This is the fifth in an occasional series on Hild’s bynames. In Hild, the first novel, Hild as a child and then adolescent girl acquires four bynames. In the second, Menewood, she acquires three more, the first of which is Cath Llew.

Vocabularly

‘Cath Llew’ is Modern Welsh for ‘cat lion’, that is, ‘lynx’.¹ Here I’m thinking of the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), apex predators powerful enough to kill deer up to 150 kg (330 lb). They are nothing like domestic cats. But they are cats—ambush predators, silent hunters—and move with that impossibly lithe feline grace that is both beautiful and terrifying. If I ever tried my hand at composing an Old English Ode to a Lynx (lox in OE), the verb I’d use to describe its movement would be shrithe.

Given that there is a perfectly sturdy Old English word for lynx, why didn’t I use it? Because a) any modern reader would immediately think of brined salmon which is more or less diametrically opposed to the feeling I wanted to evoke of an uncanny feline predator, and b) the byname is bestowed on Hild not by Anglisc speakers but by the Bryneich of the northern uplands. The name needed British roots.

Were there lynx in Britain in Hild’s time? Yes.² There’s archaeological evidence: sub-fossilised bones from a cave in Craven carbon-dated to around 600 CE, and the wonderful tuft-eared beast carved on the reverse of 9th-century stone of Eigg that, although the Canmore describes it as a lion—based on their digital drawing which, oddly, leaves out the tufts on the ears—in my opinion could be nothing but a lynx:

Documentary evidence includes, arguably, Pais Dinogad (Dinogad’s Smock), that lovely lullaby whose setting is most likely a waterfall near the Derwent in Cumbria—possibly the southern reaches of Rheged or perhaps even Craven—and might, according to John Koch, have been composed in Primitive Cumbric.

Here it is in Old Welsh.

Peis dinogat e vreith vreith.
o grwyn balaot ban wreith.
chwit chwit chwidogeith.
gochanwn gochenyn wythgeith.
pan elei dy dat ty e helya;
llath ar y ysgwyd llory eny law.
ef gelwi gwn gogyhwc.
giff gaff. dhaly dhaly dhwg dhwg.
ef lledi bysc yng corwc.
mal ban llad. llew llywywg.
pan elei dy dat ty e vynyd.
dydygai ef penn ywrch penn gwythwch pen hyd.
penn grugyar vreith o venyd.
penn pysc o rayadyr derwennyd.
or sawl yt gyrhaedei dy dat ty ae gicwein
o wythwch a llewyn a llwyuein.
nyt anghei oll ny uei oradein.

The last three lines can be translated

Whatever your father would hit with his spear,
whether wild pig or lynx or fox,
nothing that was without wings would escape.

So why didn’t I use llewyn instead of cath llew? Well, I could say, Because it sounds too soft; the hard-kicking c of cath llew is a closer fit to the terrifying nature of an uncanny lynx. I could also say that many people, including Koch, think llewyn means ‘red fox’ not ‘lynx’ and that it’s always a good idea to avoid punting a knowledgeable reader out of the story by making them sit up and think, Hang on, that means fox!

Why, then, didn’t I use the Middle Welsh lleuon; nobody (at least as far as I’m aware) argues that this means ‘fox’. And, again, I could say, It just doesn’t sound menacing enough.

And each of those explanations is true—as far as it goes. The real reason, though, is a bit less noble.

When I began the first draft of Menewood I had in mind the story Hild first heard (detailed in the first novel) of the legendary Cait Sith, an uncanny cat who can turn into a malevolent woman. Cait Sith has a lovely ring (and of course deliciously menacing resonance with a certain well-known media franchise). I liked it. So at the appropriate moment in the story that’s the phrase that I used as a placeholder until I could take the time to research it properly.

I should know better.³ Names are powerful things. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself a name is temporary, how much I admonish myself not to get attached, the names become embedded in the character and start to exert a kind of gravitational pull. The characters begin to form around the names; the cadence of the prose begins to fit itself to the rhythms of the name. In this case the chants, the tall tales told at twilight began to wrap around and become integrated around the hiss and whisper Cait Sith. By this time, too, I was writing at a furious pace, unwilling to stop and make changes—even though I knew the name would have to change because a) it’s Irish and b) it means ‘cat black’.⁴ Then all of a sudden I was at the end and the manuscript went to the copyeditor. When it came back I had five days to research and figure out a better name—but in those five days I also had to sort hundreds (literally) of other linguistic queries and to standardise all the spellings for all the languages, and there just wasn’t time. I did a cursory search for Old Welsh for ‘lynx’, found nothing, and chose Cath Llew instead.

Traits

Like Hild, the Eurasian lynx is solitary and likes high wild places, preferably woodland. It’s an apex predator that requires a large territory. It hunts from the hills, an ambush predator, taking roe deer and occasional smaller mammals such as hare, sometimes in daylight but more often at dawn and dusk. Like Hild, it dwells at the edges of things—the edge of the wood, the edge of the light—and you could walk right past it without knowing it was there, until it’s too late. It is silent, it is deadly, it is unexpected and unpredictable, and because it is largely invisible to us it is rumoured to belong as much to the otherworld as to this.

