AS I TRANSITION AWAY FROM ARTHUR TO OTHER THINGS IN MY RETIREMENT...

Lidar Image for the Camboglanna (Castlesteads)Roman Fort in Cumbria

Other then giving a few more talks on Arthur-related subjects on Richard Johnson's O'R GOLWG YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@orgolwg), I'm suspending my overly long Arthurian quest.  Once you reach a certain age and you come to realize that 1) I'm beginning to rehash old theories due to a lack of new, original thinking and 2) my interests, frankly, are changing, it's time to let go of certain cherished ways of being - and to release the ego-driven identity that fueled and preserved them.

But before I move on to less demanding, less rancor-filled endeavors, I did want to touch upon three matters that have absorbed most of my attention during my decades of research: Uther, Arthur's father, Badon and Camboglanna.  Yes, I've discussed all three subjects exhaustively already and even produced published books that drew upon this or that theory concerning them.  But I remain undecided whether I have managed to "crack the code" in any satisfactory manner.

Let's begin with the battle of Badon.  I tried pretty much everything for the word and the place.  But, in the end, everything from etymology to the Welsh sources indicates that this is Bath (probably, given the Breton Sulis/Sulim at a Gildas site, Little Solsbury Hill fort).  While we can come out and say, well, okay, fine, but maybe Bath was only later wrongly identified with a Baddan- hillfort and that we should instead look to the Liddington Badbury as the best candidate. Unfortunately, that is an unsustainable viewpoint based on unprovable and unnecessary speculation.  

Badon is Bath.

My idea that this could be a Bathum at Buxton is possible, but has difficulties.  First, the British name of Buxton was Aquae Arnemetia and then the place took on the name of Buxton, recorded before 1108 (according to Victor Watts). More critically, there is no hillfort at Buxton. Nor was there a Roman fort, so far as we know, as the place appears to have been a civilian settlement built around a sacred thermal spring.  Just like Bath in Somerset.  Yes, we have an old Bathamgate name preserved for the Roman road that ran to Buxton, but we otherwise have no evidence that Bathum (which would naturally becomes British Badon) was ever used for the place.  

If we want to put the famous Arthur of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and ANNALES CAMBRIAE at Bath, we have to allow for a battle there c. 500 against the Saxons. Most authorities think that is way too early for a battle so far east.  But as many of our dates are uncertain (especially those of sources like the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONCLE, where I've shown the early generations of the Gewissei have been reversed), there is nothing wrong, really, with the idea of a deep penetration to Bath c. 500, or at least in the possibility of a series of raids that were ultimately repelled by the British.  

But was Arthur really there?

If all of the battles as I've identified them - minus Badon - are, indeed, in the North (even probably Camboglanna; see below), then trying to justify an Arthur at Bath is impossible.  We would have to be content with saying he was attached to the place in the course of the development of legend precisely because the real commander there was unknown or not remembered and a famous hero was needed for what had come to be seen as a famous battle.

And now for Camboglanna...

I've discussed in detail why I no longer trust the Camlann entry in the AC.  This has to do with the entry's link to Irish annal entries featuring a Dalriadan name that is the same as the name born by a brother of the Dalriadan Arthur.  This brother died with Arthur son of Aedan in battle.  Made worse, the duplicated Irish entry matching the plague reference in the AC entry that allows us to identify Medra(u)t with the St. Medard of Gallic Noviomagus who died in that year.  The place-name Noviomagus is found in Britain as well, being the Roman period name of Chichester.  Chichester's founder, an eponym, Cissa, is said in the ASC to have fought at Cymenesora near Chichester.  Cymenesora could easily have been rendered by the Welsh Camlann or merely associated with a Welsh Camlann.

Welsh tradition otherwise firmly places Camlann in Merionethshire (something I've been able to prove). If this is the real Camlann, then the only viable candidate for an Arthur who might have perished there is Arthur son of Pedr of Dyfed, a 7th century king. Dyfed was always at war with the kingdoms to its north, both in mythic contexts (see the Mabinogion) and in history.  While attempts have been made to identify Arthur son of Pedr with the Arthur, as with a war-leader fighting at Cymenesora we cannot square him with the Northern battles.  Chronology, of course, is a glaring problem with the Dyfed king.

