AS I TRANSITION AWAY FROM ARTHUR TO OTHER THINGS IN MY RETIREMENT...

Lidar Image for the Camboglanna (Castlesteads)Roman Fort in Cumbria

Other then giving a few more talks on Arthur-related subjects on Richard Johnson's O'R GOLWG YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@orgolwg), I'm suspending my overly long Arthurian quest.  Once you reach a certain age and you come to realize that 1) I'm beginning to rehash old theories due to a lack of new, original thinking and 2) my interests, frankly, are changing, it's time to let go of certain cherished ways of being - and to release the ego-driven identity that fueled and preserved them.

But before I move on to less demanding, less rancor-filled endeavors, I did want to touch upon three matters that have absorbed most of my attention during my decades of research: Uther, Arthur's father, Badon and Camboglanna.  Yes, I've discussed all three subjects exhaustively already and even produced published books that drew upon this or that theory concerning them.  But I remain undecided whether I have managed to "crack the code" in any satisfactory manner.

Let's begin with the battle of Badon.  I tried pretty much everything for the word and the place.  But, in the end, everything from etymology to the Welsh sources indicates that this is Bath (probably, given the Breton Sulis/Sulim at a Gildas site, Little Solsbury Hill fort).  While we can come out and say, well, okay, fine, but maybe Bath was only later wrongly identified with a Baddan- hillfort and that we should instead look to the Liddington Badbury as the best candidate. Unfortunately, that is an unsustainable viewpoint based on unprovable and unnecessary speculation.  

Badon is Bath.

My idea that this could be a Bathum at Buxton is possible, but has difficulties.  First, the British name of Buxton was Aquae Arnemetia and then the place took on the name of Buxton, recorded before 1108 (according to Victor Watts). More critically, there is no hillfort at Buxton. Nor was there a Roman fort, so far as we know, as the place appears to have been a civilian settlement built around a sacred thermal spring.  Just like Bath in Somerset.  Yes, we have an old Bathamgate name preserved for the Roman road that ran to Buxton, but we otherwise have no evidence that Bathum (which would naturally becomes British Badon) was ever used for the place.  

If we want to put the famous Arthur of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and ANNALES CAMBRIAE at Bath, we have to allow for a battle there c. 500 against the Saxons. Most authorities think that is way too early for a battle so far east.  But as many of our dates are uncertain (especially those of sources like the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONCLE, where I've shown the early generations of the Gewissei have been reversed), there is nothing wrong, really, with the idea of a deep penetration to Bath c. 500, or at least in the possibility of a series of raids that were ultimately repelled by the British.  

But was Arthur really there?

If all of the battles as I've identified them - minus Badon - are, indeed, in the North (even probably Camboglanna; see below), then trying to justify an Arthur at Bath is impossible.  We would have to be content with saying he was attached to the place in the course of the development of legend precisely because the real commander there was unknown or not remembered and a famous hero was needed for what had come to be seen as a famous battle.

And now for Camboglanna...

I've discussed in detail why I no longer trust the Camlann entry in the AC.  This has to do with the entry's link to Irish annal entries featuring a Dalriadan name that is the same as the name born by a brother of the Dalriadan Arthur.  This brother died with Arthur son of Aedan in battle.  Made worse, the duplicated Irish entry matching the plague reference in the AC entry that allows us to identify Medra(u)t with the St. Medard of Gallic Noviomagus who died in that year.  The place-name Noviomagus is found in Britain as well, being the Roman period name of Chichester.  Chichester's founder, an eponym, Cissa, is said in the ASC to have fought at Cymenesora near Chichester.  Cymenesora could easily have been rendered by the Welsh Camlann or merely associated with a Welsh Camlann.

Welsh tradition otherwise firmly places Camlann in Merionethshire (something I've been able to prove). If this is the real Camlann, then the only viable candidate for an Arthur who might have perished there is Arthur son of Pedr of Dyfed, a 7th century king. Dyfed was always at war with the kingdoms to its north, both in mythic contexts (see the Mabinogion) and in history.  While attempts have been made to identify Arthur son of Pedr with the Arthur, as with a war-leader fighting at Cymenesora we cannot square him with the Northern battles.  Chronology, of course, is a glaring problem with the Dyfed king.

And then we have Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall. 

I've gone through quite a list of the remarkable features associated with this fort.  First, that it lies in the valley of the Irthing which, if Dr. Andrew Breeze is right, may mean the "Little Bear" river. Not far to the west of Camboglanna, along the Wall, is the Aballava Roman fort, the 'apple place', with a variant Avalana that immediately suggests Avalon.  A 'lake goddess' Dea Latis was worshipped at Aballava, as well as at Birdoswald in the Irthing Valley not far from Castlesteads.  Finally, the Concavata Roman fort just west of Aballava may well have been a sort of prototypical Grail Castle.

Yes, we could say that a Dark Age Arthur based on the North fought and died at Camboglanna.  The only problem with that scenario is that we also know that Severus and Caracalla were there, even if just for rebuilding, and it is possible (if I'm right about L. Artorius Castus serving under Severus during that emperor's massive invasion of Northern Britain) that a Roman Artorius, prefect of the Sixth Legion at York and commander of three legionary detachments, was also present at Castlesteads.  As I am found of pointing out to those who insist on trying to identify Arthur's City of the Legion battle with one of the two Welsh legionary fortresses, why bother positing an unattestable historical war-leader at Chester or Caerleon when we already know there was an actual historical Arthur at York?

At this point, having dispensed with an Arthur at Bath in Somerset and knowing as I do that we have a Roman fortress on the west end of Hadrian's Wall that fits the bill for Camlann perfectly, I'm not really disposed to holding onto a Dark Age war-leader.  It is quite conceivable that Castus did something remarkable at Camboglanna, perhaps in battle.  It is also possible he was wounded and removed from the sphere of action to the nearby fort of Aballava for treatment of his wounds.  Sure, this is unapologetic speculation, and more than smacks of special pleading, but historically and geographically it is plausible.  If Castus had achieved over a couple of centuries a mythical standing among the Britons, then a tale about an exploit performed and/or misfortune suffered at Camboglanna might well have found its way into Welsh story and been used to supply a purely propagandist creation with a proper death in 537. 

I would add that as far as I'm concerned it is extremely difficult to account for a Dark Age Arthur fighting from York to Caledonia.  The scholars I've consulted agree with me on this.  The only way around the difficulty is to accept that when it comes to the Arthurian battles we are dealing with a composite Dark Age Arthur, one who is part an otherwise unknown Arthur of Northern England and part Arthur son of Aedan of Dalriada.  And we have to accept the coincidence of Arthur of Dalriada being said to fall fighting against the Miathi/Maeatae (but also in Circenn!) when know Emperor Septimius Severus invaded the North precisely because of troubles caused by that tribal confederation.

As a related aside, I continue to find it interesting that people keep proposing invalid theories. Invalid because none of them have the battles. And none have tried to show my identifications to be wrong or have attempted better candidates. Yet they keep right on talking about Arthur being this or Arthur being that WHEN ALL WE HAVE IS THE BATTLES.

I still await a rival theory with decent battle site identifications. Until there is one, I'm not going to pay much attention to what's put forward by other researchers. And I will be even less prone to engage with such researchers if they continue to utterly ignore my selected sites. 

To finish now with Uther Pendragon...

I've made much of this traditional father of Arthur being not the usual format of name + epithet - something we find extremely common in early Welsh naming practice - but being instead some kind of poetic descriptor and/or Welsh rendering of a military rank or Latin phrase.  My efforts were all over the board, utilizing such an interpretation of the name to identify our hero's father with any number of historical figures.

Eventually, for various reasons, I settled on Uther Pendragon as a manufactured character based on the Latin terms used for St. Illtud in that saint's hagiography (magister militum, princeps militum, terribilis miles).  And that, in turn, led me to what appeared to be a confusion of Uther for Sawyl Benisel of the North.  Sawyl's genealogy as found chiefly in the Irish sources, coupled with a newly proposed etymology for Uther's grandson Eliwlad and hypothetical emendations for key passages in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN allowed me to tentatively propose Sawyl as the Dark Age Arthur's father.  Sawyl's Irish connections and his placement next to the Ribchester fort of the Roman-period Sarmatian cavalry seemed to explain why the later Arthurs all belonged to Irish-descended 'horse' dynasties in Britain.  

Unfortunately, there is one major problem with that nice, neat picture: nowhere else in Welsh tradition have I been able to find a single instance of a name + epithet being used as a poetic descriptor for someone who originally had a different name. My only rationale for Illtud as Uther P. was that someone had found it necessary to hide the saint's martial past and then, at some point, it had been forgotten that Uther was Illtud and the former became a separate personage in this heroic tradition.  But Illtud's martial past was not hidden or forgotten.  While nothing detailed about his military exploits has been preserved, we know where he served as master of the soldiers, etc. Thus while the idea that Illtud = Uther is superficially attractive, it does not stand up well to critical evaluation.  Finally, there are several examples in the early Welsh sources of people whose first names are also adjectives, as is the case with Uther.

It doesn't help us at all that Geoffrey of Monmouth or his source then chose to identify Uther P. with the terrible soldier of the Irish COMPERT MONGAN tale, an act which permitted him to appropriate that source's birth story for Arthur.  At the same time he further muddles things by converting the gorlassar epithet Uther uses for himself in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN into the separate personage Gorlois.

