This Holy Relic of the Realm - The Black Rood of Scotland

The most famous physical object associated with Scottish royalty is undoubtedly the Stone of Scone, now thankfully ensconced in Edinburgh Castle after a somewhat lengthy sojourn in London. Another famous physical icon associated with Scotland and her monarchy has disappeared forever.  This was the religious treasure enshrined  in an ebony and gold box, the iconic Black Rood of Scotland.

    The measure of its value to the royal house of Scotland can be judged by the following two deathbed scenes. In the year 1093 Queen Margaret, wife of King Malcolm Canmore was on her deathbed.  Canmore had invaded northern England a short while before, 'harrying with more wantonness than behoved him,' according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle.  But they were countered by Robert, Earl of Northumbria.  The Scots kings was taken unawares at Alnwick, possibly slain by some treachery, and his killer was named as a knight named Arkil Morel of Bamburgh.  Also slain was Malcolm's eldest son and heir, Edward.

   By coincidence, or the stress of her husband's campaign, or divine synchronicity, the queen's life also suddenly veered towards its conclusion and she lay dying within Edinburgh Castle. It seems that news of her husband's demise had filtered north, although it was possibly not confirmed. It was enough, however, to haste her sudden decline. The scene was vividly portrayed by her biographer, Turgot, prior of Durham Cathedral:

Her face had already paled in death when she bade me, and the other attendants of the sacred altar along with me, to stand beside her, and to commend her soul to Christ with song. She also commanded to bring her the cross that she used to call the Black Cross, and which she used always to hold in the greatest veneration. And when the shrine in which it had been enclosed could not be opened very quickly, the queen groaned heavily, and said: 'Oh wretch that we are, and guilty! We shall not be judged worthy to see again the holy Rood!' When, however, it was brought out of the case, and taken to her, she received it with reverence; and set to embracing and kissing it, and signing with it very frequently her eyes and face.

    The queen's body grew cold, though she audibly maintained her constant praying. Her hands still firmly clenched the Black Rood. Her son David, who had become king after the death of his father, entered the bedchamber. He had come to tell his mother about the death of her husband and other son, Edward, but hesitated to do so until the queen compelled him. The end was not long coming.

The Relic

   What was the Black Rood and where did it come from? Margaret and other members of her kin undoubtedly believed that the relic contained part of the original cross. It is likely that her family brought the object back to Britain from their time in eastern Europe. Some sources state that it was brought to Scotland from Waltham Abbey. Aelred describes the object as follows:

Now this cross has the length of a palm and is made of purest gold, of wonderful workmanship; and it shuts and opens in fashion of a case. In it is seen a certain portion of the Lord's cross (as it has often been proved by the argument of many miracles), having the image of our Saviour carved in hardest ivory, and wondrously decorated with golden adornments.

   The colour of the relic may have been because its outer wooden casing developed a black patina through age or from the carbon deposit of candles when it was held for a considerable period in a confined setting in a church. In the records of Edward I it is termed 'la Blakerode d’Escoce '. Julianna Grigg points out that Anglo-Saxon terminology allowed  the word blác to signify ‘bright’, 'shining' or
'splendid' as well as simply 'black'. 

King David and the Black Rood

  David founded the church of the Holy Rood near Edinburgh in 1128 and here he may have kept the holy relic of the cross. (This is according to the late 15th century historian Hector Boece.)  In May 1153 David, King of the Scots, became ill. Aelred (who knew the king from childhood) says on the sixth day of his sickness he became violently worse and he was unable to stand. He summoned priests and asked for the sacrament. When they prepared to bring the host to him, David asked instead that they carry him before the altar. The priest and attendant knights carried him to hear the mass and afterwards he asked that the Black Rood be brought to him.
  

David I

Theft by Edward I and Return 

  

The Black Rood was taken to England by King Edward I in 1291 along with other royal possessions. Encased in a gold-gilt silver box in Edinburgh Castle, it was among the items deposited by the king at Berwick were several things wrapped in a linen cloth, including 'a complete old vestment lacking a chausuble [and] a shrine of gilded silver wherein reposes the cross called La Blak Rode'. Strangely, in another act of cultural appropriation, the despotic Edward had also stolen another cross, the 'Croes Naid' of Wales, which had been sacred to the native princes there.

   As part of the peace settlement between England and Scotland following the Wars of Independence, negotiations were begun about the return of certain artefacts to Scotland. First among these was the Stone of Destiny which the people of London would not allow the king's guardian, Sir Roger de Mortimer, to return. But the Black Rood and other items were sent north in 1328. The duration of the relic's stay in Scotland was not to last long. As part of an alliance with France, the Scots under David II invaded and ravaged northern England in 1346, but were surprised and heavily defeated by an English force at the battle of Neville's Cross near Durham. The king was captured and spent eleven years as a captive in England. The Rood meanwhile was taken to Durham Cathedral and, according to most accounts, remained there until the Reformation in 1540, at which time it disappeared.

