Barbury Castle, Wiltshire
From time to time in the past I'd speculated about a possible connection between Arthur and Barbury Castle, the "Bear's fort", in Wiltshire. Nothing much ever came of this speculation, however - but only perhaps because I did not push it far enough. I will attempt to redress this deficiency here.
The year entry for Beranburh/Barbury in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE occurs in 556 - that is before the entry for the death of Ida.
Now, let us imagine that Nennius (or whoever compiled the HISTORIA BRITTONUM) had inserted his Arthurian material between the rise of Hengist's successor and end of Ida's reign. If so, then both Arthur, whose name was surely related by the Welsh to their own word arth, 'bear', and a Bear's fort battle would be found bracketed by the same annalistic events. In fact, one could go so far as to say that the writer of the HB knew the bear at Barbury was none other than Arthur! Or, at the very least, he chose to identify a war-leader named Arthur with this particular bear.
Bearing all this in mind (pun strictly intended!), let us take a close look at the historical sequence in the ASC. Once we have analyzed that, I wish to go over the dating of the Battle of Badon as it is derived from the testimony of Gildas and the Welsh Annals.
Let us look at the early battles in Wiltshire as these are found recorded in THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. We begin with the defeat of the British by Cynric at Old Sarum in 552. Four years later a battle is fought at Barbury Castle further north. However, this battle is, significantly, not said to be a victory. We are merely told there was a battle there. In 560, Ceawlin succeeds Cynric (see my earlier work for the reversal of the genealogical links for the Gewissei in the ASC). After Barbury Castle there are no more battles against the Britons until 571 - 15 years later. And the theater of action has changed: the Gewissei are now coming up the Thames Valley. In 577, the war theater changes again - this time to the west and north of Wiltshire (including the capturing of Bath). In 584, there is a battle in Oxfordshire, well to the NE of Wiltshire. We do not return to Wiltshire until 592, when a great slaughter occurs at Adam's Grave near Alton Priors resulting in the expulsion of Ceawlin. In the next year, Ceawlin perishes.
From the Battle of Beranburh to that of Adam's Grave, 36 years had passed. Adam's Grave is roughly 15 kilometers south of Barbury Castle.
The question I would put forth is simply this: who was in Wiltshire for all this time keeping the Gewissei and the English out? And is it a coincidence that only several kilometers NE of Barbury Castle along the ancient Ridge Wayt is the Liddington Badbury fort?
I have argued before that the Gewissei battles could be nothing more than an antiquarian attempt to define the boundaries of the nascent kingdom of Wessex. But if that is so, why are there defeats suffered in Wiltshire?
As I've remarked before, I do not have a problem with one of the Badbury forts being Badon - as long as we recognize that philologically Badon = Bath. In other words, we would have to accept the possibility that Badon (British form of English Bathum) was wrongly substituted for a Baddan-. This is a problem only for modern philologists and need not be applied to early medieval chroniclers.
As for the name of Barbury, it is indisputably English. The Gewissei who fought there were Irish or Hiberno-British. The enemy of the Gewissei at this fort were Britons. So we can be certain that the name of the place is an anachronism. The English only later came to refer to the fort as belonging to 'The Bear'. We have no idea what it's original British name might have been. A personal English name Bera is not recorded in English, according to Ekwall (see his entry for Barham, Kent, in THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES).
Going on the account of battles in the ASC, there appears to have been some kind of very strong British resistance centered in Wiltshire, an area where we not only find a Bear's fort, and a Badbury, but a place called Durocornovium (near Nythe Farm,Wanborough). Some attempt has been made to prove that this is a "ghost site", and that the name as we have it is a corruption of the Roman name for Cirencester, i.e. Corinium (Dobunnorum). I do not find this last argument at all convincing. In the words of Rivet and Smith (THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN), "the nearest major Iron Age settlement [to Durocornovium] is at Liddington Castle, 3 and a half miles to the south." R&S render the name 'fort of the Cornovii people.'
However, the name may refer to a topographical feature. My guess would be the situation of Upper Wanborough, which lies between Nythe Farm and Liddington Castle. From http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol9/pp174-186:
"Geographically the parish is divided roughly in half, the southern section lying on the chalk downs. The shape of the parish conforms to a pattern found along the scarp slope of the Chalk both westwards into Wiltshire and eastwards into Berkshire, each parish having chalk uplands as well as greensands and clays for meadow and pasture. (fn. 7) Upper Wanborough, around the church, is on an Upper Greensand spur commanding a view north over Lower Wanborough and south over Liddington. The northern half of the parish towards the shallow valley of the River Cole is successively Gault, Lower Greensand, and Kimmeridge Clay. (fn. 8) The chalk scarp rises behind the village, reaching 800 ft. at Foxhill on the parish boundary. Most of the Chalk lies between 600 ft. and 700 ft. Two coombs pierce the eastern boundary between the Ridge Way and the Icknield Way, the larger containing two chalk pits. Below the scarp the land falls gently away to the river, to below 300 ft., and is drained by the Cole, its tributary stream the Lidd [for which Liddington was named], and several smaller streams, providing abundant meadow land and marsh. There is little wood in the parish, although there is evidence of illegal felling during the 16th century. (fn. 9) Stone was quarried at Berrycombe in the 16th century (fn. 10) and marl was taken from Inlands at least from the end of the 13th century. (fn. 11)"
A spur of land or a section jutting out between two coombs could be construed as a "horn of land" and so Cornovium may have been used here in the same sense as it was for Cornwall (Cernyw).
