Selections from THE BEAR KING: ARTHUR AND THE IRISH IN WALES AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND and THE KING OF STONEHENGE: MODRED AND THE DEFENSE OF DARK AGE BRITAIN:
Years ago I played around with trying to equate some or all of the battles of Arthur and those of Cerdic of Wessex. Alas, my knowledge of place-name development and of the languages involved was insufficient to the task. Having once again brought up the very real possibility that Arthur = Cerdic in my previous blog post here, it occurred to me that I should take a second look at the battles listed in the Historia Brittonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
First, those of Arthur:
Mouth of the river Glein
4 battles on the Dubglas River in the Linnuis region
River Bassas
Celyddon Wood
Castle Guinnion
City of the Legion
Tribruit river-bank
Mt. Agned/Mt. Breguoin (and other variants)
Mt. Badon c. 516
Camlann c. 537
And, secondly, those of Cerdic (interposed battles by other Saxon chieftains are in brackets):
495 - Certicesora (Cerdic and Cynric arrive in Britain)
[Bieda of Bedenham, Maegla, Port of Portsmouth]
Certicesford - Natanleod or Nazanleog killed
[Stuf, Wihtgar - Certicesora]
Cerdicesford - Cerdic and Cynric take the kingdom of the West Saxons
Cerdicesford or Cerdicesleag
Wihtgarasburh
537 - Cerdic dies, Cynric takes the kingship, Isle of Wight given to Stuf (of Stubbington near Port and opposite Wight) and Wihtgar
As Celtic linguist Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson pointed out long ago, 'Glein' means 'pure, clean.' It is Welsh glân. However, there is also a Welsh glan, river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank. This word would nicely match in meaning the -ora of Certicesora, which is from AS. óra, a border, edge, margin, bank. If we allow for Glein/glân being an error or substitution for glan, then the mouth of the Glein and Certicesora may be one and the same place.
Ceredicesora or "Cerdic's shore" has been thought to be the Ower near Calshot. This is a very good possibility for a landing place. However, the Ower further north by Southampton must be considered a leading contender, as it is quite close to some of the other battles.
Natanleod or Nazanleog is Netley Marsh in Hampshire. The parish is bounded by Bartley Water to the south and the River Blackwater to the north. Dubglas is, of course, 'Black-stream/rivulet.' Kenneth Jackson in his ‘Once Again Arthur’s Battles’ (Modern Philology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Aug., 1945, pp. 44-57) says of the Dubglas:
"Br. *duboglasso-, 'blue-black' which seems confused in place-names with Br. *duboglassio-, OW. *dubgleis, later OW. Dugleis, 'black stream'..."
Linnuis contains the British root for lake or pool, preserved in modern Welsh llyn. Netley is believed now to mean 'wet wood or clearing', and this meaning combined with the 'marsh' that was present probably accounts for the Linnuis region descriptor of the Historia Brittonum.
W. bas, believed to underlie the supposed river-name Bassas, meant a shallow, fordable place in a river. We can associate this easily with Certicesford/Cerdicesford, modern Charford on the Avon. Just a little south of North and South Charford is a stretch of the river called “The Shallows” at Shallow Farm. These are also called the Breamore Shallows and can be as little as a foot deep. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery was recently uncovered at Shallow Farm:
“A Byzantine pail, datable to the sixth century AD, was discovered in 1999, in a field near the River Avon in Breamore, Hampshire. Subsequent fieldwork confirmed the presence there of an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In 2001, limited excavation located graves that were unusual, both for their accompanying goods and for the number of double and triple burials. This evidence suggests that Breamore was the location of a well-supplied ‘frontier’ community which may have had a relatively brief existence during the sixth century. It seems likely to have had strong connections with the Isle of Wight and Kent to the south and south-east, rather than with communities up-river to the north and north-east.” [An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery and Archaeological Survey at Breamore, Hampshire, 1999–2006, The Archaeological Journal Volume 174, 2017 - Issue 1, David A. Hinton and Sally Worrell]
Cerdicesleag contains -leag, a word which originally designated a wood or a woodland, and only later came to mean a place that had been cleared of trees and converted into a clearing or meadow. I suspect the Celyddon Wood was plugged in for this site. Celyddon contains the word later found in Welsh as called, ‘hard.’.
Cerdicesleag or "Cerdic's wood" I would identify with Hardley on Southhampton Water. I pick this location not only because it originally meant ‘Hard Wood’, but because of the mention of Stuf (= Stub/b) both before and after the Cerdicesleag battle. Hardley is just across Southhampton Water from Stubbington, the settlement of the descendents of Stuf/Stubb. It is also just across the Solent from the Isle of Wight, which was given to both Wihtgar and Stuf.
