In a message dated 8/30/00 9:43:57 AM GMT Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:
> For what it's worth, Ninnid appears as the name of a bishop in the
> Martyrology
> of Tallaght, so the Margam name could conceivably derive from a regularly-
> formed
> masculine name rather than from adaptation of an ash-grove or, as
> traditionally
> supposed, from the name of St David's mother (identified in late sources as
> 'Nonnita') or Eglwys Nynyd, 'the church of the nuns'.
One or two further mines to sow into the field:
It is reported (Frazer 'The Golden Bough', ii, 44, citing Dalyell 'The Darker
Superstitions of Scotland' 1834) that in the 16th c. near a chapel of St
Ninian in the parish of Belly stood a row of trees that were regarded as
sacred by 'the superstitious papists'. Unfortunately, the species of tree is
not recorded.
Bowen 'Saints, Seaways and Settlements' (p.183, citing Doble, Cornish Saints
Series, 'St Nonna') states that in Brittany St Nonna is a male saint,
'possibly a companion rather than the mother of St David'. It might be worth
doing a search in Largilliere, Le Moing, Loth, etc., to see what else in
Britanny, besides the river Ninian (similar to Nene, Northants., Neen,
Shrops?). On the 'sex-change' problems, see Largilliere 'Les saints et
l'organisation chretienne primitive dans l'Armorique Bretonne', p.180, n.18.
Henry.
visit the Scottish Place-Name Society website at
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/index.htm
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