Saturday, March 26, 2011

Brampton Bryan

Following on from the previous post, most of Sion Ceri's praise poems were composed to patrons living in Montgomeryshire although a few do concern Radnorshire folk. One example is a praise poem to Siams ap Rhys (James Price) of Mynachdy (Monaughty).

According to the editor of the 1996 edition of Sion Ceri's work there was a puzzle about whom and where one of the couplets in the poem referred:

Iarlles oedd i'r llys heddiw,
A'i braint o nen Brontyn yw.

No doubt this little mystery was cleared up long ago, but if not I'd say it refers to Siams' second wife Elsbedd Harley of Brampton Bryan.

If that's the case the Welsh name of the Herefordshire village must have been Brontyn.

UPDATE: Would just like to clarify that Brontyn would have been a Cymricised version of an original English name, just like Prestatyn and Rhyl.

4 comments:

Gwenddolen said...

Yes, second wife Elsbeth or Elizabeth, of Brampton Bryan. Brontyn is just a Welsh rendering of E. Brampton ('broom' is the first element).

radnorian said...

Thanks Ms G - I see the Coplestone-Crow book on Hereford Place-names doesn't have early versions of Brampton Bryan, although there are a few for nearby Little Brampton which have examples with Bron/Brom rather than Bram.

The castlewales site believes that Brian of Brampton may have been killed when the men of Maelienydd stormed Cefnllys castle in 1294. Some great pictures of Cefnllys there:

http://www.castlewales.com/cefnllys.html

Gwenddolen said...

C-C no, but a Brian de Brantone in 1185, according to Ekwall's Dictionary, p. 60.

Unknown said...

Thanks for this blog post. Just to note that the form 'Brontyn brian' is used by Lewys Dwnn: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dhBJAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285&dq=brontyn+wales&source=bl&ots=nuYcDPhN1u&sig=M_gwl9AB19w9KG0PNZVQHD50zVs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7mqjPu43VAhUIAsAKHeOxCDgQ6AEIOjAE#v=onepage&q=brontyn%20&f=false