NOTE: The material on Dinas Emrys as Caer Dathal, maintained below, was updated later on when a good translation of a key line of the MABINOGION tale 'Math son of Mathonwy' was provided to me. The site of Uther's kindred is actually elsewhere in Arfon, and I will reveal that in a new blog post shortly.
Dinas Emrys Hillfort
Years ago I came up with what I thought was a good argument for Dinas Emrys as Caer Dathal. From there I went to Caer Dathal as the original site later relocated to Tintagel by Geoffrey of Monmouth. And while I neglected to make much about it, I went to the trouble of demonstrating the the language in the Welsh MABINOGION tale 'Culhwch and Olwen' pointedly remarks that the men of Caer Dathal/Dinas Emrys were related to Arthur on his father's side. I did not bother to consider that if his father's relatives were at Caer Dathal, then the natural conclusion to be reached is that Uther was from Caer Dathal.
Among the many pieces I wrote on these subjects, here are three of the most important:
Obviously, we have to be careful when looking at Dinas Emrys and Uther's supposed connection with it. The whole Ambrosius story is nothing more than a fable (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-ghost-ambrosius-reading-4th-century.html), yet it was an early one, being found in its incipient form in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM. As Uther was made a brother of Ambrosius in Geoffrey of Monmouth's HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN, we might logically expect to find him placed at a fort that had been renamed for Ambrosius.
However, it is remarkable that 'Culhwch and Olwen' does not call the fort Dinas Emrys, but resorts to the earlier name, Caer Dathal. There is no attempt here to link Uther with Ambrosius in Gwynedd. Instead, the absence of the Emrys name in this context points to my old idea that Emrys, who is given all of western Wales by Vortigern, is a substitution for Cunedda, himself of Irish extraction (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-true-identity-of-uther-pendragon.html).
The case for Uther as Cunedda seemed reasonable to me, but I abandoned it when one interpretation of some critical lines of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN elegy came to be favored over another. Which reading is to be preferred is mere personal choice, as either are allowable given the construction of the poem. My readers know I have discussed this problem in infinite detail. Why again is it so important?
Well, if we read the relevant lines as
May our God, the chief luminary (corrected from pen kawell to p. kannwyll), transform me
It's I whose a second Sawyl (corrected from kawyl) in the gloom
we end up entangled in the Illtud mess I have also treated of in an excruciating way. Illtud comes into the picture because of his association with the Biblical Samuel and the Welsh form of the name Sawyl, and because his military titles in his VITA can be spliced together and rendered by W. Uther Pendragon. Some weight was given to this identification or mistaken conflation (?) through Mabon servant of Uther's presence in the Ely (Elai) Valley, where Illtud's Dinas Powys fort is located. Of course, just because Mabon is situated in Glywysing does not necessarily mean Uther should be there, as Glywys is an eponym for a man from Glevum and in 'Culhwch and Olwen' Mabon is a prisoner at Caer Gloyw/Gloucester, the Roman period Glevum. The church of Llanfabon is also not far from the Ely next to a river that shares an estuary with the Ely.
Utilizing Sawyl we can then extrapolate that Uther was, in actuality, Sawyl Benisel of Ribchester. The problem with this identification is that the only real bits of "evidence" that can be presented in favor of it is the possible presence of the draco at the Ribchester Roman fort of the Sarmatian veterans and Madog Ailithir son of Sawyl. Uther also had a son named Madog, and this Madog had a son named Eliwlad - a name which can be interpreted as semantically identical to the Ailithir epithet of Sawyl's son Madog.
Alas, there is good reason to localize both Uther's son Madog and Eliwlad (as the 'Grief-lord', another even better etymology for the name which I proposed) in the valley of Nantlle in Gwynedd, not far from Dinas Emrys (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-shocking-discovery-real-location-of.html). Eliwlad as a death-eagle in an oak tree is a motif copied from the death-eagle Lleu in an oak tree between the two lakes of Nantlle ("Math Son of Mathonwy"). According to the STANZAS OF THE GRAVES, Mabon's grave is in Nantlle. This might show a traditional identification of the two gods.
Now, if we interpret the lines of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN in a different way, thusly
May our God transform me, the Chief Basket (or Chief of the Basket; W. kawell left unemended)
It's I whose like (eil can mean either 'like' or 'a second') a star (kawyl becomes kannwyll) in the gloom
We end up in a totally different place. First, kannwyll could not only in a transf. sense mean star, it could also mean leader and that would match the meaning of tywyssawc yn tywyll, 'leader in the darkness', found one line before that which contains pen kawell. If we allow for Uther to be transformed into a star we can account for Geoffrey of Monmouth's dragon-star, which the author of that pseudo-history literally says represents Uther himself. We already know that Geoffrey took the gorlassar epithet Uther uses for himself earlier in the elegy and transforms the word into a separate personage, Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, and then shows the connection between Uther and Gorlois by having the former through Merlin's magic become the latter.
While we can easily see how Geoffrey misinterpreted Pendragon ('chief of warrior/warriors' according to Rachel Bromwich) as 'the Dragon's Head', and may have thought of the Roman draco, it is difficult to account for the dragon-comet if we refuse to adopt the elegy reading I have suggested above. Sure, there may have been an actual tradition extant regarding a comet which attended the death of Ambrosius, but if so, it has not survived in Welsh tradition. Instead, Ambrosius/Emrys is linked to the dragon of Dinas Emrys.
And then there is Pen Kawell. In the past, this has been considered a meaningless phrase. Marged Haycock, modern editor of the poem, went so far as to suggest this might be a basket for containing trophy heads (as such heads are mentioned later in the poem). But I have shown there is another solution - and one which allows us to identify Uther with Cunedda.
I have demonstrated that the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE'S Ceawlin bears a name which, if interpreted literally, seems to be composed of ceawl + -in, ceawl being the English form of the word basket, derived from the same Latin source as W. cawell. Cunedda himself bore a second name - Irish Coline ( = Cuilenn), found on the famous Wroxeter Stone and confirmed by Irish records. I have only recently shown that this name could have become Ceawlin in the AS:
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/03/how-to-get-ceawlin-from-coline.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/03/how-to-get-ceawlin-from-coline.html
That is where things stand at present for my many years of Arthurian research. While I like having the Arthurian battles in the North, they can be shown to be Welsh versions of Gewissei battles found listed in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. If Uther = Cunedda and Cerdic of Wessex is, indeed, Ceredig son of Cunedda, and we must have an extant Camlan, the one in NW Wales works just fine as that location is near Ceredig's kingdom of Ceredigion. Ceredig has several Arth- names among his immediate descendents and an Arth River in the center of his kingdom, so Arthur from Artorius as a decknamen for Ceredig is not improbable.
All in all, if we respect the Welsh tradition regarding Caer Dathal and Nantlle and decide against the Sawyl emendation of the Uther elegy poem, I must admit to having found nothing that will cause me to reject the Uther = Cunedda equation.
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