THE ARTHURIAN BATTLES OF THE NORTH

Bremenium (High Rochester), Western Gateway of the Roman Fort

In going over Arthur's battles ONE MORE TIME (!!!), I was struck by what is unmistakably the traditional placement of several of the sites in the North.  

Nowhere, perhaps, is this more evident than in the 'Pa Gur' poem's localization of the Tribruit battle.  In my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY, I treated in great detail of this place-name and was able to show, quite conclusively, that as far as the author of the poem was concerned, the Tribruit was the trajectus over the Firth of Forth at Queensferry.  For my treatment of the Tribruit battle-site, see

http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-tenth-battle-shore-of-river.html

In my book THE BEAR KING, wherein I attempt to identify Arthur with Ceredig son of Cunedda/Cerdic of the Gewessei, I opted intead to place the Tribruit/Trajectus between Bath and Caerwent, as such a site is named in the Antonine Itinerary.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: if the very early 'Pa Gur' poem insists that the Tribruit was at North Queensferry, what possible justification do we have for situating the battle-site at/near Bitton in South Gloucestershire? Sure, there were doubtless trajecti all over the place, either called such officially or referred to as a common descriptor. Thus a battle that originally belonged at/near Bitton could have been transferred in tradition to the one at North Queensferry.

But if this, in fact, what happened?  The only thing we can say with certainty is that the earliest extant tradition on the location of the Tribruit battle-site places it at North Queensferry.

There are some other problems with Arthurian battle-sites in the south.  In the 'Cerdic/Arthur scenario', I cleverly identified the Celidon Wood battle with that of a "hard" wood that could, conceivably, have been Cerdic's wood.  But this identification relies on two suppositions.  First, that the hard wood was, in fact, Cerdic's wood, and that the author of the Arthurian battle-list in the Historia Brittonum happened to know that the root of the word Celidon was the same as the Welsh word for "hard", viz. caled.

Instead, we can opt for the relocated Caledonian Wood in the Scottish Lowlands, which almost certainly was centered on the Caddon Water.  See

http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-seventh-battle-celidon-wood.html

If we apply the principle of Occam's Razor rather ruthlessly, there really is no contest here.  The Celidon Wood is the Celidon Wood, not a substitute name for a hard wood in extreme southern England.

A similar issue needs to be addressed concerning the Breguion and Agned hill battles.  Yes, Breguoin was at first etymologized by Kenneth Jackson as containing the British word for quern, and thus the quern hill in southern England looks attractive.  But, Jackson later changed his mind and said that Breguoin was a perfect rendering for the Bremenium Roman fort in Northumberland.

Wade-Evans, in his translation of Nennius, thought that the apparent identification of Breguoin and Agned was due solely to a "shuffling" or, rather, condensing of the battle list, something made necessary by the addition of Badon (which for him was not, properly, an Arthurian battle).  And in THE BEAR KING, I do made a case for Agned being derived from an English personal name contained in a battle-site name found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  In other words, in the southern scheme, Breguoin and Agned are two separate sites.

Yet if we opt for Bremenium, then the identification of both hill battles is easy, for Agned can be shown to derive straight across from the Roman/Latin name Egnatius.  The latter was a governor and a rebuilder of the Bremenium fort.  We have his name recorded there in a stone inscription.

Another problematic battle is that of the Bassas, supposedly a river-name or a descriptor used for a shallow place in a river.  Any shallow place could have been so designated.  And as Welsh bas can be used of a ford, I saw no difficulty in applying the term to Charford/Cerdic's ford.  This despite the fact that the usual word for ford in Welsh is rhyd and it is extremely odd that ford in this instance would have translated as bas-.

On the other hand, if we want the actual name Bassas, preserved as such to this day, then Dunipace in Scotland works nicely.

As for the remainder of the battle names I can say only this:  yes, they can be made to fit into the southern scheme.  However, to do so we have to assume that most are Welsh errors in translation for English place-names or are close approximations of English place-names.  Castle Guinnion is a good example.  In THE BEAR KING, I propose that the Wiht- of an Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Isle of Wight place-name was wrongly interpreted as being English hwit, 'white', and so Guinnion, with its presumed gwyn/'white' element was substituted.  Again, this is not impossible.  However, Celtic linguists now allow for Vinovium/Binchester being Guinnion and while the equation is not perfect (see Rivet and Smith's discussion of the name in THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN), it is far more suitable than resorting to the Isle of Wight.

If we accept the River Glen in the North we do not have to look to a similar sounding word that allows us to connect this Arthurian battle-site name with an ora in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  The City of the Legion need not be for Lygean-, but for the York where we know a Roman period Artorius was camp prefect.  Dubglas need not be for the English Blackwater near Netley Marsh, but for an actual Dubglas at Linnels on Hadrian's Wall.  And even Badon is not confined to the south, for we know Buxton in Derbyshire was anciently called this by the English.  I had demonstrated that the Welsh tradition (as evinced in the Mabinogion tale "Rhonabwy's Dream") seems to identify Buxton with Badon. Keep in mind that if Cerdic is Arthur, only the first six battle sites belong to him.  The rest were lifted from other Gewissei battles and used to pad out the list to its Herculean total of  twelve.

So there you have it: my own systematic, brutally honest critical comments levied against the theory I presented in my own book THE BEAR KING!

When you add these to what I wrote recently in http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/04/further-discussion-on-possible.html, and then take another look at my first book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY, I cannot help but admit that an argument seeking to identify Cerdic of the Gewessei with Arthur may be seriously flawed.

Does it necessarily follow, though, that Cerdic is now completely out of the picture?

Well, I think we must decide whether it is more likely Arthur was of the North, and his battle-sites are easily identifiable places in that region of Britain, or if Arthur was of the South, with his battles being Cymracized versions of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle battles.  The clincher for me is the Arthur name itself.  I simply cannot account for how the Hiberno-British Ceredig son of Cunedda, heralding from extreme western Wales, could have been given the name Artorius.  And I say this despite the presence of the Arth River in Ceredigion and of the bear-names in Ceredig's royal pedigree.

The Artorius name, so far as we know, belonged to the North. My own feeling (I won't dignify this by calling it a "belief" - itself a tricky and dangerous enough word) is that Arthur was a Northern phenomenon who was "doing his thing" at the same time the Southern Ceredig/Cerdic of the Gewissei was doing his.  Precisely because they were contemporaries, they may have become somewhat confused in tradition.

Beyond this, I am unable to say.