THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON: CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

Arthur and Uther

The story of Uther's defeat of Gorlois of Cornwall and the former's taking of the latter's queen, Ygerna, tells us that Ygerna is here, in typically Celtic fashion, being considered the Goddess of Sovereignty, whom the king must possess if he is to have the land. The Ygerna episode informs us that the Terrible Chief-warrior (the usual translation of Uther Pendragon's name, but see below) had conquered the kingdom of Gorlois.

Is Arthur's association with Cornwall correct? Was he indeed born at Tintagel? Or are the Cornish sites merely fictions?

Only in the past few years, excavations carried out at Tintagel by Kevin Brady of Glasgow University have uncovered evidence which provides a very good reason why Arthur was linked to this site. A broken piece of Cornish slate was uncovered bearing the 6th century inscription ‘Pater Coliavificit Artognov’, which Professor Charles Thomas of Exeter University has rendered ‘Artognov, father of a descendent of Coll.’ While the name Arthur cannot be identified with that of Artognov, it is quite possible that Geoffrey of Monmouth or his source knew that Tintagel was once owned by someone whose name began with Arto-. The mention of Coll in connection with a ruler found residing in Dumnonia is interesting, in that a famous Cole Hen or Coel the Old is placed at the head of genealogies for the British Strathclyde kings. Strathclyde was anciently inhabited by a Dumnonii tribe - a tribe whose name matches exactly that of the Dumnonii who inhabited Cornwall and Devon.

If Arthur was placed at Tintagel because an Artognov ruled from there (although see an alternative possibility below), can we now do anything with the other characters of the play: Uther Pendragon, Ygerna and Gorlois?

Uther

As I have demonstrated in my book “The Arthur of History: A Reinterpretation of the Evidence”, Uther Pendragon is merely a title for Ambrosius Aurelianus.  Ambrosius was “Terrible” because he caused fear in Vortigern, and his association with the dragons of Dinas Emrys is well known.  While Ambrosius was NOT the real father of Arthur (Arthur’s father was Arthwys of the North), because Uther is recognized as such in the established tradition, I plan on honoring that here.  

Gorlois

Geoffrey got his Gorlois from Taliesin’s poem XLVIII, The Death-Song of Uther Ben. In this poem Uther is referred to as Gorlasar. Noted Celticist John Koch recently pointed out the similarity between Geoffrey's Gorlois and Gorlasar. Hence it appears that Geoffrey of Monmouth took the title gorlassar and converted it into a separate person whose form Uther assumes.

The  full  stanza  containing  the  name  Gorlasar (from Death Song of Uther Ben) runs like this:

“I was called Gorlasar ['bright blue'],

My belt was a rainbow to [or 'about'] my enemies. I was a prince in the dark,

[He] who enchanted me placed me in the basket.”

According to the Geiriadur Prifsygol Cymru, gorlasar is from gor + glassar, in Old Irish forlas(s)ar, ‘fire, conflagration’ or, as an adjective, ‘shining, fiery’. In Welsh the meaning is ‘bright blue, having glinting weapons’. Gorlas (gor + glas), in OI forglas, means ‘with a blue face, very blue’ or, as an adjective in Welsh, ‘bright or deep blue’.

Gorlasar may actually be a name the poet Taliesin gave himself. I say this only because of line 4 of the quoted strophe, which has Gorlasar placed in a basket. This sounds suspiciously like what was done to Taliesin, who was placed in a ‘coracle or hide-covered basket’ by the goddess Ceridwen. The coracle/basket ends up in a fish-weir. Some obscure lines in Welsh sources hint that the pole upon which Myrddin (as Llallogan) was impaled had a fish-weir attached to it.

Finally, we are reminded of the wicker-work figures filled with humans and animals that Caeser and Strabo claim were sacrificially burned. Scholars of Celtic religion believe these were sacrifices to the thunder god Taranis. We have seen in Chapter 6 that Taranis = Mellt, the consort of Modron, mother of Mabon.

The Bear and the Dragon

The British were quite right in associating Arthur’s name with their word for bear, ‘arth’, although they could not possibly have known the actual etymology.  Arthur is commonly said to be from the Roman name Artorius, and recently Celticist Professor Stefan Zimmer has adequately demonstrated that Artorius itself was originally a Celtic name.  From *Arto-rig-ios, it meant simply ‘Bear-king’.  Ironically, the name is really from a purely Celtic *Arturix or Bear-king and not from the Roman name.  

Arthur’s celestial correspondence may, therefore, be the constellation of the Great Bear, i.e. Ursa Major.  In Britain, the Big Dipper, being part of the bear star group, is referred to as Arthur’s Wain or Wagon.

