The Goddess Achren of 'Cad Goddeu'

Field Maple, Acer Campestre

When I first wrote about the 'Cad Goddeu' many years ago, I opted not to accept an old idea for an etymology for the goddess Achren.  Early scholar had proposed Irish crann, 'tree'.  In Welsh, due to the usual shift from p to q Celtic, the word is pren.  While this was clever, it did not explain the /A/ that fronted her name.  As Bran, her opponent in the battle, is clearly 'Raven", I thought her name might be a corruption of the other bird known to have been a cause of the conflict - the lapwing.  This bird, mentioned in other sources, was mysteriously missing from the 'Cad Goddeu.' In Welsh lapwing is chornugil, a borrowing of Latin cornicula, 'little crow.'  I thought that perhaps Achren could be accounted for by a corruption of /chorn-/.  Needless to say, I was not particularly happy with the notion!

I've recently taken another look at this goddess and am now fairly certain her name derive either from Proto-Celtic *akar(n)o-, 'maple', or perhaps Latin acernus, 'made of maple'.  Neither Irish nor Welsh has names for maple going back to the Proto-Celtic, so it is possible antiquarian invention is at work here, the name being "imported" from the Latin word. Achren would, then, be merely a simple metathesis of *akarn(o) or acern(us). 

The maple in question would almost certainly have been the Field Maple (Acer Campestre).  

For those who would like to read what I originally put down regarding Achren, here is the selection from my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON.  Following this is my treatment of Goddeu as a name for Gwynedd, drawn from Chapter Five of THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY.

Achren

To know who Achren is, we must start at the Fort of Nefyn the Tall, Nefyn being the Welsh way of spelling the Irish Nemhain. In our time the fort is called Carn Bod-Buan or Boduan, which stands over the town of Nefyn on the Lleyn Peninsula in Gwynedd, Wales.

Long ago, at the foot of this fort, there occurred a famous battle among the tribe of the Gangani, the men of ‘The Branch’, as they called the headland at the end of the Lleyn Peninsula. It was because of this battle that the Welsh poets centuries later told of a battle fought between the trees of the forest. For the poets thought that the battle of the Men of the Branch was a battle of the branches of trees, and this they called the Battle of Godeu.

Godeu (or Goddeu) is not the word for wood, which in Welsh is coed (in Latin sources, coit). It is instead a short form of Gododdin, that kingdom in the North of Britain that lay along the Firth of Forth in Scotland. In the early medieval period, it was thought that men of Manau Gododdin, or that part of Gododdin at the head of the Firth of Forth, had come down to Gwynedd to rule. The ruler of these men was called Cunedda. But in truth Cunedda did not come from Manau Gododdin. He actually came from Drumanagh in Ireland, directly across from the Lleyn Peninsula. He was known to the Irish as Chuinnedha or Cuindedha.

Achren has been thought of as a goddess. She is mentioned as fighting in the Battle of Godeu. But the manuscript that speaks of her is very late – in fact, from the 17th century! We are told in this late source that the god Bran was also in the battle, and that if anyone could guess either her name or his, then the side that person was on would win the battle. Bran had with him sprigs of alder (or alder depicted on his shield), and it was because of this that Gwydion was able to guess his name. For was not Bran’s son named Gwern, which in Welsh is ‘Alder’?

But Achren herself was not a goddess – she was a divine bird from Annwn, the Otherworld. In the Welsh Triads we are told that the cause of the Battle of Godeu was the theft of a plover, white roebuck and a whelp from Arawn, Lord of Annwn, by Amaethon son of Don. When the tale is told in the 17th century, only the white roebuck and whelp are said to be the cause of the battle. The plover is oddly missing.

So what happened to the plover? This bird in the early Welsh tongue was ‘chornugil’, and in the text of the Triads chornugil is preceded by ‘a’. Achren is nothing more than a corruption for ‘a chornugil’. In other words, Achren is the plover of Annwn.

This is why she is paired with Bran, whose name means ‘Raven’. They were both sacred birds of the Gangani or ‘Branch’ people. The plover migrates very long distances, and often does so without stopping along the way. Its flight is rapid, and it also is quick to give alarm calls, and so is the sentinel for other shorebirds. 