This being so, I find myself once more faced with having to make an acutely uncomfortable confession: Uther Pendragon is Uther Pendragon and that's that.  The name must be accepted as a standard name + epithet, and if he were Arthur's father from the very beginning, then the name may have been conjured for no other reason than it worked well in poetic assonance with that of Arthur. Otherwise, there seems to be absolutely nothing we can know about Uther other than the bogus genealogy supplied for him in the Welsh and Galfridian traditions.  A good guess is that Arthur was imaginatively linked with the W. word aruthr (aruthyr). From the GPC:

aruthr

awful, terrible, dreadful, frightful, frightening; fierce, cruel, harsh, merciless; wonderful, astonishing, strange. 

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12g. GCBM i. 295, G()r oet rut y lauyn o lif gwyar, / G()r oet ruthyr aruthyr ar y esgar.

12-13g. GLlLl 53, Duc eil ruthyr, troch aruthyr trachwres, / Tir Lleyn yr llithya() branhes.

13g. GBF 250, Aryf toruoet teruyn hep warthrut, / Aruthyr goeluein brein, Bryneich gystut.

14g. SC viii/ix. 187, ac ot oed aruthyr clybot y twryf. aruthrach oed yn ol hynny idaw gwelet y dieuyl o bop parth idaw.

Uther must, I fear, remain a ghost.  Welsh tradition does not help pinpoint his origin.  We learn from the PA GUR that his servant Mabon hails from the Ely Valley in Glamorgan.  But it doesn't naturally follow, as I once tried to make the case for, that Uther belongs there as well.  CULHWCH AC OLWEN says Uther had kin at Caer Dathal (= Dinas Emrys) in Arfon, Gwynedd.  I tried to use that once to associate Uther with Cunedda/Ceawlin (the pen kawell or Chief Basket of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN being identified with the ASC's Ceawlin, given that AS ceawl = 'basket'). Other than those two occurrences, we have only Geoffrey of Monmouth to rely upon for Uther's Breton origin and absurdly wide-ranging British military activities.

My only conclusion, given all of the above, is that as per my talk on O'R GOLWG

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICS0cyB8bqg) I think that the famous Arthur is L. Artorius Castus.  His mythical status was utilized by the writer of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and then by the compiler of the ANNALES CAMBRIAE to effectively create a much-needed Dark Age hero.  Such a hero was needed at the time these sources were written, and the floruit provided for him dovetails with that of the Saxon founder of Wessex, Cerdic.  

Revised post: ELIWLAD FLIES AGAIN? or A NEW SOLUTION TO AN ETYMOLOGICAL PROBLEM

             An American Bald Eagle

     at My Home in Washington State

I've just received new information from Dr. Jurgen Uhlich of Trinity College Dublin which further reinforces my theory that Eliwlad son of Madog may be a Welsh reflection of Madoc Ailithir.

The added section to my original post has been put in boldface type.

Note, however, that this is all highly speculative and I, in fact, no longer hold to the Sawyl = Arthur's father theory.  I insert this material just to demonstrate that I did not intentionally leave out anything that future researchers may find of value (either in a positive or negative sense).

***

Several years ago I floated a new theory in a book about a possible Ribchester-based Dark Age Arthur. That theory has two related arguments. One, that the kawyl of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN stood for Sawyl, and second that Eliwlad son of Madog son of Uther was a Welsh substitution for the Irish ailithir epithet of Madog son of Sawyl Benisel.

Surprisingly, I had obtained a considerable body of scholarly support for the idea. But, ultimately, there were a couple of linguistic problems and I opted to abandon the theory. Chief among these problems was my inability to explain why the Welsh would have substituted gwlad for Irish tir when Welsh had its own tir with the same meaning. There was also the need to propose a very rare metathesis due to a copying error when going from Ir. Aili- to W. Eli-. The only way out of that predicament was to suggest a direct phonological development of Aili- to Eli-. This was deemed quite acceptable, but left us with the gwlad-for-tir issue.

It didn't help that I myself had come up with a couple of other very decent etymologies for Eliwlad (Eiliw-gwlad, Appearance-lord, or Eiliw/Eilyw-gwlad, Grief-lord).

To be honest, I deeply regreted the collapse of the Eliwlad theory. Instinctively, I felt it was right. I really didn't want to let go of it. This stubbornness on my part led me to consider another possibility for transmission of the name Eliwlad.

Supposing, I wondered, Eliwlad had somehow been brought over into Welsh entire from the Irish? This may seem like an obvious question - except that no aile + flaith compound was extant in Irish. As I'd often done when I faced such a dilemma, I contacted Prof. Jurgen Uhlich of Trinity College London and put the question to him.

His complete analysis of the Eliwlad problem from the standpoint of a possible connection with Ir. Aile + flaith follows:

"Such a compound as aile-flaith could of course have existed. Its shape (and thus its reflection in spelling), however, would not feature aili-, as e.g. in ailithir, since while the schwa /ə/ of the second syllable in alilithir is followed by a palatal consonant and needs to be spelled <i> between two palatals, what follows in your example is neutral, hence *aile(f)laith or indeed, if with regular unstressed processing, *ailelaid.

The element <f> of flaith is merely due to etymological spelling, i.e. by recognising that the second element corresponds to the simplex flaith, with an actually pronounced /f/, whereas in second position in a compound like aile(f)laith, the f is non-existent after it (or more precisely its predecessor *u̯) had been lenited to zero, and the <f> was only spelled ‘back in’ for easier etymological recognition (cf. also GOI §231.7 for purely phonetic spellings without such an <f>).

As for your question of timing, the phonetically regular spellings would be Early Old Irish a(i)le(f)laith (including with or without <f>, which is immaterial), with -th still preserved at the end of an unstressed syllable, > Classical Old Irish aile(f)laid with regular voicing in that position (cf. the pattern of cath ‘battle’ and its compound cocad ‘war’, and see further McCone in Ériu 32 (1981), 29-44). In compounds, however, the same etymological ‘recognition’ as discussed for a different feature above could always spell the -th ‘back in’ by association with the simplex flaith, all the while still pronouncing it still with voiced /δ/, or indeed even with the voiceless /θ/ introduced from the simplex. Whatever about these considerations, neither a pronounced /δ/ nor a pronounced /θ/ would correspond to Welsh /d/ in a mechanical = purely phonological loanword, so once again one has to resort to etymological recognition equating not only aile- with eli- but also –(f)laith with native gwlad, which were then put together as the corresponding Welsh compound Eli-wlad, by a process referred to as ‘’loan-translation’. This could work at any period, as long as aile(f)laith/d was understood as aile + flaith."

While that all seemed good, I sensed there was a problem remaining. For Prof. Peter Schrijver hsd told me that Eli- is EXACTLY what we would expect the Welsh to do with an Irish aile. But that is from the standpoint of phonology.  

From the Univeristy of Wales in the relevant words we're dealing with here in the Irish and Welsh:

other *allo-, SEMANTIC CLASS: measure, Gaulish alla; allos; Allo- ‘other; second’, Early Irish all- ‘other’, Welsh all- ‘other’, Breton all ‘other, next (time)’

other, second *aljo-, SEMANTIC CLASS: measure, Celtiberian ailam ‘f (As)’, Gaulish alios ‘other’, Early Irish aile ‘other’, Scottish Gaelic eile ‘other, another’, Welsh ail [often eil in the earliest attestations in the GPC] ‘second; like, similar, comparable with; son, grandson, heir; race’, Cornish eyl ‘one of two’, Breton eil, il (Old Breton), eyl (Middle Breton), eil ‘other’

So, my follow-up question for Dr. Jurgen was this:

If a possible aile + flaith had existed, or even if aile and flaith were joined by the Welsh, and they correctly did the loan-translation of Ir. flaith as W. (g)wlad, why would they do aile as Eli merely from a phonological standpoint? Wouldn't the Welsh simply have substitited all or, less properly, ail/eil? Note that I've run a thorough check for eil to eli metathesis in Welsh, and it's exceedingly rare. In fact, I was only able to find that in a couple instances in a medieval law tract.

To which he responded:

"I do not think it out of the question that in a loan translation, or perhaps adaptation, the two parts of a compound could end up receiving different treatments. (Folk-)etymological recognition can have made them translate flaith directly into gwlad, but the same recognition may not have felt workable for aile-i /al´ə/ in not sufficiently resembling native eil, so it needed to be adapted more ‘literally’ by its sound shape."

Now, this revelation was pretty exciting to me. But it wouldn't do me much good unless I could arrive at a consensus view by involving other Celtic language specialists in the discussion.

So I sent Jurgen's treatment on Eliwlad and aile-flaith first to Prof. Peter Schrijver. His response?

"Yes, that might work."

While not exactly a ringing endorsement, I take this to be a victory as the top linguists are notoriously difficult to satisfy (language laws being by definition quite rigid in their applications). Furthermore, his opinion was followed by agreement on the possibility by Dr. Simon Rodway, Dr. Richard Coates, Prof. Ranko Matasovic and Dr. Alan James.

What was I to do now?

