Finding Arthur (30 page)

Nennius does not mention the Battle of Camlann, Arthur’s last battle, and so it is often supposed that his battle-list was based upon a record, probably in the form of a poem, written during Arthur’s lifetime. If this is correct, the battle-list provides exactly what Nennius says it does: twelve battles in which Arthur was the “leader in battle.”

This explains why the battles of Arderydd and Delgon are omitted from the list. Arthur was not in command at Arderydd or at Delgon. The Battle of Camlann is not included because it did not take place until after Nennius’s source-poem was completed.

When Arthur started out on his career, no one knew he would become a great hero and so no one paid particular attention to his activities at that time. Later, when the poem upon which Nennius’s battle-list was based was composed, the poet would have had to ask for information about Arthur’s early life from those who were there.

If, as seems likely, Aneirin of the Flowing Verse wrote the poem upon which Nennius’s battle-list was based—given that Aneirin was in the south during Arthur’s early years—it would have been necessary for him to ask others what had happened in the early days.

Whoever Nennius’s source-poet was, if he had wanted to start his poem with one of the Douglas battles, battles two to five on Nennius’s battle-list, it would have been quickly pointed out to him by men who had been there that they had followed Arthur to war before the Douglas battles. If, as seems likely, these men had fought a guerrilla campaign in the aftermath of the Battle of Delgon, it is easy to see how a poet might have taken the innumerable skirmishes of which he was told and, exercising poetic license, bundled them all together into one composite battle, a battle fought at the mouth of a river called
Glein
, that is, “glen,” when, in fact, the innumerable skirmishes of which he was told had been fought at many river mouths, many river crossings and in many of the glens of Argyll. If this is correct then Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan’s first “battle” was more an anti-guerrilla campaign fought, not at a river called
glen
but by the rivers and in the glens of Argyll.

Aedan now had the upper hand—Éoganán and Duncan’s army had been destroyed and their supporters routed in the glens—but not everyone in Argyll was happy with Aedan as king. Éoganán was still alive and in exile in Ireland as part of the compromise that had brought the civil war to an end. While Éoganán lived he would always be a focal point for malcontents who might stage a coup if Aedan should falter. Fortunately for Aedan he did not falter, because from then on Aedan had Arthur to fight his battles for him.

A laconic entry in the
Annals of Tigernach
records Éoganán’s death in 593. Secure at home and abroad Arthur was now ready to take on the Picts.

T
HE
B
ATTLES OF THE
B
LACK
W
ATER

Victory at the Battle of Delgon and in the Glein campaign and success at the Council of Drumceatt left Aedan and Arthur secure in Argyll, but not without enemies. Columba-Crimthann hated them, but he was too weak to do other than pretend to cooperate with their new dispensation, at least in the short-term. If Columba-Crimthann had been sufficiently powerful at this time he would have secured for his Scottish monks the same rights to persecute the druids of the Old Way as had been allowed to the Christians of Ireland at the Council of Drumceatt, but Columba-Crimthann’s position in Dalriada remained precarious and so he had to bide his time.

Although still in his late teens, Arthur had fought in two major campaigns by the late 570s. In light of his achievements in later life, it is reasonable to suppose that his abilities were evident even at the beginning of his war-filled career, and that consequently he was sent to fight where the greatest danger lay. Once all internal opposition had been crushed this danger could only have been on the borders of Dalriada where lay the Miathi Picts.

The battle-list of Nennius says, “The second, the third, the fourth and the fifth were on another river, called the Douglas [Dubglas] which is in the country of Lindsey [Linnuis].”

Square mile for square mile, the place-name Douglas is even more common in Scotland than in England. I only have to drive twenty-two
miles south from my home in central Scotland to the town of Douglas on the Douglas Water (although there are no Linnuis connections in this area). W. F. Skene, wrote, “There are many rivers and rivulets of this name in Scotland; but none could be said to be ‘in regione Linnuis,’ except two rivers—the Upper and Lower Douglas, which fall into Loch Lomond, the one through Glen Douglas, the other at Inveruglas, and are both in the district of the Lennox, the Linnuis of Nennius.”
³

North of Loch Lomond there are to be found Lochan Srath Dubh-uisge, the small loch of the meadow of the black water, and Srath Dubh-uisage, the meadow of the black water.

There are innumerable other black-associated place-names in the Lennox, just as there are all over Scotland.

In the second century the geographer Ptolemy drew a map of Britain that showed, just north of the Clyde estuary, a place called Lindum. His source of information was probably a Q-Celtic Gaelic speaker because this name was probably derived from the early Irish Gaelic,
lind
, which means “a pool.” Later in Scottish Gaelic this became
linn
. It is probably from Lind and Linn that the name Linnuis was derived and applied to the area south and west of Loch Lomond. This area is still to this day called by a name that is derived from Linnuis, the Lennox. The Lennox has innumerable Douglas place-names within its bounds.

If this is correct Linnuis was not derived from some unrecorded British-Latin words, such as
Lindenses
or
Lindensia
, as Alcock suggests, but from the Q-Celtic word
Lind
, which became the Latin
Lindum
and the Q-Celtic
Linn
, then the Latin
Linnui
s, and then, later still, the Lennox.
⁴
Nowhere else is there this combination of Douglas and
Linnuis
, that is, the Lennox.

However slight evidence pointing south may be, it is grasped with enthusiasm and brandished boldly. Evidence that points north, however weighty it may be, is weighed only lightly in the scales. Those who contend for a southern Arthur have no real choice but to inflate the importance of what passes for evidence of Arthur in the south if their ideas are to retain even a vestige of credibility. This is particularly so with reference to the Douglas battles, because there are four of them.

