THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON: CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Everlasting Battle and

Avalon

The Red and White Dragons

In Chapter 7 I discussed the nature of the Red and White Dragons of Dinas Emrys. These creatures were shown to have originally been the cremated remains of warriors placed in a double-urn. Over time they came to be identified as Roman genii, which took serpent form. Such genii could be specific to a place or to a people and so the Red Dragon evolved into the genius of the Britons, while the White Dragon became the genius of the Saxons.

By the time we get to the much later Welsh story of Lludd and Lleuelys, we are told the ‘back story’ on how the two dragons came to be imprisoned at Dinas Emrys. It turns out that the god Lleuelys (see the listing for Lleu in Chapter 6) dug a pit at the center of the island, here situated at Oxford. In the pit he placed a vat filled with mead and covered with a silk sheet. The dragons, as was their habit, began fighting on May Eve as monstrous animals – probably oxen, given the Oxford location. The scream of the red dragon during its fight with the white dragon was heard over every hearth in the island of Britain. The hearth in this context points to Roman household deities like the genius, which could be portrayed above or next to the hearth.

The monstrous animals or oxen then flew into the air as dragons. When they wearied of the battle, they sank into the vat as pigs, dragging the sheet to the bottom. There they drank the mead and fell asleep. Lleuelys wrapped them in the sheet and locked them in a stone chest, which he then took and buried at Dinas Emrys.

The first question that must be asked about this account of the origin of the dragons is simply, ‘Why Oxford as the centre of Britain?’

Because within Oxfordshire is found Ambrosden, in Old English, Ambresdone, supposedly ‘Ambre’s Hill’. This place-name is a substitute for Amesbury, Anglo-Saxon Ambresbyrig. Indeed, the Welsh storyteller of Lludd and Lleuelys could not have helped but find more of a parallel in Dinas Emrys and Ambrosden than was obvious with Dinas Emrys and Amesbury. Thus the naval or ‘omphalos’ of Britain at Amesbury’s Stonehenge was relocated to Oxfordshire.

Another new element introduced into the dragon story by the Lludd and Lleuelys author is the precise dating of the conflict of the two monsters: May Eve. This was, of course, the pagan Beltane, the festival that celebrated the beginning of Spring and what had come to be seen as the summer half of the year. For the Romans, May 1st was the festival of the goddess Bona Dea, whose temple contained sacred snakes.

As Oxford or rather Ambrosden in Oxfordshire was a substitute for Amesbury next to Stonehenge, we can be certain that May Eve as the time of the dragon fight was adapted from Geoffrey of Monmouth. In his History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey tells us that during the reign of Vortigern, the Saxons (= the White Dragon) slew the Britons (= the Red Dragon) during a truce on May Eve at the future site of Stonehenge.

This slaying of the Britons at Stonehenge reads like a mass human sacrifice. They are killed by having their throats slashed with knives, which is the usual form of execution meted out to sacrificial victims. On another level, this episode could be read as an imaginary capture of the sacred British omphalos by the Saxons.

Geoffrey furthermore tells us that about 460 members of the British nobility were slain at what was to become Stonehenge. Why ‘about 460’? Plainly this number has some special significance. I could find no astronomical cycle that employs the number 460, although Mercury transits (when the planet appears from our vantage point on earth to pass in front of the sun) can occur every 46 years close to 7 May. Now it is true that the god Lugos or Lleu, who plays the role of ‘Emrys’ in the story of the red and white dragons, was identified by the Romans with their own god Mercury. Mercury was not only distinguished by the double-serpent caduceus or wand, but was often placed in or near the same household shrines or lararia in which the snakes or genius loci were depicted. According to Hyginus (Astronomica 2.7), Mercury’s/Hermes’ staff originated thusly:

"At Apollo’s request he [Hermes] gave him permission to claim the invention of the lyre, and received from him a certain staff as reward. When Mercury [Hermes], holding it in his hand, was journeying to Arcadia and saw two snakes with bodies intertwined, apparently fighting, he put down the staff between them. They separated then, and so he said that the staff had been appointed to bring peace. Some, in making caducei, put two snakes intertwined on the rod, because this seemed to Mercury a bringer of peace. Following his example, they use the staff in athletic contests and other contests of this kind."

