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70-576: Uther Pendragon ( Brittonic ) ( / ˈ j uː θ ər p ɛ n ˈ d r æ ɡ ən , ˈ uː θ ər / ; Welsh : Uthyr Pen Ddraig, Uthyr Pendragon, Uthr Bendragon ), also known as King Uther , was a legendary King of the Britons and father of King Arthur . A few minor references to Uther appear in Old Welsh poems , but his biography was first written down in the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae ( History of

140-582: A fairy named Terdelaschoye to the land of Feimurgân. (This looks like a garbling of some source that told of Mazadân's alliance with the Fay Morgan in Terre de la Joye; the "Land of Joy".) Mazadân becomes father of two sons, Lazaliez and Brickus. Brickus becomes father of Utepandragûn, father of Arthur, while the elder son, Lazaliez, becomes father of Gandin of Anjou , father of Gahmuret, father of Parzival ( Percival ). Uther Pendragon and Arthur here appear as

210-599: A "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then. Barry Cunliffe suggests that a Goidelic branch of Celtic may already have been spoken in Britain, but that this middle Bronze Age migration would have introduced the Brittonic branch. Brittonic languages were probably spoken before

280-473: A Celtic word that might mean 'painted ones' or 'tattooed folk', referring to body decoration. Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in

350-595: A common ancestral language termed Brittonic , British , Common Brittonic , Old Brittonic or Proto-Brittonic , which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century BC. A major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the middle to late Bronze Age , during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul . During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic markers swiftly spread through southern Britain, but not northern Britain. The authors describe this as

420-428: A discussion, see Celtic languages .) Other major characteristics include: Initial s- : Lenition: Voiceless spirants: Nasal assimilation: The family tree of the Brittonic languages is as follows: Brittonic languages in use today are Welsh , Cornish and Breton . Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th century, but

490-482: A dragon" and invented an origin to explain it away: Uther acquired the epithet when he witnessed a portentous dragon-shaped comet, which inspired him to use dragons on his standards . According to Robert de Boron and the cycles based on his work, it was Uther's older brother (elsewhere called Aurelius Ambrosius and likely based on Ambrosius Aurelianus ) who saw the comet and received the name "Pendragon", Uther taking his epithet after his death. An alternative possibility

560-553: A progressive aspect form has evolved which is formally similar to those found in Celtic languages, and somewhat less similar to the Modern English form, e.g. 'I am working' is Ich bin am Arbeiten , literally: 'I am on the working'. The same structure is also found in modern Dutch ( Ik ben aan het werk ), alongside other structures (e.g. Ik zit te werken , lit. 'I sit to working'). These parallel developments suggest that

630-738: A revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech. The Isle of Man and Orkney may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in Y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia ). The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to

700-571: A revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric , and possibly the extinct Pictish . One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non- Indo-European language. This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship. The modern Brittonic languages are generally considered to all derive from

770-623: A situation resembling that of the historical ruler Riothamus who went to Brittany to fight ravagers based in Bourges. Uther also appears in the chivalric romance Sir Cleges as the king to whom Sir Cleges brings the Christmas cherries, obtained by miracle. There is an alternative account of Uther Pendragon's background in Wolfram von Eschenbach 's Parzival . A certain Mazadân went with

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840-462: A widely used character in modern Arthurian literature and other fiction. Brittonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic ; Welsh : ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig ; Cornish : yethow brythonek/predennek ; and Breton : yezhoù predenek ) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic . It comprises

910-432: Is a far greater overlap in terms of Celtic vocabulary than with English, it is not always possible to disentangle P- and Q-Celtic words. However, some common words such as monadh = Welsh mynydd , Cumbric monidh are particularly evident. The Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is often indicated by considering Irish language usage, which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular,

980-548: Is also memorialised with "The Death-song of Uther Pen" from the Book of Taliesin . The latter includes a reference to Arthur, so the marginal addition of "dragon" to Uther's name is probably justified. "The Colloquy of Arthur and the Eagle", a modern manuscript from the 16th century but believed to have originated from the 13th century, mentions another son of Uther named Madoc, the father of Arthur's nephew Eliwlod . In Triad 28, Uthyr

