THE BATTLES OF ARTHUR (Chapter 3 from my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY)

ARTHURIAN BATTLE SITES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT

CHAPTER 3

 

THE BATTLES OF ARTHUR

 

 

The best way to approach the Arthurian battles as they are found listed in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM is to compare them with battles found in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.

 

The HB (the usual abbreviation for the HISTORIA BRITTONUM) nicely brackets Arthur’s military activities between the arrival of Cerdic in southern England in 495 A.D. and that chieftain’s death in 537.  I have argued in some detail in my book CEREDIG SON OF CUNEDDA AND THE FOUNDING OF WESSEX (https://www.amazon.com/Ceredig-son-Cunedda-Founding-Wessex/dp/1976431492/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=CEREDIG+SON+OF+CUNEDDA+AND+THE+FOUNDING+OF+WESSEX&qid=1622581366&sr=8-1) that Cerdic is, in fact, Ceredig son of Cunedda.  Cunedda himself was from Drumanagh in Ireland, not Manau Gododdin in the far north of Britain.  Sites to be identified with Cerdic’s battles were also discussed in my book.

 

Years ago I played around with trying to equate some or all of the battles of Arthur and those of Cerdic of Wessex.  Alas, my knowledge of place-name development and of the languages involved was insufficient to the task. It occurred to me that I should take a second look at the battles listed in the Historia Brittonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

 

First, those of Arthur:

 

Mouth of the river Glein

4 battles on the Dubglas River in the Linnuis region

River Bassas

Celyddon Wood

Castle Guinnion

City of the Legion

Tribruit river-bank

Mt. Agned/Mt. Breguoin (and other variants)

Mt. Badon c. 516

Camlann c. 537

 

And, secondly, those of Cerdic (interposed battles by other Saxon chieftains are in brackets):

 

495 - Certicesora (Cerdic and Cynric arrive in Britain)

[Bieda of Bedenham, Maegla, Port of Portsmouth]

Certicesford - Natanleod or Nazanleog killed

[Stuf, Wihtgar - Certicesora]

Cerdicesford - Cerdic and Cynric take the kingdom of the West Saxons

Cerdicesford or Cerdicesleag

Wihtgarasburh

537 - Cerdic dies, Cynric takes the kingship, Isle of Wight given to Stuf (of Stubbington near Port and opposite Wight) and Wihtgar

 

As Celtic linguist Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson pointed out long ago, 'Glein' means 'pure, clean.'  It is Welsh glân.  However, there is also a Welsh glan, river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank.  This word would nicely match in meaning the -ora of Certicesora, which is from AS. óra, a border, edge, margin, bank.  If we allow for Glein/glân being an error or substitution for glan, then the mouth of the Glein and Certicesora may be one and the same place.

 

Ceredicesora or "Cerdic's shore" has been thought to be the Ower near Calshot.  This is a very good possibility for a landing place.  However, the Ower further north by Southampton must be considered a leading contender, as it is quite close to some of the other battles.

 

Natanleod or Nazanleog is Netley Marsh in Hampshire.  The parish is bounded by Bartley Water to the south and the River Blackwater to the north.  Dubglas is, of course, 'Black-stream/rivulet.'  Kenneth Jackson in his ‘Once Again Arthur’s Battles’ (Modern Philology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Aug., 1945, pp. 44-57) says of the Dubglas:

 

"Br. *duboglasso-, 'blue-black' which seems confused in place-names with Br. *duboglassio-, OW. *dubgleis, later OW. Dugleis, 'black stream'..."

 

Linnuis contains the British root for lake or pool, preserved in modern Welsh llyn.  Netley is believed now to mean 'wet wood or clearing', and this meaning combined with the 'marsh' that was present probably accounts for the Linnuis region descriptor of the Historia Brittonum.

 

W. bas, believed to underlie the supposed river-name Bassas, meant a shallow, fordable place in a river.  We can associate this easily with Certicesford/Cerdicesford, modern Charford on the Avon. Just a little south of North and South Charford is a stretch of the river called “The Shallows” at Shallow Farm. These are also called the Breamore Shallows and can be as little as a foot deep. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery was recently uncovered at Shallow Farm:

 

“A Byzantine pail, datable to the sixth century AD, was discovered in 1999, in a field near the River Avon in Breamore, Hampshire. Subsequent fieldwork confirmed the presence there of an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In 2001, limited excavation located graves that were unusual, both for their accompanying goods and for the number of double and triple burials. This evidence suggests that Breamore was the location of a well-supplied ‘frontier’ community which may have had a relatively brief existence during the sixth century. It seems likely to have had strong connections with the Isle of Wight and Kent to the south and south-east, rather than with communities up-river to the north and north-east.” [An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery and Archaeological Survey at Breamore, Hampshire, 1999–2006, The Archaeological Journal

Volume 174, 2017 - Issue 1, David A. Hinton and Sally Worrell]

 

Cerdicesleag contains -leag, a word which originally designated a wood or a woodland, and only later came to mean a place that had been cleared of trees and converted into a clearing or meadow. I suspect the Celyddon Wood was plugged in for this site. Celyddon contains the word later found in Welsh as called, ‘hard.’. 

 

Cerdicesleag or "Cerdic's wood" I would identify with Hardley on Southhampton Water.  I pick this location not only because it originally meant ‘Hard Wood’, but because of the mention of Stuf (= Stub/b) both before and after the Cerdicesleag battle. Hardley is just across Southhampton Water from Stubbington, the settlement of the descendents of Stuf/Stubb.  It is also just across the Solent from the Isle of Wight, which was given to both Wihtgar and Stuf. 

 

Castle Guinnion is composed of the Welsh word for 'white', plus a typical locative suffix (cf. Latin -ium).  Wihtgar as a personage is an eponym for the Isle of Wight.  Wihtgarasburh is, then, the Fort of Wihtgar.  But it is quite possible Wiht- was mistaken for OE hwit, 'white', and so Castellum Guinnion would merely be a clumsy attempt at substituting the Welsh for the English.  /-gar/-garas/ may well have been linked to Welsh caer, 'fort, fortified city', although the presence of -burh, 'fort, fortified town' in the name may have been enough to generate Castellum.  Wihtgara is properly Wihtwara, 'people of Wight', the name of the tribal hidage.  Wihtgarasburh is traditionally situated at Carisbrooke.

 

Arthur's City of the Legion battle may well be an attempt at the ASC's Limbury of 571, whose early forms are Lygean-, Liggean- and the like.  The Waulud’s Bank earthwork is at Limbury.  Incidentally, Ceawlin’s Wibbandun of 568 is most likely a hill (dun) in the vicinity of Whipsnade, ‘Wibba’s ‘piece of land/clearing, piece of woodland’ (see Ekwall).  Whipsnade is under 10 kilometers southwest of Limbury and is on the ancient Icknield Way next to Dunstable Downs.

 

Tribruit is a Welsh substitute for the Latin word trajectus.  Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 178) discuss the term, saying that in some cases "it seems to indicate a ferry or ford..." The Welsh rendered 'litore' of the Tribruit description in Nennius as 'traeth', demanding a river estuary emptying into the sea. However, in Latin litore could also mean simply a river-bank.

 

If I were to look at Tribruit in this light, and provisionally accepted the City of the Legion as Limbury, and Badon as Bath (which the spelling demands, and which appears in a group of cities captured by Cerdic's father Ceawlin/Maquicoline/Cunedda), then the location of the Tribruit/Trajectus in question may well be determined by the locations of Mounts Agned and Breguoin.  These last two battle-sites fall between those of the City of the Legion and Bath, and after that of the Tribruit.

 

I decided to take a fresh look at Agned, which has continud to vex Arthurian scholars.  I noticed that in the ASC 571 entry there was an Egonesham, modern Eynsham.  Early forms of this place-name include Egenes-, Egnes-, Eghenes-, Einegs-.  According to both Ekwall and Mills, this comes from an Old English personal name *Aegen.  Welsh commonly adds -edd to make regular nominative i:-stem plurals of nouns (information courtesy Dr. Simon Rodway, who cites several examples).  Personal names could also be made into place-names by adding the -ydd suffix.  –ed1 (see the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru) is the suffix in the kingdom name Rheged. The genitive of Agnes in Latin is Agnetus, which could have become Agned in Welsh - as long as <d> stands for /d/, which would be exceptional in Old Welsh (normally it stands for what is, in Modern Welsh, spelled as <dd>). I'd long ago shown that it was possible for Welsh to substitute initial /A-/ for /E-/.  What this all tells me is that Agned could conceivably be an attempt at the hill-fort named for Aegen.

 

But what of Mount Breguoin?  Well, I had remembered that prior to his later piece on Breguoin ('Arthur's Battle of Breguoin', Antiquity 23 (1949) 48—9), Jackson had argued (in 'Once Again Arthur's Battles') that the place-name might come from a tribal name based on the Welsh word breuan, 'quern.'  The idea dropped out of favor when Jackson ended up preferring Brewyn/Bremenium in Northumberland for Breguoin.

 

So how does seeing breuan in Breguoin help us?

 

In the 571 ASC entry we find Aylesbury as another town that fell to the Gewessei.  This is Aegelesburg in Old English.  I would point to Quarrendon, a civil parish and a deserted medieval village on the outskirts of Aylesbury.  The name means "hill where mill-tones [querns] were got". Thus if we allow for Breguoin as deriving from the Welsh word for quern, we can identify this hill with Quarrendon at Aylesbury.

 

All of which brings us back, rather circuitously, to Tribruit.  This can only be the Romano-British Trajectus on the Avon of the city of Bath.  Rivet and Smith locate this provisionally at Bitton at the mouth of the Boyd tributary.  The Boyd runs past Dyrham, scene of the ASC battle featuring Ceawlin which led to the capture of Bath. 

 

If we accept all this, then we cannot very easily reject Badon as Bath.  In truth, with Bath listed in the ASC entry for 577, and made into a town captured by Ceawlin, we simply are no longer justified in trying to make a case for the linguistically impossible Badbury, such as the one at Liddington Castle in Wiltshire. 

