APPENDIX III
Camlan and the Grave of Osfran’s
Son
The
purpose of this essay is to prove, once and for all, where Arthur’s Camlann
battle site was located. Or, more accurately, where Welsh tradition happens to
place it!
It
is fairly well known that the Welsh record seven survivors of Camlann. Yet, to
my knowledge, no one has sought to plot these personages out on a map. To do so
may help us pinpoint a geographical region in which Camlann was believed to be
situated.
One
of the seven – Geneid Hir – it a difficult and otherwise unknown name. P.C.
Bartram (in “A Welsh Classical Dictionary: People in History and Legend up to
about A.D. 1000) suggests the name may be corrupt and offers an unlikely identification
with a personage named Eueyd or Euehyd Hir (often rendered Hefeydd). However, I
would see in Geneid ‘Cannaid’, “white, bright, shining, pure, clean, radiant,”
an epithet substituted for the original title Ceimiad, ‘Pilgrim’, of St. Elian.
Elian had churches on Mon/Anglesey and in Rhos, Gwynedd.
Sandde
Bryd Angel looks to be a pun for the Afon Angell, Aberangell, etc., places
immediately to the south of the Camlan on the Afon Dyfi in Merionethshire.
Morfran
son of Tegid is from Llyn Tegid, now Bala Lake in Gwynedd.
St.
Cynfelyn is of Llancynfelyn in Ceredigion just below the Afon Dyfi.
St.
Cedwyn of Llangedwyn in Powys, while somewhat further removed than the rest, is
still in NW Wales.
St.
Pedrog of Llanbedrog is on the Lleyn Peninsula in Gwynedd, just opposite the
three Camlans in Merionethshire.
St.
Derfel Gadarn is at Llandderfel near Bala Lake in Gwynedd.
Needless
to say, if we “triangulate” with all these names/places, we find at the center
the three
Merionethshire
Camlans.
So
which one is the right one?
Only
one way to know for sure: we must find the Camlann that is claimed as the
gravesite of Osfran’s son. This reference comes from the ‘Stanzas of the
Graves:’
Bet
mab Ossvran yg Camlan,
Gvydi
llauer kywlavan…
The
grave of Osfran’s son is at Camlan,
After
many a slaughter…
[“The
Black Books of Carmarthen ‘Stanzas of the
Graves’,
Thomas Jones, Sir John Rhys Memorial
Lecture,
1967, Critical Text and Translation.]
While
–fran of Osfran looks like Bran or ‘Raven’, the Os- does not look at all right
for a Welsh name. I suspected Ys- and after a first search failed, I defaulted
to bryn or ‘hill’ as the original of –bran. Thus I was looking for an Ysbryn.
And
I actually found him – or, rather, it! [See “An Inventory
of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and
Monmouthshire: VI – County of Merioneth”, p. 98, RCAHMW, 1921.]
On
the Mawddach River in Merionethshire there is a Foel Ispri. It used to be Moel
Ysbryn and was the legendary residence of Ysbryn Gawr or Ysbryn the Giant. If
we go north on the Mawddach we run into its tributary the Afon Gamlan, i.e. the
Water of the Crooked Bank.
In
a section of my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON, I included the following note
detailing one of the supposed sites for Arthur’s grave. As it happens, this
tradition matches the one that places Camlan on the Afon Gamlan.
A
Note on Northwestern Wales as the Site of
Arthur’s
Grave
There
are a few Camlans/Gamlans in northwestern Wales or Gwynedd. The presence of these
sites has prompted various Arthurian scholars to propose that Arthur fought his
last and fatal battle in this region. The modern champions of this notion are
Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd, whose book PENDRAGON: THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF
THE ORIGINS OF KING ARTHUR, was released in 2003 by Lyons press.
We
cannot ignore these Camlans or Gamlans (the most noteworthy being the Afon
Gamlan, a river) when searching for a historical Arthur. Unlike the placement
of Camlan (or Camlann) in
Cornwall,
something done by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN,
Gwynedd can claim to possess real candidates for Arthur’s final battle site.
The only other known site that qualifies linguistically is much further north –
Camboglanna on Hadrian’s Wall, which I have discussed above in Chaper 3.
Blake
and Lloyd place their trust in a very late medieval source, the VERA HISTORIA
MORTE DE ARTHURI, a work dated in extant MSS. to c. 1300,
although perhaps to originals dating between 1199 and 1203. According to Blake
and Lloyd, the VERA HISTORIA probably was written in Gwynedd. I will not
contest this point, as it may well be correct.
The
importance of the VERA HISTORIA lies in its placement of Arthur’s interment –
and thus of Avalon – in Gwynedd. Although Blake and Lloyd are familiar with the
Gwynedd tradition which places Arthur’s grave at Carnedd Arthur near Cwm-y-llan
or Cym Llan (an error for Cwm Llem, the Valley of the river Llem), they choose
to ignore this bit of folklore and instead settle on Tre
Beddau
near Llanfair, well to the east on the Conwy River, as the actual burial place
of the king. They deduce this from the fact that the VERA HISTORIA states that
the grave is near a church of St. Mary (in Welsh, Llan-fair), and that archaeologists
have recently uncovered a Dark Age or 6th century cemetery at Tre Beddau.
