Deconstructing Nechtan

The Pictish symbol shown here is usually described as a tuning-fork. It has been suggested that it represents the name Nechtan which was borne by several Pictish kings (Cummins 1999, 130). The name itself had a widespread popularity across the British Isles and appears in various texts of the early medieval period.

Four of the attested Nechtans appear in contexts suggesting that they lived at the beginning of the seventh century. This contemporaneity has led some historians to suggest that they were the same person (e.g. Smyth 1984, 64-5).

The four Nechtans of c.600 are listed below. The texts in which they are found are in square brackets.
Nechtan, king of the Picts, nepos Uerb, i.e.grandson or nephew of Uerb or Verb [Pictish king-list]
Nechtan son of Cano, nationality unknown, who died in 621 [Annals of Ulster]
Neithon son of Gwyddno, a North Briton, father of King Beli of Dumbarton [Dumbarton royal genealogy]
Peithan (presumed to be a mis-spelling of Neithan) father of a North Briton called Gwid [from a verse of heroic poetry in the Gododdin]

The conflation of these four individuals into one figure was prompted by the ancestry of the Pictish king Brude who defeated Ecgfrith of Northumbria at the battle of Dunnichen in 685. In the Pictish king-list Brude’s father is named as Bili, a variant of Beli, and in a Life of Saint Adomnan Brude is called “son of the king of Dumbarton”. There is no doubt that Brude was the son of the Dumbarton king Beli, son of Neithon, but some historians take the identification process much further by seeing this Neithon as the same man as Nechtan nepos Uerb, king of the Picts. We are clearly dealing with variants of the same name but this is really as far as we can push the textual data. An old Irish poem describes Brude fighting at Dunnichen “for his grandfather’s inheritance”. Because Dunnichen means “Nechtan’s Fort” the inheritance has been seen as Pictish territory formerly ruled by Neithon of Dumbarton and defended in 685 by his grandson Brude. From this theory historians have developed a political scenario in which Neithon and his son Beli ruled not only the Dumbarton Britons but also some part of the Picts. This scenario is then proposed as an explanation of why the father of Brude, a Pictish king, turns out to be a Briton. The final segment of the conflation identifies Brude’s grandfather Neithon of Dumbarton as Nechtan, Cano’s son, and also as Peithan, father of Gwid, by assuming that Cano is an error for Gwyddno and that Peithan is an error for Neithan.

To me, these conflations seem unwarranted and unnecessary. The texts themselves do not give any hint that the same Nechtan/Neithon is meant in all four cases. Two of the quartet can in fact be removed from the equation:
Nechtan, son of Cano, could be the Irish king Nechtan Cendfota whose son died in battle in c.632 (Anderson 1922, 145, n.3), or an otherwise unknown king or cleric – the name was fairly common in ecclesiastical as well as in secular contexts.
Peithan, father of Gwid. If this man was alive today he might wonder why his perfectly normal Brittonic/Welsh name was being altered to Neithan. Nothing in the rhyme or metre of the Gododdin requires such alteration (Koch 1997, 207) which looks to me like wishful thinking by supporters of the “One Nechtan” theory.

This leaves Neithon of Dumbarton and Nechtan nepos Uerb, king of the Picts. The latter is unusual in that he appears in the Pictish king-list without the name of his father. He was a nephew or grandson of someone called Uerb or Verb whose name may be the attested female name Ferb. The lack of a patronym (X son of Y) points to something odd about this Nechtan’s ancestry and suggests that his father was unknown, unworthy or irrelevant to the compilers of the king-list. Since the scribes of the Dumbarton genealogy had no such doubts about the identity of Gwyddno, father of Neithon, his absence from the Pictish list seems strange (if we try to make him the father of Nechtan nepos Uerb). Why would the Pictish scribes ignore Gwyddno if their Dumbarton counterparts were happy to include him in a royal genealogy? It surely makes more sense to see Gwyddno’s son and nepos Uerb as two individuals who had the same name.

Instead of supporting the conflation theory I prefer to envisage three separate Nechtans:
Neithon, father of King Beli of Dumbarton and son of Gwyddno (but only Beli is securely identifiable as holding the kingship).
Nechtan, nepos Uerb, king of the Picts.
Nechtan, son of Cano, perhaps an Irish king or abbot.