 

Or are we?

 

According to the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, Ceawlin (= Maqui-Coline/Cunedda) and Cynric (Cunorix son Maqui-Coline) fought at Barbury Castle in Wiltshire in 556 A.D.  This was part of a push from the south, as 4 years prior to this they had put the Britons to flight  at Old Sarum.

 

Yet, oddly, Ceawlin is not mentioned again until 568, when he drives Aethelberht into Kent. He then fights on several different fronts, but does not return to Wiltshire until 592.  He fights there at Adam's Grave (near Alton Priors), but is expelled after a great slaughter.  Adam's Grave (= Woden's Barrow) is under 15 kilometers south of Barbury Castle, and less than 20 from the Liddington Badbury. Ceawlin dies a year after this expulsion.

 

Thus from the attack on Barbury Castle in 556 to his unsuccessful second attempt to take the region in 592, 36 years elapsed.

 

The question that naturally needs to be asked is this: what happened after Barbury Castle that caused the Gewissei to cease military action in Wiltshire and seek better targets elsewhere?

 

This is where the Liddington Badbury comes in.  Being only a short distance from Barbury along the ancient Ridgeway, it is the logical place for a significant victory that might well have gone unrecorded in the ASC.  Do we have any evidence that Liddington may have been the famous Badon?  As it happens, I believe we do.

 

The Location of the Second Battle of Badon

 

There is one possible clue to identifying Badon. It lies in a comparison of the Welsh Annals entry for the Second Battle of Badon and the narrative of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  The actual year entry for this Second Battle of Badon reads as follows:

 

665 The first celebration of Easter among the Saxons.  The second battle of Badon. Morgan dies.

 

The "first celebration of Easter among the Saxons" is a reference to the Synod of Whitby of c. 664.  While not directly mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, nor the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, there is an indirect reference to this event:

 

664 … Colman with his companions went to his native land…

 

This is, of course, a reference to Colman's resigning of his see and leaving Lindisfarne with his monks for Iona.  He did so because the Roman date for Easter had been accepted at the synod over the Celtic date. 

 

While there is nothing in the ASC year entry 664 that helps with identifying Badon, if we go to the year entry 661, which is the entry found immediate prior to 664, an interesting passage occurs:

 

661 In this year, at Easter, Cenwalh [King of Wessex] fought at Posentesburh, and Wulfhere, son of Penda [King of Mercia], ravaged as far as [or "in", or "from"] Ashdown…

 

Ashdown is here the place of that name in Berkshire. It is only a half dozen kilometers to the east of Badbury and Liddington Castle.  A vague reference to ravaging in the neighborhood of Ashdown may well have been taken by someone who knew Badon was in the vicinity of Ashdown as a second battle at Badon. As the Mercian king was raiding into Wessex, it is entirely conceivable that his path took him through Liddington/Badbury or at least along the Roman road that ran immediately to the east of the area.

 

The Welsh and “Bath” of the North

 

It has often been said that the Welsh Caer Faddon is always a designation for Bath in Avon. However, the only medieval Welsh tale to localize Arthur's Badon places it at Buxton in Derbyshire.

 

I am speaking, of course, of the early Arthurian romance ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’, sometimes considered to be a part of the Mabinogion collection of tales. Rhonabwy is transported back in time via the vehicle of a dream to the eve of the battle of Caer Faddon. Arthur has apparently come from Cornwall (as he is said to return thither after a truce is made; this is almost certainly in this context a folk memory for the Cornovii kingdom, the later Powys) to mid-Wales and thence to Caer Faddon to meet with Osla or Ossa, a true historical contemporary of Arthur who lies at the head of the royal Bernician pedigree.

 

Here is the entry on Osla from P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

 

"OSLA GYLLELLFAWR. (Legendary). ‘O. of the Long Knife’. According to the tale of ‘Rhonabwy's Dream’ it was against Osla Gyllellfawr that Arthur fought the battle of Badon (RM 150). He is represented as sending forty-eight horsemen to Arthur to ask for a truce till the end of a fortnight and a month (RM 159, 160). In RM 159 the name is spelt Ossa. The ‘Long Knife’ identifies him as Saxon, and as such he is foisted into the pedigree of Oswald, king of Northumbria, in a late version of Bonedd y Saint (§70+71 in EWGT p.64), where he roughly occupies the place of Ossa, grandfather of Ida king of Bernicia. In this context he is called ‘Offa (or Ossa) Cyllellfawr, king of Lloegr, the man who fought against Arthur at the battle of Badon’, and father of Mwng Mawr Drefydd. It is curious therefore to find Osla Gyllellfawr mentioned as one of the warriors of Arthur's Court in the tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’. Here it is said that he carried Bronllafn Uerllydan, (‘Shortbroad’). When Arthur and his hosts came to a torrent's edge, a narrow place on the water would be sought, and his knife in its sheath laid across the torrent. That would be a bridge sufficient for the hosts of the Island of Britain and its three adjacent islands and its spoil (WM 465, RM 109-10). Later in the story Osla took part in the hunting of the boar Trwyth. He and others caught him and plunged him into the Severn. But as Osla Big-knife was pursuing the boar, his knife fell out of its sheath and he lost it; and his sheath thereafter became full of water, so that as he was being pulled out of the river, it dragged him back into the depths (RM 140-1). A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY 587 It may be inferred that after the battle of Badon, Osla Gyllellfawr, being defeated, was supposed to have become subject to Arthur and to have served him until he was drowned in the Severn (PCB)."

 

Arthur is said to progress from Rhyd-y-Groes to Long Mountain and Cefn Digoll (Beacon Ring hillfort).  As far as the text is concerned, Faddon is hard by this location.  Yet we find nothing whatsoever in the region that could possibly be identified with Faddon. 

 

However, if Rhyd-y-Groes were to be rendered directly into the English, it would be Crossford.  And we find Crossford at a Roman road crossing of the Mersey.  If one continues north from Crossford to Manchester, a Roman road then led straight to the SSE to Buxton.  To me, therefore, it seems obvious that Rhyd-y-Groes is a standard relocation of the original site.

 

"Stretford proper lies in the south, taking its name from an ancient ford over the Mersey, also called Crosford. Leland about 1535 crossed the Mersey 'by a great bridge of timber called Crossford Bridge.'" (from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp329-335)

While the romance is entirely fanciful, the chronological accuracy in the context of choosing Osla/Ossa is rather uncanny.  Ossa is known in English sources for being the first of the Bernicians to come to England from the Continent. Under his descendants, Bernicia became a great kingdom, stretching eventually from the Forth to the Tees. In the 7th century, Deira – which controlled roughly the area between the Tees and the Humber - was joined with Bernicia to form the Kingdom of Northumbria.

 

In its heyday, Northumbria shared a border with its neighbor to the south – Mercia – at the River Mersey of ‘Boundary River’. The Mersey flows east to Stockport, where it essentially starts at the confluence of the River Tame and Goyt. The Goyt has its headwaters on Axe Edge, only a half a dozen kilometers from Buxton in the High Peak.

 

If we allow for the story’s author to have properly chosen Ossa as Arthur’s true contemporary, but to have viewed Northumbria in an anachronistic fashion – i.e. as extending to the River Mersey during Arthur's time – then Ossa coming from Bernicia in the extreme north of England, and Arthur coming from Powys of the Cornovii to the southwest, coming together for a battle at Buxton makes a great deal of sense.

 

Ossa would have been viewed as engaging in a battle just across the established boundary.

 

If I am right about this, the Welsh knew of the ‘Bathum’ or Badon that was Buxton and placed Arthur here as the victor in the great battle.

 

The Problem from the Standpoint of Linguistics

 

Obviously, we still have the problem of the philology and phonology of the name Badon to contend with.  I've not yet encountered an expert in the languages involved who did not prefer Badon as a British form of English bathum, and such an analysis of the place-name point to Bath in Somerset (or, perhaps, as I once thought, Buxton in Berbyshire). 

 

Yet, while modern place-name scholars and linguists abide by hard and fast rules when parsing Badon, it is, frankly, absurd to suggest that the compilers of things early medieval works like the HB, AC or ASC would have had such knowledge or scruples. Sound-alike etymologies may well have abounded and places that were similar sounding or spelled similarly may well have been inappropriately identified with each other.  Errors in translation and copying only add to the possible confusion.

 

We find Bath in the ASC as a place capured by Ceawlin/Cunedda in 577 A.D.  There the place-name is spelled Baþanceaster.  It was Ceawlin who was present at Barbury in 556, remember. 

 

Now, Barbury is either 'the Bear's fort' or the fort of someone named 'bear.'  The Welsh regularly associated Arthur's name with their word (arth) for bear.  

The first group of battles found for Arthur in Chapter 56 of the HB belong to Cerdic of the Gewissei, we cannot ignore that presence in the midst of those battles of a man called Bieda (with variants Baeda, Beda).  The battle featuring Bieda occurs c. 501, a time that is nearly perfect for the Badon which supposedly happened at the time of Gildas's birth and which the AC has done for c. 516.

 

Alheydis Plassmann of Bonn (https://www.fnzrlg.uni-bonn.de/mitarbeiter/wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/pd-dr.-alheydis-plassmann) summarizes the dating of Gildas's ON THE RUIN OF BRITAIN and the most likely date for Badon according to that source (see CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA).  The prevailing view (much disputed, of course, in various circles!) is that Gildas finished writing his work in 547 at the latest.  Taking his 44 years, then, back from that date to the time of Badon, we arrive at 503. This is as close as one can get to the 501 date for the ASC battle featuring Bieda.

 

According to Dr. Richard Coates, perhaps the preeminent English place-name expert, the best guess as to the origin of the name Bieda is

 

"Redin (p. 60) linked it with OE be:odan ‘to command’, though the structure isn’t fully clear. I’ve seen no better or worse suggestion since." [personal communication]

 

Granted, the Badda/Baddan- element of the Badbury names appears to have a different origin than the Bieda name.  And I will discuss what that origin is in my next post. 

 

I've made a very good case for Bieda's name being preserved in Bedenham, Hampshire.

