Albion


Albion is an alternative name for the island of Great Britain. The oldest attestation of the toponym comes from the Greek language. It is sometimes used poetically to refer to the island, but has fallen out of common use in English. The name for Scotland in most of the Celtic languages is related to Albion: Alba in Scottish Gaelic, Albain in Irish, Nalbin in Manx and Alban in Welsh and Cornish. These names were later Latinised as Albania and Anglicised as Albany, which were once alternative names for Scotland.
New Albion and Albionoria were briefly suggested as names of Canada during the period of the Canadian Confederation. Arthur Phillip, first leader of the colonisation of Australia, originally named Sydney Cove "New Albion", but later the colony acquired the name "Sydney". Sir Francis Drake gave the name New Albion to what is now California when he landed there in 1579.

Etymology

The oldest attestation of the toponym comes from the Greek language and Latinised as Albiōn, derives from the Proto-Celtic nasal stem *Albi̯iū and survived in Old Irish as Albu. The name originally referred to Britain as a whole, but was later restricted to Caledonia. The root *albiio- is also found in Gaulish and Galatian albio- and Welsh elfydd. It may be related to other European and Mediterranean toponyms such as Alpes, Albania or the river god Alpheus. It has two possible etymologies. It may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root , meaning "white". This is perhaps in reference to the white southern shores of the island – visible from mainland Europe and a landmark at the narrowest crossing point. A different viewpoint comes from Celtic linguist Xavier Delamarre, who argued that it originally meant "the world above, the visible world", in opposition to "the world below", i.e., the underworld. Alternatively it may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *alb-, meaning "hill".

Attestation

Judging from Avienus' Ora Maritima, for which it is considered to have served as a source, the Massaliote Periplus, does not use the name Britannia; instead it speaks of nēsos Iernōn kai Albiōnōn "the islands of the Iernians and the Albiones". Likewise, Pytheas, as directly or indirectly quoted in the surviving excerpts of his works in later writers, speaks of Albiōn and Iernē. Pytheas's grasp of the νῆσος Πρεττανική is somewhat blurry, and appears to include anything he considers a western island, including Thule.
The name Albion was used by Isidore of Charax and subsequently by many classical writers. By the 1st century AD, the name refers unequivocally to Great Britain. But this "enigmatic name for Britain, revived much later by Romantic poets like William Blake, did not remain popular among Greek writers. It was soon replaced by Πρεττανία and Βρεττανία, Βρεττανός, and Βρεττανικός. From these words the Romans derived the Latin forms Britannia, Britannus, and Britannicus respectively".
The Pseudo-Aristotelian text On the Universe has:
Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History likewise has:
In his 2nd century Geography, Ptolemy uses the name Ἀλουΐων instead of the Roman name Britannia, possibly following the commentaries of Marinus of Tyre. He calls both Albion and Ierne νῆσοι Βρεττανικαὶ.
In 930, the English king Æthelstan used the title Rex et primicerius totius Albionis regni. His nephew, Edgar the Peaceful, styled himself Totius Albionis imperator augustus "Augustus Emperor of all Albion" in 970.

The giants of Albion

A legend exists in various forms that giants were either the original inhabitants, or the founders of the land named Albion.

Geoffrey of Monmouth

According to the 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the exiled Brutus of Troy was told by the goddess Diana;
After many adventures, Brutus and his fellow Trojans escape from Gaul and "set sail with a fair wind towards the promised island".
"The island was then called Albion, and inhabited by none but a few giants. Notwithstanding this, the pleasant situation of the places, the plenty of rivers abounding with fish, and the engaging prospect of its woods, made Brutus and his company very desirous to fix their habitation in it." After dividing up the island between themselves "at last Brutus called the island after his own name Britain, and his companions Britons; for by these means he desired to perpetuate the memory of his name". Geoffrey goes on to recount how the last of the giants are defeated, the largest one called Goëmagot is flung over a cliff by Corineus.

Anglo-Norman Albina story

Later, in the 14th century, a more elaborate tale was developed, claiming that Albina and her sisters founded Albion and procreated there a race of giants. The "Albina story" survives in several forms, including the octosyllabic Anglo-Norman poem "Des grantz geanz" dating to 1300–1334. According to the poem, in the 3970th year of the creation of the world, a king of Greece married his thirty daughters into royalty, but the haughty brides colluded to eliminate their husbands so they would be subservient to no one. The youngest would not be party to the crime and divulged the plot, so the other princesses were confined to an unsteerable rudderless ship and set adrift, and after three days reached an uninhabited land later to be known as "England". The eldest daughter Albina was the first to step ashore and lay claim to the land, naming it after herself. At first, the women gathered acorns and fruits, but once they learned to hunt and obtain meat, it aroused their lecherous desires. As no other humans inhabited the land, they mated with evil spirits called "incubi", and subsequently with the sons they begot, engendering a race of giants. These giants are evidenced by huge bones which are unearthed. Brutus arrived 260 years after Albina, 1136 before the birth of Christ, but by then there were only 24 giants left, due to inner strife. As with Geoffrey of Monmouth's version, Brutus's band subsequently overtake the land, defeating Gogmagog in the process.

Manuscripts and forms

The octosyllabic poem appears as a prologue to 16 out of 26 manuscripts of the Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, which derives from Wace. Octosyllabic is not the only form the Anglo-Norman Des Grantz Geanz, there are five forms, the others being: the alexandrine, prose, short verse, and short prose versions. The Latin adaptation of the Albina story, De Origine Gigantum, appeared soon later, in the 1330s. It has been edited by Carey & Crick, and translated by Ruth Evans.

Diocletian's daughters

A variant tale occurs in the Middle English prose Brut of the 14th century, an English rendition of the Anglo-Norman Brut deriving from Wace. In the Prolog of this chronicle, it was King "Dioclician" of "Surrey", who had 33 daughters, the eldest being called "Albyne". The princesses are all banished to Albion after plotting to murder their husbands, where they couple with the local demons; their offspring became a race of giants. The chronicle asserts that during the voyage Albyne entrusted the fate of the sisters to "Appolyn," which was the god of their faith. The Syrian king who was her father sounds much like a Roman emperor, though Diocletian would be anachronistic, and Holinshed explains this as a bungling of the legend of Danaus and his fifty daughters who founded Argos.

Later treatment of the myth

Because Geoffrey of Monmouth's work was regarded as fact until the late 17th century, the story appears in most early histories of Britain. Wace, Layamon, Raphael Holinshed, William Camden and John Milton repeat the legend and it appears in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
William Blake's poems Milton and Jerusalem feature Albion as an archetypal giant representing humanity.
In 2010, artist Mark Sheeky donated the 2008 painting "Two Roman Legionaries Discovering The God-King Albion Turned Into Stone" to the Grosvenor Museum collection.

Albina story