The Reign of Arthur

by Christopher Gidlow

  Third, somebody did fight the Saxons and lead the Britons at the battle of Mount Badon. If Arthur is mythological, then he must replace absolutely and without trace the real victor. But how could this happen? Nennius was not the final arbiter of all history. While he might have decided for his own reasons to replace a real Dark Age hero with some legendary chimera, how is it that he was followed by Annales Cambriae and preceded by Y Gododdin, and destroyed all conflicting versions of the story? It is beyond belief that Arthur of an indeterminate mythological period was chosen by all concerned, independently, to stand in the place of a real fifth/sixth-century warlord. This absurdity is compounded by the context. No poet would compare Guaurthur unfavourably with a godlike superhuman. Nennius puts Arthur in the context of other anti-Saxon fighters. Are they too mythological beings given spurious historical life?

  The most sensible explanation is that which has been accepted since the Middle Ages. Arthur was a real historical figure, the leader of the Britons at the fifth/sixth-century battle of Badon. His fame as a warrior, and his convenient role as leader of various kings of the Britons, made him a perfect magnet for unrelated stories of heroes, ‘the best men in the world’. He himself takes little part in these stories, the warriors come complete with their exploits, families and contexts. We can see this process in the Middle Ages with the addition to the Arthurian milieu of such fictitious knights as Lancelot and Galahad and knights from other legendary cycles, like Tristan. One example of such an out-of-context warrior is Owain, son of Urien. His father is mentioned in Historia Brittonum, and both are celebrated in the early Taliesin poems. Urien lives in the generation after Mailcunus, so two generations after Arthur. His son cannot have been one of Arthur’s men. He has become attached to a King Arthur who did not originally feature in combined stories. It is the legends which have accreted to the king, not the king who is extracted from the legends.

  Caer Vaddon

  Arthurian material in Wales after Culhwch and Olwen falls broadly into two groups. The first owe their structure and tone to Geoffrey of Monmouth and the French romances. Others present a different, supposedly more primitive picture, and it is to these that we now turn our attention.

  The Dream of Rhonabwy is found in the White Book of Rhydderch. This is a consciously literary work, with a specific claim that it is too complex to be reproduced orally. Its interest to us is that, alone of the Welsh poems and stories, it connects Arthur with both Camlan and Badon. The story is set in the middle of the twelfth century and must therefore have been composed later than that. The author knew the Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Bruts, which cover both battles.

  The author, in as much as he thinks in such terms, imagines the reign of ‘the Emperor Arthur’ as being in the mid- or even late sixth century. This makes Arthur a contemporary of Owain, son of Urien, Rhun, son of Maelgwn, Gildas and Avaon, son of Taliesin. Some of Arthur’s men come from Geoffrey (Cadwr of Cornwall, rather than the Welsh Cadwy, son of Gereint). Others are from Culhwch and Olwen (Gwalchmei, son of Gwyar, Goreu, son of Custenhim, Gwrhyr, interpreter of languages, Menw, son of Teirwaedd and Mabon, son of Modron). Many other warriors from the catalogue are given in this writer’s version of the list.

  As we do not know exactly when the story was written, other features which could be innovations in a twelfth-century context would be derivative by the early fourteenth century. One of these is Llacheu, son of Arthur, who was mentioned briefly above. The others are Drystan, son of Tallwch (Tristan) and March, son of Meirchiawn (his uncle, King Mark). These characters featured in an independent legendary cycle, not fully integrated with the Arthurian legends until the mid-thirteenth century. In the same way, the writer makes Owain, son of Urien, a contemporary of Arthur. Chretien de Troyes, in the late twelfth century, was the first writer to make Owain one of Arthur’s knights. It seems unlikely that the Welsh writer came up with a connection between Arthur, Tristan and Owain independently. He could be aware of and draw on the continental sources, while a continental writer could not have used the Dream as inspiration for his own work. Logically the Dream must derive its information from continental works, rather than vice versa.

