More About Arthur and Alyth

 

 "Reekie Linn Waterfall, Angus" by stephen samson - Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/765407. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reekie_Linn_Waterfall,_Angus.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Reekie_Linn_Waterfall,_Angus.jpg

 

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A day or two ago, I blogged about Alyth, the scene of Arthur's last battle.  But there's much more to say about the subject, and so I'm writing this post as a sort of instant sequel.

Not all of the ancient stories about, or inspired by, the historical Arthur use the familiar name of the hero.  Two alternative titles or designations which recur in this context are: Bran ("Raven") and Llew (Welsh: "Lion") or Lleu (Welsh: "Light"), the latter also occurring as Lliw or Llyw (Welsh: "Leader"), possibly from the Irish luige, Welsh llw, an "oath".

So let's look at some of the stories which give one or other of these names to their oh-so Arthurian heroes.

Le Chevalier Bran

Among the earliest sources for the "battle of Circenn" in which Arthur died, the Irish Annals of Tigernach name Bran as one of the sons of Aedan, King of the Scots, who fell alongside Artur/Artuir.  The Annals of Ulster name Bran instead of Arthur.  Adomnan's Life of Columba names Arthur instead of Bran.

In Welsh legend, Bran, the "Blessed Raven", was the "crowned king of the Island of Britain" who fell through the treachery of an Irish king named Matholwch ("Prayer-Sort").  The final battle involved a marvellous cauldron of rebirth, which had been Bran's gift to Matholwch.  Along with Bran, who had been fatally wounded by a poisoned spear, there were just seven survivors of this epic battle.  There were also seven survivors of Arthur's last battle, according to the contemporary poet and eye-witness, Taliesin.

Meanwhile, the "Horn of Bran the Hard from the North" was one of the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain ("which were in the North"), the other treasures having belonged to the contemporaries, relatives and near-neighbours of Arthur son of Aedan.  A later tradition holds that Arthur had a hound called Bran.  The name evolved into the "Brons" of Arthurian romance.

Bearing all that in mind, I was fascinated to come across an old Breton folksong entitled Le Chevalier Bran ou le Prisonnier de Guerre ("The Horseman Bran, or the Prisoner of War").  Published in 1842, this song begins:

A la battaile de Kerlouan
Fut blesse le chevalier Bran!
A Kerlouan, sur l'ocean,
Le petit fils de Bran le Grand!
Prisonnier, bien que victorieux,
Il dont franchir l'ocean bleu.

["At the battle of Kerlouan, the horseman Bran was wounded!  At Kerlouan, by the sea, the grandson of Bran the Great!  Captured, even though he was victorious, he was taken across the sea."]

There is much that can be said about this intriguing song, with its distinct Arthurian overtones - for example, the song tells of an oak-tree which stands in the field of battle, at the spot where "the Saxons were put to flight when Even suddenly appeared", Even probably being Owain (French "Yvain") who distinguished himself at Arthur's last battle, as we know from Aneirin's epic Y Gododdin poem.

However, for now we need only concentrate on two aspects of the Breton song.  The first is that le chevalier Bran was the grandson of Bran le Grand.  The grandfather of Arthur son of Aedan was Gabran, the Scottish king who gave his name to the region of Gowrie, in which Arthur's last battle was fought.

What, then, of Kerlouan, where the horseman Bran was wounded and taken away as a "prisoner of war"?  At first glance, it appears to refer to the commune of Kerlouan in the Finisterre department of Brittany.  But this place-name almost certainly travelled with the British refugees who fled to Armorica, the "Lesser Britain", when their Lothian homelands were conquered by the Northumbrian Angles in circa AD 638.  The ker element is cognate with the Welsh caer, meaning a "castle", "stronghold" or "citadel".  The louan element refers to St Elouan, otherwise Luan, Llywan, Lua, Lughaidh or Moluag ("My-Luan").

St Elouan or Louan was an obscure saint, said to have been contemporary with St Columba (and, therefore, with Arthur son of Aedan) and to have brought Christianity to the northern, Highland Picts, while Columba spread the Gospel among the southern, "Miathi" Picts (Arthur son of Aedan died, according to the Life of Columba, in "the battle of the Miathi").

The only place where St Elouan or Louan is still venerated as "Luan" is at Alyth, near the site of Arthur's last battle.  The Church of St Luan now stands on Alexander Street.  The Alyth Arches are all that remain of an earlier church, dedicated to St Luan, which supposedly occupies the site of an even earlier chapel.  Alyth, then, has a strong claim to have been the "Stronghold of Luan" or Kerlouan where Arthur/le chevalier Bran was grievously wounded and carried away "across the sea".  Any resemblance to the Caerleon which recurs in Arthurian tradition as an early form of Arthur's legendary court (later "Camelot") is probably not coincidental.

Llew Skilful Hand

Llywan is the Welsh form of Luan/Louan.  In the ancient Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen (which, as I stated in my previous blog post, offers a potted account of Arthur's career, including the violent seizure of a magical cauldron), the treacherous king-turned-boar is finally driven into a river near Llyn Lliwan ("Lake Louan"), which was somewhere near Tawy (the Tay).  This lake appears to be remembered on the map of the Alyth area as the Bankhead and Kings of Kinloch, adjacent to Arthurbank beside the River Isla.  The marshy ground in the river's floodplain was once known, perhaps, as Loch Luan, a name preserved in the spot, near Meigle, known as Glenluie.

The name of this lake recalls Llew, Lleu or Lliw - as Aneirin sang in his Y Gododdin elegy for the northern warriors who fell in Arthur's last battle:

No one living will relate what befell
Lliw, what came about on Monday at the Lliwan lake.

Apart from the tales of his Irish counterpart, Lugh Long-Hand, the most famous of the British legends concerning Llew or Lleu is that found in the Welsh "Mabinogion", in which a great hero known as Llew Skilful Hand is tricked by his treacherous wife into standing on the edge of a cauldron by a riverbank, where he is speared by his wife's lover (the poisoned spear took a year to make because it could only be worked on during the Mass on Sundays).  The name given for the river on the banks of which Llew was speared is "Cynfael".

Now, bear with me here.  The bloody boar-hunt in the legend of Culhwch and Olwen which culminates with the destruction of the Boar-King in the river near Loch Tay and the "Lliwan lake" is, in fact, the second of two dangerous boar-hunts which took place "in the North".  The first concerned another Boar-King - or, to be more accurate, another king of the Miathi Picts, who modelled their appearance on the boar, hence the Gaelic and Scots names for their territory in Angus: Circenn ("Comb-heads") and Camlann ("Comb-land").  The death of this previous Boar-King of the Miathi Picts can be dated to circa AD 580, some 14 years before the final battle.

His name was Galam, although he went by a couple of epithets.  The Annals of Ulster record the death of "Cennaleth, king of the Picts" in 580.  The Annals of Tigernach refer to the death of "Cennfhaeladh king of the Picts" in the year 578.

