The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (24 page)

Others who reject this derivation, including Kenneth Jackson whose essay “Once Again Arthur’s Battles” (1945) is considered one of the cornerstones of Arthurian research, do
not necessarily reject the location. He notes that
tryfrwyd
could be used to describe something pierced or broken, and that Nennius’s location is not necessarily a river’s name
but a description of a shoreline as “the broken place”. This could still refer to a ford, particularly one where the river is very shallow, leaving sandy and stony banks breaking the
surface of the river.

For another possible location, Barber and Pykitt looked to the story of
Culhwch and Olwen
, which tells of the hunt for the Irish Boar, the Twrch Trwyth. They suggest that this tale
involves a play on words with the River Twrc (also called the Troggy) and
trwyth
as a variant of
traeth.
Twrch Trwyth therefore not only meant the Irish Boar, but the “shores of
the Twrc”, becoming, over time,
Try-Troit
, and later
Trywruid.
They also believe that the story of the Irish Boar hunt is the retelling of a battle between
the British and the Gewisse with the final decisive battle at the mouth of the river Twrc on the Severn estuary near Caerleon. If the Dulas Brook mentioned above also corresponds to
one of the twelve battles, then these two sites may relate to Arthur’s conflict with the Twrch Trwyth.

One other suggestion of interest is the River Ribble. The Ribble is known as the “roaring river”, a name adopted by the Roman fort at Ribchester, known as Bremetennacum. The
Bre
-prefix comes from the Celtic
breffw
, which means “to bellow”. The original river name may therefore have been something like
Breffwrd
, from which the
“b” was eventually dropped, becoming
Reffwrd.
The Ribble meets the Douglas from the south and the Dow from the north at what is now called Hutton and Longton Sands. Because of
this confluence of three rivers it has been conjectured that the locality may have been known as
Trireffwrd,
which could easily mutate into
Tryfrwyd.
With the Lune and Douglas in this
vicinity, this might suggest a series of battles against the Irish marauders.

11.
The eleventh battle was fought on the mountain which is called Agned.

This battle has the added confusion that there is an alternative entry. A later version of the Nennius manuscript calls this site Breguoin, and other manuscripts have other
spellings, including Bregnion and Bregomion. One manuscript even combines the two as
Agned Catbregomion
, implying that the two names mean the same site: that is, the battle (
Cat
) of
Bregomion on Mount Agned. Just as with Dubglas and Linnuis, bringing the two together is not easy, though the fact that Breguion and Agned are such rare names means that if we can identify the two
we would almost certainly have a unique site.

Mount Agned is referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth, though not in connection with Arthur’s battles. He says that the British ruler Ebrauc founded the cities of Kaerebrauc, Alclud and
Mynydd Agned. John of Fordun, in his fourteenth-century
Scotichronicon
, states that Agned was an old name for Edinburgh. Edinburgh was usually called Eidyn and the fortress there, on top of
what is now called Arthur’s Seat, was Din Eidyn. It would require some philological contortions to convert Eidyn into
Agned, and even more to make it convincing. August
Hunt suggests the two are a play on words. Eidyn could relate to the Greek
eidon,
meaning “to behold or envision”, similar to the Latin
agnitio,
which means
“recognition or understanding.” Both would suggest that Din Eidyn might have been called Mount Agned because both could mean the “Mount of Understanding”. It’s a
romantic notion, but one not even hinted at in folklore.

Geoffrey of Monmouth says that Mount Agned was known as “The Castle of the Maidens”. This relates to the Picts. The right to kingship passed through the female line, and, according
to legend, the Picts kept all the eligible royal maidens in the Castle for their security and education. However, Eidyn was a British stronghold and though it was briefly captured by the Picts, it
was never settled by them. The Picts had several strongholds along the Forth in the area of the Manau, especially at Myot Hill to the west of Camelon. Their territory was at Stirling and one might
imagine the rock of Stirling Castle being an equally suitable site for a “Castle of the Maidens”. However, in the Middle Ages, the Castle of Maidens was always believed to refer to
Edinburgh, regardless of any historical accuracy.