The interesting thing about the place-name is that Arthur in Welsh tradition - to emphasize this point yet again! - is pretty much always associated with Cornwall.
For the sake of argument, then, let us assume for a moment that Arthur belonged at the Bear's Fort/Barbury Castle, and that he stemmed the tide of English and Gewissei invasion for over three decades. If this is so, how do we deal with the serious, and indeed, fatal problem of chronology?
The consensus is that Gildas was born c. 500 A.D. (although P.C. Bartram says c. 490). The date of Badon, which he claims happened on the day of his birth, is thought to be c. 500 +/- 10-20 years. There really is no way to more firmly calculate the date. Even the Badon date of the Welsh Annals has been disputed, primarily on the basis of a difference in the interpretation of calculated Easter Tables and the like. Generally, a date spread of 510-20 is preferred.
Needless to say, this date range cannot be reconciled with a Liddington Castle/Badbury/"Badon" battle that may have been fought sometime shortly after that of Barbury in 556. Unless, of course, we can make a case for the Gildas passage having been garbled/mangled or even deliberately tampered with. There is the tendency to rely on Gildas's account, since he was a contemporary. But Gildas's work is not without its very significant shortcomings. One of these is the inclusion of Ambrosius Aurelianus as a British war-leader. I have been able to show that this tradition is in error: A.A. is a reflection of the Gaulish governor of that name, perhaps conflated with his son, St. Ambrose. Neither were ever in Britain fighting the Saxons (although read: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/why-ambrosius-aurelianus-was-put-in.html). Ambrosius' association with Amesbury (as evinced in his being placed at Wallop Brook in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM in a battle against Vortigern's grandfather) has to do with an incorrect identification of the name Ambrosius with a British Ambirix at Amesbury (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/06/ambirix-as-name-preserved-in-place-name.html).
Let us suppose this happened: the original passage stated that the Battle of Badon had happened on Gildas's 44th birthday - not on the day he was born 44 years and one month ago. If Gildas were born in 510-20, 44 years would put the Battle of Badon somewhere between the years 554 and 564. Remember that the Barbury battle took place in 556.
Had this error occurred early enough in MSS. of Gildas, the word of the saint would have been considered incontrovertible and sources such as the Welsh Annals would automatically merely reckon from his date of birth rather than from his 44th birthday. And hence the date of the Battle of Badon was temporally dislocated, making it impossible to pinpoint it geographically or determine its military context. [Although see below under the detailed discussion regarding the Battle of Badon, and the associated Endnote, for an alternate possibility - one involving the confusion of three different similarly spelled place-names and the odd reversal of the generations for the Gewissei in the Welsh and English sources.]
We would still have to figure out what to do with Arthur's battles. Probably they are to be identified much as I did in THE BEAR KING - with one big difference. Arthur and Cerdic with his Gewissei would be adversaries at those battle-sites, and we would be confronted with the problem of both sides proclaiming victory during the various engagements.
NOTE ON UTHER PENDRAGON AND AN ARTHUR OF BARBURY CASTLE
In past blogs, I demonstrated convincingly that Uther, the only personage ever said to be the famous Arthur's father, was none other than St. Illtud (b. c. 470 according to P.C. Bartram). I decided against Illtud as the actual father of Arthur for several reasons, but chiefly because I opted for a candidate for Arthur who didn't fit into the Dobunni (or Hwicce) model.
In past blogs, I demonstrated convincingly that Uther, the only personage ever said to be the famous Arthur's father, was none other than St. Illtud (b. c. 470 according to P.C. Bartram). I decided against Illtud as the actual father of Arthur for several reasons, but chiefly because I opted for a candidate for Arthur who didn't fit into the Dobunni (or Hwicce) model.
But I've recently had good reason to doubt my earlier conclusion. A recent blog piece written on this subject nicely sets out the difficulty I face when seeking to forsake Illtud for someone else:
The principal problem concerns the perfect correspondence between the Bicknor-Lydbrook origin for Illtud when compared to Bican Dyke-Lydbrook. I have tried my best to ignore this, and to sweep it under the intellectual rug. But it continues to nag at me and I feel that I ignore it at my own peril.
If we accept Illtud as Arthur's father, and an Arthur centered at Durocornovium, which fulfulls the traditional Cornish view of Arthur, we must yet again delve into the Arthur battles in a Southern theater.
