Old Notes on Arthur son of Bicoir as THE ARTHUR

[I wrote this many years ago... and only chanced upon it the other day, preserved as a query to members of the Old Irish listserv:

https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0004&L=CELTIC-L&P=64735

I now believe I was onto something, and that work I've done in recent months supports this idea.  Some additional posts relating to this will be coming soon.  For now, I will content myself with bringing this theory back to life for examination by others.]

The Isle of Islay, where Arthur slew the Irish king Mongan

The famous Arthurian battle list of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM is found immediately after mention of Octha's (Octha = Aesc) ascension to the throne of Kent in 488.  Arthur is said to have fought against “them”, and the contextual implication – often ignored – is that the “them” is question are the Kentish Saxons. 

We know of the following 6th-7th century Arthurs, discounting for a moment Nennius's Arthur dux bellorum:

Arthur son of Aedan (or Conaing) of Dalriada

Arthur grandfather of Feradach (mentioned in connection with St. Adomnan,

and thus probably also of Scotland)

Arthur son of Petr (the Irish Petuir or Retheoir)

Arthur son of Bicoir the Briton

What I asked myself, in looking at these various Arthurs, is why one of them would have been placed by the HISTORIA BRITTONUM narrative right after mention of Aesc of Kent and in the southern England of the early Wessex dynasty. No answer revealed itself, until I looked at year entry 625 of the Irish Tigernach Annals:

... Baptismum Etuin maic Elle, qui primus credidit in reghionibus

Saxonum...  Mongan mac Fiachna Lurgan, ab Artuir filio Bicoir Britone

lapide percussus interit.  Unde Bed Boirche dixit

IS uarin gaeth dar Ile,

 do fuil oca i Cind Tire,

do-genat gnim amnus de,

mairbfit Mongan mac Fiachnae.

The translation of the regular entry tells how Arthur son of Bicoir, a Briton, killed Mongan, King of Ulster, with a stone. Immediately prior to the entry on Artuir son of Bicoir we are told of the baptism of Edwin son of Aelle of Northumbria, an event mentioned under the year 627 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The poem stanza is translated as follows:

Cold is the wind over Islay;

there are warriors in Kintyre,

 they will commit a cruel deed therefor,

they will kill Mongan, son of Fiachna.

Now, the implication is, of course, that Arthur is from or at least "in" Kintyre, which was part of Dalriada, the later Argyle.  However, compare the Old Irish Cind Tire/Kintyre with the following entry from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which tells of the 457 Crecganford battle featuring Hengist and his son, Aesc.  And bear in mind that it is this Aesc – or Octha, as Nennius calls him - who is mentioned as succeeding to the kingship of Kent just prior to the listing of the Arthurian battles.

Her Hengest 7 Aesc fuhton with Brettas in thaere stowe the is gecueden

Creganford 7 thaer ofslogon .iiiim. wera, 7 tha Brettas the forleton

 Centlond...

In this year Hengest and Aesc fought against the Britons at a placce which is called Crayford and there slew four thousand men; and the Britons then forsook Kent and fled to London in great terror. 

What I am proposing is that the Cind Tire of the Artuir passage in Tigernach was interpreted as Cent/"Kent" + Welsh tir (cf. L. terre, "land, earth, country") and equated with the Centlond of the ASC entry for the year 457.  It is also possible that the Elle/Aelle mentioned in Tigernach 625 may have been identified with the much earlier Aelle of Sussex, who is mentioned in the Chronicle just prior to Cerdic.  

The famous Arthur of legend would appear to have originally been Arthur son of Bicoir.

Who was Arthur son of Bicoir?

Well, I discussed this figure at great length here:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-problem-of-arthur-son-of-bicoir.html 

The entire article from that URL is pasted below:

THE PROBLEM OF ARTHUR SON OF BICOIR: BECCURUS, PETUIR AND THE ISLE OF ISLAY

Sometimes historians accept things at face value - at least in those instances in which they do not feel the need to question the veracity of a source.  I've recently realized there is something I myself have missed: an apparent wrong identification of a 7th century Arthur's patronymic.