These epithets reveal the location of Galam's power-base in Angus as king of the Miathi Picts.  Cennaleth translates as "Chief of Alyth".  Cennfhaeladh could indicate a "Shaved-head", as in the boar tonsure sported by the Miathi warriors, or the chief of a "high, rounded hill", such as that which looms over the town of Alyth in the vale of Strathmore.  The proper pronunciation of Cennfhaeladh would be "ken-eye-la".  This suggests that the name of the River Isla, which flows past Alyth and Arthurbank, derives phonetically from Cennfhaeladh.  It also suggests that the Cynfael river, on the bank of which Llew Skilful Hand was treacherously speared by his wife's adulterous lover, was really the Cennfhaeladh or River Isla, on the bank of which Arthur was mortally wounded.

Arthur and his men defeated Galam Cennaleth ("Chief-of-Alyth"), otherwise Cennfhaeladh, in about 580 at the "Battle of Badon" (Gaelic Badain, the "Tufted Ones"), fought a little further up the River Isla at Badandun Hill.  Galam's Miathi warriors later joined forces with Arthur's nemesis, Morgan the Wealthy, and the final conflict was fought beneath Barry Hill and the Hill of Alyth, on the banks of the River Isla or "Cynfael".

Seekers of the Grail - which in its earliest form was a magical cauldron - might care to investigate the legend of "Sir James" and his cauldron of enlightenment, a legend centred on the Reekie Linn waterfall, behind the Hill of Alyth (see top of this post).  It's quite an eye-opener.

Arthur's Ghost?

In The King Arthur Conspiracy, I describe a crisis apparition which is said to appear whenever a senior clansman of Arthur's descendants, the Campbells (a cadet branch of the Clann Arthur), is about to die.

The apparition takes the form of an ancient galley, which appears over Loch Fyne, close to the site of Arthur's settlement at Strachur (the original base of the MacArthur clan) and then sails westward, over the land, towards the place of Arthur's burial.

The last reported sighting of the ghostly galley of Loch Fyne was in 1913.  Reputedly, three men are visible on its deck.  According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, three men crewed the ship which carried Arthur's mortal remains to the Isle of Avalon.

Another crisis apparition is worthy of mention here - because it is not included in The King Arthur Conspiracy.  This is the "best-known and most dreadful spectre in the West Highlands".  It's the phantom of a headless horseman which haunts the Glen More region of the Isle of Mull.

The spectre was last seen, apparently, in 1958.  It is associated with the Clan Maclaine of Lochbuie, and its appearance heralds the death of a senior member of the clan.  Distantly related to the neighbouring Macleans of Duart, the Maclaines give the Gaelic version of their name as Mac'ill-Eathain.  Translated into English, this would be "Son of the Lad/Servant of Aedan".

Aedan (the name of Arthur's father, Aedan mac Gabrain) is a version of the Irish Aodhan, meaning "Little fiery one".  It was originally pronounced something like "Eye-than" and appeared in Welsh as Aeddan.  A later variant was Eathan, from which the Maclaines and Macleans take their clan name.

The phantom headless horseman of Glen More is known as Eoghann a' Chinn Bhig ("Ewen of the Little Head").  The name Eoghan appears to have meant "well-born" (literally, "yew-born"), and variants of the name crop up frequently in the early Arthurian literature.  Two historical rulers of the British kingdom of North Rheged - both of them contemporaries, kinsmen and comrades of Arthur - bore the names Urien and Owain, each of which compares with the Gaelic Eoghan.

Towards the end of The King Arthur Conspiracy, I trace the descendants of Arthur to the Isle of Ulva, off the west coast of the Isle of Mull. The Clan MacQuarrie claims its descent from one Guaire son of Aedan.  Mentioned in Adomnan's Life of St Columba (circa 697 AD), this Guaire was the strongest or most valiant layman in the Scottish kingdom of Dal Riata.  Arthur's father, Aedan, was ordained King of Dal Riata by St Columba in 574 AD.  The name Guaire appears to be related to the Gaelic cura, a "protector" or "guardian".  I noted in my book that the main village of the MacQuarries on Ulva was Ormaig, where a piper named MacArthur founded a famous piping school.  The ancestral burial ground of the MacQuarries, close to the village of Ormaig, is known as Cille Mhic Eoghainn ("Kilvikewan'), the "Chapel of the Son/Sons of Ewen".

In addition to relating to the yew-tree, the name Eoghan might also have been associated specifically with another island which lies off the west coast of Mull.  The Isle of Iona was known, as late as the 9th century AD, as Eo.  It was the "Island of the Yew".  Adomnan, who tells us about the death of Arthur in battle, referred to it as "the yewy isle" (Ioua insula).  This was almost certainly because the sacred isle of Iona was considered an omphalos or "World-Navel", and was the site of the "World-Tree".  This tree appears to have been known as Eo or Io - both meaning "yew".

In the context of Mull and its outlying islands - Ulva and Iona - it is possible, then, that the name Eoghan could mean "Yew-born" or "Born of Iona" or, indeed, both, Iona being the island of the sacred yew or World-Tree.  Variants of the name were applied to some of Arthur's closest associates, and possibly to Arthur himself.

It is unclear exactly who Eoghann a' Chinn Bhig - Ewen of the Little Head - was, or when he lived.  What we do know, however, is that he was a "Yew-born" youth of the Clan Maclaine, the Sons of the Lad (or Servant) of Aedan, the Aedan in question quite possibly being Arthur's father, Aedan mac Gabrain.  In Hebridean tradition, the father of Arthur is sometimes identified as Iuthar (the MacArthur clan call him Iobhair), which also derives from iubhar, the Gaelic name for the "yew", and athair (Old Irish athir), "father".

The story of Ewen of the Little Head goes like this.  Ewen had married a difficult, demanding woman who became known as Corr-dhu, the "Black Crane" (the crane was held sacred by the Druids, who believed that the letters of their alphabet were inspired by the shapes made by a crane's legs in flight; the tendency of Celtic seers to stand on one leg when making prophesies probably owed something to the crane).  His wife insisted that Ewen demand more land, and eventually Ewen found himself in dispute with his uncle.  Battle loomed.

On the eve of the battle, Ewen encountered a bean-nighe or Washer at the Ford.  These supernatural washerwomen were adept at predicting death and disaster.  Again, in The King Arthur Conspiracy, I indicate that Arthur's half-sister Muirgein ("Morgana") fulfilled the role of a Washer at the Ford.

Ewen demanded to know what the outcome of his battle with his uncle would be.  The Washer made a strange prediction.  If, on the morning of the battle, Ewen's wife provided him with some butter for his breakfast, without having to be asked, then Ewen would triumph.  If no butter appeared at the breakfast table, Ewen would die.

