The Reign of Arthur

by Christopher Gidlow

The poems give a consistent picture of Arthurian warfare, supporting the terser accounts of the Latin historians. They may not tell the whole story, of course. Close order charges make for much better poems than less dramatic tactics. They do, however, give a first glimpse of those battlefields where ‘Arthur fought in those days’.

  From History

  The early sources are coherent and plausible. Not only does Arthur, military leader of the kings of the Britons between Ambrosius and Maglocunus, fit the facts, it is the only explanation which makes sense of them: the victory of Badon Hill, the reactivation of the northern command, the defeat of the Saxons across the island, the good order shown by contemporary kings and their subjects. All of this can scarcely have come about by chance. They are the evidence which both demonstrates and requires the existence of a British leader of battles. Of course, we have no way of being certain what his name was, but a name he undoubtedly had. No other name has ever been applied to him by any British writer, no matter how eager to aggrandise their ancestors or dynastic founders. Under such circumstances it seems churlish to deny him that last piece of recognition and argue that he was not Arthur.

  SEVEN

  It seems there was an Arthur and that he was a very significant figure in Britain at the time suggested by the romances. At that level, we have answered the question whether he existed. A large number of basic Arthurian features, however, remain to be established or dismissed. Moreover, there is much in the picture which does not feature in any standard image of Arthur.

  Those who dismiss all Arthurian material as legendary should consider how few of the episodes we have studied entered into legend at all. No legend, oral, poetic, romantic or pseudo-historical has survived to shed light on the incident where Arthur killed his son Anir. The battle at Castellum Guinnion, on which Nennius dwelt at length, vanished completely. We shall never know why Arthur carried the image of the Virgin Mary on his shoulders, or how she helped him. Most of the other battles in the list will never reappear. Outigirn features in no tales, only a misplaced reference in the Harleian genealogies. Even the great battle of Badon all but disappeared from the traditions of the Britons. Of all the details the written sources have so far furnished us about Arthur, only the boar hunt with his dog Cabal and his death alongside Medraut at Camlann can truly be said to be the stuff of later legends.

  The loss is greater when we consider the historical material in Gildas. Most of the characters we have identified are never heard of again. The twelfth-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth incorporated Constantine, Aurelius, Vortiporius and Maglocunus in his history, but based purely on what he found in Gildas. There is nothing about Vortiporius’s good father, Maglocunus’s uncle or any of Aurelius’s family. Perhaps the strangest loss to legend was the family of Ambrosius Aurelianus. He had children, and they had children in their turn, but they were never to feature in any tale, genealogy or history. The legends which spread throughout the Middle Ages had little in common with the historical material studied so far.

  In contrast, it is worth considering what aspects of the legends have yet to be encountered. Many modern Arthurian theories take the concept of Camelot as a starting point. Place-names, strategic locations and impressive archaeological remains are pressed into service to identify Arthur’s supposed capital. Yet nothing in what we have studied has given us any reason to think that Arthur had any capital or single base at all. His campaigns seem energetic, ranging across the country, through rivers, forts, mountains, forests and cities. Gildas specifically denigrates the idea of fleeing to fortified locations, making it unlikely that his victorious Britons followed such a tactic. If any capitals or bases are implied, then they are those of Arthur’s allies, the kings of the Britons. Even they, like all Dark Age rulers, would have led itinerant lives, moving their courts constantly to oversee their lands and collect supplies. In the re-fortified defences of the north we see no single Camelot – rather, a complete military network. The nearest name to Camelot we have encountered is Camlann, site of the last battle.

  Avalon has not featured in the evidence. Neither has the Grail, the Round Table, the sword Excalibur (stuck in a stone or rising from a lake), or foreign wars. This suggests that theories which rely on identifying such features in the historical or archaeological record are likely to be wide of the mark. There is no need to suppose that any of them figured in Arthur’s historical career.

  Perhaps most surprising, we have not encountered any of Arthur’s men. He is not connected with a fellowship of famous knights, or a warband of any sort. There is nothing to suggest he led heavily armoured cavalry, carried a dragon banner or even rode a horse into battle. These are all features of later legends, not Dark Age history.