[Note:
Cwm Llan is a very clumsy attempt at rendering Camlan, and is obviously
spurious tradition.]
Unfortunately,
the authors of PENDRAGON also choose to ignore the description of the burial place
of Arthur as preserved in the VERA HISTORIA. In their own words, the burial of
Arthur after Camlan is told as follows:
“…
the VERA HISTORIA describes the funeral of Arthur as taking place at a chapel
dedicated to the Virgin, the entrance to which was so narrow that the mourners
had to enter by first forcing their shoulder into the gap and then dragging the
rest of their body through the opening. While the funeral took place inside the
chapel, a large storm blew up and a mist descended, so thick that is was
impossible to see the body of Arthur – which had been left outside, as it would
not fit into the chapel. Following the storm the mourners came out to find that
the body had gone and the tomb prepared for Arthur was sealed shut, ‘such that
it rather seemed to be one single stone’.”
Now,
this passage quite obviously DOES NOT portray a 6th century Christian cemetery.
Rather, it is a fitting description of a ‘chapel’ comparable to the “Green
Chapel’ of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. In other words, the said ‘chapel’
is a Neolithic chambered tomb, whose passage is so tight as to barely allow the
entrance of the mourners.
Furthermore,
we are talking about TWO conjoined passage tombs – one that is the chapel of the
Virgin, and the other which mysteriously receives the body of King Arthur. In
all of Gwynedd, there is only one such ancient monument: that of the double
chamber tomb of Dyffryn Ardudwy not far west of the Afon Gamlan.
One
of the two chambers of Dyffryn Ardudwy is actually known as Coetan Arthur or Arthur’s
Quoit. The “Virgin” is here a Christian embellishment on what would have been a
pagan goddess associated with the Otherworld site.
The
grave of Arthur discussed in the VERA HISTORIA is thus a product of folklore
only. It can thus be dismissed as an actual grave of Arthur.
Granted,
we cannot so easily dismiss the Camlans/Gamlans in northwestern Wales. Since
writing this, Dr. Jessica Hughes of CADW has sent me information via snail-mail
that adds important details to the description of the Dyffryn Ardudwy chambered
tombs. To quote Dr. Hughes:
“The
Chambered tomb at Dyffryn Ardudwy has been known as Coetan Arthur in the past,
indeed antiquarian reports of the site refer to
Dyffryn
as ‘Coetan Arthur’. However, the name appears to refer to the whole of the
monument as opposed to a particular chamber. Interestingly (and maybe somewhat
confusingly), one mile to the east of Dyffryn lies another chambered tomb known
as ‘Cors-y-Gedal’. This was also known in the past as ‘Coetan Arthur’…
Regarding whether there is a church of St. Mary in proximity to Dyffryn Ardudwy,
I have found a church 4 miles north of Dyffryn in the village of
Llanfair.
“
The
enclosed Detail Report on this Church of St. Mary
states that Llanfair was dedicated to Mary “by at least the 12c when Gerald of
Wales and Archbishop Bladwin stayed there in 1188…”
Here
is the COFLEIN listing for the second chambered cairn:
http://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/93724/detai
ls/CORS-Y-GEDOL%2C+BURIAL+CHAMBER/
“A
rather tapering rectilinear cairn, c.31m NESW by 14.5m, showing at its eastern
end a number of orthostats, partly supporting a tipped capstone, c.3.6m by 3.0m
& 0.45m thick: a spindlewhorl, thought to be IA, is said to have come from
under the capstone.”
Both
of these chambered tombs are directly west of the Afon Gamlan.
Conclusion
Regarding Arthur’s Welsh Camlan
The
next question, of course, is what Arthur was it who died at the Afon Gamlan –
assuming the Welsh
tradition is historical in nature? It can’t be a Northern Arthur. It could be
Arthur of Dyfed, but if so, the 537 A.D. date given for Camlann in the Welsh
Annals is a gross error.
There
is an Arthur son of Bicoir ‘the Briton’ in the Irish sources, but this may well
be Arthur of Dyfed, whose father’s name occurs in a number of variants, including
Petuir, which could have become Bicoir. Complicating all of this is the presence
of a Dark Age Beccurus stone a couple dozen kilometers NW of the Afon Gamlan at
Gesail Gyfarch, Penmorfa. It is tempting to see in this Beccurus the Bicoir
(genitive form of the name?) father of Arthur.
The
problem is that both Arthur of Dyfed and Arthur son of Bicoir, whether the same
man or different, have floruits well after the Badon and Camlann dates claimed
for Arthur in the Welsh Annals. The most logical explanation for this is not
that the Welsh Afon Gamlan is the wrong location for the Camlann battle, and
that the Welsh have relocated the site here from Camboglanna on Hadrian’s Wall.
Numerous
such relocations have been found in the early Welsh sources. To cite merely one
example, Rhydderch of Strathclyde is said in the “Stanzas of the Graves” to lie
at Abererch on the Lleyn Peninsula in Gwynedd.
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