 

Thus we have a number of correspondences which suggest why Arthur may have been placed (erroneously) at Badon.  They may be listed as follows:

 

1) Cerdic of the Gewissei fights battles to either side of one featuring Bieda of Bedenham.  This battle's date fits the date of the Badon mentioned by Gildas.

 

2) Ceawlin/Cunedda of the Gewissei fights at Baddanbyrig/Badbury/Liddington Castle shortly after the Barbury or 'Bear's fort' battle of 556.

 

3) Ceawlin also captures Bath in 577.  Badon can be construed as deriving from English bathum.

 

Conclusion

 

So, what exactly happened?

 

We might imagine this sequence of events playing out in the tradition over the centuries: Gildas is born at the time of the Bieda/Bedenham battle c. 500 A.D.  This was, in reality, not a special battle.  It merely happened to mark the birthday of a man who became a very famous Christian scholar and saint.  At some point it was wrongly identified with the famous battle fought at the Liddington Castle Badbury by Cunedda.  And this battle, in turn, became confused with a British spelling for English bathum, which at some point was applied to Bath in Somerset.

 

This explanation may seem unnecessarily complicated or even convoluted. But it does seem to rather nicely account for what may have happened when the usual forces were brought to bear on literary materials created in the British Dark Age.

 

THE BATTLE OF CAMLANN

 

Where was Arthur’s Camlann?

 

Well, the most logical place to put it, were he based at Cadbury Castle (see Chapter 1), would be a shore of the River Cam near the great fortification.  But the river-name Cam is a back-formation from Camel, and that name was originally Cantmael.  So we must look elsewhere for the fatal battlefield.

A Camlann in Southern England?

 

My readers will know that over the years I selected two primary locations for Arthur's battle of Camlan, a word supposedly derived from either *Cambolanda, 'crooked enclosure', or *Camboglanna, 'crooked bank/shore.'  There is the Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall and the Afon Gamlan in NW Wales (the favored spot in Welsh tradition).

 

Unfortunately, I've only now realized I missed something.  And, once again, this something has been hiding in plain view in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE all along.

 

The death-date for Arthur at Camlan in the Welsh Annals is 537.  This dovetails very nicely with Cerdic's passing in 534.  Just prior to Cerdic's death, he and Cynric had taken the Isle of Wight.  In the entry on his death, we are told that he and Cynric gave all of Wight to Stuf and Wihtgar.

 

Why is this last reference important?  Because Stuf (eponym for Stubbington) and Wihtgar (a slight corruption of a word meaning the "men of Wight") were first mentioned in 514 as arriving at Cerdicesora/Certisesora, 'Cerdic's bank or shore.'

 

I have shown that the Glein battle of Arthur was for Cerdicesora, the first battle of Cerdic and Cynric.  The word Glein has been improperly derived from

 

W. glân

 

[Crn. C. glan, Llyd. C. glan, H. Wydd. glan ‘pur, clir, disglair’: < Clt. *glano-, fel yn enwau’r afonydd Gal. Glana, Glanis ar y Cyfandir, o’r gwr. *ĝhel-, ĝhlə- ‘disgleirio’]

 

clean, cleansed, neat; clear of sin, pure, good, virtuous, uncorrupted, undefiled, fair, honest, sincere.

 

when it should instead be related to 

 

W. glan

 

[H. Grn. glan, gl. ripa, Crn. C. glan ‘glan (afon); ochr, llechwedd’, Llyd. glann: < Clt. *glanno-]

 

river-bank, brink, edge; shore

 

It will be noted that the glan of Camboglanna as 'crooked bank/shore' is the same word as this second glan.

 

Now, Cerdicesora was either the Ower near Southhampton or the one near Calshot.  But there were other owers in the region.  In 477, Cymen is a combatant in the battle of Cymenesora. It is not known for certain where this particular ora was located, but the generally accepted opinion is that it is The Owers south of Selsey Bill.  These are offshore rocks, but may once have been part of the mainland. The questionable authority for this identification is a forged charter which lists "Cumeneshora".

 

I do not think this identification is correct.  Aelle of Sussex's sons are all being used as eponyms in the ASC to map out the early boundaries of Sussex.  Cissa is for Chichester (although see also Cissbury Ring not far north of Lancing), Wlencing for Lancing.  The unknown Mearcredesburna or 'Mearcred's Burn' I make out to be the Adur's tributary, the Rother, once called the Limen, a British river-name.  Limen was probably connected to Latin limen, 'a limit', from limes, and so the name Mearcred (containing mearc, 'boundary') was substituted.  It marks the eastern boundary of early Sussex.  Aderitum or Pevensey, another Aelle conquest, is a bit further east.

 

Cymen is no different.  The name is from Welsh cyman, meaning a host or army.  It here stands for Wittering, the place of Wihthere’s people.  Wihthere, rather than being ‘creature/being-host’, as Wittering sits right across The Solent from Wight, is probably ‘Wight-host.’ In other words, the here, ‘host’ = cyman, ‘host.’  One word is English, the other Welsh.  As the meaning of the Welsh word was forgotten, it was personified into a son of the equally fictitious Port.

 

It is not at all impossible that Cymen's ora - or Cymen's glan - became corrupted over time by the Welsh (possibly by association with real Camlan place-names) to Camlan.

 

However, there is another, perhaps better possibility than Keynor for Arthur's Camlan.

 

There is a place on Portsmouth Harbour called Cams Hall.  Ekwall's listing for this place reads as follows:

 

[Kamays 1242 Fees, Cammeys 1282 Ep, Cams 1412 FA] The place is on Portsmouth Harbour. The name is no doubt the British name of the bay and identical with CAMBOIS.

 

Under CAMBOIS he has:

 

Identical with Welsh CEMMAES, KEMEYS and Ir camus, 'a bay.' The name is a derivative of OCelt

 

*kambo- 'crooked', Welsh cam.  It is British in origin...

 

Mills confirms the etymology of Cambois in his place-name study:

 

A Celtic name, a derivative of Celtic *camm 'crooked'...

 

From the GPC:

 

camas, cemais

 

[cf. Gwydd. cambas, cambus ‘tro mewn afon, fforch, plygiad’, yn aml mewn e. lleoedd, e.e. Athan-chamais ‘rhyd y tro’]

 

eb. ?ll. cemais.

 

Tro neu gongl mewn afon, cilfach o fôr, bae:

 

bend or loop in a river, inlet of sea, bay. 

 

As this 'crooked' bay has a shore, this is a very likely spot for Camlan. 

 

As consulting a map reveals, Cams Hall is quite close to Stuf's Stubbington.  Such a proximity suggests that a Camlan situated here fits the context of the ASC, where Cerdic's death is entered in the same year as his granting of Wight to Stuf and Wihtgar.

 

I found Cams mentioned at this excellent Website:

 

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol3/pp209-216

 

"Fareham Harbour, formed by a long broad inlet called the Cams..."

 

'The Cams', as they were called, stretch from Cams Bay in the southeast to Cams Lodges in the northwest.  In other words, the camas/cemais, 'bend or loop in a river, inlet of sea, bay', was the entire waterway that surrounded the Cams peninsula.  The maximum extent was generally measured as beginning at Cams Bay just on the other side of Wicor Lake and ending at Wallington River.

 

Nowadays, this inlet is called Fareham Creek, ending in Fareham Lake south and east of Wicor Lake.

 

Cams Shore is used to describe the entire shore around the peninsula (information courtesy Chris Mallin, Administration and Support Officer, Fareham Borough Council).  One of the meanings of Welsh glan, found in the Camlan name, is ‘shore’ (see the GPC).

 

Early Ordnance Survey maps show the various Cams place-names.

 

With Arthur dying at Camlann in 537, and Cerdic dying in 534, it is tempting to say that these two leaders of warriors perished fighting each other at The Cams. 

 

Camlan and the Grave of Osfran’s Son

 

The purpose of this essay is to prove, once and for all, where Arthur’s Camlann battle site was located. Or, more accurately, where Welsh tradition happens to place it!

 

It is fairly well known that the Welsh record seven survivors of Camlann. Yet, to my knowledge, no one has sought to plot these personages out on a map. To do so may help us pinpoint a geographical region in which Camlann was believed to be situated.

 

One of the seven – Geneid Hir – it a difficult and otherwise unknown name. P.C. Bartram (in “A Welsh Classical Dictionary: People in History and Legend up to about A.D. 1000) suggests the name may be corrupt and offers an unlikely identification with a personage named Eueyd or Euehyd Hir (often rendered Hefeydd). However, I would see in Geneid ‘Cannaid’, “white, bright, shining, pure, clean, radiant,” an epithet substituted for the original title Ceimiad, ‘Pilgrim’, of St. Elian. Elian had churches on Mon/Anglesey and in Rhos, Gwynedd.

 

Sandde Bryd Angel looks to be a pun for the Afon Angell, Aberangell, etc., places immediately to the south of the Camlan on the Afon Dyfi in Merionethshire.

 

Morfran son of Tegid is from Llyn Tegid, now Bala Lake in Gwynedd.

 

St. Cynfelyn is of Llancynfelyn in Ceredigion just below the Afon Dyfi.

 

St. Cedwyn of Llangedwyn in Powys, while somewhat further removed than the rest, is still in NW Wales.

 

St. Pedrog of Llanbedrog is on the Lleyn Peninsula in Gwynedd, just opposite the three Camlans in Merionethshire.

 

St. Derfel Gadarn is at Llandderfel near Bala Lake in Gwynedd.

 

Needless to say, if we “triangulate” with all these names/places, we find at the center the three

Merionethshire Camlans.

 

So which one is the right one?

 

Only one way to know for sure: we must find the Camlann that is claimed as the gravesite of Osfran’s son. This reference comes from the ‘Stanzas of the Graves:’

 

Bet mab Ossvran yg Camlan,

Gvydi llauer kywlavan…

 

The grave of Osfran’s son is at Camlan,

After many a slaughter…

 

[“The Black Books of Carmarthen ‘Stanzas of the

Graves’, Thomas Jones, Sir John Rhys Memorial

Lecture, 1967, Critical Text and Translation.]

