A Two-Tailed Comet
A few weeks ago, I went over the choice I was facing in terms of how to interpret a couple of key lines from the Uther elegy...
"Everything comes down to how I choose to read those critical lines of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN:
May our God, the chief luminary, transform me
It's I whose a second Sawyl in the gloom
or as
May our God transform me, the Chief Basket
It's I whose like a star [cannwyll in its trans. sense] in the gloom"
For the reasons expressed in the piece in question (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/04/and-winner-of-arthur-sweepstakes-is.html), I opted for the second choice.
After reviewing everything I've done in terms of research on Uther these past many years - including, most recently, re-exploring the Gwythyr-Gwythur references in the 'Marwnat Vthyr Pen' and 'Culhwch ac Olwen' - I feel compelled to reexamine everything from a more objective standpoint.
Let us begin with Uther's dragon-star, something I have discussed many times (see, for instance, my statement on this celestial phenomenon in the link supplied above).
The story of the dragon-star in Geoffrey of Monmouth is a famous one. Here is the translation of the episode from THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN by Lewis Thorpe:
"On his way to the battle, Uther saw a most remarkable spectacle in the skies. There appeared a star of such magnitude and brilliance that it was seen both day and night. The star emitted a single ray of light that created a fiery mass resembling the body and head of a dragon. Shining from the mouth of the dragon came two rays of light [actually the typical two tails of a comet]. One extended out across the skies of Britain and over Gaul. The other extended out over the Irish Sea culminating in seven lesser beams of light. Such was its magnitude, it could be seen all across Britain and beyond, and filled the people with fear and dread not knowing what it might portend."
Merlin tells the king this about the star:
"For the star, and the fiery dragon under it, signifies yourself, and the ray extending towards the Gallic coast, portends that you shall have a most potent son [Arthur], to whose power all those kingdoms shall be subject over which the ray reaches. But the other ray signifies a daughter, whose sons and grandsons shall successively enjoy the kingdom of Britain.”
When one reads the 'Marwnat Vthyr Pen', one notices first that Uther calls himself gorlassar, an epithet meaning 'the very blue', a reference (perhaps) to blue-enamelled armor and/or weapons, woad tattooing (my suggestion) or even the blue glow of a comet (!). We do know that Geoffrey of Monmouth took this epithet and converted it into Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. But, in a nod to the original source, he has Uther transform into Gorlois, thus becoming gorlassar.
If we do not accept cannwyll in its trans. sense of star for the line in question, we are left scratching our heads as to where Geoffrey came up with his comet motif. Obviously, a poetic metaphor that has God transform Uther into a star in the gloom easily accounts for the motif. Otherwise, we can credit Geoffrey with pure creativity in this context. He might have had the comet appear because there was a tradition of a comet appearing at the death of Ambrosius or merely because it was medieval tradition that comets heralded the deaths of great kings. My idea that the comet was a real one, dateable to the ascension of Uther to the kingship, is not impossible, but the problem we face is that Ambrosius was a 4th century figure, not a 5th century one. Certainly, Geoffrey's interpretation of Pendragon as 'the dragon's head' permitted him to associate this epithet with the comet, complete with head and twin-tails.
But I rather tend to think of Geoffrey as a genius of synthesis, and it makes more sense to imagine him
concocting the story of the star by drawing the image of Uther as a star directly from the poem.
Accepting cannwyll in this line leaves us with 'pen kawell' in the preceding line. According to Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales, because of the grammatical structure of the line (where a preposition such as ym/yn, 'in, at', fronting pen kawell is missing), the phrase cannot be a place-name. Thus the phrase must be a reference to to either God or Uther in the line as 'chief something' or 'chief of something.' Kawell if left unamended means 'basket.' If we allow a slight change to kafell (a word originating from the same Latin source as kawell), we have 'sanctuary, temple, holy of holies.'
