A QUESTION FROM A "FAN": WHY DID I ABANDON THE NORTHERN ARTHUR?

"Hi, August.  Huge fan of yours here.  But I've been more than a little disappointed in the direction you've taken in your more recent work.  May I politely ask why you so easily abandoned the Northern Arthur?  You seemed to have all the sites down perfectly - like I've never seen before - and you had a more than adequate explanation of where Arthur and his father should be placed.  I mean, it all worked beautifully, as far as I'm concerned (in my amateurism). Are you sure you are justified in going south (!) just because you can't certainly identify Uther with any known historical person?  Is there a way you can save the Northern Arthur?"

Hmm.  Wow.  Okay.  Firstly, I didn't know I had fans out there in the ethereal, arcane Arthurian community.  That's kind of nice to know.  Over the years, given what that community has, in general, become, I've either alienated many of its members or simply excused myself from the debate.  Found it necessary, ultimately, to shield myself from its unbridled rancor, supercilious sensationalism and the kind of rampant naivety only nonspecialists on a mission can engender.  But when I'm asked an intelligent question, especially one that makes me sit up and examine my own motives, I tend to pay attention.

Yes, the Northern theory in most respects looks, well, awesome (to use a much overused expression).  In essence, I had battles that were identified with precision, both linguistically and geographically.[1] The "pattern" produced by the plotting of these battles on the map revealed an unexpected line of campaigns running north and south in northern England and southern Scotland along the old Roman Dere Street.  This looked suspiciously like a frontier zone, a line of division between the encroaching Saxons to the east and the Britons to the west.  Finding the battles eleswhere necessitated proposing early manipulation  of the place-names, often involving unprovable attempted translations from one language to another. 

I also had some remarkable correspondences on Hadrian's Wall.  Castlesteads or Camboglanna fit Arthur's Camlann perfectly.  Just a few miles to the west along the Wall was Aballava, with its spelling variant Avalana.  This 'place of the apple orchard' made for a wonderful Avalon, complete with its own Lady of the Lake in the guise of the Roman period Dea Latis or "Lake Goddess."  

Camboglanna and Birdoswald/Banna, the latter with its significant Dark Age hall built in the ruins of the Roman fort, were in the Irthing Valley, a river-name quite probably to be traced to a Cumbric 'bear' word.  This was the likely home of the *Artenses or 'Bear-people', whose name is preserved in the Welsh genealogy for the famous Men of the North as Arthwys.  Birdoswald had been manned in the late Roman period by Dacians, who are noted for their use of the draco standard.  Many authorities hold that it was the Dacians who actually introduced the draco into the Roman army.  Lucius Artorius Castus, the 2nd century Roman soldier who served in Britain, had previously served in legions based in or operating in Dacia.  

Only a few kilometers to the east of Birdoswald along the Wall is Carvoran, the Roman period Magnis, a fort whose garrison was originally composed of Dalmatians.  This is interesting, in that there was a branch of the Artorii at Salona in Dalmatia (modern Croatia) and there is now a consensus that Lucius Artorius Castus himself was probably born there.  Certainly, he was awarded with the governship of Liburnia at the end of his military career.

Taking all of this into account, it would be natural to paint the following speculative, though eminently logical picture of the Arthurian context on Hadrian's Wall:

1) Uther Pendragon, if we may allow for him actually having been associated with the Roman draco, hailed from Birdoswald in the Irthing Valley.  His epithet Pendragon may originate in the Late Roman rank of magister draconum.  Or the leader of Birdoswald was simply called the Terrible Chief-dragon because of the draco standard and its sacredness to the warriors residing there.  I am, in fact, still working with Drs. Breeze and Flugel on the possibility that the 'AELI DRACONIS' on the Ilam pan does not involve an Aelian (= Hadrian's) Wall or a man named Aelius Draco, but instead is a poetic reference to the draco-bearing Cohors I Aelia Dacorum of the Banna fort.  

