Finding Arthur (13 page)

Not only from various Irish vocabularies … but also from a great variety of the best Irish manuscripts now extant; especially those that have been composed from the 9th & 10th centuries down to the 16th, besides those of the lives of St. Patrick & St. Bridget, written in the 6th & 7th centuries.
⁵

It followed that O’Brien’s definitions were more likely to reflect the way words were used in the sixth century, than were modern dictionaries, written to be used by people today.

According to O’Brien,
Airigh
did not mean a “summer pasture” or “shieling,” as I had been told (in the first millennium summer pasture or shieling was
Airghe
). The first millennium meaning of
Airigh
was, “Certain, particular, especiall [
sic
] …” And, in a separate entry, “A Prince, a nobleman &c. [
sic
].”

This was my Statue-of-Liberty-at-the-end-of-
Planet-of-the-Apes
moment. I had been a happy high-pasture Ardrey ever since I had stopped being a happy high-king Ardrey. Now everything changed again. My second name was still
Ard Airigh
, but it no longer meant “high pasture”—now it meant “high prince” or “high nobleman.” I was no longer fifteen years old and so I was not deluded into thinking I had become more prince-like or noble. But I knew I had become something much more important—I had become more knowledgeable.

Until then I had not been particularly interested in either the legendary or the historical Arthur, but after reading O’Brien I knew, even before I raised my head from the page, that I had evidence that the legendary Arthur was the historical Arthur Mac Aedan.

I already knew of many
Ard Airigh
/Ardrey place-names in Argyll, through my interest in my family’s history, and that Arthur Mac Aedan had been active in Argyll after his father became king of the Scots there in 574. I also knew that an entry in the
Annales Cambriae
for the previous year, 573, contained the earliest surviving reference to the man
called Merlin and that this entry placed Merlin at, “The Battle of Arderydd,” a battle after which, it was said, “Merlin went mad.”

Until I found the
Airigh
entry in O’Brien, all I had was an Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, in a place where there were innumerable
Ard Airigh
place-names and a Merlin involved in a battle at a place called Arderydd.

Arthur and Merlin were obviously connected, but what was the connection between, say, Arthur Mac Aedan’s Dunardry hillfort, in Argyll, and Merlin’s battlefield of Arderydd, one hundred miles away on the Scotland–England border?

“Hillfort of the high pasture” and the “battle of the high pasture,” while possible, had always struck me as just too much of a coincidence to believe. Two important places—one a battle and one a fort, one associated with a Merlin and one associated with an Arthur, one in 573 and one in 574—and both named after pastures? This struck me as unlikely.

Why would the main hillfort in Argyll, the hillfort that dominated the most important land route in Argyll, be named the “hillfort of the high pasture”? Why were there so many
Ard Airigh
/high pasture names in Arthur Mac Aedan’s Argyll? Why was a battle fought far from Argyll, on the Scotland–England border in P-Celtic speaking lands, given a Q-Celtic Gaelic,
Ard Airigh
name? How could these things be just coincidences?

There was no reason why pastures, high or otherwise, should have been connected to Arthur Mac Aedan. There were no especially high pastures in Argyll or on or near the battlefield of Arderydd—there were just, well, pastures.

Even if all the
Ard Airigh
place-names in Argyll meant “high pasture,” despite the fact that they were not attached to places that were particularly high or pasture-like, there was no reason to believe that such a bland Q-Celtic place-name would have been given to a fort as important as Dunardry or to a battle as important as Arderydd. The “high pasture” meaning of
Ard Airigh
had always puzzled me and it had always been a dead-end. Until I found the
Airigh
entry in O’Brien, I had been unable to understand why so many places in Argyll had “high pasture” names.

O’Brien’s definition of
Airigh
enabled me to make a sensible, albeit initially tentative, connection between the
Ard Airigh
place-names in Arthur Mac Aedan’s Argyll and Merlin-Lailoken’s Battle of Arderydd. (Merlin was the name used by his enemies. His friends called him Lailoken, Chief of Song. I will on occasion use Merlin-Lailoken from now on.)

