Finding Arthur (45 page)

The evidence suggests that the Battle of Coraind was not just fought in Aedan’s Province, which is a pretty big place, but in a very specific part of Aedan’s Province, exactly 1,500 feet to the south of Aedan’s Fort, at the opposite end of the Roman Fort, on the crooked twisted ground that inspired the battle-name Camlann.

I had found Camelon using the southern sources, and I had found corroborative evidence in the northern sources. I was content that I had proved that the Battle of Camlann was fought in Camelon, Falkirk, and more than that, that I had identified the precise place in Camelon where it was fought and that I had proved this not once but twice.

There are three other sources of evidence all pointing to the same place, Camelon, Falkirk, as the battlefield of Camlann.

In his carefully argued
The Discovery of Arthur
, Geoffrey Ashe says,

In 685 a battle was fought [at Nechtansmere] … between [the Angles] … and the Picts. Despite the wrong date and wrong nationalities a local legend makes this battle a clash between Arthur and Mordred, supposedly part of a feud leading up to
Camlann
.
²⁰

What was it that inspired this clearly distorted local legend in the area about Perth, and why was it that this local legend confused the seventh-century Battle of Nechtansmere with Arthur and Mordred,
who, according to almost everyone, lived in the sixth century and far away in the south of Britain?

The detail that this battle was a prelude to Camlann tweaked my interest. The local legend noted by Geoffrey Ashe put the legendary Arthur and Mordred in the land of the Picts, where the historical Arthur Mac Aedan had also been active. It also involved them in a battle “leading up to Camlann.” Geoffrey and Malory had both said exactly this: that there was campaign leading up to Camlann (except, of course, they set the scenes of their action in the far south of Britain).

I looked for a battle “leading up to Camlann.”
The
Annals
of
Tigernach
told of a battle fought at Chirchind (Circenn), the location of which I had identified as the fort at Carpow, in the land of the Picts. This battle was followed by a battle fought at Coraind, which I have identified as the Battle of Camlann.

The
Annals of Ulster
tell of a battle in which the sons of Aedan fought and, in a separate entry for the same year, of a battle fought at Corann, which is again Coraind and again the Battle of Camlann.

Here was evidence in a “local legend” that the legendary Arthur fought in a battle in which the historical record suggests the historical Arthur also fought. This is either an amazing coincidence or the legendary Arthur and the historical Arthur Mac Aedan were one and the same man.

If this is right, then this is how things probably happened. Arthur Mac Aedan fought and won two battles against the Picts at their capital Circenn-Carpow, outside Perth. The first of these battles, fought circa 584, is the battle best known as the Battle of Bassas. The second of these battles, fought in 596, is the battle
The
Annals of Tigernach
call the Battle of Chirchind, that is, Circenn-Carpow.

It was easy to see how the legend in the Perth area came into being and became as confused as it is. The Battle of Nechtansmere, which had nothing to do with any Arthur, was fought near a place where, a century before, Arthur Mac Aedan had fought and won the Battle of Bassas-Circenn-Carpow. This connected the area around Perth with the name of Arthur.

The Battle of Nechtansmere was fought between the Picts and the Angles. The Picts and the Angles were allies when they marshaled
their troops at Bassas-Circenn-Carpow before marching west to do battle with Arthur in the campaign that culminated in the Battle of Badon in circa 588. These events connected the name of Arthur with the Picts and the Angles and with the area about Perth.

After the Battle of Nechtansmere, fought between the Picts and the Angles, it is probable that Arthur’s name was erroneously and confusingly injected into the Nechtansmere accounts and that this produced Geoffrey Ashe’s “local legend.”

I appreciate that not all of this is easy to come to grips with, but if it were easy someone else would have come up with it long ago. To make matters more confusing, in 596 Arthur Mac Aedan fought another battle on the same ground as he had fought the Battle of Bassas-Circenn-Carpow; this was the Battle of Chirchind-Circenn-Carpow, recorded in
The Annals of Tigernach
. Just as the annals say, this Battle of Chirchind-Circenn-Carpow, fought against the Picts, immediately preceded the Battle of Coraind-Camlann. Arthur’s opponent at the Battle of Coraind-Camlann was Mordred. When this ingredient is added, the end result is again the “local legend” to which Geoffrey Ashe referred.

