THE TWO EFRDDYLS AND ARTHUR OF THE NORTH

Mote of Mark Hillfort, Dumfriesshire, Scotland

Many years ago I noticed that the Dumnonian king Cynfor or Cunomoros was often confused in the sources through spelling errors with Cynfarch/Cunomarkos. At the time I was exploring the possibility of a Northern Arthur.  My interest centered on Cynfor as the father of Constantine, father of Uther, father of Arthur.  

Could it be, I wondered, that Cynfor in the Arthurian pedigree was an error for Cynfarch and not the other way around?

Cynfarch Oer of the North, whose center may have been the Mote of Mark, held a particular fascination for me.  He had given his daughter Efrddyl to Eliffer (Eleutherius, a title used by Constantine the Great) of York.  The Triad referring to the children of Eliffer and Efrddyl is (in P.C. Bartram's words) "referred to in a slightly corrupt passage in the Brychan section of Jesus College MS 20."  There the daughter Arddun is called Arthur.  As Arddun is herself found replaced in a variant of the Triad with Ceindrech Benasgell (showing yet another confusion, as an Arddun Benasgell was properly the daughter of Pabo Post Prydyn), this Arthur is given the epithet 'Penuchel', literally 'Overlord' (translation courtesy Professor Patrick Ford).

No one has taken this Northern British Arthur seriously.  But we shall return to him in a moment.

Only recently, while taking another look at Arthur's claimed connections with Ercing in SE Wales (most or all the product of Geoffrey of Monmouth's imagination), I noticed a second Efrddyl.  She was the daughter of King Peibio of Ercing and mother of St. Dubricius.  More importantly, her own mother was a daughter of a king named Constantinus.  

I've already mentioned that a Constantine was given a daughter by Anblaud of Ercing, and that their son was Goreu.  This same Anblaud was the father of Eigr, wife of Uther and mother of Arthur.

So, we are up to our gills in Constantines!

To make matters worse, I've shown how the names/titles Anblaud Wledig and Uther Pendragon are near perfect matches for each other.  Anblaud the 'very terrible/fearful' appears to be a made-up name, a sort of play of words, with his kingdom of Ercing being related to W. erch, "terrible, frightful." Brynley F. Roberts long ago stated his belief that Anblaud was a fictional kingdom-founding ancestor for Arthur and his extended family relations.

Is there anything at all we can get out of this genealogical mess?

One thing I'm prepared to state right now: Uther Pendragon, called gorlassar in a Taliesin poem (the origin of Geoffrey's 'Gorlois'), is Urien of Rheged, son of the Cynfarch (not Cynfor) who was the father of Eliffer's ("Constantine's") wife Efrddyl.  I long suspected this, as gorlassar is otherwise found only in two places - and on both occasions it is used of Urien, once for his person and once for his spear (see John Rhys, STUDIES IN THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND).  I resisted this conclusion for a long time because with Arthur as Urien's son I was forced not only to deal with the absence of Arthur in Cynfarch's line of descent, but also with a chronological impossibility: Urien is too late to be Arthur's father.  Still, I can no longer deny that Urien of Rheged is Uther Pendragon.  

The name may have come about as Uther Pen at first.  I say this because in a Llywarch Hen poem, the hero bewails the fall of Urien and is in possession of his slain lord's head. 

Professor John Koch once had a similar idea regarding the god Bran's severed head.  Here is what he has to say in CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA:

"One possibility is that the strange and strangely named yspyddawt urddawl benn (feast of the stately head) around Brân’s living severed head in the Mabinogi represents a garbling of a more appropriate ‘feast of the uncanny head’ (uthr benn); the marwnad would make sense as the words of the living-dead Brân mourning himself. For Geoffrey, the epithet Pendragon is ‘dragon’s head’, an explanation of a celestial wonder by Merlin (see Myrddin). This meaning is not impossible..."

From Koch on the head of Urien:

"... another 30 lines describe Urien’s decapitated corpse. In the former, there is much penetrating wordplay on the multiple senses of pen (head, chief, leader) and porthi (carry, support [e.g. of a poet by his patron]). The situation is reminiscent of that in Branwen, in which seven survivors, including the poet Taliesin, return from Ireland with the severed head of their king, Brân, and the englynion may intentionally echo this story:

Penn a borthaf ar vyn tu,

penn Uryen llary—llywei llu—

ac ar y vronn wenn vran ddu.

The head I carry at my side, head of generous

Urien—he used to lead a host, and on his white

breast (bron wen) a black crow (brân).

Arthur's Breguoin battle = the Brewyn of Urien.  This may suggest either that they both fought at the place, together or separately on different occasions.  It is not necessarily the case (as I discuss in my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY) that Brewyn was copied from Urien's battles onto the Arthurian battle-list.  In the "Marwnat Uthyr Pen", Uther claims that his ‘champion’s feats partook in a
ninth part of Arthur’s valour’.

I would add that the 'Pa Gur' poem's phrase "Mabon son of Modron servant of Uther Pendragon" at last makes sense.  For the center of Mabon worship, the locus Maponi of the Classical sources, was at the heart of Urien's kingdom in the North, and in the early poetry his son Owain is referred to as an incarnation of Mabon.  

Now that we've firmly established that Uther does not belong in the South, but in the North, what do we do with Arthur?

Well, it would be tempting to go with Arthur Penuchel, as perhaps a correction of a Triad, rather than merely a corruption.  His being made a son of a chieftain of York may even be a folk memory of the Roman-era Artorius who was camp prefect in that city.

But given the presence of the Dark Age Birdoswald hall (the birthplace of St. Patrick) and Camboglanna in the valley of the Irthing River (a river best etymologized as the 'Little Bear'), an Aballava/Avalana Roman fort not far to the west, an Arthwys father whose name appears to be a regional designation meaning '[place] of the Bear', and a hypocoristic name which almost certainly originally meant something akin to 'dux erat bellorum', I still have to put my money on Ceidio, brother of Eliffer/Eleutherius ("Constantine") of York.  I've demonstrated that this line has Irish blood in their pedigrees (from Fergus Mor/Mar, i.e. 'Gwrgwst Ledlwm' of Dalriada), which would explain why later Arthurs all belonged to Irish-descended dynasties in Britain. Ceidio was the father of Gwenddolau of Carwinley, the reputed lord of Myrddin/Merlin.  

And so Efrddyl daughter of Cynfarch was not Arthur's mother, but his sister-in-law.  And Uther Pendragon/Urien son of Cynfarch was not his father, but his brother-in-law.