The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland (20 page)

Armes Prydein Fawr

Composed in the ninth or tenth century, ‘The Prophecy of Great Britain’ recalls the extent of the lands of the Old Welsh-speakers, from the Clyde to Brittany, and predicts that the Saxons will be driven into the sea. Allied to the Vikings, the Cymry will rule in London once more. Here are some extracts:

From Alt Clut will come reckless men

To drive the Saxons out of Prydein;

From Brittany a mighty army

Warlike warriors who spare not their foes.

On every side Saxons will fall,

Their day ended, their stolen lands foresworn.

Death, brought hither on warriors’ blades,

Will pay for the thieving courtiers.

May a hedge be their only haven,

May the sea be their counsel,

And may blood be their companion.

Cynan and Cadwaladr, leaders of the war band,

Will be praised forever, praise be theirs.

Powerful lords, prudent in council,

Crushing the Saxons in the sight of God . . .

From Manau to Brittany our lands will stretch;

From Dyfed to Thanet will be ours,

From the Wall to Gweryd, right to the sea

Our sway over Rheged,

The Saxons won’t return.

When Gwenddolau and his warriors rode to the fords at Arderydd, they will have passed by the ruins of former glory. Less than a mile to the south of Liddell Strength stood the Roman fort at Netherby. Known as Castra Exploratorum, ‘the Fort of the Scouts’, it was built at the same time as Hadrian’s Wall, in the period after 122. The early garrisons were large. Manned by a cohort of part-mounted Spaniards a thousand strong, the garrisons’ role along the troubled frontier of the times was as a base forward of the great wall which collected intelligence and could send out sorties in some strength. After the death of Septimius Severus at York in 212, the fort’s function was probably scaled back to scouting and the monitoring of any significant movement of native war bands and that required many fewer men. But the Castra Exploratorum was a substantial stamp of Roman power. Many units from all across the empire passed through its gates and dedications to both Celtic and Germanic war gods on soldiers’ thanksgiving altars have been unearthed. There was a small civilian settlement beyond the walls.

As a pagan, a worshipper of more than one god, Gwenddolau may have recognised some of the deities such as Belatucadros and Cocidius. Nearby, the other Hadrianic outpost fort in the west at Bewcastle was known as Fanum Cocidi, ‘the Shrine of Cocidius’. The nature of these gods and the details of the
ceremonies surrounding their worship were never written down and are lost. But one rider in Gwenddolau’s retinue will have understood for he held a vast store of religious knowledge in a prodigious memory. Myrddin was a druid, perhaps one of the last of his kind, and an aristocrat who wore a gold torc around his neck. All the sources say that he fought at Arderydd.

When Gwenddolau and his war band passed the old Roman fort in 573, it will still have been impressive. The gateway towers will perhaps have tumbled and, even though there were no large settlements at hand, stone from the ramparts will here and there have been robbed out where it was easy to remove. Few who lived in southern Scotland and northern England could be unaware of Rome, its reach and the stories of its former power. Many saw its relics every day.

On their way to Arderydd in the summer of 573, another band of warriors remembered the empire when they passed through Hadrian’s Wall, probably through the massive gates of one of the large forts. Roads led to the likes of Birrens or, more likely, Castlesteads, old Camboglanna. At the head of their war bands, where their standards fluttered, rode the kings of Ebrauc. Shadowy figures, they ruled at the place Nennius called Caer Ebrauc, Roman Eboracum, modern York. And they ruled against a background of some splendour. Under York Minster lie the collapsed drums of a massive column. It helped hold up the roof of the basilica of the army headquarters building at the centre of the fort. A vast and impressive complex of buildings, it housed army command north, provided the quarters of several emperors campaigning in Britain and was a centre of power for centuries. The multangular tower at one corner of the fort stills stands close to its original height and the archaeologists who examined the collapsed column have found evidence that the buildings remained ‘standing in good repair’ until the ninth century and probably beyond.

