Aerial View of Liddel Strength.
CHAPTER FOUR
Myrddin at Avalon
Who
was Merlin – or, rather, what was Merlin?
This
question has intrigued and vexed countless students of the Arthurian tradition
for centuries. Was he someone who panicked and ran away from the Battle of
Arfderydd? Who lost his sanity in the battle and lived like a wild beast in the
woods? Had he really been a great bard of the chieftain Gwenddolau? If he were
a madman, by what mechanism did his insane pronouncements become recognized as
prophecies? Why was he also called Llallogan or Llallawg? Why was he dealt a
triple sacrificial death akin to that meted out to the god Lugh (Gaulish Lugos,
Welsh Lleu)?
These
questions are important in and of themselves, of course. But for our purposes
they take on a more profound significance. When we answer them in an objective
way, can we say definitively that Merlin had belonged to a class of druidic
priests? Or that he had performed some vital function for such a priesthood?
In
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, Merlin, the Welsh
Myrddin, is associated with Amesbury’s Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain and with
Mount Killaraus (= Killare next to the Hill of Uisneach, the centre of Ireland),
while in Geoffrey’s Life of Merlin the great sage is placed atop a mountain in
the Scottish Caledonian Wood.
Fragments
of the Life of St. Kentigern tell of a madman/prophet named Lailoken, who is
explicitly identified with Merlin, and who is found on a ‘rock’ at Mellodonor
(modern Molindinar Burn) within sight of Glasgow and at Drumelzier (modern
Dunmeller) in Scottish Borders. Lailoken is said to have been buried near
Drumelzier.
Before
Geoffrey introduced Merlin into the Arthurian saga by substituting him for
Ambrosius of Dinas Emrys, a hill-fort in Gwynedd, Wales, and of Wallop,
Hampshire (see below), the madman/prophet had divided his time between
Carwinelow, the fort of his lord Gwenddolau, near Longtown in Liddesdale (known
now as the Moat of Liddel), nearby Arthuret, the scene of the Battle of
Arfderydd, in which his lord was slain and he went mad, the Lowland Caledonian
Wood with its mountain and the court of King Rhydderch Hen/Hael. Rhydderch
belongs at Dumbarton in Strathclyde, although Geoffrey makes him a Cumbrian
king.
Myrddin’s Mountain
In
Geoffrey the Caledonian mountain Merlin remains unnamed. This is unfortunate,
in that by finding this mountain we might learn a great deal more about
Merlin’s identity. And, incidentally, we would have a much firmer fix on the
location of Arthur’s seventh battle, which occurred in the Caledonian Wood.
Merlin’s
Caledonian Wood mountain is mentioned in one other source: the 13th century
French verse romance by Guillaume Le Clerc entitled Fergus of Galloway. The
Fergus romance is distinguished by the author’s knowledge of Scottish
geography. To quote from Cedric E. Pickford in Arthurian Literature in the
Middle Ages:
“His
[Guillaume’s] Scottish geography is remarkably accurate… In the whole range of
Arthurian romance there is no instance of a more detailed, more realistic
geographical setting.”
The
modern translator of Fergus, the late D.D.R. Owen, has made similar remarks on
this romance. The notes and synopses in his translation also remind the reader
that various elements of the Fergus mountain episode were adapted from
Chretien’s Yvain and Perceval and the Continuations of the latter.
But
it remains true that only Fergus actually names Merlin’s mountain and purports
to give us directions on how to get there. The hero Fergus starts his journey
to the mountain not as Nikolai Tolstoy (in his The Quest for Merlin) claims at
the Moat of Liddel, where Merlin fought and fled in madness, but at Liddel Castle
at Newcastleton in Liddesdale. Tolstoy uses 1) Guillaume’s directions and the
placement of King Rhydderch at Dumbarton 2) Merlin’s affinity with the stag in
Geoffrey’s Life of Merlin 3) the incorrect positioning of Merlin’s Galabes
springs (see below) and 4) the great height of the hill to select Hart Fell at the
head of Annandale
as Merlin’s mountain.
There
are marked problems with each of these guidelines used by Tolstoy. Firstly, the
directions given are incredibly vague and hence can be used to chart a course
from the Moat of Liddel to just about anywhere:
“[Fergus]
comes riding along the edge of a mighty forest… Fergus comes onto a very wide
plain between two hills. On he rode past hillocks and valleys until he saw a
mountain appear that reached up to the clouds and supported the entire sky…”
Secondly,
Fergus’ mountain is given two names, neither of which match that of Hart Fell:
Noquetran (variants Nouquetran, Noquetrant) and ‘Black Mountain’.
The latter is obviously a poetic designation only, the primary name being Noquetran.
And
thirdly, there is no edifice of any kind atop or on the flanks of Hart Fell
which could have been referred to as ‘Merlin’s Chapel’. As described in the
Fergus romance, this edifice must be an ancient chambered cairn. Such monuments
are often associated with Arthurian characters.
The
hill-name Noquetran is obviously a Norman French attempt at a Gaelic hill-name,
with the first component being cnoc, English knock, ‘hill’. As the French
render English bank as banque and check as cheque, Cnoc/Knock became Noque-.
The
secret to correctly interpreting the –tran component of Noquetran lies in a
closer examination of Professor Owen’s notes on the Fergus romance. For lines
773-93 he writes:
“This
adventure [of the Noquetran] is largely developed from elements in C.II [the
Second Continuation of Chretien’s Perceval]. There Perceval fights and defeats
a Black Knight in mysterious circumstances. Earlier, he had found a fine horn
hanging by a sash from a castle door. On it he gave three great blasts,
whereupon he was challenged by a knight, the horn’s owner, whose shield was
emblazoned with a white lion. Perceval vanquished this Chevalier du Cor and
sent him to surrender to Arthur. At his castle he learned of a high mountain,
the Mont Dolorous, on whose summit was a marvellous pillar… fashioned long ago
by Merlin.”
For
lines 4460 ff, Owen writes:
“Mont
Dolorous, which also appears in C.II (see note to II. 773-93 above), is here
associated with Melrose
and is probably to be identified with the nearby Eildon Hills…”
In
the Fergus romance, the Noquetran episode comes first. The horn hangs from a
white lion (cf. the lion on the knight’s shield in the Perceval Continuation)
in the Noquetran chapel, where Merlin had spent many a year. In front of the
chapel is a bronze giant, apparently a statue, whose arms are broken off by
Fergus, causing the giant’s great bronze hammer to fall to the ground. Later in
the romance, Fergus goes to the Dolorous
Mountain or the Eildons
and encounters there a club-wielding giant in the Castle of the Dark Rock
(reminiscent of the ‘Black
Mountain’ name applied to
the Noquetran).
As
it happens, the Eildons are noteworthy for having three major ancient monuments
atop two of their three hills. On the Eildon North Hill is the largest hill
fort in Scotland,
the probable oppidum of the Selgovae tribe. Here also is a Roman signal
station.
But
on Eildon Mid Hill is a large Bronze Age cairn. This ancient burial mound is
situated on the Southwest flank of Eildon Mid Hill about 30m below the summit,
at a height of some 395m OD. It has been much robbed and now appears as a low,
irregular mound of stones, about 15m in diameter, from which a few boulders
protrude to indicate the possible former presence of a cist.
More
remarkable was the presence below the cairn of a group of seven bronze socketed
axes. These axes are now in the Royal Museum of Scotland.
This
group of seven socketed axes was found in 1982 on the lower western slopes of
Eildon Mid Hill, Ettrick and Lauderdale District, Borders Region. Although
recovered from redeposited soil, the axes probably represent a hoard of the Ewart Park
phase of the late Bronze Age. The find reinforces what appears to be a
significant local concentration of contemporary metalwork around the Eildon
Hills.
In
view of their discovery in redeposited soil we cannot be absolutely certain how
the axes were originally deposited. However, their number, their proximity and
their similar condition all suggest that they came from a hoard, probably close
to their eventual find-spot. Whether the seven axes recovered in August 1982
comprised the whole hoard remains uncertain. On the other hand, it is possible,
though less likely, that more than one separate deposit was originally involved.
These
bronze axes immediately remind us of the bronze hammer in the Fergus romance’s
account of Merlin’s Chapel. This being so, I would see in the name ‘Noquetran’
or Noquetrant a Gaelic cnoc or Anglicized ‘knock’ plus one of the following:
G.
dreann – grief, pain (cf. Irish drean, sorrow, pain, melancholy);
or
G.
treana, treannadh – lamentation, wailing.
In
other words, Noquetran is merely a Gaelic rendering of the Old French Mont
Dolorous, the famous Dolorous
Mountain of Arthurian
romance!
The
bronze hammer Fergus causes to be dropped near Merlin’s Chapel on the Noquetran
is a folk memory of a bronze socketed axe being deposited on the slope below
the Eildon Mid Hill cairn or, more probably, of such an axe being found on the
site prior to Guillaume Le Clerc’s writing of the Fergus romance. Merlin’s
Noquetran chapel is the Eildon Mid Hill Bronze Age cairn.
Melrose Mountain, Black Mountain
and Castle of the Dark Rock are all designations for the Eildons. The hill-name
Eildon is found in 1130 as Eldunum and in 1150 as Eldune. This could be
(according to the Scottish place-name expert Watson) OE aelet + dunas, ‘fire
hills’, or G. aill, ‘a rock, cliff’, plus OE dun, ‘a hill’. The Fergus
romance’s ‘Castle of the Dark Rock’ (Li Chastiaus de la Roce Bise) may stand
for the hill-fort on Eildon North Hill, with Eildon being perceived as composed
of aill, rock, plus not dun, ‘hill’, but instead OE dun, a colour partaking of
brown and black; ME dunne, donne, dark-coloured: Ir. Dunn, a dun colour: Wel.
dwn, dun, swarthy, dusky: Gael. Donn, brown-coloured.
So
why were the Eildons identified with the Dolorous Mountain/Noquetran? The
answer may lie in part with Nikolai Tolstoy’s astute observation that the lion
Fergus thinks should be roaming over the mountain-top, but which he finds
inside the ‘chapel’ is an error or substitution for the god Lugos (Welsh Lleu,
Irish Lugh). In Welsh, Lleu’s name could sometimes be spelled Llew, and the
latter is the normal spelling for the Welsh word ‘lion’. Merlin’s associations
with Lleu will be discussed below. For now, suffice it to say that the Dolorous
Mountain got its name because the divine name Lugos or Lugh was at some point
wrongly linked to Latin lugeo, ‘to mourn, to lament, bewail’. Such mistakes in
language could easily have occurred when going from Celtic to Old French. It
may even be that in preferring lugeo to Lugos, a pagan religious secret was
being disguised and thus protected. [Note, however, that the Dolorous Mountain
first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work, where it stands for Arthur’s
Breguoin, mistakenly thought to represent Welsh bre, hill, plus gwyn, pain.]
The
Dolorous Mountain is then, properly, ‘Lugos Mountain’.
And the Lugos/Lugh/Lleu mountain in particular is Eildon Mid Hill, the highest
of the Eildons, with its Bronze Age cairn. Such an identification of the Dolorous Mountain has implications for the
Dolorous Garde of Lancelot, especially given that Lancelot himself is a late
literary manifestation of the god Lugh, something first discussed long ago by
the noted Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis.
We
know of five Lugh forts in Britain,
four known and one unlocated. Of the former there is Dinas Dinlle in Gwynedd,
Loudoun in East Ayrshire, Luguvalium or Carlisle
in Cumbria
and Lleuddiniawn or ‘Lothian’, land of the Fort of Lugh. Din Eidyn, modern Edinburgh, the capital of
Lothian, preserves the name of Lugh’s mother in Irish tradition, Eithne.
Luguvalium has been interpreted as containing a personal name *Lugovalos,
‘Lugos-strong’, but I believe this name is instead a descriptive of the fort
itself as being ‘Strong as Lugh’.
Then
there is the Lugudunum or ‘Hill-fort of Lugh’ of the Ravenna Cosmography. This
place, according to Rivet and Smith’s The Place-Names of Roman Britain, is
situated somewhere roughly between Chester-le-Street
and South Shields. The only good candidate
would seem to be Penshaw Hill, which the Brigantes Nation Website calls “the
only triple rampart Iron Age hill-fort known to exist in the north of England.”
Penshaw Hill is associated with the famous Lambton Worm, a monster not unlike
the two worms or dragons of Lleu’s hill-fort of Dinas Emrys in Gwynedd, Wales.
According
to Joseph Rogerson (The Farmer’s Magazine, 1835), the Melrose Lammas Fair (Christian
substitute for the pagan Lughnasadh) was the largest in the south of
Scotland. It was held on the northern
slope of the Eildons and as many as 30,000-50,000 lambs were shown. Lammas was associated with St. Peter “in
Chains”, i.e. St. Peter when he was imprisoned by Herod. His being freed by an angel, according to
James B. Jordan (“The Resurrection of Peter and the Coming of the Kingdom”,
Biblical Horizons 34), portrayed a type of resurrection for Peter,
recapitulating the resurrection of Jesus.
As I’ve shown that the death of Lugh fell on Imbolc (February 1; see
below) on the opposite side of the solar year from Lughnasadh, we can say with
a fair degree of confidence that not only were the Eildons a famous Lugh
mountain, but that the celebration of Lughnasadh here had commemorated the
rebirth of the sun god.
The
Eildons are noted for the stories of ‘Canobie’ or Canonbie Dick and Thomas the
Rhymer of Ercildoune.
Canonbie
is close to both the Carwinley of Myrddin’s/Merlin’s lord Gwenddolau and
Arthuret Knowes, the scene of the Battle of Arfderydd in which Myrddin was
driven mad. The 13th century Thomas is credited with meeting an elf-woman under
the Eildon Tree (whose location is now marked by a stone) and being taken under
the Eildons to the land
of Faery. He is also
credited with a prophecy concerning Merlin’s grave at Drumelzier:
“When
Tweed and Powsail meet at Merlin’s grave, Scotland and England that
day ae king shall have.”
The
story of Canonbie Dick presents Thomas as a wizard from past days, and I will
quote it in full:
“A
long time ago in the Borders Region there lived a Horse Cowper called Canobie
Dick. He was both admired and feared for his bold courage and rash temper. One
evening he was riding over Bowden Moor on the West side of the Eildon Hills. It
was very late and the moon was already high in the night sky.
He
had been to market but trade that day had been poor and he had with him a brace
of horses, which he had not been able to sell. Suddenly, he saw ahead of him on
the moonlit road, a stranger. The stranger was dressed in a fashion that had
not been seen for many centuries. The stranger politely asked the price of the
horses.
Now
Canobie Dick liked to bargain, and was not worried by the strange man’s looks.
Why, he would have sold his horses to the devil himself, and cheated him as
well, given half a chance. They agreed a price which the stranger promptly
paid.
The
only puzzle was that the gold coins he used to pay were as ancient as his
dress. They were in the shape of unicorns and bonnet pieces. However, Canobie
Dick shrugged his shoulders. Gold was gold. He smiled to himself, thinking that
he would get a better bargain for the coins than the stranger had got for the
horses.
When
the stranger asked if he could meet him again at the same place, Canobie Dick
was happy to agree. But the stranger had one condition: that he should always
come by night and always alone.
After
several more meetings, Canobie Dick became curious to learn more about his
secret buyer. He suggested that ‘dry bargains’ were unlucky bargains and that
they should seal the business with a drink at the buyer’s home.
‘You
may see my dwelling if you wish,’ said the stranger; ‘but if you lose courage
at what you see there, you will regret it all your life.’
Canobie
Dick was scornful of the warning, after all he was well known for his courage
and the stranger seemed harmless enough. The stranger led the way along a
narrow footpath, which led into the hills between the Southern and central
peaks to a place called the Lucken Hare. Canobie Dick followed but was amazed
to see an enormous entrance into the hillside. He knew the area well but had
never seen before such an opening or heard any mention of it.
