ARMATOS ARMORICA - TOMATO TOMAHTO?: NONSPECIFICITY AND THE LUCIUS ARTORIUS CASTUS MEMORIAL STONE

RIB 1322

"Missing Pieces" (Malcor, L.A., Trinchese, A., Faggiani, A., Missing Pieces: A New Reading of the Main Lucius Artorius Castus Inscription, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 47, no 3 & 4 Fall/Winter, 2019, pp. 415-437) offers a new reading of a key fragmentary word in the memorial inscription of Lucius Artorius Castus.  The ARM- of the stone has now been interpreted as the first part of the word ARMATOS, 'armed men/soldiers.'  Combined with a date for LAC falling in the latter part of the 2nd century, the authors of the paper propose that Artorius commanded parts of three British legions against unnamed adversaries within Britain itself.  This revised view on the career of LAC has generated considerable discussion.

While I have confirmed the probable dating of LAC with various top epigraphers and Roman military historians (like Roger Tomlin), the ARM- remains a problem.  Why?  Because even if we opt to discount the possibility that ARM- is for Armorica (a position previously held by Malcor), we have in armatos a nonspecificity problem. Simply put, whenever vague terms like 'armed men' (ore rebels, deserters, brigands and such) are used in inscriptions - and there are a very small number of such - the location of the said troublemakers is either stated or implied.  The majority of scholars I have consulted all dislike, to a greater or lesser degree, the ambiguity of a phrase 'adversus armatos.'

Now, I have gone over in painstaking detail the sources for the period, both primary and secondary.  We don't have much, and what we have is often contradictory (e.g. the different accounts of the death of Perennis).  What is clear is that during the reign of Commodus chaotic conditions prevailed.  Scholars like Anthony Birley (see his most recent book THE GOVERNMENT OF ROMAN BRITAIN) have done their best to weave together the various strands of the historical tradition.  Often we have nothing more than a "restored" name or two on a badly damaged stone to go by.  Any attempt to paint a comprehensive portrait of what was going on appears to be quite impossible.  We can only deductively arrive at various speculations, some more compelling than others.  But all is uncertain and one comes away from it all feeling rather unsatisfied and frustrated.  The paucity of information is, frankly, discouraging to future research.  The scholars I've corresponded with are now content to accept our relative ignorance of what was going on in the West during the Commodus regime.

There are scholars, of course, who have had no problem with LAC in Armorica.  Most tend to default to the so-called bellum desertorum or Deserters' War as the reason why he would have taken legionary vexillations to the Continent.  But even here scholarly opinion is divided.  Some think the revolt of Maternus was a rather small, contained and even unimportant problem for the Roman government and military.  Others (like Gilbert-Charles Picard, https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_1982_num_126_3_13972 and https://www.persee.fr/doc/bsnaf_0081-1181_1987_num_1985_1_9135), drawing on an interdisciplinary approach involving archaeological findings, have forcefully argued for the severity of the event.  

The fact of the matter is both readings of ARM- could be construed as referring to participation in the bellum desertorum.  We know that when Pescennius Niger was sent to deal with Maternus' revolt, he went to Gallia Lugdunensis.  Armorica was part of that province. Whether Maternus originated in Armorica or elsewhere is not known.  But if the center of the troubled area, which eventually engulfed Gaul and Spain, was Gallia Lugdunensis, then certainly help from Britain might have been expected.  And, in fact, we know from the primary sources that Commodus demanded that the provinces send military support to deal with the deserters.  LAC may have been ordered to Armorica to deal with the rebels there.  And this is true whether the stone says ARMORICA or ARMATOS.  Certainly, the mixed nature of Maternus's forces (again, as described in the sources) could well have been described as 'armed men/soldiers.'

The problem with ARMORICA is of an entirely different order.  In short, it is not found in a single inscription (if we discount that of LAC).  In the words of Professor Roger Tomlin (personal communication):

"No, I haven't seen Armorica used in that fashion. And I see that Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, who cites many references for are-mori-co-s and Armoricanus, does not cite a single inscription."

As precedence is everything, this fact alone casts doubt on Armorica being present on the LAC stone.

Armenia, also proposed for the LAC inscription, does not suffer from this shortcoming.  There are numerous references to this country on stones.  But if LAC does belong to the latter part of the second century, then the ARM- of his memorial does not stand for Armenia.

I recently had the very good fortune to talk with Professor John Wilkes, the man who (with his friend Anthony Birley) first removed the LAC stone from where it had been placed.  His account of this was shared with me:

"In 1962, in company with my old friend Tony Birley, I travelled from Split a few miles south along the coast where we located the two halves of the text still incorporated in the roadside field wall at Podstrana di Jesenice. The part of the stone with the key letters ARM[...] was buried but we managed to excavate it from the grass verge and confirm that there were no traces of further letters to be seen."

When I asked him what he thought of ARM-, he reflected on another stone that describes the use of parts of three British legions in Germany: 

"Some time ago, I argued that the famous text excavated from the bed of the river Tyne at the beginning of the last century naming detachments from the three legions of Britain recorded their departure for the two German provinces, rather than as generally assumed their arrival back in Britain, as generally assumed since the time of Haverfield and Richmond. The date appears to be AD 158. What is relevant to Artorius is that this, in my view, suggests a pattern of use for the three legions based in Britannia, grossly disproportionate given the size of the province, as a mobile reserve for deployment in the adjacent western regions of the Empire. Such was the case regarding the Newcastle inscription, on which a major rebellion in northern Britain was imagined, a fantasy that still appears in text-books."

