Prudhoe Castle and Hexham, with Corbridge Roman Fort and Arthur's Dubglas River Battle Site
A few days ago I wrote this blog piece, resurrecting the old idea that Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father, might be Ambrosius:
[A couple subsequent posts touched on other aspects of the same subject:
A head-note added subsequent to its publication stated that I still needed to pin down the location and significance of Ambrosius's Campus Elleti. It is to this purpose that I turn now.
Now, I once flirted with the notion that Campus Elleti (= the Old French 'Camelot') could be in the North:
I ultimately abandoned the idea, as it seemed rather unlikely, despite the etymological correspondence between Elleti and the divine name Alliitio at Corbridge Roman fort. And this was true despite the apparent survival of a place named for the goddess Brigantia Caelestis (Heavenfield) at Corbridge, which served as a sort of precedent:
Graham Isaac's treatment of Elleti and Alliitio have held up, however. To remind my readers:
"The form of the name Elleti is corroborated by the instance of 'palude [Latin for “marsh” or “swamp”] Elleti' in Book of Llan Dav (148). But since both that and HB’s campum Elleti are in Latin contexts, we cannot see whether the name is OW Elleti (= Elledi) or OW Ellet (= Elled) with a Latin genitive ending. Both are possible. My guess would be that OW Elleti is right. As the W suffix -i would motivate affection, so allowing the base to be posited as all-, the same as in W ar-all 'other', all-tud 'exile', Gaulish allo-, etc. Elleti would be 'other-place, place of the other side (of something)'."
Dr. Isaac then went on to say that Elleti may be the same word as the ALLIITIO personal or god name found at Corbridge. He added: “Taking the double -ll- at face value, as I would be inclined to do as a working hypothesis, that would be connected the W all- that I have mentioned before.”
To this proposed etymology for these words, the following Celtic experts chimed in:
Prof. Dr. Peter Schrijver:
"Yes, that would work. Incidentally the spelling II in ALLIITIO is read /e/, and Alletio works better for Elleti than Allitio does."
Dr. Simon Rodway:
"Graham's suggestion sounds perfectly plausible to me, and accounts for the form Elleti."
Alliitio from Corbridge
So, that's all well and fine. We have a Campus/Palud Elleti that is a missing place-name in Glamorgan, supposedly found (according to the Book of Llandaf) between the River Thaw and the estate of Gilbert de Umfreville at Penmark. And we have a name, perhaps of a god, found at Corbridge, near where Arthur fought several battles on the Devil's Water at Linnels. Nice coincidence, but nothing to hang anything firmer on. Right?
Wrong.
As it happens, the de Umfreville family first held lands in Northumberland. One of their chief castles was at Prudhoe, only a dozen or so kilometers to the east of Corbridge. Members of the family were actually entombed at Hexham Abbey, the construction stones of which were taken from the nearby Roman fort.
Furthermore, Aydon Castle, even closer to Corbridge, was once held by de Umfrevilles:
For a good treatment of the family and the Gilberts at Penmark and Prudhoe, see
What this tells me is that a place-name featuring the divine name Alliitio/Alletio once known at Corbridge has been, through the usual folkloristic processes, relocated from the Northumberland lands of the de Umfrevilles to the Glamorgan estate.
Or, alternately, there was an Elleti name in the Penmark estate, now submerged under another English place-name (like Kenson) or simply lost. But, such a name would have been brought to Penmark from the Elleti name at/in the vicinity of Corbridge by the de Umfrevilles.
If so - and Ambrosius is Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father - then Arthur belongs on Hadrian's Wall and we can retain the Northern battles for our hero.
Of course, we would have to predicate that Ambrosius had an identity independent of the 4th century Gaulish prefect and his son of the same name. The latter two men would merely be legendary accretions, although it is certainly possible that someone on the Wall had been named after a notable Roman of a previous generation whose prefecture included Britain.
At present I'm in communication with experts in the history of Penmark and the de Umfrevilles, and if they can contribute anything of value to the discussion I will add it to this article as a footnote.
NOTE 1:
When talking about Mabon of Elei/Ely as a servant of Uther Pendragon, I have pointed to Gileston just to the west of the Ely, which was once a 'church' of Mabon. But I also have shown how close Gileston is to the supposed location of Elleti. It may not be a coincidence that of the extant Maponos inscriptions in Britain, the majority were found at Corbridge.
NOTE 2:
But What About Gildas’s Ambrosius?
Although I have shown to my satisfaction why Ambrosius Aurelianus was not only wrongly placed in Britain, but put there at the wrong time, I've been asked a very good question by some of my readers: "That's all well and fine, if we're talking about the tradition recorded in Nennius and subsequent sources (like Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-history). But what about A.A.'s appearance in Gildas? How do you account for that?"
As it happens, that is an excellent question. And not an easy one to answer. But I will take a stab at it, in any case.
