chapter summary seventeen (THE FINAL)

Author: * Walensis Volcae - 25 Posts on this thread out of 64 Posts sitewide.
Date: Jun 8, 2004 - 11:27

* Having examined the fate of Owain Ddantgwyn's descendants, we consider evidence for the burial site of the kings of Powys, and the final resting place of the historical 'King Arthur'.

1. About 577, with the British defeat at the battle of Dyrham, the cities of Gloucester and Bath were occupied by the Saxons. Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle fails to record the British leader, it was probably Brochfael Ysgithrog who was ruling in Powys about that time.

2. Brochfael's son, Cynan Garwyn, although containing the Saxon advance in the South, appears to have been defeated at Catterick about 598. After the battle (the theme of the Gododdin poem) most of Northern England was lost to the Angle king, Aethelfrid, who established the kingdom of Northumbria.

3. According to the Annales Cambriae, around 613 Aethelfrid attacked North Wales and defeated a joint Gwynedd/Powys army at Chester, where Cynan's son Selyf was killed. The Anglo-Saxons thus drove a wedge between the British forces of the North and Central Britain.

4. With the power of Gwynedd broken, in 644 an alliance between Cynddylan and the Angle kingdom of Mercia finally defeated the Northumbrians at Maes Cogwy in oswestry. However, within a few years only Powys remained as the last bastion of British power, as the Annales record the 'hammering of the Dyfed' in 645 and the 'slaughter of Gwent' in 649, perhaps by the Irish and West Saxons respectively.

5. The final days of greater Powys are outlined in a collection of ninth century Welsh poems called the Canu Llywarch Hen (the 'song of Llwarch the Old'), now preserved in the 'Red book of Hergest' in Oxford's Bodleian Library. In the poems, Cynddylan and the kings of Powys are said to have been descended from king Arthur himself.

6. The final defeat of Cynddylan and the sacking of Powys probably occurred around 658. The British of Shropshire were certainly conquered by the Anglo-Saxons by 661, as the people of the Wroxeter district are entered as Wrocensaetna in the census of Mercian territories in the Tribal Hidage. Also, a ford over the Severn near Melverley, ten miles West of Shewsbury, is recorded as 'Wulfhere's Ford', bearing the name of Wulfhere, the Mercian king from 658.

7. One poem of the Canu Llwarch Hen cycle, composed about 850, gives the burial site of the kings of Powys in the seventh century. Called the Canu Heledd (the 'song of Heledd'), it identifies the burial site as Eglwyseu Bassa, the 'churches of Bassa'. Eglwyseu Bassa is almost certainly the Shropshire village of Baschurch, and just outside the village is the Berth, an ancient fortified hillock. Archaeological excavations have shown that the Berth was in use in the early sixth century, but as yet the mounds themselves have not been excavated. One of them may still contain the remains of the historical King Arthur, Owain Ddantgwyn.

8. Since the Celtic tradition of votive offerings (from which the legend of excalibur and the Lady of the Lake may derive) also appear to have been included in funeral rites, it could have been into Berth Pool, the lake below the Berth, that the sword of Owain Ddantgwyn was ultimately cast. There is evidence that the Berth Pool received votive offerings. In 1906, a workman cutting turf at the edge of a stream which drains from Berth Pool, discovered a bronze cauldron dating from the first century. Since it was buried where the stream cuts through the Southern causeway, about a hundred yards from Berth Pool, it is considered to have been carried there from Berth Pool itself, leading to archaeological conjecture that the cauldron was originally cast into the pool as a votive offering. If Owain Ddantgwyn's sword was thrown into Berth Pool during his burial, it may still be preserved and awaiting discovery. THE END

# Thats it, all finished. End...of...story! Or is it a story?