Category: Brythonic/Brittonic

The Lime/Linden Tree – a “lesser” tree in the eyes of Ancient Britons?

December 9th, 2025

The linden tree. It stood unchanged since the first time Papa Horatio had seen it, all those years ago— unchanged, Alaine thought, for perhaps centuries. Always green, always blooming, even in the middle of winter. Now, at the cresting of summer, it almost blended into the deep green of the forest, except for the perfect circle of velvet green surrounding it. That, and the scent. Ebbing like a tide on the gentle breeze that stirred the linden’s leaves, the perfume mingled the ordinary golden florals of linden blooms with strange notes of vanilla and cedar and incense.” ~ Rowenna Miller, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill

The Lime/Linden tree (genus Tilia) has a place among the “sacred” tree types of Europe. You’ll find it referenced in Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, and Greek mythologies… and even into Asia, in northern China. It also remains a national symbol of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and of the Sorbs in Lusatia. Yet, when it comes to the Brythonic/Brittonic languages, words seem to struggle to find shared meaning and significance. Was that a reflection of lesser appreciation or respect?

At first, I thought… perhaps… but then, maybe I shouldn’t be so hasty.

In Welsh, breaking down the compound word, pisgwydden (plural: pisgwydd)… the first part, pisg, isn’t well-documented, and by itself, can mean blisters or pods. Yet, when combined with gwydden (gwŷdd, meaning “trees” or “wood”… by the way, that double “dd” should actually roll off the tongue as a “th” sound), it refers to the Linden tree.

The Cornish word (pry, prye, or prys), however, does not align (at least in my opinion) so smoothly in sound against the Welsh pisg, and I struggle to see shared origins in a Common Brythonic word.

That being said, I also saw a reference to the Cornish word Elowen (relating to Elaw/Elow) being associated with the Linden… though it actually means “Elm tree”. In this instance, the similarly sounding Breton word for the Linden is… evlec’h (or *evlec‘).

So, what’s going on?

At this point, I found it might be worth “climbing” from Brittonic, further up into the Insular Celtic linguistic tree, and then back down the other side, to Goidelic (Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, etc.).

In doing so, I found the Gaelic word for linden tree (or lime tree) is crann-teile (Scottish Gaelic) or teile (Irish Gaelic)… both, clearly connecting to the genus name Tilia. The crann (tree) or craobh, means tree… and relates to the Gaelic leamhán (which, I would argue, sounds much like the Cornish elow/elaw).

I had to wonder if… in elow/elaw and leamhán, was I seeing something significant tied to the Old Germanic word for law (hinting at a possible connection in the Proto-Indo-European linguistic tree). After all, the Linden tree was symbolic for peace and justice (as well as… love, fertility, friendship, healing, protection, endurance, and renewal). Lindens were traditionally seen as a sacred space where no lies could be told. It was the site for assemblies, legal proceedings, and important judgments. Not to mention… the word law comes from the Old English lagu, which was borrowed from the Old Norse lagu, meaning “things laid down or fixed,” derived from lag (“layer, measure”), ultimately from a Proto-Germanic root related to “to lie” or “to lay”. This highlights law as something established or set, unlike Latin-derived terms like lex or legal, which come from roots meaning “to gather” or “to bind,” showing different cultural approaches to defining law (laid down vs. gathered rules).

Yet, as I kept unraveling, it seemed more likely that I had encountered a homophone… the whole “sounds like.. but isn’t the same”.

Looking just at the Gaelic leamhán, I found it could mean a number of things… from elm tree, to a moth (particularly a clothes moth), and even to the marshmallow plant… which shares linguistic roots related to softness or weakness.

Wait, wait… softness or weakness?

Without going too far down yet another path, it’s probably worth noting that the Linden tree is soft and easy to carve, making it suitable for instruments, furniture, and sculptures.

It seems the further I go, the more uncertainties and/or possibilities there are.

Back to my original question, then…

Was the Linden tree of lesser importance to Britons? More specifically, I wonder if it was less significant to Britons, say… prior to the arrival (ca. 410 AD/CE) of the Anglo-Saxons, who… perhaps… brought with them the significance of Germanic symbolism of the Linden?

I can’t find a definitive answer, and given the timeline and scant history, it really shouldn’t surprise me.

Coming down the historical timeline, the Linden seems to have held some significance in Britain. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings certainly left us tastes of its enchantment in both Aragon’s Song of Lúthien…

He heard there often the flying sound/Of feet as light as linden-leaves.

