Claire Jordan
Degree in biology and folklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper23h
Is there a real British king who can be associated with King Arthur?
The problem is that “Arthur” means “Bear” and was almost certainly just
a nickname. Some of the other people mentioned in the Arthurian stories
were definitely real and lived around AD 500 in the north Cornwall/Shropshire/south-east Wales area.
It is possible, but unproven, that the real Arthur was a local warlord
in the Welsh marches, called Owain Danwyn or Owain Ddantgwyn, who died
in AD 517.
For reasons which I explain here, it is likely that the original
location of Camelot, or at least which inspired the stories about
Camelot, was the Caerwent/Caerleon/Caermelyn group in south-east Wales, which indeed seems to have been part of Owain Danwyn’s territory.
Caerwent is now a tiny village but in its heyday it was one of the last holdouts of Rome in Britian, a fortified market town and administration centre surrounded by 32-ft-high stone walls, with a small river which brought ships up to moor close to the walls. Caermelyn is an Iron Age
fort and lookout point on a hill above Caerwent, and Caerleon - which
means “fortified town of the Legions” - was a once-great Roman town once called “the second Rome”, a few miles west of Caerwent, less well-fortified than Caerwent but with a huge cavalry barracks and a very well-preserved amphtheatre which may be the original Round Table, as
it’s about the right size to serve as an open-air debating chamber. One
of the Arthurian stories specifically mentions the “city of the Legions” as being close to Camelot.
---------------------------------
54 comments
John Smith
· 16h ago
The Welsh Marches/Shropshire area is an interesting idea.
There is evidence of some kind of resurgence in the area around Wroxeter
in the 5th century. And I always understood that “the city of the legions” referred to Chester, quite literally “up the road” AKA the A5!.
The location of the battle of Mount Baden is however most likely way to
the South, near Bath. If only those bloody Romano British had kept
better records!
Something definitely unexpected, that goes against the grain of an inevitable westward expansion of Anglo/Saxon/Jute influence happened in
the mid to late 5th century that not only stalled that advance, but
scared the hell out of them and might possibly be connected to the establishment of a British/Breton colony across the (Saxon pirate controlled?) Channel.
To pin all that success on one man is probably wrong, but if all it took
was a charismatic leader of a cohort of light cavalry in the style of
the later Romans, able to show up unexpected, and organise defensive positions against the numerous, but ultimately not as disciplined
Germanic hoards, then maybe that is the type of guy we should be looking for. I mention cavalry because Arthur seems to have been everywhere West
of the River Severn, and as far North as Mount Edin (Edinburgh?) in what
can only have been, say 20 years max of effective campaigning. If
indeed, it is even the same Arthur.
Claire Jordan
· 14h ago
It’s unlikely the city of the legions would be Chester when Caerleon was the more important town, and its name actually *means* “city of the legions”. And it was a cavalry base with huge stables.
It’s an interesting idea that there might have been more than one Arthur
- perhaps the nickname was passed down, like the Dauphin (dolphin) in France.
Tim Chisell
· 6h ago
It seems quite common in folk history for different figures to be
conflated, and for different stories to be attached to well known
figures — we see it even in modern times, with recent memories and good record keeping (eg just about all gangster activity in North and East
London in the 60s gets ascribed to 'the Kray twins' in the popular mind
— including incidents that they either weren't involved in, or at least only involved them tangentially).
It's very possible there were multiple different British resistance
leaders in the late 5th century — possibly multiple cavalry bands travelling the the west of Britain and aiding in battles against Saxon
raids — so it may be that one of the better known and more applauded
ones was led by 'The Bear’ (Arthur), and, in the generations after, stories handed down of battles and places that didn't directly concern
him became attached to his growing legend.
It's also, of course, still common to ascribe military actions to the commander that had ultimate responsibility for them — so, for example we say that 'Montgomery fought the Afika Korps in North Africa in the
1940s’, although, of course, he certainly wasn't personally present at every engagement between units of the 8th army and the DAK, let alone personally duking it out with German soldiers on the front line!
John Smith
· 2h ago
Just wanted to add that Paul White produced a very easy to read (and
short at 40 pages) book about Arthur. Why so short? Well there's not
much contemporary material, a lot of stuff written centuries after the events, but no letters, monuments or papal legates writing about the
plucky British holding the line.
Here is my copy. (picture - King Arthur, Man or Myth?)
He concluded that he may well have been a relative of Ambrosius
Aurelianus, based around Dunster (Severn Estuary) with lands as far
south as Cornwall and as far North as Scotland looking to him for protection. However after Baden, all pretence of tribal affiliation and unity against the common enemy fell apart, and with old enmities allowed
to take precedence again, he was killed during a civil war, quite
possibly by a relative.
