6
The White Land
In the Welsh tale Peredur, the location of the castle where the hero sees the severed head is not revealed. However, if the relic was Bran’s head, as I figured, then the most likely location the author had in mind would be a castle at the summit of a hill overlooking the town of Llangollen in northeast Wales. Known as Dinas Bran, or “Bran’s Fort” in English, the ruins of the stone-built fortress, still to be seen, only date from the 1260s, but an earlier and more extensive citadel stood on the spot (see plate 9). Occupying the flat summit of the thousand-foot hill, the original fortification consisted of a single bank, some twenty feet high, and a surrounding ditch, encircling an area of about four acres. This hill fort, similar to the one at Cadbury (see chapter 2), consisting of a wooden stockade encompassing a fortified settlement, dated to around 500 BC.1 Abandoned during Roman times, and reoccupied in the fifth century, it was certainly in use again at the time Arthur is said to have lived. The oldest surviving reference to the site is found in a medieval narrative called Fouke le Fitz Waryn, named after a local hero and written around 1250, which states that the ruins of an earlier castle had existed at this time.2 According to the account the castle had been built by Bran himself, and Dinas Bran is also said to be where Bran’s mystical talking head ended up.
In the Welsh tale Branwen Ferch Llŷr (Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr), Bran (Branwen’s brother) asks for his head to be cut off as he is dying. After it has served as an oracle for many years, giving advice to the British leaders, the head of Bran is finally buried at a place identified as the White Hill.3 The oldest extant copy dates from the 1300s, but literary scholars believe it to be very much older, perhaps originally dating in part from the post-Roman era. Fourteenth-century English copyists suggested that the White Hill had been the White Mount in London, where the Tower of London stood, but this would seem most unlikely for a tale where the action takes place in Wales. Besides, during the period in which the tales seem to have been composed, London was firmly under Saxon control. Welsh tradition, conversely, locates the White Hill at Dinas Bran, and with some justification. Not only is the place specifically linked with the legendary figure of Bran, but during the Middle Ages the hill on which the fort stands is recorded as Gwynfryn, Welsh for “White Hill.”
In the Arthurian romances Arthur appears to be buried on or near Avalon, which is also the home of the Grail whose guardian is Bron. In turn, the Arthurian Grail seems to have been based to a large extent on the Welsh story of Annwn and the magic cauldron, and the magic cauldron’s guardian was the almost identical-sounding Bran (see chapter 4). Dinas Bran, I decided, was well worth a visit. Today Dinas Bran is not only the name of the ruined castle but also the hill itself. This, though, is unlikely to have been the location for a historical Avalon. Not only is the hill huge, over a thousand feet high, it was also never surrounded by water. Nonetheless, I soon discovered that the immediate vicinity had firm links with the Welsh Arthurian tradition. Standing among the stark, gray-stone castle ruins—some of its thick walls over thirty feet high, complete with rounded arches and window openings long bereft of doors or glass—I could see for miles across the surrounding countryside: to the west, the mountains of Wales, and to the east, the plains of central England. Directly below, to the southwest, was the town of Llangollen, on the other side of the meandering River Dee; and just downstream were the magnificent ruins of the abbey of Valle Crucis.4 During the fourteenth century this Cistercian monastery was where many of the Dark Age Welsh Arthurian tales were committed to writing in their present form (see plate 10).
