Tinto Hill Cairn
Now that I have finished my Arthurian research and settled on a Northern candidate for a historical Arthur (a son of Sawyl Benisel of Ribchester), I thought I would offer a brief summary of my thoughts on the equally famous Merlin or, rather, Myrddin. Over the years I have written a lot about this elusive character, although very little of it was able to fight its way free of the influence (or shall I say long shadow?) of Geoffrey of Monmouth. What follows is who I think the original Cumbric Myrddin was - before Geoffrey got his ink-stained hands on the inherited Welsh legend.
***
The ancient Classical writer Procopius (in his 6th century CE History Of The Wars, VIII, XX. 42-48) said:
“Now in this island of Britain the men of ancient times built a long wall, cutting off a large part of it; and the climate and the soil and everything else is not alike on the two sides of it. For to the south of the wall there is a salubrious air, changing with the seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool in winter… But on the north side everything is the reverse of this, so that it is actually impossible for a man to survive there even a half-hour, but countless snakes and serpents and every other kind of wild creature occupy this area as their own. And, strangest of all, the inhabitants say that if a man crosses this wall and goes to the other side, he dies straightway… They say, then, that the souls of men who die are always conveyed to this place.”
From the Welsh poem The Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin (Black Book of Carmarthen), we learn that at Myrddin’s Battle of Arderydd:
“Seven score chieftains became gwyllon; In the Wood of Celyddon they died.”
Gwyllon or ‘Wild Ones’ is a word deriving from gwyllt, ‘wild’. The Welsh epithet for Myrddin is, of course, Gwyllt. Myrddin Gwyllt is Myrddin ‘the Wild’.
But as Nikolai Tolstoy pointed out, there is something odd about these two lines. The gwyllon or ‘Wild Ones’ are equated with the warriors who died in the battle! The word ‘died’ in the poem’s second line is Middle Welsh daruuan, i.e. darfuan. Modern Welsh has darfyddaf or darfod, which according to the authoritative Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Welsh dictionary has the following meanings:
‘To come to an end, end, conclude, finish, complete, terminate, cease; expire, die, languish, weaken, fail, fade, decline, perish’
Darfod is an interesting word. It is from the prefix dar-, roughly ‘across’, and bod, ‘to be’, with the regular lenition of b>f. So literally ‘to be across’, possibly in the same sense in which we say of a dead person ‘he has crossed over’.
There is thus no ambiguity in the poetic passage we are considering. The warriors who became ‘Wild Ones’ did not go mad – they died. In this context, then, to become gwyllon means to become a roving spirit that has left its battle-slain body behind. To exist as a ‘Wild One’ is to exist in spirit-form after the death of the body. [1]
The Christian medieval mind either could not accept this notion of wandering spirits or, just as likely, misunderstood it. The gwyllon were transformed into living madmen who leapt or flitted about the forest much as did their Irish counterpart, Suibhne Geilt, or the British madman Fer Caille/Alladhan, mentioned in the story of Suihbne.
In another Myrddin poem, Greetings (Black Book of Carmarthen), we are told by Myrddin himself:
“The hwimleian speaks to me strange tidings, And I prophesy a summer of strife.”
Hwimleian or ‘Grey Wanderer’ is yet another word for a spirit or spectre.
We might then naturally conclude that Myrddin’s madness was of the same kind, i.e. he had died at the Battle of Arderydd. The triple sacrifice he suffers at Drumelzier at the hands of Meldred’s shepherds would then be a “tag on”, made necessary because his already having died was no longer acknowledged and because it was politic to give him a Christian burial. I have shown elsewhere that the Drumelzier tradition is a relocalized one and that Myrddin does not really belong there at all [2].