  The most significant aspect of the Dream is that the writer refers to both the battle of Badon and the battle of Camlann. The context is that Rhonabwy dreams about going back in time to the eve of the battle of Badon. The first person he meets is Iddawg, son of Mynyo, embroiler of Britain, who explains his role in the battle of Camlann. He leads Rhonabwy to Arthur’s camp, where the men are preparing for the battle of Badon. This has been interpreted as either the author’s confusion or his playful inversion of the true order of the battles. I cannot believe that this is the intention of the writer. Since the story is a dream, it is perfectly understandable that Iddawg should be able to explain his future role, including how he procured his name, although chronologically this cannot yet have happened. Arthur, too, is aware that Rhonabwy comes from the future.

  Iddawg explains that he is called the embroiler of Britain because he was ‘one of the messengers at the battle of Camlann between Arthur and his nephew Medraut’. Because he was such a high-spirited young man and eager for battle, he deliberately stirred up ill-feeling between them. ‘When the Emperor Arthur sent me to remind Medrawd that Arthur was his uncle and foster-father, and to ask for peace lest the sons and nobles of the island of Britain be killed’, Iddawg repeated his kindly words as rudely as possible. Nevertheless, he repented ‘three nights before the end of the battle’ and went off to Scotland.

  That Arthur and Medraut are adversaries at Camlann seems to be the intention of Annales Cambriae. Geoffrey made this clear and is the first writer to state that Medraut was Arthur’s nephew. He does not see any opportunity for the two to parlay and make deals. This motif first appears in continental sources in the early thirteenth century. Here again, the inconclusive dating prevents us from ascertaining whether Rhonabwy has come at this idea earlier and independently or later and derivatively. The only source to suggest that the battle was brought about by human guile is Culhwch and Olwen, where Gwynn Hyvar and others plan the battle. Iddawg says that his intervention wove the battle, but a similar story might have seen repeated transfers of envoys between the reluctant opponents. That Arthur is Medraut’s foster-father and that the battle dragged on for more than three days are features unique to the Dream.

  On the battle of Badon, the writer has the troops, the leaders and the warriors of the Britons mustering at the ford called Rhyd y Groes on the Severn. They set off in the direction of Kevyn Digoll, away from the Severn Valley. The force descends until they are below Caer Vaddon, the City or Fortress of Badon, possibly the City of Bath, as in Geoffrey, but whether the author sees it as a real location in Somerset is not clear. Arthur and his men are giant supermen and rush off to Cornwall by nightfall, so whether Baddon is supposed to be near Rhyd y Groes, Cornwall or amazingly distant from one or the other is impossible to tell. The story makes it seem that Arthur is besieging Caer Vaddon, but it may be that he is attacking another army in the field close by. His enemy is Osla Big-Knife. If the writer knows this is the Saxon Octha or decides to make that connection for himself, or even if he just plucks the name out, he is acting completely independently of Geoffrey, for whom Cheldric is the Saxon leader. The writer does not even say whether Osla’s men are Saxons or Britons. In the event, there is no battle of Badon between Arthur and Osla. Instead, Arthur’s men fight Owain’s ravens while their masters play the board game gwyddbwyll.

  This strange tale hints at other possible interpretations of the Arthurian legends, although we cannot dismiss the possibility that these are derived from the author’s imagination, presented as ‘eye-witness’ corrections of current views.

  Red Ravager of the Island of Britain

  The vast majority of Welsh Arthurian tales was undoubtedly oral. Traces of this body of tradition are preserved in the ‘Triads of the Island of Britain’. These group three related names or events, such
as ‘the three exalted prisoners of the Island of Britain’. Grammatical or stylistic triads were used by Welsh bards as mnemonic devices and it is theorised that the legendary triads were used in the same way. Recalling one story would naturally remind the bard of the other two. The tales in the White and Red Books show how these Triads would be unpacked. They could be delivered at length (as with the Triad of the three fortunate concealments, which takes a whole tale of the Mabinogi to develop) or simply dropped into a larger text (the three unfortunate blows, or, presumably, the three men who survived Camlan) to add depth by resonance and comparison.