This motif of fighting serpents reminds us immediately of the fighting of the red and white dragons.

In addition to the snake as genius loci, snake jewelery hoards are found in Roman Britain. Snake rings and snake bracelets of the Romano-British hoards have been associated with Asclepius, the Genius Paterfamilias and Lares, Mercury, Sabazius, Mithras and Glycon (who may have had affinities with both Asclepius and Sarapis). There may also be a link between such snakes and Mother Goddess cults, such as those belonging to Ceres/Demeter, Minerva and Fortuna.

Snakes regularly slough off their skin and so were associated with death and rebirth. For this reason, snake symbolism often features in funerary monuments. The tombstone of Longinus at Colchester includes snakes grasped between the paws of lions, and a stone pine cone encircled by a snake may have formed an independent gravestone at Carlisle. The association of snakes with re-birth also led to snakes being found in cult images and decorations asscoiated with mystery religions that looked to saviour gods.

But to return to the Britons said to have been slain at Stonehenge. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s number of slain Britons – 460 - is also found in Wace. But Lawman has 405, Nennius 300, while Alfred of Beverley, the Anglo-Norman Brut, Robert of Brunne and the Welsh copies have 360. 360 could be a reference the number of days in an ancient year.

However, it may be that the Anglo-Saxon dates for Vortigern supply us with a clue as to what 460 actually represents. The advent of the Saxons, who were invited in by Vortigern, is said to have occurred in 449 CE. He is also said to have fought a battle with the Saxons in 455. Could it be that Geoffrey’s ‘460’ is either code or an error for 460 CE?

I used NASA’s eclipse tables to determine that while no solar eclipse visible from Britain had taken place ‘about 460’ on or close to May 1, there was a total lunar eclipse on May 3, 459. During a lunar eclipse, the moon, which is ordinarily white, can become blood-red in color. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records such an event under the year entry for 734:

“In this year the moon was as if it were suffused with blood…”

The possibility that Geoffrey’s ‘about 460’ was referring to a total lunar eclipse in 459 immediately after Beltane has tremendous ramifications for the nature of the red and white dragons. These ramifications may reveal that the genii of the Britons and the Saxons were at some point subjected to a further mythological interpretation.

Let us begin by viewing the White Dragon as the moon. The White Dragon becomes the Red Dragon during a lunar eclipse. When the eclipse is over, the Red Dragon is gone and the White Dragon has returned. Such a cosmic drama may have been considered a battle between opposing dragons.

The sun is never white, and can only be reddish at sunrise or sunset or when viewed through smoke. Hence it is very unlikely that the two dragons are solar monsters who divide the year between themselves, one ruling the period from Beltane to Samhain and the other the period from Samhain to Beltane. It is true that the division of the year into two solar halves was observed anciently by the Celts, as is proven by the Coligny Calendar (see the Appendix below). We will see that prior to the ‘slipping’ of the calendar, Beltane, now May 1st, fell on midsummer, and Samhain, now November 1st, belonged at midwinter. And neolithic monuments such as the Newgrange and Bryn Celli Ddu passage graves and various stone circles and alignments indisputably marked the summer and winter solstices. But although it is tempting to relate this divided solar year to the two dragons, there is a considerable amount of evidence that prohibits us from doing so.

For example, when we go back to the account of the dragons in Lludd and Lleuelys, we recall that it was the horrifying scream of the Red Dragon on May Eve that caused men to lose their color and strength, women to suffer miscarriages, children to lose their senses and animals and trees and soil and water to become barren. As is well known, the moon was closely associated with the nine month term of pregnancy (as the term ‘month’ comes from the word moon), and with madness, called lunacy in honour of the lunar body.

It has long been known that a snake’s shedding of its skin was associated by the ancients with the moon going from old to new. The sun, on the other hand, does not go through phases of cyclic death and rebirth that could be symbolized by the sloughing of skin.

If the Red and White Dragons did come to be perceived as lunar monsters, Lleuelys’ entrapment of them in the vat, his wrapping them in the sheet and locking them in the chest that was buried on Dinas Emrys may be metaphorical language for the setting of the moon into the earth during a total lunar eclipse.

It would have been poetic genius to describe the dragon of the Britons as being like the eclipsed moon, as the Britons themselves, confronted with the onslaught of the Saxons, were in truth being eclipsed by their enemy.

