A PROOF FOR UTHER PENDRAGON/GORLASSAR AS CUNEDDA OF THE CIANNACHTA

 

Cunedda

Uther Pendragon has always been a problem for me.  Not content with what appears to be a Galfridian origin for his pedigree, I have sought to identify him with various known historical personages.  Two such candidates were Sawyl Benisel of the North and Geraint son of Erbin in the South.  Both held some promise of actually being Arthur's father, but the arguments falter across the board for anything that does not relate however tenuously to a supposed genealogical trace. 

A few years ago I wrote a little book called THE BEAR KING: ARTHUR AND THE IRISH IN WALES AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND.  While initially very excited about the theory I presented in that volume, I eventually abandoned it.  Why?  Because while everything else worked, I could not form a cohesive link between Cunedda Maquicoline/Ceawlin, father of Cerdic of Wessex, and Uther Pendragon/gorlassar.

Well, I have now succeeded in doing that - and in a way that, frankly, exceeds my wildest dreams.

I began by looking at the Ciannachta, the tribe Cunedda descended from.  The tribal name derives from the personal name Cian, from the adjective found only in Irish.  As it did not occur in Welsh*, it occurred to me that someone may have sought to link it with the following Greek and Latin words:

GREEK

κύα^νος [υ^], ὁ (later ἡ, v. infr. 1.3, 7),

A.dark-blue enamel, esp. used to adorn armour, “δέκα οἶμοι μέλανος κυάνοιο” Il.11.24, cf. 35; “πτύχες κυάνου” Hes.Sc.143; also θριγκὸς κυάνοιο, of a cornice, Od.7.87; so perh. in IG12.367.7, 42(1).102.244 (Epid.).

2. lapis lazuli, κ. αὐτοφυής (opp. σκευαστός) Thphr.Lap.39, al., Dsc.5.91, etc. (perh. also in Pl.Phd.113c); κ. ἄρρην, θῆλυς, Thphr.Lap.31: also an imitation made in Egypt, ib.55.

3. blue copper carbonate, Hp.Cord.2, Gal.12.233 (ὁ and ἡ), Luc.Lex.22; “βαπτὴ κ.” AP6.229 (Crin.).

4. blue cornflower, Plin.HN21.68.

5. a bird, perh. blue thrush, Turdus cyanus, Arist.HA617a23, Ael.NA4.59.

6. sea-water, Hsch.

7. fem., the colour blue, Alex.Aphr.in Mete.162.4.

II. as Adj., = κυάνεος, Nic.Th.438 (unless κυανός as in Phlp.in GC23.11, codd. Pl.l.c.): Comp. -ώτερος Anacreont.16.11: Sup. -ώτατος Philostr. Im.1.6. [υ_ in dactylic verses, metri gr., cf. κυάνεος, etc.]

LATIN

cȳănĕus , a, um, adj., = κυάνεος.

I. Dark-blue, sea-blue: “cyaneo colore avis,” Plin. 10, 32, 47, § 89: “stagna,” Prud. Psych. 858.—

II. Cȳănĕae , ārum, f., = Κυάνεαι, the two small rocky islands at the entrance of the Pontus Euxinus, called also Symplegades, q. v., Ov. Tr. 1, 10, 34; Mel. 2, 7, 3: “errantes,” Val. Fl. 4, 561.—Hence,

B. Cȳă-nĕus , a, um, adj., of or belonging to the Cyaneæ: “cautes,” Luc. 2, 716: “montes,” Val. Fl. 2, 381: “rupes,” id. 4, 637: “ruinae,” Mart. 7, 19, 3: “insulae,” Mel. 2, 7, 3; Plin. 4, 13, 27, § 92 al.—

2. Transf., like the Cyaneæ: “nates,” Mart. 11, 99, 6.

cyănŏs or -us , i, m., = κύανος.

I. The blue corn-flower, blue-bottle: Centaurea cyanus, Linn.; Plin. 21, 8, 24, § 48; 21, 11, 39, § 68.—

II. A precious stone, a species of lapis lazuli, Plin. 37, 9, 38, § 119.

While I have not done a significant search, there are instances of cyan- being spelled cian- and kian- in Latin sources.  

Professor Francesco Stella, Professor of Medieval Latin Literature at the University of Siena-Arezzo, as assured me that

"i and y in medieval manuscripts are completely interchangeable, so no inference can be deduced from the presence of one form or another. Lexica of medieval Latin usually don't report allographs, just because every word can have many." 

