The Cams, Hampshire
ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE
530
Her Cerdic 7 Cynric genaman Wihte ealand 7 ofslogan fea men on Wihtgarabyrig.
534
Her Cerdic forðferde, 7 Cynric his sunu rixode .xxvii. wintra, 7 hie gesealdan heora twam nefum, Stufe 7 Wihtgare, Wihte ealand.
A.D. 530. This year Cerdic and Cynric took the isle of Wight, and slew many men in Carisbrook.
A.D. 534. This year died Cerdic, the first king of the West-Saxons. Cynric his son succeeded to the government, and reigned afterwards twenty-six winters. And they gave to their two nephews, Stuff and Wihtgar, the whole of the Isle of Wight.
WELSH ANNALS
537
The battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell: and there was plague in Britain and Ireland.
537
Gueith camlann in qua Arthur et Medraut corruerunt, et mortalitas in Brittannia et in Hibernia fuit.
This post is a continuation of the one offered here:
That article covered my findings pertaining to the Welsh Camlan (the Afon Gamlan).
Here I wish to discuss in some detail what I think is the actual, as opposed to the traditional, site.
Some time ago I put forward an outlandish idea - one that was quite harshly received. In fact, it was so universally disliked that I pulled the relevant blogs. However, I've recently had cause to reexamine the theory and have obtained some support for at least the premise from Dr. Richard Coates, one of the top experts in English place-names.
By now, my readers are aware that I was the person who first proposed (to Dr. Oliver Padel) that the name Medraut or, rather, the Cornish form Modred, represented the well-attested Roman/Latin name Moderatus.
When I was considering Arthur as an opponent of Cerdic of Wessex (or that Arthur actually was Cerdic of Wessex/Ceredig son of Cunedda), I had noticed something peculiar. Yes, Cerdic's and Arthur's death-dates pretty nearly correspond: Cerdic in 534, Arthur c. 537. But when it came to Cerdic, the context of his death was important. We are told that 4 years prior he had fought at the fort of Wight (Carisbrook). Upon his death, the Isle of Wight is given to Wihtgar and Stuf.
Now this Stuf is earlier mentioned during the battle at Cerdicesora, probably the Ower by Netley (the Natanleag of the ASC Cerdic battles), but also possibly the Ower by Calshot. To my eye, the proximity of Stubbington, Hampshire, to these Owers, and to Wight, was interesting. The place-name specialists (Ekwall, Mills, Watts) have two ideas for Stubbington. Either it contains a personal name Stubba or it is from stubbing, a Middle English term for cleared land with tree-stumps, from the OE word for tree-stump.
But we often find in certain circumstances that the letters b and f can be mistaken for each other, and thus substituted for each other. I wondered if the ASC's Stuf could represent an attempted eponym for Stubbington. As it happens, it is well-known that the early portion of the ASC contains several attested eponyms. The most blatant, perhaps, is Port, a chieftain whose name supposedly lies behind the place-names Portchester and Portsmouth.
[I have asked Dr. Coates, who is working on the Isle of Wight place-names right now, what his take is on Stuf and Stubbington. His response will be added to this blog post in due course.]
An even more fascinating place-name was near Stubbington: The Cams, a name which preserved W. camas, 'bend', for the remarkable loop in the estuary of the Wallington River at Portsmouth Harbour. The Cams Shore is spoken of in modern times, but we have ancient ora place-names all over the region. The closest to The Cams (actually right next to Cams Bay) is Wicor. According to Coates, this is for wic ‘specialized farm’ + ora 'shore, bank.'
When I asked Coates if The Cams might well have had an ora attached to it, he remarked that it was possible.
But an additional surprise was soon forthcoming. As it turned out, the name of the principal river of Wight - Medina, from OE medume - had among its various meanings "moderate." In other words, had someone known what medume meant, he could have rendered it into Latin as 'moderatus.' And that word could have been miscontrued at some point as a personal name.
Silly, right?
Well, not so fast.
Just across from the Medina, on the shore of Hampshire, the River Meon empties into The Solent at Stubbington! We have records that the people of the Meon were called the MEONWARA.
So, I went ahead and asked Dr. Coates what the inhabitants of the Medina would have been called. His reply:
"I suppose it would be *Meodemware."
What I'm thinking now, therefore, is that Medraut/Modred/Moderatus is an error for the men of the River Medina, who were fighting either for or against Arthur. If after the battle of Carisbrook in 530 Cerdic had the Isle of Wight, and The Cams [ora] = Camlan, then Cerdic and the men of Medina fell at The Cams.
I feel fairly confident that this may really be what happened.
***
The complete listing for Medina, courtesy Coates:
The Medina
Medine c. 1200 HMC, 1299 RS, t. Ed 4 Ct
Medme 1279 Ass, (cursum aque que vocat’) medeme before 1295 CarD, Medeme c.1250 QCh, 13th AD, Madox, AD, t. Ed. 1 RS, Medome 1299 RS
Medone 1299 Add
Mede c.1240x1250 GBCart, c.1250 QCh, 13th AOMB, ?13th (18th) Harl, aqua de Meda 1300 CarD
Medene R. 1775 M, River Medina 1781 M, R. Medena 1785 M
Ekwall (1928: 283-284 and DEPN) suggested that Medina and the name of the river Meden (Nottinghamshire) derive from the OE adjective medume, meodeme ‘middle’. That is appropriate for this river, which divides the island into two approximately equal halves. Forms like Medine and Medeine, which also occur in the names of the hundreds deriving from the river-name, probably result from mistaken resolution of minim-letter sequences in medieval handwriting, with <m> resolved as <in>. Subsequently Medine was latinized as Medina; there is no such Latin word, but it no doubt conveniently suggested medium ‘centre’ and related words. The name is now stressed on the second syllable, on the model of the many names, especially female given names, ending with -ina.
