Making Sense of "Y Gododdin"

I'm working ahead on the Grail book (The Grail: Relic of an Ancient Religion, being published in monthly instalments on the Moon Books website/blog).  Basically, the proofs of Who Killed William Shakespeare? will be arriving soon, so I'm making sure that the Grail book is advanced enough that I won't fall behind deadline with it when I take a couple of weeks out to focus on the story of Shakespeare and his skull.

So I've been reviewing the historical sources for Arthur.  I've looked at what many scholars consider to be the sole historical sources, and then I've explored the others.  The latter have a great deal to tell us about Arthur but are usually ignored.

They are ignored for one of two reasons:

1) scholars have not understood the context of the sources and have therefore wrongly assigned them;

2) scholars don't want to entertain the merest possibility that Arthur wasn't a Romanised Christian operating in southern Britain in the late 5th/early 6th centuries.

Evidence which does not support the latter view tends to be discounted as inadmissable.  If it is considered at all.  But basically, it does not correspond to the Arthurian stereotype.

In fact, there is no evidence at all for an Arthur active in the south.  None.  Not a shred.

There is, however, plenty of evidence to link him with the North.  And not in the early 6th century, but in the last quarter of that century.

Take Y Gododdin.  This was composed by Aneirin, a princely poet of North Britain, and was probably first sung in or near Edinburgh in about the year 600.

Of the two surviving versions of Y Gododdin (the "title" refers to the warriors of Lothian, of which the capital was Edinburgh, the site of Arthur's Seat), the oldest includes a direct reference to Arthur.  Here it is in the original Old Welsh:

Gochore brein du ar uur
Caer cein bei ef arthur
Rug ciuin uerthi ig disur ...

(These are the last words to appear on the page of the Y Gododdin text in the photo above).

This was translated by W.F. Skene in the 19th century thus:

Black ravens croaked on the wall
Of the beautiful Caer.  He was an Arthur
In the midst of the exhausting conflict ...

Skene's translation gives the impression that a certain warrior of the Britons was so impressive that he was "an Arthur".  That was too much for some scholars, who have tended to translate the original passage along the following lines:

He glutted black ravens on the rampart
Of the fortress, though he was no Arthur
He did mighty deeds in battle ...

So, the warrior in question was "no Arthur".  He was good, but he wasn't that good.  And the implication appears to be that "Arthur", whoever he was, was a sort of yardstick by which warriors were measured (and apparently found wanting).  It follows that this original Arthur had belonged to another time and place.  It is as if we might say of someone today, "He was a great president, though he was no Lincoln."

I've long had a problem with this familiar interpretation of Aneirin's lines.  Not least of all because I couldn't see where the negative element in the lines came in.  I couldn't understand where the scholarly translators had found that negative.  If the lines did in fact mean "he was no Arthur", you'd expect something in the original words to indicate "no" or "not".  But that negative is nowhere to be seen.

Unless the scholars were interpreting the Welsh word cein by way of the Germanic kein.  Which would be a peculiar thing to do.  Like using a Danish dictionary to translate a statement in French.

Here's what I make of the lines, from the Old Welsh original:

Black ravens sang [praises] over the man-servant
Of Cian's fortress; he blamed Arthur,
The dogs cursed in return for our wailing ...

Okay, that's a very different interpretation.  It assumes that Gochore relates to the archaic Welsh gochanu, "to sing, to praise", and that uur should not be read as mur ("wall") but as [g]wr ("vassal").  There is a translation in there which comes by way of Irish/Scottish Gaelic: cein, a variant of the genitive form of Cian, a personal name.  But then, Welsh and Gaelic are related - as Celtic languages - while English is a Germanic language and is unlikely to offer many clues as to the meaning of Y Gododdin in its original Welsh.

The half-line bei ef arthur comes out as "he blamed Arthur" (Welsh beio, "to blame", "to accuse", with ef being the third person masculine pronoun, "he").

Now, this interpretation brings Arthur somewhat closer to the action.  Whatever had happened, the individual being described by Aneirin at this stage in his elegy "blamed Arthur" for it.  The "Black ravens" were warriors (they appear elsewhere in Arthurian literature, as in the Dream of Rhonabwy, a story from the Mabinogion, in which Arthur's soldiers attack, and are they attacked by, the "ravens" of Owain son of Urien).  They were singing and wailing.  A funeral ceremony is suggested.  But somebody there blamed Arthur.  The "dogs" who cursed the warriors in response to their songs of praise appear to have taken the side of whoever it was who blamed Arthur for whatever it was that had happened.

Arthur, then, was not some heroic figure of legend or distant memory.  He was, according to one view, the cause of the military catastrophe, the devastating defeat, described by the poet Aneirin.  Whatever had gone wrong at that final battle - which saw the effective annihilation of the army of Lothian - Arthur was held responsible for it (at least by the individual who had his cursing "dogs" with him).

There is more that I could say about the scenario as hinted at in those few words from the ancient Welsh poem.  A description, along with partial explanation, is given in my book The King Arthur Conspiracy, and was partly drawn from the poetry of Taliesin, a contemporary of Arthur who also warrants a mention in Y Gododdin.

