Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  The saint was said to have been born on the beach at Culross in Fife. His mother, Tenew, queen of Lleddiniawn, had been cast adrift in a coracle, punished by her husband for adultery. She was somehow rescued by St Servanus, who, despite living a century later, saw the child and dubbed him in Old Welsh Mwn gu, ‘Dear One’. Educated by the monks at Culross, Mungo made his way either to Rheged or to ‘The Rock’. In one account, he is said to have walked to the Clyde, taking the body of an old man on a cart pulled by two untamed bulls and heading for the Christian cemetery at Molendinar beside the Rock, where he acquired the non-existent title of ‘bishop of North Britain’.

  The central years of Mungo’s career were passed in Gwynedd, whither he went at the invitation of St Dewi or David, the patron of Wales and pioneer of Welsh monasticism. With David’s assistance, he founded a church at Llanelwy, where the holy Asaph served as deacon; Llanelwy is now St Asaph in Flintshire. Around 580 Mungo was summoned back to Clydeside by Roderick or Rhydderch Hael, a monarch of ‘The Rock’ in the fifth or the sixth generation of Ceredig’s dynasty. At Rhydderch’s request he founded a church at Glas-gau, the ‘Blue-Green Meadow’, died at a ripe old age and was buried in the crypt. His tomb duly became a site of pilgrimage.

  Mungo’s miracles, cemented by centuries of later tradition, are best remembered by a jingle: ‘Here’s the bird that never flew, here’s the tree that never grew. Here’s the bell that never rang. Here’s the fish that never swam.’35 The four symbols of bird, tree, bell and fish appear on modern Glasgow’s coat of arms. The bird stands for the pet sparrow of St Servanus that Mungo restored to life. The tree represents a dead branch which Mungo endowed with the capacity to burst into flame. The bell was supposedly brought back from Mungo’s journey to Rome. And the fish is a salmon, immortalized by the legend of ‘The Salmon and the Ring’:

  Once upon a time, King Rhydderch’s queen, Languoreth, took a secret lover, a young soldier. As a token of her love, she foolishly gave the soldier a ring that had earlier been presented to her by her husband. When the king saw the ring on the soldier’s finger, he gave him wine and disarmed him. Seizing the ring he flung it into the waters of the Clyde. He condemned the soldier to death. And he flung the queen into a dungeon.

  In her desperation, the queen turned to Saint Mungo for advice. The saint promptly sent his man to catch the fish in the river. The man returned with a salmon which, when cut open, contained the missing ring. The king’s wrath was assuaged. The soldier was reprieved. The queen was forgiven.36

  In some accounts Rhydderch and Languoreth are described as the ‘monarchs of Cadzow’, a locality to the south of Glasgow which later became the site of a royal castle and in modern times the seat of the dukes of Hamilton. Mungo also appears in some of the Arthurian legends, where textual analysts have noted similarities between the legend of ‘The Salmon and the Ring’ and the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere.

  It is beyond doubt, however, that the greatest power in Mungo’s time was wielded by Urien, king of Rheged. Urien’s Latin name was Urbigenus or ‘city-born’, and it implies a conscious degree of Romanitas. He ruled over a domain that stretched from the southern outskirts of Glas-gau to the environs of Mancunium, where an outpost called Reged-ham (the present Rochdale) attests his sway. The royal seat lay at Dun Rheged (Dunragit) in Galloway; the chief city was Caer Ligualid (Carlisle); the main corridor of communication the Ituna or Solway, which led to the open sea and to Ireland. Urien earned the Old Welsh epithet of Y Eochydd, ‘Lord of the Rip-Tide’, suggesting that Rheged, like ‘The Rock’ and Dalriada, was a significant naval power.

  In the late sixth century, the Britons of the North recognized the growing threat from the Angles, and Urien mounted a grand coalition against them. His allies included Rhydderch Hael of ‘The Rock’, Guallauc from Lennox, Morgant of south Gododdin, Aedan macGabrain of Argyll and King Fiachna of Ulster. In 590 they set out to wipe Bernicia off the map. The Irish somehow stormed the heights of Bamburgh; and the remnants of the garrison took refuge on Medcaut, the ‘Island of Tides’, the Angles’ name for Lindisfarne. Urien laid siege. He was on the point of total victory, when through the jealousy of Morgant, he was assassinated. The unity of the Britons was lost, and the ambitions of Rheged ended.

