THE "FOUR-PART ARGUMENT" FOR ARTHUR AS SON OF SAWYL OF RIBCHESTER

A quick summary piece here...

I've decided on Arthur as son of Sawyl Benisel as my final candidate for the historical hero.

My case is built on four points:

1) A new (and confirmed) reading of the Lucius Artorius Castus memorial stone in Podstrana, Croatia, by Linda Malcor, Antonio Trinchese and Alessandro Faggiani.  This reading establishes 'LAC' as a Roman military man who was involved in both the relocation of 5,500 Sarmatians to Britain and in their use while he acted as prefect of the Sixth Legion and de facto governor. It is not at all unreasonable to assume that the name Artorius would have been preserved in the North among the descendants of these Sarmatians.

2) A pre-Galfridian Arthurian pedigree that runs 'Eliwlad son of Madog son of Uther' should be read 'Eilwlad', etc.  The name thus produced with an allowable metathesis (which has precedent in medieval Welsh MSS.) means 'other land' and exactly corresponds semantically with Irish Ailithir, from aile, 'other', and tir, 'land.' A Matoc (= Madog) Ailithir is known as son of Sawyl Benisel of Northern England.  Eilwlad son of Madog son of Uther is, therefore, a dim folk memory or reflection of Matoc Ailithir son of Sawyl.

3) The word kawyl in "Marwnat Vthyr Pen" is best emended as Sawyl.  Only recently I confirmed this with Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales, whose comment should be considered authoritative (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/02/sawyl-or-kanwyll-reaching-decision-on.html):

"I think this [cannwyll for kawyl, which I had proposed] is possible, but three things make me uneasy.

 A)      This requires positing an n-suspension.  These do occur occasionally in medieval Welsh MSS, but they are very rare.

B)      The single l would mean suggesting an Old Welsh exemplar, for which there is no other clear evidence in the poem.  Elsewhere the scribe has ll where needed, so if he was copying from an examplar with l for ll, then this would be the only occasion on which he didn’t correctly modernize.

C)      Supposing an n-suspension would only allow us to restore one n.  In an OW form, one would expect nt, nh or perhaps nn, but not n.

Overall, emendation to Sawyl, while totally speculative, involves less issues (eye-skip to kawell), and eil Sawyl, ‘a second Samuel’ gives plausible sense."

Thus Uther in the elegy poem is calling himself a 'second Sawyl', i.e. he resembled the first Biblical Sawyl.  In Line 6 God is called 'Chief of the Sanctuary', and this would seem to be a reference to the sanctuary at Shiloh.

4) I have successfully placed Sawyl Benisel at Samlesbury near Ribchester, the fort of the Sarmatian veterans.  

I'm confident that these four points, taken in combination, very strongly indicate that the historical Arthur of the 6th century was sired by the 'terrible chief-dragon' of Ribchester, Sawyl Benisel.