They
dismounted and tethered their horses. His guide stopped and fixed his gaze on
Canobie Dick. ‘You may still return,’ he said. Not wanting to be seen as a
coward, Canobie Dick shook his head, squared his shoulders and followed the man
along the passage into a great hall cut out of the rock.
As
they walked, they passed many rows of stables. In every stall there was a coal
black horse, and by every horse lay a knight in jet black armour, with a drawn
sword in each hand. They were as still as stone, as if they had been carved
from marble.
In
the great hall were many burning torches. But their fiery light only made the
hall more gloomy. There was a strange stillness in the air, like a hot day
before a storm. At last they arrived at the far end of the Hall. On an antique
oak table lay a sword, still sheathed, and a horn. The stranger revealed that
he was Thomas of Ercildoun [Thomas the Rhymer] the famous prophet who had
disappeared many centuries ago.
Turning
to Canobie Dick he said, ‘It is foretold that: ‘He that sounds the horn and
draws that sword, shall, if his heart fails him not, be king over all broad Britain. But
all depends on courage, and whether the sword or horn is taken first. So speaks
the tongue that cannot lie.’’
The
stillness of the air felt heavy. Canobie Dick wanted to take the sword but he
was struck by a supernatural terror, such as he had never felt before. What, he
thought, would happen if he drew the sword; would such a daring act annoy the
powers of the mountain?
Instead
he took the horn and with trembling hands put it to his lips. He let out a
feeble blast that echoed around the hall.
It
produced a terrible answer. Thunder rolled and with a cry and a clash of armour
the knights arose from their slumber and the horses snorted and tossed their
manes. A dreadful army rose before him. Terrified, Canobie Dick snatched the
sword and tried to free it from its scabbard. At this a voice boomed:
‘Woe
to the Coward, that ever he was born,
Who
did not draw the sword before he blew the horn.’
Then
he heard the fury of a great whirlwind as he was lifted from his feet and
blasted from the cavern. He tumbled down steep banks of stones until he hit the
ground. Canobie Dick was found the next morning by local shepherds. He had just
enough trembling breath to tell his fearful tale, before he died.”
A
similar story is told of Alderley Edge in Cheshire,
only in that version the wizard is Merlin and the sleeping knights are King
Arthur and his men. My guess is that in the case of the Canonbie Dick story,
Thomas the Rhymer has taken the place of Merlin. This is not a new supposition,
but combined with my identification of Myrddin’s Noquetran with Eildon Mid Hill
as the Dolorous Mountain, the argument is significantly
strengthened. Fergus was written around 1200 CE, while Thomas is thought to
have lived c. 1220-1298. At some point Thomas was substituted for Merlin at his
chapel/cairn on Eildon Mid Hill.
If
I am right and the Eildons are Merlin’s Mountain at the centre of the great
Celyddon Wood, then we can allow for the Celyddon as being thought of as the
ancient woodland which covered much of the area surrounding the Eildons. When
we combine this with the fact that Merlin was obviously wandering in the wood
in the vicinity of Drumelzier when he was captured by Meldred, it is fairly
obvious that the Celyddon, which in this context means merely a great forest of
the Scottish Lowlands, extended for a considerable distance.
Indeed,
we know there were four great ancient forests surrounding the Eildon Hills: the
Jedforest, whose Capon Tree oak is one of the oldest such trees in all of
Britain; Teviotdale itself, which was covered by huge oaks and ash trees in the
12th century; the Ettrick Forest of Selkirkshire; and the Lauder Forest, an
immense forested track encompassing Lauderdale that still existed up until the
17th century. Apples, or rather crab-apples, the very species of tree Merlin
takes refuge under in the early Welsh poetry, were also present in this region.
The St. Boswell’s Apple is thought to be 150 years old and is the largest of
its kind in Scotland.
Thomas the Rhymer, taken to Fairyland at the Eildons, is given an apple by the
Queen of Fairy.
In
my book ‘The Arthur of History’, I was able to precisely pinpoint the location
of Arthur’s Coed Celyddon battle. This
was in the area of the Caddon Water, a place-name with early forms (spellings)
that are all but identical to that of Celyddon.
The Caddon Water empties into the Tweed not far west of the
Eildons. In fact, it was likely this
stream name that led to the relocation of Caledonia from its home in the
Scottish Highland to the Lowland in Welsh tradition.
The Pre-Romance Mountain of Myrddin
While
the Eildons would seem to be the location of Merlin’s Mountain according to the
late “Fergus” romance, there is evidence of another Scottish Lowland mountain
in the earlier Welsh poetry. This particular
mountain would have been the true, original mountain, the prototype of all
those that succeeded it.
The
reference to the location of this mountain is found in Gwasgargerd vyrdin yny
bed, the “Separation-Song of Myrddin in the Grave” of the Red Book of
Hergest. There Myrddin says:
‘Gwasawg,
your cry to Gwenddydd
was
told to me by the wild men of the mountain
in
Aber Caraf.’
From
other references in the early poetry we know that Gwasawg was a ‘supporter’ of the
Christian champion Rhydderch Hael, King of Strathclyde. The name is a diminutive of Welsh gwas, ‘lad,
servant’.
As
it turns out, St. Kentigern as a boy (see Chapter 8 of Jocelyn's Vita) is
called servuli, from servulus, a dim. of Latin servus, with a meaning
'sevant-lad, young slave'.
As
Kentigern is brought into close connection with Myrddin as Lailoken in the
saint's life, and Kentigern's royal patron was Rhydderch, I'm proposing that
Gwasawg is a Welsh rendering of servuli and that the former is thus St.
Kentigern himself.
Note
that Myrddin is said to be chased by the hunting-dogs of Rhydderch, and
Kentigern or *Cuno-tigernos means "Hound Lord."
While
Aber Caraf has been rendered by at least one translator as Aber Craf (Peter
Goodrich, The Romance of Merlin, 1990), a location in south-central Wales, we
can be sure it is actually to be found in Lowland Scotland.
We
have seen how Merlin/Lailoken is present in both the region of Glasgow and at Drumelzier on the Tweed. It has long
been thought that his mountain must have been somewhere between these two places,
and most likely at or not far from the sources of the Clyde
and Tweed, a sort of symbolic ‘center’ of the
southern ‘Caledonian Wood’.
I
would identify the mountain in Aber Caraf with Tinto Hill (2320 feet / 707
meters), which looms over ancient Abercarf, now called Wiston. Abercarf, according to the Scottish
Place-Name Society’s “Brittonic Language in the North”, is from aber, ‘confluence’,
plus garw, ‘rough’, derived from the name of the Garf Water, a tributary of the
upper Clyde. I also call attention to Wyndales on the mountain's flank, a name which, superficially at least, reminds us of the Gwenddolau or White Dales of Carwinley near Arthuret/Arderydd.
When I asked Alan James, the author of BLITON, as to the possibility that
Abercarf could instead contain carw, 'stag', he responded:
"Quite
right. As to the merits of the two interpretations, I'm agnostic. The phonology
of either wouldn't be difficult to explain. Garw and Gaelic garbh are of course
pretty common in river-names, and I'm rather less eager than some place-name
scholars to see animals, e.g. carw, in such names, but there certainly are
parallels."
Just
a few kilometers upstream on the Clyde from the Garf Water is Hartside and
Hartside Burn. Red Deer were once
plentiful here.
Given
Myrddin's association with the stag in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Life of
Merlin" (see Chapter 5), and his placement historically at Arferderydd/Arthuret
in Cumbria in what was the northwestern limit of the ancient Carvetti
(Stag-people) territory, a mountain at the confluence of the Stag Water would
make a lot of sense.
Tinto
Hill is situated between Drumelzier to the east and Glasgow to the
northwest. It is also only a few miles
north-northwest of the headwaters of the Clyde
and Tweed.
Thus it just happens to stand exactly where we would expect the hill of
Myrddin to be found.
The
hill’s name was discussed long ago by W. J. Watson in his GENERAL SURVEY OF
AYRSHIRE AND STRATHCLYDE, History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland, 1926
(reprinted 1993 by BIRLINN, Edinburgh, ISBN 1 874744 06 8):
“Tinto
appears in 'Karyn de Tintou,' 'Kaerne de Tintou,' c. 1315 (RMS); in Macfarlane
it is Tyntoche once, Tynto thrice; in Scots, Tintock, as also in the Retours ; it
is for teinteach, 'place of fire'…”
Atop
Tinto Hill is Tinto Cairn, of Bronze Age date and the largest summit cairn in
all of Scotland. Details on the hill and cairn can be found
here:
http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/47525/details/tinto+cairn/
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/biggar/tinto/index.html
http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/image.php?service=RCAHMS&id=47525&image_id=SC342977
Different
reasons have been supplied for why this hill is called ‘place of fire’. One suggests it gets its name from the fact
that its exposed red Felsite rock can be given a fiery glow by the setting
sun. This geology is discussed here:
http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/gcrdb/GCRsiteaccount401.pdf
Another
possible explanation is that the hill was used for beacon fires or even for
Beltane fires:
“Long
a beacon post and a place of Beltane fires, it took thence its name of Tinto,
signifying the ‘hill of fire’.” [Groome, 1885, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland]
I
would say these apparently conflicting ideas are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it may precisely have been the
red-glowing color of the rocks in the light of the setting sun that drew people
to this mountain as being particularly sacred, and they may then have used it
for Beltane fires.
It
would surely be significant if Myrddin were thought to be communing with the
ancestral ghosts at a huge Bronze Age cairn atop a mountain known as the Place
of Fire. This would intimately connect
him with seasonal Beltane rites.
The Name Myrddin
According
to Dr. Graham Isaac of The National University of Ireland, Galway, the name
Myrddin may be from an earlier, not directly attested *Myr-ddyn, with the
second element dyn ‘man, person’, and the first element Myr- which is found in
the name of the Old Irish goddess-type figure Morrigan (who also prophesies),
and in English night-mare, and also in several Slavic words. This original form
would have been something like *moro-donyes, ‘man-demon, specter’ or “man of
supernatural character” (see Isaac, G., 2001, 'Myrddin, proffwyd diwedd y byd:
ystyriaethau newydd ar ddatblygiad ei chwedl', Llên Cymru, 24 :13-23).
Thus
the basic meaning of the name Myrddin was ‘supernatural being, elf, goblin,
phantom’ or the like. Another possible rendering would be something like
‘Elf-man’. His father’s name was Morfryn or Mor-bryn, literally ‘Elf-hill’.
I
myself prefer Isaac’s derivation for Myrddin’s name, and I will have more on
why I do below.
Myrddin
may also reflect a Welsh attempt to render a Gaelic name meaning ‘mad-man’,
itself either dependent on or at the root of the homo fatuus designation for
Llallogan found in the Life of St. Kentigern. According to Dr. Simon Rodway of
The University of Wales, if an Irish compound *merduine 'mad person' existed,
it could be 'semi-translated' into Welsh as *Myrddyn, becoming Myrddin in the
same way as that envisaged by Isaac. The Electronic Dictionary of the Irish
Language does not give any examples of *merduine, but it is not implausible as
a compound in the light of mergall 'mad foreigner', mersca:l 'mad phantom',
etc. Professor Ranko Matasovic can “imagine an OIr. compound *mer-duine 'crazy
man' somehow calqued or partly borrowed into Welsh."
These
etymologies have been put forward against the traditional one, i.e. that
Myrddin in a very straight-forward rendering of Moridunum, the ‘Sea-fort’. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in fact, claimed that Myrddin
is to be derived from the city name of Carmarthen, ancient Caerfyrddin, Roman
Moridunum, ‘Sea-fort’. In The History of the Kings of Britain, Myrddin is found
as a boy at Carmarthen. The whole story is Geoffrey’s alteration of Nennius’
tale of the boy Ambrosius being found at Campus Elleti in Glamorgan.
The
only father provided for Myrddin in the early poetry is one Morfryn. The name rather transparently means
‘Sea-hill’ and is obviously a literally creation, as the –dunum of Moridunum
originally had the sense of ‘hill fort’, as forts were typically built atop
hills.
Myrddin’s
brothers were named Morgenau, Morial, Mordaf and Morien. According to A.O.H. Jarmon, Morien is
‘Sea-born’, but the rest contain Mor-, mawr, ‘great’. They may all, however, “reflect an early
association, perhaps mythological, with the sea.” John Koch, in “The Celtic Lands”(in MEDIEVAL
ARTHURIAN LITERARTURE: A GUIDE TO RECENT SOURCES), says that
“References
in the Cyfoesi to Myrddin’s father, Morfryn, and brothers, Morgenau, Morial,
Mordaf and Morien, imply that, when the tradition was formed, the name
[Myrddin] was still understood to contain the element mor < mori-, ‘sea’.”
A
‘Sea-man’ makes no sense, as there is nothing of the merman about Myrddin! The sea does not figure in his story at all. Some have sought to use ‘Sea-man’ as a way to
link Myrddin with Mannanan mac Lir of Irish story. But, again, there is nothing of Mannanan in
Myrddin.
Other
attempted etymologies fail on either phonological or philological bases or
both.
The Name
Llallog/Llallogan
Myrddin
in the early poems is called Llallog or Llallogan, a name also found in the
Life of St. Kentigern as ‘Laloecen’. This is a reduplicated form of ail/eil,
‘other’, and so Llallogan is, literally, ‘The Other’.
Llallog
is present in feminine form in the name of Patrick’s sister’s daughter Lalloc,
who was set over Ard Senlis in Ireland.
This place was on Magh-Nenda, where the famous fairy hill Sidh-Nenta was
also to be found. The modern name for
Senlis is Fairymount. St. Lalloc of the Fairymount would then seem to represent
‘the Other’ who was the fairy queen or divine ancestral spirit of this particular
sidh-dwelling.
We
also know of a 9th century Breton named Lalocan, mentioned in the
Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Redon (125).
Welsh
Ellyll, cognate with the Irish personal name Ailill, is also a reduplicated
form of ail/eil, “other”. Ellyll, according
to the Geiriadur Prufysgol Cymru, is defined as ‘goblin, elf, fairy, sprit,
genius (of a place), apparition, phantom, specter, wraith, ghost, shade,
bogey.’
To
quote from Professor Daniel Melia of the University of California,
Berkeley
(personal communication):
“I’m
citing CELTICA3, 1956, which reads as follows:
‘The
contracted form of Ailill gen. Ailella in all the manuscripts of the
genealogies which I have read (Rawl. B 502; Laud 610 ; LL ; BB; Lec. ; H 2.7)
is always Aill-, Aill-a. These contractions
are quite abnormal.
Ailill
is without a doubt cognate [1] with Welsh ellyll "ghost, elf, etc."
and this suggests that the older form of the name was Aillill which became
Ailill with the same kind of dissimilation we find in cenand < cenn-fhind
and menand < menn-fhind.
The
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru agrees with this meaning. They see a connection with
a reduplicated form of Proto-Celtic *allo- "other" as in the Gaulish
tribal name "Allobroges" < *allo "other" + bro- "border"
-> "country". The Wurzburg
glosses on the Pauline Epistles (Wb.) date from ~600-~750, so the form
"Aillill" would presumably, by O'Brien's argument, have still been
current, at least amongst literate intellectuals, in that period.”
Professor
Ranko Matasovic of “The Etymological Lexicon of Proto-Celtic” (again via
private correspondence) says
“Welsh
ellyll is indeed cognate with Mir. Ailill, but these names cannot be related to
English elf, which is from Germanic *albiyo-.
It is certainly possible that these words contain the stem *al-
(actually *h2el-, in a more modern notation), the plain pronominal stem that
meant ‘other, different’ (Lat. alius, Gr. allos, etc.). I would add that Alladhan, the name given to
Llallogan in the Irish Suibhne Geilt story, would appear to be from Irish
allaid, ‘wild’. The most likely
etymology for allaid is the same al- root, as an ‘Other’ is someone who lived
beyond the civilized world and was hence barbarous or ‘wild’, a stranger or
foreigner or an enemy, i.e. someone deemed dangerous because he did not belong
to one’s native land. The evolution of meaning would be similar to the development
from Latin silvaticus, ‘belonging to woods’ to French sauvage.”