In 573, more than 150 years after the last legionaries were stationed at York, two native kings and their war band occupied the old principia, its echoing basilica and the galleried courtyard
beyond it. Towering like a cathedral, the huge hall had a tribunal at one end, a podium where commanders – and indeed emperors – stood to address officers. There were rows of eight columns on each side and the internal height of the building was more than 23 metres, only seven less than that of York Minster. No other structure remotely like it will have been seen for many miles, perhaps not in all Britain. The York kings borrowed the grandeur of Rome and gained authority thereby.

Peredur ap Elifer and his brother Gwrgi had ridden out of the principia and taken the roads to the north-west to wage war. They were Christian kings and may have controlled not only Ebrauc but also its hinterland. This was Deifr, ‘the Land of Rivers’, the fertile East Riding of Yorkshire and later the dynamic Anglian kingdom of Deira.

Conquest rather than conversion is likely to have supplied a motive for the strike across the Pennines and into Cumbria. What mattered to powerful rulers, whether native or Anglo-Saxon, was power. Despite Gildas’ railings, British kings rarely made common cause against the Germanic invaders and, if it suited their purpose, Germanic kings would – and did – make alliances with natives. Not until much later was there any sense of a cultural or racial struggle for Britain between clearly defined enemies. In the ninth century, when the enclave of Wales was all that remained, a prophecy called the
Armes Prydein Fawr
exhorted the Welsh to ally with the Danes, the Irish and the Scots to drive the Anglo-Saxons back into the sea. There was a deep sense of loss, that Lloegr, the lost lands of England, had been submerged by the Saxons, a people ‘so lacking in lineage’. And the later myth-history of Arthur the king fighting against the tide of barbarism threatening to engulf Britain has added much to that sense of a national war. In reality there was no Britain, only British kingdoms. And they often fought each other. That was why King Peredur and King Gwrgi and their warriors saddled their ponies and rode out of the citadel at York.

The outcome of the battle they fought at Arderydd is remembered only in the uncertainties and conventions of later bardic poetry, recensions of what was no doubt held in memory after 573. But it is clear that there was a great slaughter – perhaps 300 men died. One was Gwenddolau and it appears that the kings of Ebrauc added Carlisle, another half-ruined Roman city, to their domain. Such was the killing in the fields at Arderydd that Myrddin the druid was driven insane. Having cut down his own Christian nephew in the furious chaos of the fighting Myrddin, covered in his blood, fled into the wastes of the great wood of Celyddon. There, in the hills above the Ettrick, Yarrow and Tweed Valleys, he lived a fugitive life, tormented by his dreams. And he kept his weapons by him:

The Thirteen Treasures of Britain

The very early Welsh epic,
Preiddeu Annwfn
(
The Spoils of Annwfn
), was composed some time before the ninth century, possibly as early as the seventh century. It tells the story of a raid to the Otherworld led by the hero, Arthur, to steal a magic cauldron. This features in a list of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain gathered by Myrddin or Merlin and kept safe on the island of Bardsey off the Welsh coast. It is not a list of obvious treasures, gemstones, silver and gold, but a collection of everyday objects with magical properties. The Thirteen Treasures appear in many Arthurian myths and what is striking are the clear northern origins of several:

1.
Dyrnwyn
(‘White Hilt’) – the sword of Rhydderch Hael, king of Strathclyde, which burst into flame when one of the Well-Born drew it.

2.
The Basket of Gwyddno Garanhir
(Gwyddno with the Crane’s Legs) – if food for one man was put in the basket, food for a hundred could be taken out.

3.
The Horn of Bran, the Miser from the North
– whatever drink most desired would be provided.

4.
The Chariot of Morgan the Wealthy
– the driver had only to think of where he wanted to go and the chariot would take him there speedily.

5.
The Halter of Clydno Eiddyn
(Clydno of Edinburgh) – if a sleeper tied it to the end of his bed, he would awake to find the horse he most desired in the halter.