However, the fact that his triple-death at Drumelzier is a sacred one, and one that mimics the death of the god Lleu in Welsh tradition, is significant. The death is SACRIFICIAL in nature, and such triple deaths were meted out to HUMAN sacrifice victims (see Ross and Robins’ The Life and Death of a Druid Prince). Among the ancient Celts and Germans we have some testimony from Classical authors that war captives were the most commonly sacrificed humans. It is not impossible that Myrddin was captured after the disastrous defeat at Arderydd and sacrificed by his enemy, although since that enemy seems to have been the Christian king Rhydderch, this is a difficult proposition to support. Perhaps a pagan ally of Rhydderch got his hands on Llallogan. Or Llallogan had fled to a neighboring tribal territory and was seized by an opportunistic chieftain.
In the Irish sources we are told of battle-panic and one of its unfortunate results. For example, when the great hero Cuchulainn faces the opposing armies of Ireland,
“He saw from him the ardent sparkling of the bright golden weapons over the heads of the four great provinces of Eriu, before the fall of the cloud of evening. Great fury and indignation seized him on seeing them, at the number of his opponents and at the multitude of his enemies. He seized his two spears, and his shield and his sword, and uttered from his throat a warrior’s shout, so that sprites, and satyrs, and maniacs of the valley, and the demons of the air responded, terror-stricken by the shout which he had raised on high. And the Neman confused the army; and the four provinces of Eriu dashed themselves against the points of their own spears and weapons, so that one hundred warriors died of fear and trembling in the middle of the fort and encampment that night.”
This passage is from W.M. Hennessey’s “The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”. Also from this source:
“Of the effects of this fear inspired by the Badb [or Nemhain] was geltacht or lunacy, which, according to the popular notion, affected the body no less than the mind, and, in fact, made its victims so that they flew through the air like birds.”
We learn more about the precise meaning of geltacht from the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language. There we are told
geltacht
Keywords: panic; terror; frenzy; insanity
In Thomas Kinsella’s translation of “The Tain”, we learn that
“The Nemain brought confusion on the armies and a hundred of their number [while asleep!] fell dead.”
“… that same night Net’s wives, Nemain and Badb, called out to the men of Ireland near the field of Gairech and Irgairech, and a hundred warriors died of fright.”
In THE SAINTLY MADMAN: A STUDY OF THE SCHOLARLY RECEPTION HISTORY OF BUILE SHUIBHNE by Alexandra Bergholm, Department of Comparative Religion, University of Helsinki (2009), we are given a wonderful description of what happened to the title character when he was faced with the horror of battle:
“When the Battle of Mag Rath begins, Suibhne is suddenly alarmed by the cries of the two hosts, and the incident is depicted as follows:
…he looked up, whereupon turbulence (?), and darkness, and fury, and
giddiness, and frenzy, and flight, unsteadiness, restlessness, and
unquiet filled him, likewise disgust with every place in which he used
to be and desire for every place which he had not reached. His fingers
were palsied, his feet trembled, his heart beat quick, his senses were
overcome, his sight was distorted, his weapons fell naked from his
hands, so that through Ronan’s curse he went, like any bird of the air,
in madness and imbecility.”
It should be noted here immediately that the word translated ‘fury’ is nemhain, the goddess’s name used as a common noun.
When we come to the two accounts of the Battle of Arderydd, we see that the “Life of St. Kentigern” preserves the more authentic tradition (although highly Christianized, of course), while that found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Life of Merlin” is considerably diluted:
St. Kentigern’s Life –
“In the midst of that fray, the very sky began to gape open above my head, and I heard what seemed to be a great cracking sound, a voice in the sky saying to me, ‘Lailoken, Lailoken, since you alone are guilty of the blood of all your slain comrades, you alone shall suffer for their sins. You shall be handed over to the minions of Satan, and until the day of your death your companions shall be the beasts of the forest.’ And, as I turned my eyes to the source of the voice, I saw a brilliance so dazzling that no man could bear it. I also saw numerous battle formations of an army in the sky, much like the streaks of lightning. In their hands the warriors held burning lances and shining javelins whgich they brandished at me with bloodthirsty FURY [emphasis mine]. Then, as I turned away, a wicked spirit seized me and consigned me to live among the wild beasts of the forest, as you are my witness.”
