A NEW CANDIDATE FOR ARTHUR AND MEDRAUT'S CAMLAN?

Carvedras or "Caer Modred" in Kenwyn, Truro, Cornwall 

Ordinarily, I'm a stickler for obeying onomastic rules.  But there is one case in which I might make an exception...

We all know how Medraut (Cornish Modred, Latin Moderatus) perished with Arthur at Camlan.  But the site of Camlan has been hotly disputed.  I have favored either one of the Camlans in NW Wales or the Roman fort of Camboglanna on Hadrian's Wall.  In fact, I was the first to definitively identify the Welsh Camlan (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-thirteenth-battle-camlann.html and https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-avalon-of-geoffrey-of-monmouth.html).

I'd never really seriously considered a southern Camlan, to be perfectly honest.  But as I'm once more delving into the possibility of a Southern Arthur, it seemed the sensible thing to do.

I began with the Modred names we know of in Cornwall.  The following passage is from the entry for Medrawd in P.C. Bartrum's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

Several place-names apparently involving the name Modred are found in Cornwall. Rosemodres in the parish of St.Buryan has been interpretted as meaning Modred's Heath. There is Tremodret in Roche (a Domesday manor) and another Tremodret (now Tremadert) in Duloe (Henry Jenner in The Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, LVIII (c.1911) pp.60, 76). In the parish of Kenwyn near Truro we find Carveddras which in 1296 was Kaervodred juxta Tryvero and in 1250 Carvodret. Such occurences show that Modred was a Cornish name, and need not have anything to do with the Arthurian character (C.L.Wrenn in Trans.Cym., 1959, pp.60-61). See also TYP p.455.  

One of these sites is especially interesting - Carvedras in Kenwyn, Truro.  Please see the map posted at the head of this article.

Is it a coincidence that a place called 'the Fort of Modred' is situated quite close to the River Allen?  And that there is a pronounced bend in this location?  The Cam(bo)- of Camlan, of course, means "crooked" and is applied to a bend in a river-bank.

Could an original British *Cambo-alauna have been replaced in the Welsh tradition by known native examples of *Camboglanna?  Note that Wales has an river called the Afon Alun or Alyn, to be properly derived from British *Alauna.  Might we allow for a Cornish Cam + Alan (1199) having become Camlan in the Welsh tradition due to affinity with their own Camlan place-names?

I think this possible.  If this is where Modred/Medrawd and Arthur died, we are dealing with some kind of internal squabble - as indeed the tradition insists we should. 

Some support of this argument is provided by, of all things, Geoffrey of Monmouth's own Camel River.  While it has long been known that the main part of the Camel was once called the Alan - yet again from a Celtic Alauna - the best recent analysis of this river-name is supplied in Victor Watt's THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES (2004):

"The name originally referred only to the upper section of the river and probably means 'crooked one.' Camel 1602, Camel or Alan River 1748... Co cam + adj.suff. *-el or diminutive sufffix -ell. The name of the main river was Alan 1199-1803, Aleyn (1285-1381), a common Celtic r.n. discussed under River ALLEN."

It would have taken very little for such a river to come to be called the 'crooked Alan', which itself again could easily have been inferred by the Welsh as a Camlan.  Or, alternately, the Allen at Truro was simply confused at some point with the Alan, with the cam- element being incorporated as a result.  That Geoffrey picked the wrong *Alauna river for the battle site may be evidence that this is exactly what happened. 

In concluding, I should mention that one of the candidate for Arthur's Kelliwic - Castle Killibury - is on an Allen River in Cornwall. However, this Allen name is an error (see THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES by Victor Watts, p. 8) and Kelliwic was actually in another place (see 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-new-candidate-for-arthur-and-medrauts.html).  We find a mysterious Arthur's Bridge in Somerset on the River Alham, which may derive from an *Alauna river-name.  However, there is no 'Cam' element present at the Alham. 

NOTE:

It is probably only a coincidence, but a short distance from the Carvedras place-names is a Nansavallan, Apple Valley:

https://www.akademikernewek.org.uk/place-names/content/nansavallan