Note 53 — Chapter IX · Place-name Stories

This probably means ‘(the Monument) of Clutorix, son of Paulinus from Latium in the Marsh’; unless one ought rather to treat Marini as an epithet to Paulini. In either case Latio has probably to be construed ‘of or from Latium’: compare a Roman inscription found at Bath (Hübner’s No. 48), which begins with C. Murrius. | C. F. Arniensis | Foro. Iuli. Modestus53, and makes in English, according to Mr. Haverfield, ‘Gaius Murrius Modestus, son of Gaius, of the tribe Arniensis, of the town Forum Iulii.’ The easiest way to explain the last line as a whole is probably to treat it as a compound with the qualifying word deriving its meaning, not from mare, ‘the sea,’ but from the Late Latin mara, ‘a marsh or bog.’ Thus Marini-Latium would mean ‘Marshy Latium,’ to distinguish it from Latium in Italy, and from Letha or Ỻydaw in the sense of Brittany, which was analogously termed in Medieval Irish Armuirc Letha54, that is the Armorica of Letha. This is borne out by the name of the church of Paulinus, which is in Welsh Ỻan y Gors, anglicized Ỻangorse, ‘the Church of the Marsh or Bog,’ and that is exactly the meaning of the name given it in the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, which is that of Ecclesia de Mara. In other terms, we have in the qualified Latium of the inscription the Latium or Letha which came to be called in Welsh Ỻydaw. It is, in my opinion, from that settlement as their head quarters, that the Men of Ỻydaw sallied forth to take part in the hunt in Ystrad Yw, where the boar Ỻwydog was killed.