OLD OSWESTRY HILLFORT AS CAER GOGFRAN

Old Oswestry Hillfort

Having confirmed that the name of one of the fathers of the three Guineveres in Welsh tradition is properly Gogfran, 'Jackdaw' (or chough, etc.) [1], I'm now convinced the tradition which associated this giant with Old Oswestry hillfort in Shropshire is correct.

The jackdaw is a member of the crow family. Here is a photo of the bird:

Oswestry has an early legend of a "great bird of the crow family". The story of this bird is related in "The King in the North: The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria" by Max Adams:

Although most commentators on the Life of St. Oswald have preferred to see in this bird a raven, there is no reason why it couldn't have been a gogfran.

[1]

Gogfran would appear at first to be a difficult name to analyze.  Why?  Well, here are the discussions of his name from both P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY and from Bromwich's note:

The first thing we can do is dispense with R. J. Thomas's idea that the giant's name should be related to the Ogran in Monmouthshire.  This stream is called the Ochram Brook and there are several Ochran place-names associated with it.  The derivation is rather simple and straight-forward, though; it is from Welsh Gochrwm or Gogrwm (with the G- lost through the usual process of mutation), "bent, crooked, curved."  I have this suggestion from James January-McCann of Historic Place-Names with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.

Thomas also proproses for Ogrfan a meaning of 'keen-horse', with the first element being similar to Irish ochair and the second one from Celtic *mandu-.  I note in the eDIL entry for ochair that Whitley Stokes sees the word in some contexts as meaning 'swift', which might make more sense than keen or sharp.  The Welsh cognate of Irish ochair, viz. ochr, does not have the same range of definitions. 

Some of the places linked to Gogfran are interesting, even if they are instances of late, spurious tradition.  Aberyscir is very near to Nant Bran, indicating that the name was thought of as containing -bran, "raven."  However, the Powell's of Castle Madoc on the Honddu River near the Yscir have long had the chough in their coat of arms. The unlocated castle between or immediately adjacent to Penmaenmawr in Arfon and the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula points to Nefyn, which I long ago showed was the Caer Nefenhir of the 'Cad Goddeu' poem, in which the god Bran plays a leading role.

The castle near Abbeycwmhir is probably meant to be the motte called Tomen Bedd Ugre, with Ugre being mistaken for the Ogr- of Ogrfan. 

Gogfran, if taken as is (all the other forms can be explained on the basis of a lost initial G- and/or a metathesis of -vran to -rvan), is the common Welsh word (see the GPC) for "chough, jackdaw, Cornish chough, crow, redshank." In Cornish folklore, Arthur's spirit left his body after he died at Camlan in the form of a chough.