The Nechtan who gave his name to Dunnichen (Gaelic Dun Nechtain) probably lived a long time before the battle of 685. He may have been one of the semi-legendary Pictish kings whose names appear in the earlier generations of the king-list, e.g. the Nechtan who allegedly founded the church at Abernethy in Fife. The grandfather’s “inheritance” connected to this battle may have been adjacent territory once ruled by Brude’s mother’s father, a high-status Pict whose name we do not know.

Brude’s kingship of the Picts does not demand that his father and/or grandfather also held sway over this people. As a supporter of Pictish matriliny (royal inheritance through the maternal line) I would not expect Brude’s immediate male forbears to be Pictish kings. Eanfrith, an exiled English prince, fathered a future king of the Picts on a Pictish princess before he himself became king of Bernicia in 633. Beli of Dumbarton may have likewise spent his youth as an exile among the Picts, during which time he and a Pictish royal lady together produced the future king Brude. A political context is provided by the long reign at Dumbarton of a king called Rhydderch Hael who sprang from a separate branch of the royal family. Perhaps Beli fled into exile in this period, as a fosterling – like Eanfrith – of Pictish royalty, before returning home to claim the kingship of Dumbarton after Rhydderch’s death?

Other strands of this topic include the maternal ancestry of Owain, king of Dumbarton, who was another son of Beli, plus the alleged kinship of Brude and his Northumbrian adversary Ecgfrith, not to mention the long-running debate about Pictish matriliny.

References

A.O. Anderson (ed) Early sources of Scottish history, vol.1 (Edinburgh, 1922)
W.A. Cummins The Picts and their symbols (Stroud, 1999)
J.T. Koch (ed) The Gododdin of Aneirin: text & context from dark age North Britain (Cardiff, 1997)
A.P. Smyth Warlords and holy men (London, 1984)

Brude’s symbol?

This is the Pictish symbol known as the Crescent & V-Rod. It appears on various carved stones in Scotland, usually accompanied by one or more other symbols. But what does it mean?

Various theories about the Pictish symbols have been proposed, each with its supporters and critics. The one I cautiously lean towards is the idea that they represent personal names, and that where two symbols appear as a pair on a particular stone they commemorate a person “X, son of Y” (or Z, daughter of Y). One supporter of this theory is W.A. Cummins who has suggested that the Crescent & V-Rod – the symbol appearing most frequently on the stones – might represent Brude – the name appearing most frequently in the Pictish king lists.

The abstract design of the symbol has been seen by some people as an arrow breaking on a shield, by others as a crescent moon with a geometrical instrument like a pair of dividers. We will never know its real meaning but the idea that this and other symbols were used by the Picts in a kind of pictorial alphabet for words or names, like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, is the one I vote for at the moment.

Reference
W.A. Cummins, The Picts and their symbols (Stroud, 1999)

The Lady of the Mercians

English Mercia in AD 900

Alfred the Great died in 899 and was succeeded as king of Wessex by his son Edward. At that time the Vikings held sway over much of northern and midland England, having toppled the old kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia. The western part of Mercia still lay under English rule but its leaders now called themselves ealdormen rather than kings and acknowledged the authority of Wessex. When Edward succeeded his father the Mercians were ruled by Ealdorman Aethelred whose wife Aethelflaed was Alfred’s firstborn child and Edward’s sister.

Aethelred assisted his overlord King Edward against the Vikings but fell ill in c.902 and withdrew from political life. In his stead Aethelflaed, herself half-Mercian by blood, became the effective ruler of Mercia. When Aethelred died in 911 the people accepted his widow as their sole leader, calling her Myrcna hlaefdige, “The Lady of the Mercians”. She continued her husband’s anti-Viking policies and supported the campaigns of her brother Edward. Together the siblings built a line of fortresses, running diagonally across England from the Thames to the Dee, to serve as military bases for future campaigning.

Aethelflaed was no armchair general and took an active part in warfare, leading her Mercian warriors on successful expeditions in the east midlands. In 917, for example, she enhanced her reputation at home and abroad by capturing the Viking stronghold of Derby. Her military policies were not, however, confined to the frontiers of Mercia. She was acutely aware of the threat posed by Scandinavian settlements in northwest England – in what are now the counties of Cumbria and Lancashire – and across the Solway Firth in the coastlands of Galloway. But her principal source of anxiety in the North was the powerful Viking warlord Ragnall who had appeared in Northumbria with his warband in 914.

