Saxons, Vikings, and Celts

by Bryan Sykes

  It is hard for us, in retrospect and living in a world where most mythologies, or so we like to think, require at least a semblance of supporting evidence, to believe that Geoffrey’s History should have been taken quite so literally. But what gave the History such an enduring influence, apart from its use for political advantage, was that woven into the improbable narrative and sheer fantasy were crumbs of credible historical fact. It was very specific about the tide of events and enjoyed huge popularity because of its enthusiastic endorsement by a succession of royal dynasties. It became, quite literally, a medieval bestseller, and as its popularity increased, so the myth it created slowly transubstantiated into objective truth. It was believed every bit as much as the Greeks were certain of their Olympian pantheon of Zeus, Apollo, Athena and Poseidon.

  Geoffrey begins his History with a description:

  Britain, best of Islands, formerly called Albion is situated in the Western Ocean, between Gaul and Ireland. It is in length 800 miles, in breadth 200 and is inexhaustible in every production necessary to the use of man. For it has mines of all kinds, the plains are numerous and extensive, the hills high and bold and the soil well adapted to tillage, yields its fruits of every species in their season. The woods abound with a variety of animals and afford pasturage for cattle, and flowers of many lines, from which the eager bees collect their honey. At the bases of their mountains that tower to the skies are green meads, delightfully situated, through which the pure streams flow from their fountains in gentle soothing murmurs. Fish also live in abundance in the lakes and rivers and in the surrounding sea. It is inhabited by five different nations, Britons, Saxons, Romans, Picts and Celts. Of these the Britons formerly, and prior to the rest, possessed the country from sea to sea until divine vengeance because of their pride, they gave place to the Pictish and Saxon invaders. In what manner and whence they came will more fully appear in what follows.

  According to the History, the very first inhabitants of Britain were a race of giants under Albion, a son of the sea-god Poseidon. Albion and the other giants were the children of a band of fifty women who arrived in the empty land having been banished for killing their husbands. There being no men, the fifty women mated with demons to conceive their giant offspring. The demise of Albion came about when he joined forces with two of his brothers to steal, from Hercules, the herd of cattle he had been sent to capture in Spain as the tenth of his twelve labours. Albion and his giants ambushed Hercules as he was passing through the south of France on his way home to Greece with the cattle. Hercules fought off Albion, aided by his father Zeus who arranged for a shower of rocks to fall from the sky at just the right moment, and slew the giants. After that defeat, though the giants continued to inhabit Britain for the next 600 years, their numbers dwindled until only a few remained.

  Already this is a rich history, firmly linked for the benefit of the readership to the classical mythology of Zeus, Poseidon and Hercules. The next arrivals were no less well connected to the classical world and came to Britain as a direct result of the Trojan War. When Troy fell to the Greeks, Aeneas and a group of his followers escaped and made their way to Italy, where they established the settlement that was to become Rome. The link between Troy and Britain begins with the birth of Aeneas’s grandson, Brutus. The soothsayers, indispensible contributors to all good mythologies, predict that he will cause the death of his parents. Which, of course, comes to pass. His mother dies in childbirth and he accidentally shoots his father. A deer runs between the young Brutus and his father while they are out hunting. Brutus fires the arrow, which glances off the deer’s back and hits his father in the chest. After this misfortune Brutus is banished. His wanderings take him to Greece, where he precipitates a revolt by slaves descended from Trojan prisoners of war, and liberates them. Looking for a new home, they sail to a small deserted island, where Brutus finds a temple dedicated to the goddess Diana. In a dream Diana reveals to Brutus the existence of a great island past the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) and out into the ocean towards the setting sun.

  Brutus, there lies in the west, beyond the realms of Gaul, an island surrounded by the waters of the ocean, once inhabited by giants, but now deserted. Thither go thou, for it is fated to be a second Troy to thee and thy posterity; and from thee shall Kings descend who shall subdue the whole world to their power.

  Though the island is inhabited by giants, Diana reassures Brutus that, following their defeat by Hercules, they are few in number and easily overcome. Once there, Diana promises him, Brutus will build a new Troy and found a dynasty of kings that will eventually become the most powerful on earth. You can already see how Geoffrey has cleverly sculpted his History to make it irresistible for any British king to claim this mantle for himself.

