THE CALEDONIAN WOOD BATTLE: AN "OUTLIER" OR EVIDENCE OF NON-SAXON MILITARY ACTION BY ARTHUR?

Grampian Mountains

Only in the last week or so I've had a chance to review my old work on Arthur's Caledonian Wood battle.  Alas, as is so often the case, I've found it sorely lacking in the quality of its argument and conclusion.  

When treating of the battle initially, I had, of course, sought a way to make it conform to a list of battles that were all supposedly fought against the Saxons.  I had arrived at what I thought a clever solution, equating Celidon with a Scottish river-name that may have contributed to the original Caledonian Wood being relocated from the Scottish Highlands to the Scottish Lowlands.  By doing this, I was able to situate a plausible battle site near Dere Street, where several of the other battles were aligned.  For my earlier argument, please see

http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-seventh-battle-celidon-wood.html

Alas, I now realize I must dispense with this idea.  Why?

Well, I began by re-reading studies such as "Calidon and the Caledonian Forest", Clarke B., Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies xxiii, 191–201, 1969.  And one thing became immediately clear: the Caledonian Wood before or up to the 10th century (the date of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM, although the substance of the Arthurian battle list likely predates the actual writing of the HB) could not have been in the Scottish Lowlands.  This is, literally, quite impossible.  The Lowlands did not become Scottish until much later in the Middle Ages.

So, we must allow for Arthur's Caledonian Wood battle to be in the actual Caledonia, a region covering, essentially, the Grampian Mountains in the Highlands of Scotland.

This location is the only reasonable candidate for Arthur's Caledonian Wood.

Needless to say, this wrecks havoc with the HB's claim that all Arthur's battles were fought against the Saxons.  More than any other battle, that of the Caledonian Wood has given fits to Arthurian researchers (such as myself) who have opted for the Saxon champion over one who may have been either the ghost of L. Artorius Castus or a fusion of several Arthurs, with the extreme northern battles belonging to the later Arthur of Dalriada.

This problem intensifies when the battles of Bassas and the Tribruit are thrown into the mix.  Best arguments for those two sites, as I've explored in great depth, are Dunipace (between the two Miathi/Maeatae forts near the Arthur's Oven Roman monument) and North Queensferry.  These sites also do not point to an Arthur fighting Saxons.  The Dogheads at Tribruit in the PA GUR may owe their existence to the name of the headland at Queensferry, although the Roman era Venicones tribe ('hunting hounds' according to Andrew Breeze, or 'kindred hounds' according to John Koch) held the territory north of Queensferry. 

It is tempting to do something similar with the battles at the mouth of the Glen and the Dubglas in Linnuis, but to do so we must resort to Gaelic names (see Inverglen on Loch Fyne, directly opposite of which is a Douglas Water).  It seems safer to leave these two sites as British place-names, both being easily locatable in Northumberland ( = the mouth of the Glen near Yeavering and the Devil's Water at Linnels near Corbridge).

I once went even further with the Gaelic spin, seeing Agned as a corruption for agued, in this case a reference to the Aghaidh Artair or 'Arthur's face on the west side of Glenkinglas in Scotland.  This involved a comparison of W. agwedd, from gwedd, 'face', with Irish agad, agaid. It was clever, I thought - until I found agued used to describe the dire straits of the British host at Catterick in the GODODDIN, a poem that contains the earliest known mention of Arthur. 

All the names of the list can be shown to be British, but they still describe a campaign ranging from somewhat south of York to Caledonia.  The City of the Legion is the York of L. Artorius Castus, Guinnion is Vinovium/Binchester, Breguoin is Brewyn/Bremenium/High Rochester. 

Badon for English Bathum points to Buxton, the Aquae Arnemetia of the Roman period.  I still think there is nothing unusual about the use of the English term, as no one seeking to promote the great Christian champion Arthur would mention the name of a pagan goddess. Or Badon was a tag-on, a site actually in the South (Bath in Somerset), the scene of a famous battle whose victorious commander was unknown.  Giving it to Arthur magnified his importance. Geography may also have played a part in a decision to give Arthur a southern Badon, as it could then be shown that he was a truly mythical hero, having fought from extreme northern Scotland to southern England.  

In the Northern scheme of things, Camlan is not a problem.  It is certainly Camboglanna/Castlesteads on Hadrian's Wall in the Irthing Valley (a river-name that may mean 'Little Bear'; I have placed the *Artenses or Bear people here, a tribal designation preserved in the Welsh eponym Arthwys). Aballava/Avalana/"Avalon" at Burgh-By-Sands is not far to the west, as is a possible prototypical Grail Castle, Concavata at Drumburgh.  There is even a Dea Latis or Lake Goddess who was worshipped at Aballava and at Birdoswald/Banna.

If we go with this picture, and ignore the various Welsh attempts to relocate Arthur to the South (all of which seem to be spurious tradition when we compare them to the HB battle list), what can we say about the HB Arthur?

Time for perfect honesty here: were it not for the fact that Arthur is said to die at Camlan, I could not help but see in the arrangement of the HB battles a perfect blueprint for L. Artorius Castus, possibly serving under the governor Ulpius Marcellus during his victorious campaign in the North, or under Severus and Caracalla during their major action against the Caledonii and the Maeatae.  I have before discussed the interesting presence of Arthur of Dalraida in a fatal battle agains the Miathi, the Dark Age version of the Roman period Maeatae, and the correspondence with the Bassas battle of Arthur of the HB.

I had even gone to the trouble of coming up with a new reading for the lacuna of the L. Artorius Castus memorial stone - a reading which actually received academic acceptance: ARM.GENTES, indicating the Castus had led three legions against armed tribes (in the North, as he was prefect of the Sixth at York).  I dispensed with this idea only because I am somewhat philosophically opposed to adopting the Arthur = LAC theory.  And I abandoned the notion despite the fact that the consensus opinion on the date of the Castus inscription put it well into the Severan period.  Here are two of the most valuable statements on the stone's age:

Benet Salway:

"Basing my opinion purely on the script, I would favour a date in the Severan period (AD 193-235) or up to a decade or so later. I base this on the high degree of ligaturing in the design."

Abigail Graham:

"There are a few things that, in my mind, make it very hard to accept an Antonine date, at the earliest, one could say Commodus, but its a stretch. These have to do with a combination of visual features, ligatures, spacing, stops, textual organisation and spellings. 