Geoffrey also called Mount Agned the Dolorous Mountain, which may be appropriate as one understanding of the word
agned
is that it is related to the Welsh
ochenaid
meaning
“sigh”. This makes an interesting connection to the possibility of Wedale as the eighth battle at Guinnion, since the Eildon Hills near Wedale are referred to as the Dolorous Mountains
in the Arthurian romance
Fergus of Galloway.
This may link with the location of Breguoin, which has been shown to derive from Bremenium, the Roman fort at High Rochester, a day’s ride
to the south, perhaps suggesting a continuation of the first battle.

The philologist Alfred Anscombe demonstrated that had Breguoin been spelled
Breguein
, it would have derived from Bravonium, the Roman fort at Leintwardine, in Herefordshire. This is just
west of Ludlow and within hurling distance of the Clun Forest, one of the candidates for the Celidon battle. Bravonium appears in one Roman itinerary as Branogenium. Kenneth Jackson has suggested
that Branogenus means “born of the raven”, but it can equally mean “born of the king” or, taking
genus
in its
more general sense, “people
of the king.” This could suggest that the original Celtic site of Bravonium/Branogenium was a hill fort occupied by royalty or descendants of royalty.

Linda Malcor has shown that Bremetennacum, the name of the fort at Ribchester which has the same prefix as Bremenium, would also adapt to Breguoin. Bremetennacum was the fort at which Lucius
Artorius Castus was based, and would be a natural candidate during the period when the Picts were attacking the forts south of the wall.

One other intriguing suggestion arose from a marginal note in an old translation of Nennius found by Joseph Ritson in 1825, suggesting that the site was Cathbregyon, in Somerset. Barber and
Pykitt identified this as Catbrain in Bristol, now at one end of Filton airfield. It has also been suggested that this might be Cadbury, where the Saxon
Caddesbyrig
was derived from the
Celtic
Cat-bregyon.
Cadbury has long been associated with Arthur, as a possible site for Camelot, but not with this battle. However, the name is derived from the personal name
Cada
,
not from
Cat
for battle.

12.
The twelfth battle was on Mount Badon in which there fell in one day 960 men from one charge by Arthur; and no one struck them down except Arthur himself, and in all the
wars he emerged as victor.

This is the one battle for which we have irrefutable historical support because Gildas mentioned it, and said that it happened in the year of his birth. We have already
tentatively dated it to some time in the 490s, probably between 493 and 497. We have also seen that both the original battle poem and the
Welsh Annals
connect Badon with Arthur.
Unfortunately Gildas does not tell us who the commander was at Badon, or where it was fought. Why did he need to? In his day, the audience for his
De Excidio
would have remembered Badon or
have heard of it, and the location was well known.

The fact remains that Badon was the decisive battle which forced back the Saxons, resulting in a period of comparative peace in Britain. Whoever was the victor at Badon became the Arthur of
legend. Tying Badon into the landscape is thus vital in helping identify Arthur.

Gildas would have referred to the place by its British name,
and
Badon
or
Baddon
is British for “bath”. Nennius had the same view. In his
historical miscellany is a reference to “the Hot Lake, where the baths of Badon are, in the country of the Hwicce.” (§67). The passage then describes what are clearly Roman baths,
and the obvious assumption is that the reference is to Bath itself.

The territory of the Hwicce centred upon Worcester and its main town Winchcombe, but included Gloucester and Cirencester, and thus were the lands opened up to the Saxons following the battle of
Dyrham in 577. Bath was tucked in at the southern end of the Hwicce, and the southern boundary follows the River Avon to the coast and along part of the Wansdyke defensive earthwork. However, the
Hwicce people must have roamed because their name is remembered as far afield as Whiston (formerly
Hwiccingtune
), east of Northampton.

Bath continued to be known as the city of the “Hot Baths” long after the Roman period and into the Saxon. It was called
aet Badum
in the foundation charter for Bath Abbey in
676
AD
. Just when the original of Nennius’s list of wonders was compiled is not known. The baths would have to have survived in sufficiently useable condition to be
regarded as a “wonder”. Barry Cunliffe, in his excavations at Bath in the 1980s, confirmed that whilst there was considerable stone-robbing in the post Roman period, efforts were made
to maintain other buildings well into the fifth and even sixth centuries. The likelihood is that Bath was still a functioning British city at the time of the Battle of Dyrham, and the baths there
must still have been held in awe.

