A MAJOR DISCOVERY REGARDING THE FORT OF CRIMTHANN MAC FIDACH IN CORNWALL

Castle Canyke, Cornwall

Arthur's Dindraithou, at least according to the hagiographical account of St. Carannog's VITA, is Dart's Castle at Watchet.  I proved this pretty conclusively in the following blog post : https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/12/dindraithou-darts-castle-at-watchet.html. But Dart's Castle is NOT in Cornwall, and not even of British origin. So while it is probably the Cair Draitou of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM's list of cities, it is unlikely to be the Dun Tradui (Tredui, 'of three ramparts') of the Irish SANAS CORMAIC.  Where might this latter fort have been situated?

Not too long ago I firmly identified Arthur's Kelliwic fort in Cornwall as being Castle Canyke (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-location-of-kelliwic.html).  Two factors that contributed to this identification was the presence of the nearby Callywith place-name, as well as the proximity of Madog names.

But it was only just this morning that I happened to realize something rather remarkable: the Irish ard righ Crimthann's name means "fox", while that of his father Fidach (Fidaig, etc.) means "wooded, abounding in woods; trees; timber."  Kelliwic is from celli + gwig, meaning something like "forest grove", celli being 'grove, corpse, woodland' and gwig being 'wood, forest, grove'.  In Welsh Madog means 'fox.'  According to the DIALOGUE OF ARTHUR AND THE EAGLE, Madog is the name of a son of Uther and thus is Arthur's brother.

I would propose, then, that Crimthann's fort in Cornwall is none other than Arthur's Kelliwic.

Now, before anyone gets too excited about the superficial resemblance of the Irish title ard-righ and the name Arthur, let me repeat what has been written about a great deal by every legitimate Celtic linguist I know of: Arthur cannot be from ard-righ, nor can ard-righ be derived from Arthur.  However, it is interesting that Crimthann has a family connection to the Ui Liathain tribe (see https://ia800307.us.archive.org/12/items/papersirishacad00macnuoft/papersirishacad00macnuoft.pdf, pp. 130-131).  In a previous post I've shown how Uther/Illtud, Arthur's father according to Galfridian tradition, descended from the Ui Liathain who founded Brycheiniog.