Ligatures & Spacing.  Ligatures can happen at any time for practical reasons:  when cutters run out of space (often in the right hand margin). As texts become more complex, this happens more often. By the time of Septimius Severus, however, they also become decorative, and some seem deliberate, even artistic. Quite a few ligatures in this text happen early on in a line (ll  2-3, 5, 6) not as the carver ran out of space, and with the letter T.  Two unusual ones of curved forms also fall beneath each other.  ll. 7-8.  Also  line 9, there was no need for a ligature of 'TE" there was plenty of space (compare with a practical use of ligature NTE at the end of line 8). Ligatures of vowels and T form become popular under Sept Severus, and occur regardless of spacing.  cf. Line 2 of this text from Britain. https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1151.

Terms: "Duci" tends to be used in the 3rd c. CE. I found one use in Pannonia on a shield referring to Commodus (180-191).  for [Vi]ctoria [re] duci . All other uses are Severan or later. 

Spellings: Another dating issue noted by Salway is the replication of letters "Legg" (or "Augg" ""praeff" to show a potential plural. I cannot find a single example of this anywhere in the empire before Sept Severus (201 CE), though it occurs frequently after.  

The lovely letters, the contrast between deep and light chisel cuts (for another example of this Severan from Pannonia cf. https://lupa.at/26913, also note the fine triangulate interpuncts), plus the double letters, the ligatures for decorative rather than functional use... As well as spelling and terminology all point to Severan or a bit later.  At the earliest, this could be 180,  but the issue is, it does not look anything like the parallel text cited by Miletic CIL 3. 11695 https://www.flickr.com/photos/156429244@N04/43444599171.   A monumental text from this period (ca. 179/180) has no ligatures, and diff lettering style altogether. It is hard to believe that a man born in ca. 100, in his fifties by 154, as he claims, was commemorated in ca. 180-190.  It is not impossible, but it would be incredibly rare. 

Where do the interpuncts fit in?  You are right to observe these: this is a beautifully arranged inscription with skilled carving. Dating at text involves taking in the whole picture, and reconciling skill and message with the medium. Few texts are perfect and this had moments of difficulty, but it is beautifully rendered.  The idea that all ligatures are from lack of talent does not hold, in theory or in practice. That double letters are a series of errors in common terms "legg".  "praeff"  is hard to accept, especially when these features emerge after 200 CE Legg=  at least 22 cases, all dating to the 3rd. C. CE, most between 200-250.  "praeff" 40+ cases, none dating before 200.  I lean towards Benet Salway's date: Severan or later. I'm not sure one can rule out something from 180, but it would be an anomaly.  It's a shame Miletic's archaeology/history and the dating don't align, but this happens often."

Let's play a little game at this point.  What if two things about the Arthurian battle list are true:

1) Arthur did not fight at Badon.

2) Arthur did not die at Camlan.

How peculiar it is that the two battles that show up in the Welsh Annals are the only two that really make me pause on identifying Arthur with L. Artorius Castus!

We start playing by saying that Badon was assigned to Arthur.  It may (probably did) happen in the South, but Arthur had nothing to do with it outside the manufacturing of heroic legend.

So, that's easy to do.  But what about Camlan?   LAC died at Epetium (modern Stobrec) in Dalmatia (Croatia).  If Arthur is a ghost of LAC, and the death at Camlan is a folkloristic fiction, why place his death there?

Well, I wrote about some interesting aspects of Camboglanna in connection with Severus and Caracalla:

http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/02/camboglanna-roman-fort-and-l-artorius.html?m=1

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/02/two-lupi-two-severi-mechanism-by-which.html

While not all of the speculations there are necessarily valid, two points may be: L. Artorius Castus may well have served under Severus and Caracalla and may even have been present at Castlesteads.  There is nothing implausible in that scenario at all.  Second, both Artorius and Arthur may well have been taken as 'bear' names fairly early on by the British, and Camboglanna is in the Irthing Valley.  Irthing may, as already mentioned above, be a 'bear' river-name.  For Dr. Andrew Breeze's article on this etymology, see

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-bear-river-of-birdoswald-banna-and.html

Is it a coincidence that the famous Arthur is said to die in the valley that seems to have been called after a Little Bear river?

I've even sought to relate the Camlan in NW Wales with the Miathi battle of Arthur of Dalriada - itself a possible reflection of L. Artorius Castus going against the Maeatae under Severus and Caracalla:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/02/camlan-as-folk-relocation-of-dalriadan.html [1]

Alternately, and as I once theorized, a sub-Roman Arthur may have belonged to Banna/Birdoswald in the Irthing Valley, where there was a remarkable Dark Age royal complex.  The name Artorius, associated with a bear, could have come from nearby Carvoran/Magnis, garrisoned in the late Roman period by Dalmatians.  LAC had Dalmatian connections, finished his career in Dalmatia and we know of several Artorii from Salona in Dalmatia.  We have a funeral stone from a Salona woman at Carvoran.

As for Banna, that fort may be referred to as the 'dragon' on the Ilam Cup, as it was garissoned for centuries by Dacians.  The Dacians were noted for their devotion to an ethnic version of the draco standard.  I once sought to situate Uther Pendragon at this fort and we might still give the idea some currency, but only if we adopt the Galfridian tradition regarding Uther's draco and dragon-comet.  The prevailing view among Welsh literature specialists is that he conjured all that from a misinterpretation of the Pendragon epithet (poetically it had come to mean 'chief-warror' or 'chief of warriors', not Dragon's Head), and I have added the possibility that he may have gotten his dragon-star from a line in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN. 

Give all of that, what would it take to push me over the edge and see in the HB Arthur nothing more than a reflection of L. Artorius Castus?  I mean, I'd already proven that Ambrosius Aurelianus was a 4th century conflated Gaulish figure and not a British war-leader of the 5th century.  With that kind of chronological manipulation going on in Gildas and the HB, why should I have any particular allegiance

to a 6th century Arthur?  All the subsequent Arthurs, from Irish-descended dynasties in Britain, could easily have adopted the Arthur name because already in their time it represented a great legendary figure of the British past.  What we do know is that the Dessi who went from Ireland to Dyfed (where we later find Arthur son of Pedr) took great pains to change the names of their Irish ancestors to Roman ones.  

