How Expert Analysis of the Uther Pendragon Elegy has Definitively Identified Arthur's Father

When I started out on my Arthurian research many years ago, I could never have imagined that the identity of Uther Pendragon would be proven by a few lines in an early Welsh poem.  

I've just concluded days of discussion of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN with Dr. Simon Rodway of The Unversity of Wales and Prof. Peter Schrijver of Utrecht University.  The conclusion we reached was deceptively simple, and quite sobering.  Much of this has already been presented in the blog post I put up a few days ago:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2023/01/sawyl-armorica-and-perennis-my-final.html

Here I will only offer a grossly simplified explanation of how this all played out.

We begin with the lines in question:

Neu vi tywyssawc yn tywyll:

It is I who’s a leader in darkness:

a’m rithwy am dwy pen kawell.

May our God, the Chief Luminary (or candle, lamp, star, leader/guide), transform me

                     or

May our God, the Chief of the Lamp (again, W. can[n]wyll), transform me

Neu vi eil kawyl yn ardu:

It’s I who’s a second Sawyl (or 'who's like Sawyl') in the gloom:

The way that translation is arrived at is by understanding Welsh poetic rhyme structure.  The words tywyll, kawell and kawyl must all rhyme. Kawyl is emended through the process known as eye-skip to Sawyl.  According to Dr. Rodway:

"It can’t be a case of miscopying a letter, but it could be eye-skip - when a copyist’s eye skips inadvertently to another nearby word resulting in an error.  In this case, he would have eye-skipped to the preceding line's 'kawell' to get the /k-/ fronting what should have been 'sawyl'.  Was not an uncommon error, so quite plausible." 

It naturally follows that the exemplar that lies behind kawell must have ended in -wyll.  There are only two possible words that fit the bill: camel (a Latin loan word which cannot be shown to belong to Welsh) and can[n]wyll.  

A pen canwyll can be assigned to either God or Uther. If to God, it may reflect an allusion to the Biblical story that has the boy Samuel receive his calling while lying asleep in the sanctuary with the lamp of God still burning.  If to Uther, it may have provided Geoffrey of Monmouth with the excuse to invent Uther's dragon-star, said to be Uther.  I would wager that no matter how Geoffrey or his source understood this line, we are referring to the lamp of God in 1 Samuel 3:3, as this ties in directly with the reference to Uther as a 'second Samuel.'

Once again, while we are employing emendations to the text, if we abide by strict poetic rules we cannot opt for other renderings for these lines.

I am myself satisfied with the outcome of this investigation into the meaning the salient portion of the Uther death-song.  As I had already found quite a few additional reasons - some of them composed of very strong argumentation - for identifying Uther with Sawyl Benisel of Ribchester, the forced reading is more welcome than it is disturbing or disappointing.

Because I am now feeling more confident in the case I made for Uther = Sawyl in my book THE BATTLE-LEADER OF RIBCHESTER, I will again be offering that title for publication, with necessary revision material inserted.  Once it is available, I will post it on my blog site and on the usual Facebook pages.