The Badburys
In a recent blog post, I suggested that the date for Arthur's Badon is not only wrong, but very much so. My idea, simply put, is that what we find in the work of Gildas is a later interpolation. Whoever inserted the statement regarding the date of Badon, which coincidentally (or providentially?) happened to fall on the very day the saint was born, wrongly identified it with the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE BATTLE of 501 at Portsmouth, one of the combatants of whom was Bieda.
From Wikipedia of the name Bieda:
"As a masculine given name, it originates as an Anglo-Saxon short name, West Saxon Bīeda, Northumbrian Bǣda, Anglian Bēda (the purported name of one of the Saxon founders of Portsmouth in AD 501 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)[1] cognate with German Bodo."
[Source citation is J. Insley, "Portesmutha" in: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde vol. 23, Walter de Gruyter (2003), 291.]
According to Dr. Richard Coates,
"There are many mysteries about AS GNs. Many are of totally obscure origin, and this might be one of them. Its stem appears homonymous with the stem of the ‘prayer’ word bedu, but that has a short vowel whilst that in Beda is long. I can see no phonological argument to derive it from beadu (< Proto-Gmc *badu-) unless by some mysterious hypocoristic process. The same applies to Be:da and be:odan, 'to command.'. It’s not out of the question that there is a hypocorism of some sort involved, but it would be non-standard. Redin gives a complicated etymology which amounts to 'I don’t really know.'"
By establishing this very early date for Badon, the interpolator has seriously thrown off all subsequent writers - right up to the modern era. My choice for the Battle of Badon - in this case, a decisive action fought at Liddington Castle in Wiltshire - is fought sometime soon after the Barbury/Bear's Fort battle in 556 A.D. From that time up to the next failed penetration of Wiltshire (the slaughter at Adam's Grave) just under 40 years will pass. Someone based in that specific region had successfully kept the Saxons and their Gewissei allies at bay for that entire period. For a more complete accounting of this remarkable defense of tribal territory, see http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/05/arthur-and-beranburhbarbury-critical.html.
Now, the question I wish to address here in some detail is whether it might really be possible for such an interpolation to have occurred in the DE EXCIDIO. I've many times discussed the very real possibility that Badon could represent a Badbury. To quote from Dr. Richard Coates' "Middle English badde and Related Puzzles" (NOWELLE, Vol. 11, February 1988):
"We must conclude that whilst one of the Badburys may be the historical site of Badon, this may not be safely inferred from the linguistic evidence within English (pace Jackson 1953b). The inference requires the rather casual association of a form [baðón] with the recurrent name-type Baddanburh; there can be no direct etymological connection."
That the latter may well have happened is at least suggested by the apparent identification of the Second Battle of Badon in the WELSH ANNALS with an ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE military action that took place near Liddington Castle/Badbury. I have described this seeming correspondence at http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-second-battle-of-badon.html.
The best we can do with Badon linguistically is to say that it would be the normal British rendering of Anglo-Saxon Bathum. No Celtic derivation - attempted by anyone - has passed muster. Curiously, there is a similar problem inherent in etymologizing Baddan-, which must come from a Badda, an attested personal name (e.g. a moneyer during the reign of Edward the Elder). For the source of this name, Coates eventually defaults to an unattested OE *badde, the presumed ancestor of ME badde, our modern "bad". According to Coates,
"Its sense in names cannot be determined with precision, but it is not likely to have been very far removed from the present-day senses of the word bad. One might guess at 'worthless', 'of ill omen or repute', 'disgusting', since all these meanings appear in the first century of the word's history."
While Coates makes a good argument, when one actually looks at the more impressive Badbury hillforts, it is difficult to see anything "bad" about them.
Badbury Rings, Dorset
Liddington Castle, Badbury, Wiltshire
They are incredibly impressive, monumental structures. If anything, they are places of awe - and I imagine they would have been exactly that to the Dark Age invaders of England. How exactly would badde have been used pejoratively for either such a structure or those great enough to have constructed it - or even those who much later still resided within it or used it for tactical advantage? While maligning or dehumanizing one's enemy is an expected application of a psychological tool during warfare, it seems decidedly odd that we would call this kind of superior fort "badde" and not refer to him in the same way! I'm not aware of the Welsh being disparaged this way in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. Instead, I'm reminded of the Briton, 'a very noble man', who is slain in 501 A.D. He is not called a 'badde' man, or said to be hunkered down in a 'badde' place.