   But there are alternative tales about the fate of the relic. Some stories insist that the relic, or at least part of it remained in Scotland. The custodian of Melrose Abbey, George Smith, told author Pat Gerber that the Black Rood was broken when the abbey was destroyed in 1385 and he believed that part of it was buried under the high altar when rebuilt.

   The writer Jeff Nisbet details the tradition that one Simon Sinclair retrieved the Scottish icon from Durham Cathedral and brought it back to be hidden in Rosslyn Chapel, a place associated both with his family and with an array of esoteric traditions and folklore. However, as Nisbet points out, there is little proof that Simon actually existed.  But he points out a connection between the widow of King James V, Mary of Guise, and William Sinclair of Rosslyn in 1546. The two had a discussion about some object which was presumably at Rosslyn and Mary swore to keep the details of it secret. Nobody knows what the thing was, though speculation has been rise over the years that it may have been the Black Rood. The writer states he has seen photographs of an item at Rosslyn which may support this tradition.

   The same writer also notes the record of two crosses being brought to the battle of Neville's Cross - one requiring to be carried by several men and the other small enough to be carried in the palm of a hand.  He further speculates that the Rood's cross contained part of the royal crown of the kings of Hungary. But, equally, given Margaret's background in both Anglo-Saxon England and Hungary, the Black Rood may have originated among the sacred possessions of her great uncle, King Edward the Confessor. Despite her family's exile in Hungary, Margaret was conspicuously and self-consciously of Anglo-Saxon heritage and it is highly likely that any holy heirloom she possessed and passed down to her son would have reflected this cultural lineage.
 

Other Traditions

   E. L. G. Stones points out that the Rood may not have been returned to Scotland in 1328 as is generally thought. He discovered that one official English record noted on 7th January 1346 that the Black Rood was taken from its box in the Tower of London and given to then keeper of the king's wardrobe, to be 'kept by the side of the king'. The capture of the relic at the battle is apparently based on evidence that is open to question. So we are left with a variety of dates for its relocation to England and three possible locations for it: Durham, Rosslyn and London. The various crosses at Durham are detailed by David Willem, including the crosses associated with its patron, St Curthbert, and the cross which was allegedly the Black Rood of Durham. St Cuthbert and his see of Durham had a long and complicated history with Scots royalty. Durham also had a propensity to display Scottish royal knick-knacks. Stirrups from king James IV were displayed here after his death at the battle of Flodden in 1513.

Some Sources

Pat Gerber, Search for the Stone of Destiny (Edinburgh, 1992).

Julianna Grigg, 'The Black Rood of Scotland: a social and political life,' Viator, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 38, Issue 3 (2017), pp. 53-78.
Jeff Nisbet, 'The Black Cross of Scotland: Has the Long-Lost Relic Been Found At Last?' Atlantis Rising Research Group

E. L. G. Stones, 'Allusion to the Black Rood of Scotland in 1346,' The Scottish Historical Review, 38, No. 126, Part 2 (October 1959), pp. 174-5.
David Willem, 'Two ways ‘St Cuthbert’s cross’ could be the Black Rood of Scotland,' https://davidwillem.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/two-ways-st-cuthberts-cross-could-be-the-black-rood-of-scotland/

David Willem,'What did the Black Rood look like?' https://davidwillem.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/what-did-the-black-rood-look-like/

Yrp of the Hosts - Proto Pictish Supremo?

  What information do we know about the earliest Pictish kings found before the historical horizon? It's generally thought that the Pictish king lists only become reliable around the middle of the 6th century, with the advent of the powerful Brude mac Maelchon, who ruled from somewhere near the modern Inverness and was famously encountered by St Columba there.

  Can anything then be recovered from the material we have about Pictish kings before this date? One line of enquiry we can stumble along begins not with the fragmentary Pictish material, but in the Welsh Triads. There is mention there of a character named Yrp of the Hosts. One Triad describes him as leader of a vast army that departed from Britain:

Three Levies that departed from the Island, and not one of them came back.
'The second went with Yrp of the Hosts...And all her asked of each chief fortress was twice as many (men) as would come with him to it; and to the first Fortress there came only himself and his servant...Nevertheless that was the most complete levy that ever went from this Island, and no (man) of them ever came back. The place where those men remained was on two island close to the Greek sea...'

 More information is contained in the following:

An army (of assistance) went with Yrp of the Hosts to Llychlyn...And with these men he conquered the way he went...

  The suggestion that this Triad remembers the departure of Aud, widow of Olaf the White, to Iceland. This is on the basis that one of Aud's followers was named Erpr.  But Welsh legend does not generally celebrate Viking events and this identification seems misplaced. The editor of the Welsh Triads, Rachel Bromwich, believed that the proper name was a play on the Welsh word for 'number' and that it was invented by a storyteller instead of being based on a real person. An argument against this would be that the great majority of names in the Triads are demonstrably real people, not invented characters, even if we know next to nothing about many of them.

