The Germanic Hero Wade and Wat's Dyke, Wales

• Authors: Andrew Breeze

Abstracts

EN

Wat's Dyke is an earthwork running along the border of England and Wales, like its western neighbour Offa's Dyke. But it is the shorter of the two, stretching a mere thirty-eight miles (62 kilometres) from the coast of the Dee Estuary to the environs of Old Oswestry, an Iron Age fortress in Shropshire, England. Although Wat's Dyke is now dated to the early ninth century (some decades later than Offa's Dyke), its name has remained obscure. A solution is yet possible. It can be related to the legendary Germanic hero Wade, who figures in Old and Middle English verse (including that of Chaucer), Old Norse, Middle High German, and even (as 'Wat') medieval Welsh. Wat's Dyke thus has unexpected links with poetry in Wales and beyond. There is another surprise: for Wade will be the mysterious warrior appearing on Maen Achwyfan, a tenth-century cross near Whitford, a Welsh village neighbouring the Dyke. The arguments for all this can be set out in four parts. We start with accounts of Wat's Dyke; move on to Chaucer and others on Wade; discuss the 'Wat' praised by Welsh bards; and end with Wade as the hero of both Maen Achwyfan and a lost monument to the west of it at Meliden (near Prestatyn) recorded by Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709), pioneer Oxford archaeologist. Plenty to say, then, on the past (Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian) of this region, where north-east Wales borders the English counties of Cheshire and Shropshire.

Keywords

EN

Wade; Germanic mythology; Chaucer; Maen Achwyfan; Wat's Dyke

• Publisher: Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa w Chełmie
• Journal: Language. Culture. Politics. International Journal
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 117-128

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Andrew Breeze

• University of Navarra, Pamplona (Spain)

References

• Anon. (2008). Wat's Dyke. In: J. Davies, N. Jenkins, M. Baines, P. I. Lynch (eds). The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales. Cardiff.
• Bachellery, E. (1950-1). L'Œuvre poétique de Gutun Owain. Paris.
• Beasley, E., Brett, L. (1971). A Shell Guide: North Wales. London.
• Blake, N. F. (ed). (1980). The Canterbury Tales. London.
• Breeze, A. (1991). “Beowulf 875-902 and the Sculptures at Sangüesa, Spain”. In: Notes and Queries, vol. 38.
• Breeze, A. (2007). “The Old Cornish Gloss on Boethius”. In: Notes and Queries, vol. 54, issue 4.
• Carr, A. D. (2017). The Gentry of North Wales in the Later Middle Ages. Cardiff.
• Chadwick, H. M., Chadwick, N. K. (1932). The Growth of Literature: The Ancient Literatures of Europe. Cambridge.
• Chambers, R. W. (1912). Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend. Cambridge.
• Charles-Edwards, T. M. (2013). Wales and the Britons 350-1064. Oxford.
• Davies, E. (1959). Flintshire Place-Names. Cardiff.
• Davies, W. (1990). Patterns of Power in Early Wales. Oxford.
• Edwards, N. (2013). A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales: North Wales. Cardiff.
• Ekwall, E. (1960). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn. Oxford.
• Finberg, H. P. R. (1974). The Formation of England 550-1042. London.
• Foster, I. L. (1965). The Emergence of Wales. In: I. L. Foster, G. Daniel (eds). Prehistoric and Early Wales. London.
• Fox, A. (1948). Early Christian Period: Settlement Sites and Other Remains. In: V. E. Nash-Williams (ed.). A Hundred Years of Welsh Archaeology. Gloucester.
• Fox, C. (1955). Offa's Dyke. London.
• Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A, Stenton, F. M. (eds). (1939). The Place-Names of Wiltshire. Cambridge.
• Higham, N. J. (1993). The Origins of Cheshire. Manchester.
• Houlder, C. (1974). Wales: An Archaeological Guide. London.
• Jack, R. I. (1972). The Sources of History: Medieval Wales. London.
• Jackson, K. H. (1953). Language and History in Early Britain. Edinburgh.
• Jones, G. R. J. (1972). Post-Roman Wales. In: H. P. R. Finberg (ed.). The Agrarian History of England and Wales: AD 43-1042. Cambridge.
• Jones, I. (ed.). (1963). Gwaith Hywel Cilan. Caerdydd.
• Koch, J. T. (2007). An Atlas for Celtic Studies. Oxford.
• Labuda, G. (1961). Źródła, sagi i legendy do najdawniejszych dziejów Polski. Warszawa.
• Lewis, S. (1844). A Topographical Dictionary of Wales: From Llanedarn to Y Vaenor Isâv, 3rd edn. London.
• Lloyd, J. E. (1911). A History of Wales. London.
• Mackie, W. S. (ed). (1934). The Exeter Book: Part II. London.
• Malim, T. (2020). Old Oswestry and its Relationship to Wat's Dyke. In: T. Malim, G. Nash (eds). Old Oswestry Hillfort and its Landscape. Oxford.
• Mann, J. (ed.). (2005). The Canterbury Tales. London.
• Naismith, R. (2021). Early Medieval Britain. Cambridge.
• Nash-Williams, V. E. (1950). The Early Christian Monuments of Wales. Cardiff.
• Neidorf, L. (2017). The Transmission of 'Beowulf'. Ithaca.
• Owen, H. W. (2008). Place-Names and the Landscapes of North-East Wales. In: O. J. Padel and D. N. Parsons (eds). A Commodity of Good Names. Donington.
• Owen H. W., Gryffiths, K. Ll. (2017). Place-Names of Flintshire. Cardiff.
• Phillips, C. W. (1966). Map of Britain in the Dark Ages, 2nd edn. Southampton.
• Rees, W. (1951). An Historical Atlas of Wales. London.
• Reynolds, A. (2020). A Possible Anglo-Saxon Execution Cemetery. In: A. Langlands, R. Lavell (eds). The Land of the English Kin. Leiden.
• Robinson, F. N. (ed.). (1957). The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd edn. London.
• Root, R. J. (ed.). (1926). The Book of Troilus and Criseyde. Princeton.
• Rowlands, E. I. (ed.). (1975). Gwaith Lewys Môn. Caerdydd.
• Sawyer, P. H. (1978). From Roman Britain to Norman England. London.
• Skeat, W. W. (ed.). (1900). The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Notes to the Canterbury Tales, 2nd edn. Oxford.
• Smith, J. B. (2017). Walter Map and the Matter of Britain. Philadelphia.
• Stenton, F. M. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn. Oxford.
• Stévenovitch, C., Mathieu, A. (eds). (2017). Les 'Mort d'Arthur' moyen-anglaises en vers. Turnhout.
• Vinaver, E. (ed.). (1967). The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 2nd edn. Oxford.
• Watts, V. E. (ed.). (2004). The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names. Cambridge.
• Welch, M. (2001). The Archaeology of Mercia. In: M. P. Brown, C. A. Farr (eds). Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe. London.
• Williams, H. (2007). Forgetting the Britons in Victorian Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. In: N. J. Higham (ed.). Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge.
• Williamson, C. (2017). The Complete Old English Poems. Philadelphia.
• Wilson, R. M. (1970). The Lost Literature of Medieval England, 2nd edn. London.
• Wormald, P. (1982). Offa's Dyke. In: J. Campbell (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons. Oxford.
• Worthington, M. (1999). Wat's Dyke. In: M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes, D. Scragg (eds). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford.

Identifiers

DOI

10.54515/lcp.2023.1.117-128

Biblioteka Nauki

22676738