THE ARTHURIAN BATTLES IN THE SOUTH
Liddington Castle, Wiltshire - Site of the Battle of Badon?
First, the battles of Arthur:
Mouth of the River Glein
4 battles on the Dubglas River in the Linnuis region
River Bassas
Celyddon Wood
Castle Guinnion
City of the Legion
Tribruit river-bank
Mt. Agned/Mt. Breguoin (and other variants)
Mt. Badon c. 516
Camlann c. 537
And, secondly, those of Cerdic of the Gewessei (interposed battles by other Saxon chieftains are in brackets):
495 - Certicesora (Cerdic and Cynric arrive in Britain)
[Bieda of Bedenham, Maegla, Port of Portsmouth]
Certicesford - Natanleod or Nazanleog killed
[Stuf, Wihtgar - Certicesora]
Cerdicesford - Cerdic and Cynric take the kingdom of the West Saxons
Cerdicesford or Cerdicesleag
Wihtgarasburh
537 - Cerdic dies, Cynric takes the kingship, Isle of Wight given to Stuf (of Stubbington near Port and opposite Wight) and Wihtgar
As Celtic linguist Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson pointed out long ago, 'Glein' means 'pure, clean.' It is Welsh glân. However, there is also a Welsh glan, river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank. This word would nicely match in meaning the -ora of Certicesora, which is from AS. óra, a border, edge, margin, bank. If we allow for Glein/glân being an error or substitution for glan, then the mouth of the Glein and Certicesora may be one and the same place.
Ceredicesora or "Cerdic's shore" has been thought to be the Ower near Calshot. This is a very good possibility for a landing place. However, the Ower further north by Southampton must be considered a leading contender, as it is quite close to some of the other battles.
Natanleod or Nazanleog is Netley Marsh in Hampshire. The parish is bounded by Bartley Water to the south and the River Blackwater to the north. Dubglas is, of course, 'Black-stream/rivulet.' Kenneth Jackson in his ‘Once Again Arthur’s Battles’ (Modern Philology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Aug., 1945, pp. 44-57) says of the Dubglas:
"Br. *duboglasso-, 'blue-black' which seems confused in place-names with Br. *duboglassio-, OW. *dubgleis, later OW. Dugleis, 'black stream'..."
Linnuis contains the British root for lake or pool, preserved in modern Welsh llyn. Netley is believed now to mean 'wet wood or clearing', and this meaning combined with the 'marsh' that was present probably accounts for the Linnuis region descriptor of the Historia Brittonum.
W. bas, believed to underlie the supposed river-name Bassas, meant a shallow, fordable place in a river. We can associate this easily with Certicesford/Cerdicesford, modern Charford on the Avon. Just a little south of North and South Charford is a stretch of the river called “The Shallows” at Shallow Farm. These are also called the Breamore Shallows and can be as little as a foot deep. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery was recently uncovered at Shallow Farm:
“A Byzantine pail, datable to the sixth century AD, was discovered in 1999, in a field near the River Avon in Breamore, Hampshire. Subsequent fieldwork confirmed the presence there of an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In 2001, limited excavation located graves that were unusual, both for their accompanying goods and for the number of double and triple burials. This evidence suggests that Breamore was the location of a well-supplied ‘frontier’ community which may have had a relatively brief existence during the sixth century. It seems likely to have had strong connections with the Isle of Wight and Kent to the south and south-east, rather than with communities up-river to the north and north-east.” [An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery and Archaeological Survey at Breamore, Hampshire, 1999–2006, The Archaeological Journal
Volume 174, 2017 - Issue 1, David A. Hinton and Sally Worrell]
Cerdicesleag contains -leag, a word which originally designated a wood or a woodland, and only later came to mean a place that had been cleared of trees and converted into a clearing or meadow. I once thought the Celidon Wood could have been substituted for this site, but that really made no sense. Hardley, Hampshire, being the 'hard' wood (Watts, etc.), looked promising, if we could assume the Welsh knew Celidon (from Calidon-) derived from a British root similar to Welsh caled, 'hard.' But we couldn't assume that.
Instead, Celidon, being a great forest in Pictland, is a mistaken reference to Netley. While the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s insistence on this being named for a British king Natanloed is untrue (Natan- here being wrongly converted into a personal name; it is actually from a root meaning “wet”; see Watts, Mills, Ekwall, etc.), given that the Welsh knew of the famous Pictish Nechtans, in Welsh Neithon or similar (cf. Bede’s Naiton, Naitan), it is probable that the name was identified with a Pictish king and the wood thus relocated to the far North. And, in fact, it is possible that Natanleod/Natanleag in the Linnuis or ‘Lake’ region may have reminded the chronicler of the Dark Age battle of Nechtansmere
(https://canmore.org.uk/site/34664/nechtansmere), which took place at the loch or mire which existed at modern Dunnichen, Scotland, until it was drained in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Castle Guinnion is composed of the Welsh word for 'white', plus a typical locative suffix (cf. Latin -ium). Wihtgar as a personage is an eponym for the Isle of Wight. Wihtgarasburh is, then, the Fort of Wihtgar. But it is quite possible Wiht- was mistaken for OE hwit, 'white', and so Castellum Guinnion would merely be a clumsy attempt at substituting the Welsh for the English. /-gar/-garas/ may well have been linked to Welsh caer, 'fort, fortified city', although the presence of -burh, 'fort, fortified town' in the name may have been enough to generate Castellum. Wihtgara is properly Wihtwara, 'people of Wight', the name of the tribal hidage. Wihtgarasburh is traditionally situated at Carisbrooke.