  Now on a divine mission, Brutus sets sail for Albion with his Trojans. All ancestors, whether mythical or entirely real, must place their first foot on dry land somewhere. Brutus chose Totnes in Devon, a few miles up the River Dart from the open sea. The rock on which his foot first made contact with Albion is still there. Brutus and his men made short work of the giants and set about exploring the virgin country. Their chosen site for New Troy was on the River Thames. New Troy, or Troia Nova, became Trinovantum and, later, London. Another stone, still visible today in Cannon Street near the City’s financial quarter, was the altar that Brutus built to honour Diana whose divine guidance led him to Albion. Thus it was, according to the History, that Brutus, grandson of Aeneas of Troy, became the first king of Britain.

  Twenty years after he first stepped ashore at Totnes, Brutus died and Britain was divided into three parts, England, Scotland and Wales, each ruled by one of his three sons in that order of seniority. When the two younger sons died, the whole island reverted to the eldest, Locrinus. It was his alleged direct descent from Locrinus that Edward I used as the justification for his military campaigns against both Wales and Scotland in the late 1200s. For Edward, it was entirely legitimate to restore the whole of Britain under one crown–his, of course.

  From Brutus and Locrinus, a long line of kings trickles down through the centuries, a rich vein of quasi-historical material for mythologists and authors. Shakespeare’s inspiration for King Lear came from this list. Another legendary king was Lud, who rebuilt the walls of New Troy; it was through corruptions of Lud’s name that it eventually became London. After Lud, the next in line was Cassivelaunus, whom we shall meet again later on. It was during his reign that Julius Caesar launched his military expeditions in Britain in 55 and 54 BC. And these were certainly not mythical. Caesar was well aware of the legend of common descent of both Romans and Britons from Aeneas and the Trojans. But this did not alter his view that the Britons, during their long centuries of isolation, had become degenerate and lost their skill in the art of war.

  The full-scale Roman invasion launched by Claudius in AD 43 reduced the power of the British kings but did not extinguish it. But it is the events in the centuries after the Roman occupation ended and what the myth has to say about the Saxons that give it its greatest modern significance. Not all British kings were heroes in the History, and as Roman power in Britain declined in the early fifth century AD, the country became the focus of Anglo-Saxon ambitions. At this point the crown passed to the ambitious and treacherous tribal chieftain Vortigern.

  After the death of the rightful king, Constantine, Vortigern arranges for the coronation of Constantine’s unworldly son, Constans, in exchange for his own effective management of the country. But that is not enough for Vortigern, and he orders Constans’s murder. Even then he is not crowned, but assumes the title of King of the Britons. Constans’s brothers, the rightful heirs, flee to Brittany and prepare for an attack to regain the crown. To protect himself against the forthcoming war, Vortigern makes the fateful decision to recruit outside help. According to the History, he sights three ships in the Channel which, he discovers, are manned by Saxons under their leader Hengist. They have been sent to seek settlements of their own, their homel
and being no longer able to support them–an exercise carried out, apparently, once every seven years.

  Vortigern promises the Saxons land on which to settle in return for their military support in the anticipated war and they receive, first, part of Lincolnshire, then, after Hengist gives his daughter Rowena to the infatuated Vortigern, he receives the earldom of Kent. Appalled at Vortigern’s gift of land to the Saxons–none more so than the dispossessed Earl of Kent–the Britons make Vortimer, Vortigern’s son from his first wife, their king and expel the Saxons from the shores. But Vortimer is poisoned on Rowena’s orders and Vortigern is made king once more. The Saxons return in force. Hengist convenes a great assembly of British earls and barons under Vortigern’s patronage to thrash out the peaceful integration of his Saxons in Britain. In the spirit of the meeting, everyone arrives unarmed. But the treacherous Hengist orders each of his men to conceal a long knife in their clothes. On a prearranged signal, each Saxon pulls out his knife and kills the Briton standing next to him. Only one man survives to tell the tale. The Saxons banish Vortigern, no longer useful to them, to Wales and take possession of England.

