Horned head found near the shrine of Belatucadros at Netherby, Cumbria
(Tullie House museum, Carlisle)
Mayburgh Henge
Mayburgh Henge and Related Henges
Up to the present date, my emphasis when doing Myrddin (Merlin) research has been to approach the problem of his identity from two directions. First, the early Welsh sources strongly suggest that his "madness" is actually a strange, spectral state following death at the Battle of Arderydd. But second, there appears to have been an effort in the extant tradition to also relate him to a deity. This deity is most commonly thought to be Lleu.
In this brief piece I would like to consider another possibility for Myrddin.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's VITA MERLINI, which tells the story of the Northern figure prior to the same author's ridiculous though ingenious identification of Myrddin with Ambrosius, has the following interesting episode:
"Merlin had entered the forest and was living an animal life, existing on frozen moss in the snow, in the rain, in the angry blast. Yet that satisfied him more than administering the law in cities and ruling over a warrior people. Meanwhile, as the years were slipping past and her husband was still leading this sort of life among his woodland flock, Guendoloena became legally promised in marriage. It was night, and the horned moon was shining brightly; all the lights of the vault of heaven were glittering. The air had an extra clarity, for a bitterly cold north wind had blown away the clouds, absorbed the mists on its drying breath and left the sky serene again. The prophet was watching the stars in their courses from a high hill.
He was out in the open, talking to himself and saying: "What means this ray from Mars? Does its new ruddy glow mean a king dead and another king to be? I see it so. Constantine has died and by an evil chance his nephew Conan has seized the crown through the murder of an uncle and is king. Highest Venus, you sail along within your prescribed bounds in company with the sun in his path beneath the zodiac: what now of your twin ray cutting through the ether? Does its division foretell the parting of my love? Such is the ray that speaks of love divided. Perhaps Guendoloena has abandoned me, now that I am away. Perhaps she is happy in the close embrace of another man. So I lose, another wins her. My rights are taken from me while I linger here. Indeed, a laggard lover loses to the lover who is not a laggard nor absent but near and urgent. Yet I bear no grudge. She may marry now the time is right, and with my permission enjoy a new husband. When tomorrow dawns, I will go and take with me the present I promised her when I left."
So saying, he set off round all the woods and clearings, and organized a herd of stags into a single line; so, too, with does and with she-goats. He seated himself on a stag, and at the coming of the day he set off, driving his lines before him. So he came with speed to the place of Guendoloena's wedding. Arriving there, he made the stags stand quietly outside the gates, then shouted, "Guendoloena, Guendoloena, come out! What presents are looking for you!" Guendoloena came quickly, all smiles, and was astonished to see a man riding a stag and it obeying him, astonished that so many animals of the wild could be brought together and that he alone was driving them before him like a shepherd accustomed to taking his sheep to pasture.
The bridegroom was standing at a high window, looking in amazement at the rider on his seat; and he broke into a laugh. When the prophet saw him and realised who he was, he promptly wrenched off the horns of the stag he rode. He whirled the horns round and threw them at the bridegroom. He crushed the bridegroom's head right in, knocking him lifeless, and drove his spirit to the winds. In a moment the prophet dug his heels into his stag and set it flying and was on his way back to the woods. The incident brought out retainers from every corner, and they followed the bard in hot pursuit across country. But he went at such a pace that he would have reached the forest unscathed had it not been for a river in his path. While his beast was bounding across the torrent, Merlin slipped and fell into the fast current."
[Basil Clarke translation; https://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/merlini.html]
Guendoloena is merely a feminine form of Gwenddolau, Myrddin's lord in the Welsh texts, who perished at Arderydd. We may assume, therefore, that she belongs at or in the vicinity of Carwinley, Cumbria.
To the best of our knowledge (see THE CARVETII by Nicholas Higham and Barri Jones, p. 12-13) the northern boundary of the Roman period Carvetii kingdom extended to the Solway Mosses:
"... most commentators suggest that the extent of the Brigantes, and therefore the Carvetii probably spread beyond the eventual line of Hadrian's Wall. This is probably correct; the extent of the northern mosses around the Rivers Esk and Lyne is impressive enough even today after extensive agricultural reclamation, but further to the northwest, despite the presence of Lochars Moss, good quality, well-drained land comes close to the Solway at the southern end of Annandale. Settlement has now been located in this area on an extensive scale, and it is at least arguable that, with the Solway fordable at certain points as far west as Bowness and beyond, these sites were part of the northern fringe of the Carvetii."