  As in the preceding period, the king-lists of ‘The Rock’ from the sixth century, such as the Bonedd Gwyr y Gogledd, ‘The Descent of the Men of the North’, contain one definite name and a clutch of doubtful ones. Just as Ceredig (Coroticus) is given veracity by links with St Patrick, Rhydderch Hael is bolstered by his links to St Columba. Adamnan recalled that St Columba had visited the court of ‘The Rock’ and he makes Rhydderch the subject of one of the saint’s prophecies:

  This same king being on friendly terms with the holy man, sent him on one occasion a secret message… as he was anxious to know whether he would be killed by his enemies or not. But when [the messenger] was being closely [questioned] by the saint regarding the king, his kingdom and people… the saint replied, ‘He shall never be delivered into the hands of his enemies; he will die at home on his own pillow.’ And the prophecy of the saint regarding King Roderc was fully accomplished; for, according to his word, he died quietly in his own house.37

  Rhydderch Hael features in the Bonedd Gwyr y Gogledd, and in order to coincide with St Columba his regnal dates are conventionally fixed as c. 580–618. Adamnan describes him as filius Tothail, which puts Rhydderch’s father, Tutagual, in the regnal time bracket of 560–80. But all further identifications are hopelessly problematic. Historians are left struggling once again in the red mist in regard to Rhydderch’s successors. Dumnagual Hen, Clinoch and Cinbellin are names without dates or faces. No less than five princes called Dumnagual are referred to. One of them, who apparently had three sons, could conceivably have been the father of Gildas the chronicler.38

  In the seventh century the Old North was shaken both by religious disputes and by shattering military battles. Interpretations inevitably vary, but all commentators agree that Catraeth, Whitby and Nechtansmere mark milestones of lasting significance.

  The Battle of Catraeth occurred in c. 600 as a by-product of continued animosity between Britons and Angles. The conflict was exacerbated by the apprehensions of the Celtic Church, which would have heard of the Roman mission recently introduced into southern Britain by St Augustine of Canterbury.39 It came to a head within ten years of Urien’s assassination, and arose from a similar set of circumstances. This time it was Yrfai, son of Wulfsten, lord of north Gododdin, who assembled the coalition. He invited three hundred warriors to Dun Eidyn, feasted them for months on end, and then set out to do battle. Princes from Pictland and Gwynedd joined him. So, too, did Cynon, son of Clydno Eidyn, Lord of ‘The Rock’, whose name suggests kinship with Yrfai. The coalition deployed an elite cavalry force, and rode far to the south, beyond Bernicia, beyond Hadrian’s Wall, into the eastern lands of Rheged. They called themselves Y Bedydd – ‘The Baptized’ – and claimed to be defending the old faith against the Anglian Gynt or ‘Gentiles’. Their exploits were recorded in the greatest of the early Old Welsh epics. The opening sentence of the only surviving manuscript, known as The Book of Aneirin, announces the names of the poem and of its author:

  Hwn yw e gododdin, aneirin ae cant.40

  (This is the Gododdin, Aneirin sang it.)

  There follows a long collection of eulogies for the fallen warriors. One of them was called Madauc or Madawg:

  Ni forthïnt ueiri molüt nïuet,

  ractria riallü trin orthoret,

  tebïhïc tan teryd druï cïnneüet.

  Dïu Maurth guisgassant eü cein dühet

  Diu Merchyr bü guero eü cïtunet…

  The chief men maintained the praise of rightful privilege

  like a bright fire that has been well kindled.

  On Tuesday they put on their dark covering.

  On Wednesday their common purpose was bitter.

  On Thursday envoys were pledged.

  On Frida
y corpses were counted.

  On Saturday their joint action was swift.

  On Sunday, their red blades were redistributed.

  On Monday, a stream of blood as high as the thigh was seen.

  A Gododdin man tells that when they came back

  before Madawg’s tent after the exhaustion of battle

  but one in a hundred would return.41

  As many observers have noted, the warrior ethos, the poetic hyperbole and the tangible cult of death and slaughter has a timeless quality. These are Celts fighting Angles, but without too much variation they could well be the host of Agamemnon at Troy. The Lord of ‘The Rock’ was in the van:

  Moch arereith ï – immetin

  pan – crïssiassan cïntäränn i-mbodin…

  He rose early in the morning

  When centurions hasten in the mustering of the army,

  Moving from one advanced position to another.