Nechtansmere was a hugely important battle, and so it was the battle best remembered in the area, because, after all, the Picts had won the Battle of Nechtansmere and they had lost every time they had come up against Arthur. No one likes remembering defeats.

If the local legend is an echo of battles fought circa 596, involving first Arthur against the Picts and second Arthur against Mordred’s Gododdin, then the “wrong date” to which Geoffrey Ashe refers ceases to exist as a problem,

Geoffrey Ashe says the Angles and the Picts are the “wrong nationalities” to be involved in an Arthurian legend, but of course if Arthur was Arthur Mac Aedan, then Geoffrey Ashe’s “wrong nationalities” are not wrong, because the Angles and the Picts were allies in the Badon campaign they fought against Arthur, and, not only that, they set out from the Perth area.

The most telling fact, however, is that the battle in the local legend is said to have been “a clash between Arthur and Mordred supposedly part of a feud [campaign] leading up to Camlann.” This detail fits the reconstruction of the Camlann campaign that comes to light if
Arthur was Arthur Mac Aedan. There was a battle in the north, in the vicinity of Nechtansmere-Perth (Circenn-Carpow) which was part of a campaign that ended with the Battle of Camlann, a battle fought between Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, and Mordred of the Gododdin. It is likely that there were two battles fought, one after the other. One was lost sight of, and the participants in the second battle were simply said to have fought in the one battle that anyone remembered.

What probably happened was that Geoffrey Ashe’s “local legend” of the legendary Arthur was inspired by the actions of the historical Arthur Mac Aedan, and that, in due course, anachronistic Nechtansmere references were added.

It would be a colossal coincidence if the legendary Arthur just happened to be involved in a battle near Perth, a battle that was a prelude to his death at the Battle of Camlann, when the historical Arthur Mac Aedan also just happened to have fought a battle near Perth, at Circenn-Carpow, immediately before the Battle of Coraind, that is Camlann. It is more sensible to suppose that the legendary Arthur and Arthur Mac Aedan were the same man and that he fought in a battle outside Perth immediately before he fought in his last battle at Camelon-Camlann.

L
E
M
ORTE D
’A
RTHUR

The Christian propagandist Adamnan, a seventh-century Abbot of Iona, favored Columba-Crimthann at the expense of warrior contemporaries such as Arthur Mac Aedan. In his historically reckless
Life of St. Columba
Adamnan recorded that what he said was an eye-witness report of the events in 596. Adamnan was gullible or deluded or just a liar, because he says that while Columba-Crimthann was on Iona, he was able to provide an account of a battle while it was happening on the other side of the country. This is nonsense, of course.

Adamnan’s Columba-Crimthann says, “Let us now pray fervently to the Lord for this people and for King Aedan, for even now they are going into battle [against the Miathi Picts].”
²¹
Writing with the benefit of hindsight Adamnan says that a little later Columba went outside and looked at the sky (which is a nice touch) before saying, “Now the barbarians
are turned in flight and victory is granted to Aedan, though it is not a happy one. From Aedan’s army, three hundred and three were killed.”
²²

Clearly this battle was extremely costly for the victors. Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, enjoyed only a pyrrhic victory at best. This was the first battle in the Camlann campaign, the Battle of Chirchind-Circenn-Carpow.

The Welsh fifteenth-century
Red Book of Hergest
contains what is left of sixth-century Scottish history after the best part of a thousand years, during which it was battered into a shape that served the purposes of those who wanted Arthur to be in the south. The writers of the
Red Book
, just like Geoffrey, said Arthur fought an unnamed Roman Emperor. This is plainly preposterous; there were no Roman emperors in the west after circa 476 CE, and even if there had been, no one from Britain could have traveled across the mainland of Europe to fight him without carving a wide swathe in history, and there is no evidence of this.