… and Legolas Song of Nimrodel…

And in the wind she went a light/As leaf of linden tree.

… both, seemingly, influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer’s (ca. 1343-1400) Canterbury Tales…

Be ay of chiere as light as leef on lynde,
And lat hym care, and wepe, and wrynge, and waille!”*

I’m curious, though. Even with the boost from Tolkien, how did the Linden get left out in the contemporary sacred Pagan trees of the Wheel of the Year?

So ends today’s journey in the Brittonic…

*Be ever of cheer as light as a leaf on a linden tree,
And let him (your husband) care, and weep, and wring his hands, and wail!”)
“You’re not a Viking”- a problem with too quickly belittling identity in ancestral DNA

December 5th, 2025

On one hand, I get it… in fact, just this past summer, while in Norway, I had an interesting exchange with a Norwegian about DNA and an American’s (for example) claims of “being” German, Dane, Irish, Scots, or whatever. I agreed that an American should not claim that they “ARE” any one of these if they did not grow out of the respective, contemporary cultures. But, to say they “have origins in” a country… that should/might(?) be understood as identifying oneself to some sort of quest… an attempt to understand… something… in their DNA results.

Taking this back to the title of this post… the same might be said of the whole “Viking thing”… though, I think this gets complicated. About twenty years ago, I told someone about my “Viking origins”. They asked (fair question) how the DNA proved such a thing, and I responded that it was because one DNA company (over the years, I’ve tested with five, total) showed I was over (at that time) forty percent Scandinavian. They responded that just because it showed Scandinavian origins doesn’t mean that it was Viking in origin. That’s absolutely true, but… for having done genealogy for over thirty years (at that time), and having reached back in most lines to the 17th century (some even further… supported by primary source materials, of course), I had encountered not one instance of a Scandinavian surname. However, the Viking thumbprint on DNA in the British Isles, France, Germany, the Baltic, etc. (all areas indicated in my DNA origins), cannot be easily dismissed. Further, in the time since that discussion, I’ve significantly expanded my work in Y DNA studies and have seen Pretanī Y in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland… and Scandinavian Y in the British Isles. It’s a throwback to massaging the brain for the old lessons of World History 101, but through another type of magnifying glass.

It hasn’t been measured, so I can’t show percentages, but, I think most who take DNA tests (and, by the way, per an M.I.T. study, as of 2019, an estimated 26 million had tested their DNA for ancestry… and, by the way, one in five Americans have tested their DNA.) are just trying to get a handle on their ancestral origins… maybe even trying to see if it aligns with what they already “know”. Some even test to finally “prove” Native American origins (and, in my experience, frequently fail). Anyway, I think a good many get their results, say, “cool” and then tuck them away as some sort of “mission accomplished”.

I could go on and on about this (and, I’m likely to expand on some things in future posts), but I want to move along to thoughts on an even deeper motivation.

Could this journey through DNA reflect a need to identify to a sort of lack of “tribal” connection… a personal, genetic cry for something(s) absent in ourselves and in the world, today? Walking this back to the “You’re not a Viking”… I wonder… would it be right to belittle a person, so many generations removed from their Native American roots, for trying to reconnect with the same? Why then should anyone be quick to dismiss someone else’s “journey to reconnect” with their own indigenous (indeed, Animistic) spirituality… be that Nordic, Brittonic, or otherwise… or even a blended rebirth of a combination, in a new understanding, found comforting to navigate the modern world?

*Photo (hazy as it is) of a very enjoyable dining experience I had in the Viking camp at Midgardsblot, in Borre, Norway, this past August.
A thought before that seasonal kiss under the…

December 4th, 2025

We might do well to embrace Brythonic words for a popular toxic, parasitic evergreen plant used for Winter holiday decorations and for its peer-pressuring one into a kiss. Whether Welsh, Cornish, or Breton (uchelwydd/ughelvarr/uhelvarr), the meaning is quite simple. Broken down, “uchel“ = high, and “gwŷdd“ = trees. That said, I think (because it just sounds cool) I like a much older word, going back to Old Welsh and Old Breton… hisæl-barr. While”hisæl,” is not clearly defined (but, I think it sounds a lot like “mistle”, and the backstory of the æ might be further-telling), “barr” is derived from the Gaelic and Brittonic words for “height” or “hill” and is used here to mean branch or thicket. More or less, the Brythonic (uchelwydd/ughelvarr/uhelvarr) focuses on the fact that accessing the plant usually requires scaling a tree in some way.