 

While –fran of Osfran looks like Bran or ‘Raven’, the Os- does not look at all right for a Welsh name. I suspected Ys- and after a first search failed, I defaulted to bryn or ‘hill’ as the original of –bran. Thus I was looking for an Ysbryn.

 

And I actually found him – or, rather, it! [See “An

Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales  and Monmouthshire: VI – County of Merioneth”, p. 98, RCAHMW, 1921.]

 

On the Mawddach River in Merionethshire there is a Foel Ispri. It used to be Moel Ysbryn and was the legendary residence of Ysbryn Gawr or Ysbryn the Giant. If we go north on the Mawddach we run into its tributary the Afon Gamlan, i.e. the Water of the Crooked Bank.

 

In a section of my book THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON, I included the following note detailing one of the supposed sites for Arthur’s grave. As it happens, this tradition matches the one that places Camlan on the Afon Gamlan.

 

A Note on Northwestern Wales as the Site of

Arthur’s Grave

 

There are a few Camlans/Gamlans in northwestern Wales or Gwynedd. The presence of these sites has prompted various Arthurian scholars to propose that Arthur fought his last and fatal battle in this region. The modern champions of this notion are Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd, whose book PENDRAGON: THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGINS OF KING ARTHUR, was released in 2003 by Lyons press.

 

We cannot ignore these Camlans or Gamlans (the most noteworthy being the Afon Gamlan, a river) when searching for a historical Arthur. Unlike the placement of Camlan (or Camlann) in Cornwall, something done by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN, Gwynedd can claim to possess real candidates for Arthur’s final battle site. The only other known site that qualifies linguistically is much further north – Camboglanna on Hadrian’s Wall.

 

Blake and Lloyd place their trust in a very late medieval source, the VERA HISTORIA MORTE DE ARTHURI, a work dated in extant MSS. to c.

1300, although perhaps to originals dating between 1199 and 1203. According to Blake and Lloyd, the VERA HISTORIA probably was written in Gwynedd. I will not contest this point, as it may well be correct.

 

The importance of the VERA HISTORIA lies in its placement of Arthur’s interment – and thus of Avalon – in Gwynedd. Although Blake and Lloyd are familiar with the Gwynedd tradition which places Arthur’s grave at Carnedd Arthur near Cwm-y-llan or Cym Llan (an error for Cwm Llem, the Valley of the river Llem), they choose to ignore this bit of folklore and instead settle on Tre

Beddau near Llanfair, well to the east on the Conwy River, as the actual burial place of the king. They deduce this from the fact that the VERA HISTORIA states that the grave is near a church of St. Mary (in Welsh, Llan-fair), and that archaeologists have recently uncovered a Dark Age or 6th century cemetery at Tre Beddau.

 

[Note: Cwm Llan is a very clumsy attempt at rendering Camlan, and is obviously spurious tradition.]

 

Unfortunately, the authors of PENDRAGON also choose to ignore the description of the burial place of Arthur as preserved in the VERA HISTORIA. In their own words, the burial of Arthur after Camlan is told as follows:

 

“… the VERA HISTORIA describes the funeral of Arthur as taking place at a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, the entrance to which was so narrow that the mourners had to enter by first forcing their shoulder into the gap and then dragging the rest of their body through the opening. While the funeral took place inside the chapel, a large storm blew up and a mist descended, so thick that is was impossible to see the body of Arthur – which had been left outside, as it would not fit into the chapel. Following the storm the mourners came out to find that the body had gone and the tomb prepared for Arthur was sealed shut, ‘such that it rather seemed to be one single stone’.”

 

Now, this passage quite obviously DOES NOT portray a 6th century Christian cemetery. Rather, it is a fitting description of a ‘chapel’ comparable to the “Green Chapel’ of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. In other words, the said ‘chapel’ is a Neolithic chambered tomb, whose passage is so tight as to barely allow the entrance of the mourners.

 

Furthermore, we are talking about TWO conjoined passage tombs – one that is the chapel of the Virgin, and the other which mysteriously receives the body of King Arthur. In all of Gwynedd, there is only one such ancient monument: that of the double chamber tomb of Dyffryn Ardudwy not far west of the Afon Gamlan.

 

One of the two chambers of Dyffryn Ardudwy is actually known as Coetan Arthur or Arthur’s Quoit. The “Virgin” is here a Christian embellishment on what would have been a pagan goddess associated with the Otherworld site.

 

The grave of Arthur discussed in the VERA HISTORIA is thus a product of folklore only. It can thus be dismissed as an actual grave of Arthur.

 

Granted, we cannot so easily dismiss the Camlans/Gamlans in northwestern Wales. Since writing this, Dr. Jessica Hughes of CADW has sent me information via snail-mail that adds important details to the description of the Dyffryn Ardudwy chambered tombs. To quote Dr. Hughes:

 

“The Chambered tomb at Dyffryn Ardudwy has been known as Coetan Arthur in the past, indeed antiquarian reports of the site refer to

Dyffryn as ‘Coetan Arthur’. However, the name appears to refer to the whole of the monument as opposed to a particular chamber. Interestingly (and maybe somewhat confusingly), one mile to the east of Dyffryn lies another chambered tomb known as ‘Cors-y-Gedal’. This was also known in the past as ‘Coetan Arthur’… Regarding whether there is a church of St. Mary in proximity to Dyffryn Ardudwy, I have found a church 4 miles north of Dyffryn in the village of

Llanfair. “

 

The enclosed Detail Report on this Church of St.

Mary states that Llanfair was dedicated to Mary “by at least the 12c when Gerald of Wales and Archbishop Bladwin stayed there in 1188…”

 

Here is the COFLEIN listing for the second chambered cairn:

 

http://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/93724/detai

ls/CORS-Y-GEDOL%2C+BURIAL+CHAMBER/

 

“A rather tapering rectilinear cairn, c.31m NESW by 14.5m, showing at its eastern end a number of orthostats, partly supporting a tipped capstone, c.3.6m by 3.0m & 0.45m thick: a spindlewhorl, thought to be IA, is said to have come from under the capstone.”

 

Both of these chambered tombs are directly west of the Afon Gamlan.

 

 

The Camlann (and Avalon) of Geoffrey of Monmouth

 

Over the years, I've written a great deal about possible locations for Arthur's Avalon.  Only recently I decided to take another look at the problem - this time making use of whatever extant tradition Geoffrey himself may have encountered.

 

It is generally agreed that the Galfridian 'Camblam' is the Camel River in Cornwall.  I myself will not dispute this claim – as long as we remember that this Camel’s early forms are Cambula, Camble, Cornish cam ‘crooked’ and pul (Welsh pwll) ‘a stream’ (Ekwall).

 

There is an old tradition that an inscribed stone found on or near the Camel at Slaughterbridge/Worthyvale was 'King Arthur's Stone:'

 

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/site/wvale.html

 

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/stone/wvale_1.html

 

This identification of the stone was due to a false reading of the inscription.  However, the legend that this stone was Arthur's may, indeed, be very old.

 

What most Arthurian scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike appear to have missed is that the original name of Worthyvale - preserved as early as the Domesday Book of 1086 - was Guerdevalan/Gerdavalan (Cornish auallen, 'apple-tree', plus garth, "enclosure" - or is guerd/gerd here similar to Welsh garth, "mountain ridge, promontory, hill, wooded slope, woodland, brushwood, thicket, uncultivated land"?). Thus we might surmise that Geoffrey had simply picked up this place-name as the location of the supposed King Arthur's Stone.  If so, the happy coincidence that the site bore an apple place-name would immediately have conjured up all kinds of otherworldly connotations. 

 

So, in Geoffrey's mind, Arthur was merely ferried across the Camel from the battlefield to Worthyvale.  There is no need to look for Avalon elsewhere.

 

A New Candidate for King Arthur’s Camlan

 

Ordinarily, I'm a stickler for obeying onomastic rules.  But there is one case in which I might make an exception...

 

We all know how Medraut (Cornish Modred, Latin Moderatus) perished with Arthur at Camlan.  But the site of Camlan has been hotly disputed.  I have favored either one of the Camlans in NW Wales or the Roman fort of Camboglanna on Hadrian's Wall.  In fact, I was the first to definitively identify the Welsh Camlan (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-thirteenth-battle-camlann.html and https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-avalon-of-geoffrey-of-monmouth.html).

 

I'd never really seriously considered a southern Camlan, to be perfectly honest.  But as I'm once more delving into the possibility of a Southern Arthur, it seemed the sensible thing to do.

 

I began with the Modred names we know of in Cornwall.  The following passage is from the entry for Medrawd in P.C. Bartrum's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

 

Several place-names apparently involving the name Modred are found in Cornwall. Rosemodres in the parish of St.Buryan has been interpretted as meaning Modred's Heath. There is Tremodret in Roche (a Domesday manor) and another Tremodret (now Tremadert) in Duloe (Henry Jenner in The Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, LVIII (c.1911) pp.60, 76). In the parish of Kenwyn near Truro we find Carveddras which in 1296 was Kaervodred juxta Tryvero and in 1250 Carvodret. Such occurences show that Modred was a Cornish name, and need not have anything to do with the Arthurian character (C.L.Wrenn in Trans.Cym., 1959, pp.60-61). See also TYP p.455. 

 

One of these sites is especially interesting - Carvedras in Kenwyn, Truro.  Please see the map posted at the head of this article.

 

Is it a coincidence that a place called 'the Fort of Modred' is situated quite close to the River Allen?  And that there is a pronounced bend in this location?  The Cam(bo)- of Camlan, of course, means "crooked" and is applied to a bend in a river-bank.

 

Could an original British *Cambo-alauna have been replaced in the Welsh tradition by known native examples of *Camboglanna?  Note that Wales has an river called the Afon Alun or Alyn, to be properly derived from British *Alauna.  Might we allow for a Cornish Cam + Alan (1199) having become Camlan in the Welsh tradition due to affinity with their own Camlan place-names?

 

I think this possible.  If this is where Modred/Medrawd and Arthur died, we are dealing with some kind of internal squabble - as indeed the tradition insists we should. 