Life of Merlin –
“Then, when the air was full of these repeated loud complainings [of Merlin’s grief], a strange madness came upon him. He crept away and fled to the woods, unwilling that any should see his going. Into the forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees. He watched the wild creatures grazing on the pasture of the glades. Sometimes he would follow them, sometimes pass them in his course. He made use of the roots of plants and of grasses, of fruit from ttrees and of the blackberries of the thicket. He became a Man of the Woods [‘silvester homo’, the Fer Caille title given to him in the story of Suibhne Geilt], as if dedicated to the woods. So for a whole summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.”
The author Hennessey, like the Christian medieval audience of the Merlin story, did not realize that madness could be a poetic metaphor for a spectral death-state. It was not the demented body that fled like a bird through the forest after a battle, but the spirit of the warrior whose death was literally caused by the goddess Nemhain.
Nemhain’s involvement in such battles reinforces my earlier argument that Myrddin’s/Merlin’s Lady of the Lake, who goes by names such as Viviane, Ninniane, Nimiane, etc., and who is also found in Welsh sources as Nefyn, wife of Cynfarch, is indeed Nemhain.
So what to make of Myrddin’s madness [3]?
Part of the clue to solving the mystery may involve the “coincidental” pairings of Myrddin/Llallogan and St. Martin and/or St. Ninian sites. We find early St. Martin churches in Liddesdale, where Myrddin fights and is defeated at Arfderydd We find St. Ninian (of Whithorn or Candida Casa, with its supposed very early St. Martin’s Church) at Cathures (probably the Roman fort of Cadder) and the Molendinar Burn in Glasgow, where St. Kentigern later met Llallogan (Laloecen). We find a Martin name atop Myrddin’s mountain of Tinto [4], and there was a Ninian church at Wiston itself (although this appears to have been established by the Templers).
Some have tried to make a case for Myrddin BEING St. Martin, but in Welsh, Martinus would become *Merthin and it is impossible, linguistically speaking, for Myrddin to come from the Latin name.
St. Martin died on the date of a Roman festival to the Manes and his feast/funeral day became known as Old Halloween or Old Allhallows Eve.
I had before written about the death and burial of Myrddin at a river confluence, and how this brings to mind Candes or Condate ("confluence") of St. Martin, as well as the god Mars Condatis in Britain (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/03/myrddin-mars-condatis-and-st-martin.html).
While it was easy to explain Myrddin's replacement by St. Martin, it was not so easy to account for why Ninian, or rather *Uinniau, came to be associated with Myrddin or St. Martin. Two articles cover my thoughts on this problem:
[1]
According to Dr. Graham Isaac of The National University of Ireland, Galway, the name Myrddin may be from an earlier, not directly attested *Myr-ddyn, with the second element dyn ‘man, person’, and the first element Myr- which is found in the name of the Old Irish goddess-type figure Morrigan (who also prophesies), and in English night-mare, and also in several Slavic words. This original form would have been something like *moro-donyes, ‘man-demon, specter’ or “man of supernatural character” (see Isaac, G., 2001, 'Myrddin, proffwyd diwedd y byd: ystyriaethau newydd ar ddatblygiad ei chwedl', Llên Cymru, 24 :13-23).
Thus the basic meaning of the name Myrddin was ‘supernatural being, elf, goblin, phantom’ or the like. Another possible rendering would be something like ‘Elf-man’. His father’s name was Morfryn or Mor-bryn, literally ‘Elf-hill’.
Myrddin was a sort of revered ghost, something akin to the manes of Roman religion. About the closest thing we in the modern world can compare this to is the Cult of the Saints. We understand how a dead holy man could be worshiped, and how one could communicate with him.
The primary difference between the two is that while a saint became divine after his death due to his religious works in life, a pagan became a species of god simply because ghosts were inherently divine.
The easiest way for us to understand Myrddin is to take a good look at a recent study of the Roman cult of the dead by Dr. Charles King. After offering a definition of the manes, the author challenges "the widespread assumption that the term 'manes' always refers to collective groups of the dead" and demonstrates "that the Romans worshipped dead individuals as manes."
