Kingdoms of Armorican Celts

The north-western corner of today's France was known during the Roman period as Armorica. The tribe of the Veneti had been the most powerful of Armorica's tribes, and that name gradually changed during the Roman occupation to Vannetais. This was how Armorica was initially known to the Britons who began migrating there in the fourth century AD, during a period in which British town life appears to have declined.

The low-key migration from Britain into Armorica seems to have picked up noticeably in the mid-fourth century, but it became a flood in the unsettled fifth century. Traditional certainly maintains that the British colony in Armorica was founded before the expedition of Constantine III in 407 (see feature link). People arrived mainly from the south-west of Britain, from Dumnonia and Cornubia, and each group retained its ethnic name (ergo the people in each region knew exactly what they were ethnically or tribally, regardless of who was king over them).

This new colony of Britons formed in a region which was beginning to drift out of firm Roman control. The colony's traditional first king, Conan Meriadog, ruled Armorica as the kingdom of Vannetais, maintaining the local Gaulish tribal name. The area was permanently 'freed' of Roman control by Magnus Maximus as the first stage of his invasion of Gaul in 383 (see feature link). Conan was placed in command, with a probable capital in Vannes. The usual Celtic practice of dividing territory between sons soon created the smaller principalities out of Vannetais during the course of the fifth and sixth centuries whilst other Britons also popped over from the mainland to found their own principalities.

The precise location of the minor principality of Poher is uncertain. Linking it to the traditional county of today is not entirely reliable since ancient Poher is barely mentioned in official texts before the eleventh century. Either a position to the far east of Armorica or one within the borders of Cornouaille seems the most likely option according to varying sources (the latter choice has been accepted here).

Set up by the new wave of British settlers during the mid-fifth century, Poher seemed to change hands a great deal from the sixth century onwards, between Britons and Franks after Blois had fallen in 491 and the Frankish border closed up to the Vannetais (Brittany) area. Its capital was Vorgium, the former Vorgium Osismiorum of the Osismii tribe (identified as modern Carhaix). It seemingly remained a stronghold even after the loss of Roman domination of the region.

The origins of the principality's name have been interpreted in a good many ways, many of them incorrectly. Originally known as Pou Caër, this was an Old Breton name which was translated into Latin as 'pagus castrum' or 'pagus castelli'. The Latin word 'pagus' means 'rural' (and not 'people', as is occasionally given elsewhere). The Latin word for a peasant or a man of the rural farms (not the major estates) and the undeveloped countryside is 'paganus'. Therefore 'pagus castrum' means a fort in the countryside. The word 'castelli' is 'castrum' plus a diminutive, providing 'little fort'. Britons didn't seem to differentiate between the two, so therefore Pou Caër is simply 'Fort Pou'. The 'g' in pagus went silent in pronunciation (Powys underwent a similar process of naming from its initial form as Paganes).

Diverging more from the straightforward approach, Chédeville (see below) believes that the name was derived from 'Ker Ahes', the source for the later Carhaix, with 'ker', meaning in Breton 'a domain' (from the Brythonic 'caer'), which would have been translated as 'a castle'. Kerboul and others suggest that 'caër' was indeed a fortified castle or a citadel which was built by Conomor in the sixth century.

European Kingdoms

Celts of Armorica

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