AN ADDED MEASURE OF CONFIDENCE FOR THE NOTION THAT UTHER AS ARTHUR'S FATHER IS AN ERROR FOR SAWYL

By now my readers have seen me go back and forth several times on the idea that Uther Pendragon as Arthur's father, while on one level a reference to the military titles of St. Illtud, is actually Sawyl Benisel of the North.

In the past I've detailed the various ways in which it seems Illtud as U.P. was confused with Sawyl.  But while I did list several examples in which this could come about, I somehow completely missed combining two of those in an obvious fashion that provides strong support to the 'second Sawyl' emendation in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN.

I got hung up on seeing the proposed 'Sawyl' in that elegy as a straight-forward allusion to the Biblical Samuel.  But I decided to go back to the Lives of SS. Cadog and Illtud and now realize that there is a better way to account for Sawyl in the Uther poem.

From John Koch's CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA on first Cadog and then Illtud:

"Vita Cadoci, the longest of the Lives

of Welsh saints, was written by Lifris c. 1100, revised

by Caradog of Llancarfan in the first half of the

12th century...

Caradog of

Llancarfan—describes him [Illtud] as an Armorican cleric

who took service with ‘Poulentus, king of Glamorgan’,

but this detail appears to be an adaptation of a

story about St Cadoc and Paul of Penychen, a cantref

of Glamorgan. There is a passing reference to

Arthur—said to be Illtud’s cousin—and the king’s

magnificent court (see Arthur in the saints’

lives), as well as several stories concerning Illtud’s

dealings with a king of Glamorgan with the common

early Welsh name Meirchiaun (from Latin Marcianus)."

While I had pointed out the fact that Illtud appears to play a similar role as Sawyl, it had not occurred to me to check which parallel tale had precedence.  Closer examination of both leaves little doubt that Caradog took the Cadog story of Sawyl and used it to tell a practically identical story about Illtud.

The Uther elegy is widely considered to be pre-Galfridian, but it has come down to us in the 14th century BOOK OF TALIESIN. Could it be that the author of the elegy, being familiar with Caradog's Lives of Cadoc and Illtud, chose to describe Illtud as a 'second Sawyl' precisely because he had taken on the role of the Sawyl found in the Cadoc Life?  

On the other hand, if we wish to grant the elegy the earliest possible composition date, then we could say that 'second Sawyl' is, indeed, a simple poetic allusion comparing Uther/Illtud to the Biblical Samuel.  And that it was Caradog who used that phrase to apply the Sawyl story found in Cadoc's Life to that of Illtud.  

In either case - whether a 'second Sawyl' in the elegy arose through the poet's knowledge of the SS. Lives or  gave birth to a duplicated story in those Lives - I feel we are on a bit firmer footing in continuing to adopt the emendation as the preferred reading for the original manuscript's 'eil kawyl.'