  Looking north, we have similar forms to Yrp in some versions of the Pictish kings lists.  We can particularly note Drust, Erp's son and also Nechtan Morbet, son of Erip or Wirp.  These kings (if they existed at all) may have reigned in the 5th century AD.  However, we are definitely in the realm of fantasy when we hear from the sources that Drust son of Erp reigned for a hundred years and fought a hundred battles.  Is these merely shorthand based on the remembered boasts of a bard who was himself glorifying an exceptionally powerful and long-lived ruler?  These rulers seem to have been associated with the lands around the Tay in southern Pictland.  Nechtan may be the king who is remembered at the fort and later parish of Dunnichen in Angus, site of the later battle in the 7th century when the Northumbrians were defeated.  he may also be associated with a monastic community at Abernethy. He is alleged to have invited an acolyte of the Irish St Bridget to settle there.







The hidden history of this pair of kings, Nechtan and Drust, is not easy to fathom, wreathed as it is in layer upon layer of rewriting and fantasy.  There is a possibility that Nechtan was extremely active in reaching out to the nascent Irish church.  He may be the same Nechtan who is associated with St Buitte, an Irishman who is credited with bringing him back to life.  In thanks for this admittedly impressive miracle, he transferred ownership of the fort in which the event took place to the saint. This is alleged to be Kirkbuddo in central Angus. It seems possibly that Nechtan's brother was against the association with missionaries, though whether this was on the basis of his own paganism or because he was distrustful of foreigners entering Pictland is unknown.  Drust expelled Nechtan to Ireland at some stage and it was there that Nechtan made close ties with the Christian community. The writer John Morris (author of The Age of Arthur (1973)) confidently dates Drust's reign to the period 414 to 458, but we are a long way from certainty on this matter.

  Could Erp be a legendary and shadowy king who led raids perhaps on the crumbling Roman state of Britannia? There is no way of knowing for sure, but it's an intriguing possibility.

The Legendary Giant Caw of Prydyn, An Early Pictish King?

This post is one of a series which looks at very early Pictish history and attempts to see what, if anything, can be recovered from that very remote periods. Fragments of stories about early kings, in the surviving king lists and saint's lives, can give clues about these characters, but in most cases the information is late, piecemeal, or grossly distorted.

Culhwch and Olwen

   Caw of Prydyn - that is, Pictland - is one of those lost figures of the far north of who make a shadowy appearance in various places in early Welsh literature. Perhaps his best showing is as a fleeting character in the medieval tale Culhwch and Olwen (featured in the Mabinogion), where is one one of a dizzying cast of dozens who assist the hero defeat the evil giant  Yspadaden Penkawr. (The cast includes the supposed eldest son of Caw, Hueil, who is also mentioned below.  Another son, Gwarthegydd, is also mentioned.) Nora Chadwick believed that Caw may have played a more central part in this medieval tale in its primitive version, but this is difficult to confirm or deny.  In the tale, Culhwch must complete a series of near impossible tasks imposed upon him by the giant before he can win Olwen.

   The tasks themselves in the tale are so varied and encompass the assistance of so many heroes that it is difficult to disentangle the earliest strata of the story.  There does seem to be a great many elements which point towards ill-remembered early British Celtic tradition. Caw  is characterised as a leader in the far North, who 'rules the sixty cantrevs of Pictland'.  He attacks the huge boar named Ysgithrwyn Pen Beidd, slicing its mighty head in two and keeping its mighty tusks as trophies.  Later in the story he collects the still warm blood of a black witch and shaves the giant himself.  Although many of the motifs in this story are ancient indeed, the editors of Culhwch and Olwen believe that the inclusion of Caw is largely due to his conspicuous part in a legendary incident in the life of St Cadoc, considered below.

Creative Commons Zero - CC0

The Giant Arises

   The fullest account of Caw comes in a Life of St Cadoc, written at Llancarfan in South Wales by Lifric, of Lifric, at the start of the 12th century. In this work the saint is said to have lived for some time at the Pictish monastery of St Andrews in Fife.  On his return to his homeland in the south he crossed the hills known as Bannog (Bannauc, Bannawg), which are known to have separated Pictish and British territory a little way north of Glasgow.  Here he was instructed by an angel to halt and remain seven years, converting the people to Christianity.  While he was engaged one day in digging the foundations for his monastery here he came across a huge collar bone belonging to some ancient hero.  It was so large that a champion of horseback would have been able to ride through it unimpeded.  Cadoc swore that he would find out the meaning of this marvel and that night an angel warned him to strengthen his priests and the local people with his words for fear they should fear for their lives.

   'For tomorrow, at the first hour of the day,' the angel said, 'this ancient giant will be resuscitated, who will be your excavator as long as he lives.'