Well, the Uther = Sawyl equation was the only good identification I had for Arthur's father. Otherwise, I was forced to interpret Uther Pendragon as a conjured name. And as Sawyl had Irish connections (his wife was a Dal Fiatach princess) and resided where Sarmatian cavalry had been in garrison for a couple centuries, I could easily account for the later Arthurs in the horse-loving, Irish-founded kingdoms of Dyfed and Dalriada.

It does not matter that Eliwlad is placed by the "Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle" in Cornwall in a 15th century MS. (which Sir Ifor Williams traced back to the 12th century), or that the dead eagle in an oak motif was taken from the Lleu story (the Madoc place-names in Cornwall match those in Nantlle). All of that would have been subsequent story and is not reflective of the earliest tradition. However, Eliwlad as instructor of Christian virtues to Arthur is perfectly paralleled by another medieval didactic poem in which a pilgrim (W. creiriwr; cf. Ir. ailithir) is instructed by Mary Magdalene of Brynbuga. And Prof. Stefan Zimmer has told me that an "other land" designation for Eliwlad may well have contributed to the notion that the other land in question was the Otherworld, i.e. Heaven. Hence Eliwlad appearing in spectral form.

There is an element of the Uther identification with Sawyl that I don't like, of course: the Sarmatian connection. I'm quite sure of that connection because I'd earlier proven that Sawyl Benisel belongs at Samlesbury in Lancashire near Ribchester. And that means the epithet Pendragon will once again be claimed as a reference to the Sarmatian draco.

As my readers know by now, I did a lot of research on the draco standard. My conclusion was that we utterly lacked textual or archaeological evidence for the existence of the Sarmatian draco. The Dacians had one, as did the Alans. So while it would be safe to assume the Sarmatians had their own flying dragon standard, we can't prove that they did. We can say that rather than adhering to strict Welsh poetic usage of the word dragon as a metaphor for "warrior", Sawyl might have been referred to as the "Chief Dragon" of an ethnic group whose totem was the dragon. 

We cannot relate Sawyl's epithet Benisel to Pendragon. Benisel or "Low-head" meant someone who was humble. Penuchel, sometimes substitited for Benisel, conversely meant "High-head", i.e. one who was prideful or arrogant.

Where does this all leave us?

I'm not sure yet. Certainly, if the preferred emendation of Sawyl for kawyl in the Uther elegy is correct - and that does make for a good contextual fit - and we can allow for Eliwlad to have come from Ir. aile-flaith as an epithet identical in meaning to Ailithir (an epithet originally attached to St. Matoc that was wrongly made into Matoc's/Madog's son), then we have a historical candidate for Uther Pendragon. 

I should remind my readers that Uther says in the elegy that God transforms him into a "second kawyl", or rather "second Sawyl." That is to say, a second Samuel, the first being, presumably, the Biblical prophet of that name. The /k/ of kawyl would be due to the common scribal error of eye-skip, the /k/ being dropped down from the /k/ of kawell in the previous line. Kawyl has no meaning in Welsh. It's unlikely to be an error for cannwyll, "candle', for reasons of scribal practice [1] and poetic convention [2], facts made plain by Dr. Simon Rodway and Prof. Marged Haycock (editor of the MARWNAT VTHYR HEN). 

[1]

"1) This requires positing an n-suspension. These do occur occasionally in medieval Welsh MSS, but they are very rare." [NOTE: cannwyll in 4 out of the 5 earliest attestations in GPC is spelled with only one /n/. Simon Rodway told me that n-suspension could account for a missing single /n/ in kawyl, but again, "they are rare in Welsh manuscripts."]

2) The single l would mean suggesting an Old Welsh exemplar, for which there is no other clear evidence in the poem. Elsewhere the scribe has ll where needed, so if he was copying from an examplar with l for ll, then this would be the only occasion on which he didn’t correctly modernize.

Overall, emendation to Sawyl, while totally speculative, involves less issues (eye-skip to kawell), and eil Sawyl, ‘a second Samuel’ gives plausible sense." - SR

[2]

"Kawyl (or Sawyl) is not at the end of the line so is not in this case involved in any prescribed rhyme (tywyll, kawell are proest rhymes)." - MH This is significant because tywyll and cannwyll are found paired in the poetry, but a poet would not pair them unless both were at the ends of their respective lines.

Haycock was also kind enough to approve my reading of kafell ("temple, sanctuary") for kawell (which as it stands would appear to mean "basket"):

"The cafell variant of cawell < Late Latin cauella may already have developed before the first attestation in GPC."

She then concluded with a discussion of end-rhyme: 

"The tywyll and kawell do not form a full rhyme, and are not strictly speaking a normal type of proest (which is a half rhyme where the vowels vary, but consonants match). This is because tywyll contains a diphthong -wy- whereas kawell just has simple vowel. However, some -wy- sounds can morph into a clear -y, in which case tywyll might form a sort of proest with kawell. It seems near enough to pass muster. However, the slight irregularity might suggest to some an emendation to a word ending in -wyll, or alternatively the fem. form of tywyll which is tawell (that would give you full rhyme)."

Needless to say, kawell from cannwyll evinces the same /nn/ problem as we just encountered trying to derive cannwyll from kawyl.

All in all, after applying Occam's Razor to the rather opaque Uther elegy, we have these key lines:

Our God, Chief of the Sanctuary, transforms me;

It's I who's a second Samuel in the gloom

This may well be an allusion to the Biblical Samuel in the darkness of the sanctuary at Shiloh.

"Is there any way you can make Illtud/Uther work?": An Attempt to Answer a Question from a Reader

Illtud Cross

A funny thing happens every time I write something about Illtud the magister militum/princeps militum/terriblis miles as Uther Pendragon: the hit number on that particular blog post climbs far higher than for any articles touching on other Arthurian subjects.

Having just offered this piece -

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-final-statement-on-st-illtud-as-uther.html

- I heard from a reader who was disappointed I refused to accept Illtud as Arthur's father.  I am going to quote directly from this reader, unedited and with her permission:

"Dear Mr. Hunt: Is there any way you can make Illtud/Uther work? It seems to be you have proven the true identity of Uther Pendragon.  As he is the only father we know of for the Arthur of 5th-5th centuries AD, what do we do without him?  Without meaning any disrespect (your work is awesome!), it seems to me that if we don't have a father for Arthur then we don't have Arthur.  Or at least we don't know where he comes from and that pretty much leaves us having to resort to theories like the one you've recently flushed out for Lucius Artorius Castus.  In other words, we are forced to go to someone, anyone who is provably historical. But worse, Uther becomes just another lie of Geoffrey of Monmouth and that casts in doubt the whole idea that there really was a Dark Age hero.  Isn't it possible that there was an Arthur son of Illtud, maybe for Badon and Camlan, and that it is all the other battles that were merely attached to him later to enhance his story?  I don't know; maybe the other battles do belong to Castus.  Or to Castus and Arthur son of Aedan.  If you could find a way to keep Illtud AND tell us how the later Arthurs in the Irish-descended British kingdoms of Dyfed and Dalriada came to be, wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Sigh.  To be honest, I'm not sure what to do with this.  But it has been bothering me for days.  I've tried to shake it and just can't.  So... let me try to get my mind around this problem one last time and, hopefully, produce something coherent that might help us with what I'm going to start calling "The Illtud Problem."

The first thing for me to do, I suppose, is to admit that, yes, I do think Uther = Illtud.  

The next thing to do was to find Illtud's Llydaw - WHICH IS NOT ARMORICA/BRITTANY.

For a Llydaw that appears to have been inside Britain, here is a discussion of the place-name from P. C. Bartram's A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY:

LLYDAW.

The place-name appears in old Welsh as Lettau in the Life of St.Cadog (§35) here identified 

with Armorica and also (§45) used for the immigrants to Gaul under Maximus: gens que vocatur Lettau,

glossed Brittones. The Irish form was Letha which is found applied not only to Armorica but also to 

Latium (John Rhys, Celtic Folklore, p.532). The Latinised form of the name was Letavia (e.g. the 

Breton Life of Gildas; §16, the Life of St.Illtud, §1 etc.). An inhabitant was called Lledewig, ‘Letavian’ 

(See Eneas Ledewig, Glythmyr Ledewig), plural Lledewigion, older Letewicion (HB §27 MS.C), 

Lidwicc(i)um, Lidwicingum [oblique case] in ASC s.aa. 885(6), 915(8). A.W.Wade-Evans spelt 

Llydewig (WCO 163, 198). See also s.n. Cynan ab Eudaf.

Llydaw is the regular Welsh name for Armorica, Brittany. But the name also occurs in Wales, 

e.g. Llyn Llydaw in Snowdonia, and there are several cases of the use of the name in the older literature 

which suggest that it was used for some region in Wales. Just as Devon [Dumnonia] and Cornwall gave 

their names to Domnonée and Cornouaille in Brittany, so Llydaw [Brittany] seems to have had its 

duplicate in Britain. John Rhys gave reasons for suggesting that a place named Llydaw was in the region 

of Llangorse Lake in Brycheiniog (Celtic Folklore, pp.531-6). In the story of the hunting of the boar, 

Trwyth, in the tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’, the men of Llydaw, gwyr Llydaw, are represented as 

assembling in Ystrad Yw, a cwmwd on the south-east border of Brycheiniog (RM 140). In the Life of 

St.Padarn (§22) it is said that Caradog Freichfras extended his boundaries of Britannia [Wales] so as to 

include Letavia. This can be interpreted as extending his kingdom from Radnorshire into Brycheiniog. 