Dr.
Graham Isaac of The National University of Ireland, Galway,
and Professor of Celtic Thomas Charles-Edwards of Jesus College,
Oxford, both
agree with this derivation for ellyll/Ailill.
I
would add that Rachel Bromwich, in her note to Welsh Triad No. 63, says of the
word ellyll in the context of three heroes:
“…
the suggested implication of ellyll is that of men who became “outside”
themselves.”
This
is significant, given that one of these three heroes - Llyr Marini - is in late
genealogies placed in the tribe of Meirchiaun.
I’ve shown that Meirchiaun ruled from the heartland of the Carvetii or
Stag-People. A variant of Triad 63 calls
Llyr a ‘charv/charw ellyll’ or ‘stag-spectre’.
In the Irish the use of a word for “phantom”
is applied to the god Lugh.
The
following selection is from “Baile in Scail”, ‘The Phantom’s Frenzy’:
“They
saw the scál [phantom] himself in the house, before them on his throne. There
was never in Tara a man of his size or his beauty, on account of the fairness
of his form and the wondrousness of his appearance.
He
answered them and said, "I am not a phantom nor a specter. I have come on
account of my fame among you, since my death. And I am of the race of Adam: my
name is Lugh son of Eithliu son of Tigernmas. This is why I have come: to
relate to you the length of your reign, and of every reign which there will be
in Tara."
And
the girl who sat before then in the house was the Sovereignty of Ireland, and
it was she who gave Conn his meal: the rib of an ox and the rib of a boar. The
ox rib was twenty-four feet long and eight feet between its arch and the ground.
When the girl began to distribute drinks she said, "To whom shall this cup
be given?"; and the phantom answered her.
When
she had named every ruler until the Day of Judgment, they went into the
phantom's shadow, so that they saw neither the enclosure nor the house. The vat
and the golden dipper and the cup were left with Conn. And hence are the
stories "The Phantom's Dream" and "The Adventure and Journey of
Conn".
From
the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language on scal:
Scál
o,n.
See Ped. i 76 , O'Brien, Ériu xi 89 f . supernatural or superhuman
being, phantom, giant, hero. Later also man, human being (espec. in B. na f.;
see also banscál, ferscál): ascath .i. scāl, unde ascata .i. lāechda. Nō scālda
ar ūathmaire an laoich amhail scāth,
Corm. Y 21
`sgal'
láoch (scál, v.l. ), Met. Gl. 15 § 32 .
`sgal' ┐ `arg' . . . | sen anmann na bhfer,
13 § 24 . sgal .i. fear, O'Cl. sgal .i. láoch, ib. scal .i. fear, Lec. Gl. M 101 . conaccatar a s.¤ fadeissin
isin taig, ZCP xiii 373.7 (Baile in Scáil). nimda s.¤-sa ┐ nimda
aurdrach . . . is de hsīl Ādaim [dom],
11
.
scal find (of a hero), LL 311 b 15 ,
`ein leuch- tendes Phantom ', Ält. Ir.
Dicht. ii 23 § 1 . C. . . . in s.¤ sciathach,
LL 45 a 25 ( RC xxxvi 262 ). co
faca in s.¤ . . . chuci, LU 8534 ( FB 39 ). immácomarnaic dó ┐ don s.¤, 8547 (
FB 40 ). co n-acca ní: in s.¤ mór am' dóchumm `a mighty phantom ', Aisl. MC 71.15 . dom mac neimnech . . . scal
fri scalaibh sgelmhaine sgal sgolaidhe,
LL 385 c 33 ( Measgra M. Uí
Chléirigh 206.43 ). gabais E. scot na scal | os chlaind N. co nefnar, LL 3 b 24 . marb I. i Scelc na s.¤, 16 a 28 . cland in merscáil móir (i.e. Míl),
ZCP xiii 364.2 . ? airddithir a scíath ri s.¤ | sithithir a lam ri
lae, LL 44 b 29 = 380 b 38 .
In
B. na f.: do [ḟ]racc (.i.
do ben) a scáil (.i. a fir), LU 437 ( ACC 1 Comm ). ēccusc an scāil (.i.
fer), ZCP v 484.1 .
In
nn. loc.: a nGlinn in Scail, Tromd.
Guaire 403.428 . Medb Maige in Scáil,
TBC 3228 = TBC² 2409 .
Compds.
¤baile, alternative title of the text Baile in Scáil ( ZCP xiii 372 ff . ): ro
scríbad issin s., LL 132 a 48 . ¤ḟer giant: co n-acca in scáilfer
mór ina dochum, LU 8515 ( FB 37 ). co n-acamar in s. mór . . .
chucaind aníar `a great hero ', Ériu iv
138.24 .
To
continue from the same dictionary on the word ferscal (fer being “man”):
Ferscál
o,n.
a male person, a man (opp. to banscál a woman): noléced f.¤ a bernai chatha do
banscáil, TTr.² 1692 . nach facaid do
bhean ... gnuis ḟirscail
... ┐ nach facaid do mac gnuis banscaili
IT iii 197
-
198 . ni rodḟech ...
riam in ng[n]uis ḟerscali LB 66 a 34 . na findfad oentaid ḟerscáil PH 2012 . ni ronig a lama ... iter ḟeraib nā ḟearscalaib ZCP xii 293.15 . eitir ferscail is
banscail, Fl. Earls 176.13 . anmanna a
fferscal of their male children Hugh
Roe² 1.8 (f. 1 a ).
The
Brittonic Language in the Old North Website discusses scal thusly:
*scǭl (m)
Early
Celtic *scālo- > British * scālo- > Middle Welsh yscawl; O-Modern Irish
scál, G sgail; ? cf Gothic skōhsl.
[Proto-Celtic
*skax-slo- ‘demon, supernatural being’ OIr scal ‘phantom’, MW yscawl, ‘young
hero, warrior’]
The
primary sense was ‘a ghost, a supernatural being’, especially a powerful one,
but in Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic literatures it is used of human heroes,
and in Welsh it comes to mean ‘a young warrior’.
An
Irish ‘ferscal’, then, comes very close to Myrddin/Llallogan in meaning.
The Celyddon Wood
as the Land of Spirits
The
ancient Classical writer Procopius (in his 6th century CE History Of The Wars,
VIII, XX. 42-48) said:
“Now
in this island of
Britain the men of
ancient times built a long wall, cutting off a large part of it; and the
climate and the soil and everything else is not alike on the two sides of it.
For to the south of the wall there is a salubrious air, changing with the
seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool in winter… But on the north
side everything is the reverse of this, so that it is actually impossible for a
man to survive there even a half-hour, but countless snakes and serpents and
every other kind of wild creature occupy this area as their own. And, strangest
of all, the inhabitants say that if a man crosses this wall and goes to the
other side, he dies straightway… They say, then, that the souls of men who die
are always conveyed to this place.”
From
the Welsh poem The Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin (Black Book of Carmarthen),
we learn that at Myrddin’s Battle of Arderydd:
“Seven score chieftains became
gwyllon; In the Wood of Celyddon they died.”
Gwyllon
or ‘Wild Ones’ is a word deriving from gwyllt, ‘wild’. The Welsh epithet for
Myrddin is, of course, Gwyllt. Myrddin Gwyllt is Myrddin ‘the Wild’.
But
as Nikolai Tolstoy pointed out, there is something odd about these two lines.
The gwyllon or ‘Wild Ones’ are equated with the warriors who died in the
battle! The word ‘died’ in the poem’s second line is Middle Welsh daruuan, i.e.
darfuan. Modern Welsh has darfyddaf or darfod, which according to the authoritative
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Welsh dictionary has the following meanings:
‘To
come to an end, end, conclude, finish, complete, terminate, cease; expire, die,
languish, weaken, fail, fade, decline, perish’
Darfod
is an interesting word. It is from the prefix dar-, roughly ‘across’, and bod,
‘to be’, with the regular lenition of b>f. So literally ‘to be across’,
possibly in the same sense in which we say of a dead person ‘he has crossed
over’.
There
is thus no ambiguity in the poetic passage we are considering. The warriors who
became ‘Wild Ones’ did not go mad – they died. In this context, then, to become
gwyllon means to become a roving spirit that has left its battle-slain body
behind. To exist as a ‘Wild One’ is to exist in spirit-form after the death of
the body.
The
Christian medieval mind either could not accept this notion of wandering
spirits or, just as likely, misunderstood it. The gwyllon were transformed into
living madmen who leapt or flitted about the forest much as did their Irish
counterpart, Suibhne Geilt, or the British madman Fer Caille/Alladhan, mentioned
in the story of Suihbne.
In
another Myrddin poem, Greetings (Black Book of Carmarthen), we are told by
Myrddin himself:
“The
hwimleian speaks to me strange tidings, And I prophesy a summer of strife.”
Hwimleian
or ‘Grey Wanderer’ is yet another word for a spirit or spectre.
We
might then naturally conclude that Myrddin’s madness was of the same kind, i.e.
he had died at the Battle of Arderydd.
The triple sacrifice he suffers at Drumelzier at the hands of Meldred’s
shepherds would then be a “tag on”, made necessary because his already having
died was no longer acknowledged and because it was politic to give him a
Christian burial. I will, in fact, later show that the Drumelzier tradition is
a relocalized one and that Myrddin does not really belong there at all.
However, the fact that his triple-death at Drumelzier is a sacred one, and one
that mimics the death of the god Lleu in Welsh tradition, is significant. The death is SACRIFICIAL in nature, and such
triple deaths were meted out to HUMAN sacrifice victims (see Ross and Robins’
The Life and Death of a Druid Prince). Among the ancient Celts and Germans we
have some testimony from Classical authors that war captives were the most
commonly sacrificed humans. It is not
impossible that Myrddin was captured after the disastrous defeat at Arderydd
and sacrificed by his enemy, although since that enemy seems to have been the
Christian king Rhydderch, this is a difficult proposition to support. Perhaps a
pagan ally of Rhydderch got his hands on Llallogan. Or Llallogan had fled to a
neighboring tribal territory and was seized by an opportunistic chieftain.
In
the Irish sources we are told of battle-panic and one of its unfortunate
results. For example, when the great
hero Cuchulainn faces the opposing armies of Ireland,
“He
saw from him the ardent sparkling of the bright golden weapons over the heads
of the four great provinces of Eriu, before the fall of the cloud of evening.
Great fury and indignation seized him on seeing them, at the number of his
opponents and at the multitude of his enemies. He seized his two spears, and
his shield and his sword, and uttered from his throat a warrior’s shout, so
that sprites, and satyrs, and maniacs of the valley, and the demons of the air
responded, terror-stricken by the shout which he had raised on high. And the Neman confused the army; and the four provinces of Eriu
dashed themselves against the points of their own spears and weapons, so that
one hundred warriors died of fear and trembling in the middle of the fort and
encampment that night.”
This
passage is from W.M. Hennessey’s “The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”. Also from this source:
“Of
the effects of this fear inspired by the Badb [or Nemhain] was geltacht or
lunacy, which, according to the popular notion, affected the body no less than
the mind, and, in fact, made its victims so that they flew through the air like
birds.”
We
learn more about the precise meaning of geltacht from the Electronic Dictionary
of the Irish Language. There we are told
geltacht
Keywords:
panic; terror; frenzy; insanity
In
Thomas Kinsella’s translation of “The Tain”, we learn that
“The
Nemain brought confusion on the armies and a hundred of their number [while
asleep!] fell dead.”
“…
that same night Net’s wives, Nemain and Badb, called out to the men of Ireland
near the field of Gairech and Irgairech, and a hundred warriors died of
fright.”
In
THE SAINTLY MADMAN: A STUDY OF THE SCHOLARLY RECEPTION HISTORY OF BUILE
SHUIBHNE by Alexandra Bergholm, Department of Comparative Religion, University of Helsinki (2009), we are given a
wonderful description of what happened to the title character when he was faced
with the horror of battle:
“When
the Battle of Mag Rath begins, Suibhne is suddenly alarmed by the cries of the
two hosts, and the incident is depicted as follows:
…he
looked up, whereupon turbulence (?), and darkness, and fury, and
giddiness,
and frenzy, and flight, unsteadiness, restlessness, and
unquiet
filled him, likewise disgust with every place in which he used
to
be and desire for every place which he had not reached. His fingers
were
palsied, his feet trembled, his heart beat quick, his senses were
overcome,
his sight was distorted, his weapons fell naked from his
hands,
so that through Ronan’s curse he went, like any bird of the air,
in
madness and imbecility.”
It
should be noted here immediately that the word translated ‘fury’ is nemhain,
the goddess’s name used as a common noun.
When
we come to the two accounts of the Battle of Arderydd, we see that the “Life of
St. Kentigern” preserves the more authentic tradition (although highly
Christianized, of course), while that found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Life of
Merlin” is considerably diluted:
St.
Kentigern’s Life –
“In
the midst of that fray, the very sky began to gape open above my head, and I
heard what seemed to be a great cracking sound, a voice in the sky saying to
me, ‘Lailoken, Lailoken, since you alone are guilty of the blood of all your
slain comrades, you alone shall suffer for their sins. You shall be handed over to the minions of
Satan, and until the day of your death your companions shall be the beasts of
the forest.’ And, as I turned my eyes to
the source of the voice, I saw a brilliance so dazzling that no man could bear
it. I also saw numerous battle formations
of an army in the sky, much like the streaks of lightning. In their hands the warriors held burning
lances and shining javelins whgich they brandished at me with bloodthirsty FURY
[emphasis mine]. Then, as I turned away,
a wicked spirit seized me and consigned me to live among the wild beasts of the
forest, as you are my witness.”
Life
of Merlin –
“Then,
when the air was full of these repeated loud complainings [of Merlin’s grief],
a strange madness came upon him. He crept away and fled to the woods, unwilling
that any should see his going. Into the
forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees. He watched the wild creatures grazing on the
pasture of the glades. Sometimes he
would follow them, sometimes pass them in his course. He made use of the roots of plants and of
grasses, of fruit from ttrees and of the blackberries of the thicket. He became a Man of the Woods [‘silvester
homo’, the Fer Caille title given to him in the story of Suibhne Geilt], as if
dedicated to the woods. So for a whole
summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself
and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.”
The
author Hennessey, like the Christian medieval audience of the Merlin story, did
not realize that madness could be a poetic metaphor for a spectral
death-state. It was not the demented
body that fled like a bird through the forest after a battle, but the spirit of
the warrior whose death was literally caused by the goddess Nemhain.
Nemhain’s
involvement in such battles reinforces my earlier argument that
Myrddin’s/Merlin’s Lady of the Lake, who goes by names such as Viviane,
Ninniane, Nimiane, etc., and who is also found in Welsh sources as Nefyn, wife
of Cynfarch, is indeed Nemhain.
So
what to make of Myrddin’s madness?
Part
of the clue to solving the mystery may involve the “coincidental” pairings of
Myrddin/Llallogan and St. Martin and/or St.
Ninian sites. We find early St. Martin
churches in Liddesdale, where Myrddin fights and is defeated at Arfderydd We find St. Ninian (of Whithorn or Candida
Casa, with its supposed very early St. Martin’s
Church) at Cathures (probably the Roman fort of Cadder) and the Molendinar Burn
in Glasgow,
where St. Kentigern later met Llallogan (Laloecen). We find a Martin name atop Myrddin’s mountain
of Tinto, and there was a Ninian church at Wiston itself (although this appears
to have been established by the Templers).
Some
have tried to make a case for Myrddin
BEING St. Martin, but in Welsh, Martinus would
become *Merthin and it is impossible, linguistically speaking, for Myrddin to
come from the Latin name. To quote Professor Ranko Matasovic on this fact:
“Phonologically, Martin (Lat. Martinus) cannot correspond to W. Myrddin. What you get from Lat. Martinus in Welsh is Marthin (cf. the place-name Llanfarthin in Shropshire). However, one cannot exclude the possibility that the similarity of the two names contributed to their confusion, say, that Sanctus Martinus became Myrddin.”
