Finding Arthur (21 page)

The King’s Knot, viewed from Stirling Castle, the round mound that inspired the story of The Round Table, lies beneath the remains of the sixteeenth-century garden
.

© Courtesy of Historic Scotland

The Gartnait referred to as the son of the Pictish Princess Domelch is not included among Aedan’s sons in any one of the three western Scots sources of evidence: Adamnan’s
Life of Columba
, the
Senchus
, and the
Annals of Tigernach
(although it may be that he is included under another name). This apparent omission and the fact that Gartnait is a distinctly Pictish name (as opposed to the Scots names of Aedan’s other sons) suggests a dichotomy between Aedan’s offspring that can be explained if Aedan was married more than once.

Given the dangers inherent in childbirth in the sixth century, it is quite possible that Domelch did not live into her late twenties and that Aedan was married for a second time to a woman whose name we do not know. One of Aedan’s daughters, Maithgemma of Manau, is said to have been the niece of a British king. Given that Aedan was not British, this suggests the British connection must have come through her mother. Domelch is identified with reference to Manau. Maithgemma’s mother, whoever she was, is identified with reference to a British kingdom, probably Strathclyde (because Aedan was an ally of Strathclyde, and because there is, as we will see, reason to believe there were close family ties between Aedan’s family and Strathclyde).

This lady of Strathclyde is usually called Ygerna or Igraine—that is, in Gaelic, Grainne—but this is probably a later invention. I will call her the Lady of Strathclyde. This albeit slight evidence, which suggests that Domelch was from Manau and Maithgemma’s mother was from Strathclyde, points to Aedan having been married at least twice. The question arises—was Arthur Domelch’s son or the son of the Lady of Strathclyde?

A second marriage to a lady of Strathclyde would have made good sense in the 550s, because at this time the main threat to Manau, after the Picts in the north, lay in the kingdom of the Gododdin to the east and in the growing threat from the Angles in the south. A political alliance with Strathclyde, cemented by a marriage to, say, a daughter of a chief, if not of a member of the royal family, would have bolstered Manau’s position or Aedan’s position.

There are several reasons to suppose that Arthur’s mother was from Strathclyde or, at least, that she was not a Pict of Manau. In about 584 Arthur avenged his grandfather Gabhran’s defeat in battle by the
Picts when he defeated Bridei Mac Maelchon, king of the Miathi Picts, near Perth. Despite this being Arthur’s victory, in the aftermath of the battle Aedan made his son Gartnait, not Arthur, king of the Picts. This, taken together with the fact that Gartnait is a Pictish name, suggests that Gartnait was of Pictish blood on his mother’s side and, more to the point, that Arthur, who did not have a Pictish name, was not.

If Arthur was the son of the Lady of Strathclyde, especially if she was a woman of the royal house, this would have been a factor weighing in Arthur’s favor when he strove to lead the army of Strathclyde and indeed other armies, in the Great Angle War of the 580s. If Arthur was the son of the Lady of Strathclyde and so a Briton on his mother’s side, in the eyes of the army of Strathclyde at least, he would have been one of their own.

If Arthur’s mother was the Lady of Strathclyde this would also explain why when Aedan became king of the Scots in 574, he made Arthur his tanist—his chosen successor (besides, of course, the fact that Arthur was obviously the most able candidate). Aedan needed the support of Strathclyde to take the Scots throne. Making Arthur his tanist would have won favor in Strathclyde. Strathclyde would have wanted one of its sons in line for the throne of the Scots. The available evidence is slight, but, on the balance of probabilities, Arthur was the son of Aedan’s second wife, the Lady of Strathclyde.

If Arthur Mac Aedan was born in 559, his birth would have been a year after his grandfather, Gabhran, died, probably from wounds sustained in battle against the Picts the year before. Gabhran was succeeded by his nephew, Conall Mac Comgall. Gabhran’s son Aedan, Arthur’s father, was overlooked. This was not necessarily a personal slight upon Aedan. The tanistry system of selecting the next king favored alternating the kingship between different houses of the royal family, and so just as Gabhran had followed his brother Comgall as king; Conall, Comgall’s son, followed Gabhran. Aedan was just not the right man in the right place at the right time.