See s.n. Caradog Freichfras. Again in the Life of St.Illtud (§1) it is said that his father was a man of 

Letavia, and implies that Illtud was born there. Later we are told that he returned to Letavia to die, but 

there is a tradition that he was buried in the parish of Defynnog in Brycheiniog. See s.n. Illtud, note to 

§1 of the Life.

Many Welsh saints are said to be descended from Emyr Llydaw, and this has led to the

assumption that they migrated from Brittany. But there is no good reason for supposing that any of these 

saints actually came from Brittany. All the evidence points to the contrary, and the movement was 

almost wholly in the opposite direction. See Emyr Llydaw. It seems therefore that, in many cases when 

Llydaw is mentioned in a context of the sixth century or earlier, Llydaw could mean a district 

somewhere in the boundaries of Brycheiniog.

See also WCO 102, 111-2, 133, 135. 151; E.G.Bowen, The Settlements of the Celtic Saints in 

Wales, 1954, pp.55, 94.

A curious passage in the Life of St.Oswald printed by John Capgrave says that ‘[Oswald] was 

killed in the place called in the English tongue Maserfeld ... That place [Oswestry] moreover is adjacent 

to the boundaries of Armorice Wallie - because anciently the greatest part of Wales was named 

Armorica.’ (Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. C. Horstman, II.204)."

The answer to that mystery is the Leadon Vale, a river-name conforming to Celtic *Litano- and hence a perfect candidate for a British 'Llydaw.' I'd written many pieces on the Leadon and Illtud's possible origin there. Here are just a couple:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/10/uther-pendragon-was-born-in-vale-of.html?m=1

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-galfridian-genealogy-for-arthur-and.html?m=1

Alas, if Leadon Vale is Illtud's Llydaw, then the Irish connection to his son Arthur is lost. 

Our second and biggest problem is, of course, the battles of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and ANNALES CAMBRIAE:

Mouth of the River Glein

Dubglas River in Linnuis

Bassas River

Celidon Wood

City of the Legion

Tribruit Shore

Hills of Breguoin

Hill of Agned

Hill of Badon

Camlann

If Badon is Bath, as it seems to be (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/09/badon-as-bath-final-proof.html?m=1), there's no problem with an Arthur based in the old Dobunni lands fighting there. 

Without resorting to trying to identify them with English place-names, we can say that a couple more of the battles could be put in the South.  The City of the Legion could be Caerleon - something that has long been suggested by various Arthurian scholars, professional and amateur alike. 

The Tribruit, because this is a Welsh substitute for the Latin trajectus, a crossing, may well be the one recorded in Roman records at or near Bitton - which itself it quite close to Bath.  Such a location also would put this battle practically right at the Dyrham site of the ASC.

But after that, things get hopelessly mirky.  It is interesting that in the ASC that after the battle of Dyrham, three cities are captured - Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester. Three cities in the ASC, and three hills in the HB.  But, perhaps more interesting is that there are three hillforts at Bath: Little Solsbury, Bathampton and Little Down.  Might there be some correspondence between one group of three and the other?

The Celidon Wood is quite impossible. Try as we might there is really nothing we can do with it unless we try to make it conform to some similar looking or sounding English name.  Any identification reached by that method will not satisfy anyone other than people who lack all knowledge of place-name development and the various languages involved.  We could have fun with it: there is a Chilton hard by Cadbury Castle in Devon.  Yet there is really no way to escape the fact that the Celidon Wood is the Celidon Wood.  If it's something else, we can't possibly prove what that is.  

Bassas forces us in one of two directions: we look for an English Bassa stream, like that of Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire, or we accept an impossible to locate 'shallow' (W. bas) stream or shallow of a stream.  

The Glein, followed immediately by a Dubglas in Linnuis, does seem to suggest that whoever compiled the list may have been thinking of the Lincolnshire Glen (in the region of the Roman period Lindum).  Alas, there is no Dubglas in Lindsey and, so far as we know, never has been. There is a Blackwater at Witham in Essex, and a Witham River in Lincolnshire. The earliest forms of the two Witham names are not identical (see Ekwall, Watts, etc.), but I suppose it's possible they were confused and so the Essex Blackwater was placed accidentally in Lindsey.  But, again, this is relying on English place-names.  And there are other Glens (although not always deriving from W. glein) and Douglas (some being Gaelic) rivers around.  There was a Lindinis Roman town at Ilchester in Somerset. 

Camlann, because of the Gallic St. Medard of Noviomagus's intrusion into the AC entry, looks to be the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE'S Cymenesora (a site near the British Noviomagus/Chichester). However, we have the odd presence of an early Llanelltyd church near the Afon Gamlan in NW Wales. The Afon Gamlan is the Camlann of later Welsh tradition. It is possible the Afon Gamlan is a relocation of Cymenesora and the church of Illtud was put there in the mistaken belief Arthur really had perished in Merionethshire.

Rather than trying to identify the battles which seem to belong firmly in the North with southern sites, it might be better to accept them as an attempt by the author of the HB to further glorify Arthur by placing him all over Britain.

The real Dark Age war-leader may have been based in Dobunni lands.  How the name Artorius came to be transmitted there would remain unknown. 

I realize none of that will sit very well with my readers.  It does feel, well, unfulfilling.  But if we are going to keep an Arthur son of Illtud, this is the best I can do, I'm afraid.  We end up with an Arthur disassociated from several of his battles and with no discernible Irish ties.

 

The Transmission of the Name Arthur from Strathclyde to Dalriada - and Thence to Dyfed?

                      Rock of Clyde

Over the past few weeks I've written a number of pieces on my ideas for the possibility of a Dark Age British Arthur in the North. Such an elusive figure may have existed, despite my preference for seeing in a northern Arthur a mythical construction built upon the attested historical entity Lucius Artorius Castus.

Two of my most recent blog posts on the subject:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-final-statement-on-st-illtud-as-uther.html?m=1

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-northern-battles-of-arthur-with-no.html?m=1

Here I wish to explore a problem which continues to bother me.

While it is easy to account for the transmission of the Arthur name from Strathclyde to Dalriada (as Aedan married the niece of the British king), it is not an easy matter to account for the presence of the name Arthur in Dyfed. 

In the following article -

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/01/stones-and-horses-on-reaching-final.html?m=1

- I did try and provide some possible explanations for the Arthur son of Pedr of the Irish-descended dynasty in SW Wales. But are any of those explanations satisfactory? 

I have, in my exploration of a Dark Age northern Arthur candidate, focused on two possible Arthurian centers: Alclud/Dumbarton and Uxellodunum/Petrianis/Stanwix. The problem is not so much whether either is a decent choice, but rather whether the Arthurian battles - as I've laid them out - actually represent those of a Roman general or can be assigned to just one Dark Age chieftain or mercenary (without resorting to a composite figure). And it seems to me that Dyfed's Arthur may hold the clue to answering this question.

To begin, discounting the suggestions I made in the "Stones and Horsez" article above, I've been unable to establish a link between the Deissi and Strathclyde or Dalriada (other than their shared "Irishness", of course). We know of no marriage ties existing between Dyfed and either Strathclyde or Dalriada. Nor is there a hint in our records of a military alliance. Lastly, I could not find anything convincing to tie the tribal groups together prior to their respective folk migrations to Britain.

But could there be an interesting religious connection between SW Wales and Northern Britain?

St. Kentigern/Mungo of Strathclyde is said to have fled to Menevia/St. David's prior to returning home under the kingship of Rhydderch. 

Could the name of a famous northern Arthur have come to be known to the Dyfed royal house through Kentigern?

Unfortunately, no.

Scholars have shown that Kentigern's sojourn in Wales and his etablishment of religious houses there which are well-known to have been founded by Welsh saints was a Norman period creation of Jocelyn of Furness. Jocelyn invented the story to bolster the primacy of the Glasgow archbishopric. Instead, actual early Mungo place-names are clustered in Cumbria and if the saint did flee anywhere, it was to there. Not to Wales.

That all leaves us, I'm afraid, with nothing substantial of a true historical nature to help us account for how the Arthur name got to Dyfed.

I keep coming back to the marked horse culture present in both Dyfed and Dalriada. 

Interestingly, I've had confirmed for me that the Petriana unit name, possibly deriving from that of its first cimmander, Titus Pomponius Petra, would still have taken the form Petriana had Petrus been that commander's cognomen. From Dr. Roger Tomlin on the Petriana name and the cavalry garrisoned at Stanwix:

"It's only a good guess that the unit took its name from Pomponius Petra. Petrus or even Petrius would be perfectly possible. And after centuries at Stanwix, with hundreds of horses housed there, it is bound to have produced 'civilian' horses, too."

And this brings us back once more to Petr(us), later Welsh Pedr, the father of the Dyfed Arthur. Such a man may have seen in the Cumbric Arthur, a war-leader who descended from the Ala Petriana - a famous cavalry unit he may have associated with his own name - a good name for his own son.

The only other Petra that could be involved is that of Petra Cloithe, a Latin rendering of Alclud, capital of Strathclyde. Although, so far as I know, that Latin form is used only in Adomnan's Life of St. Columba. All the Welsh sources have Alclut/Alclud.