“Phonologically, Martin (Lat. Martinus) cannot correspond to W. Myrddin. What you get from Lat. Martinus in Welsh is Marthin (cf. the place-name Llanfarthin in Shropshire). However, one cannot exclude the possibility that the similarity of the two names contributed to their confusion, say, that Sanctus Martinus became Myrddin.”
Arderydd/Armterid/Arfderydd
and Arthuret, Cumbria
Arthuret
has long been considered the best candidate for Arderydd, the battle from which
Myrddin fled in madness (or in death).
However, Arthuret AS A PLACE-NAME cannot be Armterid/Arfderydd, an early
form of the battle site name found in the Welsh sources. The two names are not
reconcilable.
Andrew
Breeze in his excellent paper on the subject (http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=jlo)
identified Arf- with the Welsh word for weapon, and derydd or, rather, terydd,
with “ardent, passionate, fierce”, for a river-name meaning “ardent weapon,
burning weapon.”
Arthuret
(referred to as Howes or Knowes) is a hill or ridge, though, not a river. In fact, the hills are a geological feature
known as an esker (a ridge of gravel left after glaciation) and were described
in an early source as follows:
“The
church and rectory at Arthuret are situated on a raised plateau on the west
side of the river Esk which flows past them at a lower level, and to the south
of the church and rectory garden there rise two small wooded hills known as the
“Arthuret Knowes." These are separated from each other by the public road,
and I think that at one time they formed one low hill or ridge about 500 yards
long, but were divided into two when the highway was made. There can be no
doubt that these hills occupied at one time a most important strategic position
commanding the fords of the river Esk and the road over them from Cumberland
into Scotland. The hill to the south of the church is the more important of the
two, is about 150 yards long, is somewhat rounded in shape and has a flattened
top which is enclosed by a low earthen rampart enclosing a space nearly square.
Through the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Hesketh Hodgson, who at my request made a
survey of this earthwork, I am able to give a plan of it, and they have
supplied me with some interesting notes which appear as an appendix to this
paper. The hill to the south of the rectory garden is much longer, being
upwards of four hundred yards in length; it is of varying height and has also
in places a flattened top, but no traces of a rampart. There is nothing
authentic known as to the origin of these hills. They do not appear to have
attracted the attention of this Society at any previous meeting; they are not
mentioned in our Transactions nor in any of the county histories, and they are
not marked as tumuli in either the old or the recent maps of the Ordnance
Survey. Professor Windle, however, in his recent work, On the Remains of the
Prehistoric Age in England includes Arthuret in his list of Cumberland tumuli
with the suggestion, in brackets, that these are probably eskers. The word
"esker" or "eskar" is a geological term, and was originally
used by Irish geologists. It is derived from the Irish word "Eiscir"
signifying a ridge. The word has now come into general use among writers on
glacial geology, and is applied to a ridge of water-worn materials running
across valleys and plains, along hillsides, and even over watersheds, and
forming a very marked feature in the topography of certain regions. They are
very common in the centre of Ireland, they occur in Sweden where they are
called " asar," in Scotland where they are called " kames,"
and in the New England states of North America. Professor Geikie says that no
very satisfactory explanation of their mode of formation has yet been given,
but they are believed to be in some way connected with the former glaciation of
the regions where they occur. In these Transactions, Chancellor Ferguson gives
an account of the exploration of a tumulus near Dalston Hall which turned out
to be an esker. I have not been able to find any authority for including these
hills at Arthuret in the list of Cumberland tumuli, and no attempt has been
made to explore them systematically so as to ascertain their nature. From an
examination of a sandpit on the northern slopes of the larger hill, and of a
gravel pit at the western end of the other hill, I think there can be no doubt
that these are eskers. There is a distinct stratification of earth, gravel, and
sand in the latter, which could only be produced by an effort of nature. The
plan given is prepared from a survey of the earthwork on Arthuret Hills,
undertaken by request. It shows a small enclosure, which occupies nearly the
whole of the top of a natural mound lying south of Arthuret Church. The ground
falls away very sharply, on three sides, for 40 or 50 feet, but on the
south-east the slope is more gradual towards the modern road, which is cut
through a depression in the long ridge known as Arthuret Hills. This ridge
appears to be the division between two ancient estuaries; and the mound on
which the earthwork stands forms its north-western extremity. The plain lies
more than 100 feet below, extending to the fells of West Cumberland on one
side, and to those of Scotland on the other with the Solway in front, towards
which the Esk, not a mile distant, winds its way. It flowed close beneath the
hill in the eighteenth century. The earthwork is nearly square, though not very
regular in form, and measures about 40 feet, more or less, each way. It is
surrounded by a shallow ditch, two or three feet wide, which fades out on the
south-western side. On the south-eastern side, and perhaps all along the ditch,
there are signs of a very low rampart of earth, outside as well as inside the
ditch. The inner rampart is continued all round the enclosure, but is quite
small in size. It is difficult to judge of the meaning of various slight
irregularities in the levels of the interior, owing to the small and
insignificant scale of the work. Two trees, and the stumps of several which
have been cut down, standing within the enclosure, and several others just
outside it, add greatly to the difficulty : but a shallow depression, five or
six feet wide, crosses the enclosure from north-east to south-west, and seems
to divide it into two parts, of which the south-eastern is slightly the higher.
We could find no certain trace of an entrance, nor was there any sign of
stonework of any kind. The western corner is impinged upon by a gravel-pit,
which has also caused a landslip all along the north-western face of the hill, that
threatens to destroy the ditch on this side. We saw nothing whatever to give us
any clue to the date of the enclosure.
(From
http://archive.org/stream/transactionscum13collgoog/transactionscum13collgoog_djvu.txt)
The
Liddel Water is an English name, but is quite a distance from Arthuret. The Esk once flowed much closer to Arthuret,
but Esk is from a very ancient British river-name *Isca, so it can’t be the
Arfderydd. Furthremore, although we
might find a river named Derydd, there is no precedence for a formation such as
Arf-derydd. Instead, it is fairly
certain that Armterid/Arfderydd represents a perversion of an earlier name, or
even an intentional alteration to fit poetic purposes.
I
would say we should allow Terydd/Derydd to stand as the British name of the
Liddel Water, with Caer (G)wenddolau or Carwinley, the Fort of the White Dales,
being the name of Liddel Strength. But
Arf-derydd must be decoupled from Arthuret.
Let
us look at all the known forms for the place-name Arthuret from http://placenames.org.uk/id/placename/20/000009:
- Arthuret
- Artureth 1171-5 (1333), 1368
- Arturet c. 1182, 1349
- Arturede 1203
- Artured 1292
- Arturett(e) 1307, 1332
- Hartred 1276
- Hartered 1276
- Artreth 1528
- Artereth 1609
- Arcturet 1209
- Arcturheth 1576
- Arthureth 1276, 1279, 1400, 1528
- Arthuret 1278, 1282, 1596
- Arthurette 1278
- Arthured 1279), 1300, 1552
- Arthurede 1338, 1454
- Arthurehede 1434
- Arthurhed(e) 1517, 1521, 1771
- Arthure heth t. Hy 8
- Arthurheath 1517
- Arthreed 1596
- Artheret 1278
- Art(e)ret 1306
- Artret 1368
- Artreth 1332
- Artereth 1348 1441, 1517
- Artrede 1357
- Arthred 1399
- Artruthe 1576
- del Crosse de Artureth 1339
As
we are dealing with a hill at Arthuret, the initial component is almost
certainly ardd, ‘hill, height’. But what
of the second element?
The
clue, interestingly enough, is also found in the Welsh sources. In an early
Myrddin poem we learn that two of the warriors present at Arderydd were Errith
and Gwrrith (spelled Gurrith in the MS.). Errith is cognate with an Irish word,
arracht, from ar + richt, meaning specter, ghost, apparition. Gwrrith is
'Man-specter/ghost/apparition'. This last matches the meaning of the name
Myrddin according to Dr. Graham Isaac of The National University of Ireland,
Galway - *Moro-donyos or "Specter-man".
While
some scholars have claimed that Errith and Gwrrith belong to Dyfed (where
Myrddin as Merlin was transferred in later medieval tradition), there is no
good reason for thinking they were not considered to be present at the Battle
of Arderydd.
Now,
from https://content.historicengland.org.uk/content/docs/battlefields/solway.pdf:
“The
most recent change in the topography of the battlefield occurred in the 1950s
when the western of two mounds known as Arthuret Knowes was bulldozed. It had
been quarried for sand during the Second World War. The twin knowes were long-believed
to be prehistoric burial mounds but the sand is now thought to have been
deposited on the boulder clay beneath by a glacial icesheet.”
As
we are talking about TWO MOUNDS, I would propose that one was called Ardd
Gurrith/(G)urrith (the /G/ quie naturally being lost, as is typical in such
Welsh compounds) and the other Ardd Errith.
I
would propose, therefore, that Arthuret is from *Ardd-(G)wrrith/(G)urrith (the
/G-/ quite naturally being lost, as is typical in such Welsh compounds), for a
meaning of the Hill of Gwrrith. Although
Gwrrith and Myrddin may mean the same thing, and Myrddin was also known by an
attested second name – that of Llallogan – we cannot be sure Gwrrith = Myrddin
in terms of an identification of actual personhood. But it is tempting to see both Specter Man
names as descriptors for Llallogan, making Arthuret the home and ruling center
of Myrddin.
The
Welsh Arderydd probably stands for Ardd Errith.
As
suggested by Isaac, Myrddin’s father’s name Morfryn or Mor-bryn = ‘Spirit-hill’. This would exactly match in meaning Ardd
Errith.
We
could retain –derydd from a purely poetic Arf-derydd, ‘weapon-fierce’, for the
British name of the Liddel Water at Carwinley/Fort of Gwenddolau. Liddel is, of course, English, the Loud Dale,
the river-name being from OE hlyde/hlud.
A
confusion of these names could easily have occurred in the tradition. Derydd was the river, and several miles south
were the twin hills of Ardd Gurrith and Ardd Errith.
I
dispensed with an earlier idea which was to see Arderydd as Ar- + Derydd, the
Ar- being found commonly in Welsh place-names and meaning “by, alongside of,
next to, near to” and the like. We would
then see the twin hills well to the south of the Derydd/Liddle Water as merely
the Knowes that were in Arderydd. Unfortunately, we still can’t reconcile the
spelling of Ar Derydd with Arthuret, and w would be forced to dispense with the
Gurrith and Errith names for the twin hills.
The ‘Rotwyd’
(Rhodwydd) of Arderys (Arderydd)
The
early Welsh poetry on Arfderydd mentions something called the ‘rotwyd’ or
rhodwydd. Scholars cannot say exactly
what this was, but they have made a good guess.
According to Rachel Bromwich (see her text, translation and commentary
on the Triads of the Island of Britain):
“…
Rhodwydd can mean either a ford or an earthen dyke; the latter was frequently
constructed on rising ground above a ford, and would be held instead of the
ford itself. This was often the place
where the fiercest battles were fought.”
Sir
Ifor Williams (in his notes to The Poems of Taliesin) adds:
“…
these examples show that rhyd (ford) and rhodwydd occur together often, and
Loth suggested that rhodwydd was synonymous with rhyd… Rhodwydd may be from
rhawd [cognate with Irish rath, ‘ringfort, earthen fortification’; cf. beddrod,
bed + rhawd] and gwydd, cf. gwydd-fa [height, eminence, promontory; seat,
throne, mound, burial ground, grave, burial mound, etc., where gwydd = grave,
burial mound, grave, burial mound, tumulus].”
As
Arthuret in Cumbria is an esker/ridge that anciently was much closer the Esk,
and there was once an ancient earthwork atop this ridge, we could assume the
‘rotwyd’ of Arderydd is a reference to this very earthwork which may have once
stood guard over a ford on the river.
However,
the much more significant Liddel Strength at the confluence of the Esk and
Liddel Water was in the parish of Arthuret, and as Gwenddolau or White Dales is
Carwinley only a kilometer or so south of the site, we can be fairly certain
the Rhodwydd of Arderydd was this place, not the small earthwork that once
existed on Arthuret Hills. Finally, the
Kentigern Life puts the battle between Liddel and Carwinley, and this can only
mean Liddel Strength. So the rhodwydd
was in Arthuret parish, but it was not Arthuret itself.
The
Liddel Strength motte and baileys is described as follows in the Pastscape
listing (http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=11686):
“Motte
and double bailey, probably of late - 11th/12th century, situated on the edge
of a sheer cliff 160' above the Liddel Water. The outer bailey is defended by
an earthen rampart and a ditch 25' deep, and the inner by a rampart 35' high.
Foundations exist to the north-west of the motte, probably of the mansion which
later occupied the site. (2-4)
Liddel Strength, is an earthwork castle situated at NY 4018 7416, at the edge of a steep wooded escarpment of boulder clay. The whole site has been affected by the erosion of the river cliff, and is covered by rough pasture, scattered scrub and small trees. The remains are unusual. At face value they comprise an eroded motte, standing 6.6 m above an inner bailey to the east, with an outer bailey further to the E. However, it may be significant that there is no trace of a ditch between the motte and the inner `bailey' and the ditch around the S side of the combined motte and inner ward, connecting with the river cliff, describes a neat semi-circle as if enclosing a cohesive whole. This ditch is massive, up to 4.1 m deep externally and up to 8.2 m below the inner rampart of the inner ward. The impression is that it initially enclosed a ringwork, and that the motte was a later insertion on the W side of it. The outer bailey, less strong than the inner, is bounded by a bank, up to 1.4 m high internally, and outer ditch, up to 2.2 m deep externally. Contained within the inner ward are the turf covered remains of a tower (see NY 47 SW 6).
The castle is first mentioned in 1174 and was taken and destroyed in 1346 to be superceded by the tower; it seems likely that it was never rebuilt in stone (7a-7b).”
Liddel Strength, is an earthwork castle situated at NY 4018 7416, at the edge of a steep wooded escarpment of boulder clay. The whole site has been affected by the erosion of the river cliff, and is covered by rough pasture, scattered scrub and small trees. The remains are unusual. At face value they comprise an eroded motte, standing 6.6 m above an inner bailey to the east, with an outer bailey further to the E. However, it may be significant that there is no trace of a ditch between the motte and the inner `bailey' and the ditch around the S side of the combined motte and inner ward, connecting with the river cliff, describes a neat semi-circle as if enclosing a cohesive whole. This ditch is massive, up to 4.1 m deep externally and up to 8.2 m below the inner rampart of the inner ward. The impression is that it initially enclosed a ringwork, and that the motte was a later insertion on the W side of it. The outer bailey, less strong than the inner, is bounded by a bank, up to 1.4 m high internally, and outer ditch, up to 2.2 m deep externally. Contained within the inner ward are the turf covered remains of a tower (see NY 47 SW 6).
The castle is first mentioned in 1174 and was taken and destroyed in 1346 to be superceded by the tower; it seems likely that it was never rebuilt in stone (7a-7b).”
The
situation of Liddel Strength – between the Liddel and the Esk – strongly
suggests that Myrddin and his “lord” Gwenddolau were at the northern boundary
of what had been, during the Roman period, Carvetti territory. To the north of the Liddel lay the ancient
tribal territory of the Selgovae.
Early Welsh
Tradition Versus Jocelyn’s Life of Kentigern: A Second Death for Myrddin and a
Christian Burial
For
years now, I’ve been unable to reconcile what I perceive to be two separate
strands in the early Myrddin (= Merlin) tradition. The first concerns the
death of a warrior or chieftain (or god; see my discussion of Lugh below) named
Llallogan in a battle at Arderydd/Arthuret and his wandering the woods as a
disembodied spirit, his spectral state being misunderstood by a later age as a
state of madness. This version of the story is implicit in the early
Welsh sources. The second story is from the Life of St. Kentigern.
