SAWYL/SAMUEL IN THE UTHER PENDRAGON ELEGY: MERE POETIC METAPHOR, NOT IDENTIFICATION

The Beginning of the 'Marwnat Vthyr Pen'

1 Samuel 14:47–48

The New Revised Standard Version

47 When Saul had taken the kingship over Israel, he fought against all his enemies on every side—against Moab, against the Ammonites, against Edom, against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines; wherever he turned he routed them. 48 He did valiantly, and struck down the Amalekites, and rescued Israel out of the hands of those who plundered them.

In recent weeks, I have gone from offering a last-ditch defense of Sawyl of the North as Arthur's father (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-death-knell-for-armorican-theory-of.html) to retracting that idea entirely (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-death-knell-for-armorican-theory-of.html).  As the plausibility of ARMORICOS as a reading for the ARM[...]S of the L. Artorius Castus memorial inscription became less and less attractive, and the likelihood that it was, indeed, Caunius Priscus who led the 1500 British spearmen to Rome to get rid of Perennis grew [1], it became increasngly difficult not to accept ARMENIOS of 163 and the proposed founding of Liburnia (over which Castus became procurator) in 168.

But if I was going to let go of Sawyl as the actual historical entity lurking behind Uther Pendragon, that meant treating once more of the elegy poem on Arthur's father, the 'Marwnat Vthyr Pen.'

In this poem, Uther liken himself to Sawyl, i.e. Samuel, and the context seems to suggest that this is intended to be a reference to the Biblical Samuel:

Neu vi a elwir gorlassar:

It’s I who’s styled ‘Armed in Blue’:

vy gwrys bu enuys y’m hescar.

my ferocity snared my enemy.

5 Neu vi tywyssawc yn tywyll:

It is I who’s a leader in darkness:

a’m rithwy am dwy pen kawell.

Our God, the Chief Luminary, transforms me. [1]

Neu vi eil Sawyl5 yn ardu:

It’s I who’s a second Sawyl in the gloom:

ny pheidwn heb wyar rwg deu lu.

I’d not give up without bloodshed [the fight] between two forces.

What I had neglected to really consider was the chief role of Samuel in the Bible: he had appointed Saul as the first king of Israel.  And this king's military career, before he lost God's favor, reads remarkably like that of Arthur's.  In other words, the poetic language is implying that as Samuel was to Saul, so Uther was to Arthur. 

The Welsh, in the process of legend-building, wrongly identified Uther Pendragon, who appears to have belonged to the Birdoswald/Banna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall, with St. Illtud.  This happened because the Latin sources that dealt with the saint supplied him with military ranks and descriptors that could be interpreted as exact equivalents of the Welsh Uther Pendragon, 'Terrible Chief-soldier' or 'Terrible Chief of Soldiers.' Thus we find Illtud seemingly confused with Sawyl in the Welsh materials, and Eldad (= Illtud) in Geoffrey of Monmouth being compared to Samuel.

As I had years ago successfully, through the application of place-names studies, placed Sawyl of the North near the Ribchester fort of the Roman-period Sarmatian veterans, an identification of Uther with this particular Sawyl seemed appropriate.  There seemed to be some incidental matchups as well in regards to certain family members of Uther and Sawyl.  Sawyl also had married an Irish princess, allowing us to for the first time account for the fact that all Arthurs subsequent to the more famous one belonged to Irish-descended dynaties in Britain. All in all, it looked very promising.

The problem? In order for the Artorius name to have been preserved in the lands of the settled Sarmatian veterans, we would need for L. Artorius Castus to have been in Britain when the Sarmatian troops were there.  And that meant that his leading British legionary vexillations against ARM[...]S has to indicate ARMORICOS, where he would have fought in the Deserters' War.  There simply was no other alternative. 

Right now, given the above reappraisal of the significance of the appearance of Sawyl in the Uther elegy, I am not disposed to continue favoring the Sawyl theory.  I think that Uther, compared with Sawyl metaphorically, came to be wrongly identified with St. Illtud due to the latter's military titles.  When this happened, the Sawyl comparison was transferred to Illtud.  

[1]

I think Priscus led the 1500. It is the natural corollary to his time as legate of the Sixth at York. The Empire  needed a man who knew the British troops coming over to help against the deserters. He would have been the logical choice. That he wouldn't have led them because he was removed when the troops in Britain tried to raise him to the purple need not deter us. The offending troops could have been purged or disciplined and the ones sent were picked because they were loyal to Commodus.  See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/05/l-artorius-castus-in-armorica-case-for.html for a discussion with Roger Tomlin of the Caunius Priscus inscription.

[2] 

Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin,

edited and translated by Marged Haycock,

CMCS Publications, Department of Welsh, Aberystwyth University, 2007.

My translation, made with the assistance of Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales and Prof. Peter Schrijver of Utretcht.  The sequence tywyll/kawell (for kanwyll)/Sawyl (for kawyl) is the only possible rendering for these lines, given the rhyming constraints of the poem.

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.