father, Tadhg, a druid, objected. They eloped. Tadhg ordered Goll Mac Morna to kill Cumal, which he does, but not before Murna becomes pregnant and gives birth to Cumal’s son Fionn Mac Cumhail. It is interesting to note that Cumal signifies “sky.” It seems cognate with the British name Camulos, who was also known among the Gauls as a god of war. Camulodunum, the fort of Camulos, was the Celtic name for Colchester. Camulosessa was the name for Almonbury, Yorkshire. The name might be the origin for Arthur’s mythical court of Camelot.

Cumbria

Now a county of England. The British Celts were cut off in this area after a.d. 655. Cadwallon of Gwynedd had managed to reunite the Welsh and Cumbrians briefly in a.d. 633, but in a.d. 655 came Winwaed Field, after which the Saxons controlled the territory between Cumbria and Wales, isolating Cumbria. Like their Welsh compatriots, they called themselves Cymry (compatriots or fellow-countrymen) and their country Cymru (Cum-ree) (land of comrades), which was Anglicised as Cumbria.

While the Annales Cambriae mention that Cumbrian poets were well respected in the Celtic world, nothing that can be really identified as Cumbrian can be discerned in early medieval Welsh literature. After the defeat of the Celtic confederation at Brunanburh, Edmund (a.d. 940–946) invaded Cumbria, but the Cumbrians sought help from their Celtic neighbours of Alba (Scotland). Edmund was forced to hand over Cumbria to Maol Callum I (a.d. 943–954), and Cumbria, under petty kings, became a province of Scotland with its capital at Caer Llywelydd (Carlisle), originally Luguvallos, named after the Celtic god Lug. In a.d. 1092 William Rufus of England defeated Dumnail (Dòmhnuil), king of Cumbria, and annexed it to England. Saxon colonists were encouraged to move into the fertile valleys, while the Celts took to the inhospitable hills.

Celtic, however, was spoken in the Eden Valley area until the fourteenth century. The original form of Eden was Ituna, after a Celtic deity. An Irish record refers to a British god Eiturn, which it is thought cognate with the Gaulish Taranus, a god of thunder. In Welsh myth, Gluneu, one of the seven survivors of Bran’s battle with Matholwch, was son of Taran.