There Myrddin the madman wanders the woods until he eventually meets his
triple-sacrificial death at the hands of Meldred’s shepherds at Drumelzier on
the Tweed.
Drumelzier
was known anciently as Dunmeller, the ‘oppidum Dunmeller’ of the Life of St.
Kentigern. The best modern philologists can do with the name, in its
various early spellings, is din-, ‘fort’, plus –medal- plus –wir, plural of
wur, cf. W. medalwyr, ‘reapers’, in the metaphorical sense of warriors.
The
name Meldred appears to be an anachronism, as Meldredus is a known form of the
much later historical Maldred, sometimes styled son of Crinan the Thane. It used to be accepted that this Crinan was to
be identified with Crinan the lay abbot of Dunkeld, the ‘Fort of the
Caledonians.” But much doubt has been cast upon this identification by
recent scholars. See, for example, the discussion of the problem in
“Saints’ Cults in the Celtic World” (by Steve Boardman, John Reuben Davies and
Eila Williamson, Boydell Press, 2013).
According
to Alex Woolf at the University of St. Andrews,
“All
we really know about him [Maldred] comes from the text known as De obsessione
Dunelmensis which simply says that a daughter of Earl Uhtred married a certain
Maldred son if Crinan the thegn, a very rich man, by whom she gave birth to
Cospatric. That Cospatric was the Earl of Northumbria just after the
Norman conquest. We know nothing about the location of Maldred or his father
unless we assume the father is Crinan of Dunkeld.
There
was a Gospatric who was Lord of Allerdale c. 1060, and a Dolphin (possibly
brother of Gospatric) who controlled Carlisle c. 1090. The Earl of Northumbria
c. 1070 was Gospatric son of Maldred. The people who make Maldred Lord of
Allerdale and Carlise presume the Gospatric(s) mentioned in relation to them
was Gospatric son of Maldred (which is possible but not certain), and they
are assuming he inherited his position. This latter seems less likely since De
Obsessione tells us that Gospatric son of Maldred's claim to high status, and
ultimately the earldom, was through his mother not his father. Dolphin being in
Carlisle is mentioned only once in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in no other
source. Scottish charters of the early twelfth century are sometimes witnessed
by some one described as 'Gospatric brother of Dolphin.
Gospatric
son of Maldred was the Earl of Northumbria who fled to Scotland. His descendants eventually became earls of
Dunbar, but we don’t know if he is the same person as Gospatric of Allerdale.”
It
is possible Meldred/Maldred was placed at Drumelzier because of the presence
there of Thane’s Castle (now Tinnis Castle). Alternately, Meldred may
have been placed at Dunmeller merely as a sort of folk etymology, with the
place-name being fancifully derived from the personal name. Alan James believes
this to be a very real possibility. I
would also mention that Jocelyn, who wrote Kentigern’s Life, was based at
Furness in Cumbria, so there may have been a political element to his choosing
Maldred for the Lailoken story.
The
etymology of the name Maldred is unknown.
Alex Woolf tentatively offers an English garbling of the Irish Mael
Doraid. Oliver Padel thinks the first
element should be from British *Maglo-, ‘prince, lord, ruler.’ I once proposed Mael + drud for ‘Bold
Prince’, although I noted that the Irish cognate to Welsh drud, druth, meant
“fool”, and that this reminded us of Jocelyn calling Lailoken ‘homo fatuus’,
“foolish man.” But an even more interesting
possibility would be to derive the name from Mael + derydd – the very same
derydd we find in the Arfderydd battle name.
This would mean something like “Ardent/Fierce Prince.” It has been noted
by other authorities that Jocelyn does not name the battle.
Attempts
have been made to find Myrddin’s grave not at the Drumelzier in Tweeddale, but at
the similarly named place near Dunipace in Stirlingshire. The most
elaborate argument for placing Myrddin’s death-place at the Drumelzier on the
Carron has been produced by Adam Ardrey his his book FINDING MERLIN: THE TRUTH
BEHIND THE LEGEND. Mr. Ardrey’s Website may be found here:
http://finding-merlin.com/.
It
is true that this second Drumelzier appears to be an ancient name. To
quote from Zoe Ellis, Archives Assistant with the Falkirk Community Trust
(personal correspondence):
“Drumelzier, also known as Drumalzier, is an ancient name. It appears on the first series Ordnance Survey map (published in 1865) as Drimallier, and was still called Drimallier on a 1951 OS map. It also appears on Roy’s military survey map of Scotland done in the 1750s as Drumalzierst.
“Drumelzier, also known as Drumalzier, is an ancient name. It appears on the first series Ordnance Survey map (published in 1865) as Drimallier, and was still called Drimallier on a 1951 OS map. It also appears on Roy’s military survey map of Scotland done in the 1750s as Drumalzierst.
In
the Archives we have a copy of a book called “The Place Names of Falkirk and
East Stirlingshire” by John Reid. This book notes that the earliest
written references to Drumelzier (from 1608) refer to it as
“Drummelzarislandis” or Drumelzier’s-lands, and the book therefore suggests
that the lands may have had the same name as their owner. It doesn’t
speculate further on the derivation of the name itself.”
The
reason for looking at this second Drumelzier is, primarily, because Myrddin’s
grave as described in Tweeddale cannot now be found. CANMORE nicely
summarizes the problem of this missing grave:
"’Merlin's
Grave’ (Site): According to legend which is at least as old as the 15th
century, the wizard Merlin was buried 200 yds NNW of Drumelzier Church, on the
level haugh close to the right bank of the River Tweed. No structural remains
are now to be seen, or have ever been recorded, at the place in question, but
it is possible that the tradition may have been originated from the discovery
of a Bronze Age cist.
RCAHMS
1967, visited 1956.
There
is nothing to be seen at this site which lies in a field. The tradition still
survives.
Visited
by OS(IA) 11 August 1972.”
The
idea, then, is that one of the Hills of Dunipace was a barrow mound or had a
grave incorporated into it, and that the Tweeddale Drumelzier is simply the
wrong one. I’ve noted before that St. Ninian, whose establishment is close to
Plean, is often brought into connection with Myrddin because of the former’s
association with St. Martin. Might there
be something to the Dunipace connection?
No. The legend that places Merlin’s grave on the
river is simply wrong. The earliest account
of where he was buried is the Life of St. Kentigern, and there we are plainly
told by Merlin himself that
“I
want you to bury me in the eastern part of the city in the churchyard, where
the faithful are interred, not far from the green chapel where the brook
Pausayl [now the Drumelzier Burn] flows into the River Tweed…”
The
‘green chapel’ here, of course, is another matter and will be discussed in more
detail below. It could be a description
of a barrow mound or cairn (cf. the Green Chapel in “Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight”) which has been eroded away by the river over the past centuries. But the important thing to note is that we
are not told Merlin was buried in the green chapel. He is said to have been buried in the
churchyard.
The
present Drumelzier Kirk is not very old, but it probably stood upon the spot of
an earlier, more ancient establishment. Whether we can identify the modern
churchyard with the ancient one is not something that can ever be determined.
But
why Drumelzier at all? If I am right and
the sacrifice of Merlin at the hands of Meldred’s shepherds is merely a story
invented to both Christianize him and provide him with a death-tale (the actual
nature of his madness being
misunderstood), why was this location on the Tweed chosen?
I’m
convinced the answers lies in a relocation.
In Liddesdale, at Newcastleton, the Tweeden Burn empties into the Liddel
Water.
Early
forms of this stream-name include Tueeden (Blaeu/Pont map 1654), Tweden (1541,
1580), Tweden (1583), Tueden (1599), Twyden (1841).
According
to Alan James, this stream-name appears to represent Tweed + a diminutive
Brittonic –in suffix, and this
“… pushes the name back to the 12th century or earlier, possibly a lot earlier, and implies the stream was called Tweed or something similar before that.”
Given
that Myrddin/Llallogan fought at Arthuret where the Liddel and the Esk meet,
and Meldred/Maldred may have been the lord of Cumbria, I would identify as the
proper death-place of our “madman” the Tweeden Burn. This notion is made all the more attractive
by the presence at Old Castleton, a bit further up the Liddel, of a very early
St. Martin’s Church, quite possibly an establishment originating from Whithorn. I have suggested elsewhere that Myrddin was
either identified with St. Martin or replaced by the saint in several locations
in Lowland Scotland.
If
I’m right and the Tweeden Burn is the place where Myrddin underwent his triple
sacrifice, then the churchyard he was buried in must be that of St. Martin’s at
Old Castleton. Note that there is no St. Martin or St. Ninian connection to
Drumelzier.
However,
we have forgotten about the Powsail Burn at Drumelzier. This place-name is from
*pol-, ‘pool’, plus the word for ‘willow.’
Not coincidentally, there is a Willow Pool at the confluence of the
Liddel Water and the Esk. This is also
the location of the Liddel Strength fort, sometimes also referred to in the
sources as the Moat of Liddel (not to be confused with the castle at Old
Castleton in Liddesdale).
For years now I have accepted the most recent translation 'green chapel' for the edifice that supposedly stands near where Myrddin/Merlin is buried. However, knowing as I do all too well the freedom translators can take when rendering medieval Latin, I went to the source and checked it out myself.
For years now I have accepted the most recent translation 'green chapel' for the edifice that supposedly stands near where Myrddin/Merlin is buried. However, knowing as I do all too well the freedom translators can take when rendering medieval Latin, I went to the source and checked it out myself.
The
most recent version of the relevant passage drawn from the Vita Kentigern was
done by a Zacharias P. Thundy and is found in Peter Goodrich's The Romance of
Merlin. It reads:
“Lailoken
said, There is something I very much desire; you can easily grant me that
besides my freedom. I want you to bury me in the eastern part of the city in
the churchyard, where the faithful are interred, not far from the green chapel
where the brook Pausayl flows into the River Tweed, which, indeed, will take
place in a few days after my triple death.”
The
actual Latin text is as follows:
Respondit
Lailoken. vnum valde dabile postulo. libertate non pretermissa. videlicet vt
tradas corpus meum sepulture, ad partem huius oppidi orientalem. in loco
funeri. fidelis defuncti competenciore, haut longe a cespite. vbi torrens
Passales in flumen descendit Tuedense. Futurum est enim post paucos dies, trina
nece me morit[urum].
What
I wanted to know was simply this: where is the 'green chapel' in this Latin?
My
understanding of cespite is that is means 'grassy ground, grass, earth, sod,
turf, altar/rampart/mound of sod/turf/earth. It does not mean 'chapel'. It, in
fact, must mean a mound of grassy earth, i.e. a barrow mound. So there is no
poetic description here of a barrow mound, no 'green chapel' - the Latin is
quite specific.
Cespite
is from caespes, turf, sod, "used for altars, mounds (of tombs), for
covering cottages, huts, etc."
In
brief, a cespite as a grassy mound COULD mean a grave mound. But we also need
to bear in mind that the word moat, which we now think of as a defensive ditch,
often filled with water, is from French via Middle English and during the
medieval period it meant MOUND. It was the mound made by scooping dirt out of the
surrounding ditch and flinging it up into a gigantic pile, upon which the
castle would then be built.
W.F.
Skene, in the 1800s, spoke with the farmer at 'Upper Moat', now Highmoat farm.
This is located immediately SW of Liddel Strength, itself often described with
the word mote or motte. Willow Pool ( = the exact meaning of the Powsail in
Tweeddale) is right here at Highmoat. The farmer told Skene there was a local
tradition of Romans and Picts (!) being slain in a great battle and buried in
the orchard of Highmoat farm.
The
Tweeden is a major tributary of the Liddel, but it is the Liddel that joins the
Willow Pool at the Liddel Strength fortress.
In
other words, as I've surmised all along, Myrddin did not survive the Arderydd
battle. His madness is a poetic way of describing a post-death spectral state.
This state was either not approved of by Christians or misunderstood. In any
case, they had to invent a death for him subsequent to the battle and his
supposed madness, and then transferred him to what would become, several
centuries hence, the church of Liddel or St. Martin at nearby Canonbie. Yet the
mode of his death - the triple sacrifice - brands him as a sacred Lleu warrior.
Myrddin
the 'specter-man', whose name is perhaps found as Gwrrith (same meaning) in the
name Arthuret/Ardd-(G)wrrith, is buried at Highmoat farm in Cumbria. It is his
spirit that frequents Cairn Avel, his magical Otherworld apple tree, or Tinto
Hill with its enormous summit burial cairn. He is doubtless wandering still in
the remaining wilds and wastes of the Scottish Lowlands.
The Story of the
Stag: a Seasonal Myth?
Geoffrey
of Monmouth, in his ‘Life of Merlin’, tells a very strange tale about Merlin
and stags:
Merlin
reads the heavens to learn that his wife Guendoloena (a manufactured feminine
form of the personified place-name Gwenddolau) is ready to take another husband
in his absence. He seems resigned to
this fact, and indeed seems to approve of the match: “Yet I bear no grudge.” He decides to go to her and give his permission
for the marriage to take place, and to bring to her the present he promised her
when he left. He then sets off through
the woods and clearings, gathering a herd of stags single file, as well as does
and she-goats. He seats himself on a
stag and drives his lines of animals before him. He arrives thus at the scene of the wedding
and with his stags shouts from the gates for Guendoloena to come out and view
her presents. She is astonished that so
many wild animals could be brought together and controlled by one man
alone. The bridegroom is standing at a
high window, and makes the mistake of laughing at Merlin astride his
stag-steed. Merlin wrenches off the
horns off the stag he is mounted upon, whirls them around and throws them at
the bridegroom. The bridegroom’s head is
crushed in and he dies. Then Merlin digs
his heels into his mount and it races back towards the woods.
Now,
if this story evolved from genuine tradition, the army of stags and does in all
likelihood represents a host of Carvetii warriors, as the Carvetii was the
‘Stag/Deer tribe’. According to Nicholas
Higham and Barri Jones’ The Carvetii (1991), the original territory of the
Carvetii of Cumbria probably extended north and west through the Solway
Mosses. This area includes Arthuret. Merlin as leader of the Carvetii would make
sense, given what we know about the other combatants at the Battle of Arderydd.
The
killing of Guendoloena’s husband with Myrddin’s stag horn has strong mythic
overtones, however. This is especially true
as the red deer rut in Cumbria (when stags fight each other for possession of
females) reaches its climax in October, and we can be fairly certain, then,
that the new chieftain of Arderydd was slain on November 1 or Samhain, the end
of the Celtic summer half-year and the beginning of the winter half-year.
After
Myrddin kills his rival at Arderydd, he is caught while attempting to flee,
bound and handed over to his sister, Ganieda (= Gwenddydd, cf. Goleuddydd; I
will propose below that both of these are Welsh names that came to be
associated with the Roman Diana Lucina the moon goddess). Geoffrey makes
Ganieda the wife of Rhydderch of Cumbria (not Strathclyde, as was historically
accurate). Myrddin is more or less
forced to spend some time in human society, but quickly chafes of this and demands
to return to his woods. His sister
advises him to wait until the ‘white winter frosts’, soon to be upon the land,
have abated. But he rejects her petition
and hurries off to the wild. Ganieda
builds him a house where he lives during the winter. During the summer he roams the woods in his
role as wild man.
Reading
this strictly as seasonal myth, we have Myrddin as the sun god of the winter
half-year, which for the Celts stretched from November 1 to May 1 (Beltaine). The second husband of Guendoloena, killed on
November 1, would be the god of the summer half-year, from May 1 to November
1. The live god manifests himself as the
one who is living with the goddess in her house. The dead god is envisioned as roaming about
in the wild as a specter. Both gods are
aspects of the same god, of course, so from story to story their roles might
change.
If
I’m interpreting this right, a whole new dimension is added to the motif of
Myrddin’s madness. Yes, madness is a
poetic metaphor for a spectral death-state.