And then we have Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall. 

I've gone through quite a list of the remarkable features associated with this fort.  First, that it lies in the valley of the Irthing which, if Dr. Andrew Breeze is right, may mean the "Little Bear" river. Not far to the west of Camboglanna, along the Wall, is the Aballava Roman fort, the 'apple place', with a variant Avalana that immediately suggests Avalon.  A 'lake goddess' Dea Latis was worshipped at Aballava, as well as at Birdoswald in the Irthing Valley not far from Castlesteads.  Finally, the Concavata Roman fort just west of Aballava may well have been a sort of prototypical Grail Castle.

Yes, we could say that a Dark Age Arthur based on the North fought and died at Camboglanna.  The only problem with that scenario is that we also know that Severus and Caracalla were there, even if just for rebuilding, and it is possible (if I'm right about L. Artorius Castus serving under Severus during that emperor's massive invasion of Northern Britain) that a Roman Artorius, prefect of the Sixth Legion at York and commander of three legionary detachments, was also present at Castlesteads.  As I am found of pointing out to those who insist on trying to identify Arthur's City of the Legion battle with one of the two Welsh legionary fortresses, why bother positing an unattestable historical war-leader at Chester or Caerleon when we already know there was an actual historical Arthur at York?

At this point, having dispensed with an Arthur at Bath in Somerset and knowing as I do that we have a Roman fortress on the west end of Hadrian's Wall that fits the bill for Camlann perfectly, I'm not really disposed to holding onto a Dark Age war-leader.  It is quite conceivable that Castus did something remarkable at Camboglanna, perhaps in battle.  It is also possible he was wounded and removed from the sphere of action to the nearby fort of Aballava for treatment of his wounds.  Sure, this is unapologetic speculation, and more than smacks of special pleading, but historically and geographically it is plausible.  If Castus had achieved over a couple of centuries a mythical standing among the Britons, then a tale about an exploit performed and/or misfortune suffered at Camboglanna might well have found its way into Welsh story and been used to supply a purely propagandist creation with a proper death in 537. 

I would add that as far as I'm concerned it is extremely difficult to account for a Dark Age Arthur fighting from York to Caledonia.  The scholars I've consulted agree with me on this.  The only way around the difficulty is to accept that when it comes to the Arthurian battles we are dealing with a composite Dark Age Arthur, one who is part an otherwise unknown Arthur of Northern England and part Arthur son of Aedan of Dalriada.  And we have to accept the coincidence of Arthur of Dalriada being said to fall fighting against the Miathi/Maeatae (but also in Circenn!) when know Emperor Septimius Severus invaded the North precisely because of troubles caused by that tribal confederation.

As a related aside, I continue to find it interesting that people keep proposing invalid theories. Invalid because none of them have the battles. And none have tried to show my identifications to be wrong or have attempted better candidates. Yet they keep right on talking about Arthur being this or Arthur being that WHEN ALL WE HAVE IS THE BATTLES.

I still await a rival theory with decent battle site identifications. Until there is one, I'm not going to pay much attention to what's put forward by other researchers. And I will be even less prone to engage with such researchers if they continue to utterly ignore my selected sites. 

To finish now with Uther Pendragon...

I've made much of this traditional father of Arthur being not the usual format of name + epithet - something we find extremely common in early Welsh naming practice - but being instead some kind of poetic descriptor and/or Welsh rendering of a military rank or Latin phrase.  My efforts were all over the board, utilizing such an interpretation of the name to identify our hero's father with any number of historical figures.

