Finding Arthur (16 page)

As for the Nennius “epitome,” with its battle-list of twelve battles, we will come to it—to all twelve battles.

4

A Fragmented Kingdom

A
RTHUR
M
AC
A
EDAN
M
AC
G
ABHRAN
M
AC
D
OMANGART
M
AC
F
ERGUS
Mac Erc Mac Eochaid was born to a Scottish father and probably to a British mother, probably in the kingdom of Manau in central Scotland, probably about 559.

In the early sixth century, Ireland and Britain were hodgepodges of kingdoms, sub-kingdoms, chiefdoms, confederations, and what in later centuries were called debatable lands, lands where no one’s rule was certain or for long. Both islands were inhabited by Celts: the Gaels in Ireland; the Picts in Scotland (north of the Rivers Clyde and Forth); and the Britons everywhere else. The Scots, whose homeland was Antrim in Ulster in northeast Ireland, were a subdivision of the Gaels, who, in their turn, were a subdivision of the Celts.

As Gaels, the Scots spoke Q-Celtic Gaelic, a language that sprang from the Goidelic branch of the Indo-European family tree of languages. The people of Britain, Picts and Britons both, spoke P Celtic, from the Brythonic branch of the same linguistic tree. It is from this division that we get the saying “Mind your Ps and Qs”—watch how you speak.

When the Roman Empire collapsed and the last legions left Britain in the early fifth century, the Scots of Ireland, who, like the Picts of Scotland, had never been conquered by the Romans, increasingly raided the west coast of Britain. As always, they were looking for loot, but as the years passed, more and more they came looking for places to settle.

The people of the south of Britain, who had for centuries lived under the protection of Rome, were less martial than the Scots, but they were brave and sufficiently numerous to push the Scots back to their ships. Only in Argyll were the Scots able to establish substantial permanent settlements.

According to the second-century geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, the native Pictish people of Argyll were the
Epidii
, the people of the horse. They were no less doughty than their British Celtic cousins in the south, but over hundreds of years close commercial ties had grown up between them and the Scots of Ireland and so they were less inclined to reject Scots incursions. Commercial ties naturally led to social interaction and from there to marriages and settlement until, by the start of the sixth century, a sizeable number of Scots were living in peace with the Picts in Argyll.

Left alone to get on with their lives the differences between the Scots settlers and the native Picts of Argyll would have blurred with time and the two peoples would have come together as one. But this was not to be; there were powerful people who saw an opportunity to advance their interests at the expense of others.

At the end of the fifth century, Arthur Mac Aedan’s great-great-grandfather Fergus Mor Mac Erc, Fergus the Great son of Erc, a chief of the Scots of Dalriada-Ireland, pressed by dynastic competition at home, took advantage of the beachhead his fellow Scots had created across the water, marshaled an army, invaded Argyll, and founded a new Dalriada in what is now Scotland.

The simple picture commonly presented is of a native population usurped and replaced by an invading army of Scots. The real picture is more complicated. Put broadly, before Fergus arrived there was a mixture of Picts and Scots in Argyll, with the Picts in charge. After Fergus’s invasion, there was a mixture of Picts and Scots in Argyll, with the Scots
in charge and with Fergus in charge of the Scots. While Fergus had made himself king of the Scots of Dalriada, his kingdom was really a subkingdom of Dalriada-Ireland, a status it was to retain for seventy-five years until Arthur’s father, the wily Aedan, backed by force of arms, negotiated the independence of Dalriada-Scotland.

Circa the year 500, Fergus was inaugurated king on the summit of the hillfort of Dunadd, Argyll’s ceremonial capital. Dunadd still stands stark in the Moine Mhor, the Great Moss, through which the River Add twists on its way to the western sea. In Fergus’s time the shoreline was closer to the fort than it is today and the marsh, now largely drained, was wider and deeper. The modern approach road that leads from the main road to a small car park would have been a raised causeway or a bridge-walk standing on stakes. This would have been the route Fergus took as he approached Dunadd, before walking through the entrance gate in the great stone wall that bounded the fort, and crossing the large enclosure that lay beyond. He would have then gone through another, smaller, gate that opened to allow him to climb the last few feet to the high-point of the rock.

