A DARK AGE/SUB-ROMAN ARTHUR FROM YORK: A RECONSIDERATION

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote the following:

http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/10/julian-dragon-and-his-draco-standard.html

While I felt this piece important, it didn't really help me pin down a Dark Age/Sub-Roman Arthur who originated in some sense from York.

But I did later write another piece that concentrated on other details of an Arthur who owed his existence to the earlier, famous Roman commander in North Britain.  What follows is an account of my treatment of Arthur Penuchel.

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In the traditional genealogies for Arthur, Cynfawr (= Cunomorus) or Cynfarch is made the father of Custenin/Constantine the father of Uther. Urien is son of Cynfarch son of Meirchiaun.

In the Welsh genealogies we encounter a chieftain of the North named Eliffer Gosgorddfawr (Eleutherius of the Great Retinue). Eliffer’s epithet is significant. This ‘great retinue’ may be a memory either of the Sixth Legion, which was stationed at York, or of a comitatensis.

Eliffer’s real father is thought to have been one ARTHWYS (although see Chapter 5 and Appendix II for this personal name as a possible territorial designation) and he had a son named Peredur, the Welsh form of the Roman rank of Praetor (hence the later Peredur son of Ebrauc, the latter being an eponym for the city of Eboracum/York, headquarters of the Roman praetor).

During the Roman period, the governor of Northern Britain at York was a Praetor, or to be more specific, a Praetorian Prefect. I do not hold to the idea that Peredur is instead from *Pritorix, the handsome king, fair-shaped king (see Rachel Bromwich’s Triads of the Island of Britain, p. 561).

Eleutherius is a Greek name, and these were popular in northern Europe in the 5th century. It means "Liberator", and this is certainly significant.

Why? Because York is famous for its association with Constantine the Great, who not only declared himself emperor while at the city, but went out of his way to present himself as the Liberator of Rome and, indeed, of the world (see

laweb.usc.edu/centers/clhc/events/feature/documents/Lenski_ConstantineUSC.pdf). Greek writers, of course, when speaking of him as the Liberator used words derived from eleutheros/ eleutheria.

I would surmise that a sort of "cult" of Constantine the Great might have existed in 5th century York and that Eleutherius as a name was actually originally derived from Constantine's Liberator title. [The ‘The Twenty-Four Mightiest Kings’, Custennin Fendigaid, i.e. the Welsh version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Constantine III, is called Waredwr, ‘the Deliverer’. This suggests that Constantine III was here confused with the earlier Constantine the Liberator.]

Eliffer's sons Peredur and Gwrgi are recorded as fighting at a place called Caer Greu (‘Fort Greu’) and at Arfderydd/Arthuret just NW of Carlisle. Greu has been tentatively related to W. creu, ‘blood’. I would propose that Caer Greu/Creu is Carrawburgh, i.e. the Roman fort of Brocolitia, on Hadrian’s Wall. English 'Carrawburgh' could easily reflect something like very early Old Welsh *'Cair Carrou'. The extant form of 'Caer Greu' could be the regular Middle Welsh reflex of this. Carrawburgh is not far from Corbridge, where Arthur's Dubglas River battles were fought (see Chapter 3).

Their presence at Arthuret shows that they were active in the same area as Arthur, who died in battle at Castlesteads/Camboglanna on the Wall not far to the east (see again Chapter 3).

Eliffer’s wife Efrddyl, daughter of Cynfarch son of Merchiaun, is said to have had three children: Gwrgi, Peredur and either Ceindrech or Arddun Benasgell (sometimes called 'Wing-head'; however, as asgell can also mean 'spear' or even 'wing of an army', her epithet may mean instead either 'Spear-head', a reference to her weapon, or 'Spear-chieftain', or even 'Chieftain of the Army Wing'). Arddun is elsewhere said to be the daughter of Pabo Post Prydyn. But in the slightly corrupt Jesus College MS. 20, Arddun’s name is replaced by ARTHUR PENUCHEL.

Rachel Bromwich discussed this supposed corruption in her revised edition of ‘The Triads of the Island of Britain”, and I am quoting her here in full:

“Ardun Pen Askell is probably the correct form of the name of the sister of Gwrgi and Peredur… But if is likely that it is this name which has been corrupted to arthur penuchel in Jes. Gens. 20… The manuscript is of the turn of the 14th/15th century, but with indications of having been copied from an earlier exemplar… These points suggest that the triad may be as old as any that hav been preserved in the earlier collections… And in fact the context in which the triad is cited in Jes. Gens. 20 points to the probable source which inspired its composition This is the allusion to the progeny of Nefyn daughter of Brychan which is contained in the tract De Situ Brecheniauc, preserved in a thirteenth century manuscript, which has been copied from one of perhaps the eleventh century.”

We should pay a bit more attention to this alteration.

Why? Firstly, although it has been customary to view the alteration as a corruption, we cannot be sure that this is so in this particular context. It could represent, in fact, a CORRECTION or even a SUBSTITUTION.

Or an ADDITION: in 'The Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin", we are told of the "seven sons of Eliffer.”  While this may be mere poetic rhetoric, the possibility that Eliffer had sons in addition to Peredur and Gwrgi leaves for an Arthur among them.

The truly remarkable thing about this “corruption” of Arthur Penuchel is that it is found attached to the royal house of York – the one place we know of that had seen a Roman period camp prefect named Artorius, and the one place where the name may have been remembered by Britons claiming Romano-British descent. This is simply too big of a coincidence, in this author’s opinion. Of all the other lines of descent for the Men of the North the name could have been attached to, it was attached only to the family of Eliffer/Eleutherius.