NOT BRITISH ONES. And this last is an important point.  If the Dyfed royal family would opt to assume Roman names for the ancestors, why wouldn't they choose to give a prince of their line the name of one of the most famous Romans to serve in Britain, viz. Artorius?

The alternative to explaining why the Arthur name was taken by these Irish chieftains does not seem to work: we have to propose that a British Arthur who died c. 537 had become so famous that by the middle of that century Aedan son of Gabran of Dalriada, who had presumably taken a British wife (from Strathclyde, it is assumed), names a son after him.  So, within a couple decades the earlier British Arthur ws held in such great esteem in Strathclyde (or perhaps was descended from someone in Strathclyde, e.g. Ceredig Wledig?) that the Dalriadans introduced the name into their own dynasty in Kintyre.

But if that's so, how do we explain Arthur son of Pedr?  Sure, there was an Artchorp or 'Bear-bodied' in the Dessi Dyfed genealogy.  But Arthur is beyond doubt from Roman Latin Artorius, and while a bear-name in the ancestral pedigree may have been a factor in Pedr's choosing Arthur, the King of Dyfed would still have to have knowledge of the Artorius name and what it signified.  

There is no traceable connection between the Dessi who went to Dyfed and the Dalriadans who went to Scotland. It could be that Pedr named his son for Arthur of Dalriada simply because the Dalriadans, like the Dessi, were Irish, but if so, it still would only have been done if the signficance of the Arthur name were known and appreciated.

So have I answered my own question?  Am I willing to admit that the famous Arthur of legend may, in fact, be an anachronistic shadow of L. Artorius Castus?

Obviously, I need to think on that a bit.  But I am creeping closer and closer to acknowledging the likelihood of the identification.  

"...Prefect of the Sixth Victorious Legion, Dux of Three British Legions Against Armed Tribes...

[1]

I have written to Alan James, noted Brythonic place-name expert, on Camelon, Falkirk.  His response will be pasted here once it is received.  For now I can quote from his Dictionary on Brittonic Place-Names:

It seems to form such a name, Kolanía, in Ptolemy, PNRB pp. 311-12: see CPNS p. 32, Jackson (1948) loc. cit., and Isaac (2005) loc. cit. This was probably the Roman fort at Camelon Stg (which place-name may have replaced *Celein because of misidentification with Camulodunum PNRB p. 295, and with Camelon AC s.a. 537, on the part of Boece and Bellenden: see also cam[b] and lann). Cair Celemion in the list of civitas capitals appended to HB66 should probably be *Celeinion, a plural form, but is unlikely to be the same place as Kolanía, and not necessarily in the North.

Thus Camelon seems first to have been mentioned by Boece (see below for a selection from a dissertation discussing the site, followed by Boece himself).  Thought to be Roman Colonia. 

Are we to see Camelon as merely a corruption of Colonia?

I only asked him because the Dalriadan Arthur is said to have died in these parts fighting the Miathi, and one could see in Camelon the Camlan of the Welsh Annals (were the dates of the two Arthurs not so divergent). 

Note the Camelon fort is on an extreme bend of the River Carron, near Arthur's Oven.

8.5.3  Camelon Less  can  be  said  about  Camelon’s  historic  role  in  the  region’s  mythic  landscape.  On   the  surface,  there  is  a  striking  resemblance  to  “Camelot,”  and  it  may  be  possible  that   this  derives  from  a  regional  variation  of  the  Arthur  myth,  encompassing  Arthur’s   O’on.  If  so,  there  are  no  clear  literary  attestations  of  such  an  Arthurian  connection,   though  Stukeley  (1720:  7)  notes  that  “the  Country  People  say  it  was  called  Camelon or  Camelot,  [and]  that  it  was  the  Metropolis of  the  Picts.”  The  name  itself  is  first   mentioned  by  Boece  (1527),  leading  Christison to  claim  that  it  was  “invented  by  that   clever  romancer”  (Christison  et  al.  1901:  335). The  site  is  most  deeply  mythologised   in  Boece’s  history,  wherein  he  places  numerous  Roman  period  activities  here.  This   is,  however,  less  the  result  of  an  invented  narrative  as  it  is  the  mistaken  identity  of   Camelon  with  the  Camulodunum (modern  Colchester)  mentioned  in  a  number  of   classical  sources,  including  the  story  of  Boudica’s  rebellion  (Hingley  and  Unwin   2005:  116–17).

https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9458/1/DarrellRohl_PhDThesis_2014.pdf?DDD6+#page=347

The  earliest  mention  of  Camelon  is  the  fabulous  account  by  HectorBoece,  whose Latin  history  of  Scotland,  published  in  1522,  was translatedby  John  Bellenden,1  and  printed  about  1536,   at  the  request  of  KingJames  V.,  and  of  which  a  highly  elaborated  metrical  version  was  alsowritten  about the  same time  by  William  Stewart.2Bellenden,  vol. i.,  the  first  buke,  p.  29 :  " In  this  time  (i.e., of Fergus,King  of  Scots),  rang  Esdaill,  King of  Brittonis, and Cruthneus Cameloun,King  of  Pichtis,  quhilk  biggit  efter,  upone  the  Watter  of  Carron,  theciete  of  Camelon."   " This  ciete  of  Camelon  resistit,  mony  yeris  efter,to  the  Britonis  and  Komanis,  quhill  at  last,  Kinneth,  King  of  Scottis,quhilk  put  the  Pichtis  out  of Albion,  brocht  it  to  uter  subversioun."Having  given  Camelon  this  highly  respectable   origin,  the  romancerfurther    on   comes   to   a    wholly    fictitious    narrative   of   its   " utersubversioun,"  of  which  the  following are  the  concluding  passages.     Vol.i.,  the  tent  buke,  p.  161:  " The cieteyanis,  astonist  with  this  suddaneirruptioun  of  Scottis,  and  nocht  of  power  to  resist,  left   the  wallis,   andfaucht,  sa  lang  as  thay  micht  with  perseverant  hatrent  to  the  deith ;and  finalie  wer  all  slane,  bot  ony mercy  or  ransom.    The  nobillis  com-mandit  to  cast  douii  the  toun,  and  to  leif  na  Pichtis  on  live  within  the1  The  History   and   Chronicles   of  Scotland,   Hector    Boeee,  translated  by  JohnBellenden,  circa  1536  ;  reprinted  1821.2  The  Bulk  of  the  Croniclis  of  Scotland,   or   a   Metrical    Version   of   the  Historyof   Hector  Boece, edited  by  W.  B.  Turnbiill,  1858.

 https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/6817/6786

WHY, LINGUISTICALLY SPEAKING, BADON MUST BE BATH

              Peak District, Derbyshire

There seems to be a unbendable, unbreakable rule with Arthurian research: nothing is ever easy, nothing is ever black and white. Throughout the medieval period so much fiction accrued to what may originally have been a kernal of history that any particular strand of the tradition, if followed to its logical conclusion, may result in nothing more than confusion, contradiction or confirmation of its nonhistoricity.

