Finding The Real King Arthur part three

SNowdon late Autumn copyright SusanMorrisonJones

Setting the background: -

The Romans are leaving Britain, they have raped her of her Gold, Tin, Coal, Slate, Amethyst and a myriad of other wonderful items and the damned Brits keep fighting back. 

Its cost Rome a small fortune to ‘keep’ Britain. Armies, versus wealth means literally the bank was being broken. Rome recalled its men and they begin to wander off back for a bit more fighting in the Empire and Britain has fewer and fewer Romans around, but over in the Lley Peninsular, things are hotting up. 

Across Britain many tribes had bent the knee to Rome but up in Northern Wales, this wasn't the truth. The Ordvices (Latin name) were a continual pain in the asterisk, alongside various other tribes. All of which have a fair bit of a mention in the Roman Histories of the times. The decisions to fight back, to challenge and to be a real thorn in Roman sides is so much so that there are not all that many signs of an actual villa or the usual Roman remains in any part of North Wales. 

Rome was not getting its own way in the area and for the first 2 centuries of their rule they had continual fighting. The second two centuries things changed dramatically when the Irish Pirates began to attack the peninsula’s (including The Lleyn) placing even more pressure on the Legions.

  

Wales even had its own Emperors at one time Carausius and Allectus. Constantius defeated Allectus and he ruled the West while Diocletian managed the East, possibly Wales was part of Brittania Prima as it held the Gold and precious metals the Romans wanted. All in all, the Roman Empire was disintegrating and Britain was going to become ruler-less and undefended very soon.

 That great Welsh legend the Mabinogian contains a lot of Welsh/Roman names these days but it is fair to say that the straight translated Black Book of Carmarthen and Book of Taliesin from the National Library of Wales, the Book of Aneirin from Cardiff Central Library and the Red Book of Hergest from Jesus College, Oxford. Contain a whole gamut of information.

 Separating the legend and tale from the history is several life time’s work and very clever scholars and professors and the like have spent many years trying to do just that.

  

I feel a tad cheeky throwing my hat into the arena but I am doing what I am doing.... because I am following a trail that has a thousand tributaries and make apologies to the scholars but here comes another little statement.........

  

They are records not necessarily truths but the truths may well be hidden in them.

 Back to the trail again. I’m seeing the old King, the tired Romans, the twitchy Irish Pirates and then I see Caer Fadryn and here, my true trail begins.

 Caer Fadryn is an unusual fort in that its rather well preserved.

 High up on top of the mountain. 

With a view of the surrounding land, over towards the Irish mainland and across the bay. Where Harlech , Barmouth and various other towns and villages now live on the North West Coast of North Wales.

  

It’s a heck of a view and of course it means that the local people, back in those days are able to defend themselves well when the Pirates, Slavers and Romans are in the mood for a quick sortie.

 The walls of this fort are uncommonly high, even now, in modern Wales the forts 2-metre-high walls are visible. The actual fort is built of stone which was unusual for those days as wood was faster, cheaper and easier to build with.

  

This stone forts differences are the beginning of my quest. There is one connection recorded of Arthur's Quoit which is a cromlech (three large stones holding up a larger stone on top), traditional associations are that Arthur the Giant threw the coetan or top stone from Carn Fadrun and his wife took three stones from her apron pocket and popped them underneath it to hold it up.

Highly improbable as a truth but the kernel of that story will always be the mention of Arth name and of course in English not in Cymry.

 The Hill Fort has, as I said earlier 2-metre-high walls and part is built of stone, the archaeological history claims a bronze age well, then a further well, artefacts and building evidence which shows this valuable fort was a place of observation for generations, until we reach Vortigern' time when the fort is in use, manned by a tribe that even the Romans would have nothing to do with, the Gangani.

