Verbeia: a Brythonic goddess (Living Water, Rain-striker)

Celtic Gods: The Brythonic Goddess, Verbeia (Living Water, Rain-striker)

Verbeia

A Brythonic goddess: Living Water, Rain-striker

Verbeia is a Brythonic goddess known from a single inscription found at Ilkley, England, where she may have been a local goddess and tutelary deity of the river Wharfe. She may have been the deity of river flood plains.

Synonyms:
Bryth: Living Water, Rain-striker

Verbeia is a goddess known from only a single inscription [RIB 635] found at the Romano–British settlement of Ilkley, West Yorkshire. The inscription itself (found on an atarstone) reads VERBEIAE SACRVM CLODIVS FRONTO PRAEF COH II LINGON (To holy Verbeia, Clodius Fronto, prefect of the Second Cohort of Lingones [dedicated this]). No other dedications to this goddess have been found and it seems likely, therefore, that she was an entirely local figure. As a result it has been proposed that she might represent the deification of the nearby river Wharfe. This is given some credence from an entry in the Notitia Dignitarium (Register of Dignitaries) a late fourth century manuscripts (that survives as an 11th century copy) which lists all of the official posts and military units of the late Roman empire. In this there is an entry for Morbio which occurs between the entries for Danum (Doncaster) and Arbeia (South Shields). The similarity between Morbio and Verbeia suggests that the former is an error and that the settlement may well have been named after the goddess of the region, Verbeia. It is also possible that the name 'Wharfe' evolved out of the original Verbeia. The first Anglo-Saxon record of the river (in 963 CE) names it as Weorf which would naturally arise from the Old Cymric form of Verbeia *gwerban or *gwerfan (both words are related to the Cymric gwern [swamp]). Might Verbeia have been a goddess of marshy ground? The often fertile borderlands of a river's floodplains.

To look at this possibility it's necessary to examine the name Verbeia and look at possible derivations. Based upon the reconstructed proto-Celtic lexicon it's possible to derive the elements: *wera- (rain) and *beja- (strike) or bei-e/o (live). Thus Verbeia could be 'Living Rain' or 'Rain-striker'. Living rain could well refer to a river, but the possible interpretation of the metaphor implied by 'Rain-striker' is a little more problematic. However, it could refer to what happens after a heavy rainfall when a river bursts its bank flooding the surrounding area. It is possible therefore that one interpretation of Verbeia links-up with how the goddess' name might have evloved in later Cymric.

Navigation