 

“History is Written By the Victors” or Who Did Win the Arthurian Battles?

 

To have to ask the question “Who won the Arthurian battles?” would seem a silly exercise.  But as I have shown above, at least some of the sites listed in the HB are identical with those belonging to Cerdic of Wessex.  And as far as the English sources are concerned, Cerdic was victorious in all his battles.  How do we reconcile that claim with Arthur’s much-heralded military success?

 

Well, I tackled this question in a less direct fashion in my book CEREDIG SON OF CUNEDDA AND THE FOUNDING OF WESSEX.  With the Gewessei, we have attacks from the south (Hampshire and adjacent regions) and then, supposedly later (although archaeologists have questioned this!), a movement up the Thames Valley.  Interestingly enough, these two areas essentially define the section of southeastern England that was settled the earliest and heaviest by the Germanic tribes.  So, in a way, the battles show approximate boundaries between the English and British controlled territories.

 

Cerdic does not seem to have gone very far, and his victories must, therefore, be questioned.  He ends up, apparently, retreating to the Isle of Wight, which some might instead interpret as a consolidation of his hold of Hampshire.  Yet I have described above the marked failure of the Gewessei to penetrate Wiltshire for over three decades.

 

It is my guess that Arthur should be seen as the true victor in the battles against Cerdic. 

CADBURY CASTLE SOMERSET The later prehistoric and early historic archaeology (free download)

Free, downloadable study of the pre-Arthurian archaeology of Cadbury Castle. 

https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-1416-1/dissemination/pdf/9781848021808_all_72dpi.pdf

A NEW CANDIDATE FOR ARTHUR AND MEDRAUT'S CAMLAN?

Carvedras or "Caer Modred" in Kenwyn, Truro, Cornwall 

Ordinarily, I'm a stickler for obeying onomastic rules.  But there is one case in which I might make an exception...

We all know how Medraut (Cornish Modred, Latin Moderatus) perished with Arthur at Camlan.  But the site of Camlan has been hotly disputed.  I have favored either one of the Camlans in NW Wales or the Roman fort of Camboglanna on Hadrian's Wall.  In fact, I was the first to definitively identify the Welsh Camlan (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-thirteenth-battle-camlann.html and https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-avalon-of-geoffrey-of-monmouth.html).

I'd never really seriously considered a southern Camlan, to be perfectly honest.  But as I'm once more delving into the possibility of a Southern Arthur, it seemed the sensible thing to do.

I began with the Modred names we know of in Cornwall.  The following passage is from the entry for Medrawd in P.C. Bartrum's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

Several place-names apparently involving the name Modred are found in Cornwall. Rosemodres in the parish of St.Buryan has been interpretted as meaning Modred's Heath. There is Tremodret in Roche (a Domesday manor) and another Tremodret (now Tremadert) in Duloe (Henry Jenner in The Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, LVIII (c.1911) pp.60, 76). In the parish of Kenwyn near Truro we find Carveddras which in 1296 was Kaervodred juxta Tryvero and in 1250 Carvodret. Such occurences show that Modred was a Cornish name, and need not have anything to do with the Arthurian character (C.L.Wrenn in Trans.Cym., 1959, pp.60-61). See also TYP p.455.  

One of these sites is especially interesting - Carvedras in Kenwyn, Truro.  Please see the map posted at the head of this article.

Is it a coincidence that a place called 'the Fort of Modred' is situated quite close to the River Allen?  And that there is a pronounced bend in this location?  The Cam(bo)- of Camlan, of course, means "crooked" and is applied to a bend in a river-bank.

Could an original British *Cambo-alauna have been replaced in the Welsh tradition by known native examples of *Camboglanna?  Note that Wales has an river called the Afon Alun or Alyn, to be properly derived from British *Alauna.  Might we allow for a Cornish Cam + Alan (1199) having become Camlan in the Welsh tradition due to affinity with their own Camlan place-names?

I think this possible.  If this is where Modred/Medrawd and Arthur died, we are dealing with some kind of internal squabble - as indeed the tradition insists we should. 

Some support of this argument is provided by, of all things, Geoffrey of Monmouth's own Camel River.  While it has long been known that the main part of the Camel was once called the Alan - yet again from a Celtic Alauna - the best recent analysis of this river-name is supplied in Victor Watt's THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES (2004):

"The name originally referred only to the upper section of the river and probably means 'crooked one.' Camel 1602, Camel or Alan River 1748... Co cam + adj.suff. *-el or diminutive sufffix -ell. The name of the main river was Alan 1199-1803, Aleyn (1285-1381), a common Celtic r.n. discussed under River ALLEN."

It would have taken very little for such a river to come to be called the 'crooked Alan', which itself again could easily have been inferred by the Welsh as a Camlan.  Or, alternately, the Allen at Truro was simply confused at some point with the Alan, with the cam- element being incorporated as a result.  That Geoffrey picked the wrong *Alauna river for the battle site may be evidence that this is exactly what happened. 

In concluding, I should mention that one of the candidate for Arthur's Kelliwic - Castle Killibury - is on an Allen River in Cornwall. However, this Allen name is an error (see THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES by Victor Watts, p. 8) and Kelliwic was actually in another place (see 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-new-candidate-for-arthur-and-medrauts.html).  We find a mysterious Arthur's Bridge in Somerset on the River Alham, which may derive from an *Alauna river-name.  However, there is no 'Cam' element present at the Alham. 

NOTE:

It is probably only a coincidence, but a short distance from the Carvedras place-names is a Nansavallan, Apple Valley:

https://www.akademikernewek.org.uk/place-names/content/nansavallan

THE STANZAS OF GERAINT SON OF ERBIN (from Nerys Ann Jones' ARTHUR IN EARLY WELSH POETRY)

Geraint and Enid by Gustave Gore

The early Welsh poem 'Geraint son of Erbin' has always been an important source for the field of Arthurian study.  The problem for scholars is what to make of Arthur's apparent presence in the company of a Geraint, presumably King of Dumnonia.  While the Llongporth mentioned in the poem as the scene of the fateful battle against the English has been variously identified, the best location is Langport on the River Parrett in Somerset.  If so, this could well be a reference to a battle found in the ANGL0-SAXON CHRONICLE under the year entry 658:

"In this year Cenwalh fought at Penselwood [Peonnum] against the Welsh, and drove them in flight as far as the Parrett."

The problem with the dating is obvious: our Arthur was of the 5th-6th centuries, not of the mid-7th.

A King Geraint of Dumnonia is mentioned fighting the Saxons Ine and Nunna under the year entry for 710.

What we have to bear in mind is there appear to have been several Geraints of Dumnonia.  All may have derived their names, ultimately, from the famous British general Gerontius of the early 5th century.  At least one of them may have been made into a saint.  It is quite conceivable that they tended to become confused with one another in the heroic tradition.  Thus if Arthur was associated in some way with an earlier Geraint, he may well have been wrongly attached to a later one.  Such might well be the case in "Geraint son of Erbin."

I have recently made the case for Uther Pendragon being a Cymricized version of the magister utriusque militiae rank of the Gerontius who belonged to the Late Roman Empire.  If I am correct about this, the presence of Arthur with a Geraint is easy to account for, as one of Geraints would have been his father.  

Because my readers may find the elegy to be of interest, I am here posting page images of the excellent treatment of the poem as found in Nerys Ann Jones' ARTHUR IN EARLY WELSH POETRY.  All of the images are "clickable" for enlarging.  

A NEW IDENTIFICATION OF ARTHUR'S MOTHER, YGERNA (AND ARTHUR'S REAL BIRTHPLACE)

Carne and Carne Hill with St. Denys Church

Geoffrey of Monmouth claims that Arthur's mother's name was Igerna.  Welsh scholars insist that Eigr is the earlier form of the name, yet Eigr is not found in any Welsh source prior to the HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN.[1]  Her being made the daughter of Anblaud/Amlawdd of Erging doesn't help vouch for her veracity, as Brynley Roberts demonstrated Anblaud was a created character used to hang famous women on who otherwise lacked known pedigrees. 

 

I've recently decided to favor Geoffrey's form because of the presence at Gorlois' fort of Dimilioc or Domellick of Carne.  This is simply the Cornish word for a rock or a rock outcrop.  Front it with a Welsh 'Y-", the definite article, and you have Igraine, Igerna, Ygerne, Ygraine.   In Welsh, carn often appears as garn.  There are many Y Garns in Wales. We also find carn or carne appearing in Cornish as cerne or kerne.

St. Denys Parish Church stands at the top of Carne Hill on the site of the Iron Age hill fort. There was another St. Denys chapel at Tintagel, where Gorlois moved Igerna for safekeeping when he fought Uther Pendragon. 

We actually know that the place was called Carn Hill from early on.  The following is excerpted from 

"The Hill-Fort at St. Dennis" by Charles Thomas M.A., F.S.A. (https://cornisharchaeology.org.uk/journals/No.4_1965.pdf):

 "The Site 

The isolated hill crowned by the parish church was formerly called 'Carn Hill' (so MacLauchlan, 1849). The tenement which included this appears in the Exeter Domesday as Dimelihoc (f.254b), a small manor with a single plough team, '1 acre'(perhaps a little over a hundred modern acres) of potential arable, pasture half-a-league by half-a-league, and no animals recorded. This probably refers to the northern slopes of the hill, and the rough ground on the moor below, since the ground south of the hill appears as Karsalan, the modern Carsella.

'Dimelihoc', found in 1145 as Dimilioc, 1284,1334 Dynmyliek, and thence to Domelioc, Domeliock (pronounced 'damel'ak'), clearly comprises OCo. din (-as), 'fortress', and a personal name *Milioc that may ultimately come from Lat. Aemiliacus rather than, as the name Mailoc seems to do, from Brit. *Maglacos. If this name, originally that of the hill-summit, had been extended to a wider tenement by Domesday times, it must be presumed that the hill-top itself was then locally called \an) dinas'; for the ascription to the un-Celtic and non-local saint Denis or Dionysius (of Paris) almost certainly resulted from verbal confusion. Whether this took place under a Norman master, or conceivably under some such English landlord as the Ailmer who held Dimelihoc in the time of Edward the Confessor, rather depends upon the date assigned to the churchyard cross standing south of the present church; but it is most unlikely that it occurred before the 11th century.  