The inscription Wilkes is alluding to is here:

https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1322

With the relevant note from the discussion pasted here:

7‒8.  There have been four attempts to emend or explain:

i. EX(ERCITIBUS) GER(MANICIS) DUOBUS Wilkes, ‘(contributed) to the two German armies’. ii. Birley Fasti, citing Wilkes but understanding ‘(contributed) from the two German armies’. iii. by haplography (EX) EX(ERCITIBUS) GER(MANICIS) DUOBUS Bogaers, ‘(contributed) from the two German armies’, re-stated by Frere, but dismissed as far-fetched by Haverfield in EE ix. iv. EX(ERCITIBUS) GER(MANICIANIS) DUOBUS Speidel, ‘(contributed) to the two German armies’ [and now returning], a possibility noted by Wilkes but thought to conflict with con(t)r(i)buti.
(iv) is the best compromise so far between the natural sense of the Latin and the historical context. It requires a previous troop-movement (from Britain to Germany), but Speidel can argue from ILS 1071 and AE 1924, 74 that a second army had been temporarily concentrated in Upper Germany. This would have been after the completion of the Antonine Wall, when northern Britain was peaceful. However, note that although EX for exercitus (singular) is found in brick-stamps, the extreme and ambiguous abbreviation EX for exercitibus seems to be unparalleled in monumental inscriptions; one would have expected at least EXX or EXER.

Professor Wilkes' commentary can be found here:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20184259?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

In summary, then, I think that the ARM- of the LAC inscription could be either for ARMATOS or ARMORICA (although, in the latter case, it would be a one-off occurrence of this country name)  But in either case, we could be talking about Artorius bringing parts of three British legions to bear on the deserters of Maternus.  Granted, we cannot discount the possibility that he used these forces somewhere in Britain.  But, if so, we can have absolutely no idea who these particular 'armed men/soldiers' happened to be - or where exactly they were on the island.  We do know that a rebellious or recalcitrant army was present there during the reign of Commodus.

 T. Caunius Priscus MAY (A. Birley very tentatively posits the identification) be the Priscus who in 184 or 185-186 refused the purple offered to him by the British troops. According to Birley, this affront to the Emperor Commodus was dealt with by dismissing the senatorial legate and installing an equestrian in the role. It may well be that the equestrian in question was LAC. He then followed the order issued by Commodus to send troops in aid against the Deserters' War. The date for the war is 186 or shortly thereafter. This is a scenario that seems to work. 

This selection comes from A. Birley's THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT OF BRITAIN (pp. 168-169):

Priscus was dismissed after Ulpius Marcellus' tenure. The latter is famous, of course, for securing the northern frontier, something completed by 184, when Commodus assumed the Britannicus title. Perennis is killed as a result of his policies, especially the one replacing senators with equestrians as legates. The story about him being given to British soldiers may or may not be true, as we have another more prosaic account of his execution as well. But Alföldy and others have suggested that these 1500 British spearman may have been part of the force LAC led to Armorica. In any case, we also have (185?) Marcus Antius Crescens Calpurnianus, followed by Pertinax (185-187). I would think that given that the Deserters' War happened at this time, what we may have (ASSUMING FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT LAC WENT TO THE CONTINENT WITH HIS FORCES, INSTEAD OF SOMEWHERE IN BRITAIN) is LAC filling the gap between Priscus and Marcus.

The problem here may be in taking Priscus as governor. He was not. He was a legionary legate, possibly of the Sixth Legion. LAC may have been the acting governor, recently promoted from prefect of the Sixth. In a province with only one legion, the legatus served as the provincial governor, while in provinces with multiple legions each legion had a legatus and a separate provincial governor who had overall command. Britain had three legions, so someone other than Priscus was the overall authority of the military.  That may well have been LAC.

And no one seems to have much considered the 1,500 British javelin men of Herodian, either.  See https://books.google.com/books?id=mWHNDwAAQBAJ&pg=PP124&lpg=PP124&dq=%221,500+javelin+men%22%2B%22Perennis%22&source=bl&ots=Jrg8zxsJMv&sig=ACfU3U1uAdygjxSaamPd3_F7blFvwfpMXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj1vrn27pjqAhVTo54KHUilDZcQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%221%2C500%20javelin%20men%22%2B%22Perennis%22&f=false.  Lanciarii of 500 men from each of the three British legions would equal 1,500.   So however these men were actually involved in action on the Continent, they answer perfectly to those detachments LAC is said to have taken against ARM-. 

Birley says this of Priscus:

He [after being removed from command over the Sixth Legion]

certainly went on to command another legion, V Macedonica, in Dacia: a

second legionary command indicates trouble where the second one was based

and there was warfare in Dacia under Commodus (HA Comm. 13. 5). There

followed command over detachments of several legions, restored as [Brita]nnicarum.

Alföldy convincingly proposes that this force was assigned to deal with

the so-called ‘deserters’ war’ and can be identified with the ‘1,500 javelin-men’

from the British army who lynched Perennis near Rome in 185 (Dio 72(73).

The problem with this narrative is obvious: how does he go from being a legate in Britain, to serving in the East, then is found once again commanding vexillations of British legions? I suspect the 'restoration' of [Brita]nnicarum is an error.  There was an Ala Britannica in Pannonia near Dacia at the time (Valeria A. Maxfield, U. of Exeter).

I have spoken with Professor Anthony Birley about Priscus.  He told me this vie personal communication:

"An update on Priscus. In my Roman Government of Britain (2005) a heavily revised version of The Fasti of R.B. I no longer refer to Caunius Priscus but discuss a  very curious long career inscription, published by Gregori in ZPE 106 (1995) 269-279, then by G. Alföldy in CIL VI 41127. Gregori's article in ZPE is on open access. I don't have my copy of CIL VI 41127 to hand. Subsequently the career is discussed  by Ioan Piso, Fasti Provinciae Daciae II (Bonn 214), in German.

Obviously we need more information...the so called 'deserters' war' may be behind the idea of a war in 'Armorica'."

WHAT IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO: THE CASE FOR UTHER PENDRAGON AS SAWYL OF RIBCHESTER

'Marwnat Vthyr Pen' Showing pen kawell and eil kawyl

My dilemma, in a nutshell, is this: given my identification of all the Arthurian sites in the North of Britain, two potential historical candidates emerge from additional research: a chieftain or king ruling along the western half of Hadrian's Wall or a son of Sawyl Benisel of Sarmatian Ribchester.

We may retain the latter only if we accept Uther Pendragon as a poetic title for Sawyl.  While several arguments can be put forward in support of Sawyl, ultimately we must rely on just two possible textual emendations.  That is the slender basis of the case I'm presenting. 

