Did Arthur actually fight at Badon?
That's one of the many questions that continue to bedevil Arthurian researchers.
I used to think there was a very good possibility that Arthur was assigned to Badon in heroic legend because he was already a famous war-leader and the name of the commander of the victory wasn't known.
However, that could be looking at things "ass-backwards." For it is just as conceivable - if not more so - that Arthur was only remembered as a great war-leader precisely because he was the victorious commander at Badon.
For the remainder of this blog post, I will, for the sake of argument, assume that Arthur was, in fact, the general of the British troops at Badon. And that Badon was (as both the Welsh Annals and Dream of Rhonabwy insist it was) the Badbury hillfort at Liddington in Wiltshire.
[Let me emphasize here, before going forward, that for what it's worth, I'm personally convinced that Badon IS Liddington Castle, despite the linguistics of Badon, which point rather to a Bath site. Scribal confusion in spelling for the Badbury place-name with that of the Bath of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and possibly even with the earlier Bieda/Bedenham of that same source, is not difficult to accept. The sub-Roman and early medieval chroniclers were not modern philologists, after all.]
So here is the bear in the room (barely a decent pun, granted!):
If Arthur fought at Badon and led the Britons to victory there over the Saxons, why were all Arthurs in the succeeding generation members of Irish-descended dynasties in Britain?
This is a question I have been forced to consider over and over again.
To begin, the "Irish Problem" may be all in my head.
After all, the brother (or father) of the Dalriadan Arthur was named Conaing, from the English word for "king." The Dyfed Dessi altered the Irish names in their pedigree to good Roman ones. Both these examples demonstrate that the Irish settling in Britain wanted, ultimately, to be seen as belonging to the British race.
In this context, then, their choosing the name of a Briton who had within living memory been perceived as a famous military man should not surprise us.
Nor should it be interpreted - as I have long done - as "proof" that the original Arthur himself must have been at least part Irish.
In any case (but bearing that last point in mind), for an Arthur at Liddington I've been able to discern only two possible historical candidates: Cerdic of Wessex/Ceredig son of the Irish Cunedda, and a son of St. Illtud. I will briefly summarize the case for both before going on to the pros and cons of each argument.
Ironically, deciding between the two candidates for Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, comes down to two different interpretations of a few critical lines in the Welsh elegiac poem MARWNAT VTHYR PEN.
One reading would have Uther transformed by God into a second Sawyl (Biblical Samuel). This rendering allows for an identification of Uther with St. Illtud, who is brought into connection with Sawyl/Samuel several times. The name of Illtud's father and his place of origin permit us to situate that father either in Ercing or at Liddington Castle. Possibly both places, as Ercing smacks of a folklore relocation. The Bicknor site was once the Church of Constantine. Galfridian tradition makes Uther a son of a Constantine.
The Cunedda trace is more straight-forward. I long ago showed that Cunedda is not from Manau Gododdin, but from Drumanagh in Ireland. He is to be equated with the Coline of the Wroxeter Stone and Ceawlin of the Gewissei. The Ceawl- of Ceawlin means "basket" in AS, and Pen Kawell of the MARWNAT means "Chief Basket." Geoffrey of Monmouth has Uther transform into Gorlois, Uther's gorlassar epithet in the elegy. Gorlassar means "very blue" or "very blue-green", colors associated with the tails of comets. If the kawyl of the elegy is emended to kanwyl, a word that can mean "star", then Uther transforms into that rather than into Samuel. In the Galfridian account of the twin-tailed star ( = comet), the celestial body is said to be Uther himself.
WHAT I LIKE AND DON'T LIKE ABOUT ILLTUD AS UTHER
The reference in the Welsh PA GUR to Mabon servant of Uther at the River Ely in Glamorgan points to Gileston, the old Church of Mabon in the Vale. That town is directly across the Thaw from the Penychen kingdom of Paul. And it was under Paul that Illtud, the terribilis miles, was magister/princeps militum.
These Latin ranks and descriptors, as I've demonstrated, perfectly match the name/epithet of Uther Pendragon.