The point to make here, though, is that consistently translating the Y Gododdin lines through mere guesswork (inserting negatives which aren't there, for example) leads to gross misinterpretations.  And those, in turn, distance us from Arthur by excluding - and/or misrepresenting - the available evidence.

The only real reason why scholars have misinterpreted the lines, making out that they mean something very different to what they actually say, is because they don't want to countenance an Arthur of the North.

Whereas the North is, in fact, precisely where Arthur is to be found.  In the company of those other warriors named in Y Gododdin who are also named in the legends of Arthur.

So please, folks, can we stop pretending that Arthur's contemporary poets said something which they manifestly didn't?  We cannot ignore, dismiss or disallow a vitally important poem like Y Gododdin just because we're not prepared to translate it properly.

Unless, of course, the plan is to avoid identifying Arthur.  And why, I wonder, would anyone want to do that.

***

NB: It has been pointed out to me, quite rightly, that the actual words in the Y Gododdin text are caer ceni bei ef arthur.  I had, at the time, gone with Professor W.F. Skene's interpretation, substituting cein (cain - 'fair', 'beautiful') for ceni.

The meaning of ceni is unclear.  It could relate to caen, plural caenau, or cen, indicating a 'layer' or 'coating'.  Caer ceni might therefore be the 'layered fort'.  There is also cyni - 'anguish', 'adversity' - suggesting a 'Fort of Distress', which would be appropriate.

Another possibility, though, is that ceni was a sort of loan word from the Irish.  The Gaelic ceann - genitive and plural cinn - derives from the Old Irish cenn, a 'head', 'chief', 'commander', 'headland', 'point' or 'extremity'.  The suffix i might therefore be recognised as I, the Gaelic name for the Isle of Iona, where (I believe) Arthur was buried.

This offers a couple of possible interpretations for the Y Gododdin lines:

"Black ravens sang [praises] over the man-servant
Of the fortress of the Chief-of-Iona/Far end of Iona.  He blamed Arthur ..."

or:

"Black ravens sang [praises] over the man
Of the fortress.  The Master-of-Iona, he blamed Arthur;
The dogs cursed in return for our weeping ..."

Getting this right is important, of course.  The art of translation demands both accuracy and an awareness of context.  Understanding Y Gododdin, or any other poem of time, requires more than just a rendering of the old Welsh words into new English ones - for that, on its own, can be misleading.  We need to understand, as far as possible, the circumstances in which the poem was composed.  It is this lack of understanding which, I would say, has led scholars to try and interpose a distance between Arthur and Y Gododdin.  Remove that artificial distance, and the poem begins to yield up its treasures.

Arthur's Last Battle - More Evidence

In the last blogspot, I suggested that Camlann - the name by which Arthur's last battle is commonly known - was not, in fact, a place-name.  Rather, it meant something like "Broken Sword".  As such, it was far more descriptive of the cataclysmic outcome than a mere place-name could ever be.

It was the battle in which Arthur's sword failed him, in which the "emperor" was mortally wounded, and which sealed the fate of Britain.

In my book, The King Arthur Conspiracy, I explain where the battle took place.  It was along the River Isla in Angus.  Arthur's forces occupied the south bank of the river.  His opponents were ranged along the hills to the north of the Isla.  Arthur was standing by a standing stone, near the village of Meigle, when he was treacherously attacked from behind.  He fought his way across the hollow plain to Arthurbank, beside the River Isla, where he fell.

A Breton poem recalls something of this.  It is entitled Bran, which means "Raven" or "Crow", and a translation can be found here: http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/bran.html

In my book, I explain at some length why Bran was an alternative name for Arthur, and that the Welsh legend of Bendigeid Fran ("Blessed Raven") recalls the treachery which culminated in Arthur's last battle and his terrible wounding.  The Breton poem of Bran would appear to have encapsulated the memory of those British refugees from the kingdom of Lothian who escaped to Brittany ("The Lesser Britain") after their homeland fell to the invading Angles in AD 638.  They remembered their lost land as Leonais - the Land of the Lion - which, through the garbled yarns of the medieval storytellers, became the romantic "Lyonesse".

The poem tells us that "Bran the knight" was grievously wounded at "Kerloan fight".  His side won, apparently - thanks, in large part, to "great Evan", who put the Saxons to flight (Evan, or Yvain, is the Frenchified version of Owain, son of Urien, who was indeed present at Arthur's last battle; he was also Arthur's nephew).  But Bran - who, in the poem, is designated "Bran-Vor's grandson", reminding us that Arthur was the grandson of the "great raven" (Bran mhor) whose given name was Gabran, King of the Scots - was "captive borne beyond the sea" to the place where he died.

The Breton poem, therefore, recalled the battle at which Arthur ("Bran") was mortally wounded as "Kerloan fight".

Now, Kerloan, or Kerlouan, is a district in Brittany, a long, long way from the site of Arthur's last battle.  There is good reason, however, to suppose that the name of the Kerlouan region actually came from the site of Arthur's battle.  The ker prefix is the same as the Welsh caer - a fortress, castle or citadel.