The Carvetii were the 'people of the Stag' (cf. W. carw, 'stag'). Their chief deity was Belatucadrus, whose cult center was at Brougham in Cumbria. I discussed this horned god in detail in my book THE SECRETS OF AVALON (https://secretsavalon.blogspot.com/2016/08/gods-and-goddesses-mentioned-in.html). An altar to Belatucadros was found at the Netherby Roman fort (https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/970).
For now, I need only repeat what I had to say about the stag god's name:
"The name Belatucadros itself has been rendered incorrectly in several recent texts on Celtic gods. One of the most common etymologies offered would have the name mean ‘Fair Shining One’, the components Belatu- and cadros both being derived from words that mean bright, shining and the like. This is scarcely creditable.
A more likely derivation would connect Belatu- with early Welsh bel-. According to Dr. Graham Isaac of The National University of Ireland, Galway, bel-
“… is not ‘death’ in a passive sense (the death which happens), but ‘death’ in an active sense (the death which someone brings, i.e. killing). The verb means ‘smites, strikes, kills’ and reflects the Proto-Indo-European root *gwelh1 –‘stab, smite; throw’, which also turns up in Old Irish at-baill ‘dies’, from an earlier meaning ‘he throws it’ referring to the casting off of life, or ‘he struck it’. From Proto-Indo-European *gwelh1- we get the nominal formation *gwelh1-tu > Gaul. Belatu-,‘smiting, killing’.”
On –cadros, Dr. Isaac is also equally clear:
“… cadro- is the cognate of Old Breton cadr, Middle Breton kazr, Modern Breton kaer, “fair, beautiful”, and is derived from *cadro- < Proto-Indo-European k^d-ro- < *k^ed-, *k^d- ‘to shine, to excel’ (Pokorny 516-7). The Welsh word cadr ‘mighty, fair’ with which it is sometimes compared is properly distinct, and reflects *kat-ro-, with the same root as cad, ‘battle’, etc. There may have been some mixing of meanings between *kadro- and *katro- in Welsh, but that there were two originally distinct words should be beyond question (see Jackson LHEB 430-1)… In Old Welsh, the name Belatucadros would have been *Belatcair, and in Middle Welsh *Belatcaer or Belatkaer.”
I had also found a reference in Georges Dottin’s “La langue gauloise’, Paris, 1920, to cadros defined as ‘god, vakker’, “good, beautiful/handsome”. When I asked Dr. Isaac about this, he replied:
“The meaning ‘good’ is quite within the possible range of *kadro-.”
All this being so, the full meaning of Belatucadros is ‘striker/smiter/killer - [who is] fair/beautiful/handsome/shining/good."
Let us examine this etymology for Belatucadros in the context of the story of Merlin and the stags. I long ago theorized that the stag army led by Merlin was symbolic of the Carvetii. In other words, he didn't lead deer against Guendoloena's husband, but deer warriors.
And then there is the method employed to kill his rival. In THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON I have this on the significance of a stag's horns:
"... a stag’s weapon is his antlers, which he uses to strike other stags during the rut, or which the animal can use defensively against predators. When rutting stags come together, it was seen as a metaphor for battle between two armed warriors. The resounding crash of opposing antlers coming into violent contact with each other may have been likened to the heavenly thunder that issued from the lightning strike."
On rare occasions, red stags have been known to kill each other with their antlers. Antlers may also become locked and if the animals cannot disengage from one other, death may eventually follow.
Merlin's act of striking his rival with antlers may be a literary representation of the 'Fair Striker' Belatucadros.
It is true that the Roman period capital of the Carvetii was Carlisle, ancient Luguvalium, the fort that was 'Lleu-strong.' So it is undeniable that the god Lleu was present there. Mabon seems to have been identified in Welsh tradition with Lleu and the former's cult center was just a little northwest of Carlisle. I have only found one example of Lleu's possible association with the stag, and that is found in the Mabinogion tale "Math Son of Mathonwy." There we are told that Lleu's seasonal counterpart and rival for his wife Blodeuwedd, Goronwy, kills a stag at Avon Gynvael just prior to sleeping with the goddess. Lleu later kills Goronwy in the same location. The mythological implication is that Lleu is being represented by the stag.
Myrddin's mountain of Aber Craf or Abercarf in Scotland may also have been named for stags. From one of my earlier essays on the subject:
"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.
However, 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."