Jan M. Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin at Harvard University, told me the same thing:

"The letters y and i were often interchanged in Medieval Latin. That means that the words cyanos, along with its rarer relatives cyaneus and cyanenus, could all be spelled ci- or ki- instead of cy-.  P. 727 of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, which gives evidence of the i for that word."

Other Medieval Latin specialists have responded along similar lines:

"Interchange between “y” and “i” occurs frequently in medieval Latin MSS. Hence you are likely to find the spelling ciane-. You are also generally likely to find confused spellings of Latin words derived from Greek."

- Marek Thue Kretschmer

“The alternation y/i in medieval manuscripts, especially for words derived from Greek (but also for all words that were perceived as rare or exotic) is very common. It is normal to find in the same manuscript, in the hand of the same copyist, forms like 'martyr/martir', 'ystoria/historia' and even 'Italia/Ytalia'. Precisely because it is a very frequent phenomenon, this alternation is not recorded in dictionaries, which generally put the 'classical' form as the headword. However, I can point out an occurrence of the word as cianus (with -i-) in the Latinitatis italicae medii aevi lexicon (saec. V ex.-saec. XII in.), edd. F. Arnaldi - P. Smiraglia et alii.”

- Paolo Chiesa

"I can say in general that the spelling of [i] for [y] occurs many times in medieval Latin mss., as does the reverse, often hypercorrectly."

- H.G.E. Rose

I note cianeus in the 10th century Pictish Chronicle (https://www.jassa.org/?p=8086).  The following study cites the spelling cianus in multiple early medieval MSS.:

https://aic-color.org/resources/Documents/jaic_v16_03_GdC2015.pdf

And see

http://www.mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/info_frame.php?tabelle=Anonymus_cps16&w=CYANEAS&tree=cyaneus%20ADJ&lang=0&inframe=1

CYANEAS

Wordlist from Comphistsem Frankfurt, Jan. 2016:

f GEN sg | f ACC pl cyanea

f ACC pl Cyanee

f ACC pl pos cyaneus

Helmut Schmid's TreeTagger with Latin data by Gabriele Brandolini: cyaneus ADJ

Lewis & Short, A latin dictionary (1879)

Cyanee, Cȳănĕē, ēs, f., = Κυανέη, a nymph, daughter of Mæander, mother of Caunus and of Byblis, Ov. M. 9, 452.

cyaneus, cȳănĕus, a, um, adj., = κυάνεος . Dark-blue, sea-blue: cyaneo colore avis, Plin. 10, 32, 47, § 89: stagna, Prud. Psych. 858. Cȳănĕae, ārum, f., = Κυάνεαι, the two small rocky islands at the entrance of the Pontus Euxinus, called also Symplegades, q. v., (show full text)

Gaffiot, Dictionnaire latin-français (2016, ex 1934), merci à G. Gréco, M. De Wilde, B. Maréchal, K. Ôkubo!

Cyanee Cyănĕē (et poét. Cȳ-) ēs, f. (Κυανέη), nymphe, fille du fleuve Méandre : Ov. M. 9, 452.

cyaneus,¹ 1 cȳănĕus, a, um (κυάνεος), bleu foncé, bleu azuré : Plin. 10, 89.

Cyaneus,² 2 Cȳănĕus, v. Cyaneæ.

Дворецкий И.Х., Отличный латинско-русский словарь (1976)

Cyanee Cyanee, es f Кианея, нимфа, дочь Меандра, возлюбленная Милета, мать Кавна и Библиды O.

DuCange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (1883-7)

CYANEA, Scythiae gemma caeruleo coruscans nitore, purpura interdum et punctulis intermicantibus auratis pulvisculis varians, Isidoro lib. 16. Origin. cap. 9. Perperam in Glossario San-German. MS. Cianea; est enim a Graeco ϰυάνειος, vel ϰυάνεος, coeruleus, pro quo Plinius dixit Cyaneus.

Latinitatis medii aevi lexicon Bohemorum (thanks to the Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences (www.ics.cas.cz/en)) (2017)

cyaneus cyaneus 3. form.: kyanos |KNM XI A 27 f.1v|; kianos |CodVodn f.251v|; quianos |CapPr P 1342 f.177ra|; quianus, quiamas v. infra; tyamos |KNM X E 5 f.308v|; kyranos v. infra; kirianos |CapPr P 1468 f.34v in mg.| (show full text)

NOTE THAT THE MEANING ' DARK-BLUE ENAMEL, ESP. USED TO ADORN ARMOUR' EXACTLY MATCHES THE MEANING WELSH SCHOLARS ASSIGN TO UTHER'S EPITHET GORLASSAR.  HE IS THE 'BLUE-ENAMELLED ONE' OR THE 'ONE WEARING BLUE ENAMELLED ARMS' OR THE 'ONE BEARING BLUE ENAMELLED WEAPONS.' Alternately, gorlassar can be read as simply “the very blue one.”

