Scotland
Scotland is a country, part of the United Kingdom. Sharing a border with England to the southeast, Scotland is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, by the North Sea to the northeast and by the Irish Sea to the south. In addition to the mainland, situated on the northern third of the island of Great Britain, Scotland has over 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides; the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, thus forming a personal union of the three kingdoms. Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain; the union created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. In 1801, the Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland enacted a political union to create a United Kingdom.
The majority of Ireland subsequently seceded from the UK in 1922. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles and other royal symbols of statehood specific to the pre-union Kingdom of Scotland; the legal system within Scotland has remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland. The continued existence of legal, educational and other institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the 1707 union with England; the Scottish Parliament, a unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, was established in 1999 and has authority over those areas of domestic policy which have been devolved by the United Kingdom Parliament. The head of the Scottish Government, the executive of the devolved legislature, is the First Minister of Scotland. Scotland is represented in the UK House of Commons by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs.
Scotland is a member of the British–Irish Council, sends five members of the Scottish Parliament to the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland is divided into councils. Glasgow City is the largest subdivision in Scotland in terms of population, with Highland being the largest in terms of area. "Scotland" comes from the Latin name for the Gaels. From the ninth century, the meaning of Scotia shifted to designate Gaelic Scotland and by the eleventh century the name was being used to refer to the core territory of the Kingdom of Alba in what is now east-central Scotland; the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass most of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages, as the Kingdom of Alba expanded and came to encompass various peoples of diverse origins. Repeated glaciations, which covered the entire land mass of modern Scotland, destroyed any traces of human habitation that may have existed before the Mesolithic period, it is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, as the ice sheet retreated after the last glaciation.
At the time, Scotland was covered in forests, had more bog-land, the main form of transport was by water. These settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, the first villages around 6,000 years ago; the well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period. Neolithic habitation and ritual sites are common and well preserved in the Northern Isles and Western Isles, where a lack of trees led to most structures being built of local stone. Evidence of sophisticated pre-Christian belief systems is demonstrated by sites such as the Callanish Stones on Lewis and the Maes Howe on Orkney, which were built in the third millennium BCE; the first written reference to Scotland was in 320 BC by Greek sailor Pytheas, who called the northern tip of Britain "Orcas", the source of the name of the Orkney islands. During the first millennium BCE, the society changed to a chiefdom model, as consolidation of settlement led to the concentration of wealth and underground stores of surplus food.
The first Roman incursion into Scotland occurred in 79 AD. After the Roman victory, Roman forts were set along the Gask Ridge close to the Highland line, but by three years after the battle, the Roman armies had withdrawn to the Southern Uplands; the Romans erected Hadrian's Wall in northern England and the Limes Britannicus became the northern border of the Roman Empire. The Roman influence on the southern part of the country was considerable, they introduced Christianity to Scotland. Beginning in the sixth century, the area, now Scotland was divided into three areas: Pictland, a patchwork of small lordships in central Scotland; these societies were based on the family unit and had sharp divisions in wealth, although the vast majority were poor and worked full-time in subsistence agriculture. The Picts kept slaves through the ninth century. Gaelic influence over Pictland and Northumbria was facilitated by the large number of Gaelic-speaking clerics working as missionaries. Operating in the sixth ce
Jean Froissart
Jean Froissart was a French-speaking medieval author and court historian from the Low Countries, who wrote several works, including Chronicles and Meliador, a long Arthurian romance, a large body of poetry, both short lyrical forms, as well as longer narrative poems. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognised as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th century kingdoms of England and Scotland, his history is an important source for the first half of the Hundred Years' War. What little is known of Froissart's life comes from his historical writings and from archival sources which mention him in the service of aristocrats or receiving gifts from them. Although his poems have been used in the past to reconstruct aspects of his biography, this approach is in fact flawed, as the'I' persona which appears in many of the poems should not be construed as a reliable reference to the historical author; this is why de Looze has characterised these works as'pseudo-autobiographical'.
Froissart came from Valenciennes in the County of Hainaut, situated in the western tip of the Holy Roman Empire, bordering France. Earlier scholars have suggested that his father was a painter of armorial bearings, but there is little evidence for this. Other suggestions include that he began working as a merchant but soon gave that up to become a cleric. For this conclusion there is no real evidence, as the poems which have been cited to support these interpretations are not autobiographical. By about age 24, Froissart left Hainault and entered the service of Philippa of Hainault, queen consort of Edward III of England, in 1361 or 1362; this service, which would have lasted until the queen's death in 1369, has been presented as including a position of court poet and/or official historiographer. Based on surviving archives of the English court, Croenen has concluded instead that this service did not entail an official position at court, was more a literary construction, in which a courtly poet dedicated poems to his'lady' and in return received occasional gifts as remuneration.
