Resolving the Issue of Illtud's Parentage or How a Title Became a Separate Personage

                   Liddington Castle

Try as I might to ignore it, there is no doubt that three different Welsh sources fix Arthur's Badon at the Liddington Castle Badbury.

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-final-discovery-of-king-arthurs.html?m=1

This is rather remarkable. And although I continue to lobby for a northern Arthur, I can only continue to do so if I deny the relevance of the Welsh identification of Badon.

The choice is plain: accept Liddington as Arthur's Badon or opt to do one of two things: put his Badon elsewhere or accept the possibility he never really fought there at all.

I do continue to think that Illtud is the most logical candidate for Uther Pendragon. While it might be that a tradition linking the Welsh name/epithet with the Latin descriptors and military titles of the saint is a spurious one, it still represents the only apparent identification of Uther with a historical entity at our disposal. And the "coincidental" matchup of Illtud's Bican and Llydaw (Welsh Bicknor and Lydbrook) with Bican Dyke and Liddington's Lyd Brook is difficult - if not impossible - to ignore.

My only reason at this point for not fully embracing Illtud as Uther is the Galfridian intrusion on the tradition and other possible signs of confusion or manipulation.

At the center of the problem is Igerna, who appears in the Welsh tradition as Eigr.

As I showed long ago, Igerna or Ygerna is a character created from a place-name:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-new-identification-of-arthurs-mother.html

She was, quite literally, "The Carne" at Domellick/Dimilioc.

Gorlois doesn't help provide any historicity, as he, too, is a fictional character conjured by Geoffrey of Monmouth from Uther's gorlassar epithet in the Marwnat Vthyr Pen.

This all brings into question the legitimacy of Eigr, who is always given precedence by Welsh scholars - and this despite her being made a daughter of Anblaud of Ercing, a chieftain Brynley F. Roberts regarded as fictitious. He says: “Anlawdd Wledig seems to be a function rather than a person. He is an ‘empty’ character ... who exists merely so that his daughters may be the mothers of heroes who are all, therefore, cousins of Arthur.”

If Eigr derives from Geoffrey's Igerna and not the other way around, as seems fairly certain, then there is no reason to accept her independent existence as a daughter of Anblaud.

When we go back to Illtud we learn that his mother was also claimed to be a daughter of Anblaud. The following listing on her is drawn from Bartrum:

RHIEINWYLYDD ferch AMLAWDD WLEDIG. (450) In the Life of St.Illtud (§1) Illtud is said to have been the son of Bicanus who married ‘filiam Anblaud, Britannie regis, Rieingulid in the British tongue, which in Latin would be regina pudica, [modest queen]’. The modern Welsh would be Rhieinwylydd (cf. WCO 102-3), where rhiain formerly meant ‘queen’ and gwylaidd means ‘modest’. 

Illtud's wife was named Trynihid, who is from "Llydaw", i.e. Lydbrook in Ercing. He takes her with him when he goes to serve as a soldier in Paul of Penychen's household. They stop on the way to see his cousin Arthur, who has "a very great company of soldiers" with him. This description of Arthur's court in Illtud's Vita betrays Galfridian influence, as Caerleon, the City of the Legion, lies between Ercing and Penychen.

Now, if we allow for Uther Pendragon, a Welsh rendering of Latin terms belonging to Illtud, having taken on, over time, either accidentally or intentionally, an identity wholly separate from that of Illtud, we may account for the fictional aspects of Arthur's parentage. I have elsewhere detailed how and why this process may have played out.

If we then, provisionally, accept that Arthur was Illtud's son, and the whole Igerna/Eigr-Gorlois story as fraudulent, there is one matter we must be sure of: are we justified in identifying Illtud's Bican/Bicknor and Lydbrook with Bican Dyke and Lyd Brook/Liddington Castle/Badbury/"Badon"?

Well, as both the Welsh Annals and the Dream of Rhonabwy (the last through an obvious relocation) place Badon at the Liddington Badbury, Liddington Castle was called Durocornovium and Barbury Castle, the "Bear's fort", is hard by, I will go out on a limb here to say that I don't think we are looking at a coincidental place-name correspondence.

If Illtud was Arthur's father and he hailed from the Cornovii/Cernyw fort at Liddington, then the "Bear" remembered by the English at nearby Barbury Castle was Arthur himself.

There remains, of course, the problem of Arthur's other battles - a problem only if we put them in the South. I will return to this subject in the near future.