In passing, it is interesting that two British snake species actually exhibit white and red color patterns, although these are sexual distinctions. The male viper has a grey, creamy white or steely grey background color, while the female ranges from brown and yellow to brick red. In the smooth snake, the female is usually a uniform silver grey, while the male tends towards brown and red. Since we now know that the Otherworld white cattle with red ears that appear in Celtic mythological tradition had their counterpart in the real world, could it be that the white and red lunar dragons had their earthly counterparts in one of these two species of native British snakes?

An alternate version of the creation of Mercury’s /Hermes’ caduceus, found recorded in several ancient sources (Phlegon, Mirabilia 4; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 683; Eustathius on Hom. Od. 10.492, p. 1665; Scholiast on Hom. Od. x.494; Ant. Lib. 17; Ov. Met. 3.316ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 75; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.95; Fulgentius, Mytholog. ii.8; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 5, 104, 169; First Vatican Mythographer 16; Second Vatican Mythographer 84; Third Vatican Mythographer iv.8), presents one of the serpents as male and the other as female. Instead of fighting, the snakes are described as copulating.

The Greek Agathos Daimon, the Roman Genius and the Lunar Dragon

“The agathos daimon is a creature we know almost nothing about - there are no texts that explain what he was or how he was represented artistically.  The artistic representations we have that perhaps are this creature show him as a man, not a serpent. The Roman genius does *not* equal the Greek daimon. They are similar concepts, to be sure, but we cannot say they were the same.”

This conclusion is echoed by other scholars.  For example, Professor Alan Shapiro, W. H. Collins Vickers Professor of Archaeology at John Hopkins University (personal communication) has said, “I'm not aware of any visual iconography of the agathos daimon.”

It quickly becomes apparent that there is a tremendous amount of confusion and ambiguity out there regarding the agathos daimon.  Many books and Web pages (which often fail to cite legitimate primary and secondary sources) simply identify the agathos daimon as the Greek forerunner of the Roman genius loci.  Serpentine form for both is assumed.

We also, however, find the same statements made in works of sound scholarship, like Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel’s “Religion in the Ancient Greek City” (Cambridge University Press, 1992), where on p. 81 we learn of “the Agathos Daimon (‘Good Spirit’), a sort of genius loci represented in the form of a snake.”  This statement echoes that of Martin Persson Nilsson in “Greek Folk Religion” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972, p. 73):  “… Agathos Daimon, the Good Daemon, the guardian of the house, who appears in snake form.”  And again in the same book (p. 70):

[The name Agathos Daimon] is inscribed on one of the house altars from Thera.  At the end of the daily meal a few drops of unmixed wine were poured out on the floor as a libation to A.D.  He too is represented as a snake.”

Professor Richard Hamilton of Bryn Mawr College relates (again personal communication):

"Robert Parker, one of the top scholars of Greek religion, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary says "like other protective figures he [the agathos daimon] was sometimes represented as a snake". I am sure if you consult the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (which Parker cites) or Pauly-Wissowa you will find textual support for this."

James H. Charlesworth, in "The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized: (Yale University Press, 2009, p. 141), states:

"Agathadaimon was a snake. the Greek word means 'good god (spirit or genius)'... In Athens he seems to have been a minor household god.  he was revered throughout most of Greece.  Families had snakes not as pets but as house gods.  The snakes were often fed by the family after their main meal... Agathadaimon most likely originated within Greece, perhaps Macedonia, and was brought to Egypt by the Greeks."

Charlesworth, however, then goes on to refer to the snakes on the murals at Pompei as Agathadaimons (p. 142).  This despite the fact that he shows elsewhere that he knows well the Roman form of the household serpent was called a genius.  We can only assume, therefore, that he rather indiscriminately uses the term Agathadaimon as a sort of synonym for other serpents found in contexts that are not demonstrably Greek.

Professor Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Univerity of Cambridge, writes:

"There is plenty of good evidence that the Agathos Daimon ('Good Spirit') was indeed worshipped by Greeks in the form of a snake - http://sites.google.com/site/hellenionstemenos/festivals/agathos-daimon.

