DINAS EMRYS, CUNEDDA AND ARTHUR: SOME ANSWERS TO READERS' QUESTIONS

Dinas Emrys Hillfort in Snowdonia, Wales

Having just tentatively proposed that Uther Pendragon is a Welsh folk etymology for the magister utriusque militiae rank of the 5th century British general Gerontius (a rank applied erroneously to a later Geraint namesake in Dumnonia), I have been asked several difficult questions concerning my earlier identification of Arthur with Ceredig son of Cunedda (= Cerdic of the Gewessei) and Cunedda's association with Dinas Emrys.  Essentially, these questions can be stated as follows:

1) Do I still hold to the notion that Dinas Emrys was the fort of Cunedda?  And that Dinas Emrys was also the Caer Dathal linked to Arthur twice in Welsh tradition?  It would appear Geoffrey of Monmouth's Tintagel was a substitute for Caer Dathal.  Eliwlad the eagle in the oak, son of Madog son of Uther, placed at a Madog's Wood in Cornwall, actually belonged at the Madog's Wood in Lleu's Nantlle in Snowdonia.

2) Have I decided to ignore the fact that Ceredig/Cerdic has three bear names among his immediate successors, all apparently related to the Bear River in his Welsh kingdom of Ceredigion?  Tied to this is the idea that Arthur (indisputably from Artorius) is a decknamen for an earlier Irish or Welsh 'bear-king' name.

3) If I abandon the idea that Ceredig/Cerdic was Arthur, how do I account for the fact that all the subsequent Arthurs belonged to Irish-descended dynasties in Britain?  After all, I had successfully shown that Cunedda was Irish and did not hail from the extreme North of Britain (Manau in Gododdin having been substituted for Drumanagh). 

These are genuinely tough problems to address.  I don't have to do so, of course.  But, truth be told, they continue to bother me as well.  Either we have a Dumnonian Arthur fighting in the South of England or a Hiberno-British Arthur fighting in the same place.  Which Arthur is a historical reality and which a construct?

To begin, I must confess that the weakness of the Cunedda = Uther Pendragon argument lies in the simple fact that the latter can't be shown to be something like Gerontius' magister utriusque militiae. We must instead view it as a heroic title applied to the former due to his association with the red dragon of Dinas Emrys.  And how do we do that?

Well, I explored that possibility in several articles here on my blog site.  But to summarize: 

The "Emrys" or Ambrosius of Dinas Emrys is a thoroughly legendary figure.  And, indeed, the Ambrosius placed at Wallop near Amesbury in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM is himself likely not a historical figure.  If he is, he is based on the Gaulish governor of that name, the father of St. Ambrose, who was a contemporary of the Emperor Constans who visited Britain in the 4th century.  As such, his being placed in the time of Vortigern is anachronistic.  Some vestiges of this temporal displacement remain in the HB (e.g. Ambrosius is said to have fought Vortigern's grandfather Vitalinus at Wallop).  

The transferrence in folk tradition of the supposedly historical Ambrosius, linked erroneously to Amesbury, to Dinas Emrys is difficult to account for.  We must delve into things Continental.  St. Ambrose and Magnus Maximus are connected in history with Aquileia.  While this latter place-name does not, in fact, derive from the Latin word for eagle - aquila - it may well have been seen that way.  As such, Eryri, the Welsh name for Snowdonia, which may derive from the Welsh word for eagle or at least been interpreted in that way (see Koch in CELTIC CULTURE), was substituted for Aquileia.  Magnus Maximus the tyrant was replaced at Dinas Emrys by Vortigern, who was called (through a mistaken interpretation of a passage from Gildas) the 'Fiery Pharaoh.'

The story of Emrys/Ambrosius and the two vases containing wrapped dragons is even more complicated.  Originally, these were cremation urns containing the wrapped bones of cremated chieftains that had been interred at Dinas Emrys.  It is possible the 'crossed serpent' insignum of nearby Roman Segontium may have influenced the account. To make matters worse, the two serpents became representative of the opposing genii (which took snake form in Roman religion) of the Britons and the Saxons.  Finally, St. Ambrose is said to have dug up two saints, one of whom was named Celsus.  Celsus in the Latin means exactly what Irish uachtar means, and according to Koch and others, Uther evolved from a British cognate of Irish uachtar.  

Emrys himself, as the boy who is to be made into the foundation sacrifice for the walls of Dinas Emrys, and as the 'Immortal/Divine One' (the meaning of ambrosius in Latin), appears to have been conflated with the Gwynedd god Lleu, who is the Lord of Gwynedd in the MABINOGION.  Lleu appears as an eagle (because of the Eryri interpretation mentioned above) in Nantlle of Snowdonia.  Geoffrey of Monmouth then decided to further identify Emrys/Ambrosius with the northern Myrddin (Merlin), and chose to identify Dinas Emrys with Amesbury and its Stonehenge.

Yet Geoffrey wasn't done yet!  He has Uther Pendragon (under the orders of Ambrosius), with the assistance of Merlin, build Stonehenge.  When he dies, the Terrible Chief-dragon is buried within the precincts of Stonehenge, thereby bringing events full circle or, rather, back to their beginning.  How so?  Because the dragon in the vase exhumed for Emrys at Dinas Emrys is not only in a sense St. Ambrose's Celsus, it is also Uther Pendragon.

Believe me, I know; this is all very confusing and even confounding in some ways.  But I am convinced this is the way the material developed.  

From this point on things get more interesting, at least from a possible historical perspective.  As Ambrosius at Dinas Emrys is a fiction, we are justified in asking to whom the fort actually belonged.  Well, we know Vortigern did not (as the HB says) give Dinas Emrys and all of Gwynedd to Ambrosius.  Who, then, might he have given it to (using the word 'given' with all due caution in this context)?