My readers have seen me treat of the first one in mind-numbing detail.  This demands that Eliwlad (son of Madog son of Uther) be interpreted as an error for Eilwlad.  Such a change can be accounted for by a metathesis which can be demonstrated in other MS. occurrences of eil for eli (or vice-versa). The meaning of Eilwlad is 'other-land', something that perfectly matches the Irish ailithir epithet of St. Madog son of Sawyl. While ailithir is, literally, 'other land', its meaning is "pilgrim." The didactic poem 'The Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle' resembles another poem featuring a saint instructing a pilgrim.

Professor Barry Lewis, who has studied these kinds of didactic poems, told me that he could not think of any counter-examples in which anyone other than a saint or especially holy person instructed the laity. While Eliwlad is depicted as a spectral eagle in an oak tree, it is implied that he is a Heavenly visitant.  For him to be instructing Arthur on Christian tenets implies that he is by his very nature sacred.  Were he not, there would be no reason for him to have been used thus in the poem.    

The other proposed alteration is from kawyl to Sawyl in the Uther Pen elegy.  I had offered cannwyll, but Dr. Simon Rodway, one of - if not the top expert on the language in these MSS. - said that three things made him "uneasy" about this word in the context of the poem:

"1)      This requires positing an n-suspension.  These do occur occasionally in medieval Welsh MSS, but they are very rare.

2)      Supposing an n-suspension would only allow us to restore one n.  In an OW form, one would expect nt, nh or perhaps nn, but not n.

3)      The single l would mean suggesting an Old Welsh exemplar, for which there is no other clear evidence in the poem.  Elsewhere the scribe has ll where needed, so if he was copying from an examplar with l for ll, then this would be the only occasion on which he didn’t correctly modernize.    

Overall, emendation to Sawyl, while totally speculative, involves less issues (eye-skip to kawell), and eil Sawyl, ‘a second Samuel’ gives plausible sense."

The "plausible sense" he is alluding to here has to do with 'eil' fronting kawyl, which can mean not only second, but like/similar to or descendant of, as well as my accepted interpretation of 'pen kawell' in the previous line as a title for God reading 'chief of the sanctuary.'  This title, in the Bible, is first used for God during the story of the prophet Samuel.  

And that's pretty much it.  We either accept those two points or we don't.  As with pretty much everything Arthurian, there is precious little evidence.  Some would say there is none at all - and they are not far wrong.  No matter how objective we try to be when we study this material, we ultimately are forced to make a judgment call.  In other words, we decide to "believe" something from a subjective perspective.  The subjectivity in question may be based on a rational process, but the actual decision to subscribe to a theory requires, well, a leap of faith.

For better or worse, I'm committing to an Arthur who was born at Ribchester to Sawyl Benisel.  I do so with the full awareness that my theory may be wrong and that someone else in the future may come up with a more compelling and more valid historical candidate for this great hero. 

DISPENSING WITH THE 'ELEI' PROBLEM

Maponus from Ribchester

I no longer think the 'Elei' of the PA GUR is relevant to our search for Uther Pendragon.  Here is the revised section on Elei from my article on the locations mentioned in that poem:

Elei (= Elai) is the early spelling of the Ely River in southern Wales.  Mabon is doubtless placed here not only because he plays a role in southern Wales in CULHWCH AND OLWEN's hunt for the monstrous boar, but because there were actual Mabon place-names there.  From P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

"MABON, ST.

The presumed saint of Llanfabon, a chapel subject to Eglwysilan, near Llandaf, Morgannwg (PW 65). Maenorfabon and Maenordeilo are two townships in the civil parish of Llandeilo Fawr (WATU p.106) although Fabon (=Maenorfabon) is also said to be a township in the parish of Llangadog (Fawr) (WATU pp.68, 125). Both parishes are in Ystrad Tywi."

The entity at Llanfabon may not be a saint at all, for Mabon in Welsh could be used for God, and most especially for Christ the "Divine Son." 

I once thought that Mabon's placement in the Ely Valley may mean that Uther was to be looked for there as well.  But there is no evidence for that.  Instead, Mabon doubtless served Uther wherever he happened to be, just as Arthur's men followed him all over Britain.  I've shown in my book THE BATTLE-LEADER OF RIBCHESTER that Sawyl of the North, my candidate for the Terrible/Horrible Chief-dragon, is more than once associated with the god Mabon/Maponus.  In particular, Apollo Maponus had a shrine at Sawyl's Ribchester. 

We know from Roman period sources that Maponus had his cult center in the North - not in the South.

THE RED-HERRING OF LLANILID: FINDING THE REAL CAMPUS ELLETI

Palus Elleti in THE BOOK OF LLANDAFF

I had several Welsh academic treatments at my disposal regarding the early Welsh place-name Campus Elleti.  Alas, most were early.  Still, they had been compiled by noted experts in the Welsh language and in the toponymics of medieval Wales.  And, as it turns out, the information these studies contained was utterly flawed.

First, Elleti cannot be related etymologically to the -ilid of the Llanilid place-names.  -ilid is thought to represent St. Julitta, although even this is not certain.  Still, as Dr. Simon Rodway just told me the other day:

"I can't see how the modern form -ilid could derive from Elleti, but I can (just about) see it coming from Julitta (or rather something like *Iulita, with a failure of a-affection, perhaps due to vowel harmony? That's how it looks to me.  I'm a bit uneasy about Julitta > Ilid."

I then asked Dr. Rodway what he thought about the idea Dr. Graham Isaac shared with me years ago:

"The form of the name Elleti is corroborated by the instance of 'palude [Latin for “marsh” or “swamp”] Elleti' in Book of Llan Dav (148). But since both that and HB’s campum Elleti are in Latin contexts, we cannot see whether the name is OW Elleti (= Elledi) or OW Ellet (= Elled) with a Latin genitive ending. Both are possible. My guess would be that OW Elleti is right. As the W suffix -i would motivate affection, so allowing the base to be posited as all-, the same as in W ar-all 'other', all-tud 'exile', Gaulish allo-, etc. Elleti would be 'other-place, place of the other side (of something)'."