Arthur's City of the Legion battle may well be an attempt at the ASC's Limbury of 571, whose early forms are Lygean-, Liggean- and the like. The Waulud’s Bank earthwork is at Limbury. Incidentally, Ceawlin’s Wibbandun of 568 is most likely a hill (dun) in the vicinity of Whipsnade, ‘Wibba’s ‘piece of land/clearing, piece of woodland’ (see Ekwall). Whipsnade is under 10 kilometers southwest of Limbury and is on the ancient Icknield Way next to Dunstable Downs.
According to Kenneth Jackson (_Once Again A thur's Battles_, MODERN PHILOLOGY, August,
1945), Tribruit, W. tryfrwyd, was used as an a jective, meaning "pierced through", and some-times as a noun meaning "battle". His rendering of traeth tryfrwyd was "the Strand of the Pierced or Broken (Place)". Basing his statement on the Welsh Traeth Tryfrwyd, Jackson said that "we should not look for a river called Tryfwyd but for a beach." However, Jackson later admitted (in The Arthur of History, ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: A COLLABORATIVE HISTORY, ed. by Roger Sher-man Loomis) that "the name (Traith) Tribruit may mean rather 'The Many-Coloured Strand' (cf. I. Williams in BBCS, xi [1943], 95).
Most recently Patrick Sims-Williams (in The Ar-thur of the Welsh, THE EARLY WELSH ARTHURIAN POEMS, 1991) has defined traeth tryfrwyd as the "very speckled shore" (try- here being the intensive prefix *tri-, cognate with L. trans). Professor Sims-Williams mentions that 'trywruid' could also mean "bespattered [with blood]." I would only add that Latin litus does usually mean "seashore, beach, coast", but that it can also mean "river bank". Latin ripa, more often used of a river bank, can also have the meaning of "shore".
The complete listing of tryfrwyd from The Dictionary of Wales (information courtesy Andrew Hawke) is as follows:
tryfrwyd
2 [?_try-^2^+brwyd^2^_; dichon fod yma fwy
nag un gair [= "poss. more than one word here"]]
3 _a_. a hefyd fel _e?b_.
6 skilful, fine, adorned; ?bloodstained; battle,
conflict.
7 12g. GCBM i. 328, G\\6aew yg coryf, yn toryf,
yn _tryfrwyd_ - wryaf.
7 id. ii. 121, _Tryfrwyd_ wa\\6d y'm pria\\6d
prydir, / Trefred ua\\6r, treul ga\\6r y gelwir.
7 id. 122, Keinuyged am drefred _dryfrwyd_.
7 13g. A 19. 8, ymplymnwyt yn _tryvrwyt_
peleidyr....
7 Digwydd hefyd fel e. afon [="also occurs as
river name"] (cf.
8 Hist Brit c. 56, in litore fluminis, quod vocatur
_Tribruit_; 14 x CBT
8 C 95. 9-10, Ar traethev _trywruid_).
Tryfrwyd itself, minus the intensive prefix,
comes from:
brwyd
[H. Grn. _bruit_, gl. _varius_, gl. Gwydd. _bre@'t_
`darn']
3 _a_.
6 variegated, pied, chequered, decorated, fine;
bloodstained; broken, shattered, frail, fragile.
7 c. 1240 RWM i. 360, lladaud duyw arnam ny
am dwyn lleydwyt - _urwyt_ / llauurwyt escwyt
ar eescwyd.
7 c. 1400 R 1387. 15-16, Gnawt vot ystwyt
_vrwyt_ vriwdoll arnaw.
7 id. 1394. 5-6, rwyt _vrwyt_ vrwydyrglwyf rwyf
rwyd get.
7 15g. H 54a. 12.
The editors of GCBM (Gwaith Cynddelw
Brydydd) take _tryfrwyd_ to be a fem. noun =
'brwydr'. They refer to Ifor Williams, Canu Anei-rin
294, and A.O.H. Jarman, Aneinin: Y
Gododdin (in English) p. 194 who translates
'clash', also Jarman, Ymddiddan Myrddin a Tha-liesin,
pp. 36-7. Ifor Williams, Bulletin of the
Board of Celtic Studies xi (1941-4) pp. 94-6 sug-gests
_try+brwyd_ `variegated, decorated'.