A funeral inscription from Netherby, Cumbria, next to the Myrddin sites, showing D.M. for 'Dis Manibus'
From "The Ancient Roman Afterlife: Di Manes, Belief, and the Cult of the Dead": (https://books.google.com/books?id=bErUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false):
For Chapter Two of Dr. King's book (which he was kind enough to send me in its pre-published form), see https://www.facebook.com/download/283328186028439/di%20manes%20chapter%20two%20charles%20king.pdf?av=100006043414438&eav=AfYYn5GtUl6U7dJwCiSn19bOI7atIPOlzzE0iyk53MOKVCvSGq4ksMjnQRufUKTDJBE&hash=Acr5x4ggnHALXa9q.
[2]
I’m convinced the answers lies in a relocation. In Liddesdale, at Newcastleton, the Tweeden Burn empties into the Liddel Water.
Early forms of this stream-name include Tueeden (Blaeu/Pont map 1654), Tweden (1541, 1580), Tweden (1583), Tueden (1599), Twyden (1841).
According to Alan James, this stream-name appears to represent Tweed + a diminutive Brittonic –in suffix, and this
“… pushes the name back to the 12th century or earlier, possibly a lot earlier, and implies the stream was called Tweed or something similar before that.”
Given that Myrddin/Llallogan fought at Arthuret where the Liddel and the Esk meet, and Meldred/Maldred may have been the lord of Cumbria, I would identify as the proper death-place of our “madman” the Tweeden Burn. This notion is made all the more attractive by the presence at Old Castleton, a bit further up the Liddel, of a very early St. Martin’s Church, quite possibly an establishment originating from Whithorn. I have suggested elsewhere that Myrddin was either identified with St. Martin or replaced by the saint in several locations in Lowland Scotland.
If I’m right and the Tweeden Burn is the place where Myrddin underwent his triple sacrifice, then the churchyard he was buried in must be that of St. Martin’s at Old Castleton. Note that there is no St. Martin or St. Ninian connection to Drumelzier.
However, we have forgotten about the Powsail Burn at Drumelzier. This place-name is from *pol-, ‘pool’, plus the word for ‘willow.’ Not coincidentally, there is a Willow Pool at the confluence of the Liddel Water and the Esk. This is also the location of the Liddel Strength fort, sometimes also referred to in the sources as the Moat of Liddel (not to be confused with the castle at Old Castleton in Liddesdale).
[3]
Terms relevant to Myrddin's madness as drawn from the GPC:
gwyllt, gwyll3
[H. Grn. asen guill, gl. onager, Crn. gwyls, gwylls, H. Lyd. gueld-enes, gl. insula indomita et inhabitabilis, H. Wydd. geilt (bnth. efallai o’r Frth.; cf. yr epithed yn e.’r ddau gymeriad Myrddin Wyllt a Suibhne geilt): < *u̯eltī, sef ff. yn cynnwys estyniad -t- ar y gwr. IE. *əl- ‘troi, cordeddu’ neu *u̯el- ‘tynnu, plicio’, cf. Alm. wild, S. wild; am y ff. gwyll, cf. gwell am gwellt (er mai mater o org. ydyw weithiau)]
frantic, raving, demented, distracted, mad (as in the name Myrddin Wyllt)
b (yn y ff. l. gwyll(i)on) Rhai sy’n wyllt, cyflym, &c. (e.e. meirch ysbrydol neu nwyfus, milwyr sy’n ymladd fel pe baent wallgof), gwallgofiaid; pobl ddidoriad, rhai heb eu gwastrodi; ysbrydion, bwganod:
wild ones (e.g. spirited horses, warriors fighting as if mad), madmen; turbulent or unruly people; sprites.
gwyllon, gwyllion
[camystyr a roes John Davies i enghrau. o ff. l. gwyllt, gwyll3 drwy eu cysylltu â gwyll1]
e.ll.
