Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms

by Alistair Moffat

  The Historia was wildly popular and, given the severe limitations of handwritten publishing, its influence was immediate and widespread. Geoffrey Gaimar and Robert Wace from Jersey both produced versions in Norman French. The first is lost to us now but Wace introduced the Round Table into the story. This is an important detail since it reminds us that the Arthurian oral tradition also existed, in a purer form, in Brittany, preserved by emigrants from Britannia as the province fell under the control of the Angles and Saxons. The Breton stories seeped into the French tradition and so when Geoffrey’s Historia appeared it quickly triggered the medieval romances of Chrétien de Troyes who wrote Lancelot, Erec et Enide, Yvain, Cligés and Perceval. They are all P-Celtic stories with tinges of tell-tale British origins. For example, Yvain is almost certainly Owain, King of Rheged, still a hero to his descendants in the twelfth century. And Perceval, the francophone equivalent of Peredur, the winner at Arthuret and a near contemporary of Owain’s, was the first of the Arthurian romances to tell the story of the Grail, itself a British tradition. In the thirteenth century in Germany, Wolfram von Eschenbach adapted, elaborated and transliterated Perceval into Parzifal and the Grail legend became profoundly influential in classical German literature.

  In Britain the stories of Arthur attracted other, often extraneous, tales and by the fifteenth century when Thomas Malory sat down to write Le Morte d’Arthur there existed a formidable body of material. Malory’s is a huge work which set the basis of the story as it is understood now.

  Consumed by lust for Igraine, the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, Uther persuaded Merlin to change his appearance to resemble her husband. After a night of passion, Arthur was conceived. The baby was then spirited away to the castle of Sir Ector where Arthur was brought up ignorant of his true parentage. After Uther’s death there was no clear successor and Merlin thrust a sword into a block of stone saying that whoever pulled it out was the rightful king. Arthur did and Merlin proclaimed him Uther’s heir, knowing the true story all along. When he had established himself on the throne by snuffing out substantial rebellion, Arthur married Guinevere. Camelot became a symbol of goodness and a magnet for manly virtue. While defeating the Roman Emperor Lucius and winning the purple for himself, Arthur returned to Camelot where Guinevere and Lancelot had begun a clandestine affair. During the quest for the Holy Grail, their adultery was exposed and Lancelot fled. Enraged and saddened, Arthur condemned Guinevere to death. Whereupon Lancelot rescued her and fled to Europe, pursued by Arthur who had foolishly left his son Mordred as regent (the boy had been the issue of incest with Morgan, whom Arthur did not realize was his sister). At length the evil and doubtless strange Mordred attempted to usurp the throne. Arthur returned to confront his son/nephew in battle on Salisbury Plain where he killed Mordred but was himself fatally wounded. Arthur was then laid in a boat bound for the Isle of Avalon. None saw him die and some said he was only sleeping and would one day return: Rex Quondam et Futurus, the Once and Future King.

  The popularity of these stories never withered but in the nineteenth century they were extensively reworked and reintroduced to the Victorian public. William Morris wrote ‘The Defence of Guinevere’ and Lord Lytton produced a book-length poem, King Arthur, but most influential was Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King. It installed Arthur firmly in the romantic, chivalrous, wronged and passionate role where he lives today. The stories fired Tennyson’s gifts and, just as Geoffrey of Monmouth had done seven centuries before, the Idylls made literature out of legend, an identity out of the myth-history of the past.

  Geoffrey called his book The History of the Kings of Britain and tellingly subtitled it The Matter of Britain. Not England, or Scotland, or Ireland or Wales, but Britain. The book’s pages spoke of an earlier, more decent, less tainted time when the whole island was united under a successful and upright king who gained his throne on merit and held it because he was virtuous. While it is easy to understand the attractions of a united, idyllic, British past to Victorian imperialists anxious to rule as much of the world as possible, it is also not surprising to hear less and less of the Celtic origins of these Edenic stories. Clothed in shining armour, in the gilded drapery of the Gothic revival, images of Arthur kept the medieval, chivalrous gloss of the High Middle Ages originally conferred by Monmouth, de Troyes, Malory and the others. Arthur the Warlord, the philo-Roman Guledig was almost submerged in a welter of borrowed grandeur.

