LLEUVELYS AND THE DRAGONS OF DINAS EMRYS

Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire

Rollright Stones and Ambrosden, Oxfordshire

I've been asked about Lleuelys, who is responsible for burying the dragons at Dinas Emrys.  Many years ago (in my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON, revision pending), I showed that this personage was none other than the god Lleu:

Lleuelys or, rather, Lleu(v)elys, is from Welsh Lleu + melys. The name means Lleu the ‘Delightful, Agreeable, Pleasant, Charming’.

The 'Ambrosius' or Emrys placed at Dinas Emrys is an embodiment of Lleu, styled the Lord of Gwynedd in Welsh tradition.  I suspect this identification came about because Ambrosius means 'the divine or immortal one', an apt description for the pan-Celtic god.  This use of Ambrosius at the Arfon hillfort facilitated Geoffrey of Monmouth's identification of Emrys with Merlin/Myrddin, as the latter may be either the god Lleu or a Lleu-avatar or at least picked up aspects of Lleu in the tradition.

The "historical" Ambrosius, as I've shown, was actually a relocated folk hero derived from a fusion of St. Ambrose and his father, the Praetorian Prefect of Gaul (combined, it would seem, with Mabon in south Wales).  

When Vortigern gives all of western Wales to Emrys, the story exhibits a strange confusion of history and legend.  In reality, in the time period we're talking about, Gwynedd went to Cunedda and his sons.   

In the MABINOGION story of Lludd and Lleuelys, we are told the ‘back story’ on how the two dragons came to be imprisoned at Dinas Emrys. It turns out that the Lleuelys dug a pit at the center of the island, here situated at Oxford. In the pit he placed a vat filled with mead and covered with a silk sheet. The dragons, as was their habit, began fighting on May Eve as monstrous animals – probably oxen, given the Oxford location. The scream of the red dragon during its fight with the white dragon was heard over every hearth in the island of Britain. The vat ( = offering container) and hearth in this context points to Roman household deities of the lararium.

The monstrous animals or oxen then flew into the air as dragons. When they wearied of the battle, they sank into the vat as pigs, dragging the sheet to the bottom. There they drank the mead and fell asleep. Lleuelys wrapped them in the sheet and locked them in a stone chest ( = a cinerary chest, here substituted for the urns of the HB account;  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7e7d392564134e5d9b59c47bbf8dc1b5), which he then took and buried at Dinas Emrys.

The first question that must be asked about this account of the origin of the dragons is simply, ‘Why Oxford as the centre of Britain?’

Because within Oxfordshire is found Ambrosden, in Old English, Ambresdone, supposedly ‘Ambre’s Hill’. This place-name is a substitute for Amesbury, Anglo-Saxon Ambresbyrig. Indeed, the Welsh storyteller of Lludd and Lleuelys could not have helped but find more of a parallel in Dinas Emrys and Ambrosden than was obvious with Dinas Emrys and Amesbury. Thus the naval or ‘omphalos’ of Britain at Amesbury’s Stonehenge was relocated to Oxfordshire.

Not too far from Ambrosden are the famous Rollright Stones, a splendid stone circle perhaps reminiscent of Stonehenge near Amesbury:

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/rollright-stones/

In Welsh tradition, Lleu is made Lord of Gwynedd - something which sounds very much like Emrys being given all of western Britain ( = Wales) by Vortigern.  I've discussed before the fact that both the sun gods Lleu and Mabon are placed in death in Nantlle, something that suggests a possible identification of the two divine figures.