Ekwall (1928: 284) explains the short form Mede as being due to the fact that the river name appeared in long hundred-names such as *Estemedeme hundred. He felt that the loss of the <m> could be due to the second of three nasal consonants <…m…m…n…> in the long name being affected by dissimilation or haplology. In both the river-name and the hundred-names the shorter form is not found after the 14th century, after which, in the hundred-names, it is usually supplanted by forms in <-in->. That may suggest that the reason for the loss of <-m-> is really to be traced in the sociolinguistics of the High Middle Ages. Only one instance of the shorter form is found after the Black Death (1348-9) which precipitated the decline of French in legal-administrative usage. In medieval French, final resonant consonants in words adapted from Latin, where they represented historic syllables two after the stressed syllable, were strongly subject to elision (angele > ange, imagene > image, virgene > vi(e)rge), and this may be a reason for the early reduction of initially-stressed Medeme to Mede by scribes conversant with Law French. A further contributory factor may be the resemblance of the first syllable to the familiar ME place-name element mēde ‘meadow’.[1] From the later 14th century, local usage mediated by writers of English prevailed, though using the forms in <-in-> which had become normal.
A full discussion of medume from the University of Texas:
medume, medeme, meodume; adj. I. middling, moderate, common :-- Medeme mediocer, Ælfc. Gr. 9, 18; Som. 9, 67. Gif hwylc man forstele deórwurþe þing ... Gif hwylc man medeme þing (rem mediocrem) UNCERTAIN stele, L. Ecg. P. ii. 25; Th. ii. 192, 17-20. II. occupying the middle or mean position as regards (a) size, amount, etc. :-- Medume leódgeld a half fine (cf. medietas leudis, and other examples, Grmm. R. A. 653), L. Ethb. 7; Th. i. 4, 9: 21; Th. i. 8, 3. Hé hæfþ medemne wæstm he is of middle height, Homl. Th. i. 456, 18. Heáfdu medumra manna heads of average, ordinary men, Salm. Kmbl. 525; Sal. 262. Gehwar gebúrrihta sýn hefige, gehwar medeme (moderate), L. R. S. 4; Th. i. 434, 5. Se mǽsta segl acateon; se medemesta segl epidromas; se lesta dalum, Wrt. Voc. i. 56, 51-53. (b) place, rank, means :-- Medemra þegna heregeata the medial thanes' heriots, L. C. S. 72; Th. i. 414, 12. Ic tǽhte ðám rícan ... ic tǽhte ðám medeman mannum ... Ic bebeád þearfum, Homl. Th. i. 378, 20. Heáfodmynstres griþbryce ... medemran mynstres ... and ðonne git læssan, L. Eth. ix. 5; Th. i. 342, 1: L. C. E. 3; Th. i. 360, 21. Ðæs medemestan lífes (the life mid-way between the best and worst, cf. mon forlǽt ðæt wyrreste líf and ne mæg git cuman tó ðæm betstan, 10), Past. 51, 6; Swt. 399, 15. (c) age :-- Mínre yldstan déhter ... ðære medemestan ... ðære gingstan, Chart. Th. 488, 28-32: 489, 23-25. III. observing the just mean, perfect, meet, fit, worthy :-- Hé wæs þurh eall meodum (MS. B. medeme: MS. O. medum) erat dignus per omnia, Bd. 4, 3; S. 567, 19. Meoduma, Mt. Kmbl. Rush. 10, 37. Hwelc se beón scolde ðe medome (dignus) hierde bión sceolde, Past. 11, 7; Swt. 73, 20, Medeme, Blickl. Homl. 129, 35. Hé wyrþ ǽlces cræftes medeme (fit for, capable of) ... ǽlces þinges swá medeme swá hé ǽfre medemast (medomist, MS. Cott.), Bt. 38, 5; Fox 206, 25-29. Hwylc ðæt medeme gód wæs hwylc ðæt unmedeme quæ sit imperfecti, quæ perfecti boni forma, 35, 1; Fox 134, 4. Medeme fæsten a proper fast, L. E. I. 39; Th. ii. 436, 35. Medeme lác, Blickl. Homl. 37, 32. Ful medomne wæstm, 55, 5. Drihtne tó geearnienne medome folc ('a prepared people,' Lk. 1, 17), 165, 15. Ne gedéþ se anweald gódne ne meodumne (MS. Cott. medomne) power makes him neither good nor worthy, Bt. 16, 3; Fox 56, 20. Góde and medeme, Blickl Homl. 129, 23; 32. Mid medemum wæstmum hreówe dignis pænitentia fructibus, Bd. 4, 27; S. 604, 24: Mt. Kmbl. 3, 8. Medeme þinc res dignas, Kent. Gl. 396. Drihten ðú ðe eall medemu geworhtest and náht unmedemes, Shrn. 165, 31. Ne mágon wé nánwuht findan betere (MS. Cott. medemre) ðonne God, Bt. 34, 4; Fox 138, 26. Nis meodumre ne mára ðonne it is not too good nor too great for, Exon. 38 a; Th. 125, 16; Gú. 355. Ðæt medemæste the best, Bt. 24, 4; Fox 86, 10. Ða medumestan ealdras exspectabiles senatores, Wrt. Voc. ii. 145, 51. [O. H. Ger. metam, metem.] v. un-medume.
My previous articles on The Cams:
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