  And yet for the sharp-eyed, the sense of the original story persists. Arthur was fighting for the survival of Britain long before the ideas of England, Scotland and Wales were born. He was and remained famous as a war leader, a king in the later stories but also a courageous and canny general. The image of Arthur astride a snorting charger may be a medieval anachronism but the truth is not so very far away. Cunedda’s Gosgordd and the swan-maned steeds of the Gododdin lacked only the scale of the heavy horses that charged at Agincourt bearing 400 pounds of man, weapons and armour. More particularly some of the names remain. Owain of Rheged lived on as Yvain long after his campaigns against the Angles and the extent of his great kingdoms were all forgotten. His father Urien was completely absorbed into the stories and his real achievements and origins lost. He was made Arthur’s contemporary, husband of Morgan Le Fay, King of Gore and much else. But if the traces of Gore are followed exhaustively in the legends, it becomes clear that it was thought of as a kingdom near Scotland, separated from it by the River Tember and like the Celtic Otherworld it could only be crossed by a bridge of swords. Just visible, through opaque myth, is a memory of the kingdom of Rheged.¹¹⁵

  That there was a parallel, more rigorously historical appraisal of the Arthur stories in the twelfth century and before, there can be no doubt. Contemporaries laughed at Geoffrey of Monmouth because they knew something of the history of Britain after the Romans left. While Geraldus Cambrensis, a Welsh monk, made fun of the magical effects of the Historia, an earlier Norman- French historian, William of Malmesbury wrote these tantalizing sentences: ‘This is that Arthur of whom modern Welsh fancy raves. Yet he plainly deserves to be remembered in genuine history rather than in the oblivion of silly fairy tales; for he long preserved his dying country.’¹¹⁶

  Clearly William knew a good deal about Arthur but to our loss neither he nor his fellow clerics wrote down much of it. He baldly notes that Arthur aided the warrior Ambrosius Aurelianus in his fight against the invaders, and then attributes a victory at Mount Badon to Arthur. But there is another glimpse of a body of knowledge which is more pointed for this present rendition. The romances of Chrétien de Troyes showed the vigorous Breton traditions of Arthur at work. When the migrations from southern Britannia to Armorica began again in the mid sixth century as the Saxons raided and settled more of what became England, the exiled P-Celts brought fresh memories of their great leader. These remained relatively uncorrupted into the early Middle Ages because the dukedom of Brittany managed to play off Angevin against Capetian and retain a robust independence. The Arthur stories were important to a separate Breton identity and they did not make careless assumptions about his origins. Writing about something else in 1120 the chronicler Lambert de St Omer makes a passing reference: ‘There is a palace of Arthur the Soldier, in Britain, in the land of the Picts, built with various and wondrous art, in which the deeds of all his acts and wars are seen to be sculpted.’¹¹⁷

  This, taken together with William of Malmesbury’s comments, allows a view in the twelfth century that Arthur was a soldier who led the armies of P-Celtic Britain against its enemies and delayed conquest for some time. And Lambert knew of a palace in Scotland where he commemorated his achievements: where else but his base and native place?

  That a man with the name of Arthur caused buildings, if not palaces, to be built is not now in doubt. On 4 July 1998 a team of archaeologists from Glasgow University made an astonishing discovery. Excavating the Cornish hill fort and castle on the rocky peninsula of Tintagel they came upon an inscribed slate. Scratched with
a knife were the words: ‘Pater Coliavificit Artognou’, which translates into ‘Artognou, father of a descendant of Col, has made this.’

  The slate was discovered under debris which can be certainly dated to the early sixth century. It had been used as a drain-cover but before had served as some sort of inscribed plaque fixed to a small stone building on the sheltered eastern edge of the peninsula. Other material, such as fragments of the only known sixth-century glass flagon ever found in Britain, shows that Tintagel was a site of sophistication and importance with clear trading links with Europe and an economic base that allowed luxury goods to be acquired and used.