Now, it is true that I may be merely reading Uther into the Mabon line in the PA GUR. That line could have nothing to do with Uther being at the River Ely (at either Dinas Powis or Caerau). And, indeed, Uther is associated with a site in NW Wales, as we shall see below. A site which, incidentally, has its own Mabon association (through a conflation of the youthful divinity with the boy Ambrosius; the Elleti of Ambrosius was on the other side of the Thaw from Gileston, and the story of Ambrosius at Elleti was taken from the tale of the Irish Mac Og, "Young Son", at Bri Leith).
Just because Mabon, who became a servant of Uther, happens to hail from Ely doesn't mean Uther himself has to belong to the same place. Uther's son Arthur, after all, gathered champions from all over.
The hagiography (which always presents Arthur in a bad light) makes Illtud out to be the hero's cousin. When Illtud becomes a religious he puts his wife away and is not said to have any children.
It is possible that as with Uther and gorlassar, it was forgotten at some point that Uther and Illtud were one and the same person.
WHAT I LIKE AND DON'T LIKE ABOUT CUNEDDA AS UTHER
In CULHWCH AND OLWEN, Uther is said to have kin at Caer Dathal. I have identified this lost Arfon fort with Dinas Emrys. It may well have been the main fortress of Cunedda.
Still, there are two things I'm not particularly happy about when it comes to seeing Arthur as Ceredig son of Cunedda/Cerdic of the Gewissei.
First, obviously, the Gewissei are supposedly allies of the Saxons against the Britons. This is not as damaging an issue as we may think. Some top AS historians, like Barbara Yorke, think it might be possible for the Gewissei to originally have been on the side of the Britons. In this sense they would have been co-ppted in the early tradition of the Saxons, being effectively converted in an ironic twist of fate into the founders of the nucleus of Wessex.
The second problem bothers me more. While it may have been forgotten that Pen Kawell/Ceawlin was Cunneda, it is difficult to account for why Cerdic was called Arthur, rather than simply Ceredig.
That would seem to be a fatal strike against the identification.
Except for one unusual coincidence. An Arth or Bear river lies in the middle of Ceredigion, and there was a promontory fort at its mouth. And three of Ceredig's immediate descendants sport bear names. Arthur most assuredly comes from Artorius (or the less formal form Artor, according to Dr. Simon Rodway) and it could have been adopted as a decknamen for an earlier British *Artorix, "Bear-king."
Furthermore, we have extant examples of Roman era and Dark Age people who had hybrid Celtic-Latin names.
Ceredig is a British name. The Irish form is Carthach. The Cynric of the ASC is from the Irish Cunorix, found preserved on the Wroxeter Stone. Ceawlin, from Coline/Cuilenn, is also Irish, as is Cunedda (from Cuindid, etc.). So it may be that either Ceredig, though a member of Cunedda's teulu or warband, was either throughly British or Hiberno-British.
I've discussed before the curious reversal of generations found in the ASC when compared with the Welsh sources. Such a reversal betrays some kind of chronological corruption or manipulation.
The most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to Cerdic is that his floruit matches that of Arthur to an uncanny degree. They even die within 3 years of each other (although neither the ASC nor the AC dates are beyong reproach).
THE DECIDING FACTOR BETWEEN ILLTUD'S SON AND CUNEDDA'S SON
Cornwall, Barbury Castle.
Those two place-names sum it up for me.
Arthur is primarily associated with Cornwall, W. Cernyw. The name is preserved in British Durocornovium, which appears to be the original name for the Liddington Badbury.
Barbury is the Bear's fort. If I'm right and the English called it thus because to the British the name Arthur began with their word for bear, then it does not make sense for it to be called such if Cerdic merely fought there.
Instead, it would have to belong to Arthur.
For these two reasons, mainly, and because I feel the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN contains pen kawell and eil kanwyl ('chief basket' and 'like a candle', transf. 'star'), I've decided my candidate for Uther going forward from this day will be Illtud.
