The Roman names for British tribes were mainly Latin translations of Celtic originals, which English scholars rarely translate. But an attempt can be made. The Caledonii were possibly the ‘Hard People’, Selgovae were the ‘Hunters’ and the Novantae the ‘Vigorous People’. The Votadini (mistranscribed by Ptolemy as Otadini) were the ‘subjects or followers of Fothad’. The Damnonii were in some way connected to the Celtic word for ‘deep’; ‘the People of the Sea’ is the most probable. It fits well with their location, and explains why other coastal tribes in Britain and Ireland, like the Dumnonii of the future Devon, had similar names. At all events, Damnonia was the earliest known statelet to be based on or near the Rock. Its maritime activities are hardly to be doubted: a later Irish source mentions an unidentified battleground in Ireland where Beinnie Britt killed Art, son of Conn. Beinnie was a ‘Briton’ from across the water. The Damnonians evidently possessed the capacity for transporting fighting men by sea.
The Rock stood only a couple of miles from the western end of the Antonine Wall on the River Clota, at the point where the Roman fleet would have been stationed to control the pirates of the northern sea and to facilitate the transfer of Gaulish auxiliaries helping to construct the Antonine Wall. Their presence is attested by an inscription on an altar erected at a fort on the wall only a few miles from Brittanodunum (Dunglass). ‘CAMPES TRIBUSET BRITANI QP SETIUS IUSTUS PREF. COH IIII GAL VS LLM’ (To the eternal field deities of Britain, Quintus Pisentius Justus, Prefect of the 4th Cohort of Gallic auxiliaries dedicated his willingly executed vow). The date was equivalent to AD 142. Within a couple of decades, the legions had retreated. Their plans to return never materialized. But the Emperor Caracalla (r. 209–17) established a system of forward cavalry patrols (called areani) north of Hadrian’s Wall, and it is conceivable that the Clota continued to offer facilities to the Roman western fleet.16
In the middle of the fourth century, the northern defences of Britannia were completely overrun by what the Romans called a great confederatio barbarica. It is not known whether Damnonia joined in. But for two years, from 367 to 369, the government of the whole Britannic province collapsed. Marauders and deserters devastated the countryside, capturing the chief military officer and killing the commander of the fortified ‘Saxon Shore’ on the province’s eastern and southern coasts. Order was restored by a veteran soldier, Count Theodosius, who re-garrisoned Hadrian’s Wall and introduced a series of dependent buffer states both in the west and the north. In the late fourth century, a Spanish general called Magnus Maximus established himself in the west, and subsequently as ‘Macsen Wledig’ became the legendary founder of several Welsh dynasties. At that same time, a personage by the name of Paternus or Padarn Pesrut (Paternus of the Red Cloak) emerged as ruler of the Votadini. His red cloak signified high Roman rank; large numbers of Roman coins dated between 369 and 410 have been found on the site of his putative capital at Marchidun (the modern Roxburgh Castle). In 405, an entry in one of the books of Irish Annals mentions a battle fought at strath Cluatha, ‘the Battle of the Clyde valley’. This is most likely the moment when the shadowy post-Roman states of the north were coming into existence. The buffer fiefdoms that Theodosius had put into place were turning into ready-made native ‘kingdoms’.17
Of course, the term ‘king’, as used both in the sources and by historians, is something of a vanity title. These rulers were not crowned monarchs, but leaders of war-bands that enforced their will and collected tribute. Their fluctuating fortunes were defined by the number of settlements from which tribute could be extracted.