1050-510: Is an illegitimate child (though later legend, as found in Malory , emphasises that the conception occurred after Gorlois's death and that he was legitimated by Uther's subsequent marriage to Igraine). This act of conception occurs the very night that Uther's troops dispatch Gorlois. The theme of illegitimate conception is repeated in Arthur's siring of Mordred by his own half-sister Morgause in

1120-399: Is based on some historical figures; Aurelius Ambrosius is Ambrosius Aurelianus, mentioned by Gildas , though his connection to Constantine and Constans is unrecorded. It is possible that Uther himself is based at least partially on Tewdrig, a historical king of Glywysing in the sixth century, given the strong similarities between their death stories. Depending on the source, Uther may either be

1190-410: Is best known from Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae (1136) where he is the youngest son of King of Britannia, Constantine. His eldest brother Constans succeeds to the throne on their father's death, but is murdered at the instigation of his adviser Vortigern , who seizes the throne. Uther and his other brother, Aurelius Ambrosius , still children, flee to Brittany . Vortigern makes an alliance with

1260-403: Is included in the definitive editions of the book's contents poems by Marged Haycock. Twelve of the poems in the manuscript were identified by Ifor Williams as credibly being the work of a historical Taliesin, or at least 'to be contemporary with Cynan Garwyn , Urien , his son Owain , and Gwallawg ', possibly historical kings who respectively ruled Powys ; Rheged , which was centred in

1330-509: Is it stems from adopting the use of the draco military standard of the Roman cavalry , but this is likely a historical conjecture. The title Pendragon was borrowed into Middle English from Welsh , where it originally indicated a literal dragon of great power or size but was eventually used figuratively to mean "a great leader; the highest commander". It is composed of the Old Welsh prefix pen- "a tall hill; headlands; great heights", which

1400-600: Is named the creator of one of the Three Great Enchantments of the Island of Britain, which he taught to the wizard Menw . Since Menw is a shapeshifter according to Culhwch and Olwen , it might be that Uther was one as well. If this is so, it opens up the possibility that Geoffrey of Monmouth's narrative about Uther impregnating Igerna with Merlin 's help (see below) was taken from a Welsh legend where Uthyr changed his own shape, Merlin possibly being added to

1470-613: Is probable that at the start of the Post-Roman period, Common Brittonic was differentiated into at least two major dialect groups – Southwestern and Western. (Additional dialects have also been posited, but have left little or no evidence, such as an Eastern Brittonic spoken in what is now the East of England .) Between the end of the Roman occupation and the mid-6th century, the two dialects began to diverge into recognizably separate varieties,

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1540-624: Is still used for place names in Wales and Cornwall (as in the famous Cornish town Penzance , or "holy headland") combined with the Old English dragoun "dragon" which was borrowed from the Old French dragon (originally the Latin accusative noun draconem "a massive serpent or sea creature", which was itself based on ancient Greek mythological dragons ). Though the Welsh tradition of

1610-409: Is the origin of Derwent, Darent, and Darwen (attested in the Roman period as Deru̯entiō ). The final root to be examined is went/uent . In Roman Britain, there were three tribal capitals named U̯entā (modern Winchester, Caerwent, and Caistor St Edmunds), whose meaning was 'place, town'. Some, including J. R. R. Tolkien , have argued that Celtic has acted as a substrate to English for both

1680-457: Is traceable to Brittonic influence. Others, however, find this unlikely since many of these forms are only attested in the later Middle English period; these scholars claim a native English development rather than Celtic influence. Ian G. Roberts postulates Northern Germanic influence, despite such constructions not existing in Norse. Literary Welsh has the simple present Caraf = 'I love' and

1750-727: The Celtic languages of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated Common Brittonic , in contrast to the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric". "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython . "Brittonic", derived from " Briton " and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in

1820-643: The Medieval Latin lingua Britannica and sermo Britannicus and the Welsh Brythoneg . Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, although, due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch , use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language. Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" were often used for all