Early in Menewood, Edwin, king of Bernicia and Deira, and Hild’s great-uncle, unexpectedly sends Hild north on a diplomatic mission to the Bryneich. She is accompanied by five of the king’s gesiths, men she doesn’t know and who don’t know her, except by reputation, later known as her Fiercesomes.⁵

Hild’s journey north is unexpected, and, given the vagaries of seventh-century communication, she and her men have to track down the Bryneich before they can negotiate. She sails from York to Colud and then must ride all over the hills to find the Bryneich’s spring camp. This of course was a lovely excuse to build a map.

Mappish digression

Over the years I’ve experimented with a variety of map styles and find I’m beginning to settle into two main types, one based on the Ordinance Survey Map of Dark Ages Britain, Second Edition (1965), and one based on finer scale false-colour topographical maps. (Some areas/events may also require more specialised maps, but those are not relevant here.)

My first Hild-goes-north map was based on OS Dark Ages with names of places (and some rivers) changed to reflect what I though Hild might have used. It was designed to work out what route she might have taken (dotted line).

She finds the Bryneich at Calchfynydd (Kelso), where the Twid (Tweed) meets the Tefeged (Teviot). Sometime later, she, four of her Fiercesomes and three swordsmen of the Bryneich, are riding through the hills—specifically the Eildon Hills—when, through a combination of her ability to connect disparate pieces of information, sharp observational skills, and deep understanding of nature, she suddenly understands they are about to ambushed. She leads her men into instant and decisive action.

All this of course was an excuse to build another map so I could work out who might be able to see what from where, and what paths and drove ways they might use. And for that, a larger-scale topographic map was most useful:

On the way back to Calchfynydd she encounters two men near Mailros (Old Melrose), one of whom later becomes a very important character. But that’s a story for another time.

Back to bynames

Hild and her men ambush their ambushers and slaughter them, a feat possible only, her men believe, because she can snatch uncanny knowledge from the air—she whispers with the wind and walks with the wights—and, like the cat of legend, spring upon her enemies with otherworldly speed and strength.

By the time she leaves Calchfynydd for Yeavering she’s known by the Bryneich, her men, and all over the north as Cath Llew.

Just as her Hounds changed their shields to reflect Hild’s Butcherbird byname, Hild’s Fiercesomes do the same for Cath Llew. So of course then I had to come up with a image that could be easily stencilled.⁶

There is one more reason that Hild becomes known as Cath Llew—but I’ll let you discover that for yourself when you read the book. Menewood is out 3 October in North America, available wherever books are sold, and in the UK a few weeks later. But if you pre-order from Phinney Books, my local independent bookshop, I will sign and personalise it before it is shipped direct to your door on publication.

Meanwhile, to whet your appetite go take a look at my personal blog where for your reading pleasure I’ve posted the opening, along with a discussion of the reasons for the book’s particular structure.

Enjoy!

¹ Why use modern Welsh? For the sake of consistency. British (the Insular Celtic language spoken in Britain and parts of France before the Roman invasion) became Common Brittonic (heavily influenced in some regions by Latin), which, when the Romans left, became Neo-Brittonic, a family of primitive versions of Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, possibly Pictish, and Welsh. We have no documents in Common Brittonic and only a few inscriptions. If I had to guess I’d say the British Hild would have spoken would have been closer to Cumbric than Welsh, but as the modern forms of Welsh and Breton are the only direct descendants of Common Brittonic—the ones for which we have the widest vocabulary*—I tend to follow Welsh etymology where I can. That is, Common Brittonic ➔ Primitive Welsh ➔ Old Welsh ➔ Middle Welsh ➔ Early Modern Welsh ➔ Late Modern Welsh, etc. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Well, keep reading the blog post and remember why you should be wary of a novelist whose natural tendency is to fabulate 🙂

* One English-Cumbric dictionary has only about a hundred entries.

² Though I’m guessing even then they were not abundant. Lynx need large territories and they need woodland. They do not easily co-exist with wolves, that hunt in packs—wolves win—and they are in natural competition for the prey of human hunters. Also, their fur is luxuriant and rather valuable, then as now.

³ I’ve run into this problem before, particularly with my first novel, Ammonite. I’ve told that story before.

⁴ Although some lynx can be quite dark—grey with charcoal stippling and spots—but as far as I’m aware there is no recorded instance of a wholly black lynx.

⁵ For a variety of reasons, these five are outcasts. Under Hild’s command they become known as the Fiercesomes and, like Hild herself, are regarded with a mix of fear and respect.

⁶ This is now the third image I’ve made of a lynx while writing Menewood. I quite like this one. For the first one, see the first map I made of Hild in the Eildon Hills—eight years ago!