  How can we draw a line between material we can legitimately consider historical, and that which is probably legendary? We have a reasonable chronological criterion in that material written after Annales Cambriae and the tenth-century recensions of Historia Brittonum is unlikely to be completely independent of the sources we have studied. In their written form, they were being collected, copied and studied from this time. Material which post-dates this must be judged, where possible, on its provenance. We can also compare each source with what we have already deduced about fifth/sixth-century reality.

  Between Annales Cambriae and the explosion of Arthurian romances at the end of the twelfth century, three types of source have been proposed as offering additional evidence for the reign of Arthur. These include Welsh legends, thought of as the final expression of an oral transmission stretching back over the centuries. Next are the lives of the saints, and related ecclesiastical material, where churches may have preserved details of Gildas and his contemporaries. Finally, there is the most important Arthurian work of all, the one which established Arthur’s ‘historical’ career and has influenced subsequent interpretations of his time, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. The romances themselves fall outside the scope of this book, as they are clearly works of fiction, drawing loosely on an established historical background, but by no means bound by it.

  Welsh Poems

  By the late thirteenth century, the Britons faced defeat. Llywellyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales and ‘descendant’ of Maglocunus, was killed. His adversary, Edward I of England, descendant of the West Saxons, sent the former’s head to the Tower of London and his regalia, including ‘The crown of King Arthur’ to join the royal treasures in Westminster. For Edward, an Arthurian enthusiast himself, the stories of Arthur would live on in French romances and in Latin histories, not in the recitals of Welsh bards.

  It is against this background that the first surviving Welsh Arthurian materials came to be written down. Works which had doubtless circulated orally for many years, even centuries, are first found in manuscripts of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Without the patronage of Welsh-speaking princes, there was no other way for these legends to survive.

  The oldest of the major manuscripts, the Black Book of Carmarthen, was written in the late thirteenth century specifically, it seems, to preserve the ancient traditions. The poems it contains vary in age, but there is little doubt that some of them are very ancient indeed; exactly how ancient is a matter of much debate. For our purposes, it is enough that some of those referring to Arthur were written between the tenth-century composition of Annales Cambriae and the establishment of an ‘authorised’ version of Arthurian history in the twelfth century. The three we will consider could be at least as old as the Annales and the Vatican Recension.

  One of the poems is entitled Gereint fil. Erbin (Gereint son of Erbin). The poet describes how he ‘sees’ Gereint and his men, fighting at the battle of Llongborth: ‘At Llongborth were slain Geraint’s brave men from the lowlands of Diuvneint (Devon)’. Medieval genealogies made Gereint a ruler of Devon and Cornwall, a reasonable inference from the poem. In these genealogies, Erbin was the son of Constantine of Cornwall, the tyrant denounced by Gildas. A King Gerent of the Britons is mentioned
in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as fighting against the West Saxons in 710. This cannot have been the same person, but indicates that the name was in use by a southern British dynasty, presumably Diuvneint. There is nothing in the poem to confirm that Gereint son of Erbin is either a grandson of Constantine or an early eighth-century king. He may have been neither.

  Gereint’s adversaries are not named. Llongborth appears to mean ‘warship port’. It is popularly identified with Langport on the Parrett in Somerset. The name is similar, and it would have been on the borders of Diuvneint. This, as we have seen, would have been a viable location for sixth-century warfare, but could equally represent an eastward thrust by a later ruler of Devon.

  The verse before that identifying Gereint’s men as coming from Diuvneint reads:

  In Llongborth I saw Arthur’s

  brave men, they hewed with steel

  Emperor, leader in toil.

  The poem is often misread as ‘In Llongborth I saw Arthur’. This is a product of the obscurity of the language and the fact that Arthur ends the line and, as in Y Gododdin, is the rhyme for the other lines. There is, however, now no doubt that the poet sees Arthur’s men at the battle. Arthur is clearly present himself, just as Gereint is, confirmed by the description of him as conductor of the toil.

  Ashe argues that the verse preserves a tradition that Arthur’s men carried on the fight after his death (Ashe 1982). If so, this is the sole piece of evidence. For Gildas, the fighters of the Badon generation are forgotten. Arthur’s men have never previously been mentioned.