As part of the inauguration ceremony favored by the local people, the Picts and the Scots of Argyll, Fergus placed his foot in a footprint carved into the bedrock of the summit. By this act he symbolized his rightful connection with the land and so with the people who lived upon it. This was standard practice when a king was inaugurated at Dunadd—indeed, standard practice among many of the people of the Old Way throughout Scotland.

We do not know the details of the doubtless colorful and complicated ceremonies involved in the inauguration of Fergus as king—these have been lost to history—but we may assume, given the evidence of subsequent inaugurations, that a list of his ancestors was recited by a
Seannachie
, a bard specializing in genealogy. In the early sixth century this
Seannachie
would have been a druid.

Fergus’s inauguration included one novelty: the introduction of the
Stone of Destiny
. According to legend, thousands of years ago the Scots brought the Stone of Destiny from Egypt, across North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, and then to Ireland. The surviving descriptions of the Stone suggest it was made of black marble or meteoric
rock cut to the shape of a low seat, about eighteen inches high with volutes to make it easier to carry, and carved all over with symbols. If it had been in the hands of the Egyptians and the Celts, great stone-carvers both, for more than a thousand years, it could hardly have been otherwise.

When Fergus sat on the Stone of Destiny and placed his foot in the footprint cut into the summit of Dunadd, he was recognized as king of the Scots, at least by those who were present that day. Not everyone in Argyll recognized Fergus. He still had to fight to fully establish his authority.

Domangart, Fergus’s successor and Arthur Mac Aedan’s great-grandfather; Comgall, Arthur Mac Aedan’s great-uncle; Conall, Arthur Mac Aedan’s uncle; and Aedan, Arthur’s father were all inaugurated kings of the Scots on Dunadd’s summit, sitting on the Stone of Destiny, as were innumerable kings of the Scots in years to come.

The
Senchus Fer nAlban
is a genealogical record of the Scots of Dalriada, although the versions available today are a composite of several seventh-century sources that were only reduced to writing in the early tenth century. The end result is that the
Senchus
is not only inherently contradictory but also contradicts other separate sources.

One reading of the
Senchus
suggests that Fergus’s new kingdom of Dalriada-Scotland was divided between Fergus’s kin, with his brother Lorne taking the north of Argyll (still, to this day, the district of Lorne) and with his brother Angus, or at least the house of Angus, taking Islay and Knapdale. Other lands fell to other kin, but the
Senchus
is vague and confused, and it is impossible to know exactly who got what.

We do know that Cowal in southeast Argyll, near to the heartlands of Strathclyde, was named after someone called Comgall. Fergus’s grandson, Arthur’s great-uncle, was a Comgall, and so it may have been him. If Fergus initially directed his efforts against the islands and the west coast, this would explain why these were named after Fergus’s closest relatives, his brothers, Lorne and Angus. It would then make sense to suppose that it was left to the next generation to advance inland to the east, which would explain why Fergus’s grandson Comgall gave his name to Cowal.

According to the
Senchus
, the
Cenél Gabhran
, Kin of Gabhran (Gabhran was Arthur Mac Aedan’s grandfather) consisted of 560 households and could put 800 men in the field. The
Cenél Lorne
and the
Cenél Angus
, with 420 and 430 households respectively, could each field 600 men. Based on these figures, Dalriada-Scotland in its heyday was probably able to muster an army of between 1,000 and 2,000 warriors. The figures in the
Senchus
do not seem to be obvious exaggerations but seem reasonable enough to be relied on. They were probably based on records kept for fiscal purposes, or perhaps they were muster rolls.

Following his inauguration, Fergus marched north from Dunardry-Dunadd, against the Picts, taking the Stone of Destiny with him and fighting all the way. Within a year of landing he had taken the islands of Lismore and Iona and was in control as far north as Loch Linnhe. In the
Chronicles of the Picts and Scots and Other Early Memorials
, W. F. Skene says that Fergus built a town near Dunstaffnage Castle and installed the Stone of Destiny there. According to Hector Boece, the fifteenth-century Scottish historian, “Fergus … brought the chair [the Stone of Destiny] from Ireland to Argyll, and was crowned upon it. He built a town in Argyll called Beregonium, in which he placed it.”