On brwydr, the National Dictionary of Wales has
this:
1 brwydr^1^
2 [dichon ei fod o'r un tarddiad a@^
_brwyd^1^_, ond cf. H. Wydd. _bri@'athar_ `gair']
3 _eb_. ll. -_au_.
6 pitched battle, conflict, attack, campaign,
struggle; bother, dispute, controversy; host, ar-my.
7 13g. HGC 116, y lle a elwir . . . y tir gwaetlyt,
o achaus y _vrwyder_ a vu ena.
7 14g. T 39. 24.
7 14g. WML 126, yn dyd kat a _brwydyr_.
7 14g. WM 166. 32, _brwydreu_ ac ymladeu.
7 14g. YCM 33, llunyaethu _brwydyr_ a oruc
Chyarlymaen, yn eu herbyn.
7 15g. IGE 272, Yr ail gofal, dial dwys, /
_Brwydr_ Addaf o Baradwys.
7 id. 295.
7 1567 LlGG (Sall) 14a, a' chyd codei _brwydyr_
im erbyn, yn hyn yr ymddiriedaf.
7 1621 E. Prys: Ps 32a, Yno drylliodd y bwa a'r
saeth, / a'r _frwydr_ a wnaeth yn ddarnau.
7 1716 T. Evans: DPO 35, Cans _brwydr_ y
Rhufeiniaid a aethai i Si@^r Fo@^n.
7 1740 id. 336, _Brwydrau_ lawer o Filwyr arfog.
Dr. G. R. Isaac of The University of Wales, Abe ystywyth, in discussing brwyd, adds that:
"The correct Latin comparison is frio 'break up', both < Indo-European *bhreiH- 'cut, graze'. These words have many cognates, e.g. Latin fr uolus 'friable, worthless', Sanskrit bhrinanti 'they damage', Old Church Slavonic britva 'ra-zor', and others. The Old British form of brwyd would have been *breitos. It is sometimes claimed that there is a possible Gaulish root cognate in brisare 'press out', but there are diffi-culties with that identification.
It may be worth stressing that the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'very speckled' and the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'piercing, pierced' are the same word, and that the latter is the historically pri mary meaning. The meaning 'very speckled' comes through 'bloodstained' from 'pierced' ('bloodstained' because 'pierced' in battle). But I do not think this has any bearing on the argu-ments.
Actually, Tryfrwyd MAY mean 'very speckled', but that is conjecture, not certain knowledge. Plausible conjecture, yes, but no more certain for that."
That "pierced" or "broken" is to be preferred as the meaning of Tribruit is plainly demonstrated by lines 21-22 of the _Pa Gur_ poem:
Neus tuc manauid - "Manawyd(an) brought
Eis tull o trywruid - pierced ribs (or, metaphori-cally, "timbers", and hence arms of any kind,
probably spears or shields; ) from Tryfrwyd"
Tull, "pierced", here obviously refers to Tribruit as "through-pierced".
Tribruit is a Welsh substitute for the Latin word trajectus. Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 178) discuss the term, saying that in some cases "it seems to indicate a ferry or ford..." The Welsh rendered 'litore' of the Tribruit description in Nennius as 'traeth', demanding a river estuary emptying into the sea. However, in Latin litore could also mean simply a river-bank.
In the case of Arthur's Tribruit, this can only be the Romano-British Trajectus on the Avon of the city of Bath. Rivet and Smith locate this provisionally at Bitton at the mouth of the Boyd tributary. The Boyd runs past Dyrham, scene of the ASC battle featuring Ceawlin which led to the capture of Bath.
So, with the Tribruit found, and knowing that Agned and Breguoin/Bregion/Bregomion lie between that battle and the one fought at Bath, can we solve the riddle of these two intervening hills?
I believe we can. But we have to go back in the ASC battle list - to the same year entry that contains Limbury or "City of the Legion."
I had remembered that prior to his later piece on Breguoin ('Arthur's Battle of Breguoin', Antiquity 23 (1949) 48—9), Jackson had argued (in 'Once Again Arthur's Battles') that the place-name might come from a tribal name based on the Welsh word breuan, 'quern.' The idea dropped out of favor when Jackson ended up preferring Brewyn/Bremenium in Northumberland for Breguoin.
So how does seeing breuan in Breguoin help us?
In the 571 ASC entry we find Aylesbury as an-other town that fell to the Gewessei. This is Aegelesburg in Old English. I would point to Quarrendon, a civil parish and a deserted medieval village on the outskirts of Aylesbury. The name means "hill where mill-tones [querns] were got". Thus if we allow for Breguoin as deriving from the Welsh word for quern, we can identify this hill with Quarrendon at Aylesbury.