   The next day, event before the saint had completed his oration to his people, the giant rose from the earth, horrible and immense. The spectators were justifiably terrified, declaring that a phantasm had appeared to them in human form in order to carry them away. But the hideous figure was compelled to fall at the feet of the holy man and begged him not to send his soul back to the awful whirlpools of Cocytus.  Cadoc asked him who he was, and about his family and the manner of his death.  The giant said that he had reigned for many years beyond Mount Bannauc, then he and his plunderers arrived at these coasts to gather booty and lay them waste. But the king of this region pursued him and slew him, and so he and his followers had been consigned to hell from that day.  He said his name was Cau of Pritdin.  Cadoc told him to rejoice, since he still had the chance of salvation, if he followed righteous actions.  To this the giant replied, 'All the things which thou hast bidden seen light to me, and I will exceedingly fulfil the.'  Caw was set to work excavating the foundations and laboured there until he died (for the second time).

Here were giants: Cambuslang in modern times

 Later in the life we are told that the monastery was at Cambuslang and evidently the story of the giant was part of its foundation legend. Nora Chadwick pointed out the similarity of this immense figure with the giants who are said to be the ancestors of Arthur and his fellow heroes in another Welsh tale, The Dream of Rhonabwy.  (The latter tale also features Caw's son Gwarthegydd, who has a  role here as a counsellor of Arthur.  In Culhwch and Olwen he is the first man killed by the monstrous boar.)  But his immense stature may have primarily been influenced by the similarity of his name to the Welsh word cawr, which simply means 'giant'.

The Father of St Gildas?

   St Gildas was the author of De Excidio Britanniae, a mid 6th century state of the nation which gave a bleak picture of the lamentable state of Celtic Britain following Roman withdrawal and under the threat of Anglo-Saxon settlement.  From the British tyrants identified by Gildas, his operational knowledge seems confined to what is now south-west England and part of Wales.  One of his lives, however, states that he was the son of a man  named Cau or Caw from North Britain.

   Although Welsh literature designates Caw as belonging to Pictland one of the lives of St Gildas states that Caw was the ruler of Arecluta, that is the Welsh (or Northern British) kingdom of Strathclyde. There are frustratingly few details in the document to be able to judge where this information might have come from and how relevant or truthful it is.  Again, in St Cadoc's life, following the extraordinary story of the giant Caw, there is an incident where Cadoc encounters Gildas in Wales. We are told in this passage that Gildas is the son of Cau, presumably the same northern figure previously encountered, but the author makes no attempt to link the information and digresses into a tale wherein the two saints engage in a petty dispute about the ownership of a bell. The only additional information we receive is that Caw is callidus artifex, a 'skilled craftsman'.  This may be a stray piece of legitimate tradition attached to the lost legend of this king, though we will never know for certain.  The association with Gilas and Cadoc likewise may have been more explicit in earlier versions of their legends.

   We can compare the two vitae of St Gildas to look at his supposed origins.  The earlier composition was composed at Ruys in Brittany, possibly in the 9th century.  In its opening chapter it is stated that Gildas was born in the 'very fertile region of Arecluta' and his father is called Caunus rex Albaniae and a most noble and catholic man.  The 12th century Welsh life of Gildas, by Caradoc of Llancarfan, cays that his father was Nau, which seems to be a scribal error.  Nau is described as 'the noblest of the kings of the north, who had twenty-four sons, victorious warriors'.

Different Traditions

   We can see that there is a variance in the records about Caw.  In one source he is a foreigner, a Pict, who raids Britain as a freebooter.  In another he is a noble and Christian king of Strathclyde. The blurring of identity need not necessarily point to a whole invented character.  There was considerable crossover in identity between the Northern Britons and the Picts. Both peoples spoke a similar language and there were certainly times when the Picts were ruled by kings from Strathclyde. However, his name does not appear in any of the king-lists for that region. P. K. Johnstone attempted to show that the garbled name Galan Arilith in the Pictish king-lists was a corruption of Caw of Arecluta, though his argument was some distance away from being convincing. 

   There is disagreement two about the offspring of Caw of the North.  The Ruys life of Gildas says that he was succeeded as ruler by his eldest son Cuillus, who is described as a great warrior.  Besides him and Gildas, he had three sons and a daughter.  These were all saints, who were venerated at various places in Wales.  Caradoc's account, as we have seen, swells the number of children to twenty-four. He calls the eldest son Hueil and he became an enemy of King Arthur, who tracked him down in a place called Manau, which was either the Isle of Man, or the British region of Manau Gododdin in Scotland.  Although Hueil does not emerge as a more likely historical figure than his father, it is certain that there was an active body of tradition about him in Wales in the Middle Ages.  He features in  the Triads (Triad 21) as one of the 'Three Battle-Diademed Men of the Island of Britain'.  In later Welsh tradition, enshrined in the text called Bonedd y Saint, the children of Caw are cited as one of the three holy families of Britain.