We also have the questionable 18th century testimony of a couple of antiquarians that Stanwix was known anciently as "Arthur's fort." While it is easy to dismiss this claim, the site is the only one in the North to have been referred to as Arthur's headquarters 

[The romance-derived Carlisle is a modern misinterpretation, something I long ago made clear: see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/02/pinning-down-arthur-his-most-likely.html?m=1.]

The Petrianis fort has always been ideally situated for an Arthurian command post. It is close to Camboglanna/Castlesteads, to Aballava/Avalana/"Avalon" (Burgh By Sands), to Dea Latis/"Lake Goddess" dedications and to a prototypical Grail fort (Concavata/Drumburgh). In the Roman period it was the most important fort on the Wall, housing the largest cavalry unit in all of Britain. It could respond quickly to points North and East.

I've pointed out before that as the Ala Petriana was a Gallic unit, the horse goddess Epona would have been worshipped by its members. Scholars of Celtic religion believe that the Dyfed horse goddess Rhiannon was a manifestation of Epona.

Finally, it is believed (although reports have yet to be published) that wooden structures excavated there might prove sub-Roman reuse of the fort.

If there were ever a perfect place for a Dark Age British Arthur, fighting in the old Brigantian territory and north into the territory of the Votadini against the Saxons (and maybe the Picts - unless the Miathi/Maeatae and Caledonii belong to Lucius Artorius Castus and/or Arthur son of Aedan)), Petrianis is it.

We would have to postulate that the same man was well-known at Alclud and his name passed from there to Dalriada. If Kentigern really was in Cumbria, he may have learned of Arthur while there. Or there may gave been marriage ties and/or a military alliance between Strathclyde and Cumbria.

We must remember, though, that Castus was of the equites. If Petr father of Arthur is not properly to be related to the cultural remnant of the Ala Petriana (which, after all, had been withdrawn from Britain in the early 5th century), and we thus lose that viable means of transmission of the Arthur name, the mythical ghost of Castus must be allowed to come back into play.

And - this is very important! - if Uther Pendragon was really the famous Northern British Arthur's father, Strathclyde is still a contender through Ceredig the 'cruel tyrant.' [But it must be admitted that the Welsh would probably have used their own teryn for a L. tyrannus.  Pendragon instead perfectly matches the magister militum title of St. Illtud.]

Should we care to allow the dragon as a Welsh poetic metaphor for a warrior originating in the dragon that was the Roman draco or, in particular, the ethnic draco of the Dacians, we might still look towards Banna/Birdoswald, in the Irthing ('Little Bear') Valley near Camboglanna Castlesteads. I'm still fairly confident that Banna went by the nickname the 'Aelian Dragon' because of the special significance of the Dacian draco. Banna's garrison for centuries, including in the late period, was a Dacian one. For more on this, see

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/01/more-scholarly-support-for-my-reading.html?m=1

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-wolf-serpent-standard-of-dacians.html?m=1

Granted, we don't have the clear link between Banna with its infantry garrison and either Strathclyde and Dalriada or Dyfed. We would have to postulate merely that an Arthur at Banna was famous and those Irish in Britain who wanted to be British took the name for their own sons. There may have been no need for the native Britons to do the same, as Arthur already belonged to them.

While I personally love the idea of an Arthur at Birdoswald, I'm not sure the idea is supportable.

I once tried to make the Dark Age Arthur a son of Sawyl of Ribchester, a Roman fort known for its Sarmatian cavalry. But I abandoned the theory as it was based solely on my own clever and valid emendations of opaque poetic terms in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN and a new and intriguing etymology of the name Eliwlad in THE DIALOGUE OF ARTHUR AND THE EAGLE. The latter collapsed when the Eli- element could not be shown to be a loan-translation from the Irish. Thus the argument did not have the weight to support a sound argument for a historical Arthur candidate.  This was a shame, as Sawyl had married a Dal Fiatach princess - the same Dal Fiatach tribe we know the Dalriadans married into. A Hiberno-British Arthur descended in part from Sarmatian cavalry might well have seemed attractive to the Dalriadan and Dyfed monarchs seeking a name for their sons.

A FINAL STATEMENT ON ST. ILLTUD AS UTHER PENDRAGON (IN LIGHT OF MORE RECENT RESEARCH)

The ground swallowed them, never to return to earth;

Illtud believed when he had seen such acts;

"He who had been a soldier, subduing many strongholds,

Changed his warfare, seizing the highest crown;

Becoming a monk, he profited in diverse ways."

- Vita Sancti Cadoci

Illtud on the Samson Cross

Deep down, almost secretly, I've never relinquished the strong feeling (conviction?) that Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, is St. Illtud.  By now my readers are doubtless tired of my constantly bringing this up.  Most recently I wrote the following piece on the subject:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-terrible-ghost-of-illtud-soldier.html

As I've just admitted in my newest article (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/09/badon-as-bath-final-proof.html) that I've been wrong in trying so hard to push the Liddington Badbury as Arthur's Badon, I thought I should take a look at Illtud in light of what seems a much more certain identification of Badon with Bath in Avon.  And I had also not considered Illtud in light of the revelation that the Annales Cambriae's Camlann entry betrays major contamination in the person of Medraut (a metathesis of St. Medard of Noviomagus in Gaul; see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/05/a-selection-from-my-revised-making.html).  This, too, needed to be considered in in connection with Illtud, as a very early church to the saint is found close to the Afon Gamlan in NW Wales, the traditional site of Arthur's last battle in later Welsh tradition.

But before I do any of that...

A quick summary of what I think the best candidate for Uther Pendragon remains St. Illtud - as long as we remember that Uther P. was later identified by Geoffrey of Monmouth with the 'terrible soldier' of the Irish COMPERT MONGAN, an act that gave us the entire marvelous story of Arthur's birth.  I have elsewhere treated exhaustively of how this all worked out, with Gorlois of Cornwall being originally the gorlassar epithet Uther gives himself in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN and Igerna being a mere truncation of Irish Caintigerna (and not Geoffrey's Latin form of Welsh Eigr, which is itself an adaption of Igerna), etc.

The Welsh PA GUR poem places Mabon servant of Uther Pendragon in the valley of the River Ely in Glamorgan.  This was where Pawl Penychen ruled, and we know that Illtud commanded that prince's troops prior to becoming a saint.  Illtud has Latin military titles/ranks applied to him in the hagiography that translated directly into Pendragon (magister militum, princeps militum), and appears after his death in spectral form as a 'terrible soldier.'  These terms were easily combined at some point to form Uther ('the terrible') Pendragon (chief of warriors; see Bromwich's notes in her TRIADS).

Now the trick is accepting that at some point Uther Pendragon as a poetic descriptor for Illtud was wrongly taken as an entirely separate personage.  This kind of thing could rather easily have happened over time, especially as the saint's martial attributes were considered undesirable from a Christian point of view.  In the end, it was found necessary to convert (pun strictly intended) Uther Pendragon from being Arthur's father to being his uncle.  Illtud thus became Arthur's cousin.  The Bicanus made Illtud's father is a false patronymic derived from the Welsh Bicknor place-name, a site which like the Lydbrook, the real "Letavia/Llydaw" origin point of Illtud, is actually or English etymology. Everything about that Lydbrook origin point suggests Illtud hailed from the kingdom of Ercing, not from Brittany.  Ercing is replete with early Arthurian associations.

Now, when I was fixated on the Liddington Badbury, I had supported my argument with what seemed a remarkable coincidence: the same English Bican- place-name and Lyd-/Lud- stream-name was present at Liddington.  To me, this was sure and certain "evidence" that Illtud's localization in Ercing was itself a relocation from Liddington Castle.  And, of course, in this line of reasoning, Badon could scarcely be anything other that the Liddington Badbury.  The Liddington fort had been called Durocornovium in the Roman period, a name containing the tribal name Cornovii, identical with the later Welsh Cernyw, their word for Cornwall.  Even better, just a short distance from Liddington along the ancient Ridgeway as Barbury Castle, the 'Bear's fort', a site I had often thought might have been named by the English for the 'bear' that was Arthur (W. arth = bear).

Of course, this all seemed too good to be true.  And, as it turns out, that appears to be the case.  If, that is, we accept my new findings regarding Badon as Bath.

In brief, Badon is absolutely beyond any doubt the Welsh form of English Bathum, and I've not found a single top Celtic or English linguist who disagrees with that verdict.  I have in the piece cited above discussed the Sulis/Sulim hillfort at a Gildas/Gweltas site in Brittany, and that I now hold to my identification of Posentesbyrig as Pascent's fort (something approved of by Dr. Richard Coates) as a doublet for William of Malmesbury's Vortigern's burg, i.e. Bradford on Avon.  The latter town is, of course, hard by Bath.  Solsbury hillfort at Bath, despite the misgivings of some toponym experts, can be shown through a number of different developmental stages to have been named for Sulis, the presiding deity of Bath.  My guess is that Gweltas at Sulis is a folk association of Gildas with Badon/Bath.  This is especially so as most authorities see Gweltas as originally an entirely different saint with whome Gildas was wrongly identified. 

Given these two apparent facts, it is supremely difficult to accept Badon as anything other than Bath.

However...