English sources shed little light on Aethelflaed’s northern policy. Their authors were evidently keen to highlight Edward’s successes by downplaying those of his sister. Only among the Celtic peoples were her achievements in North Britain duly acknowledged. According to Irish traditions preserved by the 17th century chronicler Duald mac Firbis she formed a military alliance with the Scots and Strathclyde Britons, her aim being to offer a unified challenge to Ragnall. She seems to have been recognised as leader of this tripartite coalition and, when the allied forces met Ragnall’s Vikings at Corbridge in 918, she either took part in the battle or – perhaps more likely – sent a contingent of Mercian troops. English sources noted her death in the same year, at Tamworth in Mercia, on June 12th. Her brother Edward maintained the impetus of her northern policy and, two years later, he finally secured the homage of Ragnall. This was not Aethelflaed’s only legacy to the North: her nephew Athelstan, a fosterling at her court, may have learned how to deal with the Scots and Britons by watching her methods of diplomacy. This knowledge would have been crucial in later years when, as ruler of Wessex, he found himself facing a powerful Celtic-Scandinavian coalition which included his aunt’s former allies.

I end this post with a brief epilogue or epitaph on Aethelflaed. A measure of the respect in which she was held by the Celtic nations can be gleaned from the Annals of Ulster which noted her death in June 918 by praising her as famosissima regina Saxonum (a most famous queen of the Saxons) while ignoring the passing not only of her brother Edward but also of her father Alfred the Great. The fact that she was singled out for such fullsome praise by the Ulster annalists adds weight to the traditions preserved in Duald’s text which – being a rather late and controversial source – needs all the support it can get.

 

References

F.T. Wainwright, “Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians”, pp.53-69 in P. Clemoes (ed.) The Anglo-Saxons; some aspects of their history and culture presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959)

Pauline Stafford, “Political women in Mercia, eighth to early tenth centuries”, pp.35-49 in M. Brown and C. Farr (eds.) Mercia: an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Europe (Leicester, 2001)

Stephanie Hollis, “Aethelflaed”, pp.5-7 in R. Pennington (ed.) Amazons to fighter pilots: a biographical dictionary of military women. Vol.1 (Westport CT, 2003)

English translations of the “Three Fragments” or “Fragmentary Annals” compiled by Dual mac Firbis can be found in:

Alan Orr Anderson (ed.) Early sources of Scottish history, AD 500 to 1286. Vol. 1 (London, 1922)

Catraeth and Gwen Ystrat

Edinburgh Castle, site of the Gododdin stronghold Din Eidyn.

In the introductory chapters to his radical reconstruction of the Old Welsh poem Y Gododdin John T. Koch suggested that the sixth-century battle of Catraeth, described in the poem as a defeat for the warriors of Gododdin (Lothian), was a victory for their fellow-Britons of Rheged. Koch believed that a poem known as Gweith Gwen Ystrat (The Battle of Gwen Valley) attributed to Rheged’s court-bard Taliesin was composed to celebrate the event from the victors’ perspective. He suggested that Catraeth and Gwen Ystrat were different names for the same place. In adopting this radical stance he challenged the conventional view of the Gododdin defeat which has long seen it as a triumph by the English kingdom of Bernicia over one of her British neighbours.

I was sceptical about Koch’s theory as soon as I saw it, not least because I don’t see any need to conflate the two battles. In Y Gododdin, Catraeth is clearly stated to be the location of the Gododdin defeat: there is no mention of the Gwen Valley. In Taliesin’s poem, Catraeth is mentioned as a territory associated with Rheged but is not described as the site of a battle. My unease about these and other aspects of Koch’s vision (or revision) of sixth-century history prompted me to discuss his book in the first issue of The Heroic Age back in 1999.

Recently, I looked again at a 1998 paper by Graham Isaac in which the Catraeth-Gwen Ystrat conflation was subjected to detailed linguistic scrutiny. When I first read Isaac’s analysis some years ago I welcomed his rejection of Koch’s theory – having no expertise myself in the complex field of Old Welsh literature I was glad to see a scholar from this area putting the theory under the microscope. Since returning to this topic in the past few weeks I was reminded of something I had forgotten, something quite significant for anyone with an interest in Rheged, namely Isaac’s belief that Gweith Gwen Ystrat should not be regarded as a poem composed in sixth-century North Britain.