One of the main arguments for Myrddin as Lleu or a Lleu avatar is his triple (sacrificial) death. This is usually likened to that meted out to the god Lleu in "Math son of Mathonwy" of the MABINOGION. But note in the VITA MERLINI selection I quoted above the reference to Merlin falling into the stream from the back of a stag. Geoffrey tells the story of the triple death of another person in his account. We only find that death connected to Merlin in the St. Kentigern fragment. In the VITA MERLINI a boy is pursuing a stag on horseback when his mount carries him over a cliff and into the river.
A couple of these statements do need to be qualified. In "Math son of Mathonwy", Lleu's rival for Blodeuwedd - Goronwy - hunts and kills a stag just before he takes up with Lleu's wife. And Lleu is killed while standing with one foot on the back of a goat. In Geoffrey's VITA MERLINI, wild goats are among the stags and hinds of Merlin's army. This is presumably because goats, like deer, are hooved animals.
So what do we make of all this? It is reasonable, based primarily on the very shaky testimony of Geoffrey of Monmouth, to propose that Myrddin might be a manifestation or incarnation of the Carvetii god Belatucadros and not someone we should associate with Lleu?
I would bring up one additional, possibly relevant matter. TRIAD 64 on 'the three bull-specters' of the Island of Britain, has a variant, tri charv ellyll, 'three stag-specters.' Bromwich and others have discussed what ellyll might mean in this context. According to the GPC, ellyll (a word related to the Llallawg/Llallogan used for Myrddin) means -
goblin, elf, fairy, sprite, genius (of a place, &c.), apparition, phantom, spectre, wraith, ghost, shade, bogey; evil spirit, fiend, devil, demon, bibl. a kind of demon that haunts ruins, satyr, familiar spirit
The Errith and Gurrith of the Myrddin poetry mean, respectfully, 'specter, ghost, apparition (cognate with Irish arracht) and '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".
What little we can tell from these references is that to be a 'stag-specter' might indicate a state of being one assumes when in battle. We might compare the Norse sacred warrior castes of berserkers and ulfhednars. One became "wild" in battle (Bromwich discusses W. gwyllt in this context) and evinced a 'stag-like' spirit. If so, then we could assume that upon death the stag-specter continued to exist, haunting the forest like a real, living deer.
My thinking, then, runs as follows: if Myrddin were a Carvetii warrior-chieftain, a man who in battle displayed his 'stag-spirit' in honor of his stag god, Belatucadros, then in death he would naturally take the form of a ghostly deer in the forest. I've written before about Myrddin being pursued by the hunting hounds of Rhydderch of Strathclyde. These hounds appear to be symbolic of St. Kentigern, whose name means 'hound-lord.' Gwasawg, the supporter of Rhydderch, a diminutive of W. gwas, 'servant', is also for Kentigern, whom Jocelyn calls servuli. Myrddin has a magical apple tree where he may hide from Rhydderch. The idea seems to be that the Christian saint is literally pursuing a pagan entity, his goal being the extirpation of all remnants of the old religion. One of the Kentigern fragments actually has the saint administer holy communion to Myrddin (as Lailocen).
To summarize: Myrddin appears to be the spirit of a man who was a devotee of a pagan god. His spirit partook of the nature of that god and may have been a sort of extension of that god. When one brings forth his stag-spirit, he is materializing the divine. After death of the body, the stag-spirit either becomes one with the stag-god or remains in a sort of middle world (the forest) between the worlds of the living and the divine sphere. Probably such spirits were thought to cross back and forth through the threshold of this world and the Otherworld.
The triple sacrifice must be seen in this light. The Norse Odin is a good example. He boasts of having won supernatural wisdom through his own self-sacrifice through hanging and stabbing. Thus when men when sacrificed in this way, they symbolically became Odin. This is a difficult concept for us to comprehend.
I have shown that the bathtub and goat Lleu stands upon when he is killed represent Aquarius the Water-bearer and Capricorn. This provides us with a precise date for his sacrificial killing (dependent, of course, on how far back the motif can be traced). Can we tell when Myrddin was sacrificed? And why and where?
The where is easy. The Tweed and Powsail Burn are relocations for the Tweed/Tweeden tributary of the Liddel and the Willow Pool at the confluence of the Liddel and Esk. Thus whether he perished in the Battle of Arderydd or a sacrificial ritual, it happened near the Carwinley of Gwenddolau. I've hypothesized that any sacrifice carried out might have been an offering meant to ensure victory in battle. That elaborate triple sacrifice was engaged in for this reason is proposed by Ross and Robins in THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A DRUID PRINCE. We could hazard a guess that he was ritually killed on the eve of Arderydd, dedicated to Belatucadros in this fashion so that the Christian enemy might be defeated.