In the sixth century, even in times of relative peace, neighbors tested each other’s preparedness for war by raiding each other’s lands. There can be no doubt but that the Picts would have taken advantage of civil war in Dalriada to plunder along their common border with the Scots and, if possible, extend their influence on Dalriada’s eastern marches. It is likely therefore that in the mid- to late 570s Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, who was clearly a man of action, took command where the most deadly danger threatened Dalriada, the Loch Lomond front.

Few men are remembered in history and fewer still in geography. Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, is remembered in both. About halfway up the west bank of the loch, five miles north of Glen Douglas and the River Douglas, a pass runs west from Loch Lomond, through Glen Croe, over the well-named height called the Rest and Be Thankful, through Glen Kinglas to Loch Fyne and the heartlands of Argyll. The eastern end of this strategically vital approach is dominated by a mountain that, even today, is called Ben Arthur. This is perfect place for any man charged with commanding an army on the Dalriada-Pictland border to have had his headquarters.

It was probably here that Arthur Mac Aedan, was based in the late 570s because … well, if not him, then who? The legendary Arthur of the south, whoever he was? Why would anyone connect “King Arthur of England” with a mountain in the heart of the Ghaidhealtachd, the Gaelic speaking part of Scotland? If someone did just this, for some unimaginable reason, it is likely they would have chosen the highest mountain in the vicinity to commemorate their man and not the practical, strategically-perfectly-placed Ben Arthur. Is it just a coincidence that of all the hills in all the ranges in all of Britain the one that is called Ben Arthur is adjacent to the rivers and glens of Dalriada, abutting the Pictish border, where Arthur Mac Aedan lived? Is it not more likely that Ben Arthur was a real place, where a real man defended a real country against real enemies, rather than a place named in honor of some southern king?

If, as Nennius says, there were four battles in one place, Douglas, there must have been something special about this place. In the American Civil War two battles were fought at Manassas-Bull Run because
it was an important railway junction between Washington and Richmond. The lands of Douglas were special for the same reasons. To invade Dalriada the Picts would have had to cross Douglas—specifically they would have had to traverse the pass commanded by the hill Ben Arthur, because Douglas and Ben Arthur lay between Dalriada and Pictland. Arthur’s army, if based at Ben Arthur, would have been in a prime position to command Loch Lomond and deny the Picts the pass that led west to Argyll.

Lomond is derived from the Scottish and Irish Gaelic word
loam
, which means a “blaze” (luminous comes from the same root). The toponymist William Watson suggested that Loch Lomond means Loch of the Beacon, although I suspect a plural version, Loch of the Beacons, is more accurate. To see why this is, one must stand on Merlin-Lailoken’s lands at Cadzow Hill, fifty miles to the southeast. The information board at Cadzow shows only three hills, Drumgoyne, Ben Lomond, and Ben Arthur. People in the south looking north when the beacons on the summits of Ben Lomond and Ben Arthur were lit, although they could not have seen the loch, would have known that between these two lights lay a great loch (the biggest in Britain) and, on occasion, that battle was about to begin. I picture Merlin-Lailoken standing by his fort at Cadzow watching these two great signal-fires, thinking of Arthur and his men riding out to meet the Picts.

Given the numerous black-water sites about Loch Lomond it is possible that in the sixth century much of Loch Lomondside and indeed the loch itself were called by a black-water name and that Loch Lomond and the banks of Loch Lomond were Douglas, the black water lands.

It is probably on the Douglas lands in the Lennox on the banks of Loch Lomond that Arthur fought Nennius’s second, third, fourth, and fifth battles against the Picts. Just as with Glein, it is likely there was a measure of poetic license involved in recording the second to fifth battle-entries on Nennius’s list (and perhaps some garbling of source material too). The Picts were a mighty people, the most powerful in Scotland in the late sixth century, and are unlikely to have been beaten in one campaign, far less in one battle. In any event, people like clean-cut battles and that is what Nennius gave them, although it is more likely that the four Douglas “Battles” were in fact four campaigns fought against the Picts over four campaigning seasons in the late 570s.

Ben Arthur (Arthur’s headquarters) looms over the pass that led from the land of the Picts to the heartlands of Dalriada, Argyll
.

In four campaigns Arthur held the Picts along the line of Loch Lomond, on the Black Water, Douglas. Four times in four years the Picts attacked and four times in four years Arthur’s army fought them in the hills, in the glens, by the rivers, and on the loch itself, and beat them back, until, at the end of the four Douglas campaigns, the Picts had no more fight left in them.

If the above is correct then all four Douglas battles said to have been fought by the legendary Arthur were in reality fought on the borders of the historical Arthur Mac Aedan’s Dalriada. There is no need for a southern Arthur to travel north fight four battles in one place, before returning to his southern home, as Skene has suggested.

It is generally conceded that the seventh battle, the Battle of the Caledonian Wood was fought in the Scotland, because setting it anywhere else is almost impossible, given that the name includes the word
Caledonian
, and Caledonia clearly connotes Scotland. It is sometimes conceded, somewhat grudgingly, that the eleventh battle, the Battle of Agned was fought in Scotland, in Edinburgh. If those who favor a southern Arthur were to allow that the Douglas battles, all four of them, were also fought in Scotland, this would mean that half of Nennius’s twelve battles were fought in Scotland, and this would make the idea of a southern Arthur untenable.

Four campaigns in four years and Arthur won them all. In the fifth year the Picts stayed their swords and primed their warning fires, because they knew that soon Arthur would come to the land of the Picts.

C
ARACALLA AND THE
B
ATTLE OF
B
ASSAS