Froissart took a serious approach to his work. He traveled in England, Wales, France and Spain gathering material and first-hand accounts for his Chronicles, he traveled with Lionel, Duke of Clarence, to Milan to attend and chronicle the duke's wedding to Violante, the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti. At this wedding, two other significant writers of the Middle Ages were present: Chaucer and Petrarch. After the death of Queen Philippa, he enjoyed the patronage of Joanna, Duchess of Brabant among various others, he received rewards—including the benefice of Estinnes, a village near Binche and became canon of Chimay—sufficient to finance further travels, which provided additional material for his work. He returned to England in 1395 but seemed disappointed by changes that he viewed as the end of chivalry; the date and circumstances of his death are unknown but St. Monegunda of Chimay might be the final resting place for his remains, although still unverified. Much more than his poetry, Froissart's fame is due to his Chronicles.
The text of his Chronicles is preserved in more than 100 illuminated manuscripts, illustrated by a variety of miniaturists. One of the most lavishly illuminated copies was commissioned by Louis of Gruuthuse, a Flemish nobleman, in the 1470s; the four volumes of this copy contain 112 miniatures painted by well-known Brugeois artists of the day, among them Loiset Lyédet, to whom the miniatures in the first two volumes are attributed. He is thought to have been one of the first to mention the use of the verge and foliot, or verge escapement in European clockworks, by 1368; the English composer Edward Elgar wrote an overture entitled Froissart. Froissart's Chronicles L'Horloge amoureux Méliador Peter Ainsworth, "Froissart, Jean", in Graeme Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, Brill, 2010, pp. 642–645. Cristian Bratu, "Je, aucteur de ce livre: Authorial Persona and Authority in French Medieval Histories and Chronicles." In Authorities in the Middle Ages. Influence and Power in Medieval Society.
Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, Tuija Ainonen, eds.: 183-204. Cristian Bratu, "Clerc, Aucteur: The Authorial Personae of French Medieval Historians from the 12th to the 15th centuries." In Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles. Juliana Dresvina and Nicholas Sparks, eds.: 231-259. Cristian Bratu, "De la grande Histoire à l’histoire personnelle: l’émergence de l’écriture autobiographique chez les historiens français du Moyen Age." Mediävistik 25: 85-117. Works by Jean Froissart at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Jean Froissart at Internet Archive Works at Open Library Bibliography Jean Froissart, compiled by Dr. Godfried Croenen, University of Liverpool; the Chronicles of Froissart, from Harvard Classics. The Online Froissart Project, by the University of Sheffield and the University of Liverpool. Jean Froissart, entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica; the Chronicles of Froissart Full 12 Volumes Edition online
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status; the NHS commissions most emergency medical services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other emergency services, the public access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. In addition to ambulance services provided by NHS organisations, there are some private and volunteer emergency medical services arrangements in place in the UK, the use of private or volunteer ambulances at public events or large private sites, as part of community provision of services such as community first responders. Air ambulance services in the UK are not part of the NHS and are funded through charitable donations.
Paramedics are seconded from a local NHS ambulance service, with the exception of Great North Air Ambulance Service who employ their own paramedics. Doctors are provided by their home hospital and spend no more than 40% of their time with an air ambulance service. Public ambulance services across the UK are required by law to respond to four types of requests for care, which are: Emergency calls Doctor's urgent admission requests High dependency and urgent inter-hospital transfers Major incidentsAmbulance trusts and services may undertake non-urgent patient transport services on a commercial arrangement with their local hospital trusts or health boards, or in some cases on directly funded government contracts, although these contracts are fulfilled by private and voluntary providers; the National Health Service Act 1946 gave county and borough councils a statutory responsibility to provide an emergency ambulance service, although they could contract a voluntary ambulance service to provide this, with many contracting the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance or another local provider.