In his paper Isaac questions the long-held view that the poem contains archaic linguistic features indicative of an early date of composition. Instead, he proposes that it was composed not by the northern bard Taliesin but by a Welshman of the period 1050 to 1150. If Isaac is right, the implications could be very severe, not just for Koch’s conflation of the two battles but also for conventional perceptions about other poems attributed to Taliesin. As Isaac observes near the end of his analysis: “It may be regarded as regrettable in some quarters that Gweith Gwen Ystrat in particular probably tells us nothing about sixth-century North British history” (p.69). If the poem is a product of eleventh- or twelfth-century Wales, then how confident can we be that any of Taliesin’s poetry about Rheged was composed in the sixth-century North? If one or more of these poems were composed centuries later by a Welsh “antiquarian” poet, how much of their political and geographical information about sixth-century Rheged can be trusted?

References

 John T. Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin: text and context in Dark Age North Britain (Cardiff, 1997)

G.R. Isaac, “Gweith Gwen Ystrat and the northern heroic age of the sixth century” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 36 (1998), 61-70

 My review of Koch’s book for the online journal The Heroic Age can be found here.

Additional note: The place Gwen Ystrat has never been satisfactorily located, nor (in my opinion) has Catraeth. I am unconvinced by the conventional identification of Catraeth as Catterick in Yorkshire, which I believe is too far south to be considered part of the Gododdin borderlands. Similar techniques of “sounds like” etymology have been employed to identify Gwen Ystrat with places in northern England such as Wensleydale, Winster, etc, but these are nothing more than wild shots in the dark.

Some of my early doubts about the Catterick hypothesis can be found in an article published sixteen years ago:
Tim Clarkson, “Richmond and Catraeth” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 26 (1993), 15-20

Brunanburh and Burnswark

In 937 the English king Aethelstan of Wessex gained a victory over an allied army of Scots, Norsemen and Britons at a place called Brunanburh. The encounter was remembered in subsequent generations as the “Great Battle” and has thus been regarded – perhaps incorrectly – as one of the defining moments in early English history. Whatever its long-term political significance the battle was certainly famous in its own time and in the centuries that followed. At some point in the Middle Ages its fame began to dwindle and it is now far less well known than, for example, the campaigns of Athelstan’s grandfather Alfred the Great.

Although the battle is mentioned in various contemporary and later sources its location remains a mystery. A number of places with modern names possibly deriving from Brun- have been suggested as likely candidates but many of these can be discarded on linguistic grounds. Currently, the most favoured candidate seems to be Bromborough on the Wirral Peninsula, a site with easy access to the Irish Sea which is where the main Viking force – the Norse of Dublin – would have come from (a twelfth-century reference to the Humber is probably erroneous). A rival to Bromborough is the prominent Dumfriesshire landmark known today as Burnswark, a flat-topped hill whose candidacy as the site of Brunanburh was strongly argued in 2005 by Kevin Halloran. The case for Burnswark had been made long ago by Neilson but it received an update by Halloran in a well-crafted article in the Scottish Historical Review. At the core of the Burnswark theory are the recorded instances of Bruneswerc as an alternative name of the battle, together with the hill’s geographical position at the head of the Solway Firth. Being a supporter of the Bromborough theory I found Halloran’s argument thought-provoking but I lacked the etymological expertise to scrutinise it more deeply. Then, last year, the Burnswark theory was subjected to rigorous examination by Paul Cavill in a book of essays dedicated to the renowned place-name scholar Margaret Gelling. Cavill demonstrated that Bruneswerc, although clearly an old name for the battle, was an alternative name rather than the original one. By looking closely at the old chronicle references he showed that Brunanburh was undoubtedly the original name and that Bruneswerc was a secondary form derived from it. He also showed that the modern name Burnswark has not evolved from Bruneswerc but is more likely to relate to the “burns” (streams) around the hill from which the nearby place-name Burnside also derives. In my (admittedly biased) view, the candidacy of Burnswark as a plausible location for the great battle of 937 has been effectively swept aside by Cavill’s analysis. To me, Bromborough on the Wirral is still the best candidate, even if its case is impossible to prove.