1890-582: The National Library of Wales , is incomplete, having lost a number of its original leaves including the first. It was named Llyfr Taliessin in the seventeenth century by Edward Lhuyd and hence is known in English as "The Book of Taliesin". The palaeographer John Gwenogvryn Evans dated the Book of Taliesin to around 1275, but Daniel Huws dated it to the first quarter of the fourteenth century, and

1960-738: The P-Celtic languages , including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages that similarly experienced the evolution of the Proto-Celtic language element /kʷ/ to /p/ . However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete. The name "Britain" itself comes from Latin : Britannia~Brittania , via Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne , possibly influenced by Old English Bryten[lond] , probably also from Latin Brittania , ultimately an adaptation of

2030-467: The Saxons under Hengist , but it goes disastrously wrong. Aurelius and Uther return, now adults. Aurelius burns Vortigern in his castle and becomes king. With Aurelius on the throne, Uther leads his brother in arms to Ireland to help Merlin bring the stones of Stonehenge from there to Britain. Later, while Aurelius is ill, Uther leads his army against Vortigern's son Paschent and his Saxon allies. On

2100-549: The 13th century French prose cycles, which was invented by them; it is Mordred who mortally wounds King Arthur in the Battle of Camlann . Uther's epithet Pendragon literally means "head dragon" in its original Brittonic, though it was used figuratively to mean "highest commander; head leader; top of the command chain." Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae misinterpreted it as "the head of

2170-712: The 19th century. "Brittonic" became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jackson 's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, Language and History in Early Britain . Jackson noted by that time that "Brythonic" had become a dated term: "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead." Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature. Rudolf Thurneysen used "Britannic" in his influential A Grammar of Old Irish , although this never became popular among subsequent scholars. Comparable historical terms include

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2240-441: The 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking Gaels and Germanic peoples . Henry of Huntingdon wrote c.  1129 that Pictish was "no longer spoken". The displacement of the languages of Brittonic descent was probably complete in all of Britain except Cornwall , Wales , and the English counties bordering these areas such as Devon , by the 11th century. Western Herefordshire continued to speak Welsh until

2310-563: The 7th century onward and are possibly due to inherent tendencies. Thus the concept of a Common Brittonic language ends by AD 600. Substantial numbers of Britons certainly remained in the expanding area controlled by Anglo-Saxons , but over the fifth and sixth centuries they mostly adopted the Old English language and culture. The Brittonic languages spoken in what are now Scotland , the Isle of Man , and England began to be displaced in

2380-530: The Arthurian legend is fragmentary, some material exists through the Welsh Triads and various poems. Uther appears in these fragments, where he is associated with Arthur and, in some cases, even appears as his father. He is mentioned in the circa-10th-century Arthurian poem " Pa gur yv y porthaur?" ("What man is the gatekeeper?"), where it is only said of him that Mabon son of Modron is his servant. He

2450-871: The Brittonic languages were displaced is that of toponyms (place names) and hydronyms (names of rivers and other bodies of water). There are many Brittonic place names in lowland Scotland and in the parts of England where it is agreed that substantial Brittonic speakers remained (Brittonic names, apart from those of the former Romano-British towns, are scarce over most of England). Names derived (sometimes indirectly) from Brittonic include London , Penicuik , Perth , Aberdeen , York , Dorchester , Dover , and Colchester . Brittonic elements found in England include bre- and bal- for 'hill', while some such as co[o]mb[e] (from cwm ) for 'small deep valley' and tor for 'hill, rocky headland' are examples of Brittonic words that were borrowed into English. Others reflect

2520-496: The English progressive is not necessarily due to Celtic influence; moreover, the native English development of the structure can be traced over 1000 years and more of English literature. Some researchers (Filppula, et al., 2001) argue that other elements of English syntax reflect Brittonic influences. For instance, in English tag questions , the form of the tag depends on the verb form in the main statement ( aren't I? , isn't he? , won't we? , etc.). The German nicht wahr? and

