Note 75 — Chapter I · THE CHURCHES IN THE WEST.

See Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, pp. 272, 602, for an account of Brychan and his family. He had an impossible number of children, varying in different legends from ten to twenty-four sons and twenty-six daughters. It has already been remarked (see vol. i. p. 160, note, and the Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. i. p. 82) that some of these sons and daughters are connected with Brycheiniog or Brecknock in Wales, and others with Manau Guotodin in the north, and with the men of the north. It is obvious that there must have been two Brychans, and that two different families have been mixed together. The name Brychan comes from Brych, ‘speckled,’ the Gaelic equivalent of which is Breacc, and seems to refer to a characteristic of the Picts. It enters into the name Brycheiniog or Brecknock in Wales, and we also find it in two different localities in Scotland. In Manau Guotodin, the chief church, that of Falkirk, was called Ecglis Breacc, or ‘the Speckled Church,’ the Saxon equivalent of which was Fahkirk, from the word Fah, signifying speckled. There is also the river Briech, and on the Firth of Forth Briechness, now Bridgeness. In Forfarshire we have also Brechin. The northern family seem to have been the same as that of the ten sons of Braccan, son of Bracha Meoc, king of the Britons, who found churches in Ireland, as one of the sons, Iust, is said to have been of Sleamna in Alban or Scotland; and another, Maconoc, we find in the patron saint of Inverkeilor in Forfarshire. There is there also a church called Neveth, and in the Cognatio the sepulchre of Brachan or Brychan is said to be ‘in insula que vocata Enysbrachan, que est juxta Manniam.’ Mannia stands here for Manau in the north, and it is possible that Inchbrayoch in Forfarshire, which was dedicated to Saint Braoch, may be the island meant.