But, the same constellation is also called the Plough. Bootes drives the Plough or Cart in a perpetual circle around the Pole Star, thereby causing the rotation of the heavens.  And the primary star of Bootes, and one of the brightest in the heavens, is Arcturus, the Bear-guard.  If the Big Dipper is Arthur’s wagon, i.e. the plough or cart of Bootes, then Arthur himself is almost certainly to be identified with Arcturus. 

And what of Uther Pendragon, the Chief Dragon, by which the Welsh meant ‘Chief-warrior’ or, perhaps, ‘Chief-[war-]leader’?

Geoffrey of Monmouth was, apparently, unaware of such a usage of the word ‘dragon’ in poetry. He concocted a story to account for how Uther acquired his byname:

“… there appeared a star [comet] of great magnitude and brilliance, with a single beam shining from it. At the end of this beam was a ball of fire, spread out in the shape of a dragon. From the dragon’s mouth stretched forth two rays of light [the typical dual tails of a comet], one of which seemed to extend its length beyond the latitude of Gaul, while the second turned towards the Irish Sea and split up into seven smaller shafts of light.”

(History of the Kings of Britain, Part 6)

This star appears at the moment of the death of Aurelius Ambrosius, Uther’s predecessor as King of the Britons. Merlin explains to Uther that the ‘star’ and the fiery dragon signifies him, while the beam of light that shines towards Gaul is Arthur and the second ray his daughter Anna and her royal offspring. Geoffrey continues:

“Mindful of the explanation given by Merlin of the star, Uther ordered two Dragons to be fashioned in gold, in the likeness of the one which he had seen in the ray which shone from that star. As soon as the Dragons had been completed… he made a present of one of them to the congregation of the cathedral church of the see of Winchester. The second one he kept for himself, so that he could carry it round to his wars. From that moment onwards he was called Uther Pendragon, which in the British language means ‘a dragon’s head’.”

These dragon standards have, quite plausibly, been associated with the Roman draco standard. 

Thanks to the Aneirin poem Gwarchan Maeldderw, we know that Welsh tradition held that the red dragon was still being used as a British war standard by as late as the Battle of Cattraeth (Catterick), which was fought at the end of the 6th century, well after Uther’s floruit. The relevant passage of this poem reads:

“Let them demand the virtue of fame for the great army!

The champion used to look past a young girl,

The dazzling one, and the one who required due payment for his lineage;

In the presence of the spoils of the Pharaoh’s red dragon,

Companions will depart in the breeze.”

‘Pharaoh’ is a designation for Vortigern in Gildas’ Ruin of Britain, the king to whom Emrys or Ambrosius ‘the Immortal/Divine One’ reveals the mystery of the fighting dragons. As we have seen, this particular Emrys is not the historical Aurelius Ambrosius, but is a title for the god Lleu, the Lord of Gwynedd.

Geoffrey further confused matters by identifying Merlin, the Welsh Myrddin, with Emrys of Dinas Emrys. Then to make matters even worse, he has Uther and Aurelius Ambrosius be buried at Stonehenge next to Amesbury, ancient Ambresbyrig, whose name was – like Dinas Emrys – interpreted as meaning the ‘Fort of Ambrosius’.

What exactly were the two dragons of Dinas Emrys? Is there any way we can find out what they originally represented? By the time we get the the ninth century account preserved by Nennius in his History of the Britons, the White Dragon is a symbol of the Saxons and the Red Dragon of the Britons. Completely omitted is the well-known fact that Otherworld animals in Welsh belief were unique in that they were always red and white in color.

The fort at Dinas Emrys in Gwynedd was begun in the Iron Age, but was also occupied in the Roman and Early Medieval periods. Southwest of the fort is the pool in which the dragons were supposedly discovered, an artificial cistern excavated in either the 5th or 6th century CE to supply the hill-top with water.

According to Nennius’ text (History of the Britons, 40-42), the objects found when the pool is excavated by Vortigern are:

duo vasa, ‘two vessels’,

tentorium, ‘tent’,

duo vermes, unus albus et alter rufus, ‘two worms, one white and the other red’

The best interpretation of the text has the two worms inside the tent and the tent inside the two vessels, i.e. the vessels are found set together ‘mouth to mouth’. Thus the two vessels have to be separated before the tent can be revealed. The worms are presumably wrapped in the tent.

At Nennius’ time (9th century CE), vermes in Welsh, as in Old English and Old Norse and Latin, designated creatures as small as earthworms and as large as dragons. Vermis also designated Satan.