When I first tried to locate a "Castle of Louan" I thought of Arthur's grandmother, Lluan or Lleian, a British princess of Strathclyde who married Gabran mac Domangairt ("Bran-Vor", in Breton tradition) and gave birth to Arthur's father.  Gabran himself gave his name to the Gowrie region of Scotland, and in The King Arthur Conspiracy, I note that Arthur's half-sister, Muirgein, was born in Bealach Gabrain, the "Pass of Gabran", which I suggest was the low-lying pass or Balloch which lies beneath the Hill of Alyth in Perthshire, not far from the town of Blairgowrie ("Battlefield of Gabran's Land").  I wondered, then, whether the Hill of Alyth, or one of its neighbouring hills, such as the Hill of Loyal or Barry ("Ridge of the King") Hill, was once thought of as the "Castle of Lluan".

In fact, the louan element in the Breton Kerlouan comes from Saint Louan - or Luan, as he was known in Ireland.  The Welsh form of his name - Llywan - recalls a famous pool which, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Briton, Arthur discusses with one of his comrades after they have both seen action in and around Dumbarton and Loch Lomond.

In Scotland, Luan is better known as St Moluag.  He was a contemporary of Artuir mac Aedain, and is said to have held a race with St Columba to determine who should have possession of the island of Lismore, near Oban.  Moluag is principally associated with Lismore, although there were churches dedicated to him throughout the Western Isles and northern Scotland (he appears to have spent a great deal of time amongst the Picts).  One tradition holds that he cured the holy Molaisse (Arthur's nephew, Laisren) of an ulcer.  He was mentioned in 1544 as the patron saint of Argyll - the heartland of the Scots of Dal Riata, whose king was Arthur's father - and his death is dated to AD 592.

Other versions of his name include Elvan, Elven, Lua, Lugaidh, Molloch and Murlach (the Gaelic murlach actually means a "kingfisher" or a "fishing basket").  There is only one place in Scotland at which he is remembered as Luan.

St Luan's Church stands in Alyth, Perthshire.  The Alyth Arches (see photo above) are all that remain of an earlier church, built on the site of a sixth-century chapel named in honour of St Luan.  Notably, as well as being the patron saint of Argyll, Luan was the patron of Alyth, and his fair - "Simmalogue Fair", a corruption of St Moluag - was held there.

Given that Moluag's chapel would appear to have existed by the time of his death in circa 592, we can presume that the "Fort of Luan" was already there when Arthur fought his last battle in the immediate vicinity in AD 594.  This was the Kerlouan remembered by British refugees from Arthur's land who escaped to Brittany and named a coastal region there after the site of Luan's Citadel.

The Hill of Alyth features in a more-or-less contemporary poem of Arthur's last battle.  It was a place of supreme strategic or symbolic importance - one of Arthur's earlier enemies, a king of the southern Picts named Galam Cennaleth - bore an epithet meaning "Chief of Alyth".  A very ancient tradition holds that Arthur's queen, Gwenhwyfar, was held prisoner at Alyth by the "Pictish" king Mordred.  The name Alyth means something like "The Height" or "The Strength".  The Britons spelled it Alledd - phonetically, much the same as Alyth - and it is in this form that it occurs in the epic poem Y Gododdin:

Again the battle-shout about the Alledd,
The battle-horses and bloodied armour,
Until they shook with the passion of the great battle ...

This, then, was the scene of Arthur's final conflict.  His own position was to the south of the Hill of Alyth, and is recalled at the ridge of Arthurbank (where, until the 1790s, an Arthurstone stood).  Between the hill and the ridge lay the chapel, cell or monastery named after St Moluag - the Fort of Luan, patron saint of Alyth, or, as the British refugees in Brittany remembered it, Kerlouan.

The Breton poem indicates that Lord Bran (Arthur) died in a tower or keep "beyond the sea".  He had despatched a messenger to summon his mother from "Leon-land" (the Land of the Lion, or Leonais, as the exiles thought of their Lothian homeland).  The mother of the historical Arthur was indeed a princess of Lothian.

And, in an interesting twist on what caused Arthur's last battle, the poem suggests that Arthur's messenger was a "false sentinel" with a "mischief-working smile".  But to know how that relates to Arthur's last battle, you'll just have to buy The King Arthur Conspiracy!

Anyway - the long and the short.  Here, in the form of the Breton poem of Bran, we have another source for the location of Arthur's final battle.  The Britons of Lothian remembered it well: in his poem, "The Gododdin", the British bard Aneirin recollected that Arthur's enemies had swarmed around the Hill of Alyth.  Those of his fellow countrymen who fled to Brittany remembered that the battle had been fought around a settlement associated with Luan, patron saint of Alyth.

So, anyone looking for a place called "Camlann" where Arthur's last battle was fought is likely to find nothing, especially if they are foolish enough to go looking for it in England.  The clues are unmistakeable.  Arthur fell at Arthurbank in Scotland, near the Hill of Alyth and the Church of St Luan.  It just so happens that, as he hacked his way towards Arthurbank, he crossed a hollow plain known, to this day, as the Mains of Camno.