Dr. Isaac then went on to say that Elleti may be the same word as the ALLIITIO personal or god name found at Corbridge.  He added: “Taking the double -ll- at face value, as I would be inclined to do as a working hypothesis, that would be connected the W all- that I have mentioned before.” [Incidentally, the Llallawg/Llallogan epithet of Myrddin is from the same root and has the same meaning as Alletios.]

Dr. Rodway's response to this?

"Graham's suggestion sounds perfectly plausible to me, and accounts for the form Elleti better than Julitta."

I asked the same question of Professor Peter Schrijver, to which he replied merely "Makes sense."

But to clinch the matter, I decided to go look at THE BOOK OF LLANDAFF itself, where the name Elleti occurs, given to a marsh (L. palud for palus).  I have pasted the relevant passage at the top of this post.  The reference is sparse, but not ambiguous: the swamp of Elleti is between the River Thaw and the villa of Gerbert.  Gerbert is, of course, Gilbert.  This is a reference to the early Norman lord Gerbert/Gilbert de Umfraville of Penmark Castle.  The castle is only a couple kilometers east of the River Thaw.  See https://books.google.com/books?id=mhnYtVAUhQEC&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=%22Gilbert%22%2B%22Penmark%22&source=bl&ots=jAPCTYtWvV&sig=ACfU3U3H9jphfO2v8JpTjYL3WTIe6nO5LA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwins6Dl643qAhVDJjQIHQLiDTUQ6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Gilbert%22%2B%22Penmark%22&f=false.

Needless to say, this isn't anywhere near either of the two Llanilids!

Elleti is no longer extant as a place-name.  The 'Campus' of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM should become something like maes in Welsh.  Palus would be cors or any number of other Welsh words for swamp, marsh, fen, etc.  

More on the Ala Petriana of Uxellodunum/Stanwix

See P. 38 of this article for information on the Ala Petriana of Uxellodunum/Stanwix, my preferred ruling center for the 6th century Arthur.

https://www.facebook.com/download/1134386490276010/ala%20petriana%20in%20britannia%20journal.pdf?av=100006043414438&eav=AfY1sy5qDajc2tqa6EyzIvhC3n2g1F_C-aLMhrPFd1KnSNZ39t78hR971gIKJWwy9xY&hash=AcozeB93-HwmtOZf

SUMMARY OF MY THEORY ON MYRDDIN/MERLIN

Merlin and Vivien (Gustave Dore)

[I've been asked to post this separately from my previous article (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/06/myrddin-mabon-st-ninian-and-nemhain.html), as it presents a more absorbable distillation of my current theory regarding Myrddin's nature.] 

The Triple Death of Myrddin 

Given that Myrddin's madness is a metaphor for a spectral state of existence, how do we account for his triple death?

Well, I still think there are two answers to this question.  The first would allow for the same kind of confusion being present in the medieval mind as in our own, viz. the madness was not understood as a death-state.  Were he believed to still be alive, then it became necessary in the literary tradition to conjure a death for him.  

But the form of death invented brings us to our second answer. Were Myrddin the man identified at some point with a god like Mabon, then that god's seasonal death (and subsequent imprisonment) and rebirth would have been incorporated into Myrddin's story. The parallel between his triple death and that of the god Lleu has been discussed for a long time (see, for instance. Nilokai Tolstoy's THE QUEST FOR MERLIN). I have shown Lleu may have been present on the Tweed near Drumelzier (at Louden Knowe). The Arthurian romance FERGUS OF GALLOWAY places a lion in the chapel of Merlin atop the Noquetran, and this lion (llew in Welsh) is an error for Lleu.  Lancelot of the Lake (Llwch Lamh-calad, i.e. the Irish Lugh) experiences Myrddin-like madness in the Vulgate.  So there is definitely room for Lleu in the mix.  The Welsh seem to have identified the two gods, placing both in death at Nantlle in Gwynedd, and having both take the form of predatory birds.

Merlin's imprisonment, like Mabon's, was of a seasonal nature.  Such imprisonment was symbolic of the sun's "death" during Winter, when the world became the Waste Land.  To heal the land (and the wounded king of sovereignty), the solar Grail had to be found and returned from the south to the north.  The sun god of the summer half-year often has a rival in the myths, a dark companion who takes the goddess for the winter.  Their contest for her is an everlasting one, with each being killed at the end of his half-year reign.  This motif is quite evident in the MABINOGION tale "Math Son of Mathonwy", in which Lleu and Gronwy trade on and off with Blodeuwedd.  Lleu is killed by his rival, but resurrected by the magic of Gwydion.  He then exacts his revenge, slaying Gronwy by hurling his lightning-spear through a great, shield-shaped stone. 

So, we need not fear that Myrddin the god remains trapped forever by the Lady of the Lake.  He is let out by her periodically, i.e. for the summer season.  At this time his madness ( = death) leaves him and he is sane again.  But come winter his "twin" will slay him and he will abide once more, for an interval, in his Otherworld prison.  

Distinguishing between a god that is being seasonally killed and a man who is being sacrificed to that god is no easy matter.  And this is precisely because a man sacrificed to a deity symbolically represents that deity.  A concept difficult for us to grasp.  But archaeology has examples for us.  Lindow Man is a good one.  And literature is sometimes unambiguous.  Men were sacrificed to Odin by being hung and pierced with a spear - an action performed by the god himself. 

What exactly was thought to happen to Myrddin the man after death is not something we can really know.  This is especially true if we are merely talking about a deified dead man, a member of the Manes. The Irish story of Suibhne Geilt or Suibhne the Mad offers us a sad portrait of a wandering ghost whose haunts are the wilds, the places uninhabited by living men.  He has company, but only that of his fellow spirits. When he returns to life (or is, by some mechanism, confined by the living), the 'Hag of the Mill' (the goddess as cailleach) drives him back into madness (death), so that he again flits from tree to tree like a bird, making the kind of prodigious leaps of which only a phantom is capable. Suibhne is specifically said to be a king.  There is no suggestion that he is a folklore version of an ancient pagan deity.  Still, he is pagan, and patently anti-Christian, and his affliction is portrayed as a punishment by God administered by St. Ronan.  