We modern scholars are always judging these matters on our own criteria.  There is no reason why British peoples of the Dark Ages might not have accidentally or intentionally substituted a Bathum name for a Baddan- name (itself claimed to be from an otherwise unattested/proposed and difficult, if not impossible, to etymologize English Badda personal name).  If this did happen at some point, perhaps due to influence from early English records on Bath like the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, then the Liddington Badbury might be able to be provisionally allowed to stand as Illtud's true home.

If we permit such an unprovable philological transgression, we still have two major problems to deal with: the HISTORIA BRITTONUM'S battle list (minus Badon) and the Annales Cambriae's Camlann battle.

The first is easy enough to dispense with.  It would be either a totally fictional creation - a possibility that even believers cannot not wholly gainsay - or a reflection of the legendary campaigns of the Roman general Lucius Artorius Castus. Some of them could also have been taken from actions fought by Arthur son of Aedan.  In any case, if we are talking about an Arthur who comes from either Ercing or Durocornovium, the northern battles do not work for him.  And I am as certain as I can be that my identifications for the HB battles are quite valid.  To date, no one has found better candidates for the HB battles, nor have they been able to come close to disproving my identifications.  

Camlan of 537, if we go by the Medard intrusion into the AC entry, is the ASC's Cynemesora.  This place was directly across The Solent from the Isle of Wight.  Cerdic of Wessex had died in 534 right after conquering that island.  It is not impossible that if an Arthur based at Liddington Castle were fighting the English in the SW that a deep thrust to the south into Hampshire did occur and that Arthur perished fighting not Medraut, but Cerdic.  At least according to the rather dubious testimony of the ASC, Cerdic had made it up partway up the Hampshire Avon before continuing with battles farther to the south.  Could we postulate that he was driven back down the Avon Valley and then killed at Cymenesora as he tried to make his way north a bit farther to the east? 

Llanelltyd or the Church of Illtud near the Afon Gamlan in Merionethshire might tell us that a tradition grew up in the area that the Gamlan was the Camlann and so a church to Arthur's famous saintly father was erected there.  If Cymenesora is not the right place, and the Afon Gamlan is, then we are dealing with the wrong Arthur.  An Arthur perishing at the Gamlan looks to be the 7th century Arthur son of Petr of Dyfed.  This makes a great deal of sense, as there was always warfare going on between Dyfed and Gwynedd.  This is found in early stories in the Mabinogion and in later history.  

Needless to say, the Camboglanna Roman fort not too far from the west end of Hadrian's Wall could have no bearing on an Arthur son of Illtud. It may have belonged to a Northern Arthur. The 537 date is suspect because of the Medard intrusion. As Badon's 516 in the AC looks to be wrong (with c. 490-500 being a better estimate), it is quite possible the real Camlann happened at a different time.

And that's about as good as I can do when it comes to Illtud as Arthur's father.

The problem with the theory is that it does not help us with the subsequent Arthurs, all of whom belonged to Irish-descended dynasties in western Britain (Dyfed and Dalriada).  There is very good reason to believe that the Arthur name first came into the Dalriadan royal family through the Strathclyde Britons.  We have no way of explaining how an Arthur son of Illtud from either Ercing or Liddington Castle would have been of any interest to the royal families of Dalriada and Dyfed.  We would be stuck with saying, "Well, Arthur of Ercing or Liddington became famous fighting the English in southern or southwestern England and so the Strathclyde Britons quickly took up the name among themselves and passed it on through marriage to the Dalriadans. The Dyfed kingdom, who so far as we know had nothing to do with the Dalriadans, wanted to use a famous British name, so it took Arthur."  

Unfortunately, that explanation is beyond lame, in my opinion. Instead, the preservation of the Arthur name in the North, and in particular in Strathclyde, can be traceable to a famous Artorius in the North, like the Roman general of that name from the early 3rd century.  Had he achieved a mythical status by the 5th century, his name may well have been current in Strathclyde.  

Given all of that, I'm more inclined at this point to let go of Uther Pendragon, assigning his identification as father of the famous Arthur to Geoffrey of Monmouth. For we must remember that nowhere in the pre-Galfridian Welsh sources is Arthur's father named, and Uther, in his few occurrences, is not described as Arthur's father.  

If we must have all the northern battles together with Badon and Camlan, and are going to push a Dark Age hero, there are only a couple of ways I can think of to do this.  I've outlined both in this recent blog post:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-northern-battles-of-arthur-with-no.html

I would like to be able to favor Ceredig Wledig of Strathclyde as Arthur's father. As the 'cruel tyrant' he could have yielded an Uther Pendragon independent of the Illtud identification.  Still, the Latin word tyrannus has its obvious counterpart in Welsh teryn, so it is difficult to abandon the perfect equation of Pendragon with Illtud's magister militum. It may simply be that Geoffrey of Monmouth chose to use Uther as Arthur's father.  That no contemporary authority (that we know of) objected to this may be because the real father of the Dark Age hero wasn't known.  

If we are insisting on the North, but don't like Strathclyde, an unnamed chieftain at Petrianis on Hadrian's Wall is not a bad idea - although this last is supported only by very late, local folk belief.  

Beyond this I am unable to go at the present time.  

ELAFIUS, HIS CRIPPLED SON AND ARTHUR

St. Germanus of Auxerre

Some time ago I posted a blog article on a radical idea, i.e. that the crippled boy in the c. 446-7 A.D. story of St. Germanus and Elafius , as found in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, was a reference to Arthur/Artorius. 

But Bede got Elafius from a character found Constantius of Lyons' Vita of St. Germanus:

[21] NEC multo interposito tempore nuntiatur ex eadem insula Pelagianam peruersitatem iterato paucis auctoribus dilatari; rursusque ad beatissimum uirum preces sacerdotum omnium deferuntur, ut causam Dei, quam prius obtinuerat, tutaretur. Quorum petitioni festinus obtemperat. Namque adiuncto sibi Seuero, totius sanctitatis uiro, qui erat discipulus beatissimi patris Lupi Trecasenorum episcopi, et tunc Treuiris ordinatus episcopus, gentibus primae Germaniae uerbum praedicabat, mare conscendit, et consentientibus elementis, tranquillo nauigio Brittanias petit.

Interea sinistri spiritus peruolantes totam insulam Germanum uenire inuitis uaticinationibus nuntiabant; in tantum, ut Elafius quidam, regionis illius primus, in occursu sanctorum sine ulla manifesti nuntii relatione properaret, exhibens secum filium, quem in ipso flore adulescentiae debilitas dolenda damnauerat. Erat enim arescentibus neruis contracto poplite, cui per siccitatem cruris usus uestigii negabatur. Hunc Elafium prouincia tota subsequitur; ueniunt sacerdotes, occurrit inscia multitudo, confestim benedictio et sermonis diuini doctrina profunditur. Recognoscunt populum in ea, qua reliquerat, credulitate durantem; intellegunt culpam esse paucorum, inquirunt auctores, inuentosque condemnant. Cum subito Elafius pedibus aduoluitur sacerdotum, offerens filium, cuius necessitatem ipsa debilitas etiam sine precibus adlegabat; fit communis omnium dolor, praecipue sacerdotum, qui conceptam misericordiam ad diuinam clementiam contulerunt; statimque adulescentem beatus Germanus sedere conpulit, adtrectat poplitem debilitate curuatum, et per tota infirmitatis spatia medicabilis dextera percurrit, salubremque tactum sanitas festina subsequitur. Ariditas sucum, nerui officia receperunt, et in conspectu omnium filio incolumitas, patri filius restituitur...

Chapter XXI

Meanwhile evil spirits, flying over the whole island, made known through the involuntary prophecies of their victims the coming of Germanus, with the result that one of the leading men in the country, Elafius by name, came hurrying to meet the holy men without having had any news of them through any regular messenger. He brought with him his son who had been crippled in early youth by a grievous malady. His sinews had withered and the tendons of the knee had contracted and his withered leg made it impossible for him to stand on his feet.

The whole province came along with Elafius. The bishops arrived and the crowds came upon them unexpectedly. At once blessings and the words of God were showered upon them. Germanus could see that the people as a whole had persevered in the faith in which he had left them and the bishops realized that the fallings-away had been the work only of a few. These were identified and formally condemned.

At this point Elafius approached to make obeisance to the bishops and presented to them his son, whose youth and helplessness made his need clear without words. Everyone felt acutely for him, the bishops most of all, and in their pity they had recourse to the mercy of God. The blessed Germanus at once made the boy sit down, then felt the bent knee and ran his healing hand over all the diseased parts. Health speedily followed the life-giving touch. What was withered became supple, the sinews resumed their proper work, and, before the eyes of all, the son got back a sound body and the father got back a son...

When I read the description carefully of Elafius's son's lameness, I happened to think of the following words (from Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary):

arto (not arcto ), āvi, ātum, 1, v. a. 1. artus,

I.to draw or press close together, to compress, contract (not found in Cic.).