Now, we must ask an honest question: does it make more sense to allow kafell for God - the Chief of the Sanctuary/Holy of Holies - or kawell for Ceawlin? If the latter, why not use the full name from the Anglo-Saxon source? Or why not use Cunedda, if the Welsh knew that's who Ceawlin was? While my idea for kawell as Ceawlin is quite clever, if we go simply by logic in this context (since we lack any true evidence), I must say that Pen Kafell for God must be preferred.
This would mean the relevant lines of the Uther elegy should read as follows:
May our God, the chief of the temple, transform me
It's I whose like a star in the gloom
Note that cannwyl also had a trans. sense of 'leader', and so matches the meanng of the tywyssawc, 'leader' in the darkness two lines up.
This eminently practical rendering is fatal to both of my previous theories on the identiy of Uther Pendragon. We lose Ceawlin, and we lose Sawyl (whether this last is for St. Illtud or for Sawyl Benisel).
What, if anything, are we left with, then?
THE ONLY REMAINING APPARENT CLUE REGARDING UTHER'S IDENTITY RELATES TO THE GWYTHYR/GWYTHUR CHARACTER FOUND IN BOTH THE 'MARWNAT VTHYR PEN' AND 'CULHWCH AC OLWEN.'
Otherwise, in terms of what the Welsh sources have to offer us, we have only Uther's relationship to the men of Caer Dathal in Arfon.
As a possibly valuable exercise (if for no other reason than to be able to exclude yet more relics of traditional story from history), I had once looked at the other personages mentioned in the Uther elegy. All of them could be placed in the North. See
There is only one possible place-name in the Uther elegy. Marged Haycock does a good job of discussing it in her notes to the poem:
hayarndor edeithor pen mynyd.
an iron door, a fire break on the mountain top.
hayarndor edeithor pen mynyd Hayarndor, cf. durdor CBT II 2.41 and many
compounds in dor (listed by G) ‘entrance, door; defence’ including §18.24
pybyrdor; §23.16 tewdor; Echrys Ynys line 7 Seon tewdor; and several CBT
instances, especially by Cynddelw who also uses haearn as first element
(haearndawn; haearnllu). Hayarndor is not paralleled in poetry, however.
Edeithor is not attested elsewhere: G suggests et (bet) ‘until’ (cf. educher
‘until evening’) + a word meaning ‘gap, haven’, etc., or alternatively, a
compound of root of godeith ‘fire, conflagration’ + or ‘boundary, limit, edge’.
Godeith with mynyd, EWSP 460.19 ruthur godeith ar diffeith vynyd. More radical
emendations might involve diachor ‘invincible’; durdor (cf. CBT II 2.41 Escor
dor, durdor diachoraf); eissor ‘nature’; eurddor; rheithor, pedeiror, etc. Echdor
is collocated with dor and compounds in CBT I 25.16 Kyueissor Echdor, aerdor
eurdyrn; IV 6.122 Echel dor, Echdor gor goeluein (and 6 other instances in CBT
corpus). But these can be no more than speculation. The translation follows G’s
second suggestion. The line, following suggested cerenhyd, thus has two images
of defence — the door of iron, and a boundary or limit (or) to the blazing heather,
gorse, etc. (godeith, or some other formation from *deith) on the mountain top.
Pen mynydd simply ‘on the mountain top’; although a reference to
Penmynydd, Anglesey, a house of the Tudur family in the 14c (see GGM I, 14-
15) cannot be ruled out. Cynddelw refers to Penmynydd in his praise-poem to St
Tysilio who had connections with Anglesey as well as with Meifod in Powys
(CBT III 3.196).