Although the English invasion of Wales began as early as 1171, it was over a century before the country was fully conquered. Sometime around 1300 Welsh monks, realizing that much of their country’s literary heritage was being lost, began to collect and copy Welsh tales, poems, and songs into single volumes. At Valle Crucis Abbey these were primarily Arthurian tales, preserved here during the turbulent years of the fourteenth century—the time of the Black Death—until they were copied into later manuscripts around 1400 that still survive, such as The Red Book of Hergest and The White Book of Rhydderch (both named after the color of their bindings). A number of these Welsh Arthurian stories were eventually translated into English by the Lincolnshire diarist Lady Charlotte Guest in the 1830s and eventually published under the collective title The Mabinogion (from the Welsh mabinogi, a name applied to old mythological tales), which is still widely in print today.5 As well as these prose narratives, other Welsh mythology and chronicles were preserved in poetic form—in particular, in verses known as triads. Taking their name from the groupings of themes or characters into threes, the triads served as a mnemonic device, summarizing Welsh folklore and history. Not really poems in the true sense, they are basically lyrical outlines of what were obviously more detailed sagas and accounts; sometimes they consist of only a handful of lines.6 They were committed to writing during the Middle Ages by various Welsh authors, and many of those that included the character of King Arthur were preserved by the monks of Valle Crucis. Although originally dispersed through many Welsh manuscripts, they were eventually brought together under the title Trioedd Ynys Prydain (Triads of Britain) in 1567 by the Welsh scholar William Salesbury. No doubt many Welsh Arthurian stories were lost to history, but thanks to the monks of Valle Crucis, we still have some of the originals, later adapted by authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Robert de Boron, and Chrétien de Troyes. The question I needed to answer was this: Was it just a coincidence that the abbey was right next to Dinas Bran, the location that seems to have inspired the setting for the Grail Castle in the medieval romances, or was this particular area specifically linked with the early Arthurian legend? It was not long before I discovered that the district was deeply associated with the very oldest King Arthur traditions.
Before continuing I need to explain a little about the area at the time Arthur is said to have lived. We have seen how, after the Romans left Britain in AD 410, the country soon broke into separate kingdoms based on old tribal regions. The largest and most important of these were in western Britain, as the northern region was being harassed by the Picts and Irish, and the southeast and east were being invaded by the Anglo-Saxons. There were many small kingdoms, but the largest were Dumnonia in southwest England, Dyfed (pronounced “Dove-ed”) and Gwent in south Wales, Gwynedd (pronounced “Gwineth”) in northwest Wales, and Powys (pronounced “Powis”), which covered what is now middle England, together with central and northwest Wales. During the Dark Ages Dinas Bran was within the kingdom of Powys; in fact, from around 650 its fort seems to have become the kingdom’s capital, when the Anglo-Saxons pushed into central England, forcing the Britons to retreat west. Today Gwent, Dyfed, and Gwynedd lend their name to Welsh counties, approximately covering the areas of the old kingdoms, but the modern county of Powys only comprises a small region in west-central Wales: the area to which the kingdom had been reduced by the early Middle Ages. The original Powys was much larger and was one of the most powerful kingdoms in post-Roman Britain, and it was in this kingdom that much of the action in the Welsh King Arthur tradition took place. Reading through English translations of early Welsh Arthurian tales and poetry in Llangollen’s public library, I found that Dinas Bran was just one of the many sites in what had once been the kingdom of Powys to boast Arthurian connections.
I began by searching for local associations with the Celtic goddess quartet that my research suggested was linked with the tale of Avalon (see chapter 5). I did not initially discover a lake island in the vicinity, but I did find something of particular interest that may have been related to these ancient deities. A few miles to the southeast of Dinas Bran, just outside the modern town of Oswestry, was another pre-Roman hill fort reoccupied in the late fifth century.7 Covering an area of some forty acres and consisting of several earthen ramparts, it was called Caer Ogyrfan (Welsh for the “Citadel of Ogyrfan”) and was a similar, though much larger hilltop settlement to Dinas Bran. Not only was it also reoccupied around AD 500, but it too had Welsh Arthurian associations: local legend claimed it to be the birthplace of none other than Arthur’s queen Guinevere. Guinevere is the name used by the medieval romancers for King Arthur’s wife, but in the earlier Welsh stories, she is called Gwenhwyfar (pronounced roughly “Gwen-he-var”), such as in the tales of Culhwch and Olwen and Peredur, which we have already examined, and the Lady of the Fountain and Geraint and Enid, which also seem to have been composed during the Dark Ages.8 All these tales were ultimately rehashed by the medieval romancers, but the Welsh versions were almost certainly the originals, as they interpolated purely Celtic mythological themes and names. Gwenhwyfar is one such example, whose name is Brythonic (post-Roman British) for “White Enchantress.” In fact, the far element is the British equivalent of the Old French fey, “fairy,” used by Chrétien de Troyes and subsequent romancers to described Morgan (see chapter 5). Not only is her name Celtic, but in Welsh tradition there are three Gwenhwyfars, bearing a great similarity to the three sisters of Mórrígan. Although, in the medieval Arthurian romances, Arthur has only one Queen Guinevere, in early Welsh literature Arthur had three queens all called Gwenhwyfar.9 (This, incidentally, might explain why the cross the monks of Glastonbury claimed to have found in Arthur’s grave is said to have referred to Guinevere as Arthur’s second wife.)