I. A.. Lit.: omnia conciliatu artari possunt, * Lucr. 1, 576: “libros,” Mart. 1, 3, 3; Col. 12, 44, 2: “vitis contineri debet vimine, non artari,” Plin. 17, 23, 35, § 209: “angustias eas artantibusinsulis parvis, quae etc.,” id. 3, 6, 13, § 83.—

B. Trop., to contract, straiten, limit, curtail: “fortuna humana fingit artatque ut lubet, i. e. in angustias redigit,” Plaut. Capt. 2, 2, 54 Lind.; Liv. 45, 56: “tempus,” to limit, circumscribe, Dig. 42, 1, 2; 38, 9, 1: “se,” to limit one's self, to retrench, ib. 1, 11, 2 al. —

II. In gen., to finish, conclude, Petr. 85, 4.—Hence, artātus , a, um, P. a., contracted into a small compass; hence, narrow, close; and of time, short: “pontus,” Luc. 5, 234: “tempus,” Vell. 1, 16.

artus , ūs, m. id., mostly plur. (artua, n., Plaut. Men. 5, 2, 102; quoted in Non. p. 191, 12.—Hence, dat. acc. to Vel. Long. p. 2229 P. and Ter. Scaur. p. 2260 P. artibus; yet the ancient grammarians give their decision in favor of artubus, which form is also supported by the best MSS.; cf. arcus.—The singular is found only in Luc. 6, 754; Val. Fl. 4, 310, and Prisc. p. 1219 P.).

I. A.. Lit., a joint: “molles commissurae et artus (digitorum),” Cic. N. D. 2, 60, 150: “suffraginum artus,” Plin. 11, 45, 101, § 248: “elapsi in pravum artus,” Tac. H. 4, 81: “dolorartuum,” gout, Cic. Brut. 60, 217.—Sometimes connected with membra, Plaut. Men. 5, 2, 102: “copia materiaï Cogitur interdum flecti per membra, per artus,” in every joint and limb,Lucr. 2, 282; 3, 703 al.; Suet. Calig. 28; cf. “Baumg.-Crus., Clavis ad Suet.: cernere lacerosartus, truncata membra,” Plin. Pan. 52, 5.—

B. Trop., the muscular strength in the joints; hence, in gen., strength, power: Ἐπιχαρμεῖον illud teneto; “nervos atque artus esse sapientiae, non temere credere,” Q. Cic. Petit. Cons. 10.—More freq.,

II. The limbs in gen. (very freq., esp. in the poets; in Lucr. about sixty times): cum tremulis anus attulit artubus lumen, Enn. ap. Cic. Div. 1, 20, 40 (Ann. v. 36 Vahl.); so Lucr. 3, 7; cf. id. 3, 488; 6, 1189: “artubus omnibus contremiscam,” Cic. de Or. 1, 26, 121: dum nati (sc. Absyrti) dissupatos artus captaret parens, vet. poet. ap. Cic. N. D. 3, 26, 67: “copia concita per artusOmnīs,” Lucr. 2, 267: “moribundi artus,” id. 3, 129 al.: “rogumque parari Vidit et arsurossupremis ignibus artus, etc.,” Ov. M. 2, 620 al.: “salsusque per artus Sudor iit,” Verg. A. 2, 173; 1, 173 al.: “veste strictā et singulos artus exprimente,” and showing each limb, Tac. G. 17: “artusin frusta concident,” Vulg. Lev. 1, 6; 8, 20; “ib. Job, 16, 8.—Of plants: stat per se vitis sine ullopedamento, artus suos in se colligens,” its tendrils, Plin. 14, 1, 3, § 13, where Jahn reads arcus.

artus (not arctus ), a, um, adj. v. arma, prop.

I.fitted; hence,

I. Lit., close, strait, narrow, confined, short, brief: “exierunt regionibus artis,” Lucr. 6, 120: “claustra,” id. 1, 70; so id. 3, 808: “nec tamen haec ita sunt arta et astricta, ut ea laxarenequeamus,” Cic. Or. 65, 220: “artioribus apud populum Romanum laqueis tenebitur,” Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 5: “nullum vinculum ad astringendam fidem jure jurando majores artius essevoluerunt,” id. Off. 3, 31, 111: “compages,” Verg. A. 1, 293: “nexus,” Ov. M. 6, 242: “artostipata theatro,” pressed together in a contracted theatre, Hor. Ep. 2, 1, 60: “toga,” a narrow toga without folds, id. ib. 1, 18, 30 (cf. exigua toga, id. ib. 1, 19, 13): “nimis arta convivia,” i. e. with too many guests, who are therefore compelled to sit close together, id. ib. 1, 5, 29 et saep.—Hence, subst.: artum , i, n., a narrow place or passage: “ventus cum confercit, franguntur in artomontes nimborum,” Lucr. 6, 158 Lachm.: “multiplicatis in arto ordinibus,” Liv. 2, 50; so id. 34, 15: “nec desilies imitator in artum,” nor, by imitating, leap into a close place, Hor. A. P. 134.—

II. Trop., strict, severe, scanty, brief, small: “sponte suā cecidit sub leges artaque jura,” subjected himself to the severity of the laws, Lucr. 5, 1147: “Additae leges artae et ideo superbae quasqueetc.,” Plin. 16, 4, 5, § 12: “vincula amoris artissima,” Cic. Att. 6, 2: artior somnus, a sounder or deeper sleep, id. Rep. 6, 10: “arti commeatus,” Liv. 2, 34; Tac. H. 4, 26; cf.: “in artocommeatus,” id. ib. 3, 13: “artissimae tenebrae,” very thick darkness, Suet. Ner. 46 (for which, in class. Lat., densus, v. Bremi ad h. l., and cf. densus) al.—So, colligere in artum, to compress, abridge: “quae (volumina) a me collecta in artum,” Plin. 8, 16, 17, § 44.—Of hope, small, scanty: “spes artior aquae manantis,” Col. 1, 5, 2: ne spem sibi ponat in arto, diminish hope, expectation, Ov. M. 9, 683: “quia plus quam unum ex patriciis creari non licebat, artior petitioquattuor petentibus erat,” i. e. was harder, had less ground of hope, Liv. 39, 32; and of circumstances in life, etc., straitened, distressing, wretched, needy, indigent (so in and after the Aug. per. for the class. angustus): “rebus in artis,” Ov. P. 3, 2, 25: “artas res nuntiaret,” Tac. H. 3, 69: “tam artis afflictisque rebus,” Flor. 2, 6, 31; so Sil. 7, 310: “fortuna artior expensis,” Stat. S. 5, 3, 117: “ne in arto res esset,” Liv. 26, 17.—Adv.: artē (not arcte ), closely, close, fast, firmly.

I. Lit.: “arte (manus) conliga,” Plaut. Ep. 5, 2, 29: “boves arte ad stipites religare,” Col. 6, 2, 5: “arte continere aliquid,” Caes. B. G. 7, 23: “aciem arte statuere,” Sall. J. 52, 6: “arte accubare,”Plaut. Stich. 4, 2, 39.—Comp.: “calorem artius continere,” Cic. N. D. 2, 9, 25: “artiusastringi,” Hor. Epod. 15, 5: “signa artius conlocare,” Sall. C. 59, 2: “artius ire,” Curt. 4, 13, 34: “artius pressiusque conflictari,” Gell. 10, 6.—Sup.: “milites quam artissime ire jubet,” Sall. J. 68, 4: “artissime plantas serere,” Plin. 12, 3, 7, § 16.—

II. Trop.: “arte contenteque aliquem habere,” Plaut. As. 1, 1, 63; id. Merc. prol. 64: “arte etgraviter dormire,” soundly, Cic. Div. 1, 28, 59: “arte appellare aliquem,” briefly, by shortening his name, Ov. P. 4, 12, 10: “artius adstringere rationem,” Cic. Fat. 14, 32: “abstinentiamartissime constringere,” Val. Max. 2, 2, 8.—

III. Transf.: “arte diligere aliquem,” strongly, deeply, Plin. Ep. 6, 8; so also id. ib. 2, 13.

arthrītis , ĭdis, f., = ἀρθρῖτις,

I.a lameness in the joints, gout (in pure Lat., articularis morbus), Vitr. 1, 6.

From Greek ἄρθρον, arthron "joint," from PIE *ar(ə)-dhro-, suffixed form of root *ar- "to fit together."

The reader will note that these words contain among their meanings "joint", "contract", "lameness" and the like. The lameness of the boy was due in part to the contraction of the tendons of the knee joint.

Could it not be that the author of the vita had fancifully derived his story of lameness from the name Arthur/Artorius?  These names could well have been wrongly etymologized by drawing on Latin words like artus and arto.  In this way Arthur was thought to mean a boy whose knee joint had suffered contraction of the tendons.

The idea is not as crazy as it sounds.  Professor Stefan Zimmer, in his paper ‘The Name of Arthur’, includes among the formal possibilities for explaining the name Artorius the following:

“Artorius as a genuine Latin formation may belong to the word family of ars ‘art, skill, craftmanship’, and be a derivative of artus, -ūs (masculine substantive) ‘structure, joints’, or, less likely, from artus (adjective) ‘structured, tight’. Artorius might have been a substantivized adjective meaning ‘joiner’ (not necessarily in the restricted sense of the modern English word).”

Professor Joseph Pucci, one of the world’s top experts in Late and Medieval Latin, said in response to my query on this issue:

“I think it is possible for a Latin author to connect the name Arthur to the Latin words you discuss. That sort of etymologizing, in fact, strikes me as foundational to the way early medieval thinkers on language and/or literate people thought about the relationship of words to ideas. Two sources that might be useful: Robert Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, which will give a sense of this sort of thinking in an earlier context (earlier for your interests); the other is a contemporary, and perhaps more immediately useful, source: Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, in many editions and several translations, including English.”

