A FORMAL RETRACTION OF A PREVIOUS ARTICLE

NOTE: Since writing the following piece, I've learned that the information supplied by Dr. John Bannerman pertaining to Cairell of the Dal Fiatach is incorrect.  Cairell was not grandson of Muiredach Muinderg, but his son.  This takes away the extra generation needed to make the theory on the Arthur name coming into the Dalriadan family via the Dal Fiatach unworkable.  Thus the idea that Sawyl was the father of the more famous British Arthur has to be abandoned.

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/07/a-startling-discovery-brings-back-sawyl.html?m=1

To quote from private correspondence on the issue from Prof. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, MRIA, FSA, Department of History, School of Humanities, National University of Ireland, Galway,

Editor, Peritia, Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland,

Chair, Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources,

Chair, RIA/IBA/Brepols Scriptores Celtigenae [CCSL] series,

Member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission,

Dir. Foundations of Irish Culture [PRTLI] Project:

"My first response to your question is to agree with you that the Cairell you asked about was son of Muiredach Muinderg. That's what my teacher & mentor, Francis John Byrne, has in his Irish Kings & High-Kings, p. 285, in his genealogy of the Dál Fiatach & again in the New History of Ireland, vol. IX ('Maps, Genealogies, Lists') p. 132. The genealogies in Michael O'Brien's Corpus are no different (see index, p. 529). There's nothing at all unlikely about Áedán mac Gabráin's mother having been a British woman, but that's a different matter altogether.

   Somewhere here at home I have the 1st fascicule of the German Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the Artemis Verlag in Munich back in the 70s & for which Francis John & others (myself included) wrote numerous articles, which might have a different take on those details about Áedán, but I somehow doubt that the story is any different there.

   I'm afraid I don't have a copy of Ben Hudson' s ed. of Berchán's Prophecy, so cannot help you with that. Generally speaking, however, I always found John Bannerman's stuff very sound, so the detail that you referred to may be a simple slip on his part. It happens us all!"