References

Kevin Halloran, “The Brunanburh campaign: a reappraisal” Scottish Historical Review 84 (2005), 133-48

Paul Cavill, “The site of the battle of Brunanburh: manuscripts and maps, grammar and geography”, pp.303-19 in Oliver Padel & David Parsons (eds) A commodity of good names: essays in honour of Margaret Gelling (Donnington, 2008

George Neilson, ‘Brunanburh and Burnswark’ Scottish Historical Review 7 (1909), 37-9

George Neilson, Annals of the Solway until A.D. 1307 (Glasgow, 1899)

The Lindisfarne campaign

Lindisfarne Castle

Chapter 63 of the ninth-century Welsh text Historia Brittonum (The History of the Britons) begins by naming five kings who succeeded Ida in the kingship of English Bernicia. Four are the sons of Ida (Adda, Aethelric, Theodoric and Freodwald) and the fifth is Hussa. Their reign-lengths, as given by the Historia, span the years from Ida’s death (which occurred in 559, according to Bede) to c.592. After naming Hussa and assigning him a seven-year reign the Historia continues:

Contra illum quattor reges, Urbgen, et Riderch hen, et Guallauc, et Morcant, dimicaverunt. Deodric contra illum Urbgen cum filiis dimicabat fortiter. In illo autem tempore aliquando hostes, nunc cives vincebantur, et ipse conclusit eos tribus diebus et tribus noctibus in insula Metcaud et, dum erat in expeditione, jugulatus est, Morcanto destinante pro invidia, quia in ipso prae omnibus regibus virtus maxima erat instauratione belli.

“Against him fought four kings; Urien, and Rhydderch the Old, and Gwallawg, and Morcant. Theodoric fought vigorously against Urien and his sons. During that time, sometimes the enemy, sometimes the Cymry [Britons] were victorious, and Urien blockaded them for three days and three nights in the island of Lindisfarne. But, while he was on campaign, Urien was killed on the instigation of Morcant, from jealousy, because his military skill and generalship surpassed that of all the other kings”

The sequence of events is usually interpreted as follows: “Urien, king of Rheged, fought against the Bernician kings Theodoric (reigned 572-9) and Hussa (585-92). He led an alliance of native kings (including Rhydderch of Dumbarton) on a campaign that culminated in a siege of Lindisfarne. The alliance fell apart after the treacherous assassination of Urien on the orders of his jealous ally Morcant. This ended the siege and allowed the Bernician dynasty to survive.”

The above interpretation has led to the “alliance” of Britons being imagined by historians as something akin to a pan-British coalition assembled by Urien to wage a patriotic war against the northern English. Such views originated in a twentieth-century vision of ethnic hostility between “Celtic” Britons on one side and “Germanic” Bernicians on the other, coupled with a belief that sixth-century kings routinely formed alliances along clear-cut ethnic lines. But how accurate is this interpretation and can an alternative be proposed to replace it?

The passage in the Historia Brittonum can be broken down into its constituent parts. By stripping out conventional literary devices such as “sometimes the enemy, sometimes the Cymry….” and “three days and three nights” we are left with four key elements of the narrative:

1. Four British kings, including Urien of Rheged, fought against Hussa of Bernicia.
2. An earlier Bernician king, Theodoric, fought against Urien.
3. Urien besieged a Bernician force on the island of Lindisfarne.
4. During a military campaign Urien was killed at the instigation of a British king (Morcant) who resented his military prowess.

There is no implication here of an alliance or coalition. Nor is there any hint of a joint campaign by the North Britons against an alien, non-Celtic people. My own preferred interpretation of the passage combines the above four elements to create a scenario which is somewhat less elaborate than the conventional one. It is based on a simple understanding of what the Historia actually says:

“In the period c.572 to c.592 the English of Bernicia fought a number of wars against the Britons. Among their enemies in this period were Urien of Rheged, Rhydderch of Dumbarton, a king called Gwallawg and another king called Morcant. During one of these wars an incursion by Urien into English territory included a noteworthy event: a siege of Bernician forces on Lindisfarne. Urien was eventually killed at the instigation of Morcant while on a military expedition against unidentified foes.”

With this alternative scenario in mind I see no reason to weave a story of “pan-British” co-operation from what the Historia Brittonum tells us about the Lindisfarne campaign. The Historia is in any case a controversial text whose testimony requires careful handling. Its author was keen to present the great events of the past in a manner designed to resonate with his contemporaries in ninth-century Wales. He consciously portrayed the conflicts of the sixth and seventh centuries as ethnic wars in which his own people (the Britons of Wales, Dumnonia and the North) courageously resisted the inexorable expansion of the English. In adopting this literary stance he was not presenting a factual report of sixth-century military history but pursuing instead a ninth-century propagandist agenda. We would be ill-advised to follow him too far along the same path.

* * * * *

Before ending this post I offer a few additional thoughts arising from it….