Naturally, there was no butter for breakfast.  Ewen went into battle mounted on his pony - generally described as a small black steed with a white spot on its forehead.  It is said that the prints left by this pony's hooves are not like those of normal horses.  Instead of being horseshoe-shaped, they are round indentations, "as if it had wooden legs".  This is probably because, in Arthur's day, the familiar horseshoe had not been invented.  His own war pony would have been shod with "hipposandals", a kind of iron plate or oval-shaped cup of metal which protected the sole of the hoof.  These had been introduced into Britain under the Roman Empire.

The battle ended when Ewen's head was removed from his body by a single sword stroke.  His headless body remained on his horse, which bolted.  The horse finally came to the Lussa Falls in Glen More, where Ewen's body fell from its back.  Ewen's headless body was reputedly buried there, before it was removed to the Isle of Iona.  The site of his initial burial was close to the well-defended artificial island or "crannog" in Loch Sguabain (see photo at top of this post) which is still known as Caisteal Eoghainn a' Chinn Bhig ("Ewen of the Little Head's Castle").

Such ancient crannogs were very much a part of Arthur's world (there is one in Loch Arthur, near Dumfries).  Otherwise, there are intriguing similarities in the Mull legend and the story of Arthur.  Like Arthur, Ewen was married to a difficult woman who seems to have kept on at her husband to demand more land.  It was she who caused the battle at which Ewen died - just as Arthur's wife Gwenhwyfar was held to blame for his last battle.  In The King Arthur Conspiracy, I point out that Arthur's worst enemy in his final campaign was his uncle, just as Ewen went into battle against his uncle.  And the prophecy of the Washer at the Ford (who so resembles Arthur's half-sister) indicated that success or disaster was dependent on the appearance of butter on the morning of the battle.

In one of the most revealing accounts of Arthur's last battle, as given in the Welsh tale of The Dream of Rhonabwy, we find that the battle was caused when Arthur's messenger deliberately relayed false, antagonistic messages to Arthur's opponents.  The individual concerned (who is identified in The King Arthur Conspiracy) explains that, because of his provocative behaviour, he is known as Cordd Prydain - the "Churn of Britain".

Butter, of course, comes from a churn.  And according to the Churn of Britain in The Dream of Rhonabwy, the troublemaker made himself scarce before the last day of the battle.  It was not a lack of butter that morning which signalled disaster - it was the absence of a "Churn"!  And because the "churn" in question was in cahoots with Arthur's troublesome wife, the churn's absence on the morning of the battle could be blamed on Gwenhwyfar, or the "Black Witch", as she is known in another Welsh tale.

The ghostly ancient galley which appears over Loch Fyne whenever a senior member of the Clan Campbell dies is a crisis apparition based - I suggest - on the ship which carried the wounded Arthur from Loch Fyne to the place of his burial.  In The King Arthur Conspiracy, I explain how the ship, which was bound for the Isle of Iona, put in at Carsaig on the Isle of Mull.  Arthur's body was carried up into the hills of Brolass.  He was decapitated and his body buried at Sithean Allt Mhic-Artair ("Spirit-hill of the Stream of the Sons of Arthur") above the hamlet of Pennyghael ("Head of the Gael").  His head was then carried to the Isle of Iona for burial.

It is odd, then, to discover that the glen immediately to the east of Pennyghael is haunted by a headless horseman.  The description of Ewen's pony corresponds to the exact sort of mount which Arthur and fellow horsemen or "knights" would have ridden into battle.  And so, just as the imminent death of one of Arthur's Campbell descendants causes a crisis apparition to appear over Loch Fyne, so the death of another clansman from another line - the Maclaines, or the Sons of the Lad of Aedan - provokes another crisis apparition: that of a headless horseman.  Arthur's headless body was buried by a stream on Mull, just as Ewen's headless body was supposedly buried beside the Lussa Falls nearby.  And Arthur's head was carried to the adjacent Isle of Iona, as were Ewen's disinterred remains.

In the 19th century, visitors to the Isle of Iona were shown what was said to have been a carved stone commemorating Ewen of the Little Head.  This was probably the Maclean's Cross (above), a 15th century carved stone, produced on Iona, which has the image of a mounted horseman on its base.  It stood beside the medieval Street of the Dead.  And in The King Arthur Conspiracy I indicate where, on the Street of the Dead, Arthur's head was finally laid to rest.

Could it be that the infamous headless horseman who haunts the route across Mull to the Isle of Iona was not an obscure member of the Clan Maclaine, but none other than that greatest of all heroes, Arthur son of Aedan?  I think it might be, and that this is just one of the many Scottish traditions relating to Arthur, the Scottish prince who became a mythical hero.

King Lear

They might have lived a thousand years apart, but there are several connections between my two main subjects: Arthur and Shakespeare (Art & Will - geddit?).  One of them is the legendary King Lear.

Like a great deal of Arthurian source material, the Lear legend has been ignored or overlooked because, on the face of it, it has nothing whatever to do with Arthur.  The problem is one of names.

Historically, names are a problem.  Let's take an individual from the lifetime of William Shakespeare.  Sir Robert Cecil was the deformed, diminutive son of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who served as chief minister and adviser to Elizabeth I.  Robert succeeded his father, and went on to serve James I.  Together, William and Robert Cecil were among the most ruthless and rapacious statesmen this country has ever known.

In 1603, Sir Robert Cecil became Baron Cecil of Essenden.  The following year, he was made Viscount Cranborne.  The year after that, he was elevated to the earldom of Salisbury.  Over a period of just a couple of years, Cecil's name changed more than once. It was proper to refer to him as Lord Cranborne and, later, the Earl of Salisbury.

He also had nicknames, and plenty of them.  Robertus Diabolus, the Toad, King James's 'little beagle' ...

Now, if we were to apply the "only one name per historical individual" rule which is routinely applied to Arthurian studies, then Sir Robert Cecil ceased to exist in about 1603 (he actually died in 1612).  Out of nowhere appeared another person altogether, known as Salisbury.

And Will Shakespeare, of course, was not indicating Robert Cecil in the impish character of Robin Goodfellow ('Puck') or the malignant and deformed Richard 'Crookback' of Richard III.  No way.  Shakespeare would never have done such thing (except that he did).

You see the problem?  If we insist that everybody in history only ever had the one name, and the one name only, we're not going to make much sense of history, are we?  (In The King Arthur Conspiracy I also cite the example of General Schwarzkopf, who commanded the allied forces in the first Gulf War: he was also known as "Stormin' Norman" and "The Bear" - which would appear to have made him three different people.)

The character of Llyr (Irish: Lir) occurs in British tradition.  His name meant "Sea".  If we approach this character with our modern-day heads on, pretending that everyone throughout history has only ever had one name (so that Margaret Thatcher and the Iron Lady were obviously not the same person), then we are stuck.  Who was Llyr, or Lir?  No idea.  Probably a myth.

Or maybe he was a lord of the sea-kingdom of Dalriada, the homeland of the Scots on the "Coastland of the Gael" (Argyll).  Which would have made him, effectively, Arthur's father.  Aedan mac Gabrain, the father of the historical Arthur, did become King of Dalriada in 574.  He was renowned for his powerful navy.