Merlin is similarly presented as being captured and even restrained, or otherwise forced into human society, as a means of staving off or controlling his madness.  But he always manages to escape back into the wild, rejoining the host of the Wild Ones.  

We should not make the mistake and read into this any kind of shamanistic practice - something that is often engaged in by those espousing neopagan beliefs.  They rather indiscriminately draw the parallel between a shaman's entering an ecstatic state and leaving his body to Myrddin's intermittent fits of madness. But a shamanistic spirit-journey was embarked upon for a profound purpose.  Usually, the shaman was voyaging to the Otherworld to obtain a cure for illness or he had some other critical purpose in mind.  Something which was needed to benefit his people, to restore the balance between the worlds, etc. There is nothing of that evident in anything we find in the Myrddin/Merlin tradition.

Yet another element may complicate the evolution of the character we now know as Merlin.  His epithet Llallawg or Llallogan is derived from the same root as W. ellyll.  This is a good description of at least one application of this word in the notes to Triads 63 and 64 in Bromwich.  There is it suggested the animal spirit of a warrior may be something akin to what is manifested during the berserker rage of an Odinic Viking (or of the similar ulfhednar, 'wolf-skins').  Here are Bromwich's remarks:

We might imagine that this same animal spirit that takes over a man when he is fighting in a battle might later be what survives him after death in battle.

Vaticination is also often dependent on the induction of ecstatic trance. Myrddin was a part of Welsh prophetic tradition (see A.O.H. Jarman's "The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy" in THE ARTHUR OF THE WELSH, ed. by Bromwich, Jarman and Roberts). His prophecies delivered from the rock of Molendinar were "extremely obscure and virtually unintelligible", and accompanied by "wailing and shouting in a loud voice" ("St. Kentigern and Lailoken", Cotton MS Titus A. XIX).  Such utterances were thus a product of his madness. Prophecy from madness was akin to that obtained through divine inspiration.  An example of this last would be Taliesin, who imbibed from Ceridwen's magical cauldron.

What we appear to have, therefore, in the character of Myrddin are several motifs that have been clumsily spliced.  First, we have men dying of goddess-induced battle-panic whose spirits reside like wild animals in the forest or other waste places. Their madness is a metaphor for a spectral existence, a shadowy continuance of life experienced outside of the physical body.  Second, we have men exhibiting battle-frenzy as if they had become various kinds of dangerous animals. Third, we have solar deities who seasonally die and are reborn, the cycle continuing eternally as the sacred round of the year turns.  Men who were sacrificed to such deities symbolically became this or that god and so enjoyed the same annual resurrection.  Geoffrey of Monmouth's identification of Myrddin/Merlin with Ambrosius of Dinas Emrys, a Divine/Immortal One who had himself come to be associated with Mabon (and Lleu?) of Gwynedd, had a major impact on the evolution of the former as a literary figure. And four, insane utterances could be construed as prophecies.  Prophecy was the province of gods like Apollo, and Maponus was identified in the Roman period with Apollo.

This is my best take on one of the most mysterious - and most beloved - personages in Arthurian legend.  

MYRDDIN, MABON, ST. NINIAN AND NEMHAIN: THE MERLIN "RIDDLE" SOLVED AT LAST!

Mabon/Maponus in Annandale with Myrddin Sites

[Ladyward = Maporiton or 'Son's Ford'; Blatobulgium for its LO(CO) MABOMI inscription]

Tweed's Well and the Headwaters of the Annan, Tweed and Clyde Rivers

The Northern Myrddin or 'Phantom-man' (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Merlin) has a clearly defined "range" as defined by the places mentioned in the Myrddin poetry.[1]  This stretches from Carwinley (Caer Gwenddolau) and Arthuret (Arderydd) in the south to Tinto Hill (mountain of Abercarf) and Nemphlar (Myrddin's apple tree) in the north.  Bridging these sites is the upper Clyde and the entire length of the Annan.   The Tweed sites associated with Merlin were, as I've shown before, relocated from identically named places in Liddesdale. 

Annandale was the nucleus of the Kingdom of Rheged, and Rheged in the Urien poetry (BOOK OF TALIESIN) is referred to as the 'land of Mabon.'  This is an alusion to the presence of Lochmaben in Annandale, and the Lochmaben Stane at Gretna Green.

I've recently done some work on the very real possibility that Mabon may be present at Dinas Emrys in Gwynedd.  He would appear to have been referred to as Ambrosius, the 'Divine/Immortal One."  For some details on this idea, please see the following links:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/was-dinas-emrys-fort-of-mabonmaponus.html

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/st-curig-at-dinas-emrys-proof-positive.html

Geoffrey of Monmouth chose to identify his Merlin with the Ambrosius (Mabon?) at Dinas Emrys.  The question we must naturally ask this: was his identification of Mabon of the North with a divinity at Dinas Emrys actually correct?  In other words, was it more than just an instance of inventive storytelling?

Well, not really.  There is ample evidence for seeing Myrddin as the ghost of a man who dies - perhaps of battle-panic - during the action at Arderydd. The agent of his death may well have been a pagan battle goddess like the Irish Nemhain (see below).  This deified spirit (cf. the Roman concept underlying the Manes) eventually came to be identified with the northern god Mabon/Apollo Maponus. 

I have previously touched upon Mabon's imprisonment in a maendy or 'stone house' as the prototype for Myrddin's entombment by the Lady of the Lake.  Years ago I wrote about this, and am offering a selection from this material below:

In the Vulgate Merlin, the forest name of the Lady of the Lake is first given as the Forest of Briosque and only later as Broceliande, the name used by Chretien de Troyes. While Broceliande has been sought in various places, none of the candidates work geographically or etymologically. I would derive the Old French ‘Briosque’ from the –fries component of Dumfries, the town situated just West-Southwest of Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire. While once thought to be the ‘Fort of the Frisians’, authorities now correctly identify –fries with Gaelic preas, Angl. Pres(s), gen. phris, Angl. –fries, gen. pl. preas, (b)p(h)reasach, ‘bush, copse, thicket’. Spellings such as Dunfreisch, Droonfreisch, and Drumfriesche occasionally occur in old documents.