Castle Guinnion is composed of the Welsh word for 'white', plus a typical locative suffix (cf. Latin -ium). Wihtgar as a personage is an eponym for the Isle of Wight. Wihtgarasburh is, then, the Fort of Wihtgar. But it is quite possible Wiht- was mistaken for OE hwit, 'white', and so Castellum Guinnion would merely be a clumsy attempt at substituting the Welsh for the English. /-gar/-garas/ may well have been linked to Welsh caer, 'fort, fortified city', although the presence of -burh, 'fort, fortified town' in the name may have been enough to generate Castellum. Wihtgara is properly Wihtwara, 'people of Wight', the name of the tribal hidage. Wihtgarasburh is traditionally situated at Carisbrooke.
Arthur's City of the Legion battle may well be an attempt at the ASC's Limbury of 571, whose early forms are Lygean-, Liggean- and the like. The Waulud’s Bank earthwork is at Limbury.
Tribruit is a Welsh substitute for the Latin word trajectus (see my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY for the full etymology). Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 178) discuss the term, saying that in some cases "it seems to indicate a ferry or ford..." The Welsh rendered 'litore' of the Tribruit description in Nennius as 'traeth', demanding a river estuary emptying into the sea. However, in Latin litore could also mean simply a river-bank.
If I were to look at Tribruit in this light, and provisionally accepted the City of the Legion as Limbury, and Badon as Bath (which the spelling demands, and which appears in a group of cities captured by Cerdic's father Ceawlin/Maquicoline/Cunedda), then the location of the Tribruit/Trajectus in question may well be determined by the locations of Mounts Agned and Breguoin. These last two battle-sites fall between those of the City of the Legion and Bath, and after that of the Tribruit.
I decided to take a fresh look at Agned, which has continud to vex Arthurian scholars. I noticed that in the ASC 571 entry there was an Egonesham, modern Eynsham. Early forms of this place-name include Egenes-, Egnes-, Eghenes-, Einegs-. According to both Ekwall and Mills, this comes from an Old English personal name *Aegen. Welsh commonly adds -edd to make regular nominative i:-stem plurals of nouns (information courtesy Dr. Simon Rodway, who cites several examples). Personal names could also be made into place-names by adding the -ydd suffix. –ed1 (see the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru) is the suffix in the kingdom name Rheged. The genitive of Agnes in Latin is Agnetus, which could have become Agned in Welsh - as long as <d> stands for /d/, which would be exceptional in Old Welsh (normally it stands for what is, in Modern Welsh, spelled as <dd>). I'd long ago shown that it was possible for Welsh to substitute initial /A-/ for /E-/. What this all tells me is that Agned could conceivably be an attempt at the hill-fort named for Aegen.
But what of Mount Breguoin? Well, I had remembered that prior to his later piece on Breguoin ('Arthur's Battle of Breguoin', Antiquity 23 (1949) 48—9), Jackson had argued (in 'Once Again Arthur's Battles') that the place-name might come from a tribal name based on the Welsh word breuan, 'quern.' The idea dropped out of favor when Jackson ended up preferring Brewyn/Bremenium in Northumberland for Breguoin.
So how does seeing breuan in Breguoin help us?
In the 571 ASC entry we find Aylesbury as another town that fell to the Gewessei. This is Aegelesburg in Old English. I would point to Quarrendon, a civil parish and a deserted medieval village on the outskirts of Aylesbury. The name means "hill where mill-tones [querns] were got". Thus if we allow for Breguoin as deriving from the Welsh word for quern, we can identify this hill with Quarrendon at Aylesbury.
All of which brings us back, rather circuitously, to Tribruit. This can only be the Romano-British Trajectus on the Avon of the city of Bath. Rivet and Smith locate this provisionally at Bitton at the mouth of the Boyd tributary. The Boyd runs past Dyrham, scene of the ASC battle featuring Ceawlin which led to the capture of Bath.
If we accept all this, then we cannot very easily reject Badon as Bath. In truth, with Bath listed in the ASC entry for 577, and made into a town captured by Ceawlin, we simply are no longer justified in trying to make a case for the linguistically impossible Badbury, such as the one at Liddington Castle in Wiltshire.
However, the chronology problem is significant. If we accept Arthur’s death at Camlan (see below) as happening c. 537 (= Cerdic’s death at 534 in the ASC), then Badon must have been fought c. 500 A.D. +/- 20 years. The Welsh Annals give us 516.
