ARTHUR AS A DESCENDANT OF THE SUB-ROMAN SELGOVAE: A CHRONOLOGICAL EVALUATION

The Yarrow Stone Inscription

My readers may recall that I've briefly mentioned the chronological problem one encounters when trying to connect a Northern Arthur to either the Yarrow or Neitano Stones.  The best estimation on the age of these two stones is discussed by Charles-Edwards (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/07/more-on-neitano-and-yarrow-stones-from.html).  To summarize, the Yarrow Stone is dated to the 2nd half of the 6th century.  The Neitano Stone is late 7th or early 8th. We need to trust the scholars in this case, as they have become very good at dating such stones.

The dates most commonly accepted for Arthur are c. 516 for the Battle of Badon and c. 537 for that of Camlann.  These dates could be wrong, and many have sought to revise them by various means.  But, in truth, we really have no reason for doubting them, as evidence to the contrary is wholly lacking.  

What we have, then, is my proposed 

[Uther] Pen son of Neithon/Nethawc son of Senyllt Liberalis

                                                  Nudd son of     "            "

If Nudd died between 550-600, and he is Nudd Hael ('the Liberal'), whose sons fought at Arderydd in 573 (which seems perfectly plausible), and Neithon was his brother, then the genealogical sequence Arthur son of Pen son of Neithon simply doesn't work. Yet to opt for a different Neithon - like a Pictish or Dumnonian personage of this name - puts Arthur outside the pale of those regions where the Roman/Latin Artorius name (indisputably from Lucius Artorius Castus) would naturally have been preserved among noble lineages.

If we are to retain the sub-Roman Selgovae ancestry for Arthur, how do we find our way out of this quandary?

Only by assuming that there was an earlier Neithon/Nethawc associated with the Selgovae in the sub-Roman period. The easiest solution is to see the Liberalis of the Yarrow Stone not as Senyllt Hael, but as Nudd Hael.  The Nudd buried in the place would then be a son of Nudd Liberalis, who had given his British name to his son, but used his Latin name Liberalis in the inscription.  Bromwich herself  (in the notes to her Triads) says that "the epithet Hael was not restricted to Nudd himself, but appears to have been associated with the clan to which he belonged." If Liberalis was thus the first Nudd, and his father was Senyllt, then we might infer that Arthur's father [Uther] Penn was a contemporary of the Liberalis on the Yarrow Stone.  This would allow us to have an Arthur dying in battle in 537. 

The relevant Notes from Bromwich's TRIADS:

This may seem like special pleading. But we know that Neithon son of Senyllt is found in the genealogies. And that Nethawc is a hypocoristic form of that name. Also, I've demonstrated that Neithon as a personal name is found in what had been the old Selgovae kingdom in the Dark Ages, both on a memorial stone and in a place-name. It is not unreasonable to suppose, therefore, that it had existed in the same region during the Arthurian period.

P.C. Bartrum (in his A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY) has the following entries for the relevant personages:

SENYLLT ap DINGAD. (460) Father of Neithon and one of a line of princes whose genealogy is given in HG 4 and JC 19 in EWGT pp.10, 46. JC 19 calls him Senyllt Hael, ‘the third generous one of the North’. Senyllt is not included as one of the three Hael, ‘generous ones’, in the well known triad (TYP no.2). There seems to have been confusion with Senyllt ap Cedig the father of Nudd Hael. See EWGT p.140. H.M.Chadwick thought that this part of the line ruled in Galloway (Early Scotland, p.146). See s.n. Rhun ap Neithon ap Senyllt.