What we may have then, is this: a southern pedigree running Cynfarch-Constantine-Uther-Arthur and a northern one that is very similar, but relies upon the maternal line, i.e.

                                                                        Cynfarch

                                                     Efrddyl - Eleutherius/”Constantine”

                                                                         [Uther?]

                                                                         Arthur

The Arthwys preferred as the father of Eliffer displays the Celtic arth, 'bear', component and the Welsh interpreted the Arth- of Arthur in the same way. Recently, the Roman name Artorius as been etymologized as deriving ultimately from the Celtic, meaning "Bear-king" (see Stefan Zimmer’s “The Name of Arthur – A New Etymology”, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 13, 2009, 131- 6; there, Artorius is shown to be from Celtic *Arto-rig-ios, ‘Bear-king’). If the arth/’bear’ component was already in Arthwys’s family, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that his grandson also bore this component as part of his own name. The name Arthur is indisputably from the Roman Artorius.

Penuchel, the epithet assigned to this Arthur, is given a couple different meanings. Patrick K. Ford of Harvard, translator of the Mabinogion, rendered Penuchel (in the context of Sawyl Penuchel of Samlesbury hard by Ribchester) as ‘Overlord’. The GPC dictionary, on the other hand, reading it as ‘high-head’, gives it a transferred sense of ‘haughty, arrogant’. 'Overlord' would fit the context better, as this would be a good description of the role Arthur is said to have played in the 'Historia Brittonum' of Nennius. When I wrote to Professor Ford and asked him why he had chosen the rendering 'Overlord', he replied:

"The answer is a choice based on context and the semantic fields of penn and uchel."

Granted, the established chronology for the Eliffer dynasty does not exactly support my contention that Arthur of the North was a son of Eliffer. Obviously, Arthur was not a contemporary of Urien! But Arthur may have been born to Eliffer and Efrddyl very early on, while their sons Gwrci and Peredur were produced years later.

Finally, the chronologies that have been worked out for these early Men of the North are rough approximations and thus cannot be relied upon for any kind of precise dating. 

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So, all those musings... and yet I kept getting lured to the South by late Welsh tradition.  A tradition pretty much completely established by the ever unreliable Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose purely fictional HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN continues to lead everyone save the most astute scholars astray.

I've mentioned before that there was a demonstrable tendency among the Welsh to pull into themselves and their territory famous military heroes of the past whose actual home kingdoms had long since disappeared under the oppressive ownership of the English.  I have come to see Arthur in this light.  Recent vitally important work by Dr. Linda Malcor and her colleagues on a new reading for the Lucius Artorius Castus memorial stone  - a new reading I happen to heartily agree with - has suggested quite strongly that the sub-Roman Arthur must have owed his name, at least, to 'LAC.'  We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that supports the presence of the name of Artorius/Arthur in the south. There is simply no justifiable reason for putting it there.

I'm going to put forward something rather outlandish here: we assume (and, yes, I know the immense dangers implicit in the use of this word) that Eliffer/Eleutherius had among his several sons one named Julian - a possibility not at all unreasonable if we accept the presence at York of a cult of Constantine passed down through the ruling generations - and we then also assume that such a son, being identified with the earlier Julian the Emperor, was either in reality or in posterity granted pronounced associations with the draco standard/dragon. Following this, we propose that our (admittedly) hypothetical Julian son of Eleutherius/Eliffer sired a champion named Artorius.  It was this Artorius, named for LAC, who went on to fight significant battles in the North, only to perish at Camboglanna.  This Artorius/Arthur was buried at Avalana/Avalon/Burgh By Sands.  

Yes, way too much speculation to satisfy even the most open-minded of academicians.  While it was still tempting to look for an Arthur in Ceidio (a hypocoristic name derived from a full name which may have matched perfectly the "leader of battles" rank assigned to Arthur by Nennius), this earlier identification of mine relies upon the Artorius name, presumed to contain a British *arto- or 'bear' element, being linked directly to Irthing, the name of a river where we find both Camboglanna and the Banna/Birdoswald Dark Age hall. I judge it considerably less likely that Artorius was given to a son of Arthwys ('man of Arth/Bear river or valley') than to a direct descendant of a king of York. While the genealogies make Eliffer either the son of Arthwys of the Irthing or of Gwrwst Ledlwm/Mar (= Fergus Mor/Mar of Dalriada), these connections are rather transparently manufactured. A ruler of Dark Age York would not have been descended through either a ruler at the Wall or through the Irish founder of Scottish Dalriada.  Simply on the basis of geography, if nothing else, we must ignore these supposed ancestral links and consign them to an imaginative (and probably propagandist) construction of the lines of descent for the legendary Men of the North. 

My best "proof" for a Dark Age Arthur who belongs to York comes from the activities of Gwrci and Peredur, sons of Eliffer.  As shown above, these princes fought along the Wall from Carrowburgh to Arthuret. Arthur is said to have perished at Camlann, i.e. Camboglanna, and this Roman fort at Castlesteads is exactly between those two locations where Gwrci and Peredur fought.

At this stage, we must ask ourselves a very important question: as the only known Artorius we know of who seems to have been quite a famous man (at least in Britain) was stationed at York, can we in good conscience postulate a Dark Age/Sub-Roman Arthur whose origins belong someplace/anyplace else?

My answer, after 20+ years of research?  No, we cannot.  Arthur was of the North, and he must have belonged to York or its environs, or at least to a region that was still under the control of the king at York.