  The earliest list of triads is in the manuscript Peniarth 16. This is either early or late thirteenth century (the usual Welsh source caveats apply). The scribe responsible wrote a version of the Brut (the Brut Dingestow) so knew the standard Geoffrey of Monmouth material. The same triads are specifically described as relating to Arthur and his men in another manuscript, Peniarth 45. Triads on famous horses are included in the Black Book of Carmarthen. The White Book adds more, updated by the Red Book. More Arthurian triads turn up in fifteenth- and even sixteenth-century manuscripts. In no sense are these later triads independent. They know the Mabinogion, Geoffrey of Monmouth and French thirteenth-century romances. What is interesting is the different picture of Arthur and his men that the triads present to the standard sources, even when they obviously have knowledge of them.

  Fifteenth-century triads stress Gwenhwyvar’s adultery as leading to Arthur’s downfall, a thirteenth-century concept. They single out Gwenhwyvar as more faithless than all the Three Faithless Wives and Camlan as one of the most futile battles because of her part in causing it. These add little to our understanding of early Welsh tradition. If we look at the thirteenth-century triads, we can see some very different interpretations of the Arthurian legends.

  Peniarth 16 begins with the threefold division of Britain, exemplified by Arthur’s chief tribal thrones as ruler of Wales, Cornwall and the north. In Wales he is connected with St David as Chief Bishop and Maelgwn as Chief Elder, with his seat at St David’s. In Cornwall his throne is at Kelli Wic, as it is in Culhwch and Olwen, while his seat in the north is at Pen Ryonyd.

  The second triad links three characters known by the epithet Hael (‘The Generous’), with the additional information that Arthur was more generous than the three of them. His generosity is stressed in Geoffrey of Monmouth and hence in the Bruts. This prevents us from stating that Arthur was known independently to be generous. However, one of the characteristics of Guaurthur in the Gododdin was that he too was extremely generous.

  In the ancient triads of the horses, we encounter again Gwgawn Red-sword, Morfran descendant of Tegid and Kei, but no context. Bromwich draws attention to a horse poem in the Book of Taliesin which seems to draw on the triads, but with additional material. This includes the lines: ‘A horse of Guythur, a horse of Guardur, a horse of Arthur, fearless in giving battle.’ Guardur is none other than Guaurthur of the Gododdin. Guaurthur’s horses, along with his generosity and warlike prowess, are among his attributes. We can see here, again, that the poetic comparison ‘he was not Arthur’ could imply more than simply ‘they were both warriors’.

  Many triads feature Arthur’s famous men. Llacheu mab Arthur appears with Gwalchmei mab Gwyar as men well-endowed (by their ancestry) to rule. It may be that Llacheu was always known to be Arthur’s son, and that the audience of Pa gur would be expected to realise this when he was mentioned fighting with fair Kei, but that early poem does not give him a patronymic. Three characters appear grouped as three ‘Unben’ (head ones) of Arthur’s court, two from Culhwch and Olwen, but their legends and why they were singled out for this treatment are lost. Gereint is named one of the seafarers of the Island of Britain, which might give us a clue as to why he is fighting at a place called Llongborth (warship port).

  Four ‘Arthurian’ warriors feature together as the battle-diademed men. Drystan, Hueil, son of Caw (from Culhwch and the Life of Gildas), Kei, son of Kenyr elegant-beard (from Culhwch) and finally Bedwyr, son of Bedrauc, ‘diademed above the three of them’. Morfran descendant of Tegid, one of the three who escaped Camlann, turns up as one of the slaughter-blocks of Britain, in the company of Gwgawn Red-sword, from the verse from the Stanzas on Graves which includes Arthur.

  Triad 30 shows how unconnected warriors could be added to the Arthurian story. One of the three faithless warbands is that of Alan Fyrgan, the late eleventh-century Count of Brittany. We are surprised to see that his men are faithless because they deserted him before the battle of Camlann, where he was killed. I have no doubt that, were this the first reference to the battle of Camlann, we would have sceptics declaring it was clearly an early twelfth-century action which Geoffrey of Monmouth had spun out to include the legendary Arthur. What we have, in fact, is more proof that the embellishment worked the other way round. Arthur’s death at Camlann has attracted other famous stories of death and betrayal. We know this, since even at the most pessimistic estimate the actual manuscript of Annales Cambriae giving Camlann as the battle where Arthur and Medraut fell was written down before Alan Fyrgan was born.