[a] Urien’s campaign is sometimes envisaged as a blockade of the island of Lindisfarne, upon whose sea-girt shores the Bernicians were “penned up” and cut off from the mainland. But did his warband merely gather on the opposite coast to hurl insults at the Bernicians huddling across the water? Or did he do what any warlord possessing a modicum of “military skill and generalship” would have done, i.e. check the tides, wait for the sea to recede and march over the causeway to chase the English into some defensible stronghold (such as the prominent hill where Lindisfarne Castle now stands – see photo).

[b] Contrary to popular belief, the Historia Brittonum does not place the siege of Lindisfarne in Theodoric’s reign. The event seemingly occurred at some point in the period spanned by the reigns of Theodoric and Hussa, i.e. c.572 to c.592, but it cannot be dated more precisely.

[c] Rhydderch, Gwallawg and Morcant: there is no need to envisage any of these kings participating in Urien’s campaign. Why should they join him anyway? And why would a great warlord like Urien (whose military skill and generalship was apparently far superior to theirs) need their help? Each of them had fought (or were yet to fight) Hussa but there is no reason to believe that they conducted this warfare in alliance with each other rather than undertaking separate campaigns. It is in any case inconceivable that they were not rivals and competitors in an unending contest for territory, wealth and status, a contest which also involved Rheged and Bernicia, as well as other realms not mentioned in this part of the Historia Brittonum.

[d] It is possible, though by no means certain, that Urien exercised some measure of overlordship over one or more neighbouring kingdoms, though not necessarily those represented by the kings named in the “Lindisfarne” passage.

[e] If the Historia identifies any client or sub-king of Urien the likeliest candidate is Morcant, who allegedly instigated Urien’s demise because of jealousy, though he may simply have been a rival or neighbour who begrudged Urien’s achievements. Perhaps Morcant regarded Urien as a direct threat to his own territorial ambitions but lacked the military resources to mount a full-scale challenge on the battlefield? The slaying is sometimes called an assassination, an act of treachery, but it may have been Morcant’s only option and, in political terms, might have been his wisest move. We could be tempted to imagine a masked assassin stabbing Urien in the back with a poisoned dagger but the Historia uses the phrase jugulatus est (he was killed) which might mean nothing more devious than an ambush by a band of warriors sent by Morcant to waylay Urien and his bodyguard.

[f] The location of Morcant’s kingdom is unknown. It has been suggested that it lay on the east coast, near Bernicia and the British realm of Gododdin. Some historians think Morcant may have been a king of Gododdin during Urien’s reign in Rheged. This is possible, as are other hypotheses.

 [g] Of the British kings named in the “Lindisfarne” passage only Morcant is specifically linked to an event in Urien’s career (his death). Rhydderch is the only one of the four kings whose existence is attested elsewhere in a reliable source of non-Welsh provenance: he is mentioned in the seventh-century Life of Columba by Adomnan of Iona.

[h] Gwallawg, a figure famed in later Welsh poetry, cannot be dated securely, nor can his kingdom be located. Two poems about him were formerly attributed to the sixth-century North British poet Taliesin but current opinion now favours their composition in Wales at a much later date. This means that Gwallawg’s extremely tenuous link to the kingdom of Elmet in Yorkshire, together with any detailed reconstructions of his career derived from the poems, can no longer be accepted without question.

* * * * *

For the conventional interpretation of Urien’s Bernician campaign (as an alliance or coalition of Britons) see, for example:

John Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin: text and context from Dark Age North Britain (Cardiff, 1997), p.xxv & cxiii “alliance”

Sir Ifor Williams, The beginnings of Welsh poetry (Cardiff, 1980) [a collection of papers edited by Rachel Bromwich], p.44 “allies”

Alfred Smyth, Warlords and holy men: Scotland, AD 80-1000 (London, 1984), p.29 “Urien’s coalition”

Rachel Bromwich, “The character of the early Welsh tradition”, pp.83-136 in H.M. Chadwick [et al] Studies in early British history (Cambridge, 1959), p.84 “temporary coalition of British rulers”

John Marsden, Northanhymbre saga (Felinfach, 1995), p.47 “this powerful alliance of the Men of the North”. On the same page Marsden observes that the Historia Brittonum “does not specifically state that all four kings were present at the siege, but every authority accepts that they were”.

The most detailed treatment of the campaign and its context is:  Ian Lovecy, ‘The End of Celtic Britain: A Sixth-Century Battle near Lindisfarne’ Archaeologia Aeliana 5th ser., vol.4 (1976), 31-45

Alt Clut

Here’s one of my favourite early medieval places: Dumbarton aka Alt Clut aka the Rock of Clyde. Chief royal stronghold of the Strathclyde Britons, besieged by an Anglo-Pictish army in the 8th century and by Vikings in the 9th, before losing its status to Govan during the twilight years of the Clyde kingdom.

