The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain

This is the first comprehensive linguistic study for 50 years of the stones from western Britain and Brittany, inscribed in the Roman and Irish Ogam alphabets.

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• First comprehensive study for 50 years of the stones from western Britain and Brittany, inscribed in the Roman and Irish Ogam alphabets.
  
• Provides a linguistic analysis of the 370 Brittonic and Irish inscriptions.
  
• Presents new phonological evidence for the dating of the inscriptions.

List of Tables and Figures ix

Preface xi

1 Introduction 1

2 Brittonic Phonology (1-98) 21

3 Brittonic Chronology 238

4 Irish Phonology (1-43) 296

5 Irish Chronology 322

6 Conclusion and List of Proposed Dates 351

Appendices

Abbreviations and Bibliography 396

Index of Forms Discussed 421

Index of Other Forms Mentioned 439

"[Sims-Williams's] concern is to give due weight to all the possibilities rather than to rush into one attractive interpretation. This will make the book extremely valuable as a restraining influence on the rasher tendencies of other scholars. The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain is a major achievement in Celtic historical linguistics and will be an indispensible work of reference for many years to come."
Antiquity

"(Celtic Inscriptions of Britain) represents an invaluable contribution to its field."
Cumbrian Medieval Celtic Studies

Patrick Sims-Williams is Professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of ‘Religion and Literature in Western England, 600-800’ (1990) and ‘Britain and Early Christian Europe’ (1995). He is also the co-editor of ‘Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Place-Names of Europe’ (2000), and the editor of Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies. This is the first comprehensive linguistic study for 50 years of the stones from western Britain and Brittany, inscribed in the Roman and Irish Ogam alphabets.

The stones are a major source for the history of the Celtic-speakers of post-Roman Britain and for the development and divergence of their languages, yet the dating of the 370 inscriptions remains uncertain. Now, through a new study of the phonological development of the Brittonic and Irish branches of Celtic, Patrick Sims-Williams places the chronology of the inscriptions on a surer footing.

The book will be of interest to archaeologists, historians and art historians, as well as to philologists interested in the methods and problems of historical phonology and onomastics.