  Does this verse mean the men of Diuvneint are like those of Arthur, the heroes of an earlier age? This would make a similar comparison to that of the Gododdin. If the poet implies, literally, that both Gereint and Arthur are at the same battle, then either he has wrongly dated one of them or Gereint cannot be either of the later characters above.

  If we disregard later material contextualising him two generations after Gildas, perhaps Gereint son of Erbin actually did fight with Arthur at the battle of Llongborth. If he is ruler of Dumnonia, then his fighting alongside Arthur is wholly consistent with what we have deduced so far. It is interesting that Arthur is given both a Roman title, indicative of the different nature of his rule, and a Welsh title which is a virtual synonym of Dux Bellorum.

  Llongborth is not listed as one of Arthur’s twelve battles, but it might be another name for one of them. A ‘warship port’ might be located on any of the riverine locations. If it is Langport, then this might have been one of the battles in the Linnuis (Ilchester?) region with Dubglas as an alternative name for the Parrett. Losing Gereint and his men might have made such a victory pyrrhic and led to further campaigns in the area. Alternatively, it could be part of a civil war, after the battle of Badon. Llongborth would border on the civitas of the Durotriges, after all. It is exceedingly unlikely the poem means that Gereint and Arthur were adversaries.

  The poem has one other important aspect to it: the first introduction of the concept of ‘Arthur’s brave men’. Before exploring this further, let us look at another of the Black Book poems, the Stanzas on Graves.

  The Stanzas describe or locate the graves of various heroes, some of whom feature in later legends, others of whom are unknown. Two tell of the grave of Owain, son of Urien Rheged; three describe the grave of Cynon, son of Clydno Eiddyn of the Gododdin. Bradwen, given as a comparison in Y Gododdin, also has his grave mentioned. Other verses refer to various Welsh locations like Llanbadarn.

  Two of the verses are of particular interest. One reads

  The grave of the son of Osvran is in Camlan,

  After many a slaughter the grave of Bedwyr.

  The other

  The grave of March, the grave of Gwythur,

  The grave of Gwgawn Gleddyvrudd (Red Sword);

  A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur.

  (Coe and Young 1995)

  The last line, ‘Anoeth bin u bedd Arthur’, is translated in various ways from the apocalyptic ‘concealed to Doomsday, the grave of Arthur’, to the prosaic ‘unknown is the grave of Arthur’. It could be understood as meaning that Arthur’s grave is at a place called Anoeth. Earlier in the poem we hear of the Tribes of Oeth and Anoeth. In the prose tale Culhwch and Olwen, Arthur’s porter says that he (and possibly Arthur as well) has been in Caer Oeth and Anoeth. The context indicates some fantastic, faraway place.

  The stanza is commonly taken to mean that no one knows the location of the grave of Arthur, this in turn indicating the tradition that Arthur has no grave because he is still alive. This story was around in the early twelfth century, with Arthur awaited as a messianic Celtic deliverer. It was common when the Stanzas were written down. However, the only evidence we have from the tenth century, the earliest date for the Stanzas, is quite the opposite. He was known to be dead. This is stated as specifically as possible in Annales Cambriae. At the battle of Camlann, Arthur and Medraut fell down dead. No one else so described in the Annales is considered to be alive, so we have to conclude that Arthur’s survival is a later development, perhaps partially derived from the Stanzas.

  We might wonder why, if the grave of Arthur was simply unknown, it was included in the Stanzas on Graves at all. There must have been plenty of other figures the location of whose graves was unknown. It seems odd to put one of them in a poem whose sole intention is to record details of the graves.

  The final possibility is that the grave is not unknown at all. Anoeth means a wonder or a marvel. It is the word used in the story of Culhwch and Olwen for the marvellous and seemingly impossible tasks set the hero by a giant. We already know from Historia Brittonum that in the ninth century Arthur was credited with a grave that was a marvel, one of the Mirabilia of Britain. It was a marvel because it could not be measured twice and yield the same result. In the Historia this grave is said to be built by Arthur for his son Anir, but as we can see, Anir and his death at Arthur’s hands dropped rapidly out of tradition. There is no trace of it in any tenth-century or later source. It is surely conceivable that the grave of Arthur which is Anoeth, in the Stanzas on Graves, is the same one which the author of the Mirabilia claimed to have tried to measure. ‘A marvel to the world is the tomb of Arthur.’ What appears to be the same monument, outside Hay-on-Wye in ancient Ercing, is now called ‘Arthur’s Stone’, not Anir’s Grave.

