WHAT'S IN A NAME: THE PROBLEM WITH ARTHUR

Jet Bear from Bootle, Lancashire

My readers over the years have either been interested in or bemused by (or even amused by) my attempts to account for the name Arthur as it appears in Chapter 56 of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM.  Over the last few years I have proposed a connection to 1) the Arthwys and River Irthing of the North 2) Ceredig son of Cunedda of the Afon Arth and his Arto- descendants and 3) the curious occurrence of incidents and names/titles seemingly involving a questionable Irish word art, 'stone'. 

But here is the problem with ALL of that: nowhere in the extant sources can we find a single instance of the name Arthur (even if a decknamen of a preexisting Irish or British name/title meaning 'Bear-king') being applied or related to another known historical personage.  And this is a HUGE, perhaps insurmountable problem for Arthurian researchers.  For without this early, attested identification of the name Arthur with a confirmed figure, any attempt to find the original Arthur is fraught with uncertainty.  And there is not a single (non-fringe, professional) scholar out there who will accept an Arthurian candidate without such an ironclad, substantiable identification.

So, what do we do?  Where do we go from here?

Well, we start - once again - in the North.  Given the new work done by Dr. Linda Malcor and her colleagues on the proper reading of the Lucius Artorius Castus memorial stone, there is no reason to doubt that this particular "Arthur" was quite famous in the North during the Roman period.  I and others (see below for three articles by Dr. Andrew Breeze, another recent "convert" to the idea of a Northern Arthur) have long held that any famous sub-Roman/Dark Age/Early medieval figure who bore this name must have been given it in honor of the Roman dux whose exploits in the region continued to be celebrated.  

The Dark Age Arthur, who originally belonged to the North, became subject to the usual transfer of legendary material to other places.  Chief among these were Wales and Cornwall, and even Brittany.  The reason why the Arthur of folklore, hagiography, etc., so easily took up residence in the South is simply because these lands continued to be 'Celtic' in a sense that was not true for the remainder of England or southern Scotland.  Where the English or other foreign invaders and settlers made their home, either forcing out or assimilating the indigenous population, the Cymric/Cumbric hero was replaced by Germanic exemplars.  

I've now come to believe pretty strongly that any attempt - including my own - to situate Arthur in the South is due to exactly this tendency of legends to migrate.  Arthur became bonded onto other personages.  A good example may be Ceredig son of Cunedda, whose kingdom had an Arth River and three of whose immediate descendants had bear names.  After all, this translocation of Arthur was indulged in by the Welsh in their literature and as we have precious little else to go on other than this body of work, one is hard pressed to be able to demonstrate that the hero belonged someplace else.  There are, in fact, really only three clues as to where the Northern Arthur came from and where he probably operated militarily.

Our first must be dispensed with, unfortunately, for it is based on a corrupt Triad.  This is the reference to an Arthur Penuchel, made son of Eliffer (Eleutherius) of York and a sister of Urien Rheged.  As Lucius Artorius Castus was based at York and we can expect his memory to have been preserved there more than elsewhere, it is tempting to suggest that this corrupt text really does prove he existence of such a man in the Dark Ages.  This is so despite the fact that the chronology is utterly wrong (Arthur came before Urien, not after).  Still, it shows that whoever created the corrupt Triad may have known of a British Arthur in the North.  

Secondly, there a strong indications that the Northern chieftain Arthwys, supposedly brother of Eliffer of York, points to the Irthing Valley and its two very important Roman forts, Banna at Birdoswald and Camboglanna (= 'Camlann') at Castlesteads.  I just discussed Arthwys's possible significance once again with Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales and he generously supplied this detailed analysis of the name:

"-wys (< Latin -enses) does not denote a region, but rather the people who live there, and is added to a regional name, thus Lloegrwys 'people of Lloegr (England)', Rhegedwys 'people of Rheged', Monwys 'people of Mon (Anglesey)' etc.  There is an obscure -wys in the place-name Caerwys in Wales.

Glywys, being a personal name, is equivalent to Glevensis and means ‘a man of Glevum’ or Gloucester.  When explaining Arthwys in this way, we still have to interpret Arth as a place name.  So he would be 'a man of Arth' or, if you are right about the Irthing, then perhaps he was 'a man of [the River] Arth.'"

Fellow Arthurian theorist Simon Keegan has proposed that it is this very Arthwys who is Arthur.  While is he unaware of the meaning of Arthwys, and he misplaces the chieftain geographically, the notion cannot be summarily discounted.  Arthur could well have been 'a man of the Arth.' The name Artorius might well have been chosen for someone who ruled from the valley of the Bear River.

In my mind, Ceidio son of Arthwys is a more attractive candidate. The name Ceidio is a pet-form of one that would originally have designated this man as the 'Battle-ruler' or 'Battle-leader'.  And this kind of name may harken back to the dux title applied to Lucius Artorius Castus as well as to the dux erat bellorum used to describe the Dark Age Arthur.  Hybrid Roman-Celtic names are not uncommon in the period.

And, lastly, there are the battles of Arthur as these are found listed in Chapter 56 of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM.  Time and time again I've argued that all can quite efficiently be placed in the North without bending or breaking any linguistic laws.  While they can be made to conform to some of the battles of Cerdic of Wessex (= Ceredig son of Cunedda), with the remainder being assigned to other Gewissei captains, such a scenario smacks of the artificial.  In my opinion, there may have been an attempt at some point to transform the Northern Arthur into Cerdic.  By doing so the Gwynedd author of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM would have effectively been making Arthur a member of his dynasty's founding family - something that would have served the usual propagandist purpose. 

So once again I've come full circle.  Whenever I go looking for an Arthur in the South, I'm ultimately drawn inexorably back to the North.  I cannot shake the growing conviction that Arthur died at Camboglanna in the Irthing Valley, and that the "myth" of his magical conveyance to Avalon may betray the reality of a burial at Aballava/Avalana, the Roman fort at Burgh-By-Sands not many miles to the west.  If I'm right, then my best case of a historical Arthur remains my first book on the subject, THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY: A REINTERPRETATION OF THE EVIDENCE. 

Having reached this conclusion, I've decided that the Arthur of my upcoming DARK AVALON series (see https://www.facebook.com/darkavalonbooks/) will be Ceidio son of Arthwys.  It is intriguing that according to Welsh genealogical tradition,  Ceidio was said to be the father of Myrddin's (= Merlin's) lord, Gwenddolau.

NOTE: Here is an article on the name Arthur from British place-name expert Dr. Andrew Breeze. He not only settles on Artorius as the prototypical form of British Arthur, but also insists the hero belonged in the North.  Dr. Breeze has also written on Arthur's battles in several journals.  While we do not agree on the locations of some of the battles, we do both hold that all seem to have belonged solely to Northern England and Southern Scotland.

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/plg/med/2015/00000028/00000001/art00003?crawler=true