NUDD HAEL ap SENYLLT. (525) ‘N. the generous’. A famous passage in the Venedotian Code of the Welsh laws, contained in the Chirk codex (c.1200), tells how Nudd Hael, with Mordaf Hael, Rydderch Hael and Clydno Eidyn, invaded Arfon in order to avenge the death of Elidir Mwynfawr, who had been slain in Gwynedd. They devastated Arfon but were driven out by Rhun ap Maelgwn. See further s.n. Rhun ap Maelgwn. In a triad (TYP no.2) he and Mordaf Hael and Rhydderch Hael are recorded as the ‘Three Generous Men’ of Ynys Prydain. Two sons are mentioned: Dingad and Dryon. See the names. His genealogy is given in Bonedd y Saint (§18 in EWGT p.57), namely Nudd Hael ap Senyllt ap Cedig, so that he was first cousin to Rhydderch Hael and Mordaf Hael. He was evidently a prince of North Britain although he is not mentioned in Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd. A ‘whelp’ [son or descendant?] of Nudd Hael is mentioned by Taliesin (CA VIII, l.45). There is a monument at Yarrow, Selkirkshire, which was supposed to be set up to the sons of ‘Nodus Liberalis’. See Egerton Phillimore in Bye-gones, 1889-90, p.483; John Rhys in The Academy, 29 August 1891; etc. This has since been disputed. A new reading of the inscription is given in the Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Selkirkshire, Edinburgh, 1957, pp.110-3. The following translation was agreed upon by Kenneth Jackson and Ralegh Radford (Antiquity, 29 (1955) p.81): This is the everlasting memorial: in this place lie the must famous princes, Nudus and Dumnogenus; in this tomb lie the two sons of Liberalis. A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY 582 They agree that the stone is to be dated in the early sixth century, so that it could not commemorate two sons of Nudd Hael, but it could well refer to earlier members of the same family. See further TYP p.477. There are many references to the generosity of Nudd Hael in the poets. 

NEITHON ap SENYLLT. (490) An ancestor of Merfyn Mawr (q.v.) prince of Man; father of Rhun (HG 4, JC 19, ABT 6l (Meythion) in EWGT pp.10, 46, 100). It was perhaps this Neithon or his son Rhun who came to Man having been expelled from Galloway, shortly before A.D.550 if we accept a suggestion by H.M.Chadwick (Early Scotland, p.146). Egerton Phillimore had earlier suggested that Man was conquered by “a Welsh dynasty from the once greater Cumbria beyond Morecambe Bay.” (OP II.210). 

This is the best that we can do with the pre-Galfridian tradition regarding Arthur's parentage. If anyone can do better - without horribly distorting the source material, engaging in false etymologies or simply making wild guesses excused by the presence of gaps in our knowledge - I would very much like to hear from them.  Because after over two decades of intensive research, I can conclude only this: the earliest Welsh tradition identifies the Uther Pen who fights alongside Gwythur in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN with the Penn son of Nethawc/Neithon who fights alongside Gwythyr in CULHWCH AND OLWEN.   And the only Nethawc/Neithon who makes sense, given the locations of the Arthurian battles and traditional burial place, is one who has his origin north of Hadrian's Wall in what had been the ancient kingdom of the Selgovae. A Pictish Nechtan or even one from Dumnonia/Strathclyde cannot explain the use of the name Artorius.  This last was derived from the memory of the 2nd century Roman dux and de facto governor Lucius Artorius Castus, whose principal arena of military activity was Lowland Scotland and Hadrian's Wall.  The name Arthur would likely have been chosen by a ruler of Banna in the Irthing Valley precisely because the valley itself was named for the Arthwys or the People of the Bear - the bear in question being the Irthing or Bear River - and Arthur was thought to derive from the Cumbric word arth, 'bear.'  We simply cannot account for why the name Arthur was chosen if we opt for Pictland or Strathclyde.

A chieftain like Uther Penn, whose origin lay just north of the Wall, may well have established himself in the Irthing Valley a century or so after the withdrawal of the Romans.  But he had assumed the draco standard of the earlier Dacian garrison of Banna, and so became known as the Chief Dragon or Pendragon.  His son Arthur went further, becoming a sort of Dux Britanniarum, holding sway over other tribal kings in Lowland Scotland and Northern England.