Professor Gregory Hayes, another expert in Late and Medieval Latin, added:

“Medieval writers are pretty flexible when they start etymologizing and it wouldn't surprise me to see one connecting the name Artorius with artus (noun or adj.), if there was some advantage to be gained in a particular context by doing so.”

If this confusion of the name Arthur/Artorius for the Latin artus or similar did happen, then the son of Elafius was quite possibly Arthur! 

BADON AS BATH: A FINAL PROOF

             Little Solsbury Hill, Bath

    

Just a short time ago, I wrote this piece:

          

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/07/sulis-of-bath-and-sulis-of-castennec.html?m=1

What I hadn't thought about was something that had been off my radar for many years - Little Solsbury Hill fort at Bath.

The name of this hillfort is believed to preserve the goddess Sulis name. She was the presiding deity at Bath.

Now, while there is some consensus that the Breton St. Gweltas may not originally have been St. Gildas, even if this were true it would be remarkable if a saint identified with Gildas in Brittany had been associated early on with a fortified Sulis hill. For such a hill would be a perfect counterpart to the British Solsbury.

It does not matter that Solsbury has so far failed to show sub-Roman use and appears to have been abandoned in the Iron Age. Any old hillfort might well have been repurposed for a single battle.

Badon and W. Caer Faddon are both Bath, linguistically speaking. They cannot be any other British or English place-name. Amateur historians who have not consulted the world's top Celtic language specialists continue to put forward new or old candidates. A good example is Mynydd Baeddan, which may derive from W. Baedd, "boar." These same amateurs are not aware of the fact that baedd has a diphthong /ai/, not the /a/ we see in Badon (Dr. Simon Rodway) or that even if we suggest that a Baedd-ON that went into Latin could have ended up Badon, ae could not come across as a. We would expect either Latin ae or Latin e (Prof. Peter Schrijver).

If we, then, finally accept Badon as Bath, we have only two problems remaining to consider. 

The first is easy to resolve, and I long ago proposed the solution. Why would Gildas, who addressed King Maelgwn prior to the latter's death in 547, call the British victory by an English name?

Surely his parents would have told him about the battle that was fought when he was born. As the AC date of 516 has to be wrong (given Maelgwn's obit and Gildas's age of 44 years 1 month), and the proper date of Badon was probably between 490 and 500, and Bath was very far to the west, it could not possibly have yet been known by its English name. 

I have suggested the work of Gildas originally had the British name, the hill of Sulis, but that at some point later a monkish copyist who found the pagan goddess name objectionable, substituted what was at his time the then English name of the place: Bathum, which regularly becomes Badon in the British.

Simple enough. Can't be demonstrated, of course, but it is a reasonable explanation.

Of more serious concern to us, of course, is the very early date for a battle against the Saxons at Little Solsbury Hill. And to that I shall return shortly.

But first, a bit on how the location of the AC's Second Battle of Badon (fought in 665) helps support my identification of the first Badon battle as an action at Bath.

The actual year entry for this Second Battle of Badon reads as follows:

665 The first celebration of Easter among the Saxons. The second battle of Badon. Morgan dies.

The "first celebration of Easter among the Saxons" is a reference to the Synod of Whitby of c. 664. While not directly mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, nor the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, there is an indirect reference to this event:

664 … Colman with his companions went to his native land…

This is, of course, a reference to Colman's resigning of his see and leaving Lindisfarne with his monks for Iona. He did so because the Roman date for Easter had been accepted at the synod over the Celtic date.  

While there is nothing in the ASC year entry 664 that helps with identifying Badon, if we go to the year entry 661, which is the entry found immediately prior to 664, an interesting passage occurs:

661 In this year, at Easter, Cenwalh [King of Wessex] fought at Posentesburh, and Wulfhere, son of Penda [King of Mercia], ravaged as far as [or "in", or "from"] Ashdown…

The regular northern boundary of Wessex in the west was the Bristol Avon. The Thames was the northern bounday farther east. I once used Penda's Ashdown near Liddington Castle/Badbury to identify Badon with the latter. But that ignores linguistics and Bradford On Avon's significance (see below).

I've recently identified Posentesbyrig as "Pascent's Burg". Leading English place-name authority Dr. Richard Coates had this to say when I asked him if this etymology worked:

"I see no absolute barrier to Posent – Pascent. Welsh <sc> is the cluster [sk], which would be rendered in OE as “esh” since OE had no cluster [sk] before a front vowel, even in the earliest times. “Esh” would normally also be spelt <sc>, but that’s a coincidence. It’s possible for “esh” to appear very occasionally as <s>, even before the conquest, as in Ryssebroc for Rushbrooke (Suffolk) in the mid-10th century."

William of Malmesbury seems to suggest that Bradford on Avon was once called Vortigern's Burg.

From https://www.dot-domesday.me.uk/wessex.htm:

"William of Malmesbury, however, writes that Cenwalh: “totally defeated in two actions the Britons, furious with the recollection of their ancient liberty, and in consequence perpetually meditating resistance; first at a place called Wirtgernesburg [meaning “Vortigern’s stronghold”], and then at a mountain named Penne” (GR I §19). This seems to imply that Wirtgernesburg is synonymous with Bradford-on-Avon, and that the enemy was, therefore, the Britons. Æthelweard, though, in his rendition of the event (II, 7), uses the phrase “civil war”, which presumably means that he believed the battle to be an internal dispute, or, at least, against other Anglo-Saxons."

       Bradford On Avon Near Bath

As Pascent was Vortigern's son, it makes sense to see Posentesbyrig or Pascent's fort as another nickname for the Vortigern's fort that was at or immediately adjacent to Bradford On Avon.

It is now thought possible that Vortigern's fort is the Budbury Hill camp at Bradford On Avon (see https://www.bradfordonavonmuseum.co.uk/iron-age).

Obviously, given all that, the best candidate for the Second Badon is Bath.

With Bath now convincingly identified as Badon, we need to return to our consideration of the chronology problem. To state that problem in succinct form, how can we account for a battle between Britons and Saxons at Bath as early as 490-500?

What comes to mind is the Gewissei battle at Dyrham in the ASC at 577. As a result of this victory, Bath was taken in the same year.

Well, I've proven pretty conclusively that the Gewissei were Irish or Hiberno-British federates from NW Wales. As some top historians like Barbara York have recently suggested, they may have been fighting for the Britons, not the Saxons. They might  later have been co-opted by the English and converted into the founders of Wessex.

An alternative interpretation would be to see a high king at Viroconium employing both Saxon and Irish mercenaries against his fellow Britons in the South. Intertribal warfare certainly occurred once the Romans were gone.

I've also shown that the early Gewissei generations are reversed in the ASC. Ceawlin and Cynric of the ASC are to be identified with Cunedda Maquicoline and Cunorix, found on the famous Wroxeter Stone:

https://linkedopenogham.github.io/cisp-recovery/cisp/database/stone/wrxtr_1.html#i1

Cunorix/Cynric son of Cunedda Macquicoline/Ceawlin is dated 460 - 475.

My identification of Ceawlin with Cunedda goes way back, beginning with pieces like this:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-irish-cunedda-selection-from-my.html?m=1

This theory was developed more fully and correctly over several years on this blog. The end result was the published book CEREDIG SON OF CUNEDDA AND THE FOUNDING OF WESSEX:

https://a.co/d/09SegnEU

Now, if Cunorix/Cynric is dated 460-475, and we allow him to have predeceased his father, it is possible for Ceawlin to have fought at Bath c. 490-500. Or at least some member of his immediate family might have done so. Cerdic of Wessex, presented as coming before Ceawlin in the ASC, is Cunedda's/Ceawlin's son in the Welsh sources. Specifically, he is the founder of the Welsh kingdom of Ceredigion.

In this revised scenario, of course, the dates of the ASC are seriously out of whack. But if I'm right about the Wroxeter Stone, we have archaeological proof to support such a contention.

Before I conclude this essay, given that Bath does appear to be Badon and that the battle was fought a decade or two prior to the AC date of 516, might we find a way to allow Arthur to have been at least one of the victors there?

Well, the only way in the past that I managed to place Arthur in the South was to identify him with Cerdic of Wessex. There were several reasons for attempting this, but I ultimately abandoned the notion. Still, there remains a slight possibility that the crippled son of Elafus/Elaphus in the Vita of St. Germanus of Auxerre may still be a reference to Arthur. 

I refer my readers to the following old blog, advising them to ignore the references to Cerdic as Arthur:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/why-i-ultimately-decided-on-ceredig-son.html?m=1

And then check out this excellent study on Elafus:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23969887

If Elafus has properly been brought into connection with the ASC's Elesa, father of Cerdic, we are looking at a connection with the Gewissei. As has been known for some time (see Kenneth Sisam's Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies, for example), Elesa is a link inserted to bring the Wessex genealogy into accordance with northern AS genealogies. In reality, Cerdic is son of Cunedda/Ceawlin.

But it is not impossible that Elafus is someone else entirely - viz., an actual chieftain somewhere in Southern Britain.

We just can't prove his son was Arthur, and have no independent early testimony for Arthur at Badon other than the HB and AC battle lists. I'm still of the very strong opinion that as all the battles other than Badon are British place-names and all are decidedly in the North (even Camlan, if we allow for that site to be Camboglanna on Hadrian's Wall) that Badon was not originally an Arthurian battle.