But it is quite another matter to equate a Greek divinity with a Roman one. There may well be close similarity but not identity. Thus the Agathos Daimon was often worshipped as a spirit of the home, and the home was by definition a place - 'genius loci' in Latin means 'essential spirit of the/a place', so the two ideas can come to be seen as quite similar.

The Greek Magical Papyri are another thing again - specifically from Egypt (hence on papyri) and containing a combination of Greek and 'demotic' (native Egyptian language) spells. Their thought world is far more exotic than the boring old home/place milieu of the Agathos Daimon/Genius loci..."

But then, in a directly contrary mode, Professor Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College says:

"Well, I fear the evidence from the ancient world is rather confounding, not least because as generic a term as ‘Good Spirit’ was used by different people in different ways at different times and places.  Agathos daimon does seem to have been used in classical Greek sources to refer to a divinity like the Roman genius loci that had a domestic cult.  Of course, our best evidence is, as so often, a joke in Aristophanes (Knights 105-107), but some such cult identity seems probable.  There is no evidence that this type of agathos daimon was ever represented as a snake in Classical Greece, although there is evidence from Hellenistic Alexandria for snake form.  In sources from the Roman Imperial period, the term agathos daimon is used to describe various divinities whose power is on a cosmic, rather than domestic scale.  Roman emperors such as Nero and Marcus Aurelius are identified with the Agathos Daimon as imperial cosmocrators.  In the Greek Magical Papyri, Agathos Daimon is linked not just with the sun god (Helios) but with Egyptian deities such as Pshai and Chnoum."

Professor Andromache Karanika, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of California-Irvine, puts it in simple terms:

"Serpentine forms are usually associated with the earth in Greek religion (such as Erechtheus/Erichtonius), so I don't know of any early sources bringing connections wih the "agathos daimon."  Any connections of the "good spirit" and the serpentine form is probably a conflation of late hellenistic/Roman period practices (especially around Egyptian "Sarapis"), hence the Magical Papyri reference that you are thinking of which very likely reflects this.  John Gager in his book on Curse Tablets gives the exact reference from the Magical Papyri, and then Fraser in his book on "Ptolemaic Alexandria" discusses (if I am correct), albeit briefly, the hellenistic origins of this thread."

And from Professor Robert Parker of Oxford:

"A quick look at a large reference work (Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae) seems to show that in the Greek world there are anthropomorphic depictions of him that are guaranteed by inscriptions; there are also possible cases of him as a snake that aren't so guaranteed. There wouldn't be anything very strange if he were so shown: Zeus himself as Zeus Meilichios is shown both ways, and the general assumption is that Agathos Daimon like Zeus Meiichios will have had something to do with household prosperity (he's sometimes shown with a cornucopia).   In the Greco-Egyptian world, where's he's much more prominent,  he's regularly a snake, very likely through syncretism; the magical papyri emanate from that same world.  As for genius loci, there seem to be significant differences, at least between the mainland Greece AD and the gl; AD has temples in some places, which I doubt a genius loci did."

Professor Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Greek Art and Archaeology, Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, states that

"According to the literary sources Agathos Daimon has a serpentine form, although there are versions of the myths surrounding this figure, which address him as if we were dealing with a human being.

In art, Agathos Daimon is usually represented as a mature male standing figure accompanied by a snake (very much reminiscent of Asklepios' iconography). There are, however, references (mainly in Pausanias) to statues of Tyche holding the baby Agathos Daimon (reminiscent probably of the statue of Eirene with the Ploutos child by Kephisodotos).

Personally, I wouldn't put too much weight on the connection "genius loci - Agathos Daimon". This kind of syncretistic approach goes back to Herodotus who had tried to create learned bonds among figures of the Greek and Egyptian pantheon.”

If scholarly opinion differs as widely over the nature of the agathos daimon as it does for that of the genius loci (again, see my online article), then we can be sure that not enough is known about the former to allow us to make any kind of conclusive determination. As Professor Mary beard of Cambridge concludes:  "Briefly, you are right to be suspicious. The problem is that we dont have images that come 'named', so the confusion enters when people claim that such and such IS the agathos daimon, when it might or might not be."

