Yet Another Argument for Uther Pendragon = Urien of Rheged

We should now look more closely at the gloss of the ‘Uther Pen’ poem.  John Koch tells us (in CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA) that

“…there is a weird elegy issuing from the mouth of the deceased titled Marwnat Vthyr Pen, with mar. vthyr dragon added in another hand at the margin.”

This poem, which I hold to be about the head of Urien, shows how the Pendragon title developed.  Pen was taken wrongly for “chieftain”, and the metaphorical dragon substituted for it.  Someone subsequently put the two together as ‘Pendragon’.  And thus an independent entity was born. 

For my full argument identifying Urien with Uther, please see my prior blog posts.

Line 18 of the Marwnat Vythr Pen mentions the hundred heads Uther took in battle:

neu vi a ledeis cant pen,

it was I who cut off a hundred heads,