In recent months, I've built a case for what seems like a Welsh insistence on identifying Arthur's Badon with the Liddington Badbury. Unfortunately, there are two good reasons for viewing Liddington as a non-starter.

First, there the the Arthurian battle list of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM. As I've said many times, the geographical distribution of those battles places the Arthur of that 10th century source firmly in the North. All attempts, including my own, to place them in the South have failed. I will be discussing the Northern battle sites yet again in a future blog post.

Yes, we could just resign ourselves to the fact that Arthur never really fought at Badon, that the battle was tagged onto the list. There are may scholars (and amateur historians) who have subscribed to this view. He fought in the North and was not present at Liddington.

Well, this is where reason no. 2 against accepting Liddington as Badon comes in: the argument from the standpoint of linguistics. For decades now (!) I've been trying to get people to understand this - but to a large extent have failed. 

I've decided the time has come once again to offer the complete treatment of the Badon name by the top experts in the field of Celtic and English place-names. These academics leave no room for thinking that Badon is anything other than the completely natural and expected British reflection of English Bathum.

Here is the treatment in full, unedited:

Badon is a difficult place-name for an unexpected reason. As Kenneth Jackson proclaimed:

"No such British name is known, nor any such stem." [To be briefly mentioned in the context of Badon is the Middle Welsh word bad, 'plague, pestilence, death' (GPC; first attested in the 14th century), from Proto-Celtic *bato-, cf. Old Irish bath. Some have asked me whether this word could be the root of Badon - to which Dr. Graham I. Isaac, of the National University of Ire-land, Galway, responds emphatically, "No, absolutely no. A (modern) W form _bad_ etc. would have been spelt in the W of the ancient period as _bat_ and there can be no connection since _Bad(on)_ is what we find." Other noteworthy Celtic linguists, such as Dr. Simon Rodway of Aberystwyth University, Dr. Richard Coates of the University of the West of England and Professor Ranko Matasovic of the University of Zagreb, agree with Isaac on this point. Matasovic adds: “Professor Isaac is right; since we have references to Badon in Early Welsh sources, the name would have been spelled with –t- (for voiced /d/). The spelling where the letter <d> stands for /d/ and <dd> for the voiced dental fricative was introduced in the late Middle Ages.”]

Graham Isaac has the following to say on the nature of the word Badon, which I take to be authoritative.

His explanation of why Gildas's Badon cannot be derived from one of the Badburys (like Liddington Castle, often cited as a prime candidates for Badon) is critical in an eventual identification of this battle site. Although long and rather complicated, his argument is convincing:

"Remember in all that follows that both the -d - in Badon and the -th- in OE Bathum are pronounced like th in 'bathe' and Modern Welsh - dd-. Remember also that in Old English spelling, the letters thorn and the crossed d are interchangeable in many positions: that is variation in spelling, not in sound, and has no significance for linguistic arguments.

It is curious that a number of commentators have been happy to posit a 'British' or 'Celtic' form Badon. The reason seems to be summed up succinctly by Tolstoy in the 1961 article (p. 145):

'It is obviously impossible that Gildas should have given a Saxon name for a British locality'.

Why? I see no reason at all in the world why he should not do so (begging the question as to what, exactly, is the meaning of 'British locality' here; Gildas is just talking about a hill). This then becomes the chief crutch of the argument, as shown on p. 147 of Tolstoy's article: 'But that there was a Celtic name ‘Badon’ we know from the very passage in Gildas under discussion'.

But that is just circular: ' "Badon" must be "Celtic" because Gildas only uses "Celtic" names'. This is no argument. What would have to be shown is that 'Badon' is a regular reflex of a securely attested 'Celtic' word. This is a matter of empirical detail and is easily tested; we have vast resources to tell us what was and was not a 'Celtic' word. And there is nothing like 'Badon'.

So what do we do? Do we just say that 'Badon' must be Celtic because Gildas uses it? That gets us nowhere.

So what of the relationships between aet Bathum - Badon - Baddanbyrig? The crucial point is just that OE Bathum and the Late British / very early Welsh Badon we are talking about both have the soft -th- sound of 'bathe' and Mod.Welsh 'Baddon'. Baddanbyrig, however, has a long d-sound like -d d- in 'bad day'. Both languages, early OE and Late British, had both the d-sound and the soft th-sound. So:

1) If the English had taken over British (hy-pothetical and actually non-existent) *Badon (*Din Badon or something), they would have made it *Bathanbyrig or the like, and the modern names of these places would be something like *Bathbury.

2) If the British had taken over OE Baddanbyrig, they would have kept the d-sound, and Gildas would have written 'Batonicus mons', and Annales Cambriae would have 'bellum Batonis', etc. (where the -t- is the regular early SPELLING of the sound -d-; always keep your conceptions of spellings and your conceptions of sounds separate; one of the classic errors of the untrained is to fail to distinguish these). 

I imagine if that were the case we would have no hesitation is identifying 'Baton' with a Badbury place. But the d-sound and the soft th -sound are not interchangeable. It is either the one or the other, and in fact it is the soft th -sound that is in 'Badon', and that makes it equivalent to Bathum, not Baddanbyrig. 

(That applies to the sounds. On the other hand there is nothing strange about the British making Bad-ON out of OE Bath -UM. There was nothing in the Late British/early Welsh language which corresponded to the dative plural ending - UM of OE, so it was natural for the Britons to substitute the common British suffix - ON for the very un-British OE suffix -UM: this is not a substitution of SOUNDS, but of ENDINGS, which is quite a different matter. That Gildas then makes an unproblematic Latin adjective with -icus out of this does not require comment.)

To conclude:

1) There is no reason in the world why a 6thcentury British author should not refer to a place in Britain by its OE name.

2) There was no 'British' or 'Celtic' *Badon.