And in the end Arthur encountered the emperor, and Arthur slew him. And Arthur’s best men were slain there. When Medrawd heard that Arthur’s host was dispersed, he turned against Arthur … And when Arthur heard that, he turned back with all that had survived of his army … And then there took place the Battle of Camlan …
²³

I dismissed the stuff about the Roman emperor as nonsense gauged to disguise the fact that Arthur was really pitched against a Pictish king, something that could not be disclosed without pointing to the fact that Arthur was a man of the north. I did however give weight to the evidence that Arthur had been involved in a debilitating battle immediately before the Battle of Camlann, because this corroborated Geoffrey, Malory, and Adamnan. The fact that, according to the
Red Book
, Camlann was preceded by another battle also corroborates the Irish-Scottish
Annals
.

The writers of the
Red Book
took care to avoid details that might identify Arthur’s true place in history, but they were not careful enough
because they failed to delete a passage that says the campaign against the “Emperor” was fought, “Beyond the mountain[s] of
Mynneu
.”
²⁴

At least one writer has said this
Mynneu
refers to the Alps, but this is only because Arthur was supposed to have been fighting a Roman Emperor in Italy. No one I know of has ever come up with a name for the Alps that sounds anything like
Mynneu
. The matter is clear, Mynneu is Manau, and beyond the mountains of Mynneu means beyond the mountains of Manau. Beyond the mountains of Manau lie the mountains of Pictland, where, in the sixth century, lay the capital of the premier province of the Picts—Chirchind-Circenn-Carpow. Where else?

The
Red Book
says, “Arthur turned back” to meet Mordred at Camlann. This fits with the view that has Camlann the culmination of a campaign in which Arthur marched north against the Picts, fought and won a costly victory, and then, when he heard that Mordred’s Gododdin had risen against him, marched south against Mordred with a weakened army, only to go down to defeat at Camlann.

If the
Red Book
is read with an eye on sixth century Scotland, it is clear that when it says defeated and killed an “Emperor,” it means a king of the Picts. This victory was at the expense of the deaths of many of Arthur’s men.

It is now possible to construct what led up to and what happened at Camlann. Arthur married Guinevere and so gained authority over her land on the eastern marches of Manau. This land and Mordred’s land on the western marches of the land of the Gododdin were contiguous. Mordred was jealous of Arthur because of Arthur’s reputation. Mordred knew he would have to defeat and kill Arthur and then legitimize his victory by marrying Guinevere or, and this is more likely because Mordred was already married to the fierce Cywyllog, by having one of his supporters marry Guinevere. Like other chiefs and kings who resented Arthur’s past success and feared his future actions, Mordred was willing to attack Arthur but afraid to make his move until he could be sure of success.

Mordred had commanded the Gododdin contingent in an allied British army that, in the 570s, under the overall command of Taliesin’s patron Urien of Rheged had pushed the Angles back to the sea at Lindisfarne. If the Britons had destroyed the Angle army there and then,
Urien would have become predominant in Scotland. Mordred found this both personally and politically intolerable. “But during this campaign, Urien was assassinated on the instigation of Morcant [Mordred], from jealousy, because his military skill and generalship surpassed that of all the other kings.”
²⁵

Mordred, a jealous assassin in the 570s remained a jealous assassin in the 590s. This was the Mordred Arthur had at his back when he marched north against the Picts in 596. If Mordred had been jealous of Urien, how much more must Mordred have been jealous of Arthur? Cywyllog too had both personal and political reasons to hate Arthur and to plot his death.

It is impossible to say with certainty what started the Camlann campaign. It is most likely that the Miathi Picts rebelled against Gartnait, Arthur’s half-brother, the man Aedan had installed as king of the Picts after the Battle of Bassas around 584. An unexpected rebellion would go some way toward explaining Arthur’s heavy losses in the subsequent battle, particularly if the rebel Picts had succeeded in taking the fort at Bassas-Circenn-Carpow before Arthur arrived, thus forcing him to attack a fortified position.

In 596 Arthur advanced on the Pictish capital, where twelve years before he had defeated the Picts in the Battle of Bassas, and there engaged the Picts again. This was the battle against the Miathi Picts of which Adamnan wrote, “Now the barbarians are turned in flight and victory is granted … though it is not a happy one.”
²⁶