ltitudinis barbarorum."

In the preceding paragraphs we find the same authors, or at least the
scribes who copied their writings, spelling the same names in very
diverse ways. All know how very various, and sometimes almost endless,
is the orthography of proper nouns and names among our ancient
chroniclers, and among our mediaeval writers and clerks also. Thus Lord
Lindsay, in his admirable _Lives of the Lindsays_, gives examples of
above a hundred different ways in which he has found his own family name
spelled. In the _Historia Britonum_, usually attributed to Nennius, the
pedigree of the Saxon invaders of Kent is given at greater length than
by Bede; for it is traced back four or five generations beyond
Woden[176] up to Geat, and the spelling of the four races from Woden to
Hengist and Horsa is varied according to the Celtic standard of
orthography, as cited already from Edward Lhwyd--namely, the Latin and
Saxon initials V and W are changed to the Cymric or British G, or GU. In
the same way, the Isle of Wight, "Vecta" or "Wecta," is spelled in
Nennius "Guith" and "Guied;" Venta (Winchester) is written Guincestra;
Vortigernus, Guorthigernus; Wuffa, king of the east Angles, Guffa; etc.
etc. In only one, as far as I am aware, of the old manuscript copies of
the _Historia Britonum_, is the pedigree of Hengist and Horsa spelled as
it is by Bede and all the Saxon writers, with an initial V or W, as
Wictgils, Witta, Wecta, and Woden. This copy belongs to the Royal
Library in Paris, and the orthography alone sufficiently determines it
to have been made by an Anglo-Saxon scribe or editor. Of some
twenty-five or thirty other known manuscripts of the same work, most, if
not all, spell the ancestors of Hengist with the initial Keltic GU,--as
"Guictgils, Guitta, Guechta"--one, among other arguments, for the belief
that the original and most ancient part of this composite _Historia_ was
penned, if not, as asserted in many of the copies, by Gildas, a
Strathclyde Briton, at least by a British or Cymric hand. The account
given in the work of the arrival of the Saxons is as follows:--"Interea
venerunt tres ciulae a Germania expulsae in exilio, in quibus erant Hors
et Hengist, qui et ipsi fratres erant, filii Guictgils, filii Guitta,
filii Guechta, filii Vuoden, filii Frealaf, filii Fredulf, filii Finn,
filii Folcwald, filii Geta, qui fuit, aiunt filius Dei. Non ipse est
Deus Deorum Amen, Deus exercitum, sed unus est ab idolis eorum qua