From Glein to Camlann: The Life and Death of King Arthur by August Hunt

Vortigern Studies > Faces of Arthur > Arthurian Articles > August Hunt (2) > appendix 2

Guest Author:
August Hunt

August Hunt, (1960), published his first short stories in his high school newspaper, THE WILDCAT WIRES. These were followed by stories and poems in THE PHOENIX literary magazine of Clark Community College, where he received a writing scholarship. Transferring to THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE in Olympia, WA, he continued to publish pieces in local publications and was awarded the Edith K. Draham literary prize. A few years after graduating in 1985 with a degree in Celtic and Germanic Studies, he published "The Road of the Sun: Travels of the Zodiac Twins in Near Eastern and European Myth". Magazine contributions include a cover article on the ancient Sinaguan culture of the American Southwest for Arizona Highways. His first novel, "Doomstone", and the anthology "From Within the Mist" are being offered by Double Dragon (ebook and paperback). August, a member of the International Arthurian Society, North American Branch, has most recently had his book "Shadows in the Mist: The Life and Death of King Arthur" accepted for publication by Hayloft Publishing. Now being written are "The Cloak of Caswallon", the first in a series of Arthurian novels that will go under the general heading of "The Thirteen Treasures of Britain", and a work of Celtic Reconstructionism called "The Secrets of Avalon: A Dialogue with Merlin".

Faces of Arthur is a part of Vortigern Studies

Faces of Arthur Index

Vortigen Studies Index

click here

From Glein to Camlann:
Appendix 2: Three additional Arthurian poems

August Hunt

Much has been made of early references to Arthur in three important poems: The Gododdin, Marwnad Cynddylan and Geraint son of Erbin.

The Gododdin

Of the first, we need only quote the authoritative statement on the subject by Rachel Bromwich ("Concepts of Arthur", Studia Celtica, Volume X/XI, 1975/76, University of Wales Press, Cardiff):

"But whether or not Aneirin himself composed the line [gochore brein du ar uur/ caer ceni bei ef Arthur ‘he glutted (?) black ravens in the rampart of the strongfhold, though he was no Arthur’], its fleeting unexpanded reference to a hero of an earlier period than the Gododdin warriors implies that the poet could rely on the hearers whom he addressed in his own day to have a full knowledge of all the circumstances of Arthur’s career. It is surely a fair conjecture that the body of heroic tradition current in Strathclyde between the seventh and ninth centuries included this full information about Arthur. That this common knowledge was appealed to by the poet, who either introduced the line into the Gododdin, or who transmitted a version of the poem which already contained the Arthurian reference. That a part of this information likewise made its way into the ‘Northern Chronicle’ from when AC [the Annales Cambriae] derived its two notices. And, that this information included a battle-listing poem whose contents Nennius summarized, or whoever it was who first redacted the Arthuriana passage in HB [the Historia Brittonum]."

Marwnad Cynddylan

Jenny Rowland has done a very nice job of disposing of the difficulty posed by the Line 46 of Marwnad Cynddylan. The line in question reads:

Canawon artir wras dinas degyn

This has in the past been amended to read:

Canawon Arthur wras dinas degyn: "whelps of Arthur, a resolute protection"

Jenny Rowland, wisely, opts instead for:

Canawon artir[n]wras dinas degyn, i.e.: Canawon arddyrnfras dinas degyn: "strong-handed whelps…"

This nicely eliminates our having to account for Arthur being the ancestor of the Cornovian dynasty in east-central Wales.

Geraint son of Erbin

A harder thing to dispose of is the presence of Arthur’s name in the poem Geraint son of Erbin. While different versions of the poem exist, all are in agreement in including the name Arthur in one of their stanzas. This would not be a problem, were it not for the fact that, in Jenny Rowland’s words, "Despite the Arthurian link in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work there can be no question that ‘Geraint fab Erbin’ is older than the Historia Regum Britanniae." In other words, someone, for some reason, seems to have placed Arthur in Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) prior to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s doing so.

If, as is genuinely agreed, Geraint son of Erbin is to be dated between the ninth and eleventh centuries (Jenny Rowland, p.241), how do we account for Arthur being in Dumnonia? This a critical question, for Geraint son of Erbin would seem to be our earliest source seeking to situate Arthur in extreme southwest England. All other early sources, it would seem, point towards a Northern Arthur.