I once thought Agned might be for Eynsham in the same year entry, but Agned cannot be derived from the proposed OE personal name (Aegen) underlying this place-name. Instead, Agned is pretty plainly (as we can see from the HB MSS., where "agned cat bregomion" is found several times) a simple corruption for W. agued, a word actually found used to describe the distress or dire straits of the force at the Catterick battle in the GODODDIN. The reading should actually be, then, 'distress at/of the Battle of Breguoin.'
THE WELSH AND THE 'BATH' OF THE NORTH
It has often been said that the Welsh Caer Faddon is always a designation for Bath in Avon. However, the only medieval Welsh tale to localize Arthur's Badon places it at Buxton in Derbyshire.
I am speaking, of course, of the early Arthurian romance ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’, sometimes considered to be a part of the Mabinogion collection of tales. Rhonabwy is transported back in time via the vehicle of a dream to the eve of the battle of Caer Faddon. Arthur has apparently come from Cornwall (as he is said to return thither after a truce is made; this is almost certainly in this context a folk memory for the Cornovii kingdom, the later Powys) to mid-Wales and thence to Caer Faddon to meet with Osla or Ossa, a true historical contemporary of Arthur who lies at the head of the royal Bernician pedigree.
Here is the entry on Osla from P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:
"OSLA GYLLELLFAWR. (Legendary). ‘O. of the Long Knife’. According to the tale of ‘Rhonabwy's Dream’ it was against Osla Gyllellfawr that Arthur fought the battle of Badon (RM 150). He is represented as sending forty-eight horsemen to Arthur to ask for a truce till the end of a fortnight and a month (RM 159, 160). In RM 159 the name is spelt Ossa. The ‘Long Knife’ identifies him as Saxon, and as such he is foisted into the pedigree of Oswald, king of Northumbria, in a late version of Bonedd y Saint (§70+71 in EWGT p.64), where he roughly occupies the place of Ossa, grandfather of Ida king of Bernicia. In this context he is called ‘Offa (or Ossa) Cyllellfawr, king of Lloegr, the man who fought against Arthur at the battle of Badon’, and father of Mwng Mawr Drefydd. It is curious therefore to find Osla Gyllellfawr mentioned as one of the warriors of Arthur's Court in the tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’. Here it is said that he carried Bronllafn Uerllydan, (‘Shortbroad’). When Arthur and his hosts came to a torrent's edge, a narrow place on the water would be sought, and his knife in its sheath laid across the torrent. That would be a bridge sufficient for the hosts of the Island of Britain and its three adjacent islands and its spoil (WM 465, RM 109-10). Later in the story Osla took part in the hunting of the boar Trwyth. He and others caught him and plunged him into the Severn. But as Osla Big-knife was pursuing the boar, his knife fell out of its sheath and he lost it; and his sheath thereafter became full of water, so that as he was being pulled out of the river, it dragged him back into the depths (RM 140-1). A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY 587 It may be inferred that after the battle of Badon, Osla Gyllellfawr, being defeated, was supposed to have become subject to Arthur and to have served him until he was drowned in the Severn (PCB)."
Arthur is said to progress from Rhyd-y-Groes to Long Mountain and Cefn Digoll (Beacon Ring hillfort). As far as the text is concerned, Faddon is hard by this location. Yet we find nothing whatsoever in the region that could possibly be identified with Faddon.
However, if Rhyd-y-Groes were to be rendered directly into the English, it would be Crossford. And we find Crossford at a Roman road crossing of the Mersey. If one continues north from Crossford to Manchester, a Roman road then led straight to the SSE to Buxton. To me, therefore, it seems obvious that Rhyd-y-Groes is a standard relocation of the original site.
"Stretford proper lies in the south, taking its name from an ancient ford over the Mersey, also called Crosford. Leland about 1535 crossed the Mersey 'by a great bridge of timber called Crossford Bridge.'" (from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp329-335)
While the romance is entirely fanciful, the chronological accuracy in the context of choosing Osla/Ossa is rather uncanny. Ossa is known in English sources for being the first of the Bernicians to come to England from the Continent. Under his descendants, Bernicia became a great kingdom, stretching eventually from the Forth to the Tees. In the 7th century, Deira – which controlled roughly the area between the Tees and the Humber - was joined with Bernicia to form the Kingdom of Northumbria.
In its heyday, Northumbria shared a border with its neighbor to the south – Mercia – at the River Mersey of ‘Boundary River’. The Severn is another major boundary river and perhaps that is why Crossford was wrongly placed there.
A tradition records Rhyd-y-Groes at Welshpool in Powys:
This possible siting of the ford is also very far to the North, and if correct, points again towards Buxton and not to Bath.
The Mersey flows east to Stockport, where it essentially starts at the confluence of the River Tame and Goyt. The Goyt has its headwaters on Axe Edge, only a half a dozen kilometers from Buxton in the High Peak.