The dinas in question surrounds the church and churchyard. Apart from the strong evidence afforded by the place-names, its fortified nature was apparently recognised in some lost medieval tradition encountered by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130's. The Galfridian version of the Arthur story refers (Historia Regum Britanniae, viii. 19) to 'Dimilioc' as the castle of Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. (This is implied to be hard by 'Tintagel', where Gorlois' wife Igerna is immured: Jenner and Henderson have variously demonstrated that Geoffrey's 'Tintagel', the actual medieval castle of which was not commenced until a few years after Geoffrey wrote, is far more likely to represent Castlean-Dinas, the massive Iron Age hill-fort a few miles north of St. Dennis.) 31 The evidence therefore permits the assumption that the St. Dennis hill-top was recognised as an ancient fortification, in some tale contemporary with Geoffrey of Monmouth's writing (early 12th century), at the time of the ascription to 'St. Denis' (11th century), and at the time when the name *Din Milioc was applied to it (unknown, but one would suppose well pre-Domesday)."

In THE SUFFIX -ÄKO IN CONTINENTAL CELTIC by Paul RUSSELL   

(https://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/ecelt_0373-1928_1988_num_25_1_1877.pdf), the author shows how the Roman name Aemilius could be made into a place-name designator by using the -ako suffix:

"It seems, then, that LN function of -äcus can be explained as a semantic specialisation of its general adjectival function in Gaulish and early Gallo-Latin. The shift from adjective to substantive seems in most cases to be a feature of Gallo-Latin.94 We still, however, have to face the question of why -äcus was more productive than the native Latin suffix -änus. The answer, I would suggest, lies within the complex sociolinguistic patterns of Roman Gaul and, as such, can only be framed in the most general and tentative terms. The practice of naming a fundus after the owner seems to have been widespread in Gaul but who did the naming? For a number of reasons it appears that it was not be owner himself but the people who lived in the area. By far the majority of these LNN are based on Roman gentilicia ; now, while it does not necessarily imply that they were Roman, it certainly implies a degree of Romanisation to the extent that, if the owners were naming their fundi, they might have used Latin -änus. Support for this view comes from the high proportion of -änus to -äcus LNN in Gallia Narbonensis, the area with the highest degree of Romanisation.95 On      the other hand, the native inhabitants of a particular area would have tended towards the Gaulish/Latinised Gaulish end of the continuum for whom the natural pattern of forming an adjective from a PN would have been with -äko-. If, then, the native inhabitants provided the name, we would expect precisely the type we find, namely owner’s name + äko thus, for example, the land owned by Aemilius would have been termed * (fundus) Aemiliacus = modern Amalhac, Amilly, Amillis, etc.96 This suggestion seems to be the only way to explain the conjunction of a Roman PN with a native Celtic suffix within the complex linguistic system which probably operated in Roman Gaul."

It might be worth our while to take a look at the etymology of Aemilius.  According to the best authorities, the name is to be linked to L. aemulus.  Here is the listing for that word from Chartlon T. Lewis' and Charles Short's A LATIN DICTIONARY:

aemŭlus , a, um, adj. cf. ἁμιλλάομαι and ἅμα, imitor, imago, Germ. ahmen (Eng. aim) in nachahmen = to imitate,

I.striving after another earnestly, emulating, rivalling, emulous (cf. aemulatio and aemulor), in a good and bad sense; constr. with dat. or as subst. with gen.

I. In a good sense, Att. ap. Auct. Her, 2, 26, 42: “laudum,” Cic. Phil. 2, 12: “laudis,” id. Cael. 14: “aemulus atque imitator studiorum ac laborum,” id. Marc. 1: “Timagenis aemula lingua,” Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 15: “itinerum Herculis,” Liv. 21, 41.—With ne and subj.: milites aemuli, ne dissimiles viderentur, Aur. Vict Caes. 8, 3.—

II. In a bad sense, both of one who, with a hostile feeling, strives after the possessions of another, and of one who, on account of his strong desire for a thing, envies him who possesses it; envious, jealous, grudging.— With gen.: Karthago aemula imperii Romani, Sall C. 10; Vell. 2, 1: “Triton,” Verg. A. 6, 173: “quem remoto aemulo aequiorem sibi sperabat,” Tac. A. 3, 8: “Britannici,” Suet. Ner. 6.—

III. Subst., a rival = rivalis: mihi es aemula, you are my rival (i. e. you have the same desire as I), Plaut. Rud. 1, 4, 20; Ter. Eun. 4, 1, 9; cf. id. ib. 2, 1, 8; “si non tamquam virum, at tamquam aemulum removisset,” Cic. Verr 2, 5, 31: et si nulla subest aemula, languet amor, Ov A. A. 2, 436.—By meton. (eccl.), an enemy: “videbis aemulum tuum in templo,” Vulg. 1 Reg. 2, 32; “affligebat eam aemula,” ib. 1, 6.— In gen., mostly of things without life, vying with, rivalling a thing, i. e. comparable to, similar to, with dat., v. Rudd. II. p. 70 (poet., and in prose after the Aug. per.): “tibia tubae Aemula,” Hor. A. P. 203: “labra rosis,” Mart. 4, 42: “Tuscis vina cadis,” id. 13, 118; Plin. 9, 17, 29, § 63; id. 15, 18, 19, § 68 al.: “Dictator Caesar summis oratoribus aemulus, i. e. aequiparandus,” Tac. A. 13, 3.!*? Facta dictaque ejus aemulus for aemulans, Sall. Fragm. Hist. 3 (cf. celatum indagator for indagans in Plaut. Trin. 2, 1, 15, unless celatum be here a gen.).

From this word we get our word emulate. The dictionary authors cite imitor, to imitate, act like, copy after, seek to resemble, counterfeit, mimic; resembles; assume the form of, and imago, an imitation, copy, image, representation, likeness, etc., as deriving from the same root.

On the surface, the story of Uther assuming the form of Gorlois would seem to be tied up in the meaning of Aemilius.  But we would have to believe that Goeffrey somehow knew not only the personal name underlying his Dimilioc, but that the personal name was the be related to L. aemulus.  And that seems more than a little too far for us to go.

In addition, the contortions Charles Thomas goes through on this name do not seem to be necessary.  As has been pointed out to me by Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales, 

"What is wrong with Meliog as a personal name (cf. Welsh Maelog, and note the suffix *-iak- beside *-ak-)?  *Magl-iakos > *Meiliog."

Now, the real question is this:  if I'm right and Geoffrey of Monmouth is claiming a personified place-name as Arthur's mother, does it follow that we should interpret this story as Arthur being born at The Carn?

Significantly, there is no carn place-name at Tintagel or Tintagel Head.  Many reasons have been given for why Geoffrey chose Tintagel.  He could have done so for political reasons, or to please a patron, for example.  Some have even pointed to the Artognou inscription found there, not as a serious claim for identifying Artognou with Arthur, but to suggest that Geoffrey had knowledge of someone having lived there or worked there who had an Arto- name.  I have already suggested above that may have used the presence at both places of shrines to St. Denys to justify the transferrence.  According to Nicholas Orme in his THE SAINTS OF CORNWALL, besides the chapel at Trevena/Tintagel at the church at Domellick, St. Dennis may have had establishments at Otterham and North Tamerton.  In Devon, there were St. Dennis churches at Bradninch and Walkhampton.  We might also note that there is a Mena place-name at the hillfort, and Tintagel's original name was Trevena, Cornish Tre + the lenited form of menith, viz. mena. 

But if Arthur's "mother" The Carn was never at Tintagel, does it follow that there was a tradition at one time promoting Domellick's hillfort as the hero's birthplace?  Carn names are exceedingly common in Cornwall,. And, indeed, there are many forts or other ancient monuments in Cornwall (and Wales, for that matter) that bear carn names. Yet we are hardly justified in assuming that The Carn at St. Dennis was itself a relocation of a prior site.  [In passing, though, I cannot resist mentionng Carne Beacon near Veryan Castle hillfort, which folk belief claims to be the burial mound of one of the Dark Age Gereint kings (or saints or both). The Carne place-names here are across Gerrans Bay, i.e. Gereint's Bay, from Dingerein Castle fort.]  

In other words, if Arthur was born at The Carn, and that carn is Carn Hill at St. Dennis/Domellick, then Arthur was born at St. Dennis/Domellick.  And NOT at Tintagel. 

Now, I've already shown that Gorlois is from the poetic term gorlassar Uther attaches to himself in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN elegy.  The context of the poem suggests the word means something like the Irish forlas(s)ar, 'great fire, great radiance', rather than 'the very blue'.  His tranformation at Pen Kawell, likely Pen Ridge over the River Cale (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/is-uthers-kawell-cale-river-in-somerset.html), refers to him becoming 'like a star in the gloom.'  Geoffrey himself tells us Uther was symbolized by the great dragon-star that appeared in the sky upon Ambrosius' death. Geoffrey seems to have been responsible for instead taking gorlassar as another chieftain and having Uther magically transform into that man's shape.  

This does not necessarily detract from the possibility that Arthur may have been born at Carne Hill.  But it does show us just how badly history can get mixed up with aetiologically concocted tales.

Still, I think there is a much better place to situate Ygerna, 'The Carn.' In the Life of St. Carantoc (or Carannog), we are told that Arthur and Cadwy were ruling jointly at Dindraethou near Carrum (see https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/carannog1.html, http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/carannog2.html and https://books.google.com/books?id=igQGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=%22vita+sancti+carantoci%22&source=bl&ots=fy34CenbHf&sig=ACfU3U3_5RqlkCH9jKvND3Cr0OxV4oAPag&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj8uMKouIvxAhVIj54KHZYEAaUQ6AEwCHoECAsQAw#v=onepage&q=serpentem%20validissimum&f=false). I have shown that Dindraethou was never actually an Arthurian fort (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/12/dindraithou-darts-castle-at-watchet.html).  But that Arthur is with Cadwy tells us that the original site was one of the Cadbury hillforts.  Carrum is Carhampton, and the word comes from OE carrum, dat. plur. of carr, 'rock', so 'rocks.'  As it happens, carn in the Celtic languages meant a heap of stones.  Welsh has a carreg, 'stone', and Cornish karrek, 'rock.'