Ysbrydion y meirw, cysgodion, drychiolaethau, bwbachod; rhodienwyr neu ladron nos, gwylliaid:
manes, the spirits of the dead, shades, ghosts, sprites, hobgoblins; night-prowlers, night-thieves, vagabonds.
1632 D, *gwyllon, tenebriones, manes.
1688 TJ, gwŷll, gwâg ysprŷd: a Hag, Goblin or Ghost.
id., gwŷllon, gwâg ysprydion: walking Spirits, Goblins.
1753 TR, †gwyllon, spirits, ghosts, hobgoblins; night-walkers, night-thieves.
c. 1753 Gron 97, Ewch … / At wyllon y tywyllwg, / I oddef fyth ei ddu fwg.
1773 W d.g. ghosts of the dead, manes.
1793 Dafydd Ionawr: CD 196, Y Ddaear sydd yn ddiau / Ym mron gan y Gwyllon gau.
1800 P, gwyllion, shades, ghosts; hobgoblins; night-walkers.
id., gwyllon, shades, phantoms; ghosts.
Gw. hefyd gwyllt, ŵyll.
ellyll
[?all (yr elf. a welir yn arall)+-yll neu hyll, ond cf. yr e.p. Gwydd. Ailill < Aillill]
• eg. (un. bach. ellyllyn) ll. ellyllon, ellyllion, ellyllod, ellyllau.
a Coblyn, un o’r tylwyth teg, drychiolaeth, lledrith, ysbryd, aneilun, bwbach, bwci; ysbryd drwg, anysbryd, Beibl. math o ddiafol yn trigo mewn adfeilion, ysbryd dewiniaeth; un dieflig o greulon:
goblin, elf, fairy, sprite, genius (of a place, &c.), apparition, phantom, spectre, wraith, ghost, shade, bogey; evil spirit, fiend, devil, demon, bibl. a kind of demon that haunts ruins, satyr, familiar spirit
llall [from which Llallawg and Llallogan are derived]
[tebyg fod y llall yn ff. ddbl. ar all-, cf. arall, H. Lyd. al(l)all, a’r H. Wydd. alaill, ff. ddiryw ar alaile ‘y llall’]
rh. ll. lleill, a’i ragflaenu gan y fan.
a (Yr) un arall (rhai eraill, gweddill, rhelyw); (y) nesaf, (yr) ail, (yr) un cyfatebol:
(the) other (others, rest); (the) next, (the) second
*chwyfleian, chwimleian, chwimbleian, chwibleian
[chwŷf+lleian ‘un llwyd ei wedd’ (llai ‘gwelw, llwyd’); hen org. am chwyfleian yw chwimleian, chwibleian oherwydd sgrifennu m a b am f. Oherwydd camddeall yr elf. olaf, aeth y gair i olygu ‘daroganwraig’, &c.]
eg.b. ll. -od.
a Gŵr gwyllt gwelw ei wedd, crwydryn:
wild man of pallid countenance, wanderer.
13g. C 519-10, disgogan hwimleian hwetil adiwit.
id. 557-8, Rimdyuueid huimleian chuetyl enryuet.
c. 1400 R 5809-10, Wi awendyd wenn mawr adrasdil gogan chwipleian chwedleu.
[4]
The reference to the location of this mountain is found in Gwasgargerd vyrdin yny bed, the “Separation-Song of Myrddin in the Grave” of the Red Book of Hergest. There Myrddin says:
‘Gwasawg, your cry to Gwenddydd
was told to me by the wild men of the mountain
in Aber Caraf.’
From other references in the early poetry we know that Gwasawg was a ‘supporter’ of the Christian champion Rhydderch Hael, King of Strathclyde. The name is a diminutive of Welsh gwas, ‘lad, servant’.
As it turns out, St. Kentigern as a boy (see Chapter 8 of Jocelyn's Vita) is called servuli, from servulus, a dim. of Latin servus, with a meaning 'sevant-lad, young slave'.
