The Irish in Angus and the Mighty Áedán mac Gabráin

    A subject I have returned to several times during the lifetime of this blog is the unresolved question of how Irish was the region now know as Angus during the Pictish period, prior to the 9th century.

   There are a few tantalising clues, but the facts about the Irish in the area compete hard against the unproven legends and neither side seems to win out completely against the other. Why do we know about the Irish presence in our region?  Angus the county, of course, bears a conspicuously Irish name, being named (probably) either after the king Angus mac Fergus or the people known as the Cenél nÓengusa. The mists of time have obscured all certainty about either of these theories. There are tales too that the great Irish warlord Nath-I fought in the province of Circinn (the Pictish name for Angus and the Mearns), though what he was doing here is unknown. Elsewhere I have written about the tale of the Irish hero driven out from his own land and who created a dynasty in the land of the Picts. His name was Conall Corc.

   The above stories took place in the twilight just before the advent of written history. Closer to true history perhaps are the events which took place in the late 6th century. I looked at these details again during research for my forthcoming book on the fierce warlord Áedán mac Gabráin, king of Dál Riata. (Available from Pen & Sword.)

 One of this king's known battles happened in Circenn, though we are wholly lacking any details about it. Further confusion involves the mention of a battle he fought against a presumably Pictish people or confederation known as the Miathi, which occurs in the Life of St Columba. This tribe was known to have been active in the area around Stirling, known as Manau, several hundred years earlier.

   Confusion abounds. Did they migrate north to Angus? Have all these battles been confused, or were they military skirmishes which happened as a prolonged campaign by the Scots of the west against the southern Picts? We can't know for sure. What did Áedán himself want in this region? From what we know of his other campaigns, he was not a ruler who primarily sought to expand his territory. However, he may have given his blessing to campaigns which were waged by his sons. One of his sons was named Gartnait and it has been convincingly argued that he was a king of the Picts. Áedán may have married a royal Pictish woman which gave Gartnait a claim to territory in the east.  The historian W.J. Watson, in his classic work History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (1926), speculated that Áedán was the son of a woman whose father was the legendary hero named Brachan, who gave his name to Brechin in Angus. To bolster this claim, he derived the name of Gowrie, the area immediately to the west of Angus, from Áedán's father.

The King of the 'Fierce Ones' of the Tay

St Columba, or Colum Cille, the founder of Iona in the 6th century is primarily associated with Irish kings, both in Ireland, but also in the offshoot colony of Dal Riata in Argyll. Much of his influence was generated by the spiritual powerhouse of Iona after his death. So, for instance, the saint's appearance to a Northumbrian king came in the 7th century some decades after Colum Cille's earthly demise and the story was reflective of Iona's subsequent alliance with the ruling dynasty of that northern English kingdom.

   The saint's relationship with the Pictish rulers is filtered primarily through Adomnan's Life of Colum Cille.  He gives accounts of what seems like several trips up the Great Glen to the fortress of the very powerful king Brude or Bridei son of Maelchon.  For many years this stronghold was thought to be Craig Phadraig near Inverness, though modern historians are not so certain. Still, the focus of Adomnan in relation to the Picts is entirely northern and we hear nothing of journeying or contacts with the southern Picts.

Reconstructed image of King's Seat hillfort, Dunkeld

       Another early source, independent of Adomnan, supports other hagiographic traditions that Colum Cille did indeed venture into southern Pictland and he had significant contact with rulers there. The poem called Amra Choluimb Cille was composed shortly after the saints death in 597 and contains two startling references to contact with a power centre in southern Pictland. Unfortunately bother references and very brief and raise questions which can never be definitively answered now. Short as the relevant passages are, the meaning is far from clear. The first reads:

For not us (is) the teacher who used to teach the tribes of the Tay. . . i.e. for there remains not the teacher who used to  teach the tribes so that they were silent when being preached to.  Or he used to teach the tribes as to keeping silence when his time to preaching.  Or the teacher who used to teach the tribes that dwelt by Tay, the Toe or Túi, being the name of a river in Scotland.

And the second passage reads, with its gloss:

He subdued to benediction the mouths of the fierce ones [variant reading: thrice nine  druids: whomsoever they blessed, he was cursed] who dwellt with Tay’s high king,‘i.e. he overcame, or he shut the mouths of the fierce ones who dwelt with the overking of Tay; for though it be malediction they intended, it is benediction which result from it, at first Balaam.

    The three major questions which come to mind reading this are:  who was the king, why were these 'fierce ones' so opposed to the saint, and where exactly did this encounter take place (if we assume it did happen, and there is no good reason to doubt it)?

