THERE IS NO WAY TO PUT ARTHUR IN THE SOUTH: FINAL ANALYSIS OF THE BATTLES

The Three Southermost Arthurian Battles in the 'Pa Gur'

Over the past few days I have given my utmost to trying one last time to place the Arthurian battles in southern England.

I have failed.

The only way to do it is to resort to various types of linguistic trickery.  Methods involved include the much dreaded 'sound-alike etymology', proposing Welsh translations of English place-names or seeking folkloristic connections. Errors of placement can also be utilized (e.g. using the Essex Blackwater as Dubglas in Linnuis because that river was at Witham, and there is a similar Witham River in Lindsey).  But all results from such an effort share one thing in common: no matter what kind of geographical pattern emerges, none of the identifications are convincing.  

When I finally threw up my hands in defeat, I remembered to look back at the Arthurian battles of the PA GUR.  Most of the sites in this heroic poem actually belong in northern Britain or Scotland: 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-pa-gur-battle-sites-revision.html

None belong in southern England.

The Gelli battle is almost certainly from a late saint's life that puts Arthur at Gelligaer.  The rest are in the North.

The same is true of the HB battles - even if we wish to include Badon, for there is Buxton in the High Peak.  Here again is the most recent map on the Northern battles, none of which have to undergo any kind of contortion in order to be able to fit the HB names:

The battle marked farthest south is Buxton.  That battle, in my mind, remains problematic when it comes to assigning Arthur to it.  I have said the same thing about Camlan at Camboglanna, as the pattern of the battles points decidedly to L. Artorius Castus - who certainly did not die on Hadrian's Wall.  However, Castus may well have fought there and/or engaged in rebuilding activities at Castlesteads.  We know the emperors Severus and Caracalla were there.  

Must as I hate to do so (for several reasons), I really feel that I have no choice but to see in the HB Arthur the ghost character, someone used to fill in gap in British history.  The same was done with Ambrosius Aurelianus of Gaul, who was 4th century, not 5th century.

The chief deciding factors for me were 1) the occurrence of the Miathi in a confused reference to the death of the Dalriadan Arthur and the HB Arthur's Bassas battle in Miathi territory and 2) the HB Arthur's battle in the Celidon Wood.

If I'm correct in identifying the HB Arthur with Castus, then I need to defend my new reading ARM.GENTES 'armed tribes' for the Castus inscription lacuna.  

NOTE ON AN ARTHUR OF ALCLUD

My recent treatment of an old idea - that Arthur might be son of Ceredig Wledig of Strathclyde, the crudelisque tyranni of St. Patrick - is now being abandoned.  I just don't think it's plausible to assign the battles of the HB to a war-leader from Alclud.  Yes, it is true that several generations later Rhydderch of Strathclyde was fighting the English.  But the spread of battles from the Caledonian Wood to Manau Gododdin and thence to York seems improbable in the extreme for someone fighting for Strathclyde in the early 6th century.  Such a pattern of battles doesn't even make sense for some kind of mercenary captain originating in Strathclyde who was fighting for several different kings.  

The best scholars will on occasion allow for the possibility of a sort of Dux Britannarium based on Hadrian's Wall (see the work of Dr. Ken Dark, for example).  But such a man would be trying to hold together what had once been the Brigantian Confederacy, and that group of tribes covered territory from roughly the Tyne to the Humber.  It did not extend well beyond the Wall, through Votadini (Gododdin) territory and all the way up to Caledonia.  

Trust me; I wanted the Strathclyde Arthur theory to work.  But I don't think it does.  I now hold Uther to be a fiction, one probably created to provide poetic assonance with the name Arthur.  There is the outside possibility Uther Pendragon is St. Illtud, but if so, Illtud was never Arthur's father.