, and in their private and public accounts, they use Greek letters.
"They appear to me to have established this custom for two reasons; because they would not have their secrets divulged, and because they would not have their disciples to depend upon written documents, and neglect the exercise of memory."
From these passages it is evident that a knowledge of letters was common to the members of the Bardic Institution, and even to the pupils of it. And the restraint imposed upon the pupils, not to commit the institutes to writing, Caesar ascribes to a desire in the first place, to prevent the regulations of the Order from being divulged; and in the next, to promote that exercise of the memory which was inseparable from the principles and practice of the Druidical system.
Caesar's testimony then is decisive as to the use of letters among the Druids, even before his acquaintance with them. And when he called those letters Greek, it was from having observed a certain resemblance between the two alphabets. The researches of some Welsh Antiquarians of the present day have succeeded in restoring to light the characters originally used by the Bards. And it Is singular that they comprise with four or five exceptions all the old Etruscan or Pelasgic letters, which were probably but little different from the Greek characters used in the time of Caesar--a fact which serves at once to confirm his account and vindicate the genuineness of these Druidical remains."
--Rev. D. James, The Patriarchal Religion of Britain, p.88-89
https: // archive.org/details/patriarchalreli00jamegoog

This pic comes from wiki, the Welsh characters are found in a book by William Owen Pughe, entitled "A Grammar of the Welsh." When I first saw those characters in Pughe's book, I knew I'd seen them before, but I was thinking Linear A. James is right, though, the similarity is thought provoking indeed. And the first time I heard of anyone else thinking Etruscan Britain, Phene is the one who pointed it out... in several papers, given to different research boards. Most notably,

"SOME LINGUISTIC SYNONYMS IN THE
PRE-ROMAN LANGUAGES OF BRITAIN
AND OF ITALY.
[Read June 24,1891.]
By J. B. Phené LL.D., F.S.A., F.R.G.S."

and of course, he mentions the Pelasgians... a subject I have dwelt on for months on end, and thought I was done with. But it seems that my mind had made the connection for good reason.

The Barddas, edited by John William ab Ithel, also has what Rev. James is talking about, above, and is found here:
https: // archive.org/details/barddasoracolle00willgoog
although it's cut to ribbons and seems obscure to anyone without a solid Welsh background.

____________
I apologize for any remaining OCR flaws in the above excerpts.

Now, it would appear that there are very good reasons to think that "the Brut" has some substance. It's not for nothing that Petrie castigated the nation for casting aside the British History en masse. No history as old as this has remained spotless, in any national epic; even more so, in the countries in which conquest and book burning is part and parcel of evangelism. Roberts' Chronicle of the Kings of Britain,
https:// archive.org/details/bub_gb_Mso_AAAAcAAJ_2
in which he translated Tysilio straight from the Welsh, has done a very good service for Britons. He has given us clean copies of Dares Phrygius, and an explanation for the whys and the wherefores of pseudo-Gildas. Phyrgius tells us that Aeneas was a traitor, which makes sense of the actions of Vortigern. Sometimes I know why people don't want to know, still the bitter truth is better than a fine tissue of lies.

In nations which have been conquered, it seems a matter of policy to replace the history of the conquered with that of the conquerer... no matter what the reasons are for the conquest. Opening gates, allowing safe passage onto nearby islands... no difference. And what's going on in the world today seems far beyond rumors of war.