But as I have mentioned above, in early Welsh poetry the word ‘dragon’ could be used metaphorically for a warrior. It is surely not a coincidence, then, that the ‘tent’ or cloth in which the two dragons are found wrapped bears an uncanny resemblance to the cloth used to wrap cremated remains prior to their being placed in a cinerary urn. This practice is recorded as far back as Homer’s time. From the

‘Funeral of Hector’ in the Iliad:

“So spake he, and they yoked oxen and mules to wagons, and speedily thereafter gathered together before the city. For nine days' space they brought in measureless store of wood, but when the tenth dawn arose, giving light unto mortals, then bare they forth bold Hector, shedding tears the while, and on the topmost pyre they laid the dead man and cast fire thereon. But soon as early  dawn  appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector. And when they were assembled and met together, first they quenched with flaming wine all the pyre, so far as the fire's might had come upon it, and thereafter his brethren and his comrades gathered the white bones, mourning, and big tears flowed ever down their cheeks.

The bones they took and in a golden urn, covering them over with soft purple robes, and quickly laid the urn in a hollow grave, and covered it over with great close-set stones. Then with speed heaped they the mound…”

Such cloth wrapped about cremated remains has actually been found in an archaeological context in Britain. And so, too, have cremation burials in which two urns were used to hold the remains - two urns that remind us immediately of the two ‘vases’ of the Dinas Emrys story. We also cannot help but recall that according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Uther the ‘Pendragon’ and Aurelius Ambrosius, whose death was heralded by the appearance of the dragon-shaped comet, were both buried at Amesbury’s Stonehenge.

To learn whether or not the Dinas Emrys vases could have been cremation urns, I turned to several archaeological studies on urn burials.

In some urns discovered in Cambridgeshire, at Muttilow Hill, calcined bones had been collected and wrapped in cloth before being placed in the urns. The contents of one of the urns was described as ‘burnt human bones enveloped in a cloth, which, on looking into the vessel, gave them the appearance of being viewed through a yellow gauze veil, but which upon being touched dissolved into fine powder.’ The urns were all inverted. A somewhat peculiar feature of urn burial was discovered at Broughton, in Lincolnshire where the urn containing the burnt bones was placed upright on the surface of the ground, and another urn, made to fit the mouth, inverted into it to form a cover. In instances where the ashes of the dead have been collected from the funeral pyre, and laid in a skin or cloth before interment, the bone or bronze pins with which the ‘bundle’ was fastened still remain, although, of course, the cloth itself has long since perished.

The site is that at Broughton Common near Scunthorpe. The barrow in question is No. 3 in a cemetery of 8 barrows. The vessel is described as a finely decorated tripartite urn, upright, with a smaller urn inverted over it. The cremation urn contained a rough flint flake and a bronze implement, thought at the time to be an arrowhead but considered later to be probably a razor. The urns are described as related to the collared urns from the central and southern Pennines (mountain range) and from north east Yorkshire. The use of smaller vessels as covers in the manner of barrow 3 is also found in the Pennine burials. The razor has also been found with other collared urns related to the Pennines series but also in earlier Bronze Age burials in Wessex and widely on the continent. They are dated roughly to c. 1800 BCE. This tells us that a burial similar to what was found at Dinas Emrys was actually excavated in England. But can we find a case of this kind of burial in Wales itself? Actually, yes, we can.

The burial in question consists of two urns, placed 'mouth to mouth' so as to give a closed container, in which were the cremated remains of one or more bodies. The site is near Milford Haven, Southwest Wales, and was excavated as part of a project to run a gas pipeline through Wales. The site was excavated by Cotswold Archaeology and the post-excavation work is currently ongoing.

The urns have not been radiocarbon dated yet to confirm a Bronze Age date, but typologically the vessels and site are Bronze Age. Only one vessel was a collared urn with bird bone impression decoration. It is thought there may be the cremated remains of five individuals inside the pot, without accompanying grave goods.

Such urn burials, then, with one vessel as a cover over another do occur ocasionally. These urns are called Collared Urns and belong to the Early Bronze Age, dating usually between 1900-1600 BCE. The recent Milford Haven discovery is one of this type of burial.

In other instances, two urns may be buried side by side with a burial, others may have one or two accessory vessels accompanying or within an urn.

On sixty occasions more than one Collared Urn or Vessel has been interred in the grave. On thirteen, perhaps sixteen, the urn has had a second Collared Vessel placed either within or over it as a cover.

However, it would appear that urns covered with other ceramic vessels were not solely of Bronze Age provenance. Roman cremations were often housed in a large pot with a smaller one on top. In terms of urns that are covered with other inverted urns, there are certainly Roman examples (first and second century CE). However, there are quite a few Bronze Age and Anglo-Saxon examples as well.