3) 'Badon' does not correspond linguistically with OE Baddanbyrig.

4) 'Badon' is the predictably regular Late British / early Welsh borrowing of OE Bathum.

Final note: the fact that later OE sources occasionally call Bath 'Badon' is just a symptom of the book-learning of the authors using the form. Gildas was a widely read and highly respected author, and Badon(-is) (from Gildas's adjective Badon -icus) will quickly and unproblematically have become the standard book-form (i.e. pri-marily Latin form) for the name of Bath. Again, all attempts to gain some sort of linguistic mileage from the apparent, but illusory, OE variation between Bathum and Badon are vacuous."

If We Respect the Welsh Localization of Badon, Do We Do the Same for the Welsh Camlan? YES - AND HERE'S WHY.

Afon Gamlan Valley

So, I've reached a place in my research where I've been forced by textual evidence (Welsh Annals, Dream of Rhonabwy and Life of St.Illtud) to admit that Arthur's Mount Badon was - at least according to the Welsh as early as the 10th century - the Liddington Badbury.

If this identification is correct, then Arthur's battles were in the South.  And I will treat of those one last time in a future blog.

But what of Arthur's Camlan? There is no site of this name in southern England.  Instead, we have a few in NW Wales, and the Welsh tradition is quite firm on the precise location: the Afon Gamlan.  Otherwise, we have Canboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall. For my earlier study of the Afon Gamlan, please see the pasted section below.

Obviously, if Arthur belonged at Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, he's not fighting at Castlesteads in Cumbria.  And I would say the same thing about his being present at the Afon Gamlan, were it not for one astonishing and bizarre thing: the Llanelltyd or Church of Illtud not even a half dozen kilometers south of that river.

Afon Gamlan Just North of Llanelltyd

St. Illtyd's Church, Llanelltyd

Now, I've discussed this place before, but not in any detail.  Why?  Because I was looking at other Arthur candidates more seriously, and tended to dismiss it.  Let's look at it in a bit more detail.

I already knew about Cymer Abbey near Llanelltyd (see 

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/95420/?term=cymer%20abbey), but that didn't really help me.  How old was the St. Illtyd's Church at Llanelltyd?

No one really knows.   COFLEIN tells us only that it "is thought to have originated in the twelfth century or earlier (https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/43876/)." However, the CADW site has a bit more to say on the church there:

"Early Christian site associated with St Illtyd (c475-525); the surviving raised, circular churchyard is possibly of this period

(https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=4737)."

That does not mean, of course, that the original Dark Age church was dedicated to St. Illtud.  But if it were, we need to ask what it was doing here - so near to the Camlan where the Welsh claimed Arthur perished.  Was the saint honored with a church in this spot specifically because his glorious son had been slain nearby?

Let's go with that idea for a moment.  If Arthur were a son of Illtud of Liddington Castle in Wiltshire, what was he doing fighting in Merionethshire?

Well, I actually think I can answer that question.

Let us suppose Arthur has been fighting the Gewissei successfully in the South.  As I have shown, the Gewissei were Irish or Hiberno-Irish sons or at least followers of Cunedda of NW Wales.  The very Merionethshire in which we find the Afon Gamlan is named for Meirion, the son of Tybion son of Cunedda.

Might not Arthur, having beaten back the Gewissei in what was to become the nucleus of Wessex, decided to attack the Gewissei in their homeland?  This would mark a significant change from fighting on the defensive to going on the offensive.  But not only does it make sense, we might expect such a bold action from the victor at Mount Badon.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned.  Instead of defeating his adversaries in their own kingdoms in northwestern Wales, Arthur died there fighting someone named Medraut (or 'Moderatus', if we allow for the original form of the name being more akin to the Cornish Modred).  Sometime thereafter, someone erected a church at Llanelltyd in honor of Arthur's father. 

The only thing that seems improbable about this scenario is why anyone would be allowed to erect and dedicate such an edifice to a past enemy on Gwynedd soil.  I must admit that does pose a problem.  But the Welsh loved their saints, and both in life and in death they tended to travel about quite a bit. Some other controlling faction may have come to control the region or emigrants from south Wales may have moved to Merionethshire, a new trade network established, marriages and alliances forged, etc. Any number of other possible scenarios might account for why Arthur's father would have been allowed to be worshipped at Llanelltyd.

Otherwise, I am at a loss to account for seems an impossible coincidence: that Illtud, who certainly seems to be Uther Pendragon, a warrior hailing from Liddington/Badbury in Wiltshire, had an early church a couple of miles down the Afon Mawddach from the Camlan where his son Arthur had fallen. 

Of course, it remains true that Illtud may have been wrongly identified with Uther Pendragon and all the subsequent tradition stemming from that misidentification is spurious.

The jury is still out on that for me.

***

Camlann 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 happen 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. But next to his church is a place-name Bron yr Arthro, which matches the river-name Arthro (now Artro) near the Afon Gamlan.

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, which I have discussed above in Chaper 3.

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.

Resolving the Issue of Illtud's Parentage or How a Title Became a Separate Personage

                   Liddington Castle

Try as I might to ignore it, there is no doubt that three different Welsh sources fix Arthur's Badon at the Liddington Castle Badbury.

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-final-discovery-of-king-arthurs.html?m=1

This is rather remarkable. And although I continue to lobby for a northern Arthur, I can only continue to do so if I deny the relevance of the Welsh identification of Badon.

The choice is plain: accept Liddington as Arthur's Badon or opt to do one of two things: put his Badon elsewhere or accept the possibility he never really fought there at all.

I do continue to think that Illtud is the most logical candidate for Uther Pendragon. While it might be that a tradition linking the Welsh name/epithet with the Latin descriptors and military titles of the saint is a spurious one, it still represents the only apparent identification of Uther with a historical entity at our disposal. And the "coincidental" matchup of Illtud's Bican and Llydaw (Welsh Bicknor and Lydbrook) with Bican Dyke and Liddington's Lyd Brook is difficult - if not impossible - to ignore.

My only reason at this point for not fully embracing Illtud as Uther is the Galfridian intrusion on the tradition and other possible signs of confusion or manipulation.

At the center of the problem is Igerna, who appears in the Welsh tradition as Eigr.

As I showed long ago, Igerna or Ygerna is a character created from a place-name:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-new-identification-of-arthurs-mother.html

She was, quite literally, "The Carne" at Domellick/Dimilioc.