This would seem to prove that Badon must be Bath, but we need to be cautious. To begin with, Gildas does not refer specifically to the town of Bath. His phrase is
obsessionis Badonici
month
, “the siege of Mount Badon” or “Badon Hill”. Bath isn’t on a hill – quite the contrary. The area of the hot spring which fed the baths was originally
in a marshy valley. Bath is, however, surrounded by hills, and most authorities assume that Gildas meant one of those, but which one?

All other references to Badon date from several centuries later, and they give us three other pieces of dubious information. Firstly, that Arthur fought at Badon carrying the Cross of Jesus on
his shoulder, or shield. This presumably refers to an emblem, unless it is meant figuratively, in that Arthur is defending a
church, or fighting in the name of Christ, as at
Guinnion. Secondly, Nennius tells us that the siege lasted for three days and nights. Thirdly, Nennius also states that Arthur killed 960 of the enemy. This does not mean Arthur killed them
single-handedly, but that he led the charge that resulted in such wholesale, and doubtless exaggerated, slaughter.

If Badon Hill is one of the hills surrounding Bath, it could be one of several. The most favoured are either Banner down Hill or Little Solsbury Hill, both at Batheaston. Analysis by John
Morris, for instance, suggests that the Saxon forces were almost certainly infantry, perhaps no more than a thousand strong, whilst the British forces were probably cavalry. Little Solsbury Hill
has a major hill fort on its plateau-like summit, which was certainly large enough to house a cavalry unit, but a difficult site for a cavalry charge. It is unlikely that the Saxons would take the
hill fort and then be besieged by the British from below. However, the Saxons could have been hemmed in on Bannerdown Hill, less than a mile to the east, which has no hill fort.

Such speculation, however, takes us no nearer to identifying the location precisely. There are certainly many who do not believe that Badon does equate to Bath and presume that Badon Hill is a
specific location. Kenneth Jackson demonstrated that if Badon was the site of a hill fort, and therefore known as Din Badon to the British, it would convert into the Saxon
Baddanbyrig
,
evolving into the English Badbury. Badbury in Wiltshire, Badbury Rings in Dorset and Badby in Northamptonshire are all recorded as
Baddanbyrig
in tenth century records. There is also Badbury
Hill in Oxfordshire, near Faringdon.

All of these sites except Badby have Celtic hillforts associated with them. That at Badbury, in Wiltshire, is now called Liddington Castle, a name I shall use to avoid confusion. Although an
interesting case could be made for each of the sites, Liddington seems the most suitable by virtue of its location. It stands just above the Ridgeway, the ancient British trackway that runs through
the Chilterns to the Marlborough Downs, towering above the neighbouring land. Over 277m (900 feet) at its highest point, it had a strong vantage point over the neighbouring territory, and was
within sight of other major hill forts, including Barbury Castle. Liddington stands as the frontal defence against
a northern or eastern attack, with its back line of defence
at the Wansdyke. It allows for greater flexibility than Solsbury Hill at Bath, which would not only have to have conceded a significant Saxon advance, but is also a highly restricted site.

Like Liddington, Badbury Rings in Dorset is an open site, and would have been a primary focus for any Saxon advance from the coast around Poole Bay. However, it is not a focal point for a major
breakthrough. Badon was decisive because it repulsed the Saxons in their advance into the west. The Saxon target would have been the rich territories of Cirencester and Gloucester, and their
advance would have been either from the south, where Aelle had established his base in Sussex, or from the east, around Lindsey. Aelle’s base after 491 was at Pevensey, but there were no
major Roman roads in that area. So if Aelle were to strike toward Cirencester he would have had to move along the coast to Chichester, then follow the Roman road to Silchester and from there to
Cirencester. That road goes right past Liddington. This is far more likely than working all the way along the coast as far as Badbury Rings, and then striking north for Bath along the Ackling Dyke,
with the intention of taking the Fosse Way up to Cirencester.