There is no connection between the name Achren and the Arthurian fort name Caer Ochren, as has sometimes been proposed.

Godeu

 A very important region in the North of Britain was called Godeu. This place is mentioned in two of the Taliesin praise-poems of Urien. In both cases, Godeu is paired with Reget, i.e. Rheged. Yet Godeu has remained unidentified.

Locating Godeu is complicated by its use in an ancient battle poem called Kat Godeu, the ‘Battle of Godeu’. Because this battle poem tells of the god Gwydion’s magical activation of an army of trees, it has in the past been assumed that Godeu meant ‘forest’, cf. Welsh coed/goed. However, the word godeu or goddeu/goddau actually existed in early Welsh. The National Dictionary of Wales has as the meaning of this word ‘intention, design, purpose, object or aim, end in view.’

There are some clues about where we might find the Godeu of Kat Godeu. Firstly, we know Gwydion was most firmly associated with Gwynedd. One other character mentioned in the poem – a certain Peblig, can be put in Gwynedd. The only Peblig known to Welsh tradition was the saint of Llanbeblig, the parish church of Carnarvon. This Peblig is involved in the actual battle in Godeu, at a fort called Caer Nefenhir.

In the Mabinogion tale Math Son of Mathonwy, Gwydion fights Pryderi of Dyfed in Gwynedd. The battle was fought over some magical swine Gwydion had stolen from Pryderi. Pryderi had gotten these swine from Arawn, king of Annwm, the Welsh Otherworld.

A 17th century account of the Battle of Godeu tells us that Amaethon son of Don, Gwydion’s brother, had stolen a white roebuck and a whelp from Annwm. The battle was between Arawn and Amaethon. On one side was Bran, a god regularly associated with Gwynedd. In another Taliesin poem, we are told that Lleu also took part in the battle. He, too, was a figure frequently placed in northwestern Wales.

All the clues seem, therefore, to point to Gwynedd as the location of Godeu and Caer Nefenhir.

The fort in question looks to me to be Caer Nefyn Hir, the Fort of Nefyn the Tall (cf. Cai Hir, ‘Caius the Tall’). This points strongly to Nefyn on the Lleyn Peninsula, not far from Peblig’s Carnarvon. There are two forts at Nefyn.

The first is the hill-fort of Garn Boduan or Bodfuan, the ‘Cairn of the Dwelling of Buan’. Buan was a saint in the area. The second fort at Nefyn is the promontory fort of Dinllaen, the ‘Fort of the Laigin’ or Leinsterman.

But if Nefyn is the location of Caer Nefyn Hir, where is Godeu?

The secret, I believe, lies in the meaning of Godeu – a meaning which will allow us to have not only one Godeu– that which was in or of Gwynedd – but two Godeus, including Urien’s region of that name in the North.

The Gododdin kingdom of the North, later called Lothian, derives from a tribal name Votadini. The latter is found in early Welsh documents as Guotodin. Votadini is believed to derive from a personal name or word cognate with Irish Fothad. In Old Irish, Fothad or fothad means ‘basis (?), foundation, founding, support’. But Irish fothad itself is from a root fotha, which has among its meanings ‘basis’, ‘cause’, ‘charge’, ‘foundation’, ‘reason’.

I would, therefore, propose that early Welsh Godeu or godeu represents a cognate to Irish fotha and that, as such, it is effectively an abbreviation for Gododdin. Other abbreviations are found for places in the early sources. One example is the ‘Aloo’ used in the St. Patrick letters to Ceredig of Strathclyde. ‘Aloo’ here represents the first component of Alclud, the ‘Rock’ of Clyde.

But if Godeu = Gododdin, what is a Godeu doing on the Lleyn Peninsula in Gwynedd?

The answer to that question is simple: according to the earliest Welsh authority (Nennius in his HB), the founders of Gwynedd, led by the great Cunedda, came down from Manau Gododdin. By calling Gwynedd ‘Godeu’, then, the poets were ackowledging that Gododdin warriors had supposedly established a kingdom in northwest Wales.

Urien’s Godeu is Gododdin in the North. The Godeu of Kat Godeu is Gwynedd.