2590-641: The French n'est-ce pas? , by contrast, are fixed forms which can be used with almost any main statement. It has been claimed that the English system has been borrowed from Brittonic, since Welsh tag questions vary in almost exactly the same way. Far more notable, but less well known, are Brittonic influences on Scottish Gaelic , though Scottish and Irish Gaelic, with their wider range of preposition-based periphrastic constructions, suggest that such constructions descend from their common Celtic heritage. Scottish Gaelic contains several P-Celtic loanwords, but, as there

2660-538: The Great . The introduction to Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams 's translation of The Book of Taliesin suggests that later Welsh writers came to see Taliesin as a sort of shamanic figure . The poetry ascribed to him in this collection shows how he can not only channel other entities himself (such as the Awen ) in these poems, but that the authors of these poems can in turn channel Taliesin as they both create and perform

2730-475: The Kings of Britain ), and Geoffrey's account of the character was used in most later versions. He is a fairly ambiguous individual throughout the literature, but is described as a strong king and a defender of his people. According to Arthurian legend , Merlin magically disguises Uther to look like his enemy Gorlois , enabling Uther to rape Gorlois' wife Lady Igraine . Thus Arthur, "the once and future king",

2800-492: The Roman invasion throughout most of Great Britain , though the Isle of Man later had a Goidelic language, Manx . During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now England and Wales (AD 43 to c.  410 ), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare, as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably,

2870-761: The Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith. The Brittonic branch is also referred to as P-Celtic because linguistic reconstruction of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme * kʷ is p as opposed to Goidelic k . Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. (For

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2940-523: The Western into Cumbric and Welsh, and the Southwestern into Cornish and its closely related sister language Breton, which was carried to continental Armorica . Jackson showed that a few of the dialect distinctions between West and Southwest Brittonic go back a long way. New divergencies began around AD 500 but other changes that were shared occurred in the 6th century. Other common changes occurred in

3010-422: The aids of his retainers, one of whom is Gorlois , Duke of Cornwall . At a banquet celebrating their victories, Uther becomes obsessively enamoured of Gorlois' wife Igerna (Igraine), and a war ensues between Uther and his vassal. Gorlois sends Igerna to the impregnable castle of Tintagel for protection while he himself is besieged by Uther in another town. Uther consults with Merlin who uses his magic to transform

3080-436: The book of Taliesin (1912) and the modern anthology The Triumph Tree . Among probably less archaic but still early texts, the manuscript also preserves a few hymns, a small collection of elegies to famous men such as Cunedda and Dylan Eil Ton and also famous enigmatic poems such as The Battle of Trees , The Spoils of Annwfn (in which the poet claims to have sailed to another world with Arthur and his warriors), and

3150-471: The continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia . During the next few centuries, in much of Britain the language was replaced by Old English and Scottish Gaelic , with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh , Cornish , Breton , Cumbric , and probably Pictish . Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while

3220-511: The elements der-/dar-/dur- and -went e.g. Derwent, Darwen, Deer, Adur, Dour, Darent, and Went. These names exhibit multiple different Celtic roots. One is * dubri- 'water' (Breton dour , Cumbric dowr , Welsh dŵr ), also found in the place-name Dover (attested in the Roman period as Dubrīs ); this is the source of rivers named Dour. Another is deru̯o- 'oak' or 'true' (Bret. derv , Cumb. derow , W. derw ), coupled with two agent suffixes, -ent and -iū ; this

3290-621: The extant languages Breton , Cornish , and Welsh . The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael . The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period . In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to

3360-570: The fourteenth-century dating is generally accepted. The Book of Taliesin was one of the collection of manuscripts amassed at the mansion of Hengwrt , near Dolgellau , Gwynedd , by the Welsh antiquary Robert Vaughan (c. 1592–1667); the collection was eventually donated by Sir John Williams in 1907 to the newly established National Library of Wales as the Peniarth or Hengwrt-Peniarth Manuscripts . It appears that some "marks", presumably awarded for poems, measuring their "value", are extant in

