The fifth-century Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain eventually split the originally unified Celtic-speaking area into three zones: Wales, the English south-west, and Yr Hen Ogledd, “The Old North” – the English north-west together with neighbouring areas of Scotland.
Of these three zones, Welsh still survives strongly as the native language of much of the population of Wales. But in the English south-west, Anglo-Saxons had taken over control of most of Devon by about 800 AD, leading to a wave of Celtic-speaking emigration to Brittany where the Brittonic language Breton still survives today. Cornwall remained partly Brittonic-speaking at least until the 1700s, though over the centuries the language was pushed back towards the south-western edge of the county.
In “The Old North”, the Cumbric language, as it came to be called, survived until around 1200, before gradually ceding to English in the south and Gaelic in the north. At its fullest extent, Cumbric was spoken in northern Lancashire, Westmoreland, Cumberland, Dumfries, and Galloway.
There are still numerous Cumbric-origin place-names in this area today. The first element of Carlisle corresponds to Welsh caer “fort” (also found in Cardiff and Carmarthen). Penrith is from the Brittonic for “main ford”: Modern Welsh pen is “chief, main” and rhyd is “ford”. Ecclefechan (Dumfries) is the Cumbric for “little church”: modern Welsh eglwys is a feminine noun meaning “church” and fechan is a feminine form of the adjective meaning “small”.
There are only three actual Cumbric words known to us for certain from medieval times: galnys “blood money” cf. Modern Welsh galanas; kelchyn
“tribute paid to a ruler on a royal progress” cf. Welsh cylch “circuit”; and mercheta “tax paid to a ruler on the marriage of a daughter” cf. Welsh merch “girl, daughter”. But the closest linguistic relatives of Cumbric would have undoubtedly been the Brittonic dialects of northern Wales.
A special counting system is also known to have survived in Cumbria at least until recently and is clearly at least partly Brittonic in origin. The system is traditionally supposed to have been used by shepherds for counting sheep, and knitters for counting stitches, but it seems in recent times to have been employed more often by children playing counting games.
The words vary from place to place, but one variant for the numbers from 1-10 is: yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera, nothera, dothera, dick. The numbers from 1-10 in Modern Welsh are: un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith, wyth, naw, deg. The correspondences between Welsh pedwar “four” and pethera; between pump (pronounced “pimp”) “five” and pimp; and between deg “ten” and dick, are particularly striking. Saith does resemble sethera, but the former means “seven” and the latter “six”.
A further very striking fact is that the Cumbrian counting-system word for 15
is bumfit, which corresponds rather closely to Welsh pymtheg; and yan-a-bumfit “one plus 15” = 16 corresponds nicely to Welsh un ar bymtheg. The change from pymtheg to bymtheg shows a word-initial grammatical mutation which is common in the Celtic languages, and it is interesting that the Cumbrian version appears to be derived from the mutated form. Welsh pymtheg is rather transparently derived from pump+deg; but the historical
relationship between bumfit and pimp+dick is no longer so clear.