2) Arthur was given his name because Artorius (person and/or name) was remembered at the nearby Dalmatian fort at Carvoran.  It was interpreted by the Cumbric speakers as containing their own word for bear.

3) Arthur fought the Saxons from the Firth of Forth to Derbyshire, along an established north-south line.

4) Arthur fought Medraut (Moderatus) at Castlesteads/Camboglanna in the Irthing Valley.  Legend had it that he was conveyed to Burgh By Sands/'Avalon' for burial.  This may be factual or may simply reflect the Celtic fondness for the Otherworld island of apples.  Or it may be a combination of both, i.e. Arthur was taken there because this ancient Avalon was still thought of as sacred place.

5) In the HISTORIA BRITTONUM, the story of Arthur is followed immediately by that of St. Patrick.  I have shown conclusively that Patrick's birthplace was the Birdoswald/Banna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall.

[CAUTIONARY NOTE:  Time and again I have been warned by top scholars that we must be careful when basing an argument on the principle of CONTINUITY. In other words, it can be difficult to account for the survival of an ethnically derived name or cultural trait over long spans of time.  Studies on the garrisons of frontier forts have differed somewhat in their conclusions regarding this principle.  The emphasis currently is to favor the tendency for these garrisons, over the centuries, to become much less homogeneous. So even though we find the Dacian falx as a unit emblem on stones from Birdoswald, we cannot automatically assume the unit's special dedication to the draco would have been evidenced in the late period.  Similarly, presevation of the name Artorius at Carvoran cannot be proven to have occurred.  We can only provisionally put forward the possibility.]

So, given all that, why did I forsake the northern Arthur?

Maybe for no good reason! To begin, I had become fixated (as so many have) on identifying Uther with a figure found in the Welsh genealogies.  We Arthurians are all, I think, made more than a little nervous by our concern over the validity of Uther's name.  It is really the name of Arthur's father?  Or is it merely a conjured one?  Was uther (W. uthr) chosen for no other reason than it provided decent poetic assonance?  We all know the play on Arthur and the word aruthr (ar- + uthr, 'very terrible').  It is entirely conceivable that Arthur's father's name wasn't known or had been completely forgotten and so someone had to make one up.  

I, therefore, sought a connection for Uther that I could feel confident about.  The 'pen kawell' of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN, meaning literally 'Chief(tain of the) Basket' tied in very nicely with Ceawlin of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whom I had previously identified as Cunedda (as ceawl in Old English also means basket).  There appeared to be much of Cerdic of the Gewissei in Arthur, and Cerdic himself was Ceredig son of Cunedda. Their respective floruits matched. This yanked Arthur from the north to the south.  I was still allowed my link to the Roman name Artorius through the relationship of the Seguntienses of Segontium/Caervarvon with Illyricum and the Welsh insistence that Arthur's kin came from nearby Dinas Emrys (= Caer Dathal).  The dragon of Uther could be accounted for by the Dinas Emrys dragons, probably themselves a reflection of the military standard of the Seguntienses unit.

At the same time, I had dispensed with my placement of Arthur and Uther at the Ribchester Roman fort of the Sarmatians.  This came about due to two discoveries.  First, Eliwlad son of Madog son of Uther ended up belonging at Nantlle in Gwynedd, not at Ribchester.  This Madog was not the son of Sawyl Benisel. Second, extensive research spanning many months proved to my satisfaction that Lucius Artorius Castus was in Britain before the Sarmatians ever got there, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the latter.  Thus a Ribchester connection with LAC or the name Artorius was no longer a defensible idea.  