  The longest poem dealing with Arthur in the Black Book is called Pa gur. These are its opening words (‘What man . . . ?’) addressed to the porter, Gleuluid Gavaelvaur (Strong-Grip) by Arthur. There are many translations of this obscure poem. I will use the version recently published by Sims-Williams (Bromwich et al. 1991). Although the details differ from one translation to another, the basic premise is clear. Arthur and Cei Guin (fair Kei) are seeking admittance to the place which Gleuluid guards. The porter refuses to let them in until Arthur reveals who he is travelling with: ‘Guir goreu im bid’, says Arthur, ‘the best men in the world’. There seem to be about ten or eleven of them although counts vary both on which words are names, and which men are actually with Arthur and which have only taken part in others’ exploits.

  Kei is pre-eminent. He was named with Arthur at first, and his exploits are told at length. Kei slaughtered adversaries three at a time when Kelli was lost. He killed a witch in the hall of Awarnach, he pierced Pen Palach in the Dwellings of Disethach. He killed Cinbin (dog heads – a term of abuse or mythical monsters?) at Minit Eidin (the mountain of Edinburgh). He is a sword in battle, a strong leader, possibly a tall man, a man who could drink like four but kill like a hundred. If God had not brought it about, it would be impossible to kill Kei. He killed nine witches on the peak of Ystawingun; he went to Anglesey to kill lions and his shield was a polished mirror, or a broken fragment against the fearsome Cath Palug (Palug’s Cat), which used to eat nine-score champions.

  To all intents and purposes, the poem is one in praise of Kei the monster-slayer. Arthur appears in the fourth line: ‘Arthur a Chei guin’, providing the full rhyme for th
e previous line ‘Pa gur aegouin’ (what man asks it?). Arthur is not explained. We infer that he is the leader of the best men in the world, but he is nowhere linked to their exploits. Nothing which Kei did features any locations or actions previously connected with Arthur. Arthur is enigmatically said to be doing something while Kei is fighting in the hall of Awarnach, ‘laughing’, says Sims-Williams (Bromwich et al. 1991), ‘playing’, say Coe and Young, both presumably more accurately than Williams’s earlier ‘distributing gifts’, but no more clear. Other than that, he plays no role in the poem (Coe and Young 1995, Williams 1972).

  The Mountain of Eidin would be part of the Gododdin territory. Two more of the men, Anguas Edeinauc (‘the winged’ or ‘the swift’) and Lluch Llauynnauc (windy-hand) were defenders of Eidin, so presumably Kei was a defender too. This would put them in an area and (for what it is worth, given the opponents are dog-heads) a possible historical context. Speculation in the twelfth century would place Arthur’s battle of Mount Agned at Edinburgh, but nothing we have seen so far would lead us to this supposition.

  Kei fought with Llacheu, perhaps as an ally, though the line is ambiguous. By the time the Black Book was written, Llacheu was known as a son of Arthur, equivalent to the romance figure Loholt. The romance Perlesvaus has Loholt killed by Keu (Kei), but we are going far beyond the evidence of Pa gur to surmise that this was the poet’s implication (Bryant 1978).

  Kei’s only rival among the ‘best men in the world’ is Beduir Bedrydant (perfect sinew). Like Kei, Beduir killed by the hundred. ‘His nature was ferocious as regards sword and shield.’ He fought against Garuluid on the shores of Trywruid. Another warrior, Manawidan ab Llyr, was at Trywruid, too, where he bore shattered shields (or spears). This is of great interest, since Trywruid is the same name as Tribuit, site of Arthur’s tenth battle. The Vatican recension glossed this as ‘Which we call Traht Treuroit’, exactly the Traetheu (plural of Traeth) Trywruid where Beduir fought.