Eventually, for various reasons, I settled on Uther Pendragon as a manufactured character based on the Latin terms used for St. Illtud in that saint's hagiography (magister militum, princeps militum, terribilis miles).  And that, in turn, led me to what appeared to be a confusion of Uther for Sawyl Benisel of the North.  Sawyl's genealogy as found chiefly in the Irish sources, coupled with a newly proposed etymology for Uther's grandson Eliwlad and hypothetical emendations for key passages in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN allowed me to tentatively propose Sawyl as the Dark Age Arthur's father.  Sawyl's Irish connections and his placement next to the Ribchester fort of the Roman-period Sarmatian cavalry seemed to explain why the later Arthurs all belonged to Irish-descended 'horse' dynasties in Britain.  

Unfortunately, there is one major problem with that nice, neat picture: nowhere else in Welsh tradition have I been able to find a single instance of a name + epithet being used as a poetic descriptor for someone who originally had a different name. My only rationale for Illtud as Uther P. was that someone had found it necessary to hide the saint's martial past and then, at some point, it had been forgotten that Uther was Illtud and the former became a separate personage in this heroic tradition.  But Illtud's martial past was not hidden or forgotten.  While nothing detailed about his military exploits has been preserved, we know where he served as master of the soldiers, etc. Thus while the idea that Illtud = Uther is superficially attractive, it does not stand up well to critical evaluation.  Finally, there are several examples in the early Welsh sources of people whose first names are also adjectives, as is the case with Uther.

It doesn't help us at all that Geoffrey of Monmouth or his source then chose to identify Uther P. with the terrible soldier of the Irish COMPERT MONGAN tale, an act which permitted him to appropriate that source's birth story for Arthur.  At the same time he further muddles things by converting the gorlassar epithet Uther uses for himself in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN into the separate personage Gorlois.

This being so, I find myself once more faced with having to make an acutely uncomfortable confession: Uther Pendragon is Uther Pendragon and that's that.  The name must be accepted as a standard name + epithet, and if he were Arthur's father from the very beginning, then the name may have been conjured for no other reason than it worked well in poetic assonance with that of Arthur. Otherwise, there seems to be absolutely nothing we can know about Uther other than the bogus genealogy supplied for him in the Welsh and Galfridian traditions.  A good guess is that Arthur was imaginatively linked with the W. word aruthr (aruthyr). From the GPC:

aruthr

awful, terrible, dreadful, frightful, frightening; fierce, cruel, harsh, merciless; wonderful, astonishing, strange. 

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12g. GCBM i. 295, G()r oet rut y lauyn o lif gwyar, / G()r oet ruthyr aruthyr ar y esgar.

12-13g. GLlLl 53, Duc eil ruthyr, troch aruthyr trachwres, / Tir Lleyn yr llithya() branhes.

13g. GBF 250, Aryf toruoet teruyn hep warthrut, / Aruthyr goeluein brein, Bryneich gystut.

14g. SC viii/ix. 187, ac ot oed aruthyr clybot y twryf. aruthrach oed yn ol hynny idaw gwelet y dieuyl o bop parth idaw.

Uther must, I fear, remain a ghost.  Welsh tradition does not help pinpoint his origin.  We learn from the PA GUR that his servant Mabon hails from the Ely Valley in Glamorgan.  But it doesn't naturally follow, as I once tried to make the case for, that Uther belongs there as well.  CULHWCH AC OLWEN says Uther had kin at Caer Dathal (= Dinas Emrys) in Arfon, Gwynedd.  I tried to use that once to associate Uther with Cunedda/Ceawlin (the pen kawell or Chief Basket of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN being identified with the ASC's Ceawlin, given that AS ceawl = 'basket'). Other than those two occurrences, we have only Geoffrey of Monmouth to rely upon for Uther's Breton origin and absurdly wide-ranging British military activities.

My only conclusion, given all of the above, is that as per my talk on O'R GOLWG

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICS0cyB8bqg) I think that the famous Arthur is L. Artorius Castus.  His mythical status was utilized by the writer of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and then by the compiler of the ANNALES CAMBRIAE to effectively create a much-needed Dark Age hero.  Such a hero was needed at the time these sources were written, and the floruit provided for him dovetails with that of the Saxon founder of Wessex, Cerdic.