Now, let's take this further.  In the traditional legend of King Lear, as used by one William Shakespeare, the king has three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.  During the course of my Arthurian researches, I found three women intimately connected with Arthur's father.  They were:

Gwenhwyfar - Arthur's wife (and therefore Aedan's daughter-in-law)
Muirgein - Arthur's half-sister (Aedan's first daughter)
Creiddylad - Arthur's mother (Aedan's lover)

The second of these was not exclusively known as Muirgein.  Several of her alternative names derive from rigan, an Early Irish word for a "princess", which obviously developed into the more familiar "Regan".  Creiddylad also had other names.

According to the Welsh sources, Arthur's last battle was brought about by a quarrel between two sisters, Gwenhwyfar and Gwenhwyfach.  These can be identified as Arthur's wife and his half-sister, Gwenhwyfar ("Goneril") and Muirgein ("Regan"), who did end up on opposing sides.

The Lear legend suggests that two of the King's daughters betrayed him while the third remained constant.  In the case of Arthur - or rather, his father - it could be argued that Aedan's two daughters, Gwenhwyfar and Muirgein, brought about the cataclysmic battle which claimed the life of his son, although his lover Creiddylad appears to have played no part in that. 

The lovely Creiddylad was essentially subordinate - a "daughter" - to Aedan, the lord of the isles and King of Dalriada.  The earlier, pre-Shakespearean versions of the legend have King Lear reunited with his beloved Cordelia after his other two daughters very nearly ruined the kingdom: in fact, Aedan did live for another fourteen unhappy years after the quarrel between his two daughters brought about the death of his son by Creiddylad.

This is a quick summary, of course, but the basics are there: the legend of King Lear and his three daughters corresponds with the historical situation of Aedan, the father of Arthur, who had two squabbling daughters (one being his daughter-in-law) and a third princess, whom he truly loved.  The names of Lear's daughters can all be derived from the original princesses in Aedan's immediate family circle, while the name of Lear himself relates to Aedan's role as the lord of the sea.

(While we're on the subject, in Shakespeare's King Lear, Goneril marries the Duke of Albany - another name for Scotland.  Regan marries the Duke of Cornwall, a place frequently, and mistakenly, associated with south-west Britain in Arthurian lore - in the book, I explain what "Cornwall" really meant.)

What, then, of Arthur?  Well, British - i.e. Welsh - tradition preserves several legends of the Children of Llyr.  And in my next blogpost, I'll explain where Arthur fits into that tradition, albeit under another name.

To Kindle Interest

It's out!  On Kindle, that is.

The real books will be on their way soon.  But for those who Kindle, or those who just fancy a taster, Amazon is the place:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-King-Arthur-Conspiracy-Scottish/dp/0752476858/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340102692&sr=1-2

I'll also provide updates on the publicity as it happens.  A couple of magazine articles are pending, including a big piece in History Today (August edition).  We'll keep you posted.

But that's enough about The King Arthur Conspiracy.  I'd also like to draw your attention to another new book.  Not one that I've been involved with in any way.  It's the first of a trilogy.

The Chronicles of Iona: Exile by Paula de Fougerolles is a novel about "the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation" - Aedan mac Gabrain, King of the Scots, and St Columba.  The author describes them as "a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur".

The similarities between St Columba and the literary invention that is Merlin had occured to me whilst I was researching and writing my history of Arthur.  Aedan mac Gabrain was Arthur's father (the first man on record to be known as Arthur, that is).  The original Merlin (a name of later date) was fairly close in age to the historical Arthur.  He also did not look much like the Merlin we have come to know and love.

Arguably, St Columba did look a bit more like the traditional Merlin.  Hair cut in the Druidic tonsure (shaved at the front, long at the back), with a blackthorn staff and stained eyelids, Columba might have passed for a Merlin figure.

But the "real" Merlin was an enemy of Columba.  I've even wondered whether their antipathy had anything to do with Geoffrey of Monmouth's invention, in the twelfth century, of the name Merlin.

You see, Columba's adoptive name meant "Dove".  And the hunting bird known as the merlin is scientifically known as Falco columbarius.  Merlin, you could say, was the raptor who hunted the Dove.

Anyway, that's all by the bye.  Please feel free to check out The King Arthur Conspiracy on Amazon.  And then, when you've done that, and ordered copies for everyone you know, check out this page:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Chronicles-Iona-Paula-Fougerolles/dp/0615602541/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340103057&sr=1-1

The Chronicles of Iona - potentially, a companion-piece to The King Arthur Conspiracy: How a Scottish Prince Became a Mythical Hero.

Tunnel Vision

First of all - apologies, folks, for the lack of recent posts.  I'll soon be announcing some exciting news about my Shakespeare project.

But Arthur comes first.  Literally; The King Arthur Conspiracy - How a Scottish Prince Became a Mythical Hero is due out this summer.  I'm expecting the proofs to arrive in a matter of weeks.

Of course, there are many who will scoff at the very idea of a Scottish 'King' Arthur.  It's considered heretical in some quarters even to mention the possibility that Arthur was a Scot.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with history, though - only with the prejudices of the self-proclaimed Arthurian "experts".

Let me show you how it works.  We'll start by looking at the early sources for the legends of Arthur.

Gildas Sapiens ('Gildas the Wise', or St Gildas) wrote his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae - 'On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain' - sometime around the year 550.  His open letter is something of a cornerstone in Arthur studies, even though Gildas made no mention at all of anyone called Arthur.  He did, however, refer to a 'siege of Badon Hill' (obsessionis Badonici montis), which took place in the year of his birth.  Scholars have failed to agree on when that might have been or where the siege might have taken place, but they generally assume that Arthur was there.

Nennius is the name given to a Welsh monk who compiled a 'History of the Britons' - Historia Brittonum- in about 820.  Nennius didn't just mention Arthur: he described him as dux bellorum ('Duke of Battles') and listed twelve victories which Arthur achieved against the Saxons.  The twelfth of these was fought on 'Mount Badon'.  There is no particularly good reason to think that the battle on Mount Badon referred to by Nennius was the same as the 'siege of Badon Hill' mentioned earlier by Gildas, but in the main scholars have leapt to that conclusion, and by doing so have confused matters no end.

Bede was a Northumbrian churchman who wrote the seminal 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'.  Note that Bede's people were 'English' - the Angles, in other words, who were Arthur's enemies.  The Anglo-Saxons were not very fond of recollecting their defeats in battle.  Bede does not mention Arthur.

Annales Cambriae - the 'Annals of Wales' - were compiled by monks towards the end of the tenth century.  They are another source of rampant confusion.  Many years after the events, two entries were interpolated into the annals, and they both stick out like sore thumbs:

518 - The Battle of Badon in which Arthur carries the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and nights on his shoulders and the Britons were victors

539 - The battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medrawt fell; and there was plague in Britain and Ireland.

Neither of those dates are in any way relevant to the historical Arthur.  They were invented, retrospectively, by Christian scribes.