Pen Mynydd on Anglesey actually has white and red dragon place-names associated with it, and a dragon story that resembles what we find associated with Dinas Emrys. I wrote about this in detail in the following post:
Alas, there is nothing at that Penmynydd that would evoke an iron door or some sort of fiery barrier. Indeed, there is no sign of any kind of fortification. Of all the Pen Mynydds I have been able to find, including some in the North (see https://spns.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Alan_James_Brittonic_Language_in_the_Old_North_BLITON_Volume_II_Dictionary_2019_Edition.pdf under the listing for mönïδ (m), mïnïδ), only one has atop it a significant fortification: the Penmynydd at The Bulwark hillfort at Llanmadoc (https://www.streetmap.co.uk/map?x=243500&y=192500&z=120&sv=llanmadoc&st=3&tl=Map+of+Llanmadoc+Hill,+Swansea+/+Abertawe+[Hill/Mountain]&searchp=ids&mapp=map, https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/301327/). It will be recalled that Uther's son was named Madog.
There is a cromlech called Coetan Arthur at Cae pen Mynydd near Penllech on Anglesey:
Any Uther site found in Wales, it goes without saying, must be suspect. Why? Because it was the habit of the Welsh storytellers (who were so often crafting propagandist pseudo-history) to bring heroes from all over Britain to Wales. This was a natural development of the shrinking borders of the Cymry, the formation of the so-called Celtic Fringe. When your hero belonged in a place that had long been English, you "imported" him to a location that was still perceived as being British. We have plenty of examples of this being done in the Welsh literary record. Caer Dathal may be nothing more than a Welsh substitution for Tintagel (I wrote on that possibility in some detail) or if the Welsh knew Math of Caer Dathal meant 'bear" in Irish, they may have put Arthur at the fort for no other reason than his name was construed as containing W. arth, 'bear.'
If we look outside of Wales, the last somewhat intriguing bit of tradition remains Gwythyr. But positing Uther as Penn son of Nethawc utilizes a story that comprises a horribly garbled legend, throwing together Picts and Dalriadans, a god (Gwyn), a mock goddess (Creiddylad) and a Welsh form of Victor which itself may be a Latinized version of an Irish name (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/04/creiddylad-not-goddess-welsh.html)! That's a pretty flimsy basis for a historical theory.
Right about now my readers are saying to themselves, "Uh, you've just systematically destroyed all your theories." I suppose that is true, in a way. I look at it differently, though. Had I not delved very deeply into every nook and cranny of Welsh heroic tradition for information that might help produce a valid candidate for Uther, I would not know that such tradition, while immensely valuable from a literary standpoint, is of really no value at all in discovering any history. I now have such serious doubts about all of it that I can understand why academia simply refuses to deal with the notion of a historical Arthur.
Fortunately, I do still possess something of worth. It is, of all things, a simple map.
This map was fashioned after years of research into the Arthurian battle names as found in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and the ANNALES CAMBRIAE. I brought everything I had to bear on the problems involved with finding and substantiating these battle names.
The conclusion I had reached in my first book, THE BATTLE-LEADER OF THE NORTH, was that place-names, history, archaeology and associated disciplines combined to suggest a man on Hadrian's Wall who had fought up and down the ancient Roman Dere Street. I will not here seek to repeat the many arguments that led me to this conclusion. Suffice it to say that, in the main, I was able to avoid the pitfalls I later encountered when I decided to look for more specific information in the Welsh heroic poetry and stories. The "hypothetical" Arthur on the Wall seemed to fit the bill.
I now realize that much time, energy and anguish could have been saved had I not plunged down the rabbit holes of folklore, myth and legend and romantic fiction. Had I not done so, however, I would never have known what I know now: that there does not seem to be any reliable historical information preserved in the Welsh traditional material outside of the bare battle lists of the HB and AC. And, as has been discussed endlessly by highly qualified scholars, even those are not entirely above suspicion.
So where to go from here?
Not back to the drawing board entirely. But the apparent PA GUR identification of Illtud with Uther continues to beckon, mainly because that strand of tradition leads straight to the Liddington Badbury.
First off, then, will be a reevaluation of the three raptors of Elei, one of whom - Mabon son of Modron - was the servant of Uther Pendragon.
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