“A prince, a nobleman,” said O’Brien. It is now generally accepted that the legendary Arthur was not a king but a prince. I also knew that the historical Arthur Mac Aedan was a prince, the descendent of Scots warlords who had arrived in Argyll some sixty years before he was born; he died years before his father Aedan, king of the Scots. This was only a beginning but at least O’Brien’s
Airigh
definition, “prince or nobleman,” was relevant to both the legendary Arthur and Arthur Mac Aedan, while the “pasture” definition was not.

The Britons of southern Scotland spoke P-Celtic. Their neighbors, the Scots of Dalriada-Ireland and Dalriada-Scotland, spoke Q-Celtic. The words
ard
and
airigh
, from which
Arderydd
is derived, are Q-Celtic Irish-Scots-Gaelic words.
Airigh
is especially relevant to Ulster, the part of Ireland from which Arthur Mac Aedan’s family came to Scotland at the turn of the fifth century. If
Ard Airigh
meant high prince or high nobleman it would not be surprising if the warriors who came to Scotland from Ireland at the turn of the fifth century gave the places they found there
Ard Airigh
names.

Of course, Arthur Mac Aedan was only one among many sixth-century warlords of Dalriada, and so it did not necessarily follow that he was
the
high lord or even one of the high lords who inspired the
Ard Airigh
place-names of Argyll. But Arthur Mac Aedan did live in Argyll and so directly or indirectly there was some connection. Arthur Mac Aedan was also a contemporary of Merlin-Lailoken and Merlin-Lailoken fought at the Battle of Arderydd and so there was another connection. This was, of course, provided that the legendary Arthur (who was connected with a man called Merlin) and Arthur Mac Aedan were one and the same man. If they were not, then this was a most amazing coincidence. Two Arthurs both connected with a Merlin at different times and in different places—an amazing coincidence indeed.

How many other Arthurs lived at the same time as a man called
Merlin and shared
Ard Airigh
associations? None. In legend there was a Merlin and an Arthur. In history there was a Merlin-Lailoken in 573 (at the Battle of Arderydd) and an Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, in 574 (at Dunardry). The simplest solution seemed to me to be that these Merlins and Arthurs were one and the same.

Arderydd: the battle of the high pasture. Dunardry: the hillfort of the high pasture. It is not clear why anyone would give a battle and a fort such names. These translations did not make sense. Arderydd: the battle of the high lord or high lords. Dunardry: the hillfort of the high lord or high lords. These translations made sense. (I will from now on use the more user-friendly high lord or high lords in place of the clumsy combination high prince or high nobleman.)

It had never rung true to me that Dunardry, the most vital political, economic, and strategic hillfort in Argyll, was called
Dun Ard Airigh
, the hillfort of the high pasture. The men who named this fortress were warriors. The chances of these warriors calling their stronghold the “hillfort of the high pasture” when names such as the “hillfort of the high prince or princes” or the “hillfort of the high nobleman or noblemen” were available and more obviously attractive and appropriate options were slight in the extreme.
⁶

It is reasonable to suppose that a place like Dunardry might well be called by a name that sounded of a high prince or nobleman and that a battle too might be named in memory of a high prince or nobleman (maybe not in its immediate aftermath, but certainly after that high prince or nobleman became the most famous hero in British history). Arthur Mac Aedan, certainly, especially, and particularly fitted the profile of the prince or nobleman after whom the fort and the battle were named. He lived in and was a prince in Argyll. He was a contemporary of Merlin of Arderydd, and, although I did not know this to begin with, Arthur Mac Aedan fought at the Battle of Arderydd.

If I was right and the battle-name
Arderydd
was a Q-Celtic name in a P-Celtic place and meant the “battle of the high prince or nobleman,” this suggested the possibility that the battle-name
Arderydd
commemorated the Q-Celtic speaking Arthur Mac Aedan.