And that, as they say, is that.  Everything else is medieval fantasy or guesswork.  These are the official early sources for Arthur - Gildas, Nennius, Bede and the Welsh Annals - and only two of those four even mention him by name!

Except that those are not the only documentary sources for the historical Arthur.  Far from it.

There is, for example, the Vita Sanctae Columbae ('Life of St Columba'), written by of Adomnan of Iona in about 697, one hundred years after the death of Columba.  Adomnan described the occasion when St Columba ordained Aedan mac Gabrain King of the Scots.  This happened in 574, and several sons of Aedan were there.  When Columba was asked which of these sons would follow his father onto the throne - would it be Artuir, or Domangart, or Eochaid Find? - the Irish saint answered, 'None of these three will be king; for they will fall in battles, slain by enemies.'

That is the first reference anywhere to a prince named Arthur (Irish, Artur or Artuir).

Adomnan added, naturally, that the Irish saint was right: Arthur and Eochaid Find were later killed in a 'battle with the Miathi' or southern Picts.  The precise location of this battle can in fact be pinpointed.

The Vita Sanctae Columbae was written on the Isle of Iona, off the coast of Scotland.  Columba's monastery was also the source for much of the information recorded in the Irish Annals.  Monasteries kept books in which they calculated the date of Easter each year, and the monks would occasionally add snippets of information relating to the important events of that year.  These were later transcribed into the various annals of the Irish Church, which took the snippets from the Easter Tables compiled on the Isle of Iona.

The Annals of Tigernach record the deaths of four sons of Aedan mac Gabrain - 'Bran & Domangart & Eochaid Find & Artur' - in a battle fought in 594 in Circenn, a Pictish province roughly contingent with modern-day Angus and Kincardineshire.

The Annals of Ulster date this same battle to 596 and mention only the deaths of Bran and Domangart.  Adomman, in his 'Life of St Columba', indicated that Domangart had actually died in a separate 'battle in England'.

So - three authentic early sources, two of which mention an Arthur by name.  Both tend to be completely ignored by Arthurian "experts", who simply don't want to admit that Arthur wasn't a man of southern Britain.

And then there's the poetry.  Y Gododdin ('The Gododdin'), for example, is a long and bitter elegy written in honour of the British and Irish warriors who perished in a catastrophic battle.  The poem was composed by Aneirin, a British poet-prince, sometime around the year 600, probably at Edinburgh (the Gododdin were the Britons of Lothian).  One of the two surviving versions of Y Gododdin mentions Arthur by name (in fact, the entire poem refers to Arthur by a variety of names and descriptions).

Again, scholars have got themselves hopelessly confused over Aneirin's poem, which happens to mention Catraeth (Cad - battle; traeth - shore).  The Welsh name for the North Yorkshire town of Catterick is Catraeth.  So, putting two and two together - much as they have done with the two separate references to battles of 'Badon' - the experts have pronounced that Y Gododdin must be about a British disaster at a battle which never happened somewhere near Catterick.  If the Angles had succeeded in wiping out the army of Lothian, they would have crowed about it.  But they never even mentioned it, partly because there was no British defeat at Catterick.  The poem in actuality describes Arthur's last battle - some of his friends and close relations are named, as are the landmarks which point to the precise location of the conflict, where Arthur and so many of his heroes fell.

Aneirin nods to Taliesin in his Y Gododdin poem.  Taliesin is perhaps one of the most vital sources for information about Arthur, not least of all because Taliesin knew him.  Arthur's name, and its variants, crops up repeatedly in Taliesin's poetry, alongside those of the other heroes who fought at the last battle and accompanied Arthur into the legends.  Taliesin's surviving poems are gathered together in several Welsh manuscripts of the Middle Ages.  The fact that they were transcribed - and probably 'improved' - by medieval monks does not mean that the originals weren't composed at the time of Arthur.

In his youth, Taliesin was associated with Maelgwyn of Gwynedd, who came in for ferocious criticism by St Gildas in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae.  The Welsh Annals indicate that Maelgwyn died of the 'yellow plague' in either 547 or 549.  Evidently, Gildas must have written his scathing open letter before the death of Maelgwyn.  But Arthur son of Aedan - the first Arthur to appear in any historical records - was not born until 559.  Doesn't that explain why Gildas failed to mention Arthur's name?  And why the 'siege of Badon Hill' spoken of by Gildas had absolutely nothing whatever to do with Arthur?

Like his fellow bard Aneirin, Taliesin spent most of his life in the Old North - the region which, in current terms, encompassed northern England and much of Scotland.  For that reason, as much as anything, scholars try to avoid including the poetry of Taliesin and Aneirin among the early historical sources for Arthur.

After all, we can't have anybody wondering whether Arthur might also have been based in the Old North, can we?  Even though so many of the legends in their earliest forms repeatedly have Arthur going 'into the north'.  No, we can't have that.

So, where does all this get us?  Well, what it means is that there is a great deal more in the way of early historical source material for Arthur than most scholars are prepared to admit.  And, in stark contrast to the sources that they do admit exist (and which they argue and fuss over endlessly), these other sources actually do mention Arthur.  Indeed, they tell us rather a lot about him.  They even allow us to reconstruct the circumstances of his last battle - fought in Angus in 594 - and to piece together a great deal more than that about his life and times.

But we do have to acknowledge that these sources exist, and that they relate to the historical Arthur (and not just to some random individual named after an earlier, more 'English' and thoroughly unidentifiable 'King Arthur'), before we can listen to what they have to say.

The majority of the self-styled Arthur "experts" don't want to listen to them, however, and so they pretend that they can't see them.  They know they're there.  But all the same, they don't want to look.

If they did, they might just find out who the real Arthur was.

The Sword and the Stone

One of the most enduring images from the Arthurian legends is that of the young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone and thereby proving that he is the true king.  Here's how the stone was described by Sir Thomas Malory in his fifteenth-century Le Morte d'Arthur:

And when matins and the first mass was done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone; and in the midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus:- Whoso pulleth this sword out of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.

You could search high and low for such a stone in England, and you wouldn't find it.  The reason being that the stone in question does not really belong to any English tradition.  That said, however, at the time when Sir Thomas Malory was writing, the stone in question had been in England for nearly two hundred years.

The tradition of the sacred stone of kingship actually belonged to the Scots.  According to the mythic history of the Scots, or 'Gaels', the stone was brought out of Egypt by the legendary Gaedal Glas or Gathelus, the supposed ancestor of the Scots.  Writing in 1527, the Scottish historian Hector Boece explained it thus:

Gathelus, an Athenian or Argive, travelled from Greece to Egypt, where he married Scota, daughter of Pharaoh.  At the Exodus, Gathelus fled with Scota to Iberia, where he founded a kingdom at Brigantium, now Santiago de Compostella.  There, Gathelus reigned in the marble chair, or fatal stone like a chair: wherever it was found would be the kingdom of the Scots.  Simon Breck, a descendant of Gathelus, then took the chair from Spain to Ireland, and was crowned king of Ireland in it.