After the Roman troops withdrew from Britannia, in 410 or perhaps a little later, the Intervallum hosted five or possibly six or seven native kingdoms. Some are better documented than the others. ‘Galwyddel’ (Galloway) occupied the lands of the Novantae. ‘Rheged’, centred on Caer Ligualid (the former Luguvalium and modern Carlisle), straddled both sides of Hadrian’s Wall. It possessed a complete late-Roman capital, including a wall, a bishop, an aqueduct and a municipal fountain that was still working 250 years later. At some point in the fifth century it was ruled by Coel Hen, the original ‘Old King Cole’, who spent much time campaigning in Aeron – the future Ayrshire – and whose name provides the starting point of the Welsh genealogical list known as ‘The Descent of the Men of the North’ (Bonedd Gwyr y Gogledd).18 On the east coast, ‘Manau’ (Clackmannan) and ‘Lleddiniawn’ (Lothian) lined opposite shores of the Firth of Forth. They may or may not have formed separate realms, but are together regarded as the homeland of the ‘Guotadin’, the real Celtic name for the Votadini. This ‘Land of Gododdin’ (to use a more modern form of the name) may well have been subject to Coel Hen before breaking free. Like Rheged, it came under Christian influence at an early date. The cemetery of its capital, Dun Eidyn, contained numerous Christian graves. Neighbouring ‘Bryneich’ occupied the coastal strip south of Gododdin and on either side of Hadrian’s Wall. Relatively speaking, the ‘Kingdom of the Rock’ stayed in the shadows.19
Fifth-century events in the Intervallum are illuminated to some extent by the activities of three men who attracted outside attention: Cunedda, Patrick and Ninian. Cunedda ap Edern, the ‘Good Leader’, was a warrior from Gododdin who c. 425 led a military expedition to distant Gwynedd in North Wales to eject an unwelcome colony of Irish settlers. Succeeding in his mission, he passed into history as one of the early Welsh heroes, and progenitor of Gwynedd’s ruling house. His expedition, as recorded in a later historical work produced in the court of one of his successors, the Historia Brittonum, could have been inspired by a feeling of solidarity among the Cymry.20
Cunedda’s story shows the degree to which the meagre historical sources raise as many questions as they solve. Interpretation of the king-lists continues to be as intricate as it is enigmatic. The earliest compilations for this period are to be found among the British Library’s collection of manuscripts known as the Harleian Genealogies, which date from an era long after the lives of the monarchs mentioned. They mainly derive from Wales, not from North Britain, and may be seen as attempts by the medieval Welsh to preserve the memory of their lost northern kindred. They rarely contain reliable dates, and are full of recurring names and eccentric spellings that cannot be pinned with certainty onto particular individuals. Researchers have to resort to generation-counting, to detailed comparisons of sources and to endless guessing. They also have to make allowance, in place of primogeniture, for the practice of tanistry, that is, the naming of a successor who was not necessarily the ruler’s son. One is reminded of the task of early Egyptologists who pieced together the reigns and the dynasties of the pharaohs.
Patrick is the best documented and most studied figure of the age. He was clearly a Briton of the north who was seized by Irish pirates as a boy and sold into slavery, who escaped and studied in Gaul, and who returned to lead a mission for the conversion of Ireland. Unfortunately, the dates and locations of the British sections of his biography are hotly disputed. His birthplace, described in his writings as a villula or ‘small estate’ near a vicus Bannevem Taberniae, has been ‘convincingly’ located to a village 15 miles inland from Caer Ligualid (Carlisle).21 An alternative location in a village that bears Patrick’s name, barely a stone’s throw from the Rock, is frequently overlooked,22 as is a local story about the boy ‘Succat’, who was seized by pirates when fishing by the Clota. The fact remains, however, that one of Patrick’s two surviving letters is addressed to the milites Corotici, whom he reprimands for allying themselves with the Picts and for warring and looting in a manner unbecoming for Romans and Christians:
I Patrick, a sinner, very badly educated, declare myself to be a bishop in Ireland… I live among barbarian tribes as an exile and refugee for the love of God… I have written and set down with my own hand these words to be solemnly given, carried and sent to the soldiers of Coroticus. I do not say ‘To my fellow citizens’… but ‘To the fellow citizens of the devils’, because of their wicked behaviour.
&nbs
p; The day after the newly baptized, still bearing the chrism, still in their white dress… had been ruthlessly massacred and slaughtered, I sent a letter by a holy presbyter along with other clergy. They were laughed at.