Gorlois doesn't help provide any historicity, as he, too, is a fictional character conjured by Geoffrey of Monmouth from Uther's gorlassar epithet in the Marwnat Vthyr Pen.

This all brings into question the legitimacy of Eigr, who is always given precedence by Welsh scholars - and this despite her being made a daughter of Anblaud of Ercing, a chieftain Brynley F. Roberts regarded as fictitious. He says: “Anlawdd Wledig seems to be a function rather than a person. He is an ‘empty’ character ... who exists merely so that his daughters may be the mothers of heroes who are all, therefore, cousins of Arthur.”

If Eigr derives from Geoffrey's Igerna and not the other way around, as seems fairly certain, then there is no reason to accept her independent existence as a daughter of Anblaud.

When we go back to Illtud we learn that his mother was also claimed to be a daughter of Anblaud. The following listing on her is drawn from Bartrum:

RHIEINWYLYDD ferch AMLAWDD WLEDIG. (450) In the Life of St.Illtud (§1) Illtud is said to have been the son of Bicanus who married ‘filiam Anblaud, Britannie regis, Rieingulid in the British tongue, which in Latin would be regina pudica, [modest queen]’. The modern Welsh would be Rhieinwylydd (cf. WCO 102-3), where rhiain formerly meant ‘queen’ and gwylaidd means ‘modest’. 

Illtud's wife was named Trynihid, who is from "Llydaw", i.e. Lydbrook in Ercing. He takes her with him when he goes to serve as a soldier in Paul of Penychen's household. They stop on the way to see his cousin Arthur, who has "a very great company of soldiers" with him. This description of Arthur's court in Illtud's Vita betrays Galfridian influence, as Caerleon, the City of the Legion, lies between Ercing and Penychen.

Now, if we allow for Uther Pendragon, a Welsh rendering of Latin terms belonging to Illtud, having taken on, over time, either accidentally or intentionally, an identity wholly separate from that of Illtud, we may account for the fictional aspects of Arthur's parentage. I have elsewhere detailed how and why this process may have played out.

If we then, provisionally, accept that Arthur was Illtud's son, and the whole Igerna/Eigr-Gorlois story as fraudulent, there is one matter we must be sure of: are we justified in identifying Illtud's Bican/Bicknor and Lydbrook with Bican Dyke and Lyd Brook/Liddington Castle/Badbury/"Badon"?

Well, as both the Welsh Annals and the Dream of Rhonabwy (the last through an obvious relocation) place Badon at the Liddington Badbury, Liddington Castle was called Durocornovium and Barbury Castle, the "Bear's fort", is hard by, I will go out on a limb here to say that I don't think we are looking at a coincidental place-name correspondence.

If Illtud was Arthur's father and he hailed from the Cornovii/Cernyw fort at Liddington, then the "Bear" remembered by the English at nearby Barbury Castle was Arthur himself.

There remains, of course, the problem of Arthur's other battles - a problem only if we put them in the South. I will return to this subject in the near future.

HOW TO SAVE THE ARTHUR OF THE NORTH

                   The Rock of Clyde

             Birdoswald Roman Fort

So, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to fit Arthur into the South of England, primarily because the Welsh traditon on Badon insists Arthur fought at the Liddington Badbury. This is so despite the spelling Badon, which is the normal British reflection of English Bathum. My choice for Arthur's Badon in the North has always been Buxton with its Bathamgate Roman road.

A southern Arthur, if we want an identifiable historical candidate, can only successfully be linked to either Ceredig son of Cunedda/Cerdic of Wessex, or to a son of St. Illtud. At least that is what my own extensive research has shown. Both figures carry with them some unresolvable problems that detract from their attractiveness. While compelling to a certain degree, neither is particularly convincing.

A potential Uther with no real drawbacks is Ceredig Wledig of Aloo. This king was called crudelisque tyranni by St. Patrick, a Latin phrase easily rendered into the Welsh as Uther Pendragon. Aloo is believed to be a reference to Alclud, and hence to the kingdom of Strathclyde. This kingdom was home to the ancient Dumnonii, whose tribal name is identical to that of the Dumnonii of the South, a region that included the Cornwall often connected to Arthur.

The Dalriadans could certainly have gotten the name Arthur from intermarriage with the Strathclyde Britons. During Aedan of Dalriada's floruit, Rhydderch was king of Alclud. We are told in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM that Rhydderch and other great kings of the North, including Urien, fought against the Saxons.

Alclud is the Rock of Clyde, of course, and Adamnan renders it into Latin as Petra Cloithe. It makes sense that a famous British Arthur from Alclud who gave his name to the Irish Dalriadan royal family may explain why Pedr or Petrus of the Irish-descended royal family of Dyfed gave his son the same name.

For good measure, we should not forget Arthur son of Bicoir, who killed the Irish Mongan with a stone. The "stone theme" thus seems rather pervasive.

Now, the two lines of descent for Rhydderch in the Harleian MS. are hugely conflicting. And Jocelyn's claim that Ceredig of Aloo belonged to Wallia is, frankky, odd. It is possible Wallia refers to Ceredigion in Wales and is thus merely an error. 

But Cambria or Wales and Cumbria are, in fact, the same word. Both regions were home to the Cymri. The Roman fort of Uxellodunum towards the west end of Hadrian's Wall, the vallum, was nicknamed Petrianis, the fort of the Ala Petriana, whose founder bore the name Petra.

The Petrianis fort was referred to in early antiquarian sources as Arthuriburgum, 'Arthur's fort.' It lies close to the forts of Camlan, Avalon and even a possible prototypical Grail fort. A Dea Latis or Lake Goddess is attested from Aballava/Avalana.

Is it possible, I wonder, that Ceredig Wledig the Terrible Chief-warrior didn't, in fact, rule from Alclud/Petra Cloithe, but from Petrianis in Cumbria on the Wall?

If so, then the Dalriadans may have obtained the name Arthur via some connection with Stanwix. This does, however, ruin the Northern Dumnonii-Southern Dumnonii correspondence.

In the past, I pushed Banna/Birdoswald on the Wall as the home of Uther, the site of an extraordinary sub-Roman complex. The fort there may actually have been referred to in the Roman period as the place of the Dragon (see my treatment of the Ilam Pan). I utilized the Galfridian dragon tradition to derive Uther from the late Roman period draco-devoted Dacian garrison at that fort. St. Patrick came from the same place. 