Rather, I feel fairly strongly that Coates was right when he says "...Badda... could have been a hypocoristic form of the more flattering Beadu- names." Beadu is listed thusly in Bosworth and Toller's dictionary:
BEADO, beadu; g. d. beadowe, beadwe, beaduwe; f. Battle, war, slaughter, cruelty; pugna, strages :-- Gúþ-Geáta leód, beadwe heard the War-Goths' prince, brave in battle, Beo. Th. 3082; B. 1539. Wit ðære beadwo begen ne onþungan we both prospered not in the war, Exon. 129b; Th. 497, 2; Rä. 85, 23. Beorn beaduwe heard a man brave in battle, Andr. Kmbl. 1963; An. 984. Ðú þeóde bealdest to beadowe thou encouragest the people to slaughter, Andr. Kmbl. 2373; An. 1188. [O. H. Ger. badu-, pato-: O. Nrs. böð, f. a battle: Sansk. badh to kill.]
For the earlier Germanic root, here is the listing from http://www.bulgari-istoria-2010.com/Rechnici/A_Lyubotski_Proto_Germanik_dict.pdf:
*badwo- f. 'battle' - ON poet bpa, gen. -var f. 'id.', OE beado f. 'id.', OS badu
'id.', 'OHG batu- 'id.' => *bhodh-uehz- (WEUR) - Identical to Mir. bodb, badb
m./f. 'war-god(dess); scald-crow', OBret bodou 'heron' < *bhodh-uo/eh2-.
A Celtic-Germanic isogloss.
For the earlier Germanic root, here is the listing from http://www.bulgari-istoria-2010.com/Rechnici/A_Lyubotski_Proto_Germanik_dict.pdf:
*badwo- f. 'battle' - ON poet bpa, gen. -var f. 'id.', OE beado f. 'id.', OS badu
'id.', 'OHG batu- 'id.' => *bhodh-uehz- (WEUR) - Identical to Mir. bodb, badb
m./f. 'war-god(dess); scald-crow', OBret bodou 'heron' < *bhodh-uo/eh2-.
A Celtic-Germanic isogloss.
If Badda does represent a beadu- name, then the various Badbury forts are the "Battler's forts" or the like. I would compare such to the several British Cadbury place-names. Quite some time ago I wrote this blog article:
Please give that piece a thorough perusal, and note especially Dr. Coates' comments in response to some of my more salient queries. In brief, I proposed that the Badbury forts are the English equivalent of the British Cadburys, in that both series of fort names are fronted by pet-forms of a battle name in their respective languages. And, furthermore, that Gildas's 'stragis' for Badon is, more or less, a Latin attempt to render the meaning of this pet name.
Let us assume, then, that Badda is, indeed, a hypocorism for a Beadu- name. Does this help make any more acceptable the notion that the 501 A.D. Portsmouth battle featuring Bieda (Beda, Baeda) may have been misidentified with a later Baddan- battle? Well, again, not strictly from a linguistic point of view. But if we allow for a "rather casual association" of the names Bieda (or a variant) and Badda, then I really don't see why such a misidentification could not have happened.
If it did happen - and I grant that this is a big "if" - Arthur would have been catapulted back in time a full generation. And we would once more have to take a serious look at Uther Pendragon/Illtud as his father. Illtud's "Llydaw" must be a descriptor of the broad valley of the Usk at Brecon, which seems to have been the traditional home of the warrior-turned-saint. The kingdom of Brycheiniog was founded by the Irish, and because the other Arthurs of the same time period all belonged to Irish-descended dynasties in Britain, Illtud of Brycheiniog as Arthur's father would allow us to account for this fact. Eoin MacNeil (see http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-solution-to-llydaw-problem.html) postulates that Ui Liathain were in on the settlement of Brycheiniog, and the Ui Liathain were the enemies of the Ciannachta, i.e. Cunedda and his sons or teulu.
