Caer Engan
My readers know by now that like many another Arthurian researcher I've been trying to pinpoint the Arfon location of Uther's Caer Dathal (the original fort which came to be relocated by Geoffrey of Monmouth to Tintagel (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2022/06/notes-on-cornish-place-name-tintagel.html). I eventually settled on either Dinas Dinorwig or Camp Hill/Pier Camp at Hirael for the site (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/05/caer-dathal-is-actually-identified-in.html).
However, just because Siawn, son of Iaen of Caer Dathal is said in the "Stanzas of the Graves" to be buried at Hirael doesn't mean he was necessarily from there. Nor that he was from Dinas Dinorwig. There are plenty of examples of heroes in the "Stanzas" who belong at one place, but are buried at another. Usually it is implied they were buried where they died fighting.
This being so, I began looking again at all my past work on Caer Dathal. My most convincing case for the fort's location was contained in this blog post:
Caer Engan made the most sense because of the various characters (like Goewin, Math's virgin foot-holder) we knew from the Caer Dathal tradition being found in its immediate proximity. The name Engan itself connected it to the family of Cunedda (see below). Unfortunately, when I wrote that piece I had not done sufficient thinking on Eliwlad, grandson of Uther. Sure, I had figured out that he and his father Madog had been relocated from Nantlle to Cornwall (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-shocking-discovery-real-location-of.html). Caer Engan is in Dyffryn ('valley') Nantlle.
But only the other day I was still working on the 'Elei Problem", i.e. trying to figure out where the three raptors of Elei actually belonged. As listed in the "Pa Gur' poem, these heroes are Yscawen (and a variant) son of Banon, Gwyn Godybrion and Mabon son of Modron, servant of Uther Pendragon. While it is customary to assume Elei is here for the River Ely in Glamorgan, doubt was cast on this when I discovered that Yscawen belonged in Preseli (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-vythneint-elei-of-pa-gur-poem-new.html).
Professor Peter Schrijver had analyzed the Elei river-name as follows, and Dr. Simon Rodway agreed with his assessment of the hydronym:
EMANIA 20, JUNE 2006
Early Irish Ailenn
An Etymology
Peter Schrijver
University of Utrecht
"If we reconstruct forward from an early Celtic Alesia or
Alisia towards Old Irish, the result is aile, which does
indeed exist: the Old Irish ia-stem aile means ‘fence,
palisade (to prevent cattle from trespassing)’; cf. also the
compound bú-aile ‘cow pen’. Old Welsh has a probable
cognate in the Book of Llandaf ’s Eiliau, Eliau, names of a
village and a villa, respectively, hence originally ‘Pens,
Fences’. These are British Celtic plurals in *-ou > – au,
which have an exact counterpart in Modern Welsh eiliau
‘cattle pens’. They regularly reflect an earlier British plural
*alesj-owes/*alisj-owes. The singular *alesj_ probably
survives as the Old Welsh river name Elei in the Book of
Llandaf (perhaps modern Lai or Ely, Glamorganshire).
The Middle Welsh singular belonging to the plural eiliau,
however, is not *elei but eil ‘cattle-pen, shed’ (e.g., in the
Red Book of Hergest 1035.23 alaf yn eil meil am ved ‘cattle
in a pen, a cup around mead’), which cannot be derived
regularly from *alesja/ *alisja. Middle Welsh eil is probably
a back-formation: on the model of such common plural /
singular pairs as teithieu / teith ‘journey(s)’, drysieu / drws
‘door(s)’ a new singular eil was created beside inherited
eilieu (= Old and Modern Welsh eiliau)."
This led me to approach Schrijver only recently with the following query:
"Peter, could the -eli of Preseli be akin to W. ail, Irish aile, fence, palisade? For something like brush-palisade mountain?"
"Not bad. If ‘palisade’ is indeed from *alese/a-, as I suggested, then -eli is what we would expect."
"I was thinking about your River Ely theory...