In the Irish Annals, we learn of a certain Arthur son of Bicoir "the Briton" who slew the Irish king Mongan off Islay.  It was once thought this Bicoir might preserve a known British name Beccurus.  This name is found on a 6th century memorial stone near Penmorfa in Gwynedd (see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/stone/pmrfa_1.html).  Patrick Sims-Williams has this as deriving from *Bikkori:x, 'small king'. Professor Peter Schrijver of Utrecht University says that *Bikko-wiro, 'little man', is also possible.

 

However, prior to 2006 (see http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/articles/guestdan2e.htm), I showed that Bicoir was, in fact, merely a corruption for Petuir, one of the spellings of the Dyfed king Petr/Pedr who had a 7th century son named Arthur.  What I didn't pause to ask myself at the time - as it didn't seem important, I suppose - is why a Dyfed prince would be fighting a naval battle off Islay.  

My readers can see from the above-posted map that Dyfed is quite a long ways from Islay.  Furthermore, the Dalriada of Aedan son of Gabran, with its royal centers at Tarbert and Dunaverty (see Bannerman, STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF DALRIADA, pp. 112-113),  is immediately adjacent to Islay. 

In early Irish sources , Mongan's father Fiachna is a contemporary of Aedan son of Gabran of Dalriada. The two fight on the same side against the English at Degsastan (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-new-and-certain-identification-of.html).  Aedan had a son named Arthur - and this means that Aedan's Arthur and Fiachna's Mongan were traditionally thought to belong to the same generation.  I've also written about the mil uathmar or 'terrible warrior' (and fer uathmar, 'terrible man') in the Irish story of Mongan's birth as a possible prototype for Uther Pendragon.  The motif of tranformation found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's take of Uther and Gorlois is found in the Irish tale, where the characters involved are the sea god Mananna mac Lir and Fiachna. 

I would, then, without hesitation, propose that the Bicoir/Petuir patronymic as applied to the Arthur who slew Mongan is an error.  The real father of this particular Arthur being, of course, Aedan. It is generally believed that the mother of Arthur son of Gabran was British.  If so, she was from the neighboring kingdom of Strathclyde, whose capital was Alclud.  This possibility is especially attractive as we know (again, see Bannerman) that Aedan was in conflict with other Irish in the region.  

How might the error have occurred?

My guess is that Adomnan's Latinization of Alclud as PETRA Cloithe may have influenced the decision to utilize Petuir/Petr in the context of the slaying of Mongan by an Arthur.  Note that in the Irish Annal account, Arthur is said to have killed the Irish king with a stone!  Irish has an obscure word art, 'stone', which is, apparently, only found in medieval glossaries. 

AEDAN FATHER OF ARTHUR OF DALRIADA, FIRE AND A COMET

We tend to forget that the Irish name Aedan is merely a diminutive of Irish aed, 'fire'.  We are reminded of Uther appearing as a cannwyll in the elegy poem MARWNAT VTHYR PEN.  This word can mean candle, but also star.  His gorlassar epithet in the same poem may either mean 'very blue, very blue-green' and the like or 'great blaze', depending on whether we allow it to have been borrowed from the Irish.

We also know that Aedan became king of Scottish Dalriada in 574 - the same year a comet appeared in the sky.  Comets may appear bluish or bluish-green to the naked eye.  This comet, as it happens, passed through Ursa Major, the Great Bear!

From "Observations of Comets: From B. C. 611 to A. D. 1640" by John Williams:

Was the Terrible Chief-dragon, named for the fiery comet in the sky, actually Aedan son of Gabran?

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH'S UTHER IN DYFED, PETRUS OF DYFED AND

THE STONEHENGE QUARRIES OF PRESELI

In Geoffrey's pseudo-history, Uther sees the dragon-star when he is on his way to Dyfed to fight an Irish king, who has formed an alliance with Pascent and the Saxons. 

Dyfed, of course, was the kingdom of Arthur son of Petr. It was ruled from the sub-Roman period by an Irish-descended dynasty.

We also now know that the bluestones of Stonehenge came from Preseli in Dyfed, and it is Uther who utilizes Merlins' skill to supposedly transport the stones from Ireland to Salisbury Plain.

THE (EXTREME) NORTHERN BATTLES OF ARTHUR