Once Again Myrddin's/Merlin's Grave

Tinto Hill Summit Cairn

I've written several pieces about the best candidate for Myrddin's/Merlin's grave.  The site with the most merit, I feel, is still the following:

https://canmore.org.uk/site/47525/tinto-cairn

I discussed Tinto as the mountain of Aber Craf (correctly carf) in my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON.  This mountain is mentioned in the Welsh poem "The Separation Song of Myrddin in the Grave." As far as the author of the poem is concerned, Myrddin is in the grave (cairn) atop Tinto with the 'wild men', i.e. the spirits of the battle-slain.  

While the French romances place Merlin in different types of Otherworld prisons and assigns them various locations, so far as I know the 'Separation Song' is the only Welsh source to specify the exact whereabouts of Myrddin's tomb.

As some of my readers may be interested in more details concerning Tinto, here is a selection from the above-mentioned book:

The Pre-Romance Mountain of Myrddin

The reference to the location of this mountain is found in Gwasgargerd vyrdin yny bed, the “Separation-Song of Myrddin in the Grave” of the Red Book of Hergest.  There Myrddin says:

‘Gwasawg, your cry to Gwenddydd

was told to me by the wild men of the mountain

in Aber Caraf.’

From other references in the early poetry we know that Gwasawg was a ‘supporter’ of the Christian champion Rhydderch Hael, King of Strathclyde. The name is a diminutive of Welsh gwas, ‘lad, servant’.

As it turns out, St. Kentigern as a boy (see Chapter 8 of Jocelyn's Vita) is called servuli, from servulus, a dim. of Latin servus, with a meaning 'sevant-lad, young slave'.

As Kentigern is brought into close connection with Myrddin as Lailoken in the saint's life, and Kentigern's royal patron was Rhydderch, I'm proposing that Gwasawg is a Welsh rendering of servuli and that the former is thus St. Kentigern himself.

Note that Myrddin is said to be chased by the hunting-dogs of Rhydderch, and Kentigern or *Cuno-tigernos means "Hound Lord."

While Aber Caraf has been rendered by at least one translator as Aber Craf (Peter Goodrich, The Romance of Merlin, 1990), a location in south-central Wales, we can be sure it is actually to be found in Lowland Scotland. 

We have seen how Merlin/Lailoken is present in both the region of Glasgow and at Drumelzier on the Tweed.  It has long been thought that his mountain must have been somewhere between these two places, and most likely at or not far from the sources of the Clyde and Tweed, a sort of symbolic ‘center’ of the southern ‘Caledonian Wood’. 

I would identify the mountain in Aber Caraf with Tinto Hill (2320 feet / 707 meters), which looms over ancient Abercarf, now called Wiston.  Abercarf, according to the Scottish Place-Name Society’s “Brittonic Language in the North”, is from aber, ‘confluence’, plus garw, ‘rough’, derived from the name of the Garf Water, a tributary of the upper Clyde.

However, when I asked Alan James, the author of BLITON, as to the possibility that Abercarf could instead contain carw, 'stag', he responded:

"Quite right. As to the merits of the two interpretations, I'm agnostic. The phonology of either wouldn't be difficult to explain. Garw and Gaelic garbh are of course pretty common in river-names, and I'm rather less eager than some place-name scholars to see animals, e.g. carw, in such names, but there certainly are parallels."

Just a few kilometers upstream on the Clyde from the Garf Water is Hartside and Hartside Burn.  Red Deer were once plentiful here. 

Given Myrddin's association with the stag in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Life of Merlin" (see Chapter 5), and his placement historically at Arferderydd/Arthuret in Cumbria in what was the northwestern limit of the ancient Carvetti (Stag-people) territory, a mountain at the confluence of the Stag Water would make a lot of sense.

Tinto Hill is situated between Drumelzier to the east and Glasgow to the northwest.  It is also only a few miles north-northwest of the headwaters of the Clyde and Tweed.  Thus it just happens to stand exactly where we would expect the hill of Myrddin to be found. 

The hill’s name was discussed long ago by W. J. Watson in his GENERAL SURVEY OF AYRSHIRE AND STRATHCLYDE, History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland, 1926 (reprinted 1993 by BIRLINN, Edinburgh, ISBN 1 874744 06 8):

“Tinto appears in 'Karyn de Tintou,' 'Kaerne de Tintou,' c. 1315 (RMS); in Macfarlane it is Tyntoche once, Tynto thrice; in Scots, Tintock, as also in the Retours ; it is for teinteach, 'place of fire'…”

Atop Tinto Hill is Tinto Cairn, of Bronze Age date and the largest summit cairn in all of Scotland.  Details on the hill and cairn can be found here:

http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/47525/details/tinto+cairn/

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/biggar/tinto/index.html

http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/image.php?service=RCAHMS&id=47525&image_id=SC342977

Different reasons have been supplied for why this hill is called ‘place of fire’. One suggests it gets its name from the fact that its exposed red Felsite rock can be given a fiery glow by the setting sun.  This geology is discussed here:

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/gcrdb/GCRsiteaccount401.pdf

Another possible explanation is that the hill was used for beacon fires or even for Beltane fires:

“Long a beacon post and a place of Beltane fires, it took thence its name of Tinto, signifying the ‘hill of fire’.” [Groome, 1885, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland]

I would say these apparently conflicting ideas are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it may precisely have been the red-glowing color of the rocks in the light of the setting sun that drew people to this mountain as being particularly sacred, and they may then have used it for Beltane fires. 

It would surely be significant if Myrddin were thought to be communing with the ancestral ghosts at a huge Bronze Age cairn atop a mountain known as the Place of Fire.  This would intimately connect him with seasonal Beltane rites.