However, this madness is not a permanent condition. Seasonal rebirth means an end to the
madness/spectral existence. At that
point in time, one’s ‘twin’ or solar double dies and becomes the ‘madman of the
wood’.
It
may be that this seasonal slaying and rebirth cycle, the becoming alternately
mad and sane as mythopoeic language for states of life and death, better explains how Myrddin
could perish at the first Arderydd battle, then suddenly reappear later to kill
his successor. It would also help
explain the triple sacrificial execution meted out to him by Meldred’s
shepherds, something that happened AFTER his death at Arderydd.
Such
an interpretation of Myrddin’s madness again brings him more into the realm of
the divine than the human. For instance,
in Arthurian romance, Lancelot of the Lake, who is none other than the god Lugh
Hard-hand, himself goes mad.
As
it happens, however, we can actually show with a fair degree of certainly that
the god Lleu also took the form of a stag!
In the Mabinogion tale 'Math son of Mathonwy', Lleu's solar twin and
rival for the favor of the goddess Blodewedd, Gronw, is depicted as hunting a
stag. Blodewedd first sees Gronw during
this hunt. The animal is slain at the
river Cynfael. Later in the story, Gronw
slays Lleu. Once the latter is
resurrected from spectral eagle form by Gwydion, he slays Gronw on the shore of
the same river. In mythological
language, then, the killing of the stag is a foreshadowing of the killing of
Lleu and it is likely Lleu himself could appear in stag form.
In
the next chapter, we will see that the Carvetii not only worshipped a stag god,
but also Lleu.
Gwenddydd, Sister
of Myrddin
To
be honest, this sister of Myrddin has given me fits. Why?
Because we know so precious little about her outside of Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s fiction.
According
to Welsh specialists, her name means ‘White Day’ (gwen is the feminine of gwyn,
'white, light, shining, bright, fair'). Geoffrey implies she is the planet and
goddess Venus, and that identification has been established in Welsh
tradition. But I’ve also pointed out
that she bears a distinct resemblance to the goddess Goleuddydd, “Light or
Brightness of Day”, who is married to Cilydd, son of Celyddon Wledig, an eponym
for the Celyddon or Caledonian Wood of Myrddin.
I
have in the past identified her with the Roman Diana Lucina, as well as with
the late folklore figure Kate (= Hekate) nicNiven, ‘daughter of [the Irish goddess]
Nemhain’. As such she was plainly a
lunar goddess, not Venus.
Both
Gwenddydd and the later Arthurian romance Niviane (and variants), i.e. Nemhain,
build underworld grave-houses, perhaps with surrounding stone circles for
observation of the planets, for Myrddin.
Granted, that Gwenddydd did so would seem to rely on the untrustworthy
testimony of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Where
is Gwenddydd’s house and its adjoining observatory, built for Merlin/Myrddin?
Well,
Ryderch (Rodarch) is called by Geoffrey of Monmouth the king of Cumbria, not
Strathclyde. This may be a reflection of
Carruthers and Carrutherstown in SE Dumfriesshire. The former is near the
Caerlaverock or Lark’s Nest said to be the cause of the Arderydd battle. Both are also near ancient settlements and
hill-forts, as well as the various Mabon place-names found here. Cair Riderc or Fort of Rhydderch is the
origin of the family name lying at the root of these town names. At Carruthers
is the Birrens Hill settlement, while between the two towns is the mighty
Burnswark fort and Roman camp.
Gwenddydd
is represented as the sister of Rodarch.
If the court of this particular relocated Rhydderch is not to be found
in Strathclyde, but here near the border with Cumbria, can we figure out where
Merlin’s house and observatory are located?
We
are fortunate in possessing an early 14th century elegy by Gwilym Ddu that says
Myrddin descended from the tribe of Meirchiaun.
This is Meirchiaun Gul of the
North, whom I’ve suggested (in my book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY) may belong to the
area of Maughanby (earlier ‘Meirchiaun’s By’) in Cumbria, hard by the great
Long Meg and Her Daughters stone circle, and only a few miles from the Voreda
Roman fort at Old Penrith. This is in
the heartland of the ancient Carvetii kingdom.
Meg
is a common nickname for Margaret, and the person in question is said to be a
17th century witch, Meg of Meldon. I
have wondered whether ‘Meg’ could be a late substitution for a name similar to
that of the ancient Irish goddess Macha, i.e. Imona the horse goddess (see
Chapter 6). Voreda can be compared with
Welsh gorwydd, ‘horse’, and according to philologist Kenneth Jackson means
‘Horse stream’.
While
Meirchiaun is a Welsh form of the Roman name Marcianus, it may well have been
linked to the Welsh plural for horse, viz. meirch. The son of Meirchiaun was Cynfarch of the
Mote of Mark hill-fort in Dumfries. The
name Cynfarch means ‘chief horse’ (cf. Irish conn for Cyn-/*Cuno- in this context).
A
possible association of Long Meg and Her Daughters with Myrddin is interesting,
given the circle’s description (from English Heritage’s Pastscape Website):
“A stone circle located north of Little
Salkeld and east of the River Eden. One of the largest extant stone circles in
England, the monument currently comprises 69 large stones, some standing and
some fallen, arranged in a flattened oval circa 110 metres by 93 metres. There
are two apparent entrances, one to the southwest and the other to the
northwest. According to Barnatt, the stones were set in a low bank visible intermittently
around the site's circumference except to the north. The enclosure's northern
side is "flattened", ie straight rather than curved. Air photography
has demonstrated the presence of a large cropmark enclosure (NY 53 NE 21) on
this side of the stone circle, and it appears that the stones were here
following the line of the enclosure ditch - at least 10 of the stone appear to
have stood on the outer lip of the enclosure ditch (which must therefore be
earlier than the stone circle). The stone circle's northwest entrance appears
to face directly into the entrance of the enclosure. To the southwest of the
stone circle, circa 22.5 metres from the southwestern entrance, is a single
outlier, an upright red sandstone block some 3.65 metres high known as Long
Meg. One face of this boulder is covered with rock art, comprising linear
grooves, concentric arcs, spirals, cup marks and grooves. Not all appear
finished, and there is some modern graffiti. When viewed from the centre of the
circle, Long Meg marks the direction of the midwinter sunset. It has been
suggested that two of the stones in the circle's northern arc also feature
possible spiral designs. Dating is problematic. No excavations are known to
have been undertaken at the site, and a broad later Neolithic/Early Bronze Age
date would probably encompass both stone circle and rock art. The enclosure NY
53 NE 21 is equally undated, but probably belongs to the same broad time-span.
Like
many stone circles, Long Meg and Her Daughters have had a slightly troubled
history. A narrow road runs roughly north-south across the eastern half of the
circle, and a short distance to the west of this is the line of a former wall.
Traces of ridge and furrow are also evident within the circle. In 1599 Camden
noted 77 stones, compared to the 69 currently known. William Stukeley
subsequently recorded that several stones had been broken up shortly before he
visited in 1725. Subsequent accounts also mention the removal and,
occasionally, the replacement of stones. Camden also referred to two
"heaps of stone" within the circle. These have been regarded as
possible burial mounds, although a later edition of Camden's
"Britannia" referred to them as field clearance. In the later 17th
century, Aubrey referred to "giants bones, and body" being found
within the circle, although there is no confirmation from other sources. Note
that Stukeley also referred to a second, smaller circle to the southwest (NY 53
NE 12) of which no trace now remains. (13-19)”
This
circle sounds suspiciously like the house of seventy doors and as many windows
Myrddin asks his sister Ganieda (Gwenddydd; see below) to build for him in the
Vita Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth. We
can visualize the doors as the stone uprights of the circle, and the opens
spaces between those uprights as the windows.
Of course, as Merlin was intimately associated with Stonehenge, it may
be that this house of 70 doors and windows is a reference to the latter
monument. Just as possible is Myrddin’s
presence first at Long Meg and Her Daughters, with this stone circle being
replaced in folk or literary tradition by the one on Salisbury Plain.
Modern
philologists as well as Romans (see Carin M.C. Green’s “Roman Religion and the
Cult of Diana at Aricea”, Cambridge University Press, 2007) derive Diana’s name
from the same root found in Latin dies, ‘day’, and Diana (like Juno and Hekate)
was given the bynames of Lucina, ‘the light-bringing’ or ‘bringing to light’
(lucina being, ultimately, from L. lux) and Lucifera, ‘light-bringer’. The Vulgate and Post-Vulgate either associate
the Lady of the Lake with Diana, or literally
identify the two goddesses. This identification
came about because the goddess was also Diana Nemorensis, whose shrine was in a
wood on Lake Nemi.
Her Greek counterpart Artemis was called Limnaie/Limnaea, ‘Of the Lake’.
Cicero,
De Natura Deorum 2. 27 (trans. Rackham) (Roman rhetorician C1st B.C.) :
“The
name Apollo is Greek; they say that he is the Sun, and Diana [Artemis] they
identify with the Moon . . . the name Luna is derived from lucere ‘to shine’;
for it is the same word as Lucina, and therefore in our country Juno Lucina is
invoked in childbirth, as is Diana in her manifestation as Lucifera (the
light-bringer) among the Greeks. She is also called Diana Omnivaga
(wide-wandering), not from her hunting, but because she is counted as one of
the seven planets or ‘wanderers’ (vagary). She was called Diana because she
made a sort of Day (Dia) in the night-time. She is invoked to assist at the
birth of children, because the period of gestation is either occasionally
seven, or more usually nine, lunar revolutions, and these are called menses
(months), because they cover measured (mensa) spaces.”
Goleuddydd
as wife of the son of Celyddon, who gives birth to Culhwch, the ‘Lean Pig’, may
be an educated reference to the Greek Artemis (= Roman Diana), who sent the
Calydonian Boar. One of the primary
sub-plots of “Culhwch and Olwen”, of course, is the hunt of the monstrous boar
Twrch Trwyth.
It
is also worth noting that when Goleuddydd became pregnant she went “gwyll”,
i.e. gwyllt, usually defined as “mad”, but more accurately as “wild” (see
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru for gwyllt/gwyll, ‘wild, living in a natural or
primitive state, uncivilized, savage; demented, raving, frantic, mad), and wandered
in uninhabited places. This is also a
hallmark of Artemis/Diana the Huntress, who lived in the wilderness. Madness is
typically associated with the moon.
Evidence
for Diana in Britain
during the Roman period can be found in the Roman Inscriptions of Britain (see
Guy de la Bedoyere site at
romanbritain.freeserve.co.uk/Rbgods.htm):
“Diana
Auchendavy:
altar by M. Cocceius Firmus, centurion of II Augusta. RIB 2174 (with Apollo)
Bath: altar by Vettius B[e]nignus,
lib(ertus). RIB 138
Caerleon:
slab recording restoration of a temple of Diana by T. Flavius Postumius
[V]arus, senator and (legionary) legate, probably mid-third century if this is
the man who was praefectus urbi in Rome in 271 (see RIB). RIB 316
Corbridge:
altar by N[...]. RIB 1126
Risingham:
altar by Aelia Timo. RIB 1209
Diana
Regina
Newstead:
altar by G. Arrius Domitianus, centurion of XX Valeria Victrix. RIB 2122 (see
this man again at Newstead under Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Silvanus)”
But
if Gwenddydd was indentified with Diana Lucina, why is she located in the far
North, in or adjacent to the great Caledonian Wood? Obviously, because Nemorensis (see above) has
as its root nemus, ‘(sacred) grove’, and so Diana was the goddess of the
wood. Coed Celyddon or the ‘Wood of
Celyddon’ was thus a natural place to find the moon goddess.
This
does NOT mean that we must allow for Gwenddydd being merely a story-teller’s
creation. There may certainly have been
a purely Celtic moon goddess who was syncretized with the Roman Diana and who
was later brought into connection withn Gwenddydd.
Scottish
folk beliefs may help us further flesh out the Gwenddydd of the Myrddin
tradition. On the Isle of Lewis,
tradition records that it is the cailleach who gives birth to the moon as it
rises between her knees.
The
phenomenon of the birth of the moon from the cailleach is described in more
detail in Jules Cashford’s “The Moon: Myth and Image”, Basic Books, 2003:
“Because
of the latitude of Callanish, the path of the moon at the maximum southern
declination skims two ranges of hills, one of which (the south-east) has the
appearance of a woman lying upon two pillows.
Present-day Gaelic-speaking people call her Cailleach na Mointeach, which
means ‘Old Woman of the Moors’, and English-speaking people call her ‘Sleeping
Beauty’. The Moon appear from the Sleeping
Beauty when it rises at the point of its maximum southern declination
(appearing from her knees at one place and from her neck at another), and then,
shortly after setting and disappearing from view, it rises again from a
V-shaped valley in the south-western range of hills, as though reborn.”
The
cailleach is associated with many mountains in Highland
Scotland. In fact, many are named FOR HER.
The
moon itself is identified in Scottish lore with Nicnevin, ‘Daughter of
Nemhain’. Sir Walter Scott, in his “Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
(1831)” describes Nicnevin as follows:
“…a
gigantic and malignant female, the Hecate of this mythology, who rode on the
storm and marshalled the rambling host of wanderers under her grim banner. This
hag (in all respects the reverse of the Mab or Titania of the Celtic creed) was
called Nicneven in that later system which blended the faith of the Celts and
of the Goths on this subject. The great Scottish poet Dunbar has made a
spirited description of this Hecate riding at the head of witches and good
neighbours (fairies, namely), sorceresses and elves, indifferently, upon the
ghostly eve of All-Hallow Mass. In Italy we hear of the hags arraying
themselves under the orders of Diana (in her triple character of Hecate,
doubtless) and Herodias, who were the joint leaders of their choir, But we
return to the more simple fairy belief, as entertained by the Celts before they
were conquered by the Saxons.”
In
John Koch’s ‘Celtic Culture’, we are told:
“The
Queen of the Fairies in Scotland, sometimes known as the queen of the witches,
was Neven or NicNeven, a name Henderson and Cowan derive from Neamhain, OIr
Nemain, a war goddess… variations on this name are found all over Scotland…”
Based
of the character of the goddess and the implied meanings of her name when used
as a common noun, the most likely derivation is as follows:
“OIr
neim ‘poison’ (Goth niman ‘take’, etc).
n-stem, Mod. Ir. neimh ‘poison’.
Proto-Celtic *nemen from older *nemn, from PIE root *nem ‘to allot’.
From
the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language:
nemain
Nemain
Emain anemain ineamhain némainn
Keywords:
war-goddess; battle-fury; warlike; frenzy; strife; murder; malice
However,
both noted Celtic linguist Professor Ranko Matosovic and Dr. Simon Rodway of
the University of Wales prefer deriving Nemhain's name from OIr nem, gen nime
'heaven (Lat nemus, nemoris), Old Irish
nem 'holy, heaven' is cognate with Gaul. nemeton, Lat nemus, etc. (from PCelt.
*nemo-).
If
Nemhain's name can be related to both Diana Nemorensis and the Celtic Nemeton,
then Nemhain and her lunar daughter may simply have been mother-daughter
aspects of the moon. Gwenddydd and the
Lady of the Lake would be one and the same deity.
At
least one aspect of the moon goddess - that of the daughter - may be present at
what is perhaps the most ancient extant pagan shrine in all of Europe. I'm
referring to the famous Tigh na Cailliche or Taigh nam Bodach on Glen Lyon in Highland Scotland.
According
to the Loch Lyon History Society Website:
“Tucked
away in Gleann Cailliche, a hidden glen of boggy heath and mist, is the ancient
shrine of Tigh nam Bodach. The shrine is made up of a modest stone structure
that houses a family of bell shaped water stones from the river bed of the Lyon. The largest represents the Cailleach (old woman),
accompanied by the Bodach (old man) AND THEIR DAUGHTER [OR MAIDEN], NIGHEAN.