Tim Jarvis
· 18h ago
You have to blame Geoffrey of Monmouth for some of this as
Caerleon/Caerwent was pretty close to him. I have a late 19th century
map of Caerleon (my family home was on the eastern side of Newport so
have a personal interest in the local history of the area) in which the
site of the amphitheatre (not excavated until the 20th century is also marked as the site of Arthur’s Round Table.
Charles Polk
· 1h ago
Why couldn't Arthur be an entirely mythological character, perhaps
derived from a combination of Anglo Saxon, Welsh and Roman legends? I understand the desire to connect Arthur to some historical figure(s)
but most of the evidence I have read can, at best, be called
speculative. I think he's more likely to be as mythological as the Green
man or Beowulf.
Claire Jordan
· 1h ago
Because he’s mentioned as interracting with numerous people many of whom we know were real and all lived in the same area at the same time.
Cindy Treacher
· 1h ago
‘The problem is that “Arthur” means “Bear” and was almost certainly just
a nickname.’
How has that been decided? It is an interesting suggestion but the name Arthur is a very old British name, not a nickname but a name. The word Arthur can sound like ‘our fur’ and fur trade was rampant many years ago but I don’t see how Arthur means ‘bear’.
If the word ‘bear’ can be associated in any way you’re looking at ‘to
bear’ as in to bear fruit, to be fruitful, to bear goods, to bear a
child, to bear arms etc.. the word ‘bear’ in that sense was extremely common years ago.
The rivers Iber (Spain), Tiber (Italy), Liber (France) all have that ‘to bear’ about them as does the word ‘Hiberno’, as with The Scottish Hiberno Mission, Hiberno Latin and Hiberno Saxon art (British and Irish art). Also the Gaelic and Spanish words for book contain this ‘to bear’.
I’ve a… / I bear… Iberia with a ‘h’ - Hiber(n)ia
The word bear meaning a brown bear, probably comes from the meaning of
‘to bear’ as the brown bears bore fur etc..
Arthur - Are there
Arthur - Are for
Arthur - Are fur 🐻?
On Thursday, February 3, 2022 at 5:26:37 PM UTC, a425couple wrote:
Claire Jordan
Degree in biology and folklore; programmer, shop owner, secretary on newspaper23h
Is there a real British king who can be associated with King Arthur?
The problem is that “Arthur” means “Bear” and was almost certainly just
a nickname. Some of the other people mentioned in the Arthurian stories were definitely real and lived around AD 500 in the north Cornwall/Shropshire/south-east Wales area.
It is possible, but unproven, that the real Arthur was a local warlord
in the Welsh marches, called Owain Danwyn or Owain Ddantgwyn, who died
in AD 517.
For reasons which I explain here, it is likely that the original
location of Camelot, or at least which inspired the stories about
Camelot, was the Caerwent/Caerleon/Caermelyn group in south-east Wales, which indeed seems to have been part of Owain Danwyn’s territory. Caerwent is now a tiny village but in its heyday it was one of the last holdouts of Rome in Britian, a fortified market town and administration centre surrounded by 32-ft-high stone walls, with a small river which brought ships up to moor close to the walls. Caermelyn is an Iron Age
fort and lookout point on a hill above Caerwent, and Caerleon - which means “fortified town of the Legions” - was a once-great Roman town once
called “the second Rome”, a few miles west of Caerwent, less well-fortified than Caerwent but with a huge cavalry barracks and a very well-preserved amphtheatre which may be the original Round Table, as it’s about the right size to serve as an open-air debating chamber. One of the Arthurian stories specifically mentions the “city of the Legions”
as being close to Camelot.
---------------------------------
54 comments
John Smith
· 16h ago
The Welsh Marches/Shropshire area is an interesting idea.
There is evidence of some kind of resurgence in the area around Wroxeter in the 5th century. And I always understood that “the city of the legions” referred to Chester, quite literally “up the road” AKA the A5!.
The location of the battle of Mount Baden is however most likely way to the South, near Bath. If only those bloody Romano British had kept
better records!
Something definitely unexpected, that goes against the grain of an inevitable westward expansion of Anglo/Saxon/Jute influence happened in the mid to late 5th century that not only stalled that advance, but
scared the hell out of them and might possibly be connected to the establishment of a British/Breton colony across the (Saxon pirate controlled?) Channel.