As Kentigern is brought into close connection with Myrddin as Lailoken in the saint's life, and Kentigern's royal patron was Rhydderch, I'm proposing that Gwasawg is a Welsh rendering of servuli and that the former is thus St. Kentigern himself.
Note that Myrddin is said to be chased by the hunting-dogs of Rhydderch, and Kentigern or *Cuno-tigernos means "Hound Lord."
While Aber Caraf has been rendered by at least one translator as Aber Craf (Peter Goodrich, The Romance of Merlin, 1990), a location in south-central Wales, we can be sure it is actually to be found in Lowland Scotland.
We have seen how Merlin/Lailoken is present in both the region of Glasgow and at Drumelzier on the Tweed. It has long been thought that his mountain must have been somewhere between these two places, and most likely at or not far from the sources of the Clyde and Tweed, a sort of symbolic ‘center’ of the southern ‘Caledonian Wood’.
I would identify the mountain in Aber Caraf with Tinto Hill (2320 feet / 707 meters), which looms over ancient Abercarf, now called Wiston. Abercarf, according to the Scottish Place-Name Society’s “Brittonic Language in the North”, is from aber, ‘confluence’, plus garw, ‘rough’, derived from the name of the Garf Water, a tributary of the upper Clyde.
However, when I asked Alan James, the author of BLITON, as to the possibility that Abercarf could instead contain carw, 'stag', he responded:
"Quite right. As to the merits of the two interpretations, I'm agnostic. The phonology of either wouldn't be difficult to explain. Garw and Gaelic garbh are of course pretty common in river-names, and I'm rather less eager than some place-name scholars to see animals, e.g. carw, in such names, but there certainly are parallels."
Just a few kilometers upstream on the Clyde from the Garf Water is Hartside and Hartside Burn. Red Deer were once plentiful here.
Given Myrddin's association with the stag in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Life of Merlin" (see Chapter 5), and his placement historically at Arferderydd/Arthuret in Cumbria in what was the northwestern limit of the ancient Carvetti (Stag-people) territory, a mountain at the confluence of the Stag Water would make a lot of sense.
Tinto Hill is situated between Drumelzier to the east and Glasgow to the northwest. It is also only a few miles north-northwest of the headwaters of the Clyde and Tweed. Thus it just happens to stand exactly where we would expect the hill of Myrddin to be found.
The hill’s name was discussed long ago by W. J. Watson in his GENERAL SURVEY OF AYRSHIRE AND STRATHCLYDE, History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland, 1926 (reprinted 1993 by BIRLINN, Edinburgh, ISBN 1 874744 06 8):
“Tinto appears in 'Karyn de Tintou,' 'Kaerne de Tintou,' c. 1315 (RMS); in Macfarlane it is Tyntoche once, Tynto thrice; in Scots, Tintock, as also in the Retours ; it is for teinteach, 'place of fire'…”
Atop Tinto Hill is Tinto Cairn, of Bronze Age date and the largest summit cairn in all of Scotland. Details on the hill and cairn can be found here:
http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/47525/details/tinto+cairn/
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/biggar/tinto/index.html
http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/image.php?service=RCAHMS&id=47525&image_id=SC342977
Different reasons have been supplied for why this hill is called ‘place of fire’. One suggests it gets its name from the fact that its exposed red Felsite rock can be given a fiery glow by the setting sun. This geology is discussed here:
http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/gcrdb/GCRsiteaccount401.pdf
Another possible explanation is that the hill was used for beacon fires or even for Beltane fires:
“Long a beacon post and a place of Beltane fires, it took thence its name of Tinto, signifying the ‘hill of fire’.” [Groome, 1885, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland]
I would say these apparently conflicting ideas are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it may precisely have been the red-glowing color of the rocks in the light of the setting sun that drew people to this mountain as being particularly sacred, and they may then have used it for Beltane fires.
It would surely be significant if Myrddin were thought to be communing with the ancestral ghosts at a huge Bronze Age cairn atop a mountain known as the Place of Fire. This would intimately connect him with seasonal Beltane rites.
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