I hypothesized the name Arthur came from nearby Carvoran, whose Dalmatian garrison might well have preserved the Artorius name (given L. Artorius Castus' Dalmatian connections and the Artorii who were present in Dalmatia). Carvoran's Roman name, incidentally, was Magnis, 'STONE.'  

Lastly, I pointed out that both Birdoswald and Castlesteads/Camboglanna were in the Irthing Valley, a river possibly deriving its name from a Cumbric word meaning 'Little Bear.' The Arthwys eponym of the North stood for the Bear People and I situated them in the Irthing Valley. It seemed logical the Artorius name, becoming Arthur, would lend itself well to Cumbric speakers, who would see their word for bear, 'arth,' in the name.

[As an aside, Mabon, Uther's servant according to the PA GUR, was worshipped at Castlesteads.]

While that all seems to work marvelously, an Arthur at Banna did not explain why the Irish Dalriadans and Irish Dessi-descended Dyfed dynasty took the name Arthur for their royal sons.

THE ONLY THING I COULD SAY ABOUT THE NORTHERN ARTHUR THAT WAS UNDENIABLE IS THAT THE ARTHURIAN BATTLES REALLY DID SEEM TO BELONG IN THE NORTH AND IT WAS ONLY THERE THAT MOST COULD BE PLACED WITHOUT RESORTING TO LINGUISTIC OR GEOGRAPHICAL OR HISTORICAL MANIPULATION OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER.

So if we're putting Arthur in the North, where's the best place? Strathclyde? Stanwix/Arthuriburgum? Birdoswald?

It's to this question I will return in a future post.

CEREDIG SON OF CUNEDDA AS ARTHUR or HOW TO GET TO ARTHUR WITHOUT ARTORIUS

From Koch, Celtic Culture

Aberarth, Afon Arth and Nant Erthig in Ceredigion

I've noted before that in the center of Ceredig's Ceredigion is the Afon Arth, with its tributary the Nant Erthig ('Little Bear').  There was a promontory fort at Aberarth Llandewi, and the medieval castle at Dinerth (confluence of the Afon Arth and the Nant Erthig) may well have had an ancient precursor. 

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/419561

Site of Aberarth Promontory Fort

https://www.castlewales.com/dinerth.html

Dinerth Castle

This river and its forts are significant, given that three bear-names appear among Ceredig's descendants:

Ceredigion

[G]uocaun map Mouric map Dumnguallaun map Arthgen map Seissil map Clitauc Artgloys map Artbodgu map Bodgu map Serguil map Iusay map Ceretic map Cuneda.

 

https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/genealogies.html

This is rather amazing, as there only a few bear-names in the remainder of the Harleian pedigrees, e.g. Arthur son of Pedr (Dyfed), Arthgal (Ystrad Clud), Artmail (Gwent) and Artan (Powys).

Arthgen is 'Bear-born' or "Born of the Bear', Artgloys is either 'Beautiful Bear' or 'Pure or Holy Bear' and Artbodgu is 'Bear-crow', the second element being inherited from the name of Artbodgu's father.

With a name like Arthgen, we must naturally ask what bear it was this King of Ceredigion was born from. I've suggested we are talking about the river itself, as such bodies of water are often deified.  The mythological Math and Mathonwy names of Caer Dathal, where Uther Pendragon had kin and from which Arthur took a wife, are Irish bear-names.

When it comes to attaching Arthur to Cerdic/Ceredig, we are left with really only one possibility, recently detailed for me by Dr. Simon Rodway:

"As for *Artorīx ['Bear-king'], Marged Haycock is absolutely right to say that it would give *Erthyr. The composition vowel /o/ (short) would become y through final i-affection. Then the final syllable would be lost, and the /a/ would become /e/ through internal i-affection (in which y took part). This is all perfectly well understood from numerous names in -rīx. A comparandum would be *Carantorīx > Cerennyr with /a/ > /e/.

As for Artorius, yes, it could be a deckname for Artorix. Artorius is well-attested. Artorus is a very plausible by-form of Artorius, and that would regularly give Arthur."

Thus we could say that Ceredig of the Afon Arth, a deified river, was the King of the Arth and, by extension, the Bear King.  But that at some point Artorius was substituted for *Artorix.

I would again mention the known substitition of Roman names for Celtic ones that were of a perceived semantic match:

Trier (CIL XIII/1.1, no. 3909)

HIC QUIESCIT IN PACE URSULA . . . ARTULA MATER TIT(ULUM) POSUIT

In this case the mother (Artula, Little Bear) and the daughter (Ursula, Little Bear) have the same name, the mother still in Celtic, the daughter already in the Roman tongue. 

Among specialists of ancient Italic languages, Artorius is said to be derived as follows (this from Blanca Maria Prosper Perez discussing ARTORRES):

"The most promising etymology would derive artor- in Latin and Messapic from the root meaning "adjust", "assemble", "fit", though it is impossible to reach a really specific meaning."

Professor Stefan Zimmer actually attempted to derive Artorius itself from the Celtic (see 

https://www.academia.edu/3255782/2010_The_name_of_Arthur_a_new_etymology), but this theory is frowned upon by those who study Messapic.  Still, it shows how easy it would be for, say, a sub-Roman Briton, to see in Roman Artorius a rendering of his own *Artorix. 

However, Blanca Maria Prosper Perez made an interesting comment regarding Zimmer's theory:

"It could perhaps explain the origin of Arthur's name, but neither the Latin nor the Messapic names."

Here is what Zimmer has to say:

"Recently, Ch. Gwinn (apud Delamarre 2003: 56) has proposed to

understand Artorius directly as a Latinized version of *Arto-rīχs. This

cannot be excluded categorically, but is highly unlikely. The Romans used

to treat all the many Celtic names in -rīχs, well known at least since

Caesar’s commentaries on his Gaulish wars, like their own word rex, regis

because the close relation of the two lexemes (in fact, their etymological

identity) was obvious to them. So, a Celtic *Arto-rīχs should

automatically appear in a Latin context as *Artorix – but it never does.

With due caution, I propose to understand Artorius –

exclusively used as gentilicium as mentioned above – as the Latinized

version of a Celtic patronym *Arto-rīg-i̯os. This is nowhere attested in the

Celtic world. But the basic *Arto-rīχs is, see above OIr. Artrí; the British

forms with second member *-maglos are but a variant of the same.