Here your sheep were savaged… by gangsters at the behest of Coroticus. One who betrays Christians into the hands of Scots and Picts is far from the love of God. Voracious wolves have swallowed up the flock of the Lord in Ireland which had been growing nicely through hard work…
It is the custom of the Roman Gauls who are Christians to send to the Franks… and to ransom baptized people who have been captured. You, on the contrary, murder them, and sell them to an outlandish people who know not God. You are virtually handing the members of Christ to a brothel…
So I mourn for you, my dearest… But again I rejoice, for those baptized believers have departed this world for Paradise… The good will feast in confidence with Christ. They shall judge nations and rule over wicked kings for ever and ever. Amen.23
By general consent, this Coroticus is to be equated with Ceredig Gueldig, otherwise Ceretic Guletic, the earliest-known ruler of ‘The Rock’. What would have been more natural then for Patrick, having become a bishop, to address the prince of his native country? But for their misdeeds, he would have addressed the soldiers of Coroticus as ‘My fellow citizens’. Civis, ‘citizen’, was the highest form of compliment among former Romano-Britons. At all events, to be absolutely clear, St Patrick, like St David, was a Welshman.
So, too, was St Ninian, who, according to Bede, was sent from Carlisle to convert the southern Picts. Unfortunately, there is no indication of a date (although the fifth century is generally preferred), and there is no clue to the precise meaning of ‘southern Picts’. If the phrase refers to Novantae and Selgovae, Ninian might have been responsible for the founding of the Christian community at Candida Casa (now Whithorn) in Galloway, where the Latinus Stone dates from c. 450. If it meant the Caledonians of Fortriu, he would have had to pass through the lands of ‘The Rock’ to reach them.24
Both the geography and the chronology of the links between the two substantiated northern kings of the fifth century, Coel Hen and Ceredig Gueldig (Coroticus), are uncertain. One possibility is that Coel Hen initially ruled over territory stretching from the Clyde to Eboracum (York). However, after Coel Hen was drowned c. 420 in a bog at Tarbolton in Aeron, it is not too far-fetched to assume that the ‘Kingdom of the Rock’ had detached itself from Rheged, much as Gododdin might have done. In this scenario, Ceredig becomes a successor and possibly a descendant of Coel Hen, as well as the founder of the dynasty of ‘The Rock’. Ceredig’s supposed successors – Erbin, Cinuit, Gereint, Tutagual and Caw – are nothing but names.
The historicity of Ceredig Gueldig is based on congruent references in the Harleian Genealogies, and is strengthened by further mention of him in the Annals of Ulster (in the context of St Patrick’s adventures), as Coirtech regem Aloo.25 ‘Aloo’, which occurs on several occasions, is evidently a shortened form of Alauna. The early medieval Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), which were compiled at St David’s, call him ‘Ceretig Guletic map Cynlop’ (Ceredig the Wealthy, son of Cynloyp).26 Though shadowy, he has the distinction of being more readily identifiable than his far more famous contemporary – King Arthur.
Up to this point, the story of ‘The Rock’ can be told exclusively within the compass of the post-Roman British tribes. But in the sixth century changes occurred that were to transform the scene radically. First, the Germanic Angles, the furthest outliers of the Anglo-Saxons, who were busy taking over southern Britannia, established a foothold on the coast of Gododdin and Bryneich. Second, Gaelic Scots from Dalriada in Ulster established a similar foothold on the north-western coast, close to, but slightly above the Rock. Henceforth, the future of the Intervallum would hang on the outcome of a four-sided contest between the native Britons and Picts, and the newcomer Angles and Scots. Three hundred years later, a fifth party, the Vikings, would act as a vital catalyst in the final phase of the contest.
According to Bede, ‘Ida began his reign in 547.’ According to the Welsh monk who lived after Bede and composed the Historia Brittonum in faraway Gwynedd, Ida ‘added Din Guauroy to Berneich’.27 Ida the Flamebearer was an Angle from somewhere further south. Berneich or Bryneich was the original British/Celtic name of the kingdom which he and his successors would now rule and Anglicize and which is generally known in its Latin form of Bernicia. Din Guauroy was the British name for the magnificent and near-impregnable coastal castle at Bamburgh.
To begin with, Ida’s Angles formed a small and isolated outpost. Unlike other Anglo-Saxons, they mixed readily with the native British, creating ‘the only recognisably Germano-Celtic cultural and political fusion in Britain’.28 Their long-term strategy, dictated by their advantageous coastal position, was to link up with their kinsmen in the Kingdom of Deur or Deira to the south, forming a united Anglian realm in Northumbria (that is, ‘North of the Humber’). At the same time, they could chip away at the surrounding British kingdoms of Rheged and Gododdin.