The last St John Division, to be so contracted is reputed to have been at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, where the two-bay ambulance garage can still be seen at the branch headquarters. The Regional Ambulance Officers’ Committee reported in 1979 that “There was considerable local variation in the quality of the service provided in relation to vehicles and equipment. Most Services were administered by Local Authorities through their Medical Officer of Health and his Ambulance Officer, a few were under the aegis of the Fire Service, whilst others relied upon agency methods for the provision of part or all of their services.” The 142 existing ambulance services were transferred by the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 from local authority to central government control in 1974, consolidated into 53 services under regional or area health authorities. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England.
The June 2005 report "Taking healthcare to the Patient", authored by Peter Bradley, Chief Executive of the London Ambulance Service, for the Department of Health led to the merging of the 31 trusts into 13 organisations in England, plus one organisation each in Wales and Northern Ireland. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, this has further reduced to 10 ambulance service trusts in England, plus the Isle of Wight which has its own provision. Following the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, commissioning of the ambulance services in each area passed from central government control into the hands of regional clinical commissioning groups; the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary provider for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England, 1 each in the other three countries. In England there are now ten NHS ambulance trusts, as well as an ambulance service on the Isle of Wight, run directly by Isle of Wight NHS Trust, with boundaries following those of the former regional government offices.
The ten trusts are: East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust London Ambulance Service NHS Trust North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS TrustThe English ambulance trusts are represented by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, with the Scottish and Northern Irish providers all associate members. On the 14 November 2018 West Midlands Ambulance Service became the UK's first university-ambulance trust; the service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Ambulance Service is a Special Health Board that provides ambulance services throughout whole of Scotland, on behalf of the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.
Due to the remote nature of many areas of Scotland compared to the other Home Nations, the Scottish Ambulance Service has Britain's only publi
David Cousin
David Cousin was a Scottish architect, landscape architect and planner associated with early cemetery design and many prominent buildings in Edinburgh. From 1841 to 1872 he operated as Edinburgh’s City Superintendent of Works. Cousin was born in North Leith on 19 May 1809, the son of Isabella Paterson and John Cousin, was christened in North Leith Church, he trained under his father as a joiner, but went on to study mathematics with Edward Sang. He trained as an architect under William Henry Playfair, Scotland’s most eminent architect of the time, leaving Playfair's practice in 1831 to set up on his own. During this time he was unsuccessful, in the competition to design the Scott Monument, he established a partnership with Glaswegian engineer William Gale, together they won two competitions for the design of the West Church in Greenock and the Parish Church at Cambuslang. In 1841 he was appointed assistant to Thomas Brown, Superintendent of City Works in Edinburgh, replacing him in this role when Brown retired.
During the Disruption of 1843, he left the Church of Scotland and joined the Free Church, after which he received many commissions for the new churches and graveyards that were necessary as a result of the split. He himself was an elder of Pilrig Free Church, to his own design and only the second purpose-built church for the Free Church, he worked at 7 Greenhill Gardens in Edinburgh. He employed John Chesser at his City Architect's office at 12 Royal Exchange, he trained John Henderson, Robert Morham and Morham's brother-in-law, John McLachan. He retired to Louisiana in the United States and died there in Baton Rouge in 1878, aged 69. Although buried in the United States he has a memorial in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh where the remainder of his family lie, including his wife, Isabella; the memorial stands on the west side of a north-south path, just north of the large Highlanders monument. His brother, George Cousin a surveyor, lies nearby. On 23 April 1838 Cousin married Isabella Galloway, the daughter of a tailor.
Together they had three daughters. David's brother William Cousin was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, latterly in Melrose inj the Scottish Borders. Mausoleum for Major Archibald Monteath in Glasgow Necropolis Warriston Cemetery Dean Cemetery Dalry Cemetery Rosebank Cemetery Newington Cemetery East Princes Street Gardens: terraces, quatrefoil-pierced ballustrades and steps Layout of the villas in the Grange estate Layout of the villas in the Mayfield estate St Mary Street Improvement Plan Blackfriars Street Improvement Plan Jeffrey Street Chambers Street West Savile Road Many of these were done to a standard plan as "temporary" solutions which were replaced. Auchterarder Cramond Kirkcaldy Newington, Edinburgh Pathhead, Kirkcaldy St Andrews, Edinburgh St Devenick’s, Banchory St Georges, Lothian Road, Edinburgh Borgue, Kirkcudbrightshire Dean Village, Edinburgh Kilmarnock Roseneath, Dunbartonshire Saltcoats Kinghorn Oban Free Church Offices on the Mound in Edinburgh Cambuslang Parish Church Kingston Church, Glasgow Olrig Parish Church, Caithness Chirnside Bridge Paper Mills Dalrymple Church, Ayrshire Villa at 7 Greenhill Gardens Dalkeith Corn Exchange Kelso Corn Exchange Curriehill House near Currie, Edinburgh The Reid School of Music, Edinburgh Melrose Corn Exchange The India Buildings Scott Monument Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh by McWilliam Gifford and Walker Buildings of Scotland: Lothian by Colin McWilliam
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served for twelve years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times. Gladstone was born in Liverpool to Scottish parents, he first entered the House of Commons in 1832, beginning his political career as a High Tory, a grouping which became the Conservative Party under Robert Peel in 1834. Gladstone served as a minister in both of Peel's governments, in 1846 joined the breakaway Peelite faction, which merged into the new Liberal Party in 1859, he was Chancellor under Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell. Gladstone's own political doctrine—which emphasised equality of opportunity, free trade, laissez-faire economic policies—came to be known as Gladstonian liberalism, his popularity amongst the working-class earned him the sobriquet "The People's William". In 1868, Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time.