  The later genealogical lists which feature the progeny of Caw seem primarily to be associated with Gwynedd. Much material relating to Y Gogledd, the Old North in England and Scotland associated with ancient ancient British kingdoms, migrated to north Wales and could represent fragments from the history of that lost cultural region. In one genealogical tract Caw himself is said to belong to Dwrkelyn, a commote in Anglesey.

CC0 Public Domain (Karen Arnold)

The Oldest Animal:  the Owl of Cwm Cawlydd

   Another northern character which may have been relocated south to Wales from an original northern home is the Owl of Cwm Cawlydd.  This creature appears in the Mabinogion also, as one of the oldest creatures on the earth. Its home, according to later tradition, was in the long vanished woods adjacent to Llyn Cowlydd, the deepest lake in Wales, in Snowdonia.  But the local was likely transferred from some place in Pictland or southern Scotland.  In Culhwch and Olwen, one of the tasks imposed upon the hero is seeking the legendary hero Mabon son of Modron.  The owl is asked if it had ever heard of this person. Mabon seems originally to have have been a god and his cult was particularly evident north of Hadrian's Wall.

Some Sources

Rachel Bromwich (ed.), Trioedd Ynys Prydain (2nd edn., Cardiff, 1978).

Rachel Bromwich and Simon Evans (ed.), Culhwch and Olwen, An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale (Cardiff, 1992).

N. K. Chadwick, 'The Lost Literature of Celtic Scotland,' Scottish Gaelic Studies, 7 (153), pp. 115-83.

Jeffrey Gantz (trans.), The Mabinogion (Harmondsworth, 1976).

P. K. Johnstone, 'Caw of Pictland,' Antiquity, volume 12, issue 47 (September, 1938), pp. 340-1.

King Arthur, a Lost Ruler and Rerigonion, the 'Very Royal Place'

   This article is the first in a series which will hopefully fully examine the faintest strand of tradition in Scotland: the tales of the Welsh speaking British kingdoms which once ruled northern England and southern Scotland. An unfortunate barrier to the study of these traditions for the unwary is the unwelcome over-writing of Arthurian 'tradition', a dubious palimpsest with both ancient and modern variants.

   Sites associated with King Arthur have been - to coin a phrase - done to death over the past few decades.  Every amateur historical sleuth unfortunate enough to be bitten by the Arthurian bug (when he or she should really be out investigating something more substantial) seeks desperately to nail the king or the battle-leader to specific points in the landscape, as if by doing this they would somehow substantiate his reality once and for all. Top of the list is, of course, Camelot - which may or may not be associated with Cadbury in Somerset.

   The unhappiest hunting ground for detectives seeking out the Once and Future King is perhaps the passage in the early 9th century Welsh composition Historia Brittonum which lists the supposes sites of Arthur's battles.  No-one has every satisfactorily and categorically identified the places in this lkist where Arthur is supposed to have fought.  Significantly, perhaps, the only place which seems clear is Coed Celyddon, the Forest of Caledonia, which must be within the confines of Scotland, but whether this means somewhere in the Borders area is still unclear. (The next most identifiable battle place is the City of the Legions, probably Chester.)  Opinion is divided about how ancient the incorporated list of conflict sites actually is.  The former view that the places were taken from an older poem celebrating the battles of Arthur is no longer given credence by every modern scholar.

   Battles aside, one major modern strand of current Arthurian speculation is the school of thought which tries to prove that Arthur came from the north.  A lot of this, in fairly dubious publications, insists that Arthur was the similarly named son of Aedan of Dal Riata, who died in 603.  The evidence for this equation is in fact pathetically weak and need not concern us here.  

   The second class of Arthurian site in Scotland is the Arthur names.  There is, of course, Ben Arthur near Loch Lomond and a cluster of Arthur place-names in Strathmore near the Perthshire-Angus border, plus a sprinkle of other places named after him, here and there.  But, in a category by itself perhaps, is the place named in Welsh legend as one of the three seats of Arthur, Pen Rhionydd. 

Gerthmwl Wledig in Welsh Tradition 

   The primary inhabitant of this place in the north (though he is not always named as such) is an extremely shadowy character who appears only in Welsh tradition and especially in the Triads, the summary grouping of related tales which served as memory aids to bards relating the full versions of ancient legends. In Triad 1, Three Tribal Thrones of the Island of Britain we learn about the elusive northern stronghold of power (the other places are St David's in Wales and Celliwig in Cornwall):

Arthur as Chief Prince in Pen Rhionydd in the North, and Gerthmwl Wledig as Chief Elder, and Cyndeyrn Garthwys as Chief Bishop. 