I had also decided against making anything out of the corrupt TRIAD text that gave us an Arthur son of Eliffer of York.  While York had been the headquarters of LAC as camp prefect, and the Dalmatian-manned Praesidium (according to Professor Roger Tomlin probably the civilian settlement outside the York fort) was hard by, Arthur son of Eliffer was a purely literary ghost and all the other Arthurian associations seemed to be firmly attached to Hadrian's Wall.  Uther Pendragon as gorlassar matches only one other figure in Welsh tradition, and that is the great Urien of Rheged.  This last is also called gorlassar.  But adopting him as Arthur's father destroys our Arthurian timeline.  Still, even this cannot be discounted entirely.  My research into Urien showed he was given titles almost identical to that of Uther, and he was closely associated with the god Mabon.  Mabon is the servant of Uther, etc. 

What to do with all this, then?  When we seriously study the Arthurian sources, and in particular the pre-Galfridian ones, we are met with a bewildering plethora of conflicting/competing/contradictory traditions.  In this substratum of primitive, propagandist annal entries, heroic epic poetry and folklore, we encounter an Arthur who is imprinted everywhere in the British landscape.  This is precisely what makes him so slippery, so frustratingly difficult to pin down.  At one time or another, myself and others have availed ourselves of every conceivable set of locations for this enduring figure.

We can always come up with problems with our own pet theories, if we are honest enough with ourselves.  For example, the Uther elegy poem's 'pen kawell' can be rendered in two additional ways.  It can mean 'Chieftain of [a place called] Cawell' or 'Chieftain of the Sanctuary.'  There are several places in Britain composed of the word Cawell or at least containing it. They stretch from the River Cale in Somerset up through northwestern-most Wales to Kingscavil in West Lothian, Scotland. 'Chieftain of the Sanctuary' is incredibly tempting, as in the line in question we are told that Uther is transformed by God.  We can make a very strong case for God being the 'Pen Kawell.'   Either option negates my idea that the Chief Basket = Ceawlin of the Gewissei.

Uther Pendragon can be parsed any number of ways, depending on what one is trying to do with the name/title.  I once proposed it was a Welsh rendering of the Roman rank magister utriusque militiae. As this rank was held by the British commander Gerontius in the early 5th century, I was able to claim that Arthur's father was one of the later Dumnonian Geraints who had either adopted this title for himself or who had been mistakenly given it during the course of story development.  This notion was at first greeted with great excitement, as it allowed for us to retain the tradition of an Arthur of the Southwest (Tintagel, Domelick at St. Dennis, Kelliwic, Brean Down, South Cadbury Castle, Glastonbury, River Camel, etc.).  But, alas, it collapsed horribly when it came to assigning the battles to such a man.

We Arthurian enthusiasts also seem to enjoy identifying Arthur himself with someone else.  I've done it more than once in my research/writing career.  Truth is, Arthur is Arthur.  There is no justification, within the constraints of the context, for giving him another name. If he is Cerdic/Ceredig, we need a source that names an individual bearing both of those names.  We lack such a source in each and every case.   We are no better off trying to translate Arthur's 'dux erat bellorum' title into a Brythonic name or an epithet lurking in a poem.  That exercise is just as futile. 

It is obvious that the Northern Arthur should be revisited.  In addition, I must entertain the notion that if the Northern Arthur continues to make the most sense in the broadest terms, then I must be willing to let go of the built-in need to isolate and analyze Uther's historicity.  It may prove to be enough that we look to Birdoswald as the home of the partly Dacian-descended, draco-bearing chieftain, a terrible magister draconum who sired a son named after the Dalmatian Artorius of Carvoran.  

Do we require more than this?  Or will this do?

Stay tuned...  

[1]

ARTHURIAN BATTLE SITES

Mouth of the Glein - Northumberland Glen

Dubglas River in Linnuis - Devil's Water at Linnels near Corbridge

Bassas - Dunipace 

Coit Celidon - Forest at Caddon Water

Castello Guinnion - Binchester Roman fort

urbe Legionis - York

shore of the Tribruit - trajectus at North Queensferry

Mount Agned/Breguoin - Bremenium/High Rochester Roman fort, rebuilt by the governor Egnatius

Badon - Buxton