Tradition holds that the 'marble stone' followed the Scots to their original power base in Argyll, on the west coast of what is now Scotland.  Andrew of Wyntoun, writing his Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland in the fifteenth century, noted that it was the great-great-grandfather of Arthur who brought the stone to the sacred island of Iona in about the year 498:

Fergus son of Erc from him then
Did descend line by line
Unto the fifty-fifth generation,
As even man may reckon,
Brought this Stone into Scotland,
First when he can and won that land,
And set it first in Icolmkyll
And Scone thereafter was it brought unto.

The reference to the Isle of Iona (Icolmkyll - the 'Island of Columba of the Church) is especially intriguing.  Iona was a seat of kingship - reputedly, 48 kings are buried there, including Macbeth and Duncan.  What is more, one version of the story has Simon Brecc raising the marble stone from the sea off the coast of 'Ireland'.  Iona has a natural band of marble which stretches out into the sea from its south-eastern shore.  A block of this marble served as the altar of Columba's church on the island.  It could be, then, that in one of its early guises, the 'great stone four square, like unto a marble stone' was actually a bloc of Iona marble.

John of Fordun, a Scottish chronicler who wrote more than a century before Sir Thomas Malory described the 'great stone four square, like unto a marble stone', revealed that the 'fatal' stone of Scottish kingship, commonly known as the Stone of Destiny, bore its own inscription:

Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum
Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem.

['If Destiny prove true, then Scots are known to have been kings wherever men find this Stone.']

The legends of the Stone argue that it was originally the very stone on which Jacob laid his head at Bethel (Beth-El - 'House of God' - shares a linguistic origin with the Greek Baetylus, a sacred stone or pillar) and dreamt of a stairway to heaven.  As such, the Stone compares with various Middle Eastern sacred stones, the most famous of which is the 'Black Stone' or Ka'aba at Mecca.  The Ka'aba - Islam's holiest of holies - was once thought to house an aspect of Al-Uzza, the Arabic version of Venus.  In the Scottish tradition, the goddess housed in the Stone of Destiny was Scota, daughter of the Pharaoh and mother-goddess of the Scots.

The Stone of Destiny left the Isle of Iona and eventually found its way to Scone in Perthshire, taken there by Kenneth mac Alpin when he established himself as the King of Scotland in 842.  It was from Scone that the Stone was taken by the English king, Edward I, in 1296.  As anyone who has seen Braveheart will remember, Edward 'Longshanks' had convinced himself that Scotland belonged to him.  His removal of the Stone of Destiny from Scone meant that he had laid claim to the Scottish stone of kingship.  It has long been rumoured that the stone stolen by Edward I (see photo above) was actually just a random hunk of masonry, and that the genuine Stone of Destiny was safely hidden away.  Given that the early accounts of the stone refer to it as 'marble', it is possible that there was some truth in the notion that the canny Scots tricked Edward I into stealing an irrelevant bloc of locally-quarried Old Devonian red sandstone.

Edward I installed the Stone of Destiny in the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey.  Every English monarch, from Edward II in 1308 to Elizabeth II in 1953, was crowned whilst seated on the stone.

It is typical of the way in which the legends of Arthur were corrupted by English writers that the stone's inscription was altered from the original legend ('Wherever men find this Stone is the kingdom of the Scots') to 'Whoso pulleth this sword out of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England'.

But how does this stone relate to Arthur?

In the spring of 574, a comet appeared in the skies.  This was almost certainly taken as an omen, a sign that a new king was about to be crowned (the Gaelic word for such a heavenly omen was dreag).  That same year, the Irish annals record a brutal battle in Kintyre.  The king of the Scots, Conall mac Comgaill, had died and a great battle was fought for the throne.  The victor was Aedan mac Gabrain, the father of Artuir.

St Columba, who had taken the Isle of Iona as the headquarters for his mission to Scotland, was reluctant to ordain Aedan as king of the Scots.  The saint had to be bullied into accepting Aedan's claim.  Still suffering from his ordeal, Columba returned to the Isle of Iona where he ordained Aedan as King of the Scots in the year 574 (the prophetic comet had been right!).  Present at this occasion - the first recorded instance of a king being ordained by a Christian in the whole of the British Isles - were Aedan's sons, including Arthur.  St Columba made use of the occasion to prophesy that Arthur would fall in battle, slain by enemies, and would never follow his father onto the throne.

The ceremony would have involved the 'fatal chair, or marble stone like unto a chair', as described by Hector Boece.  King Aedan would have knelt or stepped on the Stone of Destiny, which was expected to emit a shriek if Aedan was indeed the true king (in other words, the goddess Scota must have voiced her approval of his candidacy).  Aedan would then have swung his sword over the stone to demonstrate that he intended to govern the land and uphold its laws with the power of his arm.  The sword would not have been drawn out of the stone: rather, the stone represented the land (and the tutelary goddess who presided over the land) and the sword represented the authority of the king, whose rule was legitimised by a form of sacred marriage with the goddess of the land.  The power of the sword was drawn from the stone of the land.

It is rather amusing to note that the comet which flared in the skies over Britain in April-May 574 was not seen again until 1994.  Just two years later, the Stone of Destiny was finally returned, under military escort, to its proper home in Scotland, having spent a full seven centuries legitimising the rule of English monarchs.

Once again, though, we find that the 'English' Arthurian traditions were 'borrowed' from those of another culture - specifically, that of the Scots.  The 'fatal' stone was their royal stone, stolen by Edward I in 1296 and finally returned in 1996.  It was their Stone of Destiny which supposedly bore the inscription concerning kingship.  It was also the stone on which Arthur's father was ordained by St Columba on the Isle of Iona in 574, when the fifteen-year old Arthur was told that he would never be king of the Scots.

Try finding any Arthur in England who ever had anything to do with a sacred stone of kingship, and you'll enjoy a long and fruitless search.  There was no Arthur in England.  It is high time that, like the Stone of Destiny itself, he was at last returned to his Scottish roots.

Twelve Hundred Words

Part of this week was spent trying to explain in 1,200 words why Artuir mac Aedain, the "Scottish Arthur", is worth considering as a candidate for the Real King Arthur.

Sometimes, you can say a lot with a thousand words.  But it's also a case of deciding what not to include.  So that, for example, there was no space to point out that Edinburgh has Arthur's Seat while the Trossachs have Beinn Artair ('Arthur Mountain') and there are many, many other Arthurian place-names in Scotland.

Nope, no room for that.

Other things could only be alluded to, such as the battles of Arthur, which ranged from the Borders region up to Aberdeenshire.

So what did make it into the piece?