   Some Welsh commentators identified this with the Mull of Galloway and it is possible that it equates with Ptolemy's Rerigonion, which means 'very royal place'.  If so, it would be a remarkable instance of continuity of a place-name from the Iron Age to Medieval times, and all the more remarkable because the name is found in Welsh and not in any Scottish source. (It seems to be unique to the triads also.)

   But , before we venture to locate the 'very royal place,' we should take a pause to consider the people.  Arthur needs no introduction and the third person in the triad is the patron of Strathclyde, St Kentigern/Mungo. Like Arthur, the saint seems to have been drawn into the story and pinned to his locality by his regional, if not national, fame.  There are no historical, legendary or hagiographical associations with St Kentigern and the far west of Galloway whatever.  Gerthmwl Wledig is a trickier proposition, for we know very little about him.  The title wledig signifies he was of some imptotance.  Was he possibly a prince or warlord of the Novantae, the British tribe who occupied what later was called Galloway (and whose name means the Young Hunters)?

   He appears again in Triad 44, Three Horses who carried the Three Horse-Burdens.  The other two strands of the triads feature characters of the Old North and relate to incidents, one almost certainly fictitious and the second concerning a real battle.  The first tells of a supposed raid from the Strathclyde region to Anglesey (the horse burden of Elidir Mwynfawr) and the second mentions a prelude to the Battle of Arderydd in 573 (and a horse burden of the sons of Eliffer).  Although the incidents are likely unhistorical the people in them are likely to have actually existed. The third section concerns us in detail:

Heith, horse of the sons of Gwerthmwl Wledig, bore the third Horse-Burden:  he carried Gweir and Gleis and Archanad up the hill of Maelawr in Ceredigion to avenge their father.

   And there the story stalls, like many of the other triads.   Gwerthmwl  was evidently, in some other longer tale, killed in Wales, but we do not know the details.  The story may have originally been entirely set in the North; we will never know.  Rachel Bromiwch tells us that Allt Maelawr  is the hill-fort of Pendinas to the south of Aberystwyth.

   Even more intriguing is Triad 63 which gives a bare list of the Three Bull-Spectres of the Island of Britain (another version stated stag spectre) and includes:

...the Spectre of Gyrthmwl Wledig.

    The only other substantial wisp of tradition about this forgotten chieftain of Galloway is contained in the Stanzas of the Graves in the Black Book of Carmarthen, where Gyrthmwl, like many of his northern compatriots, is exhumed and given a grave somewhere in Wales, where traditions of the north migrated en masse.  In his case his resting place is designated as near Pontlliw in Carmarthenshire:

The grave of a chieftain of Britain in the open country of Gwynassed, where the Lliw goes into the Llychwr, in Kelli Friafael (is) the grave of Gyrthmul.

(The above translation is given by Bromwich.  The version by  John Bollard is: 'The grave of a chieftain of Pictland in the open land of Gwynasedd, where the Lliw goes into the Llwchwr; in Celli Friafael, the grave of Gyrthmwl.'   Jones give the following: 'The grave of a chieftain from the North is in the open land of Gwynasedd, where the Lliw flows into the Llychwr; at Cell Friafael in the grave of Gyrthmwl.')

   Barring the appearances in the Triads, Gwerthmwl 'the ruler' only fleetingly appears elsewhere, listed as one of the advisers of Arthur in the tale The Dream of Rhonabwy.  Then he vanishes from tradition and, unfortunately, we will never know who he was.

Ptolemy's Rerigonium

       The Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy wrote his Geographica in the 2nd century AD and was the first to add to the meagre written record of the peoples and places of early Roman Britain.  To him we are indebted for giving us the northern British tribal names of Damnonii, Selgovae, Carvetii, Novantae, Votadini.

The Location of Pen Rhionydd

   Where was Pen Rhionydd and was it identical with the earlier Rerigonium?  W.J. Watson stated:

Rerigonion stood on the Rerigonios gulf or bay, which is agreed to be by position and name Loch Ryan...and there can be no doubt that Penrhyn Rhionydd is the old Welsh name of the northern end of the Rhinns of Galloway, that is to say, on the promontory on the west side of Loch Ryan...Rerigonion this means "very royal place"; it was, in fact, the royal seat of the Novantae...

  The most significant modern feature of this peninsula is Cairn Ryan, which is possibly an unlikely candidate for 'a very royal place', being principally noteworthy as a ferry terminal which connects Scotland with Northern Ireland.  But there may be a clue here in its location.  It is often found that places on the borders of territories during the early Middle Ages had significance, both symbolically and politically. Such places were sometimes deliberately used as meeting places between kingdoms or peoples and sometimes religious settlements were deliberately placed there so  ecclesiastics could both mediate between tribes and have access to peoples on both sides of the border.  Any settlement here would be on the border, albeit a sea-separated one, between Britain and Ireland.