For me, this is the most visually-striking of all Scottish “hillforts” despite the urban/industrial sprawl that surrounds it.

The traditional (i.e. ubiquitous) view shown here was taken from West Ferry, a convenient lay-by off the A8 on the southern bank of the Clyde.

Perth and Bertha

Historians generally agree that the Scottish city of Perth has a name deriving from a Pictish word pert meaning a copse or wood. The antiquity of this name is less clear and is a matter of some debate, as is the question of where the original settlement called Pert was located. Did the city begin as a small trading village on the bank of the River Tay, with a seasonal market frequented by Vikings? Did it develop around an ancient Christian site in the vicinity of the present-day Saint John’s Kirk? Or was the ancestor of Perth originally a Pictish ceremonial centre near the Roman fort a mile or so further upstream where the Tay meets the River Almond?

The earliest record of the place-name Perth or Pert occurs in the 12th century when the town was named among property granted to Dunfermline Abbey in a royal charter of King David I of Scotland. In the following century the place-name appears in the variant form Berth or Bert. This variant was subsequently borrowed by medieval Scottish historians such as John of Fordun and Walter Bower as the basis of a fictional name for the Roman fort at the mouth of the Almond. In their chronicles they called the fort Bertha, a name invented by them because they did not know the Roman name for the place. This name has since stuck and the fort is often marked on maps in a way that could fool the unwary into believing that Bertha was what the Romans called it. The original Roman name was probably Tamia, derived from a native name for the River Tay. In early medieval times, when the long-abandoned site was still used for ceremonial or other purposes by Pictish and Gaelic kings, its name was Rathinveramon (Fort at the mouth of the River Almond). Perth, then, means ‘copse’ or ‘wood’ in the old Pictish language (which was a Celtic language related to the ancestor of Welsh). Bertha is a medieval variant of Perth and was erroneously applied to the nearby Roman fort. The interesting point about Perth’s early name is that it pushes the date of the original settlement backwards into the Pictish period, thereby making the city’s origins far older than the time of its elevation to town status in the 12th century.

Reference

 M. Hall, H. Hall & G. Cook, “What’s cooking? New radiocarbon dates from the earliest phases of the Perth High Street excavations and the question of Perth’s early medieval origin”, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol.135 (2005), pp.273-285.

Picts and Spooks

I’m quite a fan of the UK television drama “Spooks” about the British secret service MI5 whose function is to protect Britain from internal and external threats. In some episodes previously-loyal MI5 operatives turn rogue and start working for the enemy (usually the Russian secret service). This type of double-agent storyline has a curiously similar parallel from early Scottish history, from the final years of Roman rule in Britain.

In the 4th century Rome had long since given up any hope of conquering Scotland, a country whose landscape and people provided serious obstacles to ambitious Roman generals and their armies. The imperial frontier lay instead along Hadrian’s Wall whose forts were supported by others in the hinterland behind. Beyond the wall, in what is now the Anglo-Scottish border region, only four outpost forts remained in use. This area was effectively a buffer zone between Hadrian’s Wall and the long-disused Antonine Wall further north. Its inhabitants were tribes of native Britons ruled by their own kings under the watchful eye of the outpost forts. These kings were probably paid by Rome to serve as a first line of defence in the event of enemy raids from the far north where, in the wild highlands beyond the decaying turf ramparts of the Antonine Wall, lurked the Picts – a confederacy of warlike tribes who posed the greatest threat to Roman Britain.

The Romans were not, however, content to merely wait for a Pictish attack and react to it when it happened. They needed advance warning so that they could muster their troops in the right places or send out a squadron of warships to ambush a pirate raid. To this end they relied on a “secret service” called the arcani or areani whose role was described thus by the contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus: ‘Their function was to circulate over a wide area and report to our generals any threatening movements among the neighbouring tribes.’ This is clearly a job description for secret agents operating undercover behind enemy lines and would not look out of place today in an MI5 mission statement. Little wonder, then, that some modern historians refer to the arcani/areani as the Roman CIA.