Certainly, we do have evidence for the term Agathos Daimon being applied to serpentine deities in the ancient world: the god of Alexandria (whether Serapis or another), called Agathos Daimon, is a good example.  Various deities have been identified with Alexandria’s god, and according to the Glossary of Hans Deiter Betz’s book “The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells” (University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 331), the Agathos Daimon or

“… good genius was originally an epithet of a god invoked at Greek banquets.  In the PGM the name has become a designation for a god – one, however, who can be identified with a number of different deities [of Graeco-Roman Egypt].”

I now take the assertion that the agathos daimon did not appear as a serpent at face value only in this limited sense:  perhaps we don’t have ICONOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE for the ‘good spirit’ appearing in serpent form in the early period of Greek religion.  But we do know that the designation agathos daimon, even if only as an epithet, was used for anguiform deities from the time of Alexander onward.  The Greek Magical Papyri also mention the agathos daimon in a couple of contexts as being snake-like.  As serpentine agathos daimons existed, then, in the Roman period, some aspect of the agathos daimon may, no matter how indirectly, have found its way into the Red Dragon/Genius Loci of Britain.

This is the more probable as there is good reason to believe that in addition to the Red Dragon of Britain being the Genius Loci of the island, the monster had taken on an extra dimension of symbolic significance, becoming in the story of “Lludd and Llevelys” the blood-red moon of a lunar eclipse.  At the time of the writing of my book I had not been able to confirm that the translations by Jeffrey Gantz and Patrick K. Ford were accurate in one important respect: that Lludd “watched that NIGHT [emphasis mine] and saw the dragons fighting.”/”He himself stood watch that NIGHT.  As he was thus, he could see he dragons fighting.”  If ‘night’ was the word in the original Welsh, then we could safely interpret the White Dragon of the Saxons as the white full moon (lunar eclipses can only happen when the moon is full) and the Red Dragon of the Britons as the eclipsed moon, which often appears crimson in color.  The dragons then sink into a sheet (= the cloud), dragging that down with them into a vat (= lake or sea, i.e. the body of water into which the moon, after the eclipse, appeared to set).

As it happens, the word for night, ‘nos’, is indeed used in the original text.  My guess that the dragons have undergone a development from genii to celestial beings may, then, be correct.

And Ambrosius/Uther Pendragon, who is intimately associated with the Red Dragon of Britain, would have as his celestial counterpart the full moon during eclipse. 

Gwyn and Gwythyr

According to Culhwch and Olwen, the gods Gwyn and Gwythyr fight each other every May Eve until Judgment Day for the right to possess the goddess Creiddylad. We have seen in Chapter 6 that Gwyn, the ‘White, Fair or Holy One’, is a Horned God. Gwythyr is the Germanic god Vitiris or ‘The White One’.  His name is almost certainly meant to represent the genius of Vindolanda. 

As these two gods fight each other on the same day as the Red and White Dragons, could there be a relationship between the two sets of divine entities?

Gwyn, being white, would accord very well with the White Dragon. We know that dedications to Vitiris are accompanied by animals, including a serpent and a boar. We have seen in the Lludd and Lleuelys story that the dragons transformed into pigs.

Cernunnos the ‘Horned One’ is shown in iconography holding a sun-torc in one hand and a ram-horned snake, i.e. the crescent moon, in the other. In another representation, this one found at Cirencester, the Horned God’s legs curve upward to form two horned serpents. The same god is also depicted on a coin from Petersfield, Hampshire, with the solar wheel between his upraised antlers. Clearly this sky-father had both solar and lunar attributes. This means that as well as symbolizing the sky, he could manifest himself in either the sun or the moon.

Gwythyr, a god who like Gwyn is notable for his shining white color, would thus appear to have had a lunar aspect. The white moon dragon battles itself during an eclipse, becoming red in the process.   

A universal motif in ancient European and Near Eastern religion is the serpent or dragon at the tree. Often this serpent has as its heavenly counterpart an eagle or comparable bird that perches at the top of the tree. Whether we are talking about the ‘Snake that knows no charm’ and the Imdugud-bird of the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic, the Biblical serpent and Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the dragon Ladon and the apple tree of the Hesperides, the dragon and oak of the solar ram’s Golden Fleece, the serpent Nidhogg (a name which in Old Norse means literally ‘Waning-moon striker’) and eagle of the Ash Yggdrasill or the serpent-footed monster and Sky-rider of the Gaulish Jupiter columns – all seem to preserve a similar symbology featuring a lunar serpent, a solar deity and a sky tree. In most instances the serpent and bird or Sky-rider are in opposition to each other, something which accurately reflects the relationship of bird of prey and snake in Nature.