I would call attention to the fact that the ASC mentions a certain Bieda as fighting at Portsmouth with the eponymous Port c. 501. The battle entry is placed between the first and second entries concerning Cerdic and Cynric.
The problem with the c. 500 dating is this: at the time in question, we have no evidence whatsoever that the English and/or their Gewissei allies had penetrated far enough into England to have accessed either Bath in Somerset or a Badbury.
This fact has made pinning down the location and significance of a Badon battle impossible, and all kinds of wild theories have been proposed to account for it happening c. 500 A.D.
Now, there is a slight chance the torturous Latin in the Gildas passage on Badon has been mistranslated. While the majority of scholars render it in the traditional fashion, some have offered other interpretations. At least one top Latinist I consulted (Professor Michael Herren) claims the Latin states Badon was fought in Gildas's 44th year - not on the day of his birth. However, even he resorts to the c. 500 date for the battle itself, thus putting Gildas's day of birth around 470. He does this because the Welsh Annals insist the battle was fought in 516 or thereabouts. Thus even if we alter the meaning of the Latin, we are still stuck with a Badon fought c. 500 - when it would seem no such decisive battle at the locations in question was possible.
But suppose Badon was actually not an important battle at all. It was merely "glorified" because it supposedly happened to fall on the day of the birth of the famous St. Gildas. Over time its rather insignificant nature was exaggerated until it became the most famous battle of sub-Roman Britain. If this is true, then it could easily have been the Portsmouth battle in Hampshire, which had a combatant named Bieda, whose name in different Saxon dialects could be spelled Beda or Baeda. If this personal name were transmitted to the Welsh in a form such a Baeda, this could then later have become confused with the spelling for the Bath battle of 577. The spelling Badon was then substituted for what was originally Biedan-/Beden-.
It is entirely conceivable that it was this battle that became, through the usual process of legend-building, the famous Battle of Badon.
Incidentally, I would make Bieda the eponym for Bedenham between Portsmouth and Portchester.
***
MAEGLA, BROTHER OF BIEDA
Here I wish to briefly examine Bieda's supposed brother, Maegla. It has long been suspected that the latter represents a Welsh mael, 'lord, prince, chieftain.' For the etymology of mael, here is the entry from Matasovic's AN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF PROTO-CELTIC:
*maglo- 'noble, chief [Noun]
GOlD: Olr. mal [0 m], Ogam CUNA-MAGLI
W: MW mael [m] 'chieftain, lord'; MW -mael, -fael (in PN) (e.g. Brochfael
< *Brocco-maglos);
BRET: MBret. -mael (in PN, e.g. Tiernmael)
GAUL: Magalos, -maglus [PN]
PIE: *megh2- 'great' (IEW: 709)
What I had missed in the past was confirmation of this possibility, built into the very text of the ASC itself.
Year entry 501 tells us "ofslogon anne giongne brettiscmonnan, swiþe ęþelne monnan." That is, Port (an eponym for Portsmouth), Bieda and Maegla "slew a young British man, [who was] a very noble man."
It is now fairly obvious to me that the 'very noble man' in question is none other than Maegla/Mael himself. In other words, at some point the tradition became confused. Maegla, the young and very noble British man, was wrongly converted into one of the parties who slew that very man!
Having said this, I hasten to add that “swiþe ęþelne” is probably a reference to Elson near Bedenham. According to Ekwall, Elson’s earliest form shows a place-name based on the usual TUN, prefaced by the woman’s personal name Aethelswiþ. Note that this name contains the same two components as “swiþe ęþelne.” This smacks of aetiological word-play.
Mael was infrequently used as a personal name in the early Welsh sources. One Mael, claimed to be fictitious by P.C. Bartram in his A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY, was a son of Cunedda of the Gewissei.
***
A CAMLAN IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND?
My readers will know that over the years I select-ed two primary locations for Arthur's battle of Camlan, a word supposedly derived from either *Cambolanda, 'crooked enclosure', or *Camboglanna, 'crooked bank/shore.' There is the Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall and the Afon Gamlan in NW Wales (the favored spot in Welsh tradition).
Unfortunately, I've only now realized I missed something. And, once again, this something has been hiding in plain view in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE all along.
The death-date for Arthur at Camlan in the Welsh Annals is 537. This dovetails very nicely with Cerdic's passing in 534. Just prior to Cerdic's death, he and Cynric had taken the Isle of Wight. In the entry on his death, we are told that he and Cynric gave all of Wight to Stuf and Wihtgar.
Why is this last reference important? Because Stuf (eponym for Stubbington) and Wihtgar (a slight corruption of a word meaning the "men of Wight") were first mentioned in 514 as arriving at Cerdicesora/Certisesora, 'Cerdic's bank or shore.'