  

The Gangani are mentioned by Ptolemy in his second century geography as being in the south west of Ireland and that the Gangani promontory was on the Lleyn Peninsular. They were notably big people by all accounts. It isn't unusual for the times that the Romans met up with Celtic tribes having two 'homes' Parisi for example were found in Gaul and in England and several other tribes were the same. The women inherited alongside their equals the men. Children were treasured, the females as much as the males. The women also fought in wars alongside the men. 

Roman historian, Ammianus Marcelinus says: - "A Gallic woman, fighting beside her man, is a match for a whole troop of foreigners. Steely-eyed ... she swells her neck, gnashes her teeth, flexes her huge white biceps, and rain wallops and kicks as though from the twist cords of a catapult.

The Gangani were a proud and warlike tribe with a vast part of the land under their control. They were (as were many Celtic peoples) skilled in the making of swords, their plough was a better one than the Romans, they grew varied forms of vegetables, held Cattle to be a sign of wealth (with 20 names for different colours of the cow they really liked them) wore splendid clothing and...............hang on let me just clear a few things up.

Let’s take a reality check here, I am sick to the back teeth of seeing the media depicting the Celts as members of the great unwashed.

  

For a start the men were fined if their waists exceeded the width of a specific girdle, they were expected to be slender and fit.

  

They used soap before the Romans even thought of the idea.

 They had glorious colours for their clothing which they stitched together with beautifully crafted needles of bronze or bone or iron.

  

They were also very different from tribe to tribe in their looks.

 Virgil says of one tribe that they were tall, blonde lithe and handsome, the women extraordinarily beautiful and occasionally red haired.

 Tactitus describes one tribe as dark swarthy skinned with black curly hair...

 Strabo mentioned something everyone agreed on...they loved colour, checks, stripes, embroidery, and jewellery which they all wore as every day decoration including broaches for their magnificent cloaks.

 Virgil also mentions the Torc the golden circlet worn around 'milk white necks'.

 The women knotted, braided and fashioned their hair and held the design in place with combs, slides and pins highly decorated.

  

They also used a variety of bodily decoration.

  

The men invariably shaved their hair on their heads back to the ear line and when going into battle used lime to spike the remaining hair into ferocious looking spikes.

 They used tattoos, the women used makeup, a red dye for lips, cheeks and nails especially.

 Cloaks were common and tunics and kilts.

 Each tribe had their own pattern and the families where extended.

 No child was refused attention or food.

 Every tribe valued children of both sexes more than the jewellery they wore which infuriated the Romans when they arrived to discover that women could inherit as much as the men. (a practise the Misogynist Romans called barbaric).

  

They worshipped a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses.

 Believed in an afterlife.

Respected the Druid who kept the laws and many other aspects of life.

The Vate who had extra powers and not forgetting the Bard who made the music, the songs and the poetry of the times.

  

They had slaves, they had a Royal line and they had laws that were kept by a system of complexity dealt by the King and his Druid.

 Not exactly what you originally imagine are they, thanks to modern media we, in 2016 have a tendency to visualise sheepskin wearing drudges when in fact the Celtic people of Cymry where a sophisticated and well-dressed peoples.

  

With a way of life which incorporated balance and justice in advance of Roman practises at that time. Something the Romans crushed as fast as possible before their own women got the idea they could inherit anything at all from husband or father.

  

Anyway, like I said earlier, every tributary to this investigation needs acknowledgement to enable my hypothesis to continue and though I am sure it is not easy to follow, it is necessary otherwise statements I make later will not make sense

 Let’s recap, the Celts where a diverse number of separate races.

Joined together in a common bond of understandings.

Wealthy in Gold and similar riches which they personally did not value as much as the strength of the tribe and the family.

They wore bright colours, where very clean, inherited riches and responsibilities equally and travelled extensively up and down their country, which was as big as the 2016 map of Wales and half of the current country known as England...and they loved war.

  

If you want some form of validation of any of my statements concerning the times and the history and the people I will post a full record of them all at the end of this journey.