The patronymic type in *-i̯os is well known, cf. Gaulish names such as

Tarbeisonios ‘son of Tarbeisu’; and of course, outside Celtic, especially

in Greek. It should be safe to assume as a working hypothesis that the *-gunderwent

a kind of early lenition (whether a Latin or Celtic phenomenon

need not detain us) to the spirant -ʒ -/-j-, giving, with subsequent

assimilation of [ʒj] > [jj] > [j], *Artorījos.7 The Latinization implied two

simple adaptations to Latin:8

3.1. According to Latin writing conventions, *[artori:ʒjos] or

*[artori:jos] was spelled, with automatic replacement of the Celtic ending

by Latin -us, as Artorius.

3.2. Following the obvious and frequent pattern of Latin nouns in

-ōrius, -a, -um, regular derivative adjectives to agent nouns (including

proper names) in -tōr, the short -ŏ- in *Artŏrius was replaced by -ō-, and

the long -ī- shortened, thus producing a totally Latin-sounding Artōrius.

3.3. The subsequent phonetic development from Latin Artōrius to

Early Welsh Arthur is perfectly regular (cf. L labōrem > W llafur, etc.)."

However, I had an idea: what if we allow for a standard Latinization of a British *Arto-rīg-i̯os to Artorius?  If we could do this, then we don't have to propose that Artorius was substituted as a deckname.  We could look at Arthur merely as a natural development of *Arto-rīg-i̯os through early Latinization.

I took this idea to Dr. Simon Rodway (Welsh expert), Professor Ranko Matasovic (Proto-Celtic/Celtic expert) and Alan James (Brythonic expert).  [As I hear back from more linguists, I will add their contributions below.] Their responses?

Rodway:

"You can only get Arthur from *Arto-rig-ios by supposing conflation with Latin Artorius. This is not impossible, but is uneconomical, and it is easier to derive it straight from *Artorus, an unattested but quite plausible byform of Artorius."

Matasovic:

"I agree with you that there may have been an early British name *Artori:gyos, and it may have been Latinized in Britain at an early date.

If the name *Artori:gyos was heard by Latin-speakers after the fricattivization of -g- they would have adopted it as *Artorius (with short -o-); then they would have to change it to Arto:rius on the analogy with other names in -o:rius (as Zimmer says), and then it would have to be borrowed into Welsh again as Arthur. Complicated, but maybe possible."

James:

"The short answer is, yes, Arthur could be a regular reflex of *Arto-rīg-i̯os. I don't know that I 'favour' a Celtic origin for the name, only that I see no problem with it being one.

Patrick S-W has a typically detailed and thorough discussion of names in -orios in The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain, pp. 33-4, where he supports the view that that suffix is a 'by-form' of -orīx, Latinized as -orius, at an early date (pre-200). But he does note that - unlike in several Brittonic names of this type, and more like Roman ones such as Victōria - the vowel is long, *Artōrius.

Patrick just signals that as a 'proviso', a possible reason for doubting whether*Artōrius would be exactly comparable with the Brittonic -orius names he's discussing.

As to the ms records, we have, as I said, Arthur, with various Latin inflexions tagged on, in Harley 3859, from somewhere in the range 1100x1200. It's reasonable to infer that the name, in that form, was current at the time HB was put together, i.e. early 9th ct. And the same name appears in Llyfr Aneirin, from the late 13th ct, in the 'A series' of awdlau, whose language is no earlier than around 1100; again, we may infer that the name was current in the late 1st millennium. Whether or not it's a 'late interpolation' in some earlier version, and whether or not that supposed earlier version was part of an imagined 6th ct poem, are irrelevant, all we have is evidence for a name that was probably current in the Old Welsh period, roughly 800-1100.

But I'm still wondering when and where in the manuscript record Artorius first pops up? I must say I'm coming to suspect that it might be a relatively late invention of a medieval monk or scribe, a name sounding more agreeably Latin than the rather clumsy Art(h)urus. Which is not to deny that the name Arthur can be derived from an early Brittonic *Artorijos, which in turn  may be a by-form of *Artorix."

In other words, the Latin Artorius need not come from some Roman era man of that name (like L. Artorius Castus), nor do we need to see Artorius so much as a substitition for an earlier British 'Bear-king" name, but instead merely as a natural product of Latinization, which brought *Arto-rīg-i̯os in line with Artorius. 

Arthur, then, could be, essentially, *Arto-rīg-i̯os pronounced like Latin Artorius and, hence, indistinguishable from Artorius. 

While ordinarily it would be impossible to make anything other than a highly speculative and somewhat weak case for such development, if Ceredig of the Arth Water and the Arth- personal names is Arthur, the argument becomes considerably stronger for an original *Arto-rīg-i̯os.

Elafius (Elesa?) and His Crippled Son (Arthur?) - One More Time!

Statue of Saint Germanus of Auxerre

Before I can fully settle on 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/03/badon-at-liddington-and-two-arthurs-my.html

as my final Arthurian theory (three decades or more in the making!), I do need to address one old piece that continues to nag at me.  In the following blog -

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/why-i-ultimately-decided-on-ceredig-son.html

- I suggested, quite plausibly, that the crippled boy of the St. Germanus story may well be an oblique reference to Arthur.  

The way this works, quite simply, is that the description of the boy's lameness may well have been arrived at fancifully by the hagiographer, who was attempting in the process to account for the boy's name.  To him Arthur looked/sounded an awful lot like various Latin words derived from arto or artus.

Some experts I consulted on the idea liked it, or at least saw nothing wrong with it.  To them, this was exactly how a medieval author would set about to concoct an etiological tale. 

Of course, it has long been proposed by some scholars that Elafius, the chief man of the region (regionis illius primus) and father of the boy, was a reflection of the Elesa, father of Cerdic of Wessex, of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. 

This all seemed too good to be true.  Was this yet more evidence (loosely defined) that Arthur was Cerdic of Wessex?

Well, it depends on two things.

1) The crippled boy, with a contraction disease of his knee joint, is an Isidorian play on the name Arthur

and

2) Elafius = Elesa

Both are debatable, yet both are quite possible.  If I decide to lend enough weight to these two points, then I must opt for Cerdic son of Cunedda as Arthur, and not a son of St. Illtud.