Well, I began by explaining that when a certain long period comet appeared in the sky in 574 (it was the comet now known as McNaught-Russell, and its next visit came in 1993/4) it heralded a historic event.  This was the first recorded instance in the British Isles of a king being anointed by a Christian evangelist.  Adomnan of Iona told the story in his Life of St Columba.  Aedan mac Gabrain was ordained king of the Scots on the Isle of Iona by Columba, and several sons of King Aedan were present.  One of them was Arthur.  St Columba took the opportunity of predicting that Arthur would never become king but would die in battle.

Sixteen years later, the British Men of the North, along with their Irish allies, had the Angles of Northumbria pinned down in two coastal fortifications.  The "English", as they came to be known, were about to be driven back into the North Sea which had brought them over to Britain.  Then tragedy struck.  Treacherously, a British king named Morgan the Wealthy arranged for the assassination of another British chief, Urien of North Rheged, and the British alliance crumbled.

That was the end for the Britons.  Arthur's death came four years later in a battle fought in Angus.  After that, the Angles invaded much of the Old North.  Britain was finished.

One would hope that any historical Arthur could be placed at the very heart of the British resistance to the invasion of the Germanic tribes from Angeln, Saxony and Jutland.  And so it is rewarding to discover that Artuir mac Aedain was there.  Only the year before his father became King of the Scots, his friend Menw (later known as Myrddin Wyllt, later still as Merlin) had gone mad at a battle fought in the Scottish Borders.  Arthur's adulthood coincided with the concerted actions carried out by British and Irish allies to pacify the North and force the Germanic Angles out of Northumbria.  In their hour of triumph, the coalition partners were brought down by treachery.  And with the death of Artuir mac Aedain four years after the British disaster at Lindisfarne in 590, the battle for North Britain basically came to an end.

So that alone makes Artuir a promising candidate for having been the original Arthur - he was there during the crucial period of British resistance, the most effective counterattack yet mounted in Britain against the Germanic invaders.  And when he died, so too did the hopes of the Britons.

But that's just the start.  The early legends repeatedly associate Arthur with a group of historical individuals who can all be traced to North Britain in the late sixth century.  The same names appear in the Welsh romances and the early British poems of the time, as well as on medieval lists of the Four and Twenty Horsemen of the Court of Arthur and the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain.

The Welsh romance of Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain opens with Arthur relaxing in his chamber with Owain son of Urien and Cynon son of Clydno.  Owain's father was the victim of the assassination plot carried out at Lindisfarne in 590.  Cynon is named as one of the few survivors of Arthur's last battle; he appears in a contemporary poem of Arthur's last battle (as does Owain), and his homeland was Lothian.

Both Owain and Clydno appear on the list of Arthur's twenty-four knights.

Other names keep recurring: Llywarch of South Rheged, for example, who carried the head of his cousin Urien away from the scene of his murder at Lindisfarne; Peredur, who ruled the military stronghold of York and went on to become the romantic hero Sir Perceval; Drystan, or 'Sir Tristan', whom the Scots knew as St Drostan ... the list goes on.

They were all contemporaries, near-neighbours and kinsmen of Arthur son of Aedan.

And then there was the Round Table, identified as early as circa 1200 as having stood at Stirling.  Earlier this year, local historians and archaeologists, along with researchers from the University of Glasgow, ran geophysical surveys of the King's Knot earthwork in the meadow below Stirling Castle - the place known for centuries as the Round Table - and found evidence of a "circular feature" beneath the turf of the mound.

The first reference to the Round Table at Stirling came in the romance of Tristan by Beroul, a French poet.  The Fair Yseut had sent her squire with a message for Arthur.  Before he was directed to Stirling, the squire had gone to Caerleon, expecting to find Arthur there.

Caerleon - the 'City of the Legion' - was not far from the Round Table at Stirling: about nine miles, by the old Roman road.  It was a massive military encampment which had been built on the banks of the River Carron, just north of the Antonine Wall.  The place is known as Camelon, near Falkirk.

Camelon has just two syllables - 'came-lon'.  In Gaelic, it is Camlan.

In 1695, Edward Gibson, Bishop of London, was revising William Camden's Britannia.  He wrote of what remained of the Camelon fortifications:

"There is yet a confused appearance of a little ancient city, where the common people believe there was formerly a road for ships.  They call it Camelot."

A historical "Camelot", just nine miles south of a historical "Round Table" ... a prince named Arthur (the first on record to bear that name) who commanded the Britons and their allies in the front line region of Britain (Stirling and the River Forth) ... whose kinsmen and contemporaries joined him in the legends ... whose lifetime saw the counterattack which nearly chased the English out of Britain, and whose death opened the floodgates of the Anglian conquest of the North ...

Can we really pretend that Artuir mac Aedain - the "Scottish Arthur" - isn't a promising candidate?

W.S.

British history is in vogue at the moment.

Madonna is releasing a film about Wallace Simpson ("W.E.") and, though I fear for the script, I imagine that the casting of Andrea Riseborough will prove to have been inspired.

Another forthcoming movie release is "Anonymous", which seeks to make out that the plays of William Shakespeare were really written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

Okay, let's not worry about the fact that the Earl of Oxford died in 1604 - at least nine years before the end of Shakespeare's playwrighting career.  Even sillier theories have been put forward over the authorship question, with both Christopher Marlowe (died 1593) and Queen Elizabeth I (died 1603) being nominated as the "real" Shakespeares.  The simple reality is that there are no good reasons whatsoever to imagine that Shakespeare was not the author of his own plays - but that hasn't stopped the conspiracy theorists.

(A word of warning: this blog is about ARThur and WILLiam)

The "Was Shakespeare Really Shakespeare" nonsense can be dated back to the late-eighteenth century.  In 1769, the actor-manager David Garrick staged his Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-upon-Avon.  The event was a wash-out (literally) and, besides, it missed the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth by five years.  The Londoners who attended decided that they didn't like the Stratfordians.  They considered them ignorant.

Only a few years earlier, a rather interesting piece of evidence had turned up.  Hidden under the rafters of the Shakespeare family home on Henley Street was a small, handwritten document.  It was a Jesuit 'Last Testament of the Soul'.  Thousands of these had been distributed around the Midlands by two Jesuit priests who had entered the country illegally.  The one found at Henley Street had been signed by Shakespeare's father, roundabout the time that Will Shakespeare was 16.

The discovery of John Shakespeare's illicit 'Last Testament' was dynamite.  Inevitably, perhaps, the document was conveniently lost by a Shakespeare scholar.  But the people of Stratford knew all about it.  So David Garrick and his metropolitan friends decided that the locals were ignorant.  The only people who really knew anything about Shakespeare were the Londoners.  And one thing they knew about him was that he was never, ever, ever a Catholic.

But take the Catholicism out of Shakespeare's writings and they stop making sense.  Or, put it another way, try reading them in the context of a vicious persecution of Catholics, including many of Shakespeare's friends, neighbours and relatives, and see what happens.  It took me twenty years to figure this out (because the academic elite really does not like discussing the possibility that Shakespeare was Catholic), with the result that for twenty years I couldn't enjoy Shakespeare.  I didn't know what he was on about.