In the Mabinogion tale Math son of Mathonwy, the god Lleu sits in eagle form atop an oak. Every day a sow finds her way to the tree to consume the rotten flesh and maggots which fall from Lleu. I make this sow out to be a lunar pig; her eating of that which falls from Lleu is a poetic way of acknowledging that the moon shines only because it receives the sun’s light. The sow is thus Goewin, Arianrhod and Blodeuedd.

Apollo the sun god had slain the lunar Python inside Gaia, i.e. inside the earth. Beowulf slays the lunar dragon (which can fly across the sky in fiery fashion only from sunset to sunrise, i.e. during the night) guarding its golden sun-hoard within the earth-barrow. Likewise Sigurd the Dragon-slayer slays the dragon Fafnir, who was sitting on his solar gold inside another barrow. The Norse Glam (a poetic word for ‘moon’) became a draug in death, and came forth from his barrow to haunt the countryside until he was destroyed by Grettir the Strong.

At least in the Germanic sources, then, the dead man in the barrow, guarding his grave-goods, became identified with the moon. It may be significant that in Norse belief the moon is male, while the sun is female.

I have alluded to other ‘everlasting battles’ in previous chapters: Hafgan (the summer constellation Scorpio) is in endless conflict with Arawn (the winter constellation Orion), while Lleu is slain at Midwinter by Goronwy, only to return the favor by killing his opponent on Midsummer. There are hints in other sources of similar seasonal contests.

For example, in Nennius’ de Mirabilius Brittanniae, we are told of the ‘Two Kings of the Severn’:

“When the sea floods into the Severn estuary in the Bore, two heaped-up wave crests are built up separately, and fight each other like rams. One goes against the other, and they clash in turn, and then one withdraws from the other, and they go forth again at each tide. This they have done, from the beginning of the world to the present day.”

Yet another Everlasting Battle is mentioned in the Myrddin poem Yr Afallennau or ‘The Apple Trees’, in which Myrddin says (in Strophe 4):

“Sweet apple that grows beyond Rhun;

I have contended at its base in order to please a maiden…”

The apple tree for the ancient British (and the Irish) was the tree of the happy Otherworld, where summer reigned without end. In the same poem, we are told of this particular tree that it is in the Celyddon Wood, but that its virtue lay in the fact that it could not be found and that no one would succeed in getting its fruit. Myrddin, when ‘calm in his mind’, i.e. not in the death-state that was metaphorically described as madness (see Chapter 4 above), ‘used to be at its base with a fair, playful maiden’, presumably the same one for whom he contended.

There are several Roan, Rone and Rhone placenames in the Scottish Lowlands. Some of these may derive from Modern Scottish and mean “an unbroken, thickly covered expanse of weeds", itself from ME rone, ‘thicket, undergrowth’, although Alan James thinks Gaelic raon, 'meadow, plain, field', especially a mossy and/or upland one, also figures into some of these places.

The personal name Rhun is Run in the Old and Middle Welsh.  It is believed to derive from a Proto-Celtic *roino-, hill, field.  Scottish raon, field, plain, may be related to this name/word. 

Now, in the Welsh Stanzas of the Graves, there is a certain Llachar son of Run, said to be buried at Clun (the meadow or moor of) Kein.  In Dumfriessshire there is a place called Glenlochar with its Roman fort and later medieval castle.  Glenlochar is quite near Loch Ken and Crossmichael, where we find Rhone Hill and Rhone Park.  Loch Roan and Glenroan, etc., are only a few kilometers from Crossmichael. 

We are dealing here with the personification of plac-names, of course. 

[Incidentally, Glenlochar Roman fort may be the Leucovia of Ptolemy and Ravenna.  Rivet and Smith suggest and 'bright and shining' stretch of the River Dee might be intended. But Alan James prefers identifying Glenlochar with Locatrebe.] 

Loch Roan is called Rohn in Statistical Account of Scotland 1791, p.98, Crossmichael Parish.  The ‘Auld Kirk of Lochroan’ is a promontory fort:

“The remains of a stone-built fort on a naturally defended eminence. Three parallel ridges of rock outcrop run from east to west across the top of the eminence, and a wall of angular stones has been erected along the top of the two outer ridges, where they do not present an unscalable face, and across the ends of all three, thus forming an enclosure, almost oval in plan.”

