Playing-Out the Illtud = Uther Scenario

 

[This post is dedicated to my friend Robert Vermaat, who first published some of early works many years ago. Robert has always preferred the idea of a Southern Arthur, with a focus on Liddington Castle as Badon - although he is wise enough not to espouse a belief based upon lack of evidence.]

As I have insisted all along, the only good reason not to accept Illtud as Uther is the apparent placement of the Arthurian battles in the North. Well, that and the possible 'Sawyl' that exists in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN elegy as a poetic metaphor for Uther.

For those who wish a sort of summary of Illtud's origin point, please see the following link:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2023/01/illtuds-father-bicanus-and-his-llydaw.html

This is one of only a great many articles on the subject of Illtud, but it does provide at least the general geographical sense for this personage, at least according to my current thinking on the matter.

As with much of the early Welsh poetry, the Uther elegy contains many "opaque" passages that seem rooted in errors of copying.  The two best possible readings for one critical section at at odds with each other, and send us in completely opposite directions.

In the first, Uther boasts about God, the Chief Luminary (or candle, lamp, sun, moon, star, leader), transforming him, and that he thus became a 'second Samuel (W. Sawyl).'  It is this interpretation which allowed me to pursue the identification of Arthur's real father with Sawyl Benisel in the North.

In the second, we allow God to be Chief of the Sanctuary and have Uther transformed into the cannwyll (star, etc.) in the gloom.  This would fit the earlier reference to Uther as leader in the darkness, and allow us to posit that Geoffrey of Monmouth's comet/star, which is said to be Uther himself, has its origin in this rendering of the lines.  

If, for the sake of argument, we go with No. 2, we are allowed to hypothesize that the great war general Illtud was removed from the Arthurian orbit when he was transformed (pun intended) in hagiographical literature to a pacifist saint.  In the process, he became not Arthur's father, but his cousin.  This might seem a strange development were it not for the fact that Arthur himself is always viewed in saints' lives and didactic poems in a decidedly negative light. 

Is is possible that Illtud really was Arthur's father?

Well, there are a lot of things attractive about the notion.  An Arthur centered at Durocornovium would agree with the hero's supposed Cornish origin.  Badbury at Liddington does appear to be identified in the Welsh Annals as the site of the second Badon battle - which would imply it was also the scene of the first Badon battle.  Barbury Castle, the 'Bear's Fort', is nearby and could have easily been given its name by the English because they bought into the Welsh tendency to link Arthur's name with their word arth, 'bear.'  A Dobunnic Arthur would place our hero on the very frontier with the expanding English invaders.  

So what's stopping me from embracing this particular Arthurian theory?

Again, it's the battles that are the problem.

Sure, it may well be that sites in the South are now extinct, buried beneath English and Norman names.  In which case, obviously, we will never find them.  But when we are faced with a battle-name like that of the Celyddon Wood, we are forced to admit one of two things: either some of these battles are made up and properly belong to a later, Northern Arthur (like the Dalriadan one) or they are corruptions of Southern names.  Playing the corruption game is a dangerous one - as I have discovered more than once.

The most logical approach would be to see a Southern Arthur as a foul against the Gewissei, and to try and match up his battles with theirs.  I have actually done this, but the result has really convinced no one of the veracity of such hypothetical identifications.  

An excellent example of the kind of confusion that can occur when looking at these battles is manifest in that of the Tribruit.  I long ago showed that this was an exact Welsh translation of the Roman Latin trajectus.  But while the PA GUR poem seems to place this site in the North, the only place actually called this in our scant, extant ancient geographies is Trajectus near Bitton, not far from both Dyrham and Bath.  Part of the "proof" of the battle's Northern location is Manawydan's involvement.  This points to the Manau Gododdin region.  However, in CULHWCH AND OLWEN we learn that Manawydan is also at/in the Severn, which is where the Trajectus crossing is found.  Thus it is distinctly possible that the PA GUR has relocated the battle to the far North, when in reality it belonged in the South.

Some other place-names, like the Bassas River, can only be identified with a Northern site with a bit of a strain.  The fact remains that (as Dr. Graham Isaac long ago assured me) the most perfect candidate for it exists at Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire. This is deep in what would have been English territory as Arthur's time, but if we are dealing with an effective British counter-offensive, no matter how short-lived, Bassingbourn is not impossible.  Those who argue that an English name cannot have found its way into the Arthurian battle list are simply ignorant of how many English names can be confirmed to be present in the early Welsh literary materials.  I and others have written about several of these.

I will not again delve into the Arthurian battles in the South.  Simply put, only a couple of them can be satisfactorily placed there.  There is absolutely nothing we can do with the majority of them.  Why throw up our hands in despair when the battles can be found up and down the Roman Dere Street in the North - EXACTLY WHERE WE WOULD EXPECT TO FIND THEM IF AN ARTHUR FROM RIBCHESTER WERE FIGHTING AGAINST THE SAXONS ALONG A WELL-DEFINED FRONTIER?

In only one sense do I hold Sawyl in some disfavor: I still think that the ARM[...]S of the L. Artorius Castus stone could read ARMENIOS.  If it did, then Castus was in Britain before the Sarmatians were there, and the preservation of the Artorius name at Ribchester of the Sarmatian veterans did not happen.  That would free us up to put Arthur elsewhere.  I have flirted with a situation for him on the Wall, for instance at the Banna Roman fort.  But such a placement negates his ancestry, for we can't perfunctorily stick his father Uther at Banna (despite the known draco association with the late Roman Dacian garrison of that fort).

Epigraphers, archaeologists and historians all place the L. Artorius Castus stone in a time range that allows for either ARMENIOS or ARMORICOS to be the reading for the fragmentry ARM[...]S of the inscription.  And if it were ARMORICOS, then Sawyl of Ribchester works very well for Uther.  He gives us the Northern battles (which I have come to see as almost a certainty) of Arthur and preserves a pedigree that seems to be embedded in the Welsh tradition, albeit imperfectly.