  Arthur is named one of the three red ravagers of the island of Britain. He also appears, surprisingly, as one of the three frivolous bards. There need be no more behind this than the story in Culhwch and Olwen of Arthur offending Kei by his ill-judged verse. On the other hand, the Triad of the Three Battle Horsemen is said in the White Book of Rhydderch to be an englyn composed by Arthur himself on the three of his favourites who would not endure having a court official placed over them.

  Triad 26 gives the most detail of its three stories, showing the kind of material which could lie behind the terse entries on the other triads. It also links clearly with the next two triads, showing how one group could be used as a mnemonic for further elaboration. It deals with the three powerful swineherds of the island of Britain. These were not actually swineherds, but much more powerful men who at one point in their careers had to guard swine. The first was Drystan, son of Tallwch, guarding the swine of March, son of Meirchiawn, while the actual swineherd was off delivering a message to Essyllt. ‘And Arthur was seeking to obtain one pig from among them, either by deceit or by force, but he did not get it.’ Two significant features of this triad are Arthur’s rapacity, similar to that he shows in the Life of St Padarn, and the assimilation to Arthur of the unrelated Tristan-cycle characters. The White Book extends the episode to include Kei, Bedwyr and March himself, presumably trying to catch Drystan out.

  The second swineherd was Pryderi, son of Pwyll. The third was Coll, son of Collfrewy, guarding the sow Henwen, who he hangs on to while she tours Cornwall and Wales giving birth to various prodigies. One is a kitten which Coll throws into the Menai Straits off Anglesey. It grows up to become ‘Palug’s Cat’, the monster of Pa gur.

  This triad presumably served as a reminder to the next one, ‘Three enchanters’, which starts with Coll, son of Collfrewy, whom we might otherwise have thought just a swineherd. He is in the company of Menw, son of Teirgwaedd, from Culhwch and Olwen. This triad leads to a third: Three Great Enchantments of the Island of Britain which shows how Menw and Coll obtained their powers (the first from Uthyr Pendragon, the second from Gwythelyn the dwarf). The first enchantment, of Math, son of Mathonwy, taught to Gwydion, son of Don, features in one of the branches of the Mabinogi.

  We can see here the pattern of different layers of story which doubtless underlie the other triads too. Peniarth 16 is earlier than the manuscripts preserving the Mabinogi or the early poems and shows those stories in circulation before they reach their final written form.

  The triad of the three concealments, while easy to decipher, implies knowledge of its counterpart, the three unfortunate disclosures, although this is not found with it in the earliest version. We know that the triad cannot be of any antiquity, however, as it makes use of the story of Lludd and Llevelys which post-dates Geoffrey.

  In the Red Book we learn that the unfortu
nate disclosure of Bran’s protecting head was performed by Arthur, ‘because it did not seem right to him that this island should be defended by the strength of anyone, but by his own’.

  Although, having Peniarth 16, we can tell that the extended version of the Triads in the White Book and the Red Book are later and not likely to preserve pristine ancient traditions, it is worth looking at the new material they present. They may illuminate the ideas of the scribes who collected Culhwch and Olwen and the other Arthurian materials. The two texts, as with the prose stories, cover the same materials.

  Arthur appears first as one of the nine worthies of the world, a late thirteenth-century concept. From this we know that the writer is aware of the standard genres of medieval romance. When he expands at length on the ‘three dishonoured men who were left in the island of Britain’, we can see at once he has simply taken the story of Medraut’s betrayal of Arthur direct from the Bruts.

  It is therefore a great surprise to find completely unprecedented Arthurian material in this collection. The ‘Three Exalted Prisoners’ triad is given in the same manuscripts, in Culhwch and Olwen. In the triads themselves, it has a different form. Mabon, son of Modron, is one, in common with Culhwch and Olwen, as is Gwair, son of Geirioedd, who might be the prisoner of Preideu Annwfyn. The third is an almost unknown figure, Llyr Lledyeith (half-speech?), prisoner of Euroswydd. In the late thirteenth-century manuscript, Mostyn 117, he features at the head of the genealogy of Arthur himself. This implausibly grafts the genealogy of Arthur in the Bruts back to Constantine onto the supposed genealogy of Dumnonia by identifying this Constantine with Gildas’s tyrant.