I have shown that the Glein battle of Arthur was for Cerdicesora, the first battle of Cerdic and Cynric. The word Glein has been improperly de-rived from
W. glân
[Crn. C. glan, Llyd. C. glan, H. Wydd. glan ‘pur, clir, disglair’: < Clt. *glano-, fel yn enwau’r afonydd Gal. Glana, Glanis ar y Cyfandir, o’r gwr. *ĝhel-, ĝhlə- ‘disgleirio’]
clean, cleansed, neat; clear of sin, pure, good, virtuous, uncorrupted, undefiled, fair, honest, sincere.
when it should instead be related to
W. glan
[H. Grn. glan, gl. ripa, Crn. C. glan ‘glan (afon); ochr, llechwedd’, Llyd. glann: < Clt. *glanno-]
river-bank, brink, edge; shore
It will be noted that the glan of Camboglanna as 'crooked bank/shore' is the same word as this second glan.
Now, Cerdicesora was either the Ower near Southhampton or the one near Calshot. But there were other owers in the region. In 477, Cymen is a combatant in the battle of Cy-menesora. It is not known for certain where this particular ora was located, but the generally ac-cepted opinion is that it is The Owers south of Selsey Bill. These are offshore rocks, but may once have been part of the mainland. The ques-tionable authority for this identification is a forged charter which lists "Cumeneshora".
I do not think this identification is correct. Aelle of Sussex's sons are all being used as eponyms in the ASC to map out the early boundaries of Sussex. Cissa is for Chichester (although see al-so Cissbury Ring not far north of Lancing), Wlencing for Lancing. The unknown Mearcredesburna or 'Mearcred's Burn' I make out to be the Adur's tributary, the Rother, once called the Limen, a British river-name. Limen was probably connected to Latin limen, 'a limit', from limes, and so the name Mearcred (contain-ing mearc, 'boundary') was substituted. It marks the eastern boundary of early Sussex. Aderitum or Pevensey, another Aelle conquest, is a bit further east.
Cymen is no different. The name is from Welsh cyman, meaning a host or army. It here stands for Wittering, the place of Wihthere’s people. Wihthere, rather than being ‘creature/being-host’, as Wittering sits right across The Solent from Wight, is probably ‘Wight-host.’ In other words, the here, ‘host’ = cyman, ‘host.’ One word is English, the other Welsh. As the mean-ing of the Welsh word was forgotten, it was per-sonified into a son of the equally fictitious Port.
It is not at all impossible that Cymen's ora - or Cymen's glan - became corrupted over time by the Welsh (possibly by association with real Camlan place-names) to Camlan.
However, there is another, perhaps better possi-bility than Keynor for Arthur's Camlan.
There is a place on Portsmouth Harbour called Cams Hall. Ekwall's listing for this place reads as follows:
[Kamays 1242 Fees, Cammeys 1282 Ep, Cams 1412 FA] The place is on Portsmouth Harbour. The name is no doubt the British name of the bay and identical with CAMBOIS.
Under CAMBOIS he has:
Identical with Welsh CEMMAES, KEMEYS and Ir camus, 'a bay.' The name is a derivative of OCelt
*kambo- 'crooked', Welsh cam. It is British in origin...
Mills confirms the etymology of Cambois in his place-name study:
A Celtic name, a derivative of Celtic *camm 'crooked'...
From the GPC:
camas, cemais
[cf. Gwydd. cambas, cambus ‘tro mewn afon, fforch, plygiad’, yn aml mewn e. lleoedd, e.e. Athan-chamais ‘rhyd y tro’]
eb. ?ll. cemais.
Tro neu gongl mewn afon, cilfach o fôr, bae:
bend or loop in a river, inlet of sea, bay.
As this 'crooked' bay has a shore, this is a very likely spot for Camlan.
As consulting a map reveals, Cams Hall is quite close to Stuf's Stubbington. Such a proximity suggests that a Camlan situated here fits the context of the ASC, where Cerdic's death is en-tered in the same year as his granting of Wight to Stuf and Wihtgar.
Of course, it goes without saying that if Arthur's Camlan is on Portsmouth Harbour, this strengthens the argument that Arthur = Cerdic of Wessex. In addition, the date of Camlan in the Welsh Annals would be more or less correct. And that, in turn, would force us to acknowledge that Arthur's Badon battle was, in fact, the Bieda battle of c. 501 A.D. (with Bieda being transmitted to the Welsh in its variant form of Baeda, itself being later confused with Badon, a Welsh rendering of English bathum, i.e. Bath in Somerset).
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