3430-412: The king into the likeness of Gorlois and thus gain access to Igerna at Tintagel. He spends the night with her and they conceive Arthur, but the next morning it is discovered that Gorlois had been killed. Uther marries Igerna and they have a daughter called Anna (in later romances she is called Morgause and is usually Igerna's daughter by her previous marriage). Morgause later marries King Lot and becomes

3500-507: The late nineteenth century, and isolated pockets of Shropshire speak Welsh today. The regular consonantal sound changes from Proto-Celtic to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton are summarised in the following table. Where the graphemes have a different value from the corresponding IPA symbols, the IPA equivalent is indicated between slashes. V represents a vowel; C represents a consonant. The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which

3570-561: The lexicon and syntax. It is generally accepted that Brittonic effects on English are lexically few, aside from toponyms, consisting of a small number of domestic and geographical words, which "may" include bin , brock , carr , comb , crag and tor . Another legacy may be the sheep-counting system yan tan tethera in the north, in the traditionally Celtic areas of England such as Cumbria . Several words of Cornish origin are still in use in English as mining-related terms, including costean , gunnies , and vug . Those who argue against

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3640-466: The margin of the Book of Taliesin . Titles adapted from Skene. Many of the poems have been dated to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and are likely to be the work of poets adopting the Taliesin persona for the purposes of writing about awen (poetic inspiration), characterised by material such as: A few are attributed internally to other poets. A full discussion of the provenance of each poem

3710-467: The mother of Gawain and Mordred . Uther later falls ill and the wars against the Saxons begin to go badly. He insists on leading his army himself, propped up on his horse. He defeats Hengist's son Octa at Verulamium ( St Albans ), despite the Saxons calling him the "Half-Dead King". However, the Saxons soon contrive his death by poisoning a spring which he drinks from near Verulamium. Uther's family

3780-399: The name of the river Trent simply comes from the Welsh word for a 'trespasser' (figuratively suggesting 'overflowing river'). Scholars supporting a Brittonic substrate in English argue that the use of periphrastic constructions (using auxiliary verbs such as do and be in the continuous/progressive) of the English verb , which is more widespread than in the other Germanic languages ,

3850-555: The native word for the island, * Pritanī . An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia ; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as πρεττανική ( Prettanikē ), "The Britannic [land, island]", and νησοι βρεττανιαι ( nēsoi brettaniai ), "Britannic islands", with Pretani being

3920-512: The oldest poems in Welsh, possibly but not certainly dating back to the sixth century and to a real poet called Taliesin (though these, if genuine, would have been composed in the Cumbric dialect of Brittonic-speaking early medieval north Britain , being adapted to the Welsh dialect of Brittonic in the course of their transmission in Wales). The manuscript, known as Peniarth MS 2 and kept at

3990-632: The presence of Britons such as Dumbarton – from the Scottish Gaelic Dùn Breatainn meaning 'Fort of the Britons', and Walton meaning (in Anglo-Saxon) a tun 'settlement' where the Wealh 'Britons' still lived. The number of Celtic river names in England generally increases from east to west, a map showing these being given by Jackson. These include Avon, Chew, Frome, Axe, Brue and Exe, but also river names containing

4060-553: The present stative (al. continuous/progressive) Yr wyf yn caru = 'I am loving', where the Brittonic syntax is partly mirrored in English. (However, English I am loving comes from older I am a-loving , from still older ich am on luvende 'I am in the process of loving'). In the Germanic sister languages of English, there is only one form, for example Ich liebe in German, though in colloquial usage in some German dialects,

4130-745: The region of the Solway Firth on the borders of present-day England and Scotland and stretched east to Catraeth (identified by most scholars as present-day Catterick in North Yorkshire) and west to Galloway ; and Elmet . These are (giving Skene's numbering used in the content list below in Roman numerals, the numbering of Evans's edition of the manuscript in Arabic, and the numbers and titles of Williams's edition in brackets): Poems 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 (in Williams's numbering) close with

