The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland (21 page)

Archaeologists have found evidence of late sixth-century occupation at three royal fortresses in Galloway – at Trusty’s Hill near Gatehouse of Fleet, Tynron Doon in Dumfriesshire and Mote of Mark near Rockcliffe. All the sites show traces of trade with the Mediterranean in luxury goods, the sort of thing needed by powerful men to use as gifts to back their authority and to create the sense of conspicuous wealth, of continuing success. Although Rheged certainly developed out of the western territories of the Novantae, no bard mentioned Rerigonium, ‘the Very Royal Place’, Cairnryan or any fortress in that part of the kingdom, aside from whatever citadel gave Dunragit its name. All of which points to a ruler with his roots and base in Carlisle. With those of the Novantae, the lands of the Anavionenses and the Carvetii formed the three major regions of Rheged.

Amidst all the uncertainties and assumptions there is an unmistakable atmosphere of real power and a hunger for glory swirling around the mighty figure of Urien. No other native king of his era, or for many generations to come, could match his fame. Not only did he sit in high authority in the halls of Carlisle, he was a Christian king, one of Y Bedydd, ‘the Baptised’. But he was also a Celtic warlord who rewarded his
teulu
with gifts of horses, gold, precious objects, weapons, armour, privileges. Like all great men, Urien needed others to record his deeds and
broadcast his fame and, through their words, preserve it for posterity. He was fortunate to hear Taliesin, one of the greatest of bards to sing in Welsh, compose poetry to immortalise him:

Although Taliesin paints Urien as the scourge of the English, the great king also campaigned to the north of Rheged, fighting native kings in Manau, Gododdin and Aeron (modern Ayrshire). In the 590s, the war bands of Urien began to confront the other major power in the north, the Bernicians. One of Ida’s successors, Aethelric, was said to have led four expeditions across the Pennines into Rheged and no doubt there were native British warriors at his back. But at a place called Argoed Llwyfein, the Baptised at last defeated the forces of the heathens, ‘the Gentiles’, Y Gynt. Urien fought in the front rank beside his famous son on that glorious morning. Owain ap Urien grew to become as well known as his father in later Old Welsh myth-history.

As the Saxons in the south and the Angles in the north overran native British kingdoms in the seventh and eighth centuries, bards used their imaginations to hold evil at bay, keep the past alive and encourage belief in a resurgent future. Welsh-speaking kings would rule once more in London and the hated
Sais
would
be expelled. With the Armes Prydein, another messianic tradition took root and grew strong. There would be ‘a Redeemer’, sang the bards – Y Mab Darogan would emerge to lead the Welsh in triumph back into Lloegr and reclaim the lost lands of their forefathers. The Sons of Prophecy would win victory after victory, drive the Sais to the coasts, the cliffs and into the depths of the cleansing sea. For almost a thousand years, people gathered in churchyards and on hillsides to hear prophecy, the tales of the great Welsh heroes and battles of the glorious past and how Y Mab Darogan would return and triumph.

There were eight Mabyon Darogan, eight sons of Wales and the lost dominions of Old Welsh-speaking kings, who would rise up and lead their people. Owain of Rheged was one and also Hiriell, Cynan, Cadwaladr and Arthur from the mists of post-Roman Britain. Much later Owain Lawgoch, ‘Owain of the Red Hand’, was added. A mercenary captain in the Hundred Years’ War, he seems an unlikely addition to the ancient list. But it seems that he was the last direct male descendant of Llewyllyn the Great, the last Prince of Wales, and he led his men in the service of the French kings and fought against the English. That he was hailed as a Son of Prophesy is thought to have contributed to his death. The English had him assassinated. Owain Glyn Dwr and King Henry Tudor were the last names to be added.

When Owain and Urien led the charge of the Rheged war bands at Argoed Llwyfein, they drove back and destroyed the armies of an Angle king they called Fflamddwyn. He was Theodoric, another heir of Ida, and his name meant ‘Firebrand’. The battle took place in the Lyvennet Valley in the fells above the Eden, not far from Appleby. It is a windy and lonely place with a few farmhouses and the bleat of ewes on the bleak hillsides. But, in the 590s, a now-invisible Roman road passed through it and was still in use. It connected Ribchester, the Lancashire forts and Chester with Carlisle. Only five miles to the east ran the road which cut through the Pennines from what is now Scotch Corner. Warring armies often clashed near these old arteries
and they used them for centuries as the conduits of long-range strikes against enemies.

After the defeat of Fflamddwyn, Urien was determined to press home an advantage. In an unusually clear passage in the
Historia Brittonum
, Nennius begins with mention of another scion of Ida’s house:

Hussa reigned seven years. Four kings fought against him, Urien and Riderch Hen [‘Riderch the old’], and Guallac and Morcant. Theodoric fought bravely against the famous Urien and his sons. During that time, sometimes the enemy, sometimes our countrymen were victorious, and Urien blockaded them for three days on the island of Metcaud.

Riderch (or Rhydderch) Hen was also known as Riderch Hael, ‘Riderch the Generous’. He was the Strathclyde king who was much feared by Myrddin and it seems that he rode south with his warriors to join Urien in a grand coalition. Gildas would have approved. Guallac was one of the last native kings to rule in Yorkshire. Elmet, who may have been a remnant of Ebrauc, and Guallac’s son, Ceretic, was toppled when the Angles swept to power in 616 or 617. Guallac’s doomed kingdom has surprisingly survived in modern place-names and his principal fortress may have stood at Barwick-in-Elmet, east of Leeds, where substantial defensive earthworks can still be seen. Morcant, sometimes Morcant Bulc, is the most mysterious of the allied kings – and also potentially the most interesting.