If we allow for the story’s author to have properly chosen Ossa as Arthur’s true contemporary, but to have viewed Northumbria in an anachronistic fashion – i.e. as extending to the River Mersey during Arthur's time – then Ossa coming from Bernicia in the extreme north of England, and Arthur coming from Powys of the Cornovii to the southwest, coming together for a battle at Buxton makes a great deal of sense.
Ossa would have been viewed as engaging in a battle just across the established boundary.
If I am right about this, the Welsh knew of the ‘Bathum’ or Badon that was Buxton and placed Arthur here as the victor in the great battle. This is an error, of course.
According to the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, Ceawlin (= Maqui-Coline/Cunedda) and Cynric (Cunorix son Maqui-Coline) fought at Barbury Castle in Wiltshire in 556 A.D. This was part of a push from the south, as 4 years prior to this they had put the Britons to flight at Old Sarum.
Yet, oddly, Ceawlin is not mentioned again until 568, when he drives Aethelberht into Kent. He then fights on several different fronts, but does not return to Wiltshire until 592. He fights there at Adam's Grave (near Alton Priors), but is expelled after a great slaughter. Adam's Grave (= Woden's Barrow) is under 15 kilometers south of Barbury Castle, and less than 20 from the Liddington Badbury. Ceawlin dies a year after this expulsion.
Thus from the attack on Barbury Castle in 556 to his unsuccessful second attempt to take the region in 592, 36 years elapsed.
The question that naturally needs to be asked is this: what happened after Barbury Castle that caused the Gewissei to cease military action in Wiltshire and seek better targets elsewhere?
This is where the Liddington Badbury comes in. Being only a short distance from Barbury along the ancient Ridgeway, it is the logical place for a significant victory that might well have gone unrecorded in the ASC. Do we have any evidence that Liddington may have been the famous Badon? As it happens, I believe we do...
THE LOCATION OF THE SECOND BATTLE OF BADON
There is one possible clue to identifying Badon. It lies in a comparison of the Welsh Annals entry for the Second Battle of Badon and the narrative of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The actual year entry for this Second Battle of Badon reads as follows:
665 The first celebration of Easter among the Saxons. The second battle of Badon. Morgan dies.
The "first celebration of Easter among the Saxons" is a reference to the Synod of Whitby of c. 664. While not directly mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, nor the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, there is an indirect reference to this event:
664 … Colman with his companions went to his native land…
This is, of course, a reference to Colman's resigning of his see and leaving Lindisfarne with his monks for Iona. He did so because the Roman date for Easter had been accepted at the synod over the Celtic date.
While there is nothing in the ASC year entry 664 that helps with identifying Badon, if we go to the year entry 661, which is the entry found immediate prior to 664, an interesting passage occurs:
661 In this year, at Easter, Cenwalh [King of Wessex] fought at Posentesburh, and Wulfhere, son of Penda [King of Mercia], ravaged as far as [or "in", or "from"] Ashdown…
Ashdown is here the place of that name in Berkshire. It is only a half dozen kilometers to the east of Badbury and Liddington Castle. A vague reference to ravaging in the neighborhood of Ashdown may well have been taken by someone who knew Badon was in the vicinity of Ashdown as a second battle at Badon. As the Mercian king was raiding into Wessex, it is entirely conceivable that his path took him through Liddington/Badbury or at least along the Roman road that ran immediately to the east of the area.
THE PROBLEM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF LINGUISTICS
Obviously, we still have the problem of the philology and phonology of the name Badon to contend with. I've not yet encountered an expert in the languages involved who did not prefer Badon as a British form of English bathum, and such an analysis of the place-name point to Bath in Somerset (or, perhaps, as I once thought, Buxton in Berbyshire).
Yet, while modern place-name scholars and linguists abide by hard and fast rules when parsing Badon, it is, frankly, absurd to suggest that the compilers of things early medieval works like the HB, AC or ASC would have had such knowledge or scruples. Sound-alike etymologies may well have abounded and places that were similar sounding or spelled similarly may well have been inappropriately identified with each other. Errors in translation and copying only add to the possible confusion.
We find Bath in the ASC as a place capured by Ceawlin/Cunedda in 577 A.D. [1] There the place-name is spelled Baþanceaster. It was Ceawlin who was present at Barbury in 556, remember.
Now, Barbury is either 'the Bear's fort' or the fort of someone named 'bear.' The Welsh regularly associated Arthur's name with their word (arth) for bear.
In the midst of the Cerdic of Wessex battles (Ceredig son of Cunedda), there is an action featuring a man called Bieda (with variants Baeda, Beda). The battle featuring Bieda occurs c. 501, a time that is nearly perfect for the Badon which supposedly happened at the time of Gildas's birth and which the AC has down for c. 516.
Alheydis Plassmann of Bonn (https://www.fnzrlg.uni-bonn.de/mitarbeiter/wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/pd-dr.-alheydis-plassmann) summarizes the dating of Gildas's ON THE RUIN OF BRITAIN and the most likely date for Badon according to that source (see CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA). The prevailing view (much disputed, of course, in various circles!) is that Gildas finished writing his work in 547 at the latest. Taking his 44 years, then, back from that date to the time of Badon, we arrive at 503. This is as close as one can get to the 501 date for the ASC battle featuring Bieda.