Although these women are alleged to have had different fathers, they seem to have had the same mother as they each shared a common sister called Gwenhwyfach (pronounced roughly “Gwen-he-vak”), meaning “Little White.”10 (Some literary scholars have suggested that she was the inspiration for Snow White by the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who in the early nineteenth century researched European folklore and mythology widely for their storylines. Although there are no “seven dwarfs” in Welsh legend, there are magic mirrors, poisoned apples, and a glass coffin.) Two things seemed evident to me. The first was that the name Gwenhwyfar was probably not originally a personal name but a title; the second was that the three Gwenhwyfars—White Enchantresses—might have been linked to the three queens in the medieval Avalon theme. Along with their sister Gwenhwyfach, they may have been the Welsh equivalents to the Irish Mórrígan, Badb, Macha, and Anann and the northern Coventina and her three attendants (see chapter 5). Obviously, by the Middle Ages the three queens were different literary figures from Arthur’s wife, but in the original version of the legend, Arthur appeared to have been portrayed as marrying all three of these mystical queens. I was hoping that the fort of Caer Ogyrfan—in legend said to be the home of at least one of the Gwenhwyfars—might prove to have once been surrounded by water. Sadly, however, the terrain could never have been an island in recent geological history.11 All the same, the place was almost certainly associated with Gwenhwyfar in the early pre-romance Arthurian tradition. The Welsh triad The Three Wives of Arthur, for instance, not only refers to the three Gwenhwyfars, but one of them is said to be the daughter of Ogyrfan Gawr (Ogyrfan the Giant, a term often applied to tall warriors), the same man after whom the citadel was named.12
What I found especially interesting was the word white in what seemed to have been the title borne by Arthur’s three queens in the legend. The enchantress part seemed obvious enough; they were thought to have magic powers. But why the white enchantress? Did this mean that they were considered good, like a white witch? Or was there something more? While looking through the local history collection in the Llangollen library, I found a number of references to the word white being associated with the kingdom of Powys, in places such as the White Hall, the White Castle, and the White Town. In fact Powys itself is referred to in medieval English accounts as the White Land. The meaning of the name Powys is something of a mystery. The Celtic tribe native to the area was called the Cornovii, so unlike kingdoms such as Dumnonia, named after the Dumnonii tribe, Powys did not derive its name from its people. It has been suggested that the name came from the Latin pagus meaning “the countryside,” but I found no literary evidence to support this. Besides, it seemed quite a stretch from Pagus to Powys, and why call a kingdom simply “The Countryside”? There is no surviving reference to how the kingdom got its name, and no similar words to Powys are known in Welsh or Brythonic. As the only other name used for the kingdom is the White Land in medieval English texts, I could only assume that, that is what the now-forgotten word originally meant. There is no explanation in any of these works as to why the area was referred to as the White Land, but it was possibly because it had significant deposits of limestone, a light-colored, grayish-white rock used for building.13 Many of the area’s Roman towns had been constructed from local limestone, giving them a white, as opposed to the red, look of most cities of the time. If the kingdom had been called the White Land during the Dark Ages, then the title white enchantress might have been linked with the place where she (or they) were thought to have originated or ruled. Whatever the origin of the name, it was when I was reading one of the medieval works referring to Powys as the White Land that I was delighted to find reference to King Arthur himself actually living in the region.
