Concepts of Arthur: Author's Notes & Comments

Selections from the reviews of Concepts of Arthur will be posted below as they appear, along with any appropriate comments.  Also to be found below are brief notes on recent academic  publications which are relevant to the arguments made in Concepts but which appeared too late for use of them to be made therein.   Finally, I will also include any notes on the published text of Concepts of Arthur as the need for them comes to my attention. Despite the lengthy process of editing and proof-reading, minor errors can be introduced or overlooked and these will be corrected as they are found. 

1. Reviews
2. Recent Research
3. Textual Comments
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REVIEWS

RECENT RESEARCH

The title-less Book of Taliesin poem XIV -- sometimes known as Golychafi Gulwyd from its first line -- is used in several places in Concepts of Arthur (pp.55-6, 63, 158, 165), with a ninth or tenth century composition suggested (see Jones and Jones, 1949: xiii and Sims-Williams, 1982: 243).  John Carey has recently supported dating this poem to the tenth century or before, suggesting further that it may be of a similar date to Preideu Annwfyn: 'The two poems are written in the same metre, and share some of the same diction... There appear to be no linguistic indications that they differ in date.  It is indeed conceivable that they are the work of a single poet...' (Carey, 2007: 86, 130).

References: J. Carey, Ireland and the Grail (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2007); T. Jones and G. Jones, The Mabinogion (London: Dent, 1949); P. Sims-Williams, 'The evidence for vernacular Irish literary influence on early medieval Welsh literature' in D. Whitlock et al (edd.) Ireland in Early Medieval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: 1982), pp.235-57

Kat Godeu and gwrith

Marged Haycock has taken the four instances of writh/gwrith/datwrith in the Book of Taliesin poem Kat Godeu as the impersonal preterite formed from the to- participle, gwrith (<*wrichto-), and notes their rare and archaic nature (Haycock, 2007: 24, 174 ,184, 188). She thus treats them in the same way as Koch has, with Koch arguing that Kat Godeu 's  gwrith < *wrichto-  reflects an older (i.e. Archaic Welsh) form of the Old Welsh and later gwnaethpwyt, 'was made', an argument which is utilised in Concepts of Arthur p.66 (Koch, 1991: 116 and Koch, 1997: 90-3, 208, 209).

References: J.T. Koch, 'Gleanings from the Gododdin and other Early Welsh texts' in Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 38 (1991), pp.111-18; J.T. Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text and Context from Dark-Age Britain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997); M. Haycock, Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007)

Kadeir Teyrnon, Arthur and Aladur

In Concepts of Arthur p.197 (and in more detail in Green, 2007) it was argued that Arthur is the subject of the first part of the Book of Taliesin poem Kadeir Teyrnon. It was also suggested that the description of this subject as o echen aladur should be read as a indicating that he (Arthur) was 'from the stock/lineage/family/tribe of [the Romano-British war-god Mars] Alator'.  Finally, it was argued that this description of/ancestry for Arthur might be merely laudatory, but it could well not be.  Haycock has recently supported both the identification of the subject of the poem as Arthur and the identification of aladur as Mars Alator, in her edition of the Book of Taliesin (2007: 293, 300).  Furthermore she notes (2007: 300) that Uthyr Pendragon's uncle -- and thus Arthur's great-uncle -- in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae vi.4, Aldroenus, is given the name Aldwr in the brutiau, which could well be relevant and might help confirm that the description of Arthur as 'from the family of (Mars) Alator' was meant literally.

References: T. Green, 'A Note on Aladur, Alator and Arthur' in Studia Celtica 41 (2007), pp.237-41; M. Haycock, Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007)
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TEXTUAL COMMENTS