The second component is probably something similar to Welsh llwyn:

[bnth. Llad. lignum, cf. H. Lyd. loin, loen mewn e. lleoedd, ?Crn. Diw. loinou (ll.)] 

eg. (bach. g. llwynyn, ll. llwynynnau) ll. llwynau, llwyni, llwynydd (bach. ll. (prin) llwynïos).

bush, shrub, brake, thicket; copse, grove, arbour; woods, forest; (esp. in love-poetry) the traditional rendezvous of lovers, symbol of love or romance.

Broceliande itself may be evident in compounds like Welsh prysglwyn, "shrub, shrubbery, bush, brake, undergrowth, thicket, copse, jungle, also fig." and brysglwyn, "thicket, copse, brushwood." 

It makes a great deal of sense to envisage Merlin and Viviane in the Dumfries region, as this was the home stomping grounds of Myrddin, the Welsh prototype for Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Merlin. Broceliande, then, is simply a name for Dumfries.

In this context it is necessary to mention the Locus Maponi or ‘place of [the god] Maponus’, identifiable with Lochmaben in Dumfries (or perhaps the Ladyward Roman fort near Lochmaben, or even with the Clochmabenstane just south at Gretna Green; see the listing for Mabon in Chapter 6). 

As is well known, Mabon was the son of Modron, i.e. Matrona, the Divine Mother. This is the same Modron who is presented as the wife of Urien of Rheged, son of Nyfain. Nyfain (variants Nyuein, Nyven, Nevyn) is the most likely prototype for Nimue/Nineve/Nymue/Ninniane/Viviane/Vivien, the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian romance.

Nyfain’s name cannot, as some have thought, be an eponym for the ancient Novantae tribe, whose territory (roughly Dumfries and Galloway) was ruled over by Urien. The identification is etymologically impossible. But the name could very easily represent the Irish goddess Nemhain. Nemhain was one of the premiere battle-goddesses of Ireland, and was often paired with Macha, Morrigan and Badb.  When asked about such an equation of names, Professor Peter Schrijver responded "That may well be correct.  One could start from a form like *Nemani.  There is no suffix problem."

There is a strong probability the “stone” under which Merlin was imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake in Broceliande is none other than the Clochmabenstane, once the site of a stone circle.  Her “lake” may have been at nearby Lochmaben. 

It was only after I had reviewed this earlier research when I realized what I had missed.  Quite simply, Professor Owen Thomas Clancy's theory on a Uinniau or Finnian saint as the origin for Ninian (https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/inr.2001.52.1.1) was wrong.  Given all the possible variants of Ninian, it is plain that it actually represents a Christianized - and masculinized - version of Nyfain/Nemhain.  This and this alone would explain why Myrddin the 'Elf-man', a designation for Mabon/Apollo Maponus, is found associated with Ninian sites (like Tinto at Wiston and Molendinar, and doubtless Whithorn with its St. Martin, this last being a transparent substitute for the name Myrddin in several localities). 

I had long suspected Nemhain/Nyfain was involved in the story of Myrddin.  Once again, I'm mining from one of my earlier pieces on this Irish goddess and her role in generating potentially fatal battle-panic.  This is very relevant for what we are told happened to Myrddin at the Battle of Arderydd:

In the Irish sources we are told of battle-panic and one of its unfortunate results.  For example, when the great hero Cuchulainn faces the opposing armies of Ireland,

“He saw from him the ardent sparkling of the bright golden weapons over the heads of the four great provinces of Eriu, before the fall of the cloud of evening. Great fury and indignation seized him on seeing them, at the number of his opponents and at the multitude of his enemies. He seized his two spears, and his shield and his sword, and uttered from his throat a warrior’s shout, so that sprites, and satyrs, and maniacs of the valley, and the demons of the air responded, terror-stricken by the shout which he had raised on high. And the Neman confused the army; and the four provinces of Eriu dashed themselves against the points of their own spears and weapons, so that one hundred warriors died of fear and trembling in the middle of the fort and encampment that night.”

This passage is from W.M. Hennessey’s “The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”.  Also from this source:

“Of the effects of this fear inspired by the Badb [or Nemhain] was geltacht or lunacy, which, according to the popular notion, affected the body no less than the mind, and, in fact, made its victims so that they flew through the air like birds.”

We learn more about the precise meaning of geltacht from the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language.  There we are told

geltacht

Keywords: panic; terror; frenzy; insanity

In Thomas Kinsella’s translation of “The Tain”, we learn that

“The Nemain brought confusion on the armies and a hundred of their number [while asleep!] fell dead.”

“… that same night Net’s wives, Nemain and Badb, called out to the men of Ireland near the field of Gairech and Irgairech, and a hundred warriors died of fright.”[2]

In THE SAINTLY MADMAN: A STUDY OF THE SCHOLARLY RECEPTION HISTORY OF BUILE SHUIBHNE by Alexandra Bergholm, Department of Comparative Religion, University of Helsinki (2009), we are given a wonderful description of what happened to the title character when he was faced with the horror of battle:

“When the Battle of Mag Rath begins, Suibhne is suddenly alarmed by the cries of the two hosts, and the incident is depicted as follows:

…he looked up, whereupon turbulence (?), and darkness, and fury, and

giddiness, and frenzy, and flight, unsteadiness, restlessness, and

unquiet filled him, likewise disgust with every place in which he used

to be and desire for every place which he had not reached. His fingers

were palsied, his feet trembled, his heart beat quick, his senses were

overcome, his sight was distorted, his weapons fell naked from his

hands, so that through Ronan’s curse he went, like any bird of the air,

in madness and imbecility.”

It should be noted here immediately that the word translated ‘fury’ is nemhain, the goddess’s name used as a common noun.