The mid-thirteenth-century Fouke le Fitz Waryn, composed by an unknown author around 1250, concerns the exploits of a local baron named Fulk Fitz Warine: a historical figure that lived around AD 1200. In the work the area that had once been the kingdom of Powys is repeatedly called the White Land; for instance, when referring to Fulk, the narrative says, “In Britain the Great, a wolf will come from the White-Land.”14 (Fulk was known as the Wolf, a contemporary term for an outlaw, which Fulk had once been.) In fact the account, which frequently mentions Arthur, says that centuries before Fulk’s time, the fabled king had actually dwelt in the White Land: “There King Arthur recovered his goodness and his valor, when he had lost all his chivalry and his virtue.”15 Furthermore, the narrative specifically tells us that the district had been called the White Land in Arthur’s time: “For each of you may be sure that in the time of King Arthur that [the area in which Fulk lived] was called White Land.”16 Moreover, Fouke le Fitz Waryn even associates the area with the Holy Grail. When referring to Fulk’s castle, the author explains that in legend the Grail itself foretold events there. Enigmatically, he uses the words “Thus the Graal tells us.”17 (Graal was a contemporary spelling of Grail.) Intriguingly, it seems that the Grail actually spoke, which might be related to the tradition of Bran’s talking head. The implication seemed to be that the author believed the Grail was once said to be housed in or near Fulk’s castle. (Unfortunately, we are not told what this particular Grail actually is: it could be a cup, a chalice, a dish, or even a severed head.)
Fig. 6.1. The primary British and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the late fifth century, showing the locations discussed in this chapter.
Fulk was a historical figure who in 1204, after having been an outlaw for rebelling against England’s King John, was pardoned and inherited his castle in the town of Whittington on the Welsh border in what is now the English county of Shropshire, just a couple of miles northeast of Oswestry. On first visiting Whittington I was transfixed by its beauty. Encompassed by a broad moat, upon which swam ducks,swans, and all manner of exotic waterfowl, the castle’s towering ruins stood atop a hillock of soft green grass (see plate 11). Walls, turrets, and ramparts still survived, while the fortified gatehouse and moat-crossing bridge were almost perfectly preserved, with an arched entrance still carved with the coat of arms of the Fitz Warine family. In the sunlight the limestone brickwork shone brightly: the stronghold truly lived up to its local name as the White Castle. Although today its official name is Whittington Castle, historical records dating back to the time of Fulk Fitz Warine refer to it as the White Castle. Indeed, the Fouke le Fitz Waryn author initially calls it the White Tower, suggesting that only the central keep existed when Fulk inherited the place. The rest of it seems to have been built during Fulk’s occupancy. In fact, the Fouke le Fitz Waryn narrative refers to it as the White Tower, in the White Town, in the White Land. The scenic little town surrounding the castle is still called Whittington, from the Middle English meaning “White Town,” even today.
In a medieval Arthurian romance known as the Didot Perceval (Didot [pronounced “Dee-doe”] being the family name of the onetime owners of the manuscript), a White Castle is included as the place where the hero Perceval fights in a tournament just before he reaches the Grail Castle.18 From the narrative it appears that the two locations are close to each other. Although the surviving work is anonymous, it seems to be a continuation of the works of Robert de Boron; indeed, some scholars believe that it was originally written by Robert himself as it dates from around the same time, AD 1200. If Whittington Castle is the setting for the White Castle in the romance, then it could, I decided, be regarded as further evidence that the nearby Dinas Bran was the location for the Grail Castle in the early Arthurian saga. As the Didot Perceval depicts Perceval as the grandson of Bron, the Grail guardian, then it would seem that, like Guinevere, Perceval was another character who was originally regarded as having come from what had been the kingdom of Powys.