GPC: 

llasar

[bnth. o ryw ff. sy’n tarddu yn y pen draw o’r Pers. lāzhward ‘lapis lazuli, lliw glas’; anodd gwybod beth oedd ffynhonnell uniongyrchol y bnth. i’r Gym.; cf. Arab. (al-)lazward, Llad. C. lazur, lazurius, lazulum (cf. lapis lazuli), Ffr. azur, S. azure; ond nid amhosibl bnth. H. Wydd. lasar ‘fflam, tân’, gyda’r ystyron ‘tanbaid, disglair, gloyw; peth gloyw (e.e. tarian)’]

eg. a hefyd fel a.

Sylwedd (?owmal (glas)) at addurno tariannau, &c.; yn dros. rhywbeth (e.e. tarian) wedi ei addurno â’r sylwedd hwn; glas, asur:

•  substance (?(blue) enamel) used to decorate shields, &c.; transf. something (e.g. shield) decorated with this substance; blue, azure. 

gorlasar

[gor-+glasar, H. Wydd. for-las(s)ar ‘tanllwyth mawr, tanbeidrwydd mawr’ ac fel a. ‘disglair, tanbaid’]

a.

Gloywlas, disgleirlas ei arfau:

bright-blue, having glinting weapons. 

While this was rather promising, my follow-up research on the 'pen kawell' in Line 6 of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN elegy cinched the matter.  

I had tried to make my case for kawell being for kafell, 'sanctuary', as both W. kawell, 'basket', and kafell had come from the same Latin word.  But if taken literally, kawell meant just that - basket.  Welsh grammar rules prohibited me from seeing pen kawell as a place-name. We were looking at a line that read thusly - and seemingly nonsensically:

'Our Lord transforms me, the Chief Basket'

So I decided to look up ceawl in Bosworth and Toller's ANGLO-SAXON DICTIONARY.  Cunedda Maqui-coline appears in English sources as Ceawlin, the son, not the father of Cerdic (the entire Gewisse genealogy, in fact, runs backwards in the English sources).  And what did I find for ceawl?

ceawl

Noun [ masculine ]

ceawl, ceaul

a basket; cophinus,

[Variants cewl, cawl, ceol, ceaol, ceaul, ceowl.]

In other words, when Uther says he is transformed by God into the Chief Basket, we are looking at a Welsh translation of ceawl, the first part of Ceawlin's name!

We, therefore, appear to have some 'ciphers' in the Uther elegy.  Both gorlassar and kawell point to the Ciannachtan chieftain Ceawlin, i.e. Cunedda, as Arthur's father.  And that would mean, of course, that Arthur is Cerdic after all.  My exhaustive treatment of the Arthur name as a decknamen for an Irish or Welsh 'bear-king' name would be correct.  The original would have derived from the divine bear river in Cerdic's/Ceredig's Kingdom of Ceredigion, the Afon Arth.  The appearance of three Arto- names in Ceredig's royal line further suggest that an arth name or title may have belonged to him.  Lastly, there is the apparent oblique mention of Arthur as the crippled boy, son of Elafius, which I have shown to be an attempt by the St. Germanus hagiographer to interpret Arthur's name according to the usual fanciful etymological process.

Arthur was an Irish or Hiberno-British mercenary (or 'federate') who was fighting for the Welsh high king based at Wroxeter against his English enemies to the south.  He was NOT in alliance with the Saxons, as has been thought in the past.  For details on this revised view of Cerdic of Wessex, see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/11/why-gewissei-may-have-been-on-right.html.

For those who wish to review my case for Cunedda as an Irishman and not a Britain from Manau Goddodin, I recommend my book THE BEAR KING, which I will soon be making available again in both ebook and print formats:

https://www.amazon.com/Bear-King-Arthur-Southern-England/dp/1548982954

*

According to P. C. Bartrum in his A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY, "As a common noun cïan means ‘puppy, whelp’, and is so translated by Thomas Jones in SG (No.41 p.125)." But a cognate for Irish cian is not present in Welsh.