In 343, Constantine's brother Constans, the new Western Emperor, visited Britain. It is not known precisely why (see http://www.roman-emperors.org/consi.htm#9), but the reason is hinted at in Ammianus:
Book XX
1 1 Lupicinus, master of arms, is sent with an army to Britain, to resist the inroads of the Scots and Picts.
Such was the course of events throughout Illyricum and the Orient. But in Britain in the tenth consulship of Constantius and the third of Julian raids of the savage tribes of the Scots and the Picts, who had broken the peace that had been agreed upon, were laying waste the regions near the frontiers, so that fear seized the provincials, wearied as they were by a mass of past calamities. And Julian, who was passing the winter in Paris and was distracted amid many cares, was afraid to go to the aid of those across the sea, as Constans once did (as I have told),1
1 In one of the lost books; it was in 343.
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that A.A. did not perish with Constantine. That although he was no longer serving as Prefect of Gaul, he accompanied Constans to Britain in some capacity. This is certainly not out of the realm of the possible. Granted, Constantine I/the Great had made the praetorian prefecture a civil, rather than a military post. But A.A. could have been replaced by another prefect, and found himself in another role as part of a major military expedition to Britain. It's also not inconceivable that A.A. fled to Britain after Constantine II's death, although had that been the case we would have expected him to take his family with him.
However it happened, if A.A. were in Britain at the time, how do we account for the sequence of events in Gildas?
Rather easily, I suspect. The problem has to do with a simple confusion of the two emperors named Constans - the one who was in Britain in 343 and the Constans II, son of the Constantine III who had been proclaimed emperor in Britain in 407.
A very puzzling line in Gildas has not, to my knowledge, been analyzed. It occurs in 25:2, and runs as follows: "After a time, when the cruel plunderers had gone home, God gave strength to the survivors." These survivors, and those who flocked to them, had as their leader A.A. On the surface, this would seem to be a nonsensical statement. The Saxons invited in by Vortigern did not, in fact, go home. Gildas had just previously told us that they had invited in more of their kind and proceeded to take over the island. We are told in Nennius that Vortimer pushed them to the Isle of Thanet, but that after he was slain they continued their depredations and conquest.
So who went home when A.A. showed up on the scene?
I would propose that Gildas' account is here hopelessly confused. The enemy that withdraws in this context was forced to do so by Constans I, accompanid by A.A., who may well have had the military command. We are probably talking about Scots and Picts, not Saxons. What we appear to have here is a simple jumbling of fourth and fifth century events.
However, it is not inconceivable that the 4th century prefect Ambrosius accompanied Constans to Britain and that they fought in the North, perhaps even engaging in actions on Hadrian's Wall. And that a subsequent generation at Corbridge named a son after Ambrosius.
NOTE 3:
The early sources associate the Red Dragon of Britain with two men: Votigern and Ambrosius.
From Nerys Ann Jones' notes on the Arthurian 'Pa Gur' poem (ARTHUR IN EARLY WELSH POETRY, 2019) when I came across the following on the dragon of Gwynedd/Arfon:
A rather puzzling reference to the Red Dragon appears in the poem 'Gwarchan Maeldderw'. I've mentioned this before, as the line in question seems to assign the creature to Vortigern under his title "Fiery Pharaoh" (a Welsh misrendering of a Latin passage in Gildas).
When G.R. Isaac translates the G.M., he takes Line 21 -
ar rud dhreic fud pharaon
and re-orders it thusly:
ar fudd draig rudd Ffaraon
He then translates it as "in the presence of the spoils of the Pharaoh's red dragon." He does this because he is "interpreting the syntax as a poetic transformation of what would normally be expressed in the word order (see note to his Gwarchan Maeldderw: A "Lost" Medieval Welsh Classic?, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 44, Winter 2002).
But if we retain the original word order, another interpretation of the line is possible (something I have confirmed with Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales):
"the spoils/booty of Pharaoh before/in front of/in the presence of the Red Dragon"
Williams in CANU ANEIRIN (.p. 379) says that mention of 'the red dragon of Pharaoh' is suggestive of a reference to the story of the dragons of Dinas Emrys in Nant Gwynant, Snowdonia, as told in HISTORIA BRITTONUM and CYFRANC LLUDD AND LLEFELYS.
Thus the HB and the G. Tudfwlch has Vortigern possessing the dragon, while other Welsh sources assign it to Emrys/Ambrosius. It is only when we get to Geoffrey of Monmouth that we are told the dragon belongs not to Vortigern or Ambrosius, but to Uther Pendragon. Of course, Geoffrey takes the liberty of substituting the Northern Merlin (Myrddin) for Ambrosius of dragon fame, thus removing the king entirely from the dragon context. That author then confuses everything further by attaching the Ambrosius name to Merlin!
As I have already pointed out that the appearance of a comet in medieval tradition marks the death of a king, Geoffrey's claim that the dragon-comet represents not Ambrosius, but instead Uther, rings hollow.
Unless, of course, in reality, the Terrible Chief-dragon is Ambrosius himself.