The Tigh nam Bodach is recognized as the oldest uninterrupted pagan ritual in Britain, some
say in all of Europe. For centuries the family
of stones have been taken out of their house every spring and facing down the
Glen. At the beginning of November they are carefully shut back up inside their
house, where they shelter through the winter. The ritual coincides with the two
great Celtic fire festivals, Beltane and Samhain, and once echoed the annual
migrations of the Highland cattle to and from
the summer shielings. The shielings may be long abandoned, but the practice of
tending to the stones is still observed to this day."
To
this description may be added the following from CANMORE
“’Tigh
na Cailliche’ (A L F Rivet, 1961) or ‘Taigh-nam- Bodach’ (A C Thomas and A
Ross) is a simple pagan shrine. Shielings in the area were in use until after
1782 and the inhabitants regularly thatched it. Within there were twelve stones
resembling human beings, perhaps associated with St Meuran and his eleven
disciples (D Campbell 1888). The biennial rethatching of the shrine continued
down to the present century and is paralleled by early traditions of ritual at
a temple in France (A Ross 1967). ‘Taigh-nam-Bodach’ is a small stone-built
structure, roughly rectangular and measuring 2.0m x 1.3m with walls 0.4m high,
with an entrance to the east, and roughly roofed with stone slabs. Three of the
‘figures’ are at the entrance and three other possible figures are among the
stones of the roof. These figures are pieces of sandstone weathered into a
rough resemblance to human figures. There are no local traditions regarding
their origin but Mr Bissett (gamekeeper) still puts the figures inside the hut
in the winter and takes them out in the spring. This action has vague
associations with good weather (Scots Mag 1979). Two possible shielings are
visible to the east and north-east but they are too ruinous for certain
identification. Visited by OS (EG) 12 July 1962 Not visited. Access was refused due to
deer-shooting, but the staff in the Meggernie Estate Office state that the
shrine is unchanged. Visited by OS (RD) 9 September 1969."
Anne
Ross (Pagan Celtic Britain, p. 66) tells us:
“A
simple small stone ‘shrine’ still in existence in Glenlyon, Perthshire, is
illustrative of the difficulty of identifying such humble structures with ritual
practice unless, as in the case of this building, popular traditions retain a
memory of some earlier ritual. The
biennial thatching and unthatching of this shrine, which continued down to the
present century may find parallels in such early traditions as the ritual
annual roofing and unroofing of a temple by the women of an island community
near the mouth of the Loire."
The
best account of the House of the Cailleach and its ritual was sent to me by
Gillean Ford of the Killin Heritage Society.
This is from “Highland Perthshire” by Duncan Fraser (1969):
“Taigh-nam-Bodach,
Gleann Cailliche… There were customs and ceremonies associated with the month
of May. The story of the Old Woman’s Glen follows on from customs such as the
Beltane ceremony and the one where cattle were driven through two fires to
chase the devil out of the beasts. These precautions, however, were not quite
enough, if the migration later that month was up Glen Lyon to the fertile
grasslands of famed Glen Cailliche, the Old Woman’s Glen, that branches west
from Glen Meran. It is quite a small glen. From where the Old Woman’s Burn
rises, fully two thousand feet up in the Old Woman’s Marsh between Ben
Achaladair and Ben a’ Chuirn, on the boundary of Argyllshire, it is scarcely
two and a half miles long. But there is magic in it. In the old days, when folk
used the shieling each year, no one had any doubt why it got the name of the
Old Woman. Others grew old and died, but she seemed blessed with remembered. People showed something more than just an
ordinary respect for her years. At the beginning of May, when the advance party
arrived to repair the huts and get the shieling ready for the summer invasion,
no one would have dreamt of doing anything else, until first they had thatched
her little house, the Taigh-nam-Bodach. And when October arrived and time to
leave the shieling for another year, the very last thing they did was to remove
the thatch from her roof and carefully seal up every cranny with moss, so that
when sweeping down the glen and the snow rose high over the little house, she
would be snug and safe inside — with her husband and family. People were
superstitious about the old lady. All through the summer months she sat outside
her cottage, like a matriarch with her family around her, and everyone knew
that as long as her house was thatched and she was at the door it would be a
good summer for everyone at the Glen Cailliche shieling. But it would have been
madness not to place the thatching of her cottage first in the list of priorities.
When she was displeased, there was nothing but bad weather, bad crops, and
disease among the cattle, all through the summer months. It was almost uncanny
how it happened. So each spring and autumn the ritual continued, year after
year. When the tenants of Meggernie ceased to use the Cailliche shieling, it
was taken over by Chesthill – and a long journey it was – two dozen miles from
Chesthill. But still the old lady was
there and still her house was thatched each spring and unthatched each autumn.
Then the pattern of Highland farming began to
change towards the end of the eighteenth century. Blackface sheep were brought
from the Southern Uplands to take over the hills and the old happy days of the
pastoral life gave way to a loneliness that the landlords found infinitely more
rewarding. The cow-herds and the dairymaids could always find a job in the
dusty Lowland cotton mills or across the sea in Canada. Thousands of cottages fell
into ruins after the big sheep came and even the Cailliche’s house had to do
without its annual thatching. But she was still there. She is there to this day
with her family. They still live in the Taigh-nam-Bodach, though now it is
stone roofed instead of thatched. Any summer’s day you can see it there, with
the white stones that look from a distance like seagulls on top, and you can
see the Cailliche herself at the door with her family. She has five children
with her at present. Once every hundred years or so, she bears another. Though
the baby of the family is still very small, folk are sure it is growing – that
one day it will be as big as any of the others. And that is surprising, for
they are all of stone, an extraordinarily heavy water-worn stone. They have a
weird dumb-bell shape that is said to be found only in one small part of the
Cailliche burn. The old lady herself is
the biggest of them all. She is about eighteen inches tall and in certain
lights you could swear she takes on human features. One of the duties of the
shepherd on that beat is to see that the family is still brought out in the
late spring and put away again for the winter, and the house carefully sealed
up. Odd things, they say, are still happening, when one is foolish enough to
tamper with her or her family. There is no doubt that the Cailliche has been there
a long time-so long that even four centuries ago, when first we hear of this
glen, it already bore her circular forts or even further to the Bronze Age
people."
Gillean
Ford’s own personal letter to me on the subject of the Cailleach’s house is
also worth presenting here, as she adds some keen insights into the nature of
the shrine:
“Whilst
the KHS [Killin Heritage Society] has long been regarded as “the protector” of
the stones it is in a very unofficial capacity and stems from the time when the
land owner had links with the Society. The land has changed ownership several
times since then and whilst the Society has always tried to ensure that the
tradition of taking the stones out in May and securing them once again in
“their house” in October continues, we “protect” in a superficial form only. As
do other interested parties in and around Glen Lyon. There has been some recent
controversy in the area, due to the construction of a small hydro-electric
scheme that is taking place close to the site of Taigh Nam Bodach. As to the
age – who knows? None of us have been on this planet long enough to be able to
answer that. It is recognised as the oldest pagan ritual in Britain, if not
Europe. For centuries the family of stones
have been taken out every Spring and then at the end of October/beginning of
November put back in shelter for the Winter. This coincides with two great
festivals of Beltane and Samhain and once echoed the annual migration of cattle
to and from the Summer shielings when the Cailliche would look out over the
cattle during these Summer grazings. Strange things are said to happen to
anyone who dares to disturb the stones. A few years ago a lady historian from Edinburgh removed one to
study and story has it that her life became so disturbed that she had to return
the stone to its “home” in the glen within a very short time."
I
would make a case for the ‘na (h-)Inginn/Nighean or ‘Daughter’ of the Cailleach
and the Bodach of Glen Lyon as being of a lunar nature, and being the same
deity, in fact, as the Hekate Nicnevin of folk belief. And Hekate, of course,
is merely an aspect of Diana Lucina, i.e. Gwenddydd/Goleuddydd. We cannot go so
far as to identify the cailleach with Nemhain. Everything about the cailleach
suggests an earth goddess, and we have seen above that it is as an earth
goddess that she gives birth to the moon.
If
I am correct, then the Arthurian romance ‘entrapment” of Merlin within the
“stone” takes on a new significance: his
spirit was imprisoned within the house of Gwenddydd’s mother, the British
equivalent of the Scottish cailleach, atop Tinto Hill for the Winter
Half-Year. It was only with the return
of Summer on May 1st that he would have been permitted – for a spell – to be
free from his incarceration. The
Caillech's lunar daughter would have placed him back into the ‘house’ at the
end of the succeeding Summer Half-Year.
This was simply because he was identified with the sun god – in this
case, probably Lleu.
The
Cailleach Beara has as a proper name that of Bui or Boi, one of the wives of
Lug Lamfhota. In “The Book of the
Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer”, Gearoid O Crualaoich discusses
this aspect of the Old Woman:
…
and a role as sovereignty symbol in, for example, her representation in the
medieval materials, under the name Bui, as the wife of Lugh, elsewhere himself
the model representation of kingship… Bui was claimed as divine ancestress by
the Corca Loigde (a leading tribe of the Erainn of West Munster), whose
territory once included the whole of the Beara peninsula… We can note that
Heinrich Wagner would accept the identification of the earliest name for
Cailleach Bheara (viz. Boi/Bui) with a derivation from the Indo-European form
*Buvya meaning ‘white cow-like-one’ – this being, Wagner claims, a characteristic
appellation of Indo-European manifestations of the Magna Mater… the personal
name Boi of the divine, territorial, sovereignty queen/spouse of the divine
Lug, himself the model and epitome of the king-god of Celtic mythology. Boi is understood to be etymologically
related to the Indo-European word for cow (Mod. Ir. bo and Sc Gael. bo; gen.
sing. ba) and to be evocative of the primordial cult of the cattle divinity
(sacred bull; sacred cow).”
There
is a nice discussion of the goddess Bui in Elizabeth FitzPatrick’s “Royal
Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c. 1100-1600: A Cultural Landscape Study”
(Boydell press, 2004):
“The
Hag [Cailleach Bhearra] has been identified with the female character Bui – the
eponym of Cnogba (Cnoc Bui; Knowth, Co. Meath).
In the Dindshenchas poem of Cnocba, Bui is espoused to Lugh. This ‘marriage’ has been interpreted as a superlative
example of the ‘mythic complex of sovereingty’, in which Bui herself appears to
personify sovereignty. Bui occurs not
only as the eponym of Congba but is also directly linked with Oilean Boi
Bhearra and Inis Bui and Bo Bhui off the Beare peninsula, and in the lordship
of O Sulleabhain Bheara in west Cork. Bui (Baoi) recurs as a ornamental epithet in
medieval bardic poetry."
The
cailleach’s connection with Lugh is important, as Myrddin/Merlin is intimately
associated with this latter deity in Welsh. So, for the Gaelic identities of
the Cailleach, Bodach and Inghean of the Tigh name Bodach in Gleann Calliche,
we can make the following equivalencies:
Cailleach
= Boi
Bodach
= Lugh
Nighean
= Hekate NicNevin (Diana Lucina/Gwenddydd/Goleuddydd/Nemhain)
Lugh,
the pan-Celtic god who was worshipped at Lughnasadh atop mountains, was
undoubtedly the presiding male deity of Tinto Hill.
I
will, then, stick to my identification of Gwenddydd as a moon goddess.
The Wild Man of the
Wood in Highland Scotland
The
“Buile Shuibhne” or “Frenzy of Suibhne”, which tells the story of the
quintessential Irish madman, contains within it an episode that many have thought
may be a reference to the British Myrddin (or Merlin). This British madman is called Fer Caille, the
‘Man of the Wood’ (cf. Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'sylvester homo' for Merlin), or
Alladhan (only once Ealadhan). Scholars
have debated whether Alladhan is an attempt to render Llallogan, the real name
of Myrddin. Some think this might be the
case, while others opt for interpreting Alladhan as being derived from Gaelic
allaid(h), ‘wild’, making for ‘the Wild One’.
The point is rather moot, as I’ve already demonstrated that the word at
the root of Llallogan and allaid(h) is, in fact, the same word. Llallogan (Llallog with a diminutive suffix)
as ‘the Other’ and Alladhan as ‘the Wild One’ are, therefore, much more closely
related etymologically than one might otherwise think.
The
relevant section of the translated text of “Buile Shuibhne” is here, taken from
ucc.ie/celt/published/T302018/index.html:
“Suibhne
then left Carraig Alastair and went over the wide-mouthed, storm-swept sea
until he reached the land of the Britons. He left the fortress of the king of
the Britons on his right hand and came on a great wood. As he passed along the
wood he heard lamenting and wailing, a great moan of anguish and feeble
sighing. It was another madman who was wandering through the wood. Suibhne went
up to him. ‘Who are you, my man?’ said Suibhne. ‘I am a madman,’ said he. ‘If
you are a madman,’ said Suibhne, ‘come hither so that we may be friends, for I
too am a madman.’ ‘I would,’ said the other, ‘were it not for fear of the
king's house or household seizing me, and I do not know that you are not one of
them.’ ‘I am not indeed,’ said Suibhne, ‘and since I am not, tell me your
family name.’ ‘Fer Caille (Man of the Wood) is my name,’ said the madman;
whereupon Suibhne uttered this stave and Fer Caille answered him as follows:
Suibhne:
O Fer Cailli, what has befallen
thee?
sad is thy voice;
tell me what has marred thee
in sense or form.
Fer Caille:
I would tell thee my story,
likewise my deeds,
were it not for fear of the proud
host
of the king's household.
Ealadhan am I
who used to go to many combats,
I am known to all
as the leading madman of the glens [variant:
‘swift madman…’].
Suibhne:
Suibhne son of Colman am I
from the pleasant Bush;
the easier for us is converse
here, O man.
After
that each confided in the other and they asked tidings of each other. Said
Suibhne to the madman: ‘Give an account of yourself.’ ‘I am son of a landholder,’
said the madman of Britain,
‘and I am a native of this country in which we are, and Alladhan is my name.’
‘Tell me,’ said Suibhne, ‘what caused your madness.’ ‘Not difficult to say.
Once upon a time two kings were contending for the sovereignty of this country,
viz., Eochaidh Aincheas, son of Guaire Mathra, and Cugua, son of Guaire. Of the
people of Eochaidh am I,’ said he, ‘for he was the better of the two. There was
then convened a great assembly to give battle to each other concerning the
country. I put geasa on each one of my lord's people that none of them should
come to the battle except they were clothed in silk, so that they might be
conspicuous beyond all for pomp and pride. The hosts gave three shouts of
malediction on me, which sent me wandering and fleeing as you see.’
In
the same way he asked Suibhne what drove him to madness. ‘The words of Ronan,’
said Suibhne, ‘for he cursed me in front of the battle of Magh Rath, so that I
rose on high out of the battle, and I have been wandering and fleeing ever
since.’ ‘O Suibhne,’ said Alladhan, ‘let each of us keep good watch over the
other since we have placed trust in each other; that is, he who shall soonest
hear the cry of a heron from a blue-watered, green-watered lough or the clear
note of a cormorant, or the flight of a woodcock from a branch, the whistle or
sound of a plover on being woke from its sleep, or the sound of withered
branches being broken, or shall see the shadow of a bird above the wood, let
him who shall first hear warn and tell the other; let there be the distance of
two trees between us; and if one of us should hear any of the before-mentioned
things or anything resembling them, let us fly quickly away thereafter.’
They
do so, and they were a whole year together. At the end of the year Alladhan
said to Suibhne: ‘It is time that we part to-day, for the end of my life has
come, and I must go to the place where it has been destined for me to die.’
‘What death shall you die?’ said Suibhne. ‘Not difficult to say,’ said
Ealladhan; ‘I go now to Eas Dubhthaigh, and a blast of wind will get under me
and cast me into the waterfall so that I shall be drowned, and I shall be
buried afterwards in a churchyard of a saint, and I shall obtain Heaven; and
that is the end of my life. And, O Suibhne,’ said Alladhan, ‘tell me what your
own fate will be.’ Suibhne then told him as the story relates below. At that
they parted and the Briton set out for Eas Dubhthaigh, and when he reached the
waterfall he was drowned in it.”