When we come to the two accounts of the Battle of Arderydd, we see that the “Life of St. Kentigern” preserves the more authentic tradition (although highly Christianized, of course), while that found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Life of Merlin” is considerably diluted:

St. Kentigern’s Life –

“In the midst of that fray, the very sky began to gape open above my head, and I heard what seemed to be a great cracking sound, a voice in the sky saying to me, ‘Lailoken, Lailoken, since you alone are guilty of the blood of all your slain comrades, you alone shall suffer for their sins.  You shall be handed over to the minions of Satan, and until the day of your death your companions shall be the beasts of the forest.’  And, as I turned my eyes to the source of the voice, I saw a brilliance so dazzling that no man could bear it.  I also saw numerous battle formations of an army in the sky, much like the streaks of lightning.  In their hands the warriors held burning lances and shining javelins whgich they brandished at me with bloodthirsty FURY [emphasis mine].  Then, as I turned away, a wicked spirit seized me and consigned me to live among the wild beasts of the forest, as you are my witness.”

Life of Merlin –

“Then, when the air was full of these repeated loud complainings [of Merlin’s grief], a strange madness came upon him. He crept away and fled to the woods, unwilling that any should see his going.  Into the forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees.  He watched the wild creatures grazing on the pasture of the glades.  Sometimes he would follow them, sometimes pass them in his course.  He made use of the roots of plants and of grasses, of fruit from ttrees and of the blackberries of the thicket.  He became a Man of the Woods [‘silvester homo’, the Fer Caille title given to him in the story of Suibhne Geilt], as if dedicated to the woods.  So for a whole summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.”

The author Hennessey, like the Christian medieval audience of the Merlin story, did not realize that madness could be a poetic metaphor for a spectral death-state.  It was not the demented body that fled like a bird through the forest after a battle, but the spirit of the warrior whose death was literally caused by the goddess Nemhain.  And the fear she produced was so powerful it could literally kill.  

And what of the theory that derives the name of St. Ninian's Candida Casa/Whithorn from that of Thomas Owen Clancy's proposed Uinniau/Finnain saint?[3] I would say it was wrong. My careful study of Ptolemy's map leads me to believe that the theory identifying Whithorn with the Classical period Leucovia is correct.  The major indentation of the Ienae (or Icoa/Icoe) estuary between the Dee and Abravannus (clearly the Luce, as it is opposite Loch Ryan and defines The Rhinns peninsula) has to be Wigtown Bay, where both the Water of Fleet and the Cree debouch.  While Leucovia would appear to be situated on the wrong side of Wigtown Bay to be Whithorn, when we take into account to remarkable distortion of Ptolemy's map (which has Britain north of Hadrian's Wall is tilted 90 degrees to the east) and the merging of The Machars with The Rhinns, I personally have no problem with Leucovia being Whithorn. Regardless what Leucovia actually meant in the ancient period (*luco- 'marsh' has been proposed), a leuco- name would have been interpreted by a later Latin writer (like a hagiographer) with the word for 'white.'

Noted place-name expert Alan James agrees with me, saying

"My own view is that Leucovia was the name given firstly to some prominent 'status symbol' - more than just a promontory fort - set up by some chieftain on the headland of the Isle, and then to a trading-place in the bay below. The name might have prompted Candida Casa, or Nynia's church might have been a kind of symbolic rival. I think there are quite a lot of problems with Thomas's Nyniau/ Winniau equation (so does he, incidentally!), but in any case I think the 'white' connotation pretty stretched.  There's no shortage of Gwin/ Finn saints, but none of them had white houses."

And that means there is no need to credit Whithorn to a Finnian saint.

The River Annan, the Goddess Anu and Nemhain

According to Rivet and Smith, the root of the River Annan, found as Anava in Ptolemy, is the same as that found in the Irish goddess name Anu.  Anu herself is said to be one of the Morrigna, a group of goddesses named for the Morrigan that usually included the Morrigan herself plus a combination of the goddesses Macha, Babd and Nemhain.  It is possible, therefore, that Nyfen mother of Urien of Rheged was just another name for the river goddess of Annandale - the Annandale of the Maponus shrine.

The Triple Death of Myrddin 

Given that Myrddin's madness is a metaphor for a spectral state of existence, how do we account for his triple death?

Well, I still think there are two answers to this question.  The first would allow for the same kind of confusion being present in the medieval mind as in our own, viz. the madness was not understood as a death-state.  Were he believed to still be alive, then it became necessary in the literary tradition to conjure a death for him.

But the form of death invented brings us to our second answer. Were Myrddin the man identified at some point with a god like Mabon, then that god's seasonal death (and subsequent imprisonment) and rebirth would have been incorporated into Myrddin's story. The parallel between his triple death and that of the god Lleu has been discussed for a long time (see, for instance. Nilokai Tolstoy's THE QUEST FOR MERLIN). I have shown Lleu may have been present on the Tweed near Drumelzier (at Louden Knowe). The Arthurian romance FERGUS OF GALLOWAY places a lion in the chapel of Merlin atop the Noquetran, and this lion (llew in Welsh) is an error for Lleu.  Lancelot of the Lake (Llwch Lamh-calad, i.e. the Irish Lugh) experiences Myrddin-like madness in the Vulgate.  So there is definitely room for Lleu in the mix.  The Welsh seem to have identified the two gods, placing both in death at Nantlle in Gwynedd, and having both take the form of predatory birds.

Merlin's imprisonment, like Mabon's, was of a seasonal nature.  Such imprisonment was symbolic of the sun's "death" during Winter, when the world became the Waste Land.  To heal the land (and the wounded king of sovereignty), the solar Grail had to be found and returned from the south to the north.  The sun god of the summer half-year often has a rival in the myths, a dark companion who takes the goddess for the winter.  Their contest for her is an everlasting one, with each being killed at the end of his half-year reign.  This motif is quite evident in the MABINOGION tale "Math Son of Mathonwy", in which Lleu and Gronwy trade on and off with Blodeuwedd.  Lleu is killed by his rival, but resurrected by the magic of Gwydion.  He then exacts his revenge, slaying Gronwy by hurling his lightning-spear through a great, shield-shaped stone.