For a while I speculated that the site of Whittington Castle might have been the place upon which Avalon was based. Not only was it an island, surrounded by a moat, but archaeology had revealed that earthworks on the spot, much older than the twelfth-century castle, dated from as early as the sixth century. However, when I discovered that the moat was an artificial construction dating from the late Anglo-Saxon period of the tenth or eleventh century, I had to abandon the idea. Interestingly, Whittington Castle did turn out to be associated with the Grail legend during the Middle Ages, but this was centuries after the period in which a historical Arthur may have lived; but all this was part of an investigation I conducted some years later, concerning the Holy Grail as it was perceived in medieval times.19 Regardless of any later Grail connections, however, the site of Whittington Castle was clearly not the lake island I was seeking. Nevertheless, while I was reading Fouke le Fitz Waryn, I found reference to yet another Arthurian character: Merlin the magician. The author repeatedly states that Merlin had foretold the life of Fulk Fitz Warine, citing examples of his prophesies concerning the White Land. For example: “Merlin says that in Britain the Great, a wolf [Fulk] will come from the White Land” (see above); and “Out of the White Land, he shall [come and] have such great force and virtue. But we know that Merlin said it for Fulk Fitz Warine.”20
Exactly where the author obtained these prophecies is unknown. The point was, however, that he was linking Merlin to what had been the kingdom of Powys, and Merlin was indeed connected with the kingdom in one of the very earliest Arthurian references to still survive. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the Kings of Britain, first introduces Merlin as a young boy. Believing that the child has visionary powers, the British king Vortigern captures Merlin and takes him to his hilltop fortress in Wales. The king had been having trouble constructing his fort; the foundations kept collapsing, and his magicians told him that to put things right he must sacrifice a child—and the young Merlin is chosen. However, just as Merlin is about to be killed, he has a vision of two dragons, one red, the other white, that fight each other in a pool in a cavern below the fort. This, he tells Vortigern, is why the building keeps collapsing. He tells Vortigern’s men where to dig; the pool is found and the dragons released. The king is so impressed that he spares Merlin, appointing him as one of his advisors and rewarding him with land.21 Although this is clearly a mythological anecdote, it actually predates Geoffrey of Monmouth by some three hundred years. The same story is found almost verbatim in the writings of the ninth-century monk Nennius who came from Radnor in southwestern Powys.22 Nennius wrote the Latin Historia Brittonum (The History of the Britons) around the year 830.23 The work outlines a history of Britain compiled from various monastic texts. While it contains many known historical events, it also includes assorted myths and legends from around the country that the author considered worthy of preservation. One such legend was the same story that Geoffrey later recounted concerning the boy threatened with sacrifice by Vortigern and exalted after he reveals the two dragons in the pool below the king’s fortress.24 Not only was Nennius from Powys, but the place where the legendary event was said to have taken place was also in the kingdom. Called Dinas Emrys, the hill lies around forty miles west of Dinas Bran and is situated on what was once the border between Powys and the north Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd. (An early Welsh tale called Lludd and Llevelys, preserved in The Red Book of Hergest, refers to the two dragons first being confined to the cavern pool at a place later called Dinas Emrys.)