Anglo-Saxon cremations don’t usually have second inverted pots as a lid, though they do sometimes have pottery lids (e.g. the one from Spong Hill). On the continent there are Iron Age cremations with lids which look like inverted bowls.

Vessels included as grave goods rather than functioning as an urn to contain cremated bone are relatively common in most periods of the use of the rite, though they take different forms at different times, including, mostly in the Anglo-Saxon period, two seperate vessels being used to bury the remains of one individual in a single grave. It is probable that most if not all urned burials were originally lidded in some way; most will have used organic materials; flat stones have also been found as covers (esp. Bronze Age). Ceramic covers, either a vessel inserted into the rim of the urn, or more commonly as a dish form of vessel inverted over the rim, are common in the Romano-British period, and in the Iron Age. There is also some evidence - famously the 'Spong Man' - for ceramic covers, sometimes specially designed - in the Anglo-Saxon period.

There is another component of cremation burial which needs to be considered in the context of the Dinas Emrys story, as it relates directly to serpent imagery found as an artistic and religious motif on both Roman and Anglo-Saxon cinerary urns.

A significant number of Roman footed marble vases with strigilated decoration on the body are known today. Strigilated stone vases with entwined snake handles, however, are much rarer. On a vessel in the Marmorpalais in Potsdam the lid and most of the serpents except for their horizontal tails are modern restorations, but the remains of the head of one serpent on the rim makes clear that the handle design was the same. This vase is so similar in size and design to a piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that it could come from the same workshop. It is worth mentioning that both vessels bear comparable hard incrustations or burial deposits. The handles of another pertinent marble vase in Venice are somewhat different, as water is seemingly represented flowing beneath the serpents. Both the Berlin and Venice vases have been dated to the 2nd century CE. An earlier funerary urn formerly in the collection of the Waiters Art Gallery in Baltimore combines entwined snake handles with figured decoration carved in relief. The snake handles on the Met urn are presented in a far more dramatic way, with thicker bodies, more intricate knotting, and a greater use of dark and light effects. The bravura carving of the Metropolitan's piece seems appropriate for a work of the late 2nd century CE. Another possible indication of chronology is the treatment of the strigilated surface of the Met vase, with deeply articulated channels similar to those on cylindrical ash urns dated to the Antonine period.

It is difficult to determine whether vases of this type were made as cinerary urns to hold ashes or as purely decorative objects unless their find spot is known, or they preserve a funerary inscription or a panel prepared for a painted funerary inscription. One such cinerary vase, said to come from a tomb in Leptis Magna (on the Libyan coast), has a Latin inscription incised below the rim. The closest parallel to the Met piece, the aforementioned Berlin vessel on loan to Potsdam, was surely intended as a cinerary urn, since it has a blank panel for an inscription. Certainly it is entirely possible that Roman workshops produced these marble vases for both funerary and decorative use. Be that as it may, the motif of entwined serpents is entirely appropriate for a funerary vase. Linked with the earth, snakes were associated with chthonian powers and the Greeks and Romans regarded them as guardians of sacred places, houses and tombs. They appear often in the funerary arts of classical antiquity.

These snakes on Roman urns remind us of the so-called ‘wyrm’ or serpentine dragon device found on some Anglo-Saxon cremation urns. The suggestion that such decorative schemes on Anglo-Saxon cremation vessels evoke the dragon protecting the treasure mound (cf. Beowulf) goes back to the Caistor by Norwich report on incised decoration urn 1539. The analogy is then extended to various S shaped stamps with segmented bodies which are used in decorative schemes on several urns.

In England and Scandinavia the dragon came to be regarded as the guardian of the grave mound, watching over its treasures. It is often implied that the monster should be identified with the dead man who was buried in the mound, and in some of the late legendary sagas we are told that a man indeed becomes a dragon after death. In these accounts the transformed corpse guards the treasure which had been deposited in the barrow with him.

The most famous example of a man who became a dragon - or more accurately, an orm, the Old Norse cognate of English wyrm and Latin vermis - is Fafnir of the Volsunga Saga. We must interpret this story as a man being placed in a barrow mound after he dies. His grave goods, which include gold, are deposited with him. Thus Fafnir’s transformation into a hoard-guarding dragon represents his continued existence after death within the underworld.

But if the Dinas Emrys ‘dragons’ were, in fact, actually merely a couple of dead chieftains accidentally unearthed during the Dark Age excavation of a pool, why did they come to be viewed as symbolic of the Britons and the Saxons?

My first clue to answering this question was found in the 5th century CE writings of Sozomen, who records the unusual unearthing of the Old Testament prophet Zechariah.