  The mythology surrounding the arrival of the Saxons was completely transformed in later centuries, but for Geoffrey of Monmouth it began through an act of treachery and betrayal. It is against this background that the greatest hero of the History, Arthur, makes his appearance. The wretched Vortigern retreats to the Welsh hills, but his attempts to build himself a fortress are frustrated by the collapse of each day’s work during the following night. He is told by his court bards that only by mixing the blood of a child with no father into the mortar will this nightly collapse be avoided. His men are despatched to all parts of Wales to discover such a boy; in Carmarthen they find one and bring him, with his mother, to Vortigern. But this is no ordinary boy: it is Merlin. He challenges Vortigern’s bards as to why they think it necessary to sacrifice him to build the castle. What is it, he demands, that lies beneath the site to make it unstable? They cannot answer. Using his own magic powers to see into the ground, he tells Vortigern that if he excavates the soil beneath the castle site he will discover a subterranean pool. Vortigern’s men dig down and, sure enough, there is the lake. Drain the pool, Merlin prophesies, and you will find two hollow stones, each containing a sleeping dragon. The pool is drained and the dragons, one red, one white, awake and begin to fight. At first the White Dragon prevails but is eventually overcome by the Red Dragon. The White Dragon symbolizes the Saxons, the Red Dragon the Britons. The message is clear. Fight back against the treacherous Saxons and you will prevail. Even today the Red Dragon, and all it stands for, is prominent on the Welsh flag and other national emblems–a direct legacy from Geoffrey of Monmouth.

  The ultimate victory of the Britons over the Saxon invaders is a recurring theme throughout the History and no character symbolizes this resistance more than King Arthur. But his birth is not without its own dark side. If Vortigern’s infatuation with Rowena sowed the seeds of his downfall and the invasion of the Saxons, it was infatuation that led to Arthur’s birth.

  Merlin, who is by now living by his uncannily accurate prophecies, foretells that Uther, the younger of Constantine’s two surviving sons, will become the next King of the Britons. Returning from exile in Brittany (and landing at Totnes–always a good start), Uther and his brother beat back the Saxons, killing both Vortigern and Hengist in the process. But the elder of the two is poisoned, again as prophesied, and on his death a comet appears, at the head of which is a ball of fire resembling a dragon. Merlin, conveniently on hand, interprets this as a sign that the younger brother must be crowned king. Thus Uther becomes Uther Pendragon, Uther of the Dragon’s Head, and King of the Britons at the same time.

  At Uther Pendragon’s coronation and victory celebration in London arrive Gorlais, Earl of Cornwall, and his wife Eigr, the most beautiful woman in Britain. That is when the infatuation begins. Tired of the attention that his wife is getting from Uther, Gorlais takes her from the palace and sets out home for Cornwall and his newly built castle at Tintagel among the high sea cliffs. Uther commands that Gorlais return to London at once and when he refuses Uther follows him to Tintagel. The only entrance to the castle is over a narrow and easily defended causeway, along which only one man can pass at a time. Uther appeals to Merlin for help and Merlin transforms him into Eigr’s husband, in which disguise he enters both the castle and her bed, where Arthur is conceived. That same night, Uther’s soldiers capture and kill the real Gorlais.

  In Arthur, Geoffrey’s History has constructed the most enduring of British mythical heroes. With scant reliable historical material to go on–or, it must be said, to get in the way of a good story–Arthur’s exploits are so familiar that they scarcely need repeating here. But it was the extravagance of Arthur’s adventures that sowed the seeds of the History’s eventual demise.

  Following his father’s death (another poisoning), Arthur is crowned at the age of fifteen. Immediately after the coronation, he sets off on a spree of military conquest, first in Britain, then abroad. At first he defeats the few remaining Saxons, then pushes the encroaching Picts back to northern Scotland before invading in turn Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and the French territories of Normandy and Aquitaine–all in the space of nine years. At the celebrations to mark his return to Britain, Arthur receives a message from the Roman Emperor demanding his submission and the payment of tribute. Incensed by this insult, he sets off for Italy at once to demand his own tribute from Rome, taking the city in the process. While he is away, he is betrayed by his treacherous nephew, Mordred, who seizes both the crown and Arthur’s queen, Guinevere. Arthur returns and kills Mordred at the battle of Camlan, in Devon, but is himself wounded–though not killed.

