COMING SOON: THE NON-GALFRIDIAN GENEALOGY FOR ARTHUR ACCORDING TO THE WELSH SOURCES

Old Bridge Over the River Nethan, Near Lesmahagow, South Lanarkshire, Scotland

A bit of a big reveal coming up.  Something I'd worked on before, but never really tied neatly together.  Held off putting it into presentable form until I had it all straight in my head - and until I had made the decision to offer to my readers a major work that, as it happens, runs directly counter to my most recent prevailing theory.  I plan on finally "putting it out there" in a very public sense, so that I might weigh the reaction.

When we are faced with evidence that counters of beliefs, we quite naturally experience significant cognitive dissonance.  For awhile, even if we strive mightily for intellectual honesty, we put into practice any number of denial tactics. But eventually we are forced to admit that the new evidence, unwanted as it is, and uncomfortable as it might make us, solves a number of problems that cannot be remedied by stubbornly adhering to the old beliefs.  My litmus test for a good theory is how many facts it can absorb or embrace.  And it is with this philosophy in mind that that I will be proposing a model for a historical Arthur candidate that in one significant way contradicts what is promoted in my most recent revised book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY.  

The crux of the matter concerns Arthur's genealogy.  Once we put aside the fraudulent pedigree assigned to him in the pseudo-history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, we find ourselves with a choice: find a clever way, perhaps based on logical deduction and supportive evidence, to insert him into a preexisting family tree that otherwise does not contain his name.  OR... we need to find something in the earliest Welsh literary material on Arthur and his father Uther that will allow us to recognize a true, extant, alternate lineage trace.  

I've spent many years looking for the latter.  The duration and intensity of my efforts seem silly now, and I'm more than a little embarrassed (and ashamed of myself!), as the solution was staring me in the face for all of that time.  We require only a simple comparison of a line and an episode in two sources to find it: the elegy poem VTHYR PEN[DRAGON] and the Mabinogion tale CULHWCH AND OLWEN. 

So, stand by, please.  I will post the blog article within the next day or two.  Thank you for your patience.