Scone Palace and the River Tay

   Scone is the most notable reputed centre of southern Pictish power on the Tay, but we know little of its historicity as a place of significance before the mid 9th century. Here it was, according to one account, that the treacherous Scot Cinaed or Kenneth mac Alpin murdered the leading nobles of the Picts as a prelude to taking over their kingdom. Both the Stone of Scone and the mysterious Moot Hill here might suggest that the place was a site of significance which was perhaps holy and important since prehistoric times, in the same way that Tara and other places in Ireland were. Yet we do not know this. Not far from Scone is Forteviot, which has equal claim to be the most significant power centre in the region, and a base for both Pictish and Scottish royalty.

   But, if we follow the River Tay upstream, we come upon another candidate. This is Dunkeld, whose church was associated with Columba from very early times. Here, in the 9th century, by decree of the king, relics of Columba were brought from Viking ravaged Iona. (Other relics were split off and sent to Ireland.) Dunkeld's name means Fort of the Caledonians, suggesting that it was a place of prime significance to the Caledonian tribe, though it may be anachronistic to think of it as their capital, a term which may have been meaningless to the tribe.

   Sn intriguing site at Dunkeld is the hill-fort on the north side of the Tay known as King's Seat (from its association with the hunting activities of later medieval kings). Recent excavations by Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust have established that this was a highly important power base associated with high status Picts from the 7th to 9th centuries AD. The site may indeed have been occupied a little earlier. Industrial activity, Anglo Saxon material and continental pottery have been found here, sure indications of its significance in the Early Modern Period. It would not be difficult to envisage Columba toiling up the hill and coming face to face with the unknown ruler here, just as he did at Bridei's fortress.

   There are a number of contemporary rulers whose names we know, but it is pointless to guess which of them may have been resident her in the late 6th century. It could equally have been a Pictish potentate whose name has now been lost. It is intriguing to ponder whether the Amra is suggesting that the saint of Iona was actually assisting the king against his own powerful nobles, perhaps because he was Christian and they harboured some pagan tendencies, which we know was definitely the case in northern Pictland. 

The King's Favourites: James III and James VI

 A century separates the adult reigns of King James III and his great-great-grandson King James VI. Did anything substantial pass down the Stewart family line that might be claimed as common ground between the two men?

While researching a forthcoming book on the later king, I was reminded of the earlier James's dramatic falling out with his own nobility over his chosen circle of favourites. The standard recorded version of this dispute is that the king was thought to be too close to a group of men whom the top tier of gentry regarded as being unworthy of his attention. There is something ironic about this, at least on the surface, since the 'nobility' of Scotland in the 15th century and also in the 16th century were arguably the biggest group of cutthroat rogues who ever disgraced the nation.

Like many events from the era, the recorded version of the conflict inevitably only represents a skewed version of what actually happened. Few people remember the details now beyond the Earl of Angus being nicknamed 'Bell the Cat' after his intention of taming the principal favourite Cochrane. Cochrane of course met his end by being summarily hung at Lauder Bridge.

Angus arrests Robert Cochrane in 1482

   Why were the king's chosen companions so ill-suited in the eyes of the nobles? Cochrane was a mason. Another companion, James Hommyll, wasa a tailor. Were the lords jealous of these low born men? Were they rightfully mortified that non nobles were being favoured unjustifiably over themselves? There may have been a suggestion that the king, with his dilettante preference for the arts, was unmanly and homosexual even. If so, he paid the price. But the accusation was a blackening piece of propaganda really. Other malicious rumours stated that he had a chosen whore named the Daisy. Yet another piece of gossip said he engaged in incestuous relations with his sister.

King James III

   The case of the nobility acting against the favourites of King James VI took a different pattern. James was barely in his mid teens when he became quite extraordinarily smitten by his French cousin Esme Stuart, whom he created Earl of Lennox. A raid escalation of preferment saw both the Protestant nobility and powerful figures within the Kirk itself becoming highly alarmed by the rise of this individual. The coming of age of the king in his personal rule was a correlated trajectory which some in Scotland were uneasy about also. Esme was distrusted for his Catholicism and the concentration of power in his hands, becoming the second person in the kingdom, though James also put great trust in the Earl of Arran. Apart from the glaring religious problem, Stuart was widely hated for his foreignness and the assumption (probably true) that he had steered the gullible monarch into homosexuality. Self interest of the nobles in wanting a share of power themselves was of course a perennial motivation for them to act.

   The result of the tension was the Raid of Ruthven in 1482 when the king was essentially kidnapped and held hostage by a faction of nobility for a year. 'Better bairns greet than bearded men,' James was taunted with when he broke down when he was captured, surely a sly dig at his perceived effeminacy. Despite the setback, James indulged himself fully in the dangerous game of promoting favourites far in excess of their abilities of worth.  But, notably, it was a game he only only safely able to indulge in when he became king in far off England.

King James VI

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.