The most learned scholar in the historiography of Britain between 400 and 700, what still might usefully be called the Dark Ages, was John Morris. With a humbling and dazzling grasp of texts in Old Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, he wrote a controversial book,
The Age of Arthur
. Morris’ academic contemporaries attacked it and the author with uncommon savagery – even for the tetchy, jealous world of academic scholarship. Not only did they object strongly to his use of the name of Arthur in the title and all the mystical, new-age
baggage that came with it (to say nothing of naked commercialism – the very idea!), they also believed that Morris was much too trusting of his sources, too credulous. After a lifetime of hard work, delving where few other researchers had bothered to look, it must have been hard to bear.

The central difficulty for sources for this period was, as ever, the reliability of material caught up in the rhyme and metre of bardic poetry or stuck in the webs of complex and semi-mythical genealogies. Almost all compiled centuries after the events they describe, these sources were and are thought to be without much value. Where most scholars place their trust is in written sources, preferably contemporary with or close to events, and in archaeology and its tangible, concrete results. Forensic, even scientific, most historians feel they must approach their period or their ‘field’ with clear-eyed objectivity and take nothing at face value.

The
reductio ad absurdum
is to suspect everything and believe nothing, not even beyond a reasonable doubt. Much that has been generally accepted for generations is now rejected, famous names and traditions cast into an outer darkness of discredit. In order to make their names, new generations of historians, especially those specialising in the Dark Ages, feel compelled to dismiss the work of those of the generation before them. They must make the old new, formulate a ‘new’ approach, for the reputation and finances of their university department may depend on it.

This sort of approach makes for bleak reading and, in the time between the end of the Roman Empire in Britain and the takeover of England and part of Scotland by the Anglo-Saxons, almost no reading at all. Many of the iconoclasts, the re-interpreters, have cast doubts without the benefit of John Morris’ skills. Some current historians of Scotland, for example, feel comfortable in pronouncing and condemning without knowing a word of Gaelic or Old Welsh. Morris understood the essence of this period better than any other historian because he could hear its distant voices, sense its cultural nuances and feel passion for its great events. This was the time Britain was unmade, when
Scotland, England and Wales emerged, when their languages settled and when the word of God was everywhere heard. Morris’ great text may need, on occasion, to be treated with caution but his achievement as a historian is immense.

What Have the Romans Ever Done?

There are few more distinguished historians of Wales than John Davies and his excellent one-volume history has no peers. Generously, he lists the influences of Latin on Welsh – these are fascinating, showing the difference between a literate and non-literate society – and the number of Roman names which have become common in Wales (Emrys from Ambrosius, Tegid from Tacitusand, Iestyn from Justinus are only the most relevant here). But his critique on the empire is devastatingly eloquent:

The demise of the Roman Empire has been mourned to excess. Its essence was violence and its accomplishments were fundamentally second-rate. Its achievements in the world of science and technology were few; what need was there for new inventions in a society which had an abundance of slaves. Its literature and fine arts were a pale reflection of the splendours of classical Athens. As Mortimer Wheeler, among the most distinguished of the interpreters of the Empire, put it: ‘I suffered from a surfeit of things Roman. I felt disgusted by the mechanistic quality of their art and by the nearness of their civilisation at all times to cruelty and corruption.’

But nevertheless raw political and military power can be dazzling.

He refused to reject the work of the bards out of hand because he grasped the importance of their role in a non-literate society. They were historians, propagandists as well as poets in the modern sense. They recited the genealogies as political texts, as underpinnings to authority. But they wrote nothing down. Why should what was held in memory be more unreliable than a written source? Both sorts of record have survived by accidental process and the whole picture for the period must be patchy. Morris argued that it made sense to take everything into account in compiling the jigsaw of early British history. Many pieces were missing and there would of course be blanks no amount of
conjecture could fill. But surely what men believed, the stories they told themselves through their bards and genealogists, was as important as what a very few, self-selecting commentators reported, at second, third or fourth hand, that they did.

If taken in this spirit,
The Age of Arthur
is like an Aladdin’s cave of glittering treasures, some of fool’s gold or paste, but there are real nuggets to be found, especially in the vast appendices or where the footnotes and references direct the curious.

One of these nuggets is the story of Germanianus. Old Welshspeaking bards knew of him and the genealogies reckoned him a ‘son of Coel Hen’, ‘Old Cole’, probably the last imperial general appointed by Rome in the north. Roughly contemporary with Cunedda, in the first half of the fifth century, Germanianus was the commander of a war band who preferred to adopt a Roman title. Like Claudius Britannicus or Commodus Britannicus and other emperors eager for an association with a conquest or military victory, this man celebrated his defeat of Germanic warriors. It may be that he led his men against raiders who had landed on the North Sea coast or come up from the south. In any event Germanianus is closely associated with the kings of the Votadini, the kindred which later morphed into the Gododdin. The king lists place him in the lineage of Morcant Bwlc, perhaps at a distance of five generations. But where did these men hold power?

Quoting bardic sources, John Morris made an uncharacteristic blunder. He believed that Catraut or Cadrawd of Calchvynydd’s kingdom lay to the south of Powys on the mid-Wales borders. Evidently it was vigorous with an active war band but Morris insists that its men fought the Saxons in the English Midlands. In the great death songs for
The Gododdin
, composed around 600 by Aneirin in Edinburgh, the author sang of a prince, a sub-king, known as Catraut of Calchvynydd. He joined the royal war band as it rode south out of Edinburgh to Catterick in Yorkshire and battle with an Anglian host. Calchvynydd is the original Old Welsh name for Kelso and monastic records of the twelfth century still call it Calchou or Calco. One of the streets in the
modern town preserves the old name in Scots in Chalkheugh Terrace. Calchvynydd, or Kelso, means ‘Chalky Hill’ and it was the focus of a shadowy sixth-century kingdom.