  But the inscription holds precious information, allowing a number of observations. First and most obvious is that an important man with a name very like Arthur lived at or visited Tintagel at exactly the period when documentary sources say that a historical Arthur was alive. More, it is a unique Dark Ages example of an inscription which names an individual but which is not a memorial or a tomb. In other words Arthur was a sufficiently significant and famous man to cause plaques bearing his name to be erected while he lived. To date there has been no other discovery demonstrating prestige in such an emphatic way. The style both subtracts and adds. Arthur is given no title, not king or Guledig, nor a Roman rank, but rather his name is spelled in P-Celtic, meaning ‘bear man’ or ‘like a bear’ from the word arth. And to underline his native British status, the inscriber added ‘father of a descendant of Col’. If that description is intended to add dignity and fame to the simple statement of Arthur’s name then it can only refer to Coel Hen, the early fifth-century king of the north, a founder of the line of Rheged, perhaps the last Dux Britanniarum. And being ‘the father of a descendant of Col’ must mean that Arthur or Arthnou, as it should be pronounced, married a woman whose genealogy included Old King Cole, and whose child therefore became his direct descendant.

  This clear link to the Old North does not, however, deal with the issue of a man with a name like Arthur causing a building to be raised in Tintagel. If he was based in the north, then why is hard archaeological fact emerging as far away from the Scottish Border country as it is possible to travel without leaving Britain?

  The answer is simple, if a little convenient. If Arthur was a war leader whose success and expertise brought him to defend P-Celtic Britain wherever it was attacked then there is no doubt that he came south, either with his horse-warriors or on diplomatic business. Cunedda travelled a great distance to fight the Irish in Wales and given good logistical planning there is no reason why Arthur could not have gone further. Moreover his victories also depended on political acumen. The P-Celtic kingdoms combined under the direction of a Guledig, pooling both soldiers and resources to contain common enemies. The kingdoms of the north had a tradition of alliance and there is a credible document from the Nennius collection which describes the campaigns of Urien of Rheged against the Northumbrian Angles in the 580s.

  Hussa reigned 7 years. Four kings fought against him, Urien and Riderch Hen [Strathclyde] and Gualiauc [probably Manau] and Morcant [Gododdin]. Theodoric fought bravely against the famous Urien and his sons. During that time, sometimes the enemy, sometimes our countrymen were victorious, and Urien blockaded them for three days and three nights on the island of Metcaud [Lindisfarne].

  But while he was on the expedition Urien was assassinated, on the initiative of Morcant, from jealousy, because his military skill and generalship surpassed that of all the other kings. Which shows both the dangers and advantages of alliance. In order to mount a siege, even only for three days, a Dark Ages force would have needed both greater organization than a war-band and also enough kit and supplies to maintain a siege by an army not on the move and foraging.

  Arthur was in Tintagel not because of immediate military considerations – in the early sixth century Cornwall was far from the front line – but because he needed to secure the support of the man who controlled such a wealthy and well-connected place. And perhaps also because he wanted to persuade those not immediately threatened by Saxon advance that it was none the less in their best interests to contribute to the cost of resistance.

  That the Arthur of Tintagel did not style himself a king is also significant. Urien’s assassination signifies the extreme political difficulty of creating and sustaining alliance among ambitious and jealous British kings. These victories against the Angles were won in territory Morcant had lost. After victory there must have been a dispute over ownership and reoccupation so severe as to cause the death of the King of Rheged. As a professional soldier Arthur may have been able to avoid dynastic clashes of this fatal sort.

  At all events the Tintagel discovery offers substantial underpinning for any account of a historical Arthur. And more than that it renews some faith in the power of folk memory. Stories of Arthur had wreathed the rocky peninsula for a long time, most of them dismissed as fantasy and no store at all set by their persistence. The Arthur Stone tells us that even the most confused and elaborate tales were ignited by a spark of truth somewhere in the darkness of the past.

  Presently I want to turn to the best and hardest documentary evidence behind the stories of Arthur, and there to show that he was one of the Men of the North, a general who led the armies of the Cymry. But before doing so I want to reconsider what has gone before and draw together a context and a background against which the action that follows can be better seen.

