Celtic borrowings in English

Roman Britain

For almost four centuries Britons were ruled by the Romans, who called their country Britanni or Britannia. It was the most westerly and northerly province of the Roman empire. The Romans, led by Julius Caesar, came to the British Isles in BC 55 and a year later returned to the Continent as the Celtic opposition was strong. In BC 54 he returned with 25,000 men. The Romans crossed the Thames and stormed the Celtic capital of Cassivellaunus. Caesar then departed, taking hostages and securing a promise to pay tribute.

In the ninety years between the first two raids and the invasion of the Romans in AD 43, a thorough economic development in South-East Britain went on. Traders and colonists settled in large numbers and the growth of towns was so considerable that in AD 50, only seven years after the invasion of Claudius, Verulamium (now St. Albans) was granted the full status of a Roman town (municipium) with self-government and the rights of Roman citizenship for its inhabitants.

It would be wrong to assume that the Celts eagerly surrendered to the invaders. The hilly districts in the West were very difficult to subdue, and the Romans had to set up many camps in that part of the country and station their legions all over Britain to defend the province.

The Celts fought fiercely against the Romans who never managed to become masters of the whole island. In AD 61-62 Queen Boadicea (Boadica) led her tribesmen against the Romans. Upon her husband’s death, she managed to raise an army which raided the occupied territories slaying the Romans and their supporters, burning down and ruining the Roman towns and nearly bringing an end to the Roman rule of Britain as such. It was only when she was captured by the Roman soldiers and took poison that peace was restored in the province.

The Romans were also unable to conquer the Scottish Highlands, or Caledonia as they called it, thus the province of Britain covered only the southern part of the island. From time to time the Picts from the North managed to raid the Roman part of the island, burn their villages, and drive off their cattle and sheep. During the reign of the Emperor Hadrian a high wall was built in the North to defend the province from the raids of the Picts and the Scots. (See Map 2.) The wall, known as Hadrian’s Wall, stretches from the eastern to the western coast of the island. With its forts, built a mile apart one from another, the wall served as a stronghold in the North. At the same time, when the Northern Britons were not at war with the Romans, the wall turned into an improvised market place for either party.

In AD 139 – 42 the Emperor Antoninus Pius abandoned Hadrian’s Wall and constructed a new frontier defence system between the Forth and the Clyde – the Antonine Wall – but its use was short-lived and Hadrian’s Wall was again the main northern frontier by AD 164.

One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain in the first century AD, their first task was to build a system of roads. Stone bridges were built across rivers. Roman roads were made of of stones, lime and gravel. They were vital not only for the speedy movement of troops and supplies from one strategic center to another, but also allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market.

Map 2

(From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)

Within a generation the British landscape changed considerably. London became the chief administrative centre. From it, roads spread out to all parts of the province. Some of the roads exist up to this day, for example Watling Street which stretched from Dover to London, then to Chester and into the mountains of Wales. Unlike the Celts, who lived in villages, the Romans were city-dwellers. The Roman army built legionary fortresses, forts, camps, and roads, and assisted with the construction of buildings in towns. The Romans built most towns to a standardized pattern of straight, parallel main streets that crossed at right angles. The forum (market place) formed the centre of each town. Shops and such public buildings as the basilica, baths, law-courts, and temple surrounded the forum. The paved streets had drainage systems, and fresh water was piped to many buildings. Houses were built of wood or narrow bricks and had tiled roofs.

The chief towns were Colchester, Gloucester, York, Lincoln, Dover, Bath and London (or Londinium). It is common knowledge that London was founded by the Romans in place of an earlier settlement.

Roman towns fell into one of three main types: coloniae, municipia and civitates. The coloniae of Roman Britain were Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, York, and possibly London, and their inhabitants were Roman citizens. The only certain municipia was Verulamium (St. Albans), a self-governing community with certain legal privileges. The civitates, towns of non-citizens, included most of Britain’s administrative centres.

The Romans also brought their style of architecture to the countryside in the form of villas. Some very large early villas are known in Kent and in Sussex.

Both public buildings and private dwellings were decorated in imitation of the Roman style. Sculpture and wall painting were both novelties in Roman Britain. Statues or busts in bronze or marble were imported from Mediterranean workshops, but British sculptures soon learned their trade and produced attractive works of their own. Mosaic floors, found in towns and villas, were at first laid by imported craftsmen. But there is evidence that by the middle of the 2^nd century a local firm was at work at Colchester and Verulamium, and in the 4^th century a number of local mosaic workshops can be recognized by their styles.

When Christianity gained popularity in the Empire, it also spread to the provinces and was established in Britain in the 300s. The first English martyr was St. Alban who died about 287.

In 306, Constantine the Great, the son of Constantine Chlora and Elene (Helen), the daughter of a British chief, became the Roman Emperor. He stopped the persecution of Christians and became a Christian himself. All Christian churches were centralised in Constantinople which was made the capital of the Empire. This religion came to be known as the Catholic Church. (‘catholic’ means ‘universal’.) Greek and Latin became the languages of the Church all over Europe including Britain.

Literary evidence suggests that Britons adopted Latinized names and that the elite spoke and wrote Latin. The largest number of Latin words was introduced as a result of the spread of Christianity: abbot, altar, angel, creed, hymn, idol, organ, nun, pope, temple and many others. The traces of Latin are still found in modern English: