Caerau Camp
Camelot
The
case has often been made that Camelot is a late French form of the
Romano-British Camulodunum place-name. However, archaeological evidence from
both the fort on Old Lindley Moor near Slack and from the fort on Almondbury
five miles from Slack (either of which may have been the ancient Camulodunum)
has not revealed Dark Age occupation of these sites. The other primary
candidate for Camelot is the Cadbury hill-fort by the Camel villages in
Somerset. While this fort does show Dark Age occupation, its location does not
match that provided for Camelot in the romances.
The
first clue as to the actual whereabouts of Camelot is found in Chretien de
Troyes’ Knight of the Cart, which is the earliest romance to mention this site.
According to Chretien, Camelot is ‘in the region near Caerleon’. For some reason,
most authorities have seen fit to ignore this statement, insisting that Camelot
was placed near Caerleon simply because of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s glorified
description of the latter site as a major Arthurian centre. If we do take
Chretien’s
statement seriously, we can for the first time arrive at a satisfactory
identification of this most magical of royal cities.
The
second clue to the location of Camelot is from the later romance The Quest for
the Holy
Grail,
wherein Arthur escorts the Grail questersfrom Camelot to a point just shy of
Castle Vagan.
A
third clue, from the prose Tristan, places Camelot either on or very near the
sea. The last clue is from the Morte Artu; in this source, the castle of
Camelot is on a river. It goes without saying that we need to look for a CASTLE
or, at the very least, the site of an earlier hill-fort of some significance.
Castle
Vagan is St. Fagan’s Castle (W. Ffagan) four or five miles west of Cardiff.
This site lies in the Ely Valley, the supposed location of the Campus Elleti of
the boy Ambrosius (not the historical Ambrosius in this context, who was made into
Arthur’s uncle, but the ‘Divine or Immortal’ Lleu/Mabon; see Chapter 1 above).
According
to the HB, Campus Elleti, the ‘Field or Plain of Elleti’, was said to be in
Glywysing, the later Morgannwg/Glamorgan, which is indeed where the Ely Valley
lies. Only a dozen miles separate Campus Elleti from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
Caerleon.
In
my opinion, Campus Elleti, with Latin Campus rendered as French Champ (the p of
which is silent), became Camelot:
Cham(p)
ellet(i) > Camelot
So
can we now be relatively certain that Camelot was a site in the Ely Valley? Yes
– although there is disagreement about the relative linguistics of Ely/Elei and
Elleti.
According
to Welsh place-name expert Professor
Wyn
Owen, the derivation of the Ely river-name is uncertain:
“R.J.
Thomas (Enwau Afonydd a Nentydd Cymru, [Cardiff 1938] 141) derives 'Elei,
Istrat Elei' c.1150 tentatively from *Eleg' + -i but offers no meaning, while
Ifor Williams (Enawau Lleoedd [Liverpool 1945] 40) suggests that the root is
leg meaning dripping, slow-moving from which we get llaith 'damp', cognate with
Eng. to leak, and lake”.
The
initial E- of Elei could be explained by an el prefix, ‘much’, would would give
us a meaning the ‘very slow-moving’ river. Elleti would have to be, therefore,
a form of Elei which displays the terminal of llaith. Yet if so, it is
difficult to account for why there is only one /l/ in Elei.
Graham
Isaac disagrees that the river-name Ely can be related to Elleti:
“On
Elei, it would be from the same root as Aled,
Alun,
Eleri, all rivers, < Celt. *al- < PIE *h2el-, 'to shine'. They are all,
in different ways, 'shining rivers'. Elleti is not connected with these. The form
Elleti is corroborated by the instance of 'palude [Latin for “marsh” or “swamp”]
Elleti' in Book of Llan Dav (148). But since both that and HB’s campum Elleti
are in Latin contexts, we cannot see whether the name is OW Elleti (= Elledi)
or OW Ellet (= Elled) with a Latin genitive ending. Both are possible. My guess
would be that OW Elleti is right. As the W suffix -i would motivate affection,
so allowing the base to be posited as all-, the same as in W ar -all 'other', all-tud
'exile', Gaulish allo-, etc. Elleti would be 'other-place, place of the other
side (of something)'.
There
are certainly no grounds for thinking of a connection between Elleti and Elei.”
This
may be true, but it seems to me that the /ll/ Professor Owen was seeking is
present in Elleti, and the palude or ‘swamp, marsh’ name applied to the place
does favor the “very slow-moving’ etymology. Elei would merely represent a
truncated form of the name.
Mabon
as one of the ‘vultures of Elei’ is called the servant of Uther Pendragon
because Uther is the Ambrosius and Ambrosius was situated at Campus Elleti.
It
may also be that Campus Elleti, from a presumed Welsh Maes Elei or similar, was
a relocation for the Moselle (Latin Mosella/Mosellae) River in Gaul, upon which
stood the Roman city of Augusta Treverorum of the Gaulish prefect A.A. and his
son, St. Ambrose.
If
so, this would once again confirm my identification of A.A. as a personage
belonging to the 4th century.
There
are two notable monuments in the lower
Ely
Valley. One is a Roman villa. The other is a fairly major hillfort now called
Caerau. From
http://caerheritageproject.com/discover/caerau
-hill-fort/:
“Surrounded
by housing and the A4232, Caerau hillfort is one of the largest and best
preserved in
South
Wales. It occupies the western tip of an extensive ridge-top plateau in the
western suburbs of Caerau and Ely, Cardiff, Wales. The old parish church, St
Mary’s, and a small ringwork, almost certainly a medieval castle site probably contemporary
with the church, stand within the hillfort on the north-eastern side. Caerau
Hillfort is the third largest Iron Age hillfort in Glamorgan enclosing 5.1
hectares (about the size of four football pitches). Recent excavations by
Channel
Four’s
Time Team in April 2012 showed that occupation started about 600BC and lasted, probably
not continuously, into the 3rd century
AD.”
This
is certainly the only candidate for Camelot.
More
information on the fort can be found at:
http://www.coflein.gov.uk/cy/safle/94517/manylion/CAERAU+HILLFORT%3BCAERAU+CAMP
%3BCAERAU+ELY/
Campus
Elleti almost certainly refers to the flat lowland plain leading to the banks
of the river to the north of the fort.
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