If Arthur Mac Aedan was not the high prince or nobleman commemorated in the battle-name
Arderydd
, then we would be looking for
some other prince or nobleman with a Q-Celtic and an Argyll connection, who was active in 573 and who was or who became so famous that he inspired the name of this major battle.

Alternatively, the battle-name
Arderydd
and the
Ard Airigh
place-names in Argyll could be simple, albeit highly unlikely, coincidences. I did not think a simple coincidence was a reasonable possibility.

O’Brien’s definition of
Airigh
provided me with a solution to what I had called the
Righ
-
Airigh
conundrum. I had been unable to understand how, if
righ
meant “king” and
airigh
meant “pasture,” the words
righ
and
airigh
could be so similar when “king” and “pasture” are so different. If however
righ
meant “king,” which it does, and
airigh
meant “prince or nobleman,” which, according to O’Brien, it does, then there was an obvious relationship.
Righ
and
airigh
were similar in the same way
bishop
and
archbishop
are similar. The dichotomy that was the
Righ
-
Airigh
conundrum ceased to exist.

Welsh scholars cannot say what Arderydd means with any certainty or authority or with reference to any convincing sources because they have been looking for answers in the wrong place among the wrong people and at the wrong time. One Welsh academic with whom I corresponded, wrote to me,

A battle was fought at Arderydd (or Arthuret) in c. 573 CE between various British factions, which became the epitome of heroic battle. As such it is frequently mentioned in Welsh literature … I have never seen an explanation of the name, and it could contain several elements: possibly
arf
(“weapon”), and some form of
dâr
(“oak”), although
deri
(not *
derydd
) is the usual plural form.

Battle of the Weapon Oak seemed to me to be as unlikely a name for a battle as Battle of the High Pasture. “High prince” or “nobleman” place-names in Argyll and a battle involving high lords made more sense to me. If my
Ard Airigh
interpretation is accepted, no tortuous interpretation of
Arderydd
, involving weapons and oaks, is needed.

I looked for corroboration of O’Brien’s
Airigh
entry and found it in MacBain’s
Etymological Dictionary
, where
Airigh
is defined as follows:
“
Airigh
: worthy, Irish
airigh
(Ulster),
airigh
, nobleman … Old Irish
aire(ch
), primas, lord; Sanskrit
árya
, good, a lord;
ârya
, Aryan,
âryaka
, honourable man.” There are two categories of meaning in MacBain’s dictionary. The first includes “worthy,” “good” and “honourable.” The second includes “nobleman” and “lord.” O’Brien’s definition “prince” falls into MacBain’s second category.

MacBain says
Airigh
, in the sense of “worthy,” is derived from Irish sources and in particular from the Irish of Ulster, the most northerly of Ireland’s four provinces. It was from Ulster that the Scots came to Argyll in the early centuries of the first millennium and from which Arthur Mac Aedan’s immediate and direct ascendants came in circa 500 to found Dalriada, the first kingdom of the Scots in what is now Scotland. If Ulster-Scots brought the word
Airigh
with them from Ireland and used it to name places in Argyll, this goes some way toward explaining the high frequency of
Ard Airigh
place-names in Argyll.

Until I found O’Brien’s “high lord” definition of
Ard Airigh
, I had given no more thought to Arthur, Merlin, and Camelot than I had to innumerable other subjects, and none at all to writing books about any one of them. I had not been looking for anything to do with the Arthurian canon that day in the National Library. I had been looking for something to do with my second name and that is all. However I found evidence that threw light on the matter of Arthur, and so I decided to see if I could find more evidence.

I knew I had a solution to the
Righ
-king,
Airigh
-pasture conundrum when I read O’Brien’s definition of the word
Airigh
because, unlike
king
and
pasture
,
Righ
-king and
Airigh
-lord were obviously connected. I had never accepted that it was merely coincidental that Arthur Mac Aedan lived in Argyll among innumerable
Ard Airigh
place-names, such as Dunardry, and Ardery on Loch Awe, and that completely separately and one hundred miles from Argyll, Merlin had fought in an
Ard Airigh
battle, the Battle of Arderydd.