Beregonium, modern Benderloch, is only three miles from Dunstaffnage Castle, across the Bay of Selma, now Ardmucknish Bay. Ardmucknish Bay today is largely unspoiled and can be seen much as it was fifteen hundred years ago, when its strategic position commanding the approaches to the Sound of Mull, Firth of Lorn, and the great sea lochs, Linnhe, Creran, and Etive made it vital to anyone determined to hold the north of Argyll.

The Stone of Destiny was to remain at Beregonium during the reigns of twelve kings before it was moved south to “Evonium,” Dunstaffnage. In the ninth century, when the depredations of the Vikings made it unsafe to keep the Stone of Destiny in the west, it was taken to Scone, near Perth, and kept there until 1296. In that year Edward I, king of England, “Hammer of the Scots,” attempted to steal it as part of a campaign to denude the Scottish nation of its identity.

Fortunately for Scotland, the Stone of Destiny was hidden, and Edward was fobbed of with a lump of Perthshire sandstone. The fake stone was taken south to Westminster Abbey, where it was used in
English coronations until the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England in 1603, after which the fake stone was used to crown
British
monarchs. It was “loaned” to Scotland in 1296 and is now kept in Edinburgh Castle.
¹

Following his successes against the Picts in the north of Argyll and having divided the land he had conquered among his supporters, Fergus set off back to Ireland to help quell a rebellion. He died when his ship was driven onto the rocks at what is now Carrickfergus. Fergus had been in Scotland for about two years.

Domangart Mac Fergus succeeded his father. Domangart was Arthur Mac Aedan’s great-grandfather. He was known as Domangart of Kintyre, which suggests that while Fergus was fighting in the north of Argyll, Domangart was charged with subduing the south. It is perhaps indicative of the ferocity of the opposition mounted by the native people of Argyll that six years after becoming king Domangart too was dead (circa 507).

Domangart was survived by his two young sons, Comgall, who was to succeed him as king of the Scots, and Gabhran, Arthur Mac Aedan’s grandfather. Fergus and Domangart had established a foothold only. It would be generations before their kin could say with reason that their hold on Argyll was secure. Then all Argyll would resound to the name of Arthur, at least for a time. Today Arthur’s name echoes only faintly about the glens and hills where he fought most of his most famous battles, but echo it does

The visitor’s information map at Cadzow Hill, Hamilton, where Merlin-Lailoken was born, shows the names of hills to the north and west. The name most worn by countless pointing fingers is Ben Arthur, the Hill of Arthur.

Ben Arthur is generally accepted as having been named in honor of the legendary Arthur, despite the fact that the legendary Arthur is usually said to have been a man of the south. Skene thought a southern Arthur came north, fought a few battles on the banks of Loch Lomond, and then went home, leaving behind the memory of his heroics to be commemorated in the hill-name, Ben Arthur. Why would a southern Arthur do that? It just does not make sense.

The alternative explanation is that the fame of some southern
Arthur was so great that, for some unknown reason, his name came to be attached to this a northern hill. This begs the question: Why this particular hill?

Ben Arthur, half way up the west bank of Loch Lomond, commands the great pass that leads up and over the aptly named
Rest-and-be-thankful
road to the heartlands of Argyll, and so it is perfectly placed to serve as the headquarters of someone charged with protecting the borders of Dalriada from the depredations of the Picts. In the sixth century Loch Lomond formed Dalriada’s border with Pictland in the north and east, Manau in the south and east, and Strathclyde in the south. It is unlikely that that the name Ben Arthur and this strategic location are just a coincidence. It is more likely that Ben Arthur was given its name because it was associated with a historical Arthur, and there is only historical Arthur in the right place at the right time. If Ben Arthur was named in memory of Arthur Mac Aedan this would explain both the name and the location. This would also suggest that Arthur Mac Aedan was the man who became the legend that is Arthur and that the general consensus that Ben Arthur was named in honor of the legendary Arthur is well founded.