  At this point, Geoffrey’s History becomes strangely cloudy. While he is perfectly content to detail the death of the other ninety-eight kings in his account, when it comes to Arthur himself the ending is left deliberately vague. According to Geoffrey, Arthur is taken to the idyllic Isle of Avalon to have his wounds tended. Then comes the briefest of statements: ‘This is all that is said here of Arthur’s death’, though the year AD 542 is noted–the only date in the entire History. After giving over almost a third of the book to every detail of Arthur’s life, an ending so abrupt and so inconclusive may come as a surprise. But this kind of ending is nowadays very familiar, especially where there is even the remotest possibility of a sequel. Could it be that Geoffrey of Monmouth found it impossible to kill off his most important creation? Like so much about Arthur, we will never know. In fact, Geoffrey did write another book on his other famous creation, Vita Merlini–The Life of Merlin–and in this he does elaborate a little on Arthur’s arrival at Avalon accompanied by his entourage:

  After the battle of Camlan we took the wounded Arthur to Avalon. There Morgen [Morgan La Fay] placed the king on a golden bed, and with her own noble hand uncovered the wound and gazed at it long. At last she said that health could return to him if he were to stay with her for a long time and wished to make use of her healing art. Rejoicing, therefore, we committed the king to her, and returning gave our sails to the favouring winds.

  As Geoffrey’s book became more and more popular, the ambiguity about Arthur’s uncertain fate became a problem for the Plantagenet kings who so cleverly used the History to link themselves to the ancient line of British kings. What if Arthur were still alive, even after 700 years? And if he were, could he return? Not long after Geoffrey’s History appeared, King Henry II, in his campaigns to subdue the Welsh, became so concerned that the slightest possibility of Arthur’s miraculous reappearance would encourage resistance that he decided to do something about it. It was Henry who arranged for the remains of Arthur and Guinevere to be ‘discovered’ when Glastonbury Abbey was being rebuilt after a fire. And it was Henry who, in a move to reinforce the genealogical connection to the mythical dynasty which the Plantagenets claimed, had his own grandson christened Arthur in 1187. Not only that, when the boy a
ttained the throne he was to be known not as Arthur I but Arthur II. His uncle, King John, put an end to that when he arranged young Arthur’s murder in France when he was sixteen.

  A century later, Henry’s great-grandson, Edward I, played the Arthurian connection for all it was worth, letting it be known during his campaigns in Wales that he was personally fulfilling Merlin’s prophecy that Arthur would be reincarnated. Annoyingly for Edward, exactly the same claim was being made by his principal adversary in Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.

  The legends of Arthur and Merlin have always been particularly popular in Wales. At the end of the fifteenth century, Henry Tudor, later Henry VII, used the myth very effectively in his campaign for the crown and his defeat of Richard III. To emphasize the connection, he campaigned under the banner of the Red Dragon and christened his eldest son Arthur. But alas, like Henry II’s grandson of the same name, this Arthur never made it to the throne either. He died of consumption at the age of fifteen, seven months after marrying Catherine of Aragon, who later became the first of his younger brother Henry VIII’s many wives.

  Eventually, through repetition and royal patronage, Geoffrey’s History became the foundation for the myth that sustained and defined racial aspirations and ambitions for half a millennium. Even now, the division between Saxon and Briton (for which also read Welsh or Celt) that is such a feature of the History is still not far beneath the surface. The Britons, personified by Arthur, are the truly indigenous people of the whole of Britain and the Saxons are treacherous impostors. The reign of Henry VIII saw this mythology begin to undergo at first a subtle and then a dramatic and sinister transformation.

  At first, the legacy of the History went from strength to strength, becoming under Henry VIII a vital argument in his struggle with the Pope to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry his second, Anne Boleyn. Henry’s ambassador to the papal court, the Duke of Norfolk, used the genealogical claims to the ancient line of kings to assert Henry’s supreme jurisdiction in his own realm and to back the claim that he did not need Rome’s permission for anything. Norfolk told the bemused court that the History recorded how a British king, Brennius, had once conquered Rome, that the Roman Emperor Constantine himself was also on the list of kings, and that Arthur had been Emperor of Britain, Gaul and Germany. These arguments made little impression in Rome, which continued to resist the divorce, but they featured strongly in the laws passed by Henry to enact the break with the Roman Catholic Church and to establish the Church of England with Henry at its head. Sovereigns today still assume that title.