The Gaelic Scots on the west coast developed their activities in similar fashion. The theory that they arrived from Ireland in one mass migration is now discredited: there may well have been ‘Scottish’ (meaning Irish) settlements on both sides of the North Channel from much earlier times. Yet the important political fact concerns the extension of a Gaelic Kingdom of Dalriada from Ulster to the British shore of what would henceforth be known as ‘Argyll’ or the ‘Eastern Gaels’, where Aedan macGabrain began his reign in 574. The facts of the reign are known through the presence of St Columba (c. 521–97), who had recently planted a Christian community on the island of Iona and whose biographer, Adamnan, provides a well informed and detailed source.29 The strategic concerns of the Gaels of Argyll are not hard to divine. On the one hand, they would have aimed to consolidate the link between Argyll and Ulster, in particular by developing their sea power. On the other, if they were not to be pushed back into the sea, they would have been tempted to expand their territory at the expense of neighbouring kingdoms – notably of the inland Picts and of the Britons of ‘The Rock’.
Such is the context for one of the many strands in the unending riddle of King Arthur. The riddle is not going to be solved in a couple of pages. The literature on the subject is vast, and its conclusions are totally contradictory. Suffice it to say that there were two distinct King Arthurs, one an elusive but historical figure from the sixth century, the other a legendary medieval hero whose exploits were spun by the bards and myth-makers of a much later age. In all of this, one notes a marked tendency for Arthur-hunters from England to assume that he lived and fought in England, and for Arthur-hunters from the Borders to prove that he came from Marchidun, alias Roxburgh. Arthur-hunters from Glasgow place him firmly in Drumchapel, and Arthur-hunters from the Clan MacArthur display a bravado worthy of the late General Douglas MacArthur.30 Yet Bede and Gildas are both silent on the matter, while the Historia Brittonum names thirteen battle sites of a ‘famous dux bellorum’ which defy identification. The historical Arthur was certainly British, since he was made famous by resisting the incursions of the Britons’ enemies. After that one is looking for toponymic needles in a semi-historic haystack. Nonetheless, one is bound to be impressed by the recent surge of advocacy in favour of Arthur being a hero of northern as opposed to southern Britain. Everyone can understand the confusion between Damnonia and Dumnonia, or the misattribution by the twelfth-century Geoffrey of Monmouth of Welsh legends deriving from the ‘Old North’. Beyond that, one can only say that the Rock of Dumbarton is hardly less plausible than the rock of Tintagel. The Rock of the Clyde was known to antiquaries as the Castrum Arturi; and both an Arthur’s Stone and a King’s Ridge are still to be found in the vicinity.31
Local historians have few qualms.32 In his Glasgow and Strathclyde, James Knight waxes particularly eloquent:
Careful research seems to show that when we trace the Arthurian legends back to their orig
ins we arrive at a real historical person… the head of a British federation in Strathclyde in the century after Ninian. His enemies were the heathen Scots on the west, the Picts on the north, and the Angles on the east… As the result of a victory at Bowden Hill (West Lothian) in 516 he divided the conquered territories among three brothers, Urien [of Rheged], Arawn… and Llew or Loth, King of the Picts… Loth was the father of Thenaw… the mother of Kentigern or Mungo, the real founder of Glasgow and its patron saint… In 537, a fresh pagan combination was formed under Modred, Arthur’s nephew, and at Camelon near Falkirk, a great battle was fought in which both leaders fell, and which overwhelmed Christianity in Scotland for a whole generation.33
Whatever we might think of this, here enters St Mungo, aka Kentigern, the ‘Chief Lord’. One of the most popular saints of medieval Britain, he lived through most of the sixth century, and died c. 613, ‘a very old man’. If the Catholic Encyclopedia is right in putting his birth in 518, he could have reached the age of ninety-five. Historians would be on stronger ground if his Life, written by a twelfth-century monk, were not a conventional hagiography that jumbles up facts, tall tales and dubious reports of miracle-working.34
Vanished Kingdoms Page 7