 In Welsh tradition also there is possibly a clue to the renown of the place, in fleeting mentions in the Book of Taliesin.  One poem, 'Teyrnon's Prize Song',  asks various questions regarding the qualities of an unnamed hero and includes the lines,' Is he famous, a wise one?/Or the ruler of Rheon', whci place may likely be Caer Reon, somewhere possibly in the vicinity of modern cairn Ryan.  Another poem, 'I Make My Plea to God,' speaks of warfare far and wide in Britain, 'From Penwith Head as far as Loch Ryan' (Pen ren Wleth and Luch Reon', Penwith in Cornwall and Loch Ryan).                                                 

   It is believed that there were settlers  arriving from Ireland into this western extremity of Galloway from prehistoric times, though the population patterns are complicated by later movements.  Galloway as a whole was conspicuously Gaelic in speech and character into the 17th century, the result of Norse-Irish settlement in the Middle Ages.  But, before this and the English settlement in 8th century in the eastern part of the region, Galloway was ruled over by Celtic British, Welsh-speaking elite.  A trace of the linguistic and social structures remarkably survived into the modern era.  John MacQueen and others have pointed out the presence of local nicknamed in the Rhinns area: Creenies and Gossocks.  The Creenies was a rather derogatory nickname for a poor class of people in the peninsula ( as noted in the 1901 book Galloway Gossip by R. de B. Trotter).  Historians have recognised that this term is an Anglicization of Cruithneach, a people of northern Ireland and probably means that such a people migrated here and were regarded as low in status by other parts of the population.  Remarkably, the same source named the Gossocks as another work for this impoverished breed.  In this case the term appears to be cognate with the Welsh term Gwasog, meaning 'servile person'.  At some stage, therefore, there was a substantial Irish population here which was held in subjugation to some extent by a dominant class of Welsh/Brittonic speaking people.

   The prime candidate for Ptolomy's place-name has long been Innermessan, a site on the east side of the sea-loch of Loch Ryan (and between modern Stranraer to the south and Cairn Ryan to the north).  Although he is the only person who names this presumably important place, the Ravenna Cosmography mentions somewhere called Brigomono, which some have thought as the same place. Mike McCarthy has endorsed the identification of Innermessan, though we we never know more about the place until some happy accident of archaeological discovery. 

Sources

Bollard, John K. and Griffith, Anthony, Englynion y Beddau, The Stanzas of the Graves (Llanrwst, 2015), p. 35.

Bromwich, Rachel (ed. and trans.), Trioedd Ynys Prydein, The Triads of the Island of Britain (2nd. edn., Cardiff, 1978), pp. 1-4, 109-10, 170-1, 388-9.

Gantz, Jeffrey (trans.), The Mabinogion (Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 190.

Jones, Thomas, 'The Black Book of Carmarthen Stanzas of the Graves,' Proceedings of the British Academy, 3 (1967), pp. 97-137.

Lewis, Gwyneth and Williams, Rowan (trans.), The Book of Taliesin (London, 2019). p. 70,  p. 73.     
MacQueen, St Nynia (2nd edn., Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 45-47.

McCarthy, Mike, 'Rerigonium: a lost city of the Novantae,' Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 134 (2004), pp. 119-29.

Morris-Jones, Sir John, 'Taliesin,' Y Cymmrodorion, 28 (1918), p 222.

Watson,  The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926, rep. 1986), p. 34.

Satan Calls the Scots to Slaughter

The substantial quote below is from Robert Pitscottie's History and it relates how, a short time before the slaughter of the Battle of Flodden, a mysterious speaker turned up at the ancient Market (Mercat) Cross in Edinburgh and read out a muster call of those Scots due to die in that carnage. The speaker, identified us Plutock, equates with Pluto and is most commonly thought to be Satan. However,in my book The Afterlife of King James IV, I wonder whether he is perhaps the king of the fairies. Either way, the announcement is still unexplained five centuries later. Reading it still brings a chill to the spine:

there was a Cry heard at the Market-Cross of Edinburgh, at the Hour of Midnight, proclaiming as it had been a Summons, which was named and called by the Proclaimer thereof, The Summons of Plotock; which desired all Men, To compear, both Earl and Lord, and Baron and Gentleman, and all honest Gentlemen within the Town (every Man specified by his own Name) to compear, within the Space of forty Days, before his Master, where it should happen him to appoint, and be for the Time, under the Pain of Disobedience. But whether this Summons was proclaimed by vain Persons, Night-Walkers, or drunk Men, for their Pastime, or if it was but a Spirit, I cannot tell truly: But it was shewn to me, That an Indweller of the Town, Mr. Richard Lawson, being evil-disposed, ganging in his Galley-Stair foreanent the Cross, hearing this Voice, proclaiming this Summons, thought Marvel what it should be, cried on his Servant to bring him his Purse; and when he had brought him it, he took out a Crown, and cast over the Stair, saying, I appeal from that Summons, Judgement and Sentence thereof, and takes me all whole in the Mercy of God, and Christ Jesus his Son. Verily the Author of this, that caused me write the Manner of the Summons, was a landed Gentleman, who was, at that Time, twenty Years of Age, and was in the Town the Time of the said Summons; and thereafter, when the Field was stricken, he swore to me, there was no Man that escaped that was called in this Summons, but that one Man alone, which made his Protection, and appealed from the said Summons; but all the Lave were perished in the Field with the King.