What gave me the idea is this:
In the PA GUR, one of the raptors (?) of Elei is Yscawen (or Kysceint, maybe Kysteint) son of Panon/Banon. In CULHWCH AND OLWEN, this character dies fighting the great boar at Cwmcerwyn in Preseli. Just before that some other of Arthur's men had died at the Nyfer. As it happens, the Afon Banon (later spelled Bannon) empties into the Nyfer. It seemed to me this was fairly typical use of a river-goddess place-name. That Elei was used (thought to be the Ely River in Glamorgan in this context) suggests there may have been a confusion and the son of Banon actually belongs at Presseli precisely because the second element of the mountain name is present in the river-name.
Make sense?"
"Makes sense."
Only yesterday I happened to remembered an idea I had played around with with it came to deriving Elei from the Eli- or Eliwlad. My thinking was that if we could do that, it would solve pretty much every problem with the personal name and its context. See below for the Ely hydronym in 1314, and especially the spellings Eli and Ele. These are from the Melville Richards Archive, but I'm not sure it is an exhaustive list.
ELAI
ELAI Elay flu. BLAEU WILLEM JANSZ(OON) - MAP 1645
ELAI Eley 1536 CAD CATALOGUE OF ANCIENT DEEDS, I-VI, LONDON 1899-1915 vi. C 7589
ELAI Eley 1666 CFL DEEDS AT CARDIFF FREE LIBRARY, ARRANGED BY COUNTIES Glam
ELAI r. Eli 1638 CFL DEEDS AT CARDIFF FREE LIBRARY, ARRANGED BY COUNTIES Glam
ELAI r. Ely 1314 CIPM CALENDAR OF INQUISITIONS POST MORTEM, LONDON 1898FF v.332
ELAI Elye 1607 HENSOL HENSOL MSS
ELAI Ley River 1536/9 LELAND JOHN LELAND/THE ITINERARY IN WALES 18
ELAI Ele 1536/7 LELAND JOHN LELAND/THE ITINERARY IN WALES 18
ELAI Elei LL THE TEXT OF THE BOOK OF LLANDAV 204
ELAI Eley 1578 RM/BGA RICE MERRICK - A BOOK OF GLAMORGANSHIRE ANTIQUITIES 101, 112
ELAI Eley 1348 CIPM CALENDAR OF INQUISITIONS POST MORTEM, LONDON 1898FF ix.333
ELAI Eley 1229-61 CMG CARTAE ET ALIA MUNIMENTA QUAE AD DOMINIUM DE GLAMORGAN PERTINENT ii.462
ELAI Morva Lei 1514 CMG CARTAE ET ALIA MUNIMENTA QUAE AD DOMINIUM DE GLAMORGAN PERTINENT v.1782
ELAI ht. Eley 1719 CR RECORDS OF THE COUNTY BOROUGH OF CARDIFF I-IV iii.159
ELAI Elay 1760 EB/MSW EMANUAL BOWEN/MAP OF SOUTH WALES 1760
ELAI r. Eley 1586 HENSOL HENSOL MSS
Arguing against any use of gwlad as "prince" in Welsh is the mere fact that this word is regularly used only to mean 'land' and the like. For 'prince' we find the very well-attested gwledig. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule (see Thomas Charles-Edwards in ‘The Date of Culhwch ac Olwen’ in Bile ós Chrannaib: A Festschrift for William Gillies, edited by Wilson McLeod, Abigail Burnyeat, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, Thomas Owen Clancy and Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, Ceann Drochaid, 2010, pp. 45-56.).
Professor Peter Schrijver, when asked "Could not the eagle Eliwlad - perhaps seen at some point as Eli- + gwlad, 'land, kingdom' - have been related to Elei (which itself has several early Ele-/Eli-spellings)?", responded:
"Related: yes. If, say, Elei derives from something like *Alesjo- or *Alesja:- and Eli- from a more basic noun *Aleso- or *Alesa:- (in these particular reconstructions, the latter two would mean ‘ash(tree/wood)’ and the former two ‘anything made from ash or related to ash’)." [1]
Now, if the -eli of Presseli could be the same word as Elei, and Eliwlad on Dyffryn Nantlle contains the same word, and we already know that Gwyn Godybrion was made a son of Iaen of Caer Dathal, we need only determine whether Mabon was also in Nantlle. And, as it happens, he was. His grave is situated there in the "Stanzas of the Graves". I've remarked that this may indicate an identification of Mabon with Lleu who is found at Caer Dathal and in Nantlle as a death-eagle. It is, in fact, Lleu who serves as the model for Eliwlad the eagle-specter sitting in an oak tree.