According to Dr. Richard Coates, perhaps the preeminent English place-name expert, the best guess as to the origin of the name Bieda is
"Redin (p. 60) linked it with OE be:odan ‘to command’, though the structure isn’t fully clear. I’ve seen no better or worse suggestion since." [personal communication]
Granted, the Badda/Baddan- element of the Badbury names appears to have a different origin than the Bieda name. However, my work on the Badbury place-names suggest a similar or identical origin (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/cadburys-and-personal-name-badda.html).
I've made a very good case for Bieda's name being preserved in Bedenham, Hampshire.
Thus we have a number of correspondences which suggest why Arthur may have been placed at Badon. They may be listed as follows:
1) Cerdic of the Gewissei fights battles to either side of one featuring Bieda of Bedenham. This battle's date fits the date of the "Badon" mentioned by Gildas.
2) Ceawlin/Cunedda of the Gewissei fights at Baddanbyrig/Badbury/Liddington Castle shortly after the Barbury or 'Bear's fort' battle of 556. This is a major loss to the Gewissei and their Saxon allies, leading to their total adsence in Wiltshire for over 3 decades.
3) Ceawlin captures Bath in 577. Badon can be construed as deriving from English bathum.
CONCLUSION
So what exactly happened?
We might imagine this sequence of events playing out in the tradition over the centuries: Gildas is born at the time of the Bieda/Bedenham battle c. 500 A.D. This was, in reality, not a special battle. It merely happened to mark the birth day of a man who became a very famous Christian scholar and saint. At some point it was wrongly identified with the famous battle fought at the Liddington Castle Badbury by Arthur. Then the very similar Bath name was substituted for that of Badbury.
This explanation may seem unnecessarily complicated or even convoluted. But it does seem to rather nicely account for what may have happened when the usual forces were brought to bear on literary materials created in the British Dark Age.
[1]
Note that the order of the generations of the Gewissei in the English sources are reversed compared to what we find in the Welsh. This may have come about because of a simple confusion over the proper sequence of a genealogy. The relative dates of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE battles have also been called into question by a number of authorities, and revised chronologies created. It is beyond the purview of the article to treat of this tendency. I would instead urge my readers to research this on their own. For my purpose, there are only three things that are important:
A) That the Bedenham battle was fought in the year of Gildas's birth, c. 500.
B) That a major battle at Liddington Castle was fought by Arthur that effectively stemmed the Saxon tide in Wiltshire for several decades. Precisely dating this action is impossible. The Welsh give us a date of c. 516. But it may have been closer to the middle of the 6th century. If so, the corresponding date of Arthur's Camlan at c. 539 was probably moved back to accord better with the 516 date, itself an error brought about by the need to ascribe the battle to the date of Gildas's birth.
and
C) A later Bath battle fought by the Gewissei was wrongly substituted for both the Bedenham and Badbury events.
CAMLANN
The battle most resistant to placement in the South has proven to be Camlann, where Arthur and Medraut fell.
According to all the best Celtic scholars I have checked with (including, most recently, Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales), the second element could denote a bank (of a river, say) or an enclosure (like that of a fort). Thus we would be talking about a "Crooked Bank" or "Crooked Enclosure."
*landā-, SEMANTIC CLASS: nature, British Vindo-landa ‘white-land’, Gaulish *landa > Fr. lande ‘moor, open land’, Early Irish land, lann ‘free space’, Scottish Gaelic lann ‘inclosure, land’, Welsh lann (Old Welsh), llan ‘(parish) church, churchyard, enclosure’, Cornish *lann ‘enclosed cemetery’, Breton lann ‘area, sacred place of a village’
*glando- (?), SEMANTIC CLASS: nature, Gaulish Glanna ‘river-bank’, Welsh glann (Old Welsh), glan ‘river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank, hill-side, hillock, mountain’, Cornish glan (Old Cornish) ; glann ‘gl. ripa ‘river-bank’, side, slope’, Breton glann ‘river-bank’
Obviously, if we are looking at an Arthur who was operating out of Wiltshire or, taking a broader view, out of the region that had once been embraced by the Dobunni tribe, it would be logical to find Camlann within this area.
Dobunni Tribal Area According to Barry Cunliffe
My favorite Camlann within this range would be the great Uley hillfort. I have written about it before as a possible Camlann, given its pronounced "bent" form and its situation at a Cam stream.
This was a remarkable and was hard by the important Romano-British temple site on West Hill. Later this month Professor Roger Tomlin will be revealing the name of the British god worshipped at that site. While I have no idea whether that name will have any bearing on the Camlann problem, there is no doubt this nemeton within Dobunni territory was a very special and important place.
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