Then, fortunately, I asked myself the question (long overdue, given the evidence): Could he have been a secret Catholic?  And the next Shakespeare play I saw became one of the most painful, distressing, cathartic experiences I had ever known.

All these foolish theories about somebody else writing the plays of Shakespeare stem from a blanket refusal in the academic community to admit who he really was.  Effectively, they have suppressed the evidence (for 'political' reasons, all to do with rather outdated, David Starkey-type notions of what England is).  And when the evidence is withheld, conspiracy theories abound.

The same can be said of Arthur.  For years, though I longed to discover who he was, I could only make out a vague, possibly non-existent culture hero.  He had been Welsh, but then the English made him English.  And there simply wasn't enough evidence to point to any historical figure as the original Arthur.  If he had existed, it looked like he would never be found.

But then I found him.  By accident.  I was researching his father, a king called Aedan.  And Aedan had a son called Artuir.  And a daughter called Muirgein.

I had never yet come across any early Arthurs who had sisters called Morgan.  Could Arthur have been Scottish, then?  Well, I decided it was worth taking a proper look.

That was eight years ago, and I've been looking ever since.  And you know what?  The evidence is overwhelming.

There is, however, a long-running argument in the Arthurian community.  While many of us had begun to suspect that Arthur was of Irish extraction and was based in the North, the backlash was constant.  NO!!  Arthur could not have been a Scot.  Or an Irishman.  Or northern.  No!  No, no, no!!

When you look at the arguments used against the theory, though, they are pathetic.  Superficially, the argument against the Scottish Arthur (who was actually more British than Scottish) is that he was too late: the generally accepted era of Arthur was some 50 to 100 years before his time.  But that 'generally accepted' age of Arthur is based entirely on flawed and faulty evidence - and not very much of it, at that.  So while there is a mound of evidence that the first Arthur on record, whose sister was called Morgan, who fought against the 'Saxons' and was buried on a sacred isle, it all has to be studiously ignored.  Why?  Because some people only want to believe in an Arthur who didn't exist, rather than spend a little while examining one who did.

As Will, as Art.  A self-appointed 'elite' determines what we are allowed to believe.  So, Shakespeare was NOT a Catholic (and we end up not really sure if he was really Shakespeare) and Arthur was NOT a prince of the North (so we end up doubting whether he existed at all).  See the link here?  Whenever racial, moral, religious and intellectual intolerance steps in, we lose our heroes.

Because some people only want us to believe in their heroes.  The approved English Protestant ones.  The ones who didn't exist.

Setting the Scene

I've been toying with a prologue - a way of establishing atmosphere before the historical investigation begins.  See what you think:


THE winter had been hard.

Hidden away in the depths of the forest, the crazy man had shivered and gibbered his way through the dark months, snow up to his thighs, ice in his beard.  Bitterly he imagined the feasting halls with their bright choking fires, their music and stories and laughter.  More bitterly still, he thought of the great hall of Dumbarton, where his enemy would have celebrated the foreign Christmas feast.

Once, he had worn a golden torque around his neck. Girls swarmed around him like bees to a comb.  But that was before.

In his dreams he saw them.  Their hollow faces floated above him: black mouths spewing accusations.

Only the wolf kept him company, sharing his hunger and his mountain solitude.

He cut an alarming figure.  Short and emaciated, his hair long and matted at the back, the front of his scalp bristling with stubble.  When his eyes were not starting from their sockets they were sunk deep inside their cavities, contemplating things most men would be glad not to have seen.  Blue-black tattoos pricked into his skin with iron awls told his story.  He was a poet, a shouter, one of the inspired ones; he was also a battle-horseman and an enchanter.  He was the madman, the wild prophet of the woods, the myrddin.

For months he had guarded the spring which burst through the side of the world (it was the earth's wound, where the Mother made water).  From the summit of his forest hideaway he could glimpse the great hills of Bryneich and Rheged and the mountains to the north, even those beyond Dumbarton.  He could look down on the ruin of Britain.  The metallic spring water had kept him alive.

Alone with the wolf and the wraiths he kept watch on the skies, waiting for a sign.  He knew it would come.  The world had not ended.  Men would polish their armour.

All winter long, when the madness was not upon him, he had thought ahead.  The tang of iron was in his mouth.  Sometimes the spring water made him retch.  It tasted of blood and weapons.  And then the visions came again.

The battle-fog, the cries of confusion, the killing.

The voices that whispered.

All winter long, up to his manhood in snow.

~

On the first day of spring, the serpent came from the mound.  That was the way of things.

He was a serpent, coiled inside the cavern where the spring trickled out of the Mother like a running wound.  The men of Rhydderch had not found him.  The skies had turned: the stream froze in its rocky gully - a terrible winter.

It was time for the serpent to emerge from its mound, sloughing its skin like an old garment.

Spring brought the youth up the mountain.  He rode from the lake where he had passed the winter, safe on an island of stones, and left his pony down in the valley where the river was young.  There was still ice in the gully, and the peaks were white.

The boy was a man now.  At the battle, he became a man; now the years had caught up.

The Wildman greeted him.  It was a sorrowful reunion.  Though moons had passed, the youth still wore the battle on him.  But unlike the myrddin, who heard voices in the wind, in the trees, the boy suffered his own recriminations.  The madman was blamed by everybody, the youth only by himself.

They could not talk of plans and purposes until ghosts had been laid to rest.  The man they called Little-Shout, who could talk with the birds, had readied himself for this meeting through endless frosty nights.  He spoke:

'Peiryan faban, cease your weeping.  Aedan will come across the wide sea.  And from Manau a host of excellent hundreds.  On the islands on the way to the hill of the Irish, a series of bloody encounters, like a race.'

He was seeing now, just as he had seen by the winter moonlight.  Long-headed spears, many long lances.  Many red swords, stern troops, shining shields, lively steeds.

'Peiryan faban, fewer tears.  The encounter of Rhydderch and Aedan by the bright Clyde will resound from the northern border to the south.'

The young man listened.  Ahead of him, his sixteenth summer, a season of battles, and beyond that more battles - a lifetime of war, perhaps.  Would they all be as awful as the one at which his friend had gone mad?

'Peiryan faban, try to rest.'

The young warrior gazed down the hillside, his eyes following the course of the water through its rocky gully.  He was taller than his crazy friend but he wore his hair the same way, long at the back.  It streamed from the top of his head like reddish gold.  He had brought the eagle with him.  The creature shared his far-ranging vision and his natural royalty.  Six colours were woven into his plaid.  His bare forehead was speckled with dark spots.

His name was already famous among the tribes.  Druids had prophesied that he was the longed-for one and a brilliant poet had spent the winter spreading the word.

Last summer, he fought his first battle.  This summer, he would lead the armies of the North.  He had become a dragon, a champion, a leader of men.  The Romans had a word for such things.  But his crazy friend had just given him a new title.

Little-Shout called him peiryan faban.

He was the Commanding Youth.

Though the people knew him as Arthur.