Using Rowland’s composite text, I can make the following observations: Geraint’s name occurs in 18 out of 27 stanzas. To these we may add a 19^th stanza containing "the son of Erbin". Other than the name of Geraint and the single occurrence of the name of Arthur, there are no other personal names in the poem.

Also, it is suspicious that Arthur’s name is used in exactly the same way as is that of Geraint. The variants of the "Arthurian" line are as follows (from Rowlands and Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Assistant Archivist, Department of Manuscripts and Records, The National Library of Wales).

En Llogporth y gueleise Arthur…

(from Brynley F. Roberts’ composite text from ‘Rhaicerddi ymddiddan’, in Rachel Bromwich & R. Brinley Jones, eds., Asudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978).

En llogporth y gueleis e. y Arthur…

(from O. H. Jarman’s Black Book of Carmarthen text from Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982).

Yn llongborth llas y Arthur…

(from The Red Book of Hergest).

Patrick Sims-Williams (in "The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems", The Arthur of the Welsh, ed. by Rachel Bromwich, A.O. H. Jarman and Brynley F. Roberts, Cardiff: The Univeristy of Wales Press, 1991) has suggested that to solve the problem posed by the syntactically and semantically ambiguous y before Arthur’s name that this line be considered "a poetic inversion for ‘men to (i.e. vassals of) Arthur’, the "men" in question being the warriors of the following line:

Gwyr dewr kymynynt a/o dur; "brave men, they hewed with steel"

The Red Book has instead: "In Llongborth Arthur lost brave men, they hewed with steel"

Of course, the y is in front of Arthur’s name even in the Red Book version. The odd thing about the poem is that Geraint’s name is used in exactly the same context. We have the Black Book of Carmarthen’s:

En Llogporth y llas y Gereint…

Which is, however, rendered in the Red Book of Hergest as

En Llogporth y llas Gereint…

The cumulative effect of the panegyric, with its formulaic repetition of Geraint’s name, and the sudden intrusion of Arthur’s within the same cymeriad, is to force us to see Arthur in this context not as a separate individual, but as an honorific being applied to Geraint.

In other words, just as we find a warrior in the Gododdin compared unfavorably to Arthur, who is there decidedly a famous figure of the past, in the Geraint fab Erbin elegy the heroic nature of Geraint is so great during the Llongporth battle that he symbolically IS Arthur, the "emperor" and "ruler of battle".

Those who attempt to account for Arthur’s presence in the poem have in the past resorted to two explanations. First, that Arthur really was there, which would put this particular Geraint back in Arthur’s time, or that a warrior troop whose predecessors had served under Arthur was still, in Geraint’s day, referred to as "Arthur’s men".

There are two problems with these explanations. In the first case, it seems fairly certain that the Llongporth battle is to be identified with the battle fought at Langport by the Wessex chieftains Ine and Nunna against a Dumnonian Geraint in c. 710. This event is memorialized in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is described as a Saxon victory. Needless to say, the 8^th century is well outside the time period of Arthur.

That the men fighting with Geraint are composed of a troop whose members originally flocked to Arthur’s standard makes little sense, given that the same "brave men" (gwyr dewr) are ascribed to Geraint:

In Llongborth Geraint lost [or "I saw to"]

Brave men from the region of Dyfnaint.

And before they were killed, they killed.

In following Geraint, these warriors were fighting for a chieftain who in the praise language of the poem was an incarnation of Arthur. While it could be argued that Geraint’s fighting alongside Arthur or the latter’s men might be considered praise enough, from the perspective of the panegyrist, whose sole goal was to glorify Geraint, to use Arthur or his men in this fashion would actually have diminished Geraint’s stature. Why would a poet seeking to praise Geraint distract his audience by calling attention to the presence of another, greater hero?

We need only ask this final question: who is greater, a Geraint who by virtue of his martial prowess is literally an Arthur, or a Geraint who needs the help of Arthur and/or Arthur’s men in battle?

Back to part 1..

Comments to: August Hunt