[http://canmore.org.uk/site/64617/auld-kirk-oflochroan]

Gleroan Mote fort just a little NE of the Auld Kirk is described as follows in CANMORE:

“The innermost feature of this fort is a very denuded enclosure measuring about 100' by 60' within an intermittent scarp representing a ruined rampart. This enclosure may have been the earliest structure on the hill, and have been mutilated and partly obliterated during the construction and occupation of the later work, the main feature of which is a stone wall enclosing an area 160' by 125'. This is further defended to the S by a precipice and in all other directions by two ramparts thrown up from internal ditches.

This bivallate fort is generally as described. The entrance lies on the SW. On the NE the inner ditch has not been fully completed. The site is known locally as 'Goenroan Mote'.”

If one continues up the Water of Ken and thence along the tributary Water of Deugh, one reaches Cairn Avel, the Cairn of the Apple, a major long cairn. The CANMORE listing for this site reads as follows:

“Cairn Avel, a long cairn, is about 118ft E by S to W by N. For about 50ft from the W end, the cairn has been so completely demolished that this area rises only 1ft above ground level, though the edge is obvious. Presumably this part of the cairn has been used for building the nearby walls, one of which runs along the N side of the cairn. The rest of the monument remains as a fine steep-sided cairn of bare stones 10ft high. The width at the E end is about 73ft but at the NE corner the cairn material extends about 10ft outside the steeply rising point of the cairn at a gentler pitch. As the ground dips into a hollow at this corner, this extension of the cairn may be a platform foundation for the main cairn, on the other hand it may be that the cairn has been much robbed round this corner, and the original width of the cairn was about 83 ft. The sides of the cairn  taper westwards to about 30ft across at the W end.

Three slabs, set on their edges and projecting 1ft high, may be parts of a peristalith. Two slabs are at the W end about 3 ft within the cairn edge, and the other is 5ft within the S edge 27ft to the E. These stones suggest a strictly trapezoidal plan with squared W end, though the cairn edge at the W end is now rounded in plan. The E end of the cairn is curiously irregular, being concave towards the SE corner, and it has not obviously been robbed.”

This is exactly the kind of monument with which Myrddin would have been associated. As a solitary being, we would not find him taking refuge in an urban center bearing an apple name.

The poem betrays some confusion on the part of the poet. Myrddin as the ‘madman’, the warrior-bard or god who perished at Arderydd, went in spirit form to spend time at the Otherworld apple tree. Prior to his death, this Otherworld apple - a sky-tree like Lleu’s oak - would have been inaccesible to him, exactly as is said to be the case for the still-living followers of Rhydderch of Strathclyde (Strophe 5):

“Sweet apple tree that grows in a clearing, Its virtue hides it from Rhydderch’s lords, A crowd around its base, a host around it.”

In other words, even when Rhydderch’s men are surrounding the tree, which stands out in the open, they cannot see it.

Interestingly enough, the location of Cairn Avel does not favor there having been real apple- trees present. As Alan James notes, “it's a very exposed, wet site, hardly hospitable to Malus  sylvestris!” It may be that an Otherworld apple was associated with this particular ancient cairn.

Myrddin’s contention for the maiden led to his death. He was fighting for the goddess. When he died, his spirit was able to easily find the hidden apple tree of the Otherworld, where the goddess was waiting for him. The corollary of this story, if Myrddin is in this instance being treated as a human incarnation of the god, is to allow for his rebirth.

Geoffrey of Monmouth got close to the truth of this in his Life of Merlin. In lines 1387-1456, we learn of a madman named Maeldin (= the Irish Mail Duin, who along with his crew subsists on an apple branch for 40 days during a voyage to Otherworld islands). He had accidentally consumed a poisoned apple intended for Merlin. The poisoner was a certain woman whom Myrddin had supposedly ‘discarded’, an alias for the goddess. No sooner had Maeldin eaten the apple than he went mad. Or, to be less poetic, the apple killed him, allowing his spirit to join the goddess at the Otherworld apple tree. Maeldin may have forsaken the goddess in life, but she would possess him in death.