Close to the village of Beddgelert, the rocky hillock is around 250 feet high and mainly covered by woodland, but during the Dark Ages it was probably treeless, providing a clear view of the surrounding terrain. On its summit there can still be seen the remains of stone fortifications dating from the thirteenth century, but excavations in the 1950s, by the archaeologist Hubert Savory of the National Museum of Wales, revealed that the site had been occupied and reconstructed on several occasions, including the mid-to-late fifth century when the story of Vortigern and Merlin is set.25 Remarkably, the excavations discovered that there was indeed a pool beneath the hill fort, just as described by Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth. The fort was perfectly positioned to guard a pass through the Snowdonia Mountains joining Gwynedd and Powys, so it was a location of vital strategic importance as the accounts relate. The most astonishing thing I discovered was that unlike Bran and Gwenhwyfar, who appear to have been mythological characters at some point interpolated into the King Arthur legend, Vortigern was a historical figure. He is named as the most powerful British leader of the mid-fifth century in the Welsh Annals, compiled from earlier monastic records around 950,26 and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an Anglo-Saxon history assembled in part from older military accounts in the late 800s.27 Moreover, he is also recorded by Gildas, a British monk who wrote around the year 545, within living memory of the time Arthur is said to have lived28 (more about Gildas later). There can be little doubt that Vortigern was a historical king of Powys, as his name was inscribed on a stone pillar dating from around AD 850, listing the rulers of the kingdom. Standing on high open ground overlooking Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangollen, the pillar was originally a stone cross, some twenty feet high, and it was from it that Valle Crucis gets its name: Valle Crucis means “Valley of the Cross” in Welsh. Now called the Pillar of Eliseg—named after the man it was erected to commemorate—only parts of its original inscription remain legible (see plate 12), but before it had weathered the still visible lines were recorded by the Welsh antiquarian Edward Lhuyd in 1696.29 Although the names of all the Powys kings were not discernible even then, many did survive, and Vortigern was recorded as the first of them. (Today, a replica of the pillar can be found in the Llangollen Museum, along with the inscription recorded by Lhuyd.)
More incredibly still, and as unlikely as it might first sound, Merlin also appears to have been based on a historical figure. Geoffrey of Monmouth gives his full name as Ambrosius Merlin, and in Nennius’s earlier account the boy who reveals the dragon pool to Vortigern is called simply Ambrosius. Nennius’s account is almost identical to Geoffrey’s, so there can be little doubt that they are both referring to the same person. Like Vortigern, this Ambrosius was a real historical character. Gildas refers to him as the man who went on to lead the Britons in their struggle against the Anglo-Saxons in the late 400s. Ambrosius also appears in various early accounts from Wales, where his name is rendered in Welsh as Emrys. (Ambrosius became shortened to Ambrose in English, and Emrys is the Welsh pronunciation of Ambrose.) In English, Dinas Emrys, the place where the fabled meeting between Merlin and Vortigern occurred, translates as the “Fort of Ambrosius”: Nennius suggests that Ambrosius took over the fort following Vortigern’s demise. Clearly, the story of the two dragons was merely legend, but an encounter between Merlin and Vortigern does seem to have been regarded as a historical event in the very early Arthurian tradition. Whether or not Merlin was attributed with special powers, as he is in the medieval romances, is something we shall return to later when examining him and Vortigern in more detail. For now, however, what’s important is that I had found two more Arthurian characters firmly associated with the kingdom of Powys.
In the medieval Arthurian saga, the story is usually set in southern and southwest England. For example, Arthur is born at Tintagel in Cornwall, his capital is in Winchester, and his grave is in Glastonbury. I had discovered that all such connections were late interpolations from the Middle Ages, starting in the 1100s. However, Arthur was certainly not invented by medieval authors as he appears in earlier Welsh accounts, some dating from three centuries before. Furthermore, many of the seemingly fanciful themes in the romances originated with genuine mythology of the Dark Ages, such as Avalon, Excalibur, Guinevere, Morgan le Fey, the nine maidens, and the three queens. Whether or not Arthur was a historical figure, his legend was truly much older than the stories familiar today. I was, of course, searching for a historical character behind the legend, and if he did exist, I hoped to find his grave. I had traveled all over the British Isles, but now I finally had a specific area to concentrate my search. The oldest Arthurian traditions all seemed to focus on what had been the kingdom of Powys. The Grail legend, exemplified by Dinas Bran and the nearby White Castle, was associated with the region; Guinevere was said to have been born here; Vortigern ruled the kingdom; and Merlin makes his home in the area. And all these traditions appeared to predate the Arthurian links with the south and southwest of England by centuries. Was the post-Roman kingdom of Powys where the Arthurian story first began? An exhilarating notion occurred to me: Had previous researchers failed to find a historical King Arthur because they had been looking in the wrong place?