So, we need not fear that Myrddin the god remains trapped forever by the Lady of the Lake.  He is let out by her periodically, i.e. for the summer season.  At this time his madness ( = death) leaves him and he is sane again.  But come winter his "twin" will slay him and he will abide once more, for an interval, in his Otherworld prison.

Distinguishing between a god that is being seasonally killed and a man who is being sacrificed to that god is no easy matter.  And this is precisely because a man sacrificed to a deity symbolically represents that deity.  A concept difficult for us to grasp.  But archaeology has examples for us.  Lindow Man is a good one.  And literature is sometimes unambiguous.  Men were sacrificed to Odin by being hung and pierced with a spear - an action performed by the god himself.

What exactly was thought to happen to Myrddin the man after death is not something we can really know.  This is especially true if we are merely talking about a deified dead man, a member of the Manes. The Irish story of Suibhne Geilt or Suibhne the Mad offers us a sad portrait of a wandering ghost whose haunts are the wilds, the places uninhabited by living men.  He has company, but only that of his fellow spirits. When he returns to life (or is, by some mechanism, confined by the living), the 'Hag of the Mill' (the goddess as cailleach) drives him back into madness (death), so that he again flits from tree to tree like a bird, making the kind of prodigious leaps of which only a phantom is capable. Suibhne is specifically said to be a king.  There is no suggestion that he is a folklore version of an ancient pagan deity.  Still, he is pagan, and patently anti-Christian, and his affliction is portrayed as a punishment by God administered by St. Ronan. 

Merlin is similarly presented as being captured and even restrained, or otherwise forced into human society, as a means of staving off or controlling his madness.  But he always manages to escape back into the wild, rejoining the host of the Wild Ones.

We should not make the mistake and read into this any kind of shamanistic practice - something that is often engaged in by those espousing neopagan beliefs.  They rather indiscriminately draw the parallel between a shaman's entering an ecstatic state and leaving his body to Myrddin's intermittent fits of madness. But a shamanistic spirit-journey was embarked upon for a profound purpose.  Usually, the shaman was voyaging to the Otherworld to obtain a cure for illness or he had some other critical purpose in mind.  Something which was needed to benefit his people, to restore the balance between the worlds, etc. There is nothing of that evident in anything we find in the Myrddin/Merlin tradition.

Yet another element may complicate the evolution of the character we now know as Merlin.  His epithet Llallawg or Llallogan is derived from the same root as W. ellyll.  This is a good description of at least one application of this word in the notes to Triads 63 and 64 in Bromwich.  There is it suggested the animal spirit of a warrior may be something akin to what is manifested during the berserker rage of an Odinic Viking (or of the similar ulfhednar, 'wolf-skins').  Here are Bromwich's remarks:

We might imagine that this same animal spirit that takes over a man when he is fighting in a battle might later be what survives him after death in battle.

Vaticination is also often dependent on the induction of ecstatic trance. Myrddin was a part of Welsh prophetic tradition (see A.O.H. Jarman's "The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy" in THE ARTHUR OF THE WELSH, ed. by Bromwich, Jarman and Roberts). His prophecies delivered from the rock of Molendinar were "extremely obscure and virtually unintelligible", and accompanied by "wailing and shouting in a loud voice" ("St. Kentigern and Lailoken", Cotton MS Titus A. XIX).  Such utterances were thus a product of his madness. Prophecy from madness was akin to that obtained through divine inspiration.  An example of this last would be Taliesin, who imbibed from Ceridwen's magical cauldron.

What we appear to have, therefore, in the character of Myrddin are several motifs that have been clumsily spliced.  First, we have men dying of goddess-induced battle-panic whose spirits reside like wild animals in the forest or other waste places. Their madness is a metaphor for a spectral existence, a shadowy continuance of life experienced outside of the physical body.  Second, we have men exhibiting battle-frenzy as if they had become various kinds of dangerous animals. Third, we have solar deities who seasonally die and are reborn, the cycle continuing eternally as the sacred round of the year turns.  Men who were sacrificed to such deities symbolically became this or that god and so enjoyed the same annual resurrection.  Geoffrey of Monmouth's identification of Myrddin/Merlin with Ambrosius of Dinas Emrys, a Divine/Immortal One who had himself come to be associated with Mabon (and Lleu?) of Gwynedd, had a major impact on the evolution of the former as a literary figure. And four, insane utterances could be construed as prophecies.  Prophecy was the province of gods like Apollo, and Maponus was identified in the Roman period with Apollo.

This is my best take on one of the most mysterious - and most beloved - personages in Arthurian legend.

[1] 

The fragments of the Life of St. Kentigern place Lailocen (= W. Llallawg/Llallogan, epithets of Myrddin) on the Tweed and Powsail/Drumelzier Burn (a relocation for the Liddesdale Willow Pool and Tweed/Tweeden Burn) and at the Molendinar Burn in Glasgow.  While the Tweed sites do seem to be due to false tradition, it is worth noting that the Clyde, Annan and Tweed all rise from the same general location in the Lowther Hills.  The headwaters of the Annan and Tweed, especially, are very near to each other.  This region may have once been seen as the "sacred center" of the Lowland 'Caledonian Wood.'

[2]

Once again,  I believe there is a strong possibility that Myrddin began as just a man who perished as a result of the panic brought on by a deity such as Nemhain.  He may only later have come to be identified with Mabon. See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/myrddin-cult-of-dead-vs-cult-of-saints.html for Myrddin as a deified ghost. The very name Myrddin, 'Phantom-man', may also have contributed to this motif. When Geoffrey of Monmouth identified Merlin/Myrddin with Ambrosius the 'Divine/Immortal One' at Dinas Emrys, who was a boy, this may have been done because the boy in question was the 'Divine Son' Mabon. I discussed the presence of Mabon at Dinas Emrys here: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/was-dinas-emrys-fort-of-mabonmaponus.html, https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/st-curig-at-dinas-emrys-proof-positive.html.

[3]

See https://api.research-repository.uwa.edu.au/portalfiles/portal/14262963/O_Neill._Six_Degrees_of_Whiteness_Finbarr_Finnian_Finnian_Ninian_Candida_Casa_and_Hwiterne.pdf.