What I think happened was this: Arthur and Cadwy, who belong properly at Cadbury Castle, are placed in the saint's life at Carrum where, incidentally, we also find a 'terrible dragon', "serpentem validissimum, ingentem, terribilem" (cf. Uther Pendragon).  This carrum was at some point related to the carne at St. Dennis/Domellick and "personified" by Geoffrey of Monmouth into Ygerna.  The truth is that Arthur's mother belongs neither at Domellick nor Carhampton: she belongs at Arthur and Cadwy's Cadbury Castle in Somerset.  

[1] For years now, I've held to my theory that Eigr was a personification of the headland at Tintagel.  I had arrived at this notion after extensive correspondence with Dr. Graham Isaac.  See

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-repost-of-my-summarized-treatment-of.html.  But given the presence of Carne at Domellick, I now think this earlier proposed etymology is quite unwieldy - and completely unnecessary. 

St. Dennis Church and Fort at Carne Hill

THE GLASTONBURY GRAVE OF ARTHUR

Glastonbury Tor As Seen From Cadbury Castle

On the surface of it, as Gereint’s Dumnonia of the 5th century almost certainly embraced the island of Glastonbury, and assuming that we allow for his son to be Arthur (see my previous blog posts on this subject) and for their forward base to be Cadbury Castle, we are not justified in summarily dismissing the tradition which has Arthur buried at the site of the abbey.

It is well known that Glastonbury’s name was associated with the Welsh Ynys Witrin (urbs vitrea in Caradoc), the ‘Island of Glass.’  W. glas, of course, was only wrongly associated with the words for ‘glass.’  In reality, glas meant ‘green, grass coloured, covered with green grass’ (see the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru), a poetic reference to a grass-covered fairy mound or sidh (cf. the Green Chapel of the famous Middle English poem 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'). Scholars have insisted that the name should instead be related to the Latin glastum for ‘woad’, itself from a Gaulish root related to W. glas. Latim vitrum also can mean ‘woad.’ 

Arthur is brought into connection with Glastonbury in the Life of St. Gildas. A prince named Melwas is said to have abducted Arthur’s queen, Guinevere (the Welsh equivalent of the Irish Goddess of Sovereignty, Findabair), and taken her to his stronghold of Glastonbury.

We need to ignore the usual derivation from W. mael, 'prince', and gwas, 'boy, servant.'  He is not found in any of the royal genealogies attached to Glastonbury, nor is he to be related to any Cornish or Breton personages.  Some have sought to identify him with Gwynn son of Nudd, who is also placed at Glastonbury, but there is no real justification for doing so. The idea that the name represents Maelwys son of Baeddan ('Prince Pig son of Little Boar') of CULHWCH AND OLWEN is slightly more attractive, given the foundation story of Glastonbury involving a sow (see The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday of C.A. Ralegh Radford, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1991).  However,

"This theory has been more recently rejected most notably by Proinsias Mac Canna, Rachel Bromwich, and D. Simon Evans in favor of John Rhys's 1891 assertion that the name derives from the Irish Mael Umai mac Baitan—an early seventh century king who fought with the Scottish king of Dal Riata Aedan mac Gabrain (d. 608) against the English invader Aethelfrith at the battle of Degsastan (SAL, pp. 51, 344, CaO, p.69, DAB, p. xxxiv)."

[http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/collins-arthurian-court-list-in-culhwch-and-olwen]

Melwas could be (given the ease with which w/v and m could be substituted in many medieval MSS.), the Malmes- of Malmesbury.  In fact, we have examples of charter spellings for this place-name such as 'Malves-' and 'Malues-'.  The spelling as Malmesbury is found in the Domesday Book, with coins (1016-66) showing forms Mealmas, Melmes.  Many variants of the place-name are known (see The Place Names of Wiltshire by J.E.B Gover, Allen Mawer and F.M. Stenton Volume XVI published in 1939).  The actual personal name preserved in the first component of Malmesbury is Maeldu(i)b, later wrongly conflated with Maelduin.  Both are Irish names, and we are reminded that in the SANAS CORMAIC Glastonbury is referred to as 'Glasimpere na nGaedel' or "Glastonbury of the Irish (see below)."   

The 7th century St. Maeldub was considered the founder of the monastic settlement at Malmesbury.  

If this identification is correct, then why did Caradog of Llancarfan, the author of the Vita of St. Gildas, place this saint at Glastonbury?

The answer is straight-forward and simple: as Maelduin, Maeldub was associated with the Irish hero of that name from the Immram Maele Dúin or the Voyage of Máel Dúin, who had visited 1) an island with the branch of an apple tree, where they are fed with apples for 40 nights and 2) an island of apples, pigs, and birds. Hence, this saint of Malmesbury was linked in story with the Isle of Apple Trees, viz, Avalon, and placed at Glastonbury.

None of this proves that Arthur was buried at Glastonbury, of course.  

The Harleian Genealogies contain the following pedigree for the founder of Glastonbury:

Glastening

[I]udnerth map Morgen map Catgur map Catmor map Merguid map Moriutned map Morhen map Morcant map Botan map Morgen map Mormayl map Glast, unum sunt Glastenic qui uenerunt [per villam] que uocatur Loytcoyt [Roman LETOCETUM, ‘Grey Wood’; modern Wall, Staffordshire, 2.5 miles south of Lichfield; Welsh Caer Lwytgoed].

To learn more about Glast himself, he is the excellent entry on him from P.C. Bartrum's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:

GLAST. (470?) The name of the eponym of Glastonbury, his descendants being called Glaestings and their city Glestingaburg, whence Glastonbury. The genealogy of the descendants of Glast is given in the ‘Harleian’ genealogies (HG 25 in EWGT p.12). Here he is the father of Morfael and eleventh in descent from him is Idnerth ap Morien, the last of the line. The pedigree ends: Unum [read unde] sunt Glastenic qui uenerunt [per villam] que vocatur Loytcoyt, Whence are the Glaestings(?) who came [through the town] which is called Lichfield. A later version of the pedigree is found in the expanded ‘Hanesyn Hen’ tract, one version of which (in Peniarth MS.177 p.217 by Gruffudd Hiraethog) ends: Oddyna y Glastyniaid a dyfodd o Gaer Lwydkoed i Gaer a elwir yr awr honn Aldüd. Whence the Glastonians who came from Lichfield to the city called Aldüd today. See ABT §19 in EWGT pp.106-7. A confused story of Glast and his founding of Glastonbury is told in an interpolation in William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae, (ed. Thomas Hearne p.16). Here Glast is incorrectly called Glasteing and his eleven descendants (whose names are correctly given except for minor differences) are wrongly said to be his brothers, great-grandsons of Cunedda. Then it says: Hic est ille Glasteing, qui [venit] per mediterraneos Anglos, secus villam quae dicitur Escebtiorne. This is that Glasteing, who [came] through the midland Angles, otherwise the town which is called Escebtiorne. The correspondence with the earlier text is close if we accept the words in [ ] and cut out the words ‘mediterraneos Anglos, secus’ in the second version. The other differences are 'Glasteing' for 'Glastenic', Escebtiorne for Loytcoyt, and treating Glasteing as a personal name. Esceb = 'bishop' (modern Welsh esgob), and may well refer to Lichfield which was a bishop's See (A.W.Wade-Evans in Notes and Queries, 193 (1948) p.134). Here we are told that Glast was a great-grandson of Cunedda and it is interesting to note that Glas (q.v.) ab Elno, of the line of Dogfeiling, was also a great-grandson of Cunedda. The identity of the two was suggested by E.W.B.Nicholson (Cy. 21 (1908) pp.100-3). The interpolation goes on to say: [Glasteing], following his pigs as far as Wellis [Wells] and from there through a pathless and watery way, called Sugewege, that is ‘Sow's Way’, he found his sow near the church of which we are speaking [Glastonbury], suckling under an apple tree, whence it has reached us that the apples of that apple tree are called Ealdcyrcenas epple, that is ‘Old Church Apples’. For that reason, also, the sow was called Ealdecyrce Suge [Old Church Sow], which, wonderful to relate, had eight feet, whereas other sows have four. Here, therefore, Glasteing, after entering that island, saw it abounding in many ways with good things, came to live in it with all his family, and spent the course of his life there. And from his progeny and family which succeeded him, that place is said to have been populated. It is seen that the simple statement of the Harleian pedigree has been supplemented by a legend conerning a sow, and the introduction of an apple-tree. The latter is probably connected with the late identification of Glastonbury as the Isle of Avallon, and the explanation of Avallon as the Isle of Apple-trees [Welsh afall, ‘apple-tree’]. The introduction of pigs suggested to R.Thurneysen that the story was developed from an incident in the legend of St.Patrick (Zs. f. rom. Ph. XX (1896) pp.316 ff). For in the ‘Glossary’ attributed to Cormac mac Cuilenáin, the bishop-prince of Cashel, c.900, s.n. Mugeime, Glastonbury is referred to as follows: Glassdimber .... That is the abode wherein dwelt Glass the son of Cass, the swineherd of the king of Iruath, with his swine a-feeding, and he it is whom Patrick brought to life afterwards, that is, six-score years after he had been slain by MacCon's champions. This is probably an interpolation (Whitley Stokes, Three Irish Glossaries, p.xlviii n.2). The story is apparently taken from Tirechán's Memoirs (c.670) which say that during his travels in Connacht Patrick came upon a huge grave, 120 feet in length. His followers were amazed and inclined to doubt that a man of such size had really existed. To satisfy them, Patrick recalled the dead man to life. He arose and in reply to their question told them: I am the son of Cas son of Glas, and I was swineherd to Lugar, king of Hirot. The war-band of MacCon slew me in the reign of Coirpre Nia Fer. (Ed. Whitley Stokes, The Tripartite Life of St.Patrick, pp.324-5). Here Glas is the father of Cas. Similarly in the Tripartite Life (loc.cit. pp.122-3). But in the Dindshenchas of ‘Loch nDechet’ [in Connacht] we are told that Dechet son of Dergor was the servant of Glass mac Caiss in the time of Áed Ruad grandson of Mane Milscoth (Revue Celtique, 15 pp.475-6; Royal Irish Academny, Todd Lecture Series No.10 pp.410-3). The monks of Glastonbury adopted Patrick into their propaganda. Then it seems that the son of Cas son of Glas, the swineherd in the legend of St.Patrick, became Glas the son of Cas, the swineherd, and then was identified with Glast, the founder of Glastonbury. Whence Cormac's ‘Glossary’. So Glast(eing) with his pigs came into being (PCB).