Aedan must have spent a lot of time about Dunardry-Dunadd when his father Gabhran was king, although it is likely that when Conall succeeded to the throne Aedan moved his main base of operations back to Manau; just as, in his day, Aedan’s father, Gabhran, moved
east to distance himself from his brother Comgall. This would have lessened the tensions inherent in having Aedan, a potential rival for the throne, present at Conall’s court.

Arthur Mac Aedan was probably born in Manau, perhaps in Stirling, Manau’s main capital fortress, or west of Stirling at Aberfoyle in the Trossachs, where Aedan is known to have had a base. However, if Arthur’s mother was a lady of Strathclyde, it may be that Arthur was born there, perhaps even in the Royal Town of Partick where Merlin-Lailoken had a house.

Of course, whoever the historical Arthur was, there was no “wizard Merlin’ present to facilitate his birth with magic, because Merlin was not a wizard and there is no such thing as magic. It is possible however that the historical Merlin-Lailoken, the son of Morken, a chief of Strathclyde, was party to the diplomatic negotiations that would have preceded a politically important marriage such as that of Aedan and a lady of Strathclyde. Although any role Merlin-Lailoken might have played would have been secondary, because Merlin-Lailoken was only nineteen years old when Arthur was born.

During Arthur’s childhood Aedan was firmly based in Manau, and so despite the fact that Arthur was almost certainly fostered out into the care of another family, he probably spent much of his childhood there. As Aedan doubtless kept in touch with events and nursed his contacts in Dalriada to facilitate his accession should the throne become vacant, so it is likely that Arthur was at least an occasional visitor to Dunardry-Dunadd.

Bridei Mac Maelchon, the vastly warlike Pictish king who had defeated Arthur’s grandfather Gabhran in 558, had been on the throne for only about two years when Arthur was born. Bridei was young, about twenty-nine (close to the same age as Aedan), and ambitious to expand his kingdom. It was therefore in the interests of Manau and the Scots of Dalriada to work together against this ferocious enemy. This put Aedan in a strong political position. He had a foot in one camp, Manau, and at least a toe in the other, Dalriada.

In the legends the young Arthur was the foster son of good Sir Ector because he had to be kept out of the way until the time was right for him to reappear as the “Rightful King.” It may be thought that Malory
invented the story that has Arthur fostered out into a family under Merlin’s wing, but the historical circumstances surrounding Arthur Mac Aedan suggest that Malory might have built his fabulous fiction upon a factual foundation—fostering was a common Celtic custom in the sixth century.

No matter how unlikely it may be, Malory’s
Le Morte d’Arthur
says that by the time Arthur had grown to be a young man—at the time of the episode of the sword and the stone—his identity as the son and heir of the late king, Uther Pendragon, had been forgotten by almost everyone. This part of the story is, of course, fanciful nonsense. One thing everyone in the first millennium agreed on was that a person’s ancestry was important. Inaugurations of kings were only complete if a druid, and later a bard, recited the names of the king-to-be’s ascendants to the people assembled. It is impossible to believe that a real king would undermine his son’s chances of succeeding to the throne by putting him in a position where his identity might be forgotten. To have allowed a potential heir to be lost sight of would have been unthinkable. One thing was certain: if a historical Arthur was fostered out, he was not fostered out
incognito
.

Malory either did not understand the historical sources he had available to him, or, and this is more likely, he took actual events and re-wrote them in the interests of his fiction, because they were alien to his audience. One has only to think of the fairytale “Snow White” or the legend of Theseus to realize that a lost and unrecognized protagonist who is later found and restored to her or his rightful place is a common contrivance in fiction.

The unscrupulous Malory would not have hesitated before writing nonsense about Arthur being anonymously fostered out into Ector’s family, no matter how unlikely such an event might have been, because this allowed him to have his Arthur make a grand entrance as the “rightful king” when he took the sword from the stone. However, it is possible that the passages in
Le Morte d’Arthur
in which Arthur is fostered out into Ector’s family and in which Arthur takes a sword from a stone did not spring fully formed from Malory’s head. It is possible that they were based on actual historical events.