  At the front of a hundred men he was the first to kill.

  As great was his craving for corpses

  As for drinking mead or wine.

  It was with utter hatred

  That the Lord of Dumbarton, the laughing warrior,

  Would kill the enemy.42

  Yet this time the laughing was cut short. The advance guard of the Anglian host had pulled back, and drawn their adversaries into the line of march of a second Anglian force moving up from Deira. They collided at Catraeth (the modern Catterick). The slaughter was shocking even for a society that lived from warfare, and the North British army was annihilated: only one of the three hundred chiefs returned. Yrfai and Cynon and most of their companions were slain:

  E tri bet yg Kewin Kelvi…

  The three graves on the ridge of Celvi,

  Inspiration has declared them to me:

  [They are] the grave of Cynon of the rugged brows,

  The grave of Cynfael and the grave of Cynfeli.43

  The road was open for the Angles to resume their inexorable progress.

  The political consequences of Catraeth were worked out in the following decades. The Angles of Bernicia streamed north and overran Gododdin, so that by 631 Dun Eidyn had become Edinburgh (burgh meaning ‘fort’ was simply a calque of the Celtic dun). They also returned to the onslaught on Rheged which had been halted by Urien. In an earlier confrontation, the men of Deira had inflicted a Catraeth-like defeat on the Luguvalians at Aderydd (now Arthuret near Longtown in Cumbria), and had reputedly forced the bard of the city, Myrddin (Merlin), to seek refuge in the ‘Forest of Cellydon’ (which sounds awfully like Caledonia). Now the redoubled strength of the Angles could move into Rheged with destructive vengeance, bringing with them permanent colonists. Urien’s line disappears from the record. The last king of Rheged, the exiled Llywarch Hen, is received into the Welsh court of Powys, and Rheged itself fades away. In short, the presence of the Angles in the north is fixed from coast to coast; Bernicia’s expansion is revitalized; and the British people of ‘The Rock’ are further isolated from their countrymen.

  The religious conflict came to a head in the 660s. The issues were often those of rite or theology, like the calculation of Easter, but at their heart was a raw struggle for power. The north had been evangelized by Celtic missionaries; by St Ninian, by St Columba, by Rhun, son of Urien and bishop of Luguvalium, who claimed to have baptized Edwin of Northumbria, and by the Irishman St Aidan, who established the See of Lindisfarne c. 635. Yet the Roman mission, firmly allied to the expansion of Anglo-Saxon power, was unyielding. In 664 Oswy of Northumbria, far stronger than his predecessors, convened the Synod of Whitby. Despite his personal links to Celtic Christianity he ruled in favour of the Roman party, and appointed St Wilfrid as bishop of Northumbria. Henceforth, Anglian government marched hand in hand with the Roman faith. Within five years, Wilfrid was claiming to be ‘bishop of Pictland’. ‘It turned out that, in addition to Latin, God spoke English, not Gaelic.’44

  It also turned out that Wilfrid had been overly optimistic. Nechtansmere, the Anglian name for a location that the Britons variously called Llyn Garan, the ‘Heron’s Pool’, or Dunnicken, the ‘Fort of Nechtan’, lies well to the north of the Firth of Forth, near Forfar in modern Angus. Bede mentions it in connection with the onset of Northumbria’s decline, for it was at Nechtansmere that at around three o’clock on the Saturday afternoon of 20 May 685, the army of Ecgfrith, son of Oswy, king of Northumbria, was routed by the combined forces of Pictland and ‘The Rock’ under a warrior with the magnificent name of Bridei map Bili. Ecgfrith and his entire royal bodyguard were cut down. ‘Rashly leading his army to ravage the province of the Picts,’ wrote Bede, ‘and much against the advice of the Blessed Cuthbert, [Ecgfrith] was drawn into the straits of inaccessible mountains, and slain with the greatest part of his forces.’45 The Angles were never seen in those parts again.46

  Unusually for the ‘Dark Ages’, Bridei’s victory left a lasting artistic monument in the so-called Aberlemno Stone. It stands in the kirkyard only six miles from the battle site, and carries the only clear battle narrative to be seen on any of the Pictish symbol-stones:

  [The narrative] reads like a comic strip in a newspaper, with four scenes arranged in sequence from top to bottom. In the first, a mounted figure who may represent Bridei chases another mounted warrior. In his haste to escape the latter has thrown away his shield and sword. This man may be Ecgfrith… turning and fleeing at the moment when he realised that an ambush had been sprung. What identifies the escaping warrior as a Northumbrian is his helmet. During excavations at the Coppergate in York a very similar design, rounded with a long nose-guard was discovered.47

  The second scene shows Ecgfrith, or a mounted Northumbrian figure, wearing the same sort of helmet, attacking a group of Pictish infantrymen. The sculptor clearly understood military tactics because he was careful to arrange the men into the proper battle formation of three ranks. At the front stands a warrior with a sword and a round, curved shield with prominent boss. When the opposing cavalry charged he had to withstand the shock of impact. To support him another man stands immediately behind holding a long spear which projected well beyond the front rank. To the rear of the two warriors engaging the enemy, a third spearman stood in reserve. Along an extended battle line, an array of bristling spear points was designed to deter a charge, forcing cavalry horses to shy or to reel away. In a third scene, carved at the foot of the stone, the Bridei and Ecgfrith figures face each other on horseback. Ecgfrith appears to be on the point of throwing his spear while Bridei readies himself to parry it. And in a final act, tucked into the bottom right-hand corner, Ecgfrith lies dead on the battlefield. A raven, a carrion-feeder symbolizing defeat, pecks at his neck.

  The Aberlemno Stone is a Pictish national manifesto. Carved a century after the great victory, its message was both simple and powerful: Pictland is different. And in 685 that ‘singular identity had been preserved by force of arms’.48

  There is no reason to query the continuity of the monarchy of ‘The Rock’ throughout the seventh century, but all its king-names are dubious, and several overlaps can be observed with the rulers of Pictland. Rhydderch Hael does not appear to have had sons. The succession passed to Nwython (Neithon, Nechtan), who is conceivably the same person as Nechtan, king of Pictish Fortriu (d. c. 621), after whom Nechtansmere could have been named. Nwython was father to Beli (or Bili I) and grandfather both to Ywain (Owen, Owain) and to Brude (Bridei). Owen of ‘The Rock’ was the victor of the Battle of Strathcarron in 642, when the king of Dalriada was killed, while his brother or half-brother, Bridei map Bili, who ruled in Fortriu, was the victor of Nechtansmere.49 References to another run of dubious names crop up from time to time in the Annals of Ulster, showing that in their rivalry with Dalriada, the monarchs of ‘The Rock’ did not hesitate to take the fight across the sea to Ireland.

  The consequences of Nechtansmere were never reversed. The battle had come at the end of a phase when fortunes on the Anglian-Pictish frontier had swung back and forth and t
he intervening territory had changed hands several times. But after Nechtansmere, both the Picts and the Britons of ‘The Rock’ stood their ground. The Angles put down roots to the south of the Firth of Forth, and did not venture beyond their stronghold at Stirling. They colonized Galloway and the former Aeron (Ayrshire) in the south-west, but they did not move on the Clyde. Within their area of settlement, they introduced their particular brand of Old English that, mixed with local idioms, led to the emergence of a language called ‘Lallans’ or Lowland Scots.50 Henceforth, to the north and west of the Angles, the Gaelic Scots, the Picts and the Britons were drawn into a new, three-sided ethnic contest. Reduced to its simplest, the contest saw the Scots gaining the upper hand over the Picts, before the Picto-Scots overwhelmed the Britons. This was to take perhaps 250 years.

  The eighth century and the first part of the ninth are the darkest of all. The historical record of the long decades between Nechtansmere and the irruption of the Vikings is threadbare. Despite occasional shafts of light, no continuous narrative can be constructed. As the Northumbrian Angles dug in to the south of them, and the warring Scots and Picts gradually fused together to the north, the Britons on the Clyde turned in on themselves. There are no famous monarchs; no resounding battles; no memory-cementing poems, no extant chronicles. The sources offer no clues on the subject of naval power. No expeditions by sea are recorded. No information is forthcoming on the size of armed patrols that may or may not have been maintained on the Firth of Clyde to monitor shipping and to protect the kingdom’s tax-gatherers. Nothing has survived except occasional remarks among descriptions of the doings of others. Of the various peoples involved in the creation of Scotland, ‘it is the Britons about whom least is known, and about whom least has been written’.51