A TALE OF TWO ARTHURS or THE TENUOUS NATURE OF ARTHURIAN THEORY

NOTE:  For those who hold to the Arthurian genealogy as found in Geoffrey of Monmouth and derivative sources, you will be disappointed by the following post.  Decades of study have left me very cold when it comes to the Galdfridian tradition.  I have many reasons for not holding to the 'Dumnonian' or 'Breton' pedigrees, although I do not have time or space to present those here.  My full treatment of such may be found by searching through my many articles.  

For much of my life, on and off (but mostly on!), I've been seeking what it perhaps the impossible: identifying a true historical Arthur of the Dark Ages.  While I have come up with a few original ideas and even several "maybe" theories, only two seem valid to me.  And, ironically, they are in completely incompatible with one another.

Both rely on reconstructed genealogical traces for Arthur's only known father, Uther Pendragon.  Without such a trace, there is no hope of convincing anyone about anything.  You can't just willy-nilly stick Arthur anywhere and at any time.  Well, you can, but no serious student or academic of Arthuriana will pay attention to your nonsense.  They will consign you the fringe and either malign you or ignore you.  In my opinion, the latter is worse.

My two identifications for Uther stem from only two Welsh poems.  Fitting, I suppose.  The first of these is the Marwnat Vthyr Pen and the second the Ymddiddan Arthur a'r Eryr.  In the first source, there are some lines that can be treated of in two ways.  If we choose one emended reading, we end up with Uther saying the God, Chief of the Sanctuary, transformed him, and that he was like a second Sawyl (= Samuel, the first being the Biblical one, presumably) in the gloom.  But if we choose another credible "fix", we produce Uther himself as "Chief Basket (W. cawell)" and have him appear as being "like a candle in the gloom."

To these markedly different interpretations, we can add the presence of Madog son of Uther in the Ymddiddan Arthur a'r Eryr. Madog is father of Eliwlad, the eagle-specter of the poem.  We will see in a moment why Eliwlad and Madog may be so very important.

Now, Chief Basket is bizarre, until we remember that the Ceawlin of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a name thought to be Celtic by the majority of scholars) seems to contain ceawl, 'basket', a word that is actually derived from the same Latin word as W. cawell.  This allowed me to identify Uther and Pen Cawell with Ceawlin.  Ceawlin I have, in turn, linked with the -coline of the Wroxester Stone, who is none other than Cuinedha Mac Cuilinn of the Irish sources - the Cunedda of the Welsh tradition.  This last came from Drumanagh in Ireland, not Manau Gododdin in extreme northern Britain.  With all of this established, I could look to Ceredig son of Cunedda (= Cerdic of Wessex) as a historical Arthur candidate.

BUT, Sawyl, Madog and Eliwlad took me in a completely opposite direction. We know of a Dark Age Sawyl in what is now Lancashire.  He had a son named Madog.  This Madog, because he went to Ireland and became a saint, was known as Ailithir, a word for pilgrim that means, literally, 'Other-land.'

Eliwlad, while a different name, was identical semantically, with (g)wlad in its early meaning of 'land' being substituted for the Irish tir.  It appeared as if the name, rather than being an altered rendering of Ailithir, was conjured (or given?) to match in meaning, though not in exact form, the epithet of Madog.

One of these ideas lent itself well to the notion that Lucius Artorius Castus, the 2nd century Roman army officer, had been associated with the Sarmatian troops in Britain.  If the ARM[...]S of the LAC memorial inscription could be ARMATOS, and this reading referred to the Praetorian Guard of Rome, then LAC may have led the 1500 spearmen (Sarmatians?) to the capital city to kill Perennis, the Praetorian Prefect.  The Sarmatians had a draco standard and while Welsh scholars insist the Pendragon as an epithet should be seen as either Chief-warrior or Chief-of-warriors, wriggle room has been left for the possibility that the draco may still be a contributive factor.  

If, however, we must settle for ARMENIOS as the most reasonable rendering of ARM[...]S, then Castus was not in Britain when the Sarmatians were there.  We would look not to the name Arthur cropping up at Dark Age Ribchester, but instead at Dinas Emrys in the vicinity of Segontium in NW Wales, whose garrison had been sent to Castus' Dalmatia.  Welsh tradition puts Uther's relatives at Dinas Emrys (= Caer Dathal, a certain identification).  The Segontium connection is, however, extremely weak.  We would have to allow for one of the retired unit members returning home from Dalmatia and then, for some reason, having brought the Artorius name back with him.  Why he would have done that is the main question, for even if he encountered the LAC inscription or had been told about LAC leading British troops to Armenia centuries ago, we must ask the next logical question: of what possible importance would such a remote figure have been to him?  

As for Arthur's battles, there are best placed in the North, as we can be more literal about etymologies and some early poems (like the Pa Gur) and subsequent overlay of the Dalriadan Arthur's battles point to the North.  The presence of Camboglanna and Aballava/Avalana on the Wall also make the North quite attractive.  But it is also possible that the Arthurian battles as found in Nennius represent Gewissei battles found listed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  True, in this last case we have to more freely interpret the Welsh names, as in this scenario there appears an attempt to either translate the West Saxon or to rely on other known (and demonstrable) names for the English places.

So there you have it.  Two quite convincing theories for a historical Arthur.  Both can't be right.  Neither may be!  

Yet, it my job as a researcher/writer on this subject to ultimately come to a decision.  And that is what I will be working on next.