CANNWYLL AND THE STAR OF UTHER PENDRAGON: A CHANGE OF HEART AND MIND

Hale Bopp Comet

Cannwyll is sometimes a rhyme partner for tywyll

(e.g. AP line 88 cannwyll yn tywyll; CC 18.13; R1056.15)...

Marged Haycock, Marwnat Vthyr Pen

My readers may recall that I have gone back and forth on the word 'kawyl' in the Uther elegy.  The word has in the past (by very respectable Welsh scholars) been emended to read 'Sawyl', a name born by a Dark Age king of the North.  It is this Sawyl who has a son named Madog, just like Uther Pendragon.  The 'Sawyl' reading is a key component in my Northern Arthur theory.

Unfortunately, I've felt for some time that this is not a sustainable emendation.  Although seeing kannwyll in kawyl would require more errors on the part of copyists, the fact that the word can mean 'star' gives us an undeniable link to Uther's comet.  I don't think I can afford to continue to ignore this - no matter how much I want kawyl to represent an original Sawyl.

Geoffrey of Monmouth clearly had before him the first part of the elegy poem, which I (relying primarily on Marged Haycock's authoritative translation) have rendered as follows:

It is I who commands hosts in battle:

I’d not give up between two forces without bloodshed.

It’s I who’s called Gorlassar [the very blue, the very blue-green or 'the great blaze, conflagration'; cf. Irish forlassar]:

my ferocity snared my enemy.

It is I who’s a leader in darkness [tywyll]:

Our God, Chief of the Sanctuary, transforms me.

It’s I who’s like a star [cannwyll, also fig.' a leader'] in the gloom:

I’d not give up fighting without bloodshed between two forces.

He took Gorlassar and transformed the epithet into Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, and transferred the transformation motif from the star to Gorlassar.  But he also made sure to tell us that the star was Uther. Without a poem containing this information, I cannot account wfor where the comet story came from. Worse, it is simply too much of a coincidence that cannwyll/star is almost certainly found in the original form of the elegy.  All of this argues rather forcibly against Sawyl for kawyl.

This leaves us, then, with Madog son of Uther, and Madog's son Eliwlad.  Without my proposed reading of Eliwlad as a copying error for Eilwlad, we have no connection between Uther and Sawyl of Ribchester.  And this proposed reading, while allowed by Celticists, is not preferred.  They instead think much more likely my second - and only other - etymology for the name: *Eiliw-(g)wlad, 'grief-lord.'  This is perfectly acceptable and does not require that we resort to a copying error and the absence anywhere of a spelling Eilwlad.  Grief-lord fits the context of "The Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle", given that Eliwlad takes the form of a spectral eagle in an oak tree, a motif borrowed from the myth of the dead god Lleu (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-etymology-of-eliwlad-final-take.html).  

So where to go from here, if two linchpins of my argument in support of Sawyl = Uther are not viable?

Well, I am coming round to a radical new idea.  Welsh tradition associated Arthur's father Uther with Caer Dathal in Arfon.  Arthur even marries a woman from this fortress.  The name Dathal (and variants) are close enough to the "local form" of Tintagel to make us ask a simple question: is Geoffrey of Monmouth's Tintagel a relocation of Caer Dathal?

Eilert EKWALL (1936-1960-1980 ) : "Tintagol c 1145 Monm, Tintaieol, Tintagaeolestun 1205 Lay, Tintagel 1212 RBE, Tinthagel 1229 Fees. The local form is said to be Dundadgel."

I had fixed the location of Caer Dathal at Craig Y Dinas in Gwynedd (see  https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/01/caer-dathal-and-its-ancient-ruler.html).

Eliwlad the eagle in the oak was placed at the Cutmadoc names in Cornwall. The Welsh form of this place-name, Coed Madog, is found in the Nantlle where Lleu perched as a death-bird in an oak tree. (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-shocking-discovery-real-location-of.html). While we cannot prove that the Coed Madog name goes back as far as Arthur's or Uther's time, the author of the "Dialogue" poem may well have transferred Eliwlad from Nantlle's Coed Madog to Cornwall's Cutmadoc.  He may have done so because he was influenced by Geoffrey's pseudo-history, which places Arthur in Cornwall - although Geoffrey appears to have known nothing about Madog or his son.  

These two possibilities - that Arthur's birthplace was Caer Dathal, not Dun Dadgel/Tintagel, and Eliwlad grandson of Uther belonged at Nantlle, not at the forest of Glyn in Bodmin - would force a reappraisal of Arthur's origin.

And yet once again open up the can of worms (pun strictly intended) that is Uther Pendragon.