Many reforms were passed during his first ministry, including the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the introduction of secret voting. After electoral defeat in 1874, Gladstone resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, his Midlothian Campaign of 1879–80 was an early example of many modern political campaigning techniques. After the 1880 general election, Gladstone formed his second ministry, which saw the passage of the Third Reform Act as well as crises in Egypt and Ireland, where his government passed repressive measures but improved the legal rights of Irish tenant farmers. Back in office in early 1886, Gladstone proposed home rule for Ireland but was defeated in the House of Commons; the resulting split in the Liberal Party helped keep them out of office—with one short break—for twenty years. Gladstone formed his last government in 1892, at the age of 82; the Second Home Rule Bill passed through the Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords in 1893. Gladstone left office in March 1894, aged 84, as both the oldest person to serve as Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to have served four terms.
He died three years later. Gladstone was known affectionately by his supporters as "The People's William" or the "G. O. M.". Historians call him one of Britain's greatest leaders. Born in 1809 in Liverpool, at 62 Rodney Street, William Ewart Gladstone was the fourth son of the merchant John Gladstone, his second wife, Anne MacKenzie Robertson. In 1835, the family name was changed from Gladstones to Gladstone by royal licence, his father was made a baronet, of Fasque and Balfour, in 1846. Although born and brought up in Liverpool, William Gladstone was of purely Scottish ancestry, his grandfather Thomas Gladstones was a prominent merchant from Leith, his maternal grandfather, Andrew Robertson, was Provost of Dingwall and a Sheriff-Substitute of Ross-shire. His biographer John Morley described him as "a highlander in the custody of a lowlander", an adversary as "an ardent Italian in the custody of a Scotsman". One of his earliest childhood memories was being made to stand on a table and say "Ladies and gentlemen" to the assembled audience at a gathering to promote the election of George Canning as MP for Liverpool in 1812.
In 1814, young "Willy" visited Scotland for the first time, as he and his brother John travelled with their father to Edinburgh and Dingwall to visit their relatives. Willy and his brother were both made freemen of the burgh of Dingwall. In 1815, Gladstone travelled to London and Cambridge for the first time with his parents. Whilst in London, he attended a service of thanksgiving with his family at St Paul's Cathedral following the Battle of Waterloo, where he saw the Prince Regent. William Gladstone was educated from 1816–1821 at a preparatory school at the vicarage of St. Thomas' Church at Seaforth, close to his family's residence, Seaforth House. In 1821, William followed in the footsteps of his elder brothers and attended Eton College before matriculating in 1828 at Christ Church, where he read Classics and Mathematics, although he had no great interest in the latter subject. In December 1831, he achieved the double first-class degree. Gladstone served as President of the Oxford Union, where he developed a reputation as an orator, which followed him into the House of Commons.
At university, Gladstone was a denounced Whig proposals for parliamentary reform. Following the success of his double first, William travelled with his brother John on a Grand Tour of Europe, visiting Belgium, France and Italy. Upon his return to England, William was elected to Parliament in 1832 as a Tory Member of Parliament for Newark through the influence of the local patron, the Duke of Newcastle. Although Gladstone entered Lincoln's Inn in 1833, with intentions of becoming a barrister, by 1839 he had requested that his name should be removed from the list because he no longer intended to be called to the Bar. In the House of Commons, Gladstone was a disciple of High Toryism and, as a scion of one of the largest slave-holding families in the world, he opposed both the abolition of slavery and factory legislation. Gladstone's father was a slave owner.