To pin all that success on one man is probably wrong, but if all it took was a charismatic leader of a cohort of light cavalry in the style of
the later Romans, able to show up unexpected, and organise defensive positions against the numerous, but ultimately not as disciplined
Germanic hoards, then maybe that is the type of guy we should be looking for. I mention cavalry because Arthur seems to have been everywhere West of the River Severn, and as far North as Mount Edin (Edinburgh?) in what can only have been, say 20 years max of effective campaigning. If
indeed, it is even the same Arthur.
Claire Jordan
· 14h ago
It’s unlikely the city of the legions would be Chester when Caerleon was the more important town, and its name actually *means* “city of the legions”. And it was a cavalry base with huge stables.
It’s an interesting idea that there might have been more than one Arthur - perhaps the nickname was passed down, like the Dauphin (dolphin) in France.
Tim Chisell
· 6h ago
It seems quite common in folk history for different figures to be conflated, and for different stories to be attached to well known
figures — we see it even in modern times, with recent memories and good record keeping (eg just about all gangster activity in North and East London in the 60s gets ascribed to 'the Kray twins' in the popular mind — including incidents that they either weren't involved in, or at least only involved them tangentially).
It's very possible there were multiple different British resistance leaders in the late 5th century — possibly multiple cavalry bands travelling the the west of Britain and aiding in battles against Saxon raids — so it may be that one of the better known and more applauded ones was led by 'The Bear’ (Arthur), and, in the generations after, stories handed down of battles and places that didn't directly concern
him became attached to his growing legend.
It's also, of course, still common to ascribe military actions to the commander that had ultimate responsibility for them — so, for example we say that 'Montgomery fought the Afika Korps in North Africa in the 1940s’, although, of course, he certainly wasn't personally present at every engagement between units of the 8th army and the DAK, let alone personally duking it out with German soldiers on the front line!
John Smith
· 2h ago
Just wanted to add that Paul White produced a very easy to read (and
short at 40 pages) book about Arthur. Why so short? Well there's not
much contemporary material, a lot of stuff written centuries after the events, but no letters, monuments or papal legates writing about the plucky British holding the line.
Here is my copy. (picture - King Arthur, Man or Myth?)
He concluded that he may well have been a relative of Ambrosius Aurelianus, based around Dunster (Severn Estuary) with lands as far
south as Cornwall and as far North as Scotland looking to him for protection. However after Baden, all pretence of tribal affiliation and unity against the common enemy fell apart, and with old enmities allowed to take precedence again, he was killed during a civil war, quite
possibly by a relative.
Tim Jarvis
· 18h ago
You have to blame Geoffrey of Monmouth for some of this as Caerleon/Caerwent was pretty close to him. I have a late 19th century
map of Caerleon (my family home was on the eastern side of Newport so
have a personal interest in the local history of the area) in which the site of the amphitheatre (not excavated until the 20th century is also marked as the site of Arthur’s Round Table.
Charles Polk
· 1h ago
Why couldn't Arthur be an entirely mythological character, perhaps
derived from a combination of Anglo Saxon, Welsh and Roman legends? I understand the desire to connect Arthur to some historical figure(s)
but most of the evidence I have read can, at best, be called
speculative. I think he's more likely to be as mythological as the Green man or Beowulf.
Claire Jordan
· 1h ago
Because he’s mentioned as interracting with numerous people many of whom we know were real and all lived in the same area at the same time.
Cindy Treacher
· 1h ago
‘The problem is that “Arthur” means “Bear” and was almost certainly just
a nickname.’
How has that been decided? It is an interesting suggestion but the name Arthur is a very old British name, not a nickname but a name. The word Arthur can sound like ‘our fur’ and fur trade was rampant many years ago
but I don’t see how Arthur means ‘bear’.
If the word ‘bear’ can be associated in any way you’re looking at ‘to
bear’ as in to bear fruit, to be fruitful, to bear goods, to bear a child, to bear arms etc.. the word ‘bear’ in that sense was extremely common years ago.
The rivers Iber (Spain), Tiber (Italy), Liber (France) all have that ‘to bear’ about them as does the word ‘Hiberno’, as with The Scottish Hiberno Mission, Hiberno Latin and Hiberno Saxon art (British and Irish art). Also the Gaelic and Spanish words for book contain this ‘to bear’.
I’ve a… / I bear… Iberia with a ‘h’ - Hiber(n)ia
The word bear meaning a brown bear, probably comes from the meaning of ‘to bear’ as the brown bears bore fur etc..
Arthur - Are there
Arthur - Are for
Arthur - Are fur 🐻?"Arth" is Welsh for "bear" - the indigenous language of the area.
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