To opt instead for Illtud as hailing from the Vale of Leadon (a river-name deriving from the same root as that found in Llydaw), which had once been part of the Dobunni kingdom, we would lose the needed Irish connection. As Barbury and Liddington were themselves in Dobunni lands, it is tempting to seek another way of tying Arthur to the Irish. Unfortunately, I have not found a means of doing so. Yet it cannot be denied that an Illtud and an Arthur from the old Dobunni lands seems an especially nice fit. Please see http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/12/arthur-dobunni-and-hwicce.html for a comparison of the Dobunni and Hwicce kingdoms.
Cerdic of the Gewissei (= Ceredig son of Cunedda) would not be Arthur at all, an idea I promoted in my recent book THE BEAR KING. Instead, he would merely be one of the enemy allies of the English who were repeatedly sent against Arthur. The Gewissei were Irish or Hiberno-British mercenaries or "federates" who fought for the High King of Wales against fellow Britons to the south. I've shown that there is a serious problem with the chronological order of the battles or of the participants in those battles as recorded in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, for the generations of the Gewissei are found REVERSED in the English source. In other words, the Cunedda pedigree as found in the Welsh sources runs BACKWARDS in the ASC. So who exactly Arthur may have faced, as well as when and where, is not easy to determine.
The only thing I can say about an Arthur at Barbury Castle is that he "fits the mold" of the heroic British king defending his people against the pagan invaders. If there were such a man at this place and in this time, he probably died at the Camlan I've tentatively identified with the Uley Bury hillfort in Gloucestershire. Where he was buried we will probably never know. A real 'Avalon' may have been just across the Mouth of the Severn from Uley Bury at Lydney Park (*Nemetabala or 'Sacred Apple Grove'?), about which I've written some articles:
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-apple-bearing-ash-tree-of-mirabilia.html
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-lydney-park-temple-of-nodens-as.html
However, the best candidate for the site of his grave would be the famous nemeton at West Hill next to Uley itself:
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-archaeological-phases-of-uley.html
So, the question is: CAN WE ALLOW FOR ARTHUR BEING WRONGLY PLACED EARLY IN THE SIXTH CENTURY WHEN HE PROPERLY BELONGS TO THE MID AND LATER PORTION OF THAT CENTURY? If we staunchly adhere to the traditional chronology, obviously not. But when we do that, we find ourselves without an identifiable Arthur, and without a verifiable theater of action for him to operate in. We find ourselves cast adrift in an endless landscape of uncertainties, where everything - and nothing - is possible. I've chased Arthur (and my own tail) for many years now, all the while confining myself to the conventionally accepted 516-537 A.D. floruit. What I discovered is that there is no independent supportive material whatsoever for Chapter 56 of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM or for the two, terse entries of the ANNALES CAMBRIAE. I had looked over and over again for some previously unperceived revelation in the English sources, and even the Continental ones. But until I "disenthralled myself" and dared to think outside the box of the established time constraints, I could make no headway.
The case for Cerdic/Ceredig of the Gewissei as Arthur is, in many ways, a compelling one. Yet it is also in many ways woefully deficient and unsatisfying. And not only because Ceredig son of Cunedda is not, really, the Arthur we want. It is because if we don't make a serious effort to explain the inability of the English and the Gewissei to take Wiltshire for something like 40 years we are doing a profound injustice to whoever it was who had managed to protect the inheritors of the Dobunni kingdom from its enemies.
For if the man of the Bear's Fort was not Arthur, WHO WAS? Or, perhaps we should say, WHO MORE DESERVED TO BE?
Note that I do not expect any professional Arthurian scholar to acknowledge this latest theory of mine as something viable. Quite the contrary. Still, I feel compelled to "put it out there", if for no other reason than to satisfy myself that I have left no stone unturned in my pursuit of whatever truth is actually available to us.
If it did happen - and I grant that this is a big "if" - Arthur would have been catapulted back in time a full generation. And we would once more have to take a serious look at Uther Pendragon/Illtud as his father. Illtud's "Llydaw" must be a descriptor of the broad valley of the Usk at Brecon, which seems to have been the traditional home of the warrior-turned-saint. The kingdom of Brycheiniog was founded by the Irish, and because the other Arthurs of the same time period all belonged to Irish-descended dynasties in Britain, Illtud of Brycheiniog as Arthur's father would allow us to account for this fact. Eoin MacNeil (see http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-solution-to-llydaw-problem.html) postulates that Ui Liathain were in on the settlement of Brycheiniog, and the Ui Liathain were the enemies of the Ciannachta, i.e. Cunedda and his sons or teulu.