To cut through all the legendary accretions and discover the actual founder of Glastonbury, we need to start with the following passage from the Irish SANAS CORMAC (courtesy Francis J. Byrne's IRISH KING AND HIGH KINGS)

"For when great was the power of the Irish over the British they divided Alba amongst them in districts, and each of them knew his friend's habitation, and the Irish dwelt on the east of the sea no less than in Scotia [Ireland], and their mansions and their royal forts were built there.  Inde dicitur Dinn Tradui, i.e. Dun Tredue, i.e. the three-fossed fort of Crimthann Mar mac Fidaig, king of Ireland and Alba and down to the Ictian Sea [the Sea of the Isle of Wight], et minde Glasimpere na nGaedel [Glastonbury of the Irish], a church on the border of the Ictian Sea. In that part is Dind Map Lethain in the lands of the Cornish Britons, i.e. Dun Maic Lethain, for mac is the same as map in British.  Thus did each tribe of them divide, for there was an equal proportion of the east, and they possessed that power long after the coming of Patrick."

(For the Irish text from this passage of SANAS CORMAIC, see 

https://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/irishglossaries/texts.php?versionID=9&page=45&perPage=20&ref=.)

In the above-quoted section from Cormac's Glossary, a few statements are noteworthy.  First, Crimthann Mar is singled out.  His father, Fidach, was brother to Eochu Liathan, the eponymous head of the Ui Liathain.  The same Ui Liathain who are known to have been in southern Wales and Cornwall.  Liathain derives from the Irish word liath, "grey."

Second, the Sons of Liathain are specifically said to have had a fortress (unidentified) in Cornwall.

And, third, Glastonbury, said to be "of the Irish", is listed as a holy place central to the area where the Ui Liathain raided and established settlements.  

But what scholars have not noticed is that there was an Irish tribal group called the Ui Glaisin, a sub-sept of the Ui Meic Caille, themselves a sub-set of the Ui Liathain.  Here is the meaning of glaisin from the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language:

1 glaisín

Cite this: eDIL s.v. 1 glaisín or dil.ie/25959

n woad , see glasen.

glasen

Cite this: eDIL s.v. glasen or dil.ie/26010

Forms: gla(i)sín, glaisine, glainsine

n (n s. also gla(i)sín and glaisine, see Cáin Ad. § 52 . Laws iv 276.6 ). ā,f.

(a) woad; a plant yielding a blue dye; the dye extracted from woad. Cf. Quandam enim herbam orten- sem antiqui habebant, nomine glassen, ex cuius succo tincturam pannorum ... faciebant , V. SS. Hib. i 95 § 27 . n s. Angelica ┐ anagailicus .i. glasen coille, Arch. i 335.88 ; 61 . in ghlaisin coille (gl. barba silvana), ib. 341.40 . asara .i. glasin lena (= gariofila agrestis), ib. 330.7 . ásfaid in glassen, RC xiii 462 § 63 . ni dernad ... glaisin bhudh commaith ria, ar cidh edach Ceniuil Fiachrach uili doberthi ina hiarcain (leg. iarcaui? after-cup?) nos-gormfadh (of the dye), Lism. L. 4079 . lin ocus glaisin, Laws ii 370.30 Comm. glainsine (sic), iv 276.8 Comm. fasta[d] iarcae in datha .i. corcair no glaisin, O'Dav. 1295 . fri bratt ngorm, | glan a glaissin, Bruchst. i § 23 . d s. and a s. dofeotar cáircha glassin na rigna ate the queen's woad, RC xiii 460 § 63 . na mill umam ... in nglaisin, Lism. L. 4078 . rug L. in ngúbreith isin glaisin, Dinds. i § 35 ( RC xv 283 ). fon roid ┐ glaisīne ┐ sep, Cáin Ad. § 52 . guirmidir gas do glaisin blue as a sprig of woad, Ériu iv 96 § 14 . g s. trian a cruib glaisne, Laws ii 372.17 . i n-aimsir buana na glaisni, 418.5 Comm. oc denumh glaisne, Lism. L. 4063 . lomrad na cairech il-lomrad na glasne, RC xiii 462.2 .

Compd. ¤gort a field of woad: hi llomrad glassenguirt na rīgna, ZCP viii 311.30 .

(b) By extension a dye (in general); glasen (gl. sandyx), Sg. 69a28 .

I would say, then, that the legendary Glast who founded Glastonbury was, in fact, a member of the Ui Glaisin.  We have seen that Glast is said to come to Glastonbury from "Loytcoyt", Welsh Llwydcoed, the Roman period Letocetum, the "Grey Wood".  However, the ancient seat of the Ui Glaisin was Killeagh in Co. Cork, and I find this place-name parsed as follows:

An Choill Liath

genitive: na Coille Léithe

validated name

(Irish)

Killeagh

(English)

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Glossary

coill(also: coillidh, coillte, coille) wood

liath(also: léith) grey, grey place, grey horse

(see https://www.logainm.ie/en/12484)

In other words, 'Loytcoyt' or Grey Wood is an exact Welsh translation of Irish Killeagh. 

Leaving behind the foundation of Glastonbury by the Irish, we do have evidence that Glastonbury fell within the territory of the Dark Age kingdom of Dumnonia.  

From The Early History of Glastonbury Abbey: A Hypothesis Regarding the 'British Charter' by

Martin Grimmer (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33305716.pdf):

“The earliest actual documentary evidence that derives from the Glastonbury archives that can be used to argue for a pre-Saxon origin and for British continuity at the site is a charter which appears to date from the early seventh century. It is the aim of this paper to discuss the authenticity and implications of this so-called 'British charter'.

The charter begins an account ofgrants to Glastonbury contained in William of Malmesbury's De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, commissioned by the abbey c.1129' William's task in writing the De antiquitate Glastonie was to produce a document which validated Glastonbury's antiquity, as well as to counter a claim made by Osbem of Canterbury that Glastonbury's foundation only occurred in the mid-tenth century." The De antiquitate Glastonie does not survive in the original; the earliest version (MS T) is from the mid-thirteenth century and incorporates a number of later interpolations.'! However, the charter was also included, with some modification, in Version C of the Gesta regum Anglorum, compiled by William after he had written the De antiquitate Glastonie, most likely for presentation to Glastonbury." Thus, its place in the De antiquitate Glastonie can safely be ascribed to William." The British charter, drawn up by a Bishop Mauuron, records a grant to the 'old church' made by an unnamed king of Durnnonia offive hides ei Ineswitrin." at the request of Abbot Worgret. William records the grant as follows:

On the estate of Ynswitrin, given to Glastonbury at the time the English were converted to the faith. In 60I AD the King of Dumnonia" granted five cassates on the estate called lnesuuitrin to the old church on the petition of Abbot Worgret. I, Bishop Mauuron wrote this charter. I, Worgret, abbot of that place, have subscribed. The age of the document prevents us knowing who the king was, yet it can be presumed that he was British because he referred to Glastonbury in his own tongue as Yneswitrin which, as we know, was the British name. But Abbot Worgret, whosename smacks of British barbarism, was succeeded by Lademund and he by Bregored. The dates of their rule are obscure but their names and ranks can clearly be seen in a painting to be found near the altar in the greater church. Berthwald succeeded Bregored.

… The hypothesis offered in this paper is that the so-called 'British charter' in 'William of Malmesbury's De antiquitate Glastonie may in fact be West Saxon in origin, and may represent an authentic record of a donation from Geraint of Dumnonia in the 670s to the Saxon monastery of Glastonbury. It is possible, of  course, that the charters with scribal attestations in the Glastonbury archive could have provided a model for a later forger, and that this accounts for the existence of the scribal attestation contained in the Ineswitrin grant. However, the circumstances enumerated in this paper, and the peculiarly early Anglo-Saxon features of the charter, at least allow that the hypothesis is worthy of consideration. Therefore, while the 'British charter' cannot stand as evidence for a British community resident at Glastonbury before the Saxon foundation, it is nonetheless significant in terms of what it implies about relations between the West Saxon church and the kingdom of Dumnonia. There may not have been any continuity between Romano-British and West Saxon Christian communities at Glastonbury," but there still appears to have been interaction across the frontier.”

If the author of this study is correct, then it was one of the later Gereints who had counted Glastonbury as part of his kingdom.  The implication, of course, is that an earlier Gereint – namely the father of Arthur, styled Uther Pendragon after his famous predecessor Gerontius MVM – would also have considered the holy site to be part of his dominion.

With Cadbury Castle only some 20 kilometers (approximately 12 and a galf miles) to the southeast, there is no barrier to having Arthur buried at Glastonbury.  

NOTE:  In the following source -

https://books.google.com/books?id=dbuMaZ3JRPwC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=Cantmel+camelle+camel&source=bl&ots=7JGrxmOziZ&sig=ACfU3U2gvTajB9ORVRqrpxiMGLSpvGEk3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA9K6SotnzAhVDHzQIHebfBn0Q6AF6BAgIEAM#v=onepage&q=Cantmel%20camelle%20camel&f=false

- evidence is provided that proves there was a relationship between the Camels at Cadbury Castle and Glastonbury in the early English period.