According to the twelfth-century poem
The Birth of Brandub son of Eochu and of Aedán son of Gabrán
, Brandub and Aedan were twin brothers of an Irish king who were split up on the night they were born. The baby Aedan was exchanged for one of Gabhran’s twin daughters, who had, by a happy and utterly amazing coincidence, been born on the same night. The result of all this was that each family ended up with a daughter and a son, and the potential for conflict that always existed between twin brothers was avoided. Much of this story may be dismissed under the category of “too good to be true,” although it is possible there is some truth behind it and that Aedan, in accordance with Celtic practice, was fostered out into the family of Eochu.

As recently as the eighteenth century when the clan system was broken up, it was common practice among highland chiefs to foster out their sons to be brought up by friends and neighbors. This had the advantage of distancing vulnerable children from the dangers posed by rivals in their native clan. Fostering also allowed children an opportunity to gain a wider experience of the world and to form friendships that might be useful to them in their later lives. (For much the same reason, clan chiefs often engaged as bodyguards men from an allied clan. Such men were less likely to, quite literally, stab them in the back.)

If Aedan was fostered, it is reasonable to suppose that Arthur Mac Aedan too was fostered as a child. This Celtic fostering practice would have been alien to Malory, a man of the south of Britain, but if he read about it in one of his sources there can be no doubt he would have found it inspirational. It may be that Malory took the idea and used it to create the part of his story in which Arthur’s identity is all but lost. This would have enabled Malory to have his Arthur’s true identity revealed only after taking the sword from the stone. Malory’s genius was that he was able to take two historical events, Arthur’s fostering and Arthur’s taking a sword from a stone (something Arthur Mac Aedan really did), and tie them together to create a dazzling story.

If Arthur Mac Aedan was the son of a lady of Strathclyde, he was probably fostered out into a Strathclyde family. There is no evidence to identify the specific family into which Arthur Mac Aedan was fostered (if indeed he was). However, Malory said that the legendary
Arthur’s foster brother was named Kay. The family into which Arthur Mac Aedan was fostered may also have included a boy called Kay, because a man called Kay was killed in the ninth battle on the list of Nennius, a battle which, the evidence suggests, was fought in the south of Scotland by Arthur Mac Aedan.

As a child of importance Arthur Mac Aedan would have been placed with an important family if he was fostered out into a family of Strathclyde. This may have been the royal family, which included Languoreth, Merlin-Lailoken’s twin-sister; Merlin-Lailoken’s own immediate family; or, perhaps, the family of Anna, Arthur’s older sister.

In
Finding Merlin
I said that Anna’s first husband was a chieftain of Strathclyde, by whom she had three sons, Gawain, Gaheris, and Gareth: men who were always loyal to Arthur. (Anna subsequently married Lot of the Gododdin by whom she had two children: a girl Clarisant and Mordred.) If Arthur grew up with his nephews Gawain, Gareth, and Gaheris, this would explain their later loyalty. (The name Gawain is commemorated in the Glasgow district of Govan, today the home of Rangers Football Club. In the mid-nineteenth century an ornate sixth-century sarcophagus was discovered in Govan Old Parish Church and said to have been the last resting place of Arthur, although I think it is more likely it is the grave of Merlin-Lailoken’s nephew, the vile Constantine, who became king of Strathclyde in 612.)

Of course, it is not necessary to claim that Arthur was fostered out into his Aunt Anna’s family to explain the loyalty of the three brothers. If Arthur was in Strathclyde when he was a boy, he was still certain to have known his sister’s family well.

It is not possible to say who Arthur’s foster family was. There is just not enough evidence. But the most likely scenario is this: Arthur was fostered out into the family of a Chieftain of Strathclyde. Malory and others have Arthur under the eye of Merlin-Lailoken but not under his wing, which, if there is history behind this, suggests that Arthur’s foster family was not Merlin-Lailoken’s family. Neither is it likely that Arthur’s foster family was his sister Anna’s family because this would have defeated one of the main purposes of fostering—distancing a young vulnerable child from people with close family connections, who might have cause to harm him.

Given that Malory used an old Celtic name Kay (Cai) as the name of the young son of the house and not a more “modern” Anglicized name like Thomas, suggests that, just perhaps, there was history involved—that Malory had some evidence upon which to base his story, even if only a smidgen. Kay as a name worked in English. It survives today in names like MacKay.