The fruit loaf called by the Welsh 'bara brith' means 'speckled bread' in their tongue.
This reminded me of the word 'Brythonic', a term coined for a group of southern Celtic languages by John Rhys, Oxford's first Professor of Celtic and a fellow of Jesus College.
Now I speculated (speckle-ated?) that the 'bryth-/brith' could be connected, since the ancient Britons painted themselves, and in an early twentieth century article I found this:
'... the name of Briton apparently comes from the word 'Brith,' painted, while Giraldus Cambrensis records that 'Glaswir,' 'blue men', was in his time the name for the Welsh clergy, probably a survival attached to the priestly caste from heathen times. It is probable that both Britons and Caledonians adopted the practice of painting from the earlier races among whom they found it observed.'
'The Pictish Race and Kingdom,' by James Ferguson, in The Celtic Review, Vol. 7, No. 25 (Feb., 1911) - page 30
https://zenodo.org/record/1570180/files/article.pdf?download=1
3 comments:
The Welsh might be what is left of the original English.
They were blue because their wise elders told them that if they burned wood to keep warm the seas would rise and drown them. Also if they did not put all their valuables into the sacred well and send their virgins up to the big house, which mysteriously was very warm, then they would be char broiled before drowning.
The cunning ones, the wise elders, painted themselves blue so that hoi polloi would not know that they were secretly keeping themselves warm. They denied that this was hypocritical.
@P: believe so; or rather, original Celtic tribes.
@D: where did you get this? Or did you have fun making it up?
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