  Underpinning all that I am contending is the story of the Men of the North, the lost kingdoms of Britain, ignored and forgotten. Honed, trained, settled and horsed by the Roman cavalry, carrying the billowing Sarmatian dragon and, uncannily anachronistic in the style of Thomas Malory’s knights of the Round Table, pointing the contus, the heavy lance, as their chargers thundered into a gallop, the horse warriors of the Cymry became the most feared native fighting force in Britain after Rome abandoned the province. Buffer kingdoms wedged between the demands of Roman discipline and the expediencies of imperial policy, with the stubborn Brigantes and Selgovae in their midst, and the savage, unpredictable Picts to the north, the P-Celtic kingdoms of southern Scotland were hammered on the anvil of war for generations, first surviving and then breaking out south to Wales and north into the lands of the Miathi, the southernmost tribe in the early Pictish federation.

  As well as their weapons and methods, their most mystical cavalry traditions found a curious through-line in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and Geoffrey of Monmouth. The powerful, magical and malign figure of Morgan, or Morgan le Fay, Arthur’s sister and consort came from a Breton tradition which had derived the name from Modron,¹¹⁸ which in turn came from the parade-ground goddesses of Trimontium, the Matres Campestres, who were sacred to cavalry troopers.

  These equestrian skills and traditions also allowed the only securely recorded example of native British statecraft in the Dark Ages, of large-scale military activity more reminiscent of Roman strategy than anything contemporary, the expedition of Cunedda to rescue Wales. Sent by the planners of the Gododdin, accompanied by the Gosgordd of perhaps a thousand horse warriors, Cunedda struck back against the invaders of Britannia in a determined and decisive stroke, the only example where the P-Celts made permanent reconquest. And 150 years later Urien and Owain of Rheged led the still-vigorous armies of the Cymry in the defeat of the Northumbrian Angles, another rare British success also won from the Old North. These great generals represent the beginning and end of a long and traceable tradition of military dominance imposed from the Gododdin, Strathclyde and Rheged. Their most brilliant victor was Arthur, fighting and winning on several fronts, as I hope to show.

  And a man remembered in the earliest war poetry of the native British, the earliest vernacular literature of the old Latin West. Arthur’s name was a byword for bravery in 600 when Aneirin composed ‘The Gododdin’. The first reference to Arthur in a dateable piece of literature is in a poem sung in Edinburgh among the Men of the North. Not in Wales, not in the west of England but in southern Scotland.¹¹⁹
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  Even in the dying days of the empire in the west, emperors fought hard to hold the valuable province of Britannia. And when Magnus Maximus, or Macsen, launched his bid for the purple in 381, he went to considerable lengths to organize the northern frontiers. Having fought alongside Count Theodosius after the Barbarian Conspiracy, he already knew the Men of the North and to stiffen their ability to resist the incursions of the Picts he led the Gododdin armies into Manau and secured an aggressive frontier redoubt in the shadow of the hill fort of the Miathi. In this way he extended and strengthened the authority of Theodosius’s prefects, the military governors of the kingdoms of southern Scotland. And because of the power of the Men of the North he could afford to reduce their numbers by leading them to Europe where he pursued his campaign to be recognized as a legitimate emperor.

  The first of the generals were renamed and absorbed into the P-Celtic polities they endeavoured to direct. Particularly important was Paternus Pesrut, the man with the red cloak, the grandfather of Cunedda, and the first prefect of the southern Gododdin of the Tweed basin. New coin finds show Roman activity in southern Scotland extending into the early fifth century, 200 years after convention dates their military withdrawal.

  Remembering the style of these prefects with nomen and cognomen, Antonius Donatus, Quintilius Clemens and so on and the way in which their names were softened into P-Celtic, it is easy to see how Artorius could become Arthur. In the centuries of Roman occupation several men called Artorius had served in the army in Britain but it was a rare name. And therefore it is difficult to imagine that it could have been an eighth- or ninth-century invention when memories of Rome had all but gone. Artorius translated into Arthur is the survival of a real person.