6.
The Knife of Llawfodedd the Rider
– it could serve twenty-four men at one sitting.

7.
The Cauldron of Diwrnach the Giant
– if you placed meat in it to boil for a coward, it would never boil but, if you put meat for a brave man in it, the meat would boil quickly.

8.
The Whetstone of Tydwal Tudglyd
– if a brave man sharpened his sword on it, then the next stroke of his blade would kill a man but, if a
coward did so, his opponent would not suffer harm. (Tydwal appears in the Alt Clut genealogies.)

9.
The Coat of Padarn Red-Coat
– if one of the Well-Born put it on, it would fit him but, if a common man did so, it would not fit. (This is a tantalising reference to one of Theodosius’ prefects, Paternus Pesrut, who was set in authority over the southern Gododdin after the Barbarian Conspiracy in 367.)

10–11.
The Vat and Dish of Rhygenydd the Cleric
– these provided the food and drink most wished for.

12.
The Chessboard of Gwenddolau ap Ceidio
– the pieces played by themselves and they were made of silver and the board of gold. (Another historical figure – the loser at the Battle of Arderydd.)

13.
The Mantle of Arthur in Cornwall
– whoever wore it was invisible but the wearer could see everyone.

Most of all the old druid feared the vengeance of the king of Strathclyde, Rhydderch Hael. He had married Myrddin’s sister
and it was their son who was killed at Arderydd. Amongst the bardic devices and repetitions, these bleak stories contain glimpses of real historical personalities and they also follow traditions which were genuinely old – much older than the period when they were written down. It may well be that Myrddin, redrawn as Merlin in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth and later united with King Arthur, was indeed one of the last of the druids and a scion of one of the few native courts to cling to paganism.

Peredur and Gwrgi’s gore-spattered triumph at Arderydd was short-lived. In battle with the Bernicians, whose territory lay to the north of Ebrauc and Deifr, they were defeated and killed. Much weakened, their kingdom began to fray at the edges. A year after the brothers’ death, Aella led his Angles in victory. Deifr fell under his control and became Deira. In 616 or 617, Aella’s son, Edwin, took the citadel at York and the native kingdom of Ebrauc disappeared into the mists of history as the great basilica became the focus of a new royal power.

King Arthur in Merrie Carlisle

Cornwall, the West Country, South Cadbury and Glastonbury are the locations most closely linked with the legends of the mighty King Arthur but this was not always so. As the romance began to swirl after the publication of
The History of the Kings of Britain
(which distilled much of the existing myth-history about Arthur) in the twelfth century, many writers chose an entirely different location. Throughout Europe and Britain Carlisle became famous as the home of Arthur, of Camelot. Sir Thomas Malory’s
Le Morte D’Arthur
used Carlisle for many well-known episodes – Lancelot fighting his way out of Guinevere’s bedchamber, his rescue of the queen from the stake and the ultimate reconciliation of Arthur and the errant Guinevere. Carlisle is also the surprising setting for many of the great French Arthurian romances. Why? Was there a shred of real history still attached to the tales of chivalry, round tables and damsels? Did some memory of Arthur as a northern figure in the Dark Ages still linger? Perhaps.

The expansion and successes of the new Angle kingdoms of the east were answered by the emergence of a new name in the west – a king whose mystery and glory would outlive him in the praise poems of his bards. Urien, king of Rheged, turned out to be the eventual beneficiary of the slaughter at Arderydd. His name is derived from
urbgen
which means ‘born in the city’, almost certainly Carlisle. The old Roman city was the focus and hinge of Rheged, its walls, streets and civic buildings conferring the same sort of borrowed authority once enjoyed by the York kings. Hailed as Lord of Luguvalium, Master of the Forest of Luel and Lord of the Cultivated Plain, all references to Carlisle and its hinterland, Urien also established himself over a much wider territory.