To opt instead for Illtud as hailing from the Vale of Leadon (a river-name deriving from the same root as that found in Llydaw), which had once been part of the Dobunni kingdom, we would lose the needed Irish connection. As Barbury and Liddington were themselves in Dobunni lands, it is tempting to seek another way of tying Arthur to the Irish. Unfortunately, I have not found a means of doing so. Yet it cannot be denied that an Illtud and an Arthur from the old Dobunni lands seems an especially nice fit. Please see http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/12/arthur-dobunni-and-hwicce.html for a comparison of the Dobunni and Hwicce kingdoms.
Cerdic of the Gewissei (= Ceredig son of Cunedda) would not be Arthur at all, an idea I promoted in my recent book THE BEAR KING. Instead, he would merely be one of the enemy allies of the English who were repeatedly sent against Arthur. The Gewissei were Irish or Hiberno-British mercenaries or "federates" who fought for the High King of Wales against fellow Britons to the south. I've shown that there is a serious problem with the chronological order of the battles or of the participants in those battles as recorded in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, for the generations of the Gewissei are found REVERSED in the English source. In other words, the Cunedda pedigree as found in the Welsh sources runs BACKWARDS in the ASC. So who exactly Arthur may have faced, as well as when and where, is not easy to determine.
The only thing I can say about an Arthur at Barbury Castle is that he "fits the mold" of the heroic British king defending his people against the pagan invaders. If there were such a man at this place and in this time, he probably died at the Camlan I've tentatively identified with the Uley Bury hillfort in Gloucestershire. Where he was buried we will probably never know. A real 'Avalon' may have been just across the Mouth of the Severn from Uley Bury at Lydney Park (*Nemetabala or 'Sacred Apple Grove'?), about which I've written some articles:
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-apple-bearing-ash-tree-of-mirabilia.html
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-lydney-park-temple-of-nodens-as.html
However, the best candidate for the site of his grave would be the famous nemeton at West Hill next to Uley itself:
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-archaeological-phases-of-uley.html
So, the question is: CAN WE ALLOW FOR ARTHUR BEING WRONGLY PLACED EARLY IN THE SIXTH CENTURY WHEN HE PROPERLY BELONGS TO THE MID AND LATER PORTION OF THAT CENTURY? If we staunchly adhere to the traditional chronology, obviously not. But when we do that, we find ourselves without an identifiable Arthur, and without a verifiable theater of action for him to operate in. We find ourselves cast adrift in an endless landscape of uncertainties, where everything - and nothing - is possible. I've chased Arthur (and my own tail) for many years now, all the while confining myself to the conventionally accepted 516-537 A.D. floruit. What I discovered is that there is no independent supportive material whatsoever for Chapter 56 of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM or for the two, terse entries of the ANNALES CAMBRIAE. I had looked over and over again for some previously unperceived revelation in the English sources, and even the Continental ones. But until I "disenthralled myself" and dared to think outside the box of the established time constraints, I could make no headway.
The case for Cerdic/Ceredig of the Gewissei as Arthur is, in many ways, a compelling one. Yet it is also in many ways woefully deficient and unsatisfying. And not only because Ceredig son of Cunedda is not, really, the Arthur we want. It is because if we don't make a serious effort to explain the inability of the English and the Gewissei to take Wiltshire for something like 40 years we are doing a profound injustice to whoever it was who had managed to protect the inheritors of the Dobunni kingdom from its enemies.
For if the man of the Bear's Fort was not Arthur, WHO WAS? Or, perhaps we should say, WHO MORE DESERVED TO BE?
Note that I do not expect any professional Arthurian scholar to acknowledge this latest theory of mine as something viable. Quite the contrary. Still, I feel compelled to "put it out there", if for no other reason than to satisfy myself that I have left no stone unturned in my pursuit of whatever truth is actually available to us.
The Uley Temple
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