So, why the uncertainty over the name? The problem arises from two possible readings of the only surviving text of Ammianus, a somewhat corrupt and incomplete copy written in the 9th century. Editors of this text are unsure as to whether arcani or areani is the original form as used by the author. Some prefer to read the word as arcani with its connotations of secrecy as represented in modern English by the term arcane; others suggest areani as the correct reading, translating it as a Latin word meaning “men of the sheepfolds” which might fit the image of covert military agents disguised as shepherds or farmers. Unless by some miraculous chance another manuscript of Ammianus appears, or a relevant inscription is unearthed at a Roman fort, we will never be certain which spelling is correct.

Unfortunately for this shadowy organisation its sole mention in the contemporary literary record is a negative one. Its agents, Ammianus tells us, were in league with the Picts and passed on vital information about the disposition of Roman troops on the northern frontier. Armed with this knowledge the Picts got together with other fierce peoples – including the Scots and Saxons – to plan a wave of simultaneous attacks on Roman Britain. The result was the infamous Barbarian Conspiracy of AD 367 which took the imperial forces completely by surprise and plunged the Romanised south of the island into turmoil.

To deal with the crisis Rome sent the renowned general Count Theodosius to Britain at the head of an elite force. He soon restored order and, after expelling the barbarian marauders, swiftly identified the traitors among the secret service. According to Ammianus these double-agents ‘were clearly convicted of having been bribed by gifts or promises of large rewards to pass to the barbarians regular information about what we were doing.’ Surprisingly, given the depth of their treachery, they received a fairly light punishment: Theodosius merely kicked them out of their jobs. What happened to these “Roman Spooks” afterwards is unknown but I imagine them turning up eventually in the Highlands to sup a few drams of Speyside malt with their old Pictish buddies.

Reference:

Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire, AD 354-378. Translation by Walter Hamilton (Harmondsworth, 1986), Book 28:3 (at pages 357-8 in this edition)

The Battle of Degsastan

In 603 the English king Aethelfrith of Bernicia defeated Aedan mac Gabrain and the Scots of Dal Riada in a great battle. Bede names the site of Aethelfrith’s victory as Degsastan (the Stone of Degsa) and calls it a “very famous place”.

Can Degsastan be pinpointed on a modern map? Some historians believe that the answer to this question should be Yes. They suggest that the battle took place at Dawston in Liddesdale near the present Anglo-Scottish border, thirty miles north of Carlisle. This is not a new theory: it made its first published appearance in 1692. Since then it has been cited so frequently that its origin as an unproven hypothesis seems to be forgotten in some quarters and it has consequently acquired the status of a factoid, a fact-shaped object.

What, then, are the merits of the Degsastan=Dawston theory?  Is it based on geographical hints in Bede’s account of the battle?  Does it derive from cryptic clues in obscure Scottish chronicles?  The answer to these questions is a resounding No. Dawston was suggested as the battle-site for no other reason than that its name begins with ‘D’, ends with ‘n’ and has ’st’ in the middle. This is the sum total of supporting evidence for the identification. The name does not derive from Degsastan which, in its modern form, would today be something like Daystone.  Not a very convincing argument for the Dawston theory, you might think, but its flimsy foundations have not halted its unstoppable march into the pages of many an undergraduate text. Look in the index at the back of any book on early Scottish or Northumbrian history and you may see Dawston lurking there, either on its own or – more worryingly – in authoritative parentheses attached to the Bedan place-name, e.g. ‘Degsastan (Dawston)’.

The name Degsastan or Stone of Degsa was presumably borne by a prominent monolith in the early medieval landscape. The name Dawston, on the other hand, is borne by an insignificant stream – the Dawston Burn – which runs for a short distance beside a small patch of barren moorland called Dawston Rigg. Both stream and moor are situated in a bleak and very remote location among the hills at the head of Liddesdale (the valley of the River Liddel). Not the easiest place to get to, even by car, and not the kind of spot where one might expect a major battle to be fought.

Rival theories are few and not very convincing, being based on various experiments with modern place-names using sounds like etymology. Dawston still runs far ahead of these rival sites because it is the only one with an enticing sequence of consonants (d-st-n) in its name. I don’t have any useful alternatives to pitch against Dawston but I do like to keep two thoughts in mind whenever this issue comes up:

1. The Degsastan=Dawston theory is a red herring and should be buried, preferably somewhere deep where it can be safely forgotten.

2. The battle of 603 was probably fought near a standing-stone or prominent (sacred?) glacial boulder in a location easily accessible to both armies.

In the final analysis the only theories about Degsastan that carry any real weight for me are those which identify the site of Aethelfrith’s great victory as one of the lost battlefields of Britain.