On the other hand, from Germanic linguistics we find the word “mistletoe“… from the older form ‘mistle’ adding the Old English word tān. ‘Mistle’ is from Common Germanic (cf. Old High German mistil, Middle High German mistel, Old English mistel, Old Norse mistil).

Ultimately, the Brythonic pretty much explains what was necessary to get to the plant, while the Germanic focused on what appears necessary for how the plant is seeded.

So, to my point… would you rather have the Brythonic uchelwydd/ughelvarr/uhelvarr floating over your head as inspiration for a seasonal kiss, or… “mistel” (meaning “dung”) and tan (meaning “twig”), combined to form misteltan/mistletoe?

That’s right… the plant’s seeds are spread by birds wiping their bills on branches or by their droppings, making it a “dung-twig”. The final “-toe” was a natural evolution from the Old English word for twig.

Oh, and by the way did you know the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe is rooted in 18th century (or more narrowly, 1720-1784) England?

The “mistletoe song” from 1784 is a song from the English comic opera “Two to One” by George Colman the Younger.

What all the men, Jem, John, and Joe / Cry, ‘What good-luck has sent ye?’ / And kiss beneath the mistletoe / The girl not turned of twenty

Enjoy your seasonal tradition… 😉
Discovering “cynefin”

November 13th, 2025

Curious as I am in discovering Brythonic/Brittonic words and/or phrases, this morning I set off looking for something comparable to what Carl Jung considered “synchronicity”.

If you’re unfamiliar… while Jung believed in coincidence, he coined the term synchronicity for what he considered “meaningful coincidences” that cannot be explained by cause and effect. He theorized that these events connect inner psychological states with outer, unrelated events and are not random, but rather a manifestation of a deeper order in the universe.

I found translations… “Cydamseriad “, meaning “synchronization” or “simultaneity”… and Cyd-ddigwyddiad, which is the Welsh word for “coincidence”. Both are simply translations, but neither embraces the depth of Jung’s idea of synchronicity. Maybe I’ll look more.

Still, the search was not without fruit… it just wasn’t the fruit I was looking for. I came across two words that AI seemed to find worthy in my search for Jungian synchronicity… “hiraeth” and “cynefin”.

“Hiraeth” is Welsh word (equivalents in Cornish and Breton being “hireth” and “hiraezh”) that seems to make its rounds in memes… though, the word is interpreted slightly differently (nuanced?) from its actual meaning…

…a homesickness for a home to which one cannot return, a home which maybe never was…”

…as opposed to…

…homesickness tinged with grief and sadness, a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness.

While I love even a nuanced consideration of “hiraeth”, I was far more interested in the lesser known/lesser meme’d “cynefin”.

“Cynefin” is a Welsh word (in Middle Welsh, it was “kynevinaw” and in Old Welsh, “cenedi”), though given the Cornish word is “cynevin”, Brythonic origins appear clear. I just can’t find the Breton equivalent… yet. There is no equivalent word in English, or in any Germanic tongue. Indeed, I couldn’t even find a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) equivalent. So, I’m rather pleased that it seems rather exclusive among the tongues of Europe.

The meaning?

Historically… supposedly… it was used by farmers to describe habitual tracks left by animals on hillsides. If that is truly the case, the meaning seems to have gained deeper meaning over time. Consider this…

A place of existential belonging*; a synchronicity between people and their relationship to their habitat and cultural history.

I also found…

Beyond a physical or geographical place, historic, cultural & social dimensions.

Though there is no English equivalent (nor one rooted in Germanic or PIE), the Māori have something similar… “tūrangawaewae”… meaning, “place to stand, or ground and place which is your heritage and that you come from”.

Now, I think the concept of “cynefin” has flexibility. It can wrap itself around us, individually, to what we feel we fit within. Perhaps it’s a matter of where one grew up, along with the heritage of place and people. Perhaps it’s something more complex… that “existential belonging*”. Perhaps it can be both… and even more.

For me, personally, I see “cynefin” as a personal connector in two ways, and the profoundly deep one is having realized a sort of vibrating tribal energy that exists in a unique Brittonic word that taps into my genetics.

Maybe, in a way, I did find what I was looking for, after all.

*existential belonging – deep, innate sense of connection to the world and the fundamental nature of existence itself, beyond just social connections.

Image: the summit of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. Source: Wikipedia

Category: Brythonic/Brittonic

The Lime/Linden Tree – a “lesser” tree in the eyes of Ancient Britons?

“You’re not a Viking”- a problem with too quickly belittling identity in ancestral DNA

A thought before that seasonal kiss under the…

Discovering “cynefin”