Cumbric
Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North" in what is now Northern England and southern Lowland Scotland. It was related to Old Welsh and the other Brittonic languages. Place name evidence suggests Cumbric may have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales; the prevailing view is that it became extinct in the 12th century, after the incorporation of the semi-independent Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland. Dauvit Broun sets out the problems with the various terms used to describe the Cumbric language and its speakers; the people seem to have called themselves * Cumbri the same way. The Welsh and the Cumbric-speaking people of what are now southern Scotland and northern England felt they were one ethnic group. Old Irish speakers called them Bretnach, or Bretain; the Norse called them Brettar. In Medieval Latin, the English term Wales and the term Cumbri were Latinised as Wallenses "of Wales" and Cumbrenses "of Cumbria".
The usual English usage was to call them Welsh. In Scots, a Cumbric speaker seems to have been called Wallace, from the Scots Wallis/Wellis "Welsh". In Cumbria itaque: regione quadam inter Angliam et Scotiam sita – "Cumbria: a region situated between England and Scotland"; the Latinate term Cambria is used for Wales. John T. Koch defines the Cumbric region as "the area between the line of the River Mersey and the Forth-Clyde Isthmus", but goes on to include evidence from the Wirral Peninsula in his discussion and does not define its easterly extent. Kenneth Jackson describes Cumbric as "the Brittonic dialect of Cumberland, northern Lancashire, south-west Scotland..." and goes on to define the region further as being bound in the north by the Firth of Clyde, in the south by the River Ribble and in the east by the Southern Scottish Uplands and the Pennine Ridge. The evidence from Cumbric comes entirely through secondary sources, since no contemporary written records of the language are known; the majority of evidence comes from place names of the extreme northwest of England and the south of Scotland.
Other sources include the personal names of Strathclyde Britons in Scottish and Anglo-Saxon sources, a few Cumbric words surviving into the High Middle Ages in southwest Scotland as legal terms. Although the language is long extinct, traces of its vocabulary arguably have persisted into the modern era in the form of "counting scores" and in a handful of dialectal words. From this scanty evidence, little can be deduced about the singular characteristics of Cumbric, not the name by which its speakers referred to it. What is agreed upon by linguists is that Cumbric was a Western Brittonic language related to Welsh and, more distantly, to Cornish and Breton. Around the time of the battle described in the poem Y Gododdin, Common Brittonic was believed to be transitioning into its daughter languages: Cumbric in North Britain, Old Welsh in Wales, Southwestern Brittonic, the ancestor of Cornish and Breton. Kenneth Jackson concludes that the majority of changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the fifth to the end of the sixth century.
This involved the loss of final syllables. If the poem dates to this time, it would have been written in an early form of Cumbric, the usual name for the Brythonic speech of the Hen Ogledd. Jackson suggested the name "Primitive Cumbric" for the dialect spoken at the time. Cumbric place names are found in Scotland south of the firths of Clyde. Brittonic names north of this line are Pictish, they are found in the historic county of Cumberland and bordering areas of Northumberland. They are less common in Westmorland, with some in Lancashire and the adjoining areas of North Yorkshire. Approaching Cheshire, late Brittonic placenames are better described as being Welsh rather than Cumbric; as noted below, any clear distinction between Cumbric and Welsh is difficult to prove. For references see Armstrong et al. Watson and Jackson. Many Brittonic place-names remain in northern England, which should not be described as Cumbric because they originated from a period before Brittonic split into its daughter dialects e.g. Welsh, Breton and – arguably – Cumbric.
Some of the principal towns and cities of the region have names of Cumbric origin, including: Bathgate, West Lothian. Meaning'boar wood'. Carlisle, Cumbria. Recorded as Luguvalium in the Roman period; the Welsh form Caerliwelydd is derived by regular sound changes from the Romano-British name. Glasgow, Scotland. Believed to derive from words equivalent to Welsh glas gau "green hollow". Lanark, Lanarkshire. From the equivalent of Welsh llannerch "glade, clearing". Penicuik, Midlothian. From words meaning "hill of the cuckoo". Penrith, Cumbria. Meaning "chief ford". Several supposed Cumbric elements occur in place names of the region; the following table lists some of them according to the modern Welsh equivalent: Some Cumbric names have been replaced by Gaelic or English equivalents and in some cases