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When the Saints are Against You... The King Arthur-James IV Link?

It was a bare few weeks before the Battle of Flodden between England and Scotland in the autumn of 1513. King James IV was determined to enter England, partly to aid his ally France, which was currently at war with England. The Scots kings implicitly believed in himself as a warrior and could not have known that he would, in a very short time, have the dubious honour of being the last monarch in the British Isles to be slain on a battlefield.

In the evening he went to hear the service in the kirk of St Michael's at Linlithgow, immediately adjacent to his royal palace. Surrounded by the usual crowd of courtiers and servants, the king was a little apart from them all and possibly in a pensive mood when he was approached by a man in a blue gown who began to warn him not to go to war. The figure came out of nowhere and, more remarkably, once his lecture was over, he vanished into thin air. Nobody knows who he was. There was speculation that he was an actor hired by the king's wife Margaret, sister of Henry VIII, who was against the upcoming war. Or the culprit could have been Sir David Lindsay, a man of the court who became a notes playwright and poet.

The historian Lindsay of Pitscottie, writing a few decades after the event, imbues it with mystery and foreboding. It is generally assumed that the messenger was heavenly in origin, though later writers are divided about his exact identity. Some say St James, others St John, and yet others St Andrew the patron of Scotland, of course. The mystery, of course, will ultimately never be solved. I even allow the possibility in my book The Afterlife of King James IV that the event might not have actually happened.

That aside, I gave the variants on all the heavenly contenders for the saintly messenger and thought I had covered all the possibilities. But, lo and behold, I read in a book that the mysterious figure was none other than King Arthur! News to me. It came to late to be included in my book. Would I have included it if I had found it earlier? Er, nah. Some things are just too far fetched, even when relating visions and the miraculous.

Stories on the Birth of King James VI

In a previous post I alluded to the stories surrounding the birth of King James VI in June 1566.  It's well known that the king's unfortunate father, Lord Darnley, cast doubt on his son being his.  Equally clear is the knowledge that this is almost certainly more a mark of Darnley than of Mary, Queen of Scots.  The alleged real father was the queen's murdered secretary, the Italian, David Rizzio.  But Rizzio was well advanced in middle aged and not the kind of man who might have caught the queen's eye.

   And yet the tales persisted.  It was said that, in later years, a baby's body was found interred within the walls of Edinburgh Castle and some malicious people stated that this was the queen's true son and the boy she raised as king was an impostor, a son of Lady Reres or the Earl of Mar.

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   It was true that Lady Reres was pregnant at the time and one of the few ladies attending the queen before she gave birth.  Five years later, Lady Rere's cousin Andrew Lundy had dinner with John Knox and relayed to the reformed a stranger superstitious belief which Margaret Bethune, Lady Reres, had; namely that the childbirth pains of the queen had been supernaturally transferred to her through the intercession of the Countess of Atholl, who was accounted a witch.  The revelation to Knox was recorded by his secretary, Richard Bannatyne:

On Tuysday, the 3 of Julij, 1571, Andro Lundie beand at dener with my maister, in a place of the lard of Abbotshalls, called Falsyde, openlie affirmet for treuth, that when the quene was lying in ieasing of the king, the Ladie Athole, lying [lodging] thair lykwayis, baith within the Castell of Edinburgh, that he come thair for sum business, and called for the Ladie Reirres, whom he fand in her chalmer, lying bedfast, and he asking hir of hir disease, scho answrit that scho was never so trubled with no barne that ever scho bair, ffor the Ladie Athole had cassin all the pyne of hir (the Queen's) child-birth vpon hir.

   But what of the child in the walls?  In 1835 there was a fire in Edinburgh Castle which necessitated rebuilding work to part of the structure.  A small coffin was found in the walls of the royal apartments, containing an infant wrapped in a shroud of silk and gold cloth, with a letter J upon it.  The finding was reported in magazine literature at the time but, curiously, the coffin and its contents have vanished.  One story says that they were re-interred within the castle walls.

   The story received wider attention in the early 20th century when Alice, Lady Forbes, wrote about them in The Scottish Historical Review (Vol. 15, No. 58, Jan., 1918). In an answering article in the same journal, R. K. Hannay cast doubt on the conclusions that the infant was the true king; not least the information that Lady Reres was in fact rather old to be bearing a child at that time and her  words about pain and childbirth were hopelessly muddled both by her cousin and John Knox's secretary.
   
   We will never know the truth about the matter for sure, unless and until the remains of the possible prince are discovered again.