History tells us that at Vortigern's time, Gwynedd was taken or already in the possession OF CUNEDDA AND HIS SONS.  I have suggested that the lost Caer Dathal fort, twice connected with Arthur in the Welsh tradition, is most likely Dinas Emrys.  Dathal is an Irish personal name, the first element of which means 'quick', 'swift' and the like.  The name appears to be extent in a Latin replacement term at Beddgelert, in the parish of which Dinas Emrys stands.  Gelert or Celert is from the Latin celeritas, 'speed' (something I confirmed with Professor Dr. Peter Schrijver).  Some early spellings or pronunciations of Tintagel make its second component very similar to that of Caer Dathal.

If Uther were one of the men whose remains were found in a cremation urn, we need ask if there is any other suggestion that the fort may have belonged to him.  There may be.  Ambrosius has among its meaning 'eternal', and we are told in the HB that his unnamed father wore the purple.  In Welsh tradition, Cunedda's father was named Edern, i.e. Aeternus, and Edern's father was Padarn Pesrudd, from a Latin Paternus ('fatherly') and the epithet 'Red Tunic.'  It is possible, then, that lying under Ambrosius and his father wearing the purple lurks Edern son of Padarn Pesrudd.

As I already knew that Ceredig son of Cunedda was Cerdic of Wessex, and the two men had identical floruits, and I could show that the battles of Cerdic belonged to those of Arthur, with the remainder of Arthur's battles belonging to Cerdic's Gewessei successors, and because there were also three bear names in Ceredig's succession list, with a Bear River in his kingdom of Ceredigion, it seemed perfectly natural to identify Ceredig/Cerdic with Arthur.

Why did I go away from that theory?  Why did I look for an Arthur in the North - and only just recently another one in the South who descended from the Dumnonian royal line?

For no other reason than EVERYONE seemed to be dissatisfied with my identification of Arthur with Ceredig/Cerdic.  They could not get their heads around the idea that a man who fought with the Saxons against Britons could be the hero we have all come to cherish.  They did not want to accept that Arthur's 'dux' title was a perfect Latin rendering of the ealdorman title applied to Cerdic of Wessex.  And they did not want to acknowledge that the best way to explain the Artorius name was to relate it to what was obviously a bear cult in the Kingdom of Ceredigion.  Most still cling to the idea that it should be related to the 2nd century Roman prefect of York, Lucius Artorius Castus - and this despite the insistence by scholars in all fields that the transmission of Castus' name to someone in the 5th-6th centuries is highly improbable if not downright impossible.

And, thus, here we are. At a crossroads. Myself, I think Ceredig son of Cunedda was Artri or Arthri, and that name or title was dropped in favor of the Roman-sounding Artorius/Arthur.  Professor Roger Tomlin thinks that something like this happened, and he provided me with the following inscription as an example:

Trier (CIL XIII/1.1, no. 3909)

HIC QUIESCIT IN PACE URSULA . . . ARTULA MATER TIT(ULUM) POSUIT

In this case mother and daughter have the same name, the mother still in Celtic, the daughter already in the Roman tongue.  [See https://books.google.com/books?id=VgBtaDT-evYC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=%22ursula%22%2B%22artula%22&source=bl&ots=7-P0UquCgY&sig=ACfU3U1LtSXRV9nJOHHZx0kj3Z9sqweFHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi485Cw1ZXxAhXO854KHXTkAZ0Q6AEwEXoECBMQAw#v=onepage&q=%22ursula%22%2B%22artula%22&f=false]

In the case of both the Gwynedd and Dyfed Dark Age royal genealogies, we have clear and certain evidence that Roman names were substituted for the Irish.

With Ceredig as Arthur, and with him being of known Irish descent through his father Cunedda (of the Ciannachta), we can also account for why the subsequent Arthurs all belonged to Irish descended families in Britain.  Other attempts to account for this strangeness have failed.  One, pitched by a famous scholar of the era (Higham), claims that the bear name had become taboo among the Britons and so they avoided it, while the Irish had no problem picking it up.  Alas, the Irish were Christian from pretty early on, and we have plenty of Arth- names recorded for Welsh rulers during the Dark Ages.  

The question comes down to this: do we opt for Cunedda as Uther Pendragon or Geraint?  Arthur's placement in Dumnonia and his being related to that kingdom's royal line may well have been a secondary feature in the development of Arthurian legend. In fact, it may have become necessary.  As it stands, we have the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE telling of Cerdic's victories in places where the Welsh claim Arthur won.  Clearly, both men could not have been victors in the same battles if they were on different sides!  Probably, then, it was found expedient to associate Arthur with Dumnonia so that his military exploits could be projected against the neighboring nucleus of southern Wessex in such a way as to make him seem the enemy of Cerdic of Wessex.  When, in reality, he was Cerdic of Wessex.

Truth be told, this effort on the part of the myth-makers may well have crippled my research for some time, as I was constantly being forced away from the notion that Arthur might have been fighting against other Britons - even if he were doing so on behalf of a high-king like Vortigern.  That Cerdic would have been a hero to the Welsh is made plain by the tombstone of Cunorix son of Maquicoline found at Wroxeter/Viroconium, an important Dark Age power center.  Cunorix is the ASC's Cynric, and Maqui-coline is second name of the Irish Cunedda, and corresponds to the ASC's Ceawlin.  While in this instance genealogies in the respective sources seemed to have been oddly reversed, a honored place of burial for one of the Gewessei (a tribal designation derived from the supposed meaning of Cerdic's own name) at the high-king's capital would imply that the Gewessei were in alliance with Saxons against British enemies of the king who ruled from Wroxeter.