The
first thing to be said about this account of Alladhan is that he belongs to the
region of the ancient Caledonian Wood in Highland
Scotland,
NOT to the ‘Celyddon Wood’ the Welsh placed in Lowland Scotland. We know this because the fort of the king of
the Britons Suibhne left on his right hand is Dumbarton, the Dark Age Alclud or
Dun Breatann. Of the chieftains involved
in the battle that sends Alladhan fleeing we can say nothing other than that
the names are thoroughly Gaelic, not British and not Pictish. Eochaidh is a common Irish name; there were
several such in Scottish Dalriada.
Aincheas is Irish aincheas, found once as a personal name. It meant ‘pain, difficulty, trouble, doubt,
perplexity’, etc. Cugua is a truncated
form of Cucuach, found in the Annals of Ulster for the year 1166. A Cucuagh spelling may well have lost its
terminal. Mathra is Irish mathra,
maithre, ‘mother’s kin or tribe, maternal kins-folk’. Guaire is another common Irish name.
While
the date of “Buile Shuibhne” is roughly placed in the 13th-15th centuries,
references to it have been found in 10th century. I now know, having discovered the place of
Alladhan’s death, that the story cannot have been composed prior to the life of
the Scottish saint Dubthach or Duthac (c. 1000-1065).
The
waterfall (eas) of Dubhthaigh and the associated saint’s churchyard points
solidly to the magnificent Falls
of Glomach in Kintail,
not far to the northeast of Kilduich or Clachan Duich, the church and
stone-cell of St. Duthac. Depending on what site one accesses, the Glomach
falls are either the second or third highest in all of Britain. More importantly, the falls can be reached by
following a path, part of which follows alongside the river Elchaig, one of the
'coffin roads' used to take the dead to Clachan Duich for Christian burial.
Alladhan
would not appear, then, to have anything to do with the Welsh Myrddin/Llallogan
– other than the fact that both were specters or ‘madmen’. Christians found it necessary to supply both
with deaths and proper burials, either through a misunderstanding of the real
meaning of ‘madness’ in these contexts or as a method of eliminating pagan
aspects from the motif..
Some Other
Mysterious Places Associated With
Merlin
There
are some other Merlin sites whose locations are uncertain. Five of them are the
Fountain of Barenton, another tomb of Merlin, the spring of Galabes, Merlin’s esplumoir
and the Green Chapel of the Gawain poem.
The
Fountain of Barenton is none other than the mineral springs of Berrington
(Berinton) near Tenbury Wells in Herefordshire.
A
previously unlocated grave of Merlin is said by the Prose Lancelot to be in the
Perilous Forest of Darnantes atop a mountain. Darnantes or Dar-nantes is the
River Dore, which flows through the Golden
Valley in the Black Mountains of Wales. Dore is either
from French D’ore, ‘golden’, or W. dwr, ‘water’, while –nantes is from W. nant,
‘stream,
brook’. The Perilous
Forest of the Dore River
must be in this area, which is still forested to this day. Only a couple of
miles west of the Dore is Mynydd Merddin, ‘Myrddin’s Mountain’, one of the
traditional Welsh sites of Merlin’s tomb. However, as Mynydd Merddin is an
outlier of the Black Mountains, this could
well be a relocation of Merlin’s mountain at the Eildons in the North.
As
for Merlin’s spring or springs of Galabes, Geoffrey of Monmouth places this
site in the region of the Gewisse. In a note to his The Quest for Merlin (pp.
270-271), Tolstoy suggests that Geoffrey may have substituted the Gewisse for
Nennius’ Guunessi. This would mean, of course, that Galabes would be found in
Guunessi. Tolstoy is mistaken here. Merlin’s Galabes is plainly Nennius’ Guoloph,
i.e.
Wallop,
the site of a battle between Aurelius Ambrosius and Vitalinus. Now there is a
Wallop stream in the Shropshire of Vortigern, but there is another in
Hampshire, the Wallop Brook, site of the villages known as the Wallops.
Hampshire is within the territory of the Gewissei.
The
Cair Guorthirgin of Guunessi has been identified with a site at Nant Gwrtheyrn
near the northwest coast of Llyn between Yr
Eifl and Nefyn. Guunessi (Gwnnws, Gwynnys) is now a farm two miles south of
Nant Gwrtheyrn.
Now
to treat briefly of the famous ‘esplumoir’ or ‘esplumeor’ of Merlin, which the
Didot Perceval places next to the Grail Castle of Bron and Perceval:
“…and
I wish to make a lodging outside your palace and to dwell there… And all those
who will see my lodging will name it the esplumoir of Merlin [‘si le clameront
l’esplumoir Merlin’]. Then Merlin left them and made his esplumoir and entered
within and never since then has he been seen in the world.”
Raoul
de Houdenc’s Meraugis de Portlesguez identifies the esplumoir as a high rock
upon which are twelve damsels forever prophesying. These ‘twelve damsels’ are
in reality a stone circle. They are akin to various stone circles named for
maidens or witches, e.g. Boleigh’s Merry Maidens, Bosscawen-Un’s Nine Maidens,
Little Selkeld’s Long Meg and Her Daughters, Harthill Moor’s Grey Ladies, Stanton’s Nine Ladies.
The
best guess to date as to the meaning of esplumoir is ‘moulting cage’, but this
is usually considered unsatisfactory. The word is otherwise unknown in Old
French.
The
es- of esplumoir is a prefix such as that added to caliber to form Escalibur or
Excalibur, the name of Arthur’s sword in later romance. As such, it can be
dropped, leaving us with a word spelled ‘plumoir’ or ‘plumeor’. I would see in
either of these an obvious Old French attempt at Old Breton ploe, ‘parish’,
plus meur, ‘great’. There are four Ploemeur place-names in Brittany: Pleumeur-Bodou and
Pleumeur-Gautier in Cotes d’Armor, Plomeur in
Finistere and Ploemeur in Morbihan. Plomeur in Finistere is home to the Kerugou
dolmen.
Suppose,
however, that ‘great parish’ is not being used in this context as a genuine
place-name, but as a description of a type of district? I believe this, is in
fact, what the author of the Didot Perceval intends here. He was availing
himself of two traditions. One, which is known to come from before the 12th
century, is the designation of the island
of Britain as ‘Clas
Merdin’. Clas, according to the
Geiriadur
Prifysgol Cymru, has the meanings ‘monastic community, monastica classis, cloister,
people of the same country, band or community of fellow-countrymen’. The second
strand of tradition comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who makes Amesbury the
scene of a famous monastery, the so-called Cloister of Ambrius (or Emrys, the
Welsh form of the Latin name Ambrosius). This monastery may be referred to in
the Welsh Triads under its name Caer Caradoc, one of the three eternal choirs
of the island of Britain. This again is due to Geoffrey,
who refers to Salisbury
near Stonehenge and Amesbury as Caer Caradoc.
Geoffrey,
furthermore, places Stonehenge or the Giants’
Dance atop a hill next to the parish of Amesbury, supposedly the ‘Fort of
Ambrosius’. For Geoffrey, and anyone reading him in the Middle Ages, Ambrosius
was merely another name for Merlin himself.
The
‘Great Parish’ of Merlin, i.e. of Ambrosius, would be the parish of Amesbury
with its stone circle. Again according to Geoffrey, Ambrosius brother of Uther
was buried within the Giant’s Dance. Since Merlin bears the Ambrosius name as
well, the Didot Perceval author placed Merlin’s Otherworld ‘lodging’ or tomb at
Stonehenge.
But
if the Esplumeor Merlin = the ‘great parish’ of Amesbury, the nearby Grail
Castle obviously was not Corbenic or Castell Dinas Bran in North Wales (see
Chapter 13 below), a tradition recorded in other Arthurian romances. Then what
is the Grail Castle next to the Great Parish of
Ambrosius?
The
best guess would be Amesbury’s neighbouring hill-fort Vespasian’s Camp, only
1.2 miles east of Stonehenge.
The
name of this camp is due to the Elizabethan antiquarian Camden. In reality, the fort pre-dates the
Romans. However, I think it is not a coincidence that Geoffrey of Monmouth
calls Salisbury Caer Caradoc after the British chieftain Caractacus who was defeated
by the Roman Vespasian. We have no record of Salisbury ever being referred to as the fort
of Caractacus; the ancient name of Old Sarum next to Salisbury was Sorviodunum.
Could
not Geoffrey have mistaken Salisbury
the town for Caer Caradoc, when in reality Caer Caradoc was the name of the
hill-fort on Salisbury Plain? Camden
might well have replaced the name of the defeated British chieftain with that
of the Roman conqueror, Vespasian. If so, the ‘eternal choir’ of Caer Caradoc
mentioned in the Welsh Triads is another name for the Cloister of Ambrosius at
Amesbury. And as far as the author of the Didot Perceval was concerned,
Vespasian’s Camp next to the Esplumeor Merlin or Great Parish of Amesbury was
the Grail Castle.
Another
Arthurian site has always intrigued me; that of the Green Chapel in the 14th
century epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. While it is not immediately
apparent that the Green Chapel has anything to do with Merlin, we will see that
it actually belongs to the great enchanter.
The
poem leaves no doubt as to what the Green Chapel really is:
"...
a hillock of sorts, A smooth-surfaced barrow on a slope beside a stream... All
hollow it was within, only an old cavern..." (Lines 2171-82)
This
chambered barrow is ‘hardly two miles’ from the castle of the Green Knight, who
calls himself Bertilak of Hautdesert (High Desert).
The directions to this castle are unknown; we are only told that Gawain is
going north by way of the Gwynedd coast opposite Anglesey
and the Wirral Peninsula. After this the description of
his route becomes increasingly vague.
Bertilak
represents the Bertholais of the Arthurian Vulgate. Indeed, the English
translation of the Vulgate renders Bertholais as Bertilak. This Bertholais is
associated with Gawain, but does not bear any of the characteristics later
ascribed to Bertilak. In the Vulgate, Bertholais and the False Guinevere (whose
champion the former was) are exiled to the hinterlands. The suggestion has been
made that Bertilak's beautiful wife, the temptress of Gawain, is actually the
False Guinevere. Because the poet put Morgan le Fay in Bertilak's house, it is
also possible that the Green Knight's wife is an aspect of Morgen, i.e. the Morrigan.
Bertholais
owes his name to the Britaelis of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. Britaelis was
Gorlois' servant whose form was assumed by none other than Merlin in the story
of Ygerna's seduction by Uther. If Bertholais is Merlin, it is surely significant
that the Life of St. Kentigern has Lailoken/Myrddin/Merlin buried ‘not far from
the green chapel where the brook Pausayl flows into the River Tweed.’ In other
words, the ‘Green Chapel’ is none other than the site of the Scottish Lowland
Merlin’s supposed grave.
Myrddin and the
Journey to Avalon
The
very first account of Arthur’s conveyance to Avalon differs remarkably from
that found in late sources such as the Morte D’Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory. It
is Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin that tells us how Arthur was brought
by boat from Camlann to Avalon, with Merlin a passenger and Barinthus the
steersman. As has been recognized for some time, this Barinthis is Geoffrey’s
spelling for the famous Irish St. Brendan the Navigator, originally Breanainn,
who set out from Ireland
to find Tir Tairngire or the Land
of Promise in the west.
The
typical Celtic triad of Arthur, Merlin/Myrddin and Barinthus/Brendan is
replaced in the romances by various numbers of ‘queens’, i.e. goddesses of Avalon,
who ferry Arthur away to the Otherworld without any masculine assistance.
Morgan (= the Morrigan) is often listed as one of these ‘queens’, as is the
Lady of the Lake (= the Dea Latis Nemhain), of
course.
Breanainn
is a borrowing from the Welsh and is a name based on brenin, ‘king’. Brenin
itself derives from the name of the goddess Brigantia, specifically from
*brigantinos, a term which identified the king or ‘exalted one’ as consort of
the tutelary goddess of the Brigantes tribe. As the Camlann that was
Castlesteads and the Avalon that was Burgh-By-Sands are both in Carvetii territory,
and the Carvetii were part of the Brigantian confederation, it is particularly
appropriate that the pilot of the boat should bear this name.
Of
course, we are talking about ancient religious symbolism here – not physical
fact. It is well known that Myrddin (if a man and not a god) lived and died well
after Arthur’s time. He could not, therefore, have been personally present in
the funeral barge that took Arthur to Avalon. But as Myrddin was a divine
spirit of a slain warrior-bard, he may be emblematic of the other slain
champions who perished with Arthur at Camlann and who, presumably, also were
taken to Avalon.
Myrddin and the
Gods Mabon and Lleu
Up
until this point I have resisted seeing Myrddin as a sort of dethroned pagan
god, perhaps Maponus, the Welsh Mabon, and/or Lleu. And I will continue to do so. However, there is no doubt that elements derived
from relics of Celtic religion did adhere to him.
The
early Welsh literature on Myrddin points to him being a man, possibly an
important one, who dies in battle at Arfderydd.
His flight from the scene of carnage in spectral form was interpreted
during the Christian Middle Ages not as a post-death state, but instead as a
panic or guilt-induced madness.
Much
of my resistance to accepting Myrddin as something more than this comes from
the fact that all the “god qualities” assigned to him originate in Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s writings and Jocelyn of Furness’s hagiographical Life of St.
Kentigern. Both sources are late and of
more than dubious authority.
Geoffrey
identifies Myrddin, his “Merlin”, with the Welsh god Lleu, the ancient lord of
Gwynedd or NW Wales. The Life of
Kentigern, either aware of this tradition or drawing from some unknown
material, assigns a triple death to Myrddin not unlike that suffered by Lleu in
the Welsh Mabinogion. Many modern theorists
have, therefore, tended to identify Myrddin with Lleu. We should recall that the people of
Drumelzier were the “Reapers”, and so we might wonder if the killing of Myrddin
– if Lugh or a Lugh surrogate or avatar – coincided with the reaping of the
first grain on Lughnasadh.
But
if Myrddin did become identified with this god in folk tradition, what do we
make of the Welsh tradition that has him fleeing from battle and wandering as a
madman in the Scottish Lowland forest?
Well,
as long ago as Nikolai Tolstoy’s book THE QUEST FOR MERLIN, it has been pointed
out that the main enemy of Myrddin at Arfderydd was the Christian champion King
Rhydderch of Strathclyde.
Let
us, for the sake of argument, allow for Myrddin being THE CHIEF GOD of the
pagans, i.e. Maponus/Lleu. The army who
worships this pagan god is defeated by Christians, and their god thus
overthrown. He is exiled to the wild
places, forced to live in the forest. There he voices prophecies that are
described by his Christian adversaries as mad babblings. The “god” communes
with the spirits of the slain on Tinto Hill at its huge Bronze Age tumulus
because Tinto Hill was the central Lleu-mountain of the Scottish Lowlands.
The
triple sacrifice of Lleu would have been enacted every year. Lleu’s annual death occurred originally at
February 1 or Imbolc, if calculated around 1200 A.D.: the goat and bathtub of
Lleu’s death scene represent, respectively, the goat of Capricorn and the
water-bearer of Aquarius. In 3000 BCE, the sun was between these two signs on
the Winter Solstice.
Taking
all of the above into account, I must conclude that while it cannot be proven
Myrddin was originally the sun god Maponus/Lleu, it is certainly possible that
a deity has been overlayed upon a figure who started out, at any rate, as Myrddin/Llallogan.
Alternately,
we could view Myrddin as an AVATAR of the god Lleu. The avatar concept – that of a deity who
assumes human form - is a difficult one for us in the West to grapple
with. In simple terms, Myrddin came to
be seen as a sacred warrior, one dedicated to Lleu. When he died in battle, he became
“one” with the god. Sacrifice victims symbolized the god to whom they were
given. Thus men sacrificed to Odin by
hanging represented the god himself as he hung from the World Tree. As a Lleu warrior or chieftain, Myrddin could
be viewed as the sun god incarnate.