I have posted the relevant information on Mabon in Nantlle below. [2]
What this all means, I believe, is that the three raptors of Elei are all to be associated with Eliwlad the eagle of Nantlle, and if I'm right, then Caer Engan is Caer Dathal. The clincher in the argument is Llanengan's association with St. Tudwal, and that the Irish cognate Tuathal is one of two candidates for the Dathal place-name.
For emphasis, I will repeat the connection here:
EINION FRENIN ab OWAIN DANWYN. (470)
The saint of Llanengan in Llŷn (PW 86). He was the son of Owain Danwyn according to Bonedd y Saint (§9 in EWGT p.56). His commemoration is on February 9 (LBS I.70). See further LBS
II.422-4.
TUDWAL, ST. There is a group of two islands off the south coast of the Llŷn peninsula called St.Tudwal's Isles. On the eastern island, the larger of the two, there was formerly a small chapel, under Llanengan, dedicated to St.Tudwal (PW 86). It is mentioned in the Taxatio of 1291, p.291, as “Eccl'ia Prions de Enys Tudwal”. Ffynnon Dudwal formerly existed on Penrhyn, in the parish of Llanengan (LBS IV.274). Tudwal may have given his name to Tudweiliog, a parish in Llŷn on the opposite side of the peninsula, although the dedication is to St.Cwyfen. Compare Rice Rees, Welsh Saints, p.134.
Einion was a direct descendent of Cunedda, my candidate for Uther Pendragon in this scenario.
All of the above will be inserted in my book THE BEAR KING, being reissued in all formats on Amazon.
[1]
Incidentally, I happened to ask Alan James, noted Brittonic place-name expert, the following question. This was after providing him with Schrijver's proposed etymology for the Ely river.
"Do you think, as is often the case with river-names in Britain, the Ely as a river-name could be a back-formation from a fort on that river that had been called Elei?"
He answered:
"As to your suggestion, yes, the river might well have been named from an adjacent place called Elei, implying some - presumably exceptionally prominent - wattle palisade. I'd envisage the kind of pretty large enclosure, primarily for livestock, with fencing (perhaps on an embankment) substantial enough to deter opportunist raiders, typical of the late Iron Age through much of the 1st millennium in the west and north of Britain, though perhaps not a 'fort' as we'd usually understand that term. Ely/ Tre'lái is, of course, a district-name in Cardiff, and *Elei could have been so a lot earlier, so river named from place, then place named from river."
[2]
THE MEDIEVAL WELSH
ENGLYNION Y BEDDAU
THE ‘STANZAS OF THE GRAVES’, OR ‘GRAVES
OF THE WARRIORS OF THE ISLAND OF BRITAIN’,
ATTRIBUTED TO TALIESIN
Edited and Translated from
the Black Book of Carmarthen and Other Manuscripts,
with an Archaeological, Historical, Linguistic, and Literary Commentary
PATRICK SIMS-WILLIAMS
First published 2023
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
III.16 Mabon son of Madron in Nantlle, Crn.
W Y Bedd y gorthir Nanllaû*
ni wyr neb i gyneddvau
Mabon vab Madron glau.
*an crudely formed, resembling cm, em, im; û altered from n.
N Y bedd ygorthir Nanllaû
Ni wyr neb i gyneddvaû
Mabon vap Madron glaû
T Y Bedh yngorthir nanllaû ny wyr nep y gynnedhfeû
Mabon vap madron glaû.*
*a altered to e in different ink.
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