4200-497: The same words, suggesting common authorship, while 4 and 8 contain internal attributions to Taliesin. The closing tag runs Ac yny vallwyf (i) ben y-m dygyn agbeu agben ny byδif y-m·dirwen na molwyf Vryen. Until I perish in old age, in death's dire compulsion, I shall not be joyous, unless I praise Urien. The precise dating of these poems remains uncertain. Re-examining the linguistic evidence for their early date, Patrick Sims-Williams concluded in 2016 that evaluating

4270-425: The scions of the junior branch of an unattested House of Anjou . Early German literature's motif of Uther's descent from fairies, believed to have relied on some now lost Celtic material, may have been meant to explain Arthur's connection with Avalon . Since, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Caliburn was a gift from Avalon, and Arthur was taken to Avalon to be healed. Layamon in his Brut also said that Arthur

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4340-839: The son of Constantine III , as is related in the Welsh Triad 51, or he may be the son of Constantine of Dumnonia, as related in Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain . In Robert de Boron 's Merlin , Uther Pendragon kills Hengist after an assassination attempt by the Saxon leader and Merlin creates the Round Table for him. In the Prose Lancelot , Uther Pendragon claims to have been born in Bourges . He takes an army to Brittany to fight against King Claudas at Bourges,

4410-612: The story by Geoffrey. Uthyr's other reference, Triad 51, shows influence from Monmouth's Historia . It follows Geoffrey's description of Uther as brother of both Aurelius Ambrosius ("Emrys Wledig") and Constans II ("Custennin the Younger"). However, its account of Uther's parentage differs; Triad 51 describes Uther's father to be Constantine III ("Custennin the Blessed") son of Elen, while Monmouth describes Uther's father to be Constantine, brother of King Aldroen of Armorica. Uther

4480-550: The supposed proofs that poems in the Books of Aneirin and Taliesin cannot go back to the sixth century, we have found them either to be incorrect or to apply to only a very few lines or stanzas that may be explained as additions. It seems impossible to prove, however, that any poem must go back to the sixth century linguistically and cannot be a century or more later. Scholarly English translations of all these are available in Poems from

4550-482: The tenth-century prophetic poem Armes Prydein Vawr . Several of these contain internal claims to be the work of Taliesin, but cannot be associated with the putative historical figure. Many poems in the collection allude to Christian and Latin texts as well as native British tradition, and the book contains the earliest mention in any Western post-classical vernacular literature of the feats of Hercules and Alexander

4620-440: The theory of a more significant Brittonic influence than is widely accepted point out that many toponyms have no semantic continuation from the Brittonic language. A notable example is Avon which comes from the Celtic term for river abona or the Welsh term for river, afon , but was used by the English as a personal name. Likewise the River Ouse, Yorkshire , contains the Celtic word usa which merely means 'water' and

4690-442: The way to the battle, he sees a comet in the shape of a dragon, which Merlin interprets as presaging Aurelius's death and Uther's glorious future. Uther wins the battle and takes the epithet " Pendragon ", and returns to find that Aurelius has been poisoned by an assassin. He becomes king and orders the construction of two gold dragons, one of which he uses as his standard. He secures Britain's frontiers and quells Saxon uprisings with

4760-399: The word srath ( anglicised as "strath") is a native Goidelic word, but its usage appears to have been modified by the Welsh cognate ystrad whose meaning is slightly different. The effect on Irish has been the loan from British of many Latin-derived words. This has been associated with the Christianisation of Ireland from Britain. Book of Taliesin The volume contains some of

4830-408: The word for 'fish' in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin piscis rather than the native * ēskos – which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the River Usk , Wysg ). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish may have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than the other Brittonic languages. It

4900-399: Was given various blessings by fairies. Richard Carew 's Survey of Cornwall (1602) drew on an earlier French writer, Nicholas Gille, who mentions Moigne, brother of Uther and Aurelius, who was duke of Cornwall , and "governor of the Realme" under Emperor Honorius . Carew's brief account of Arthur's birth also mentions a sister, Amy, also born to Uther and Igraine. Uther Pendragon remains

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