CHAPTER 9
When I first came across the newspaper report of the discoveries by Wilson and Blackett in Wales, my initial response was scepticism. After all, didn’t everybody know that Arthur came from Cornwall and was buried at Glastonbury? However, when I thought about it more deeply, I could see the logic of what they were saying. If ‘he’ – and I use the singular because, for reasons that will become clearer later, I am less sure about the relevance of an earlier ‘Arthur son of Magnus Maximus’ – had ever truly existed, he would have spoken Welsh, not English, for that was then the native language of the island of Britain. It also made perfect sense for him to have been a king in South Wales. Wales has, after all, retained its language and identity long after the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries. Indeed, the very existence of Wales as an entity separate from England can be regarded as the real legacy of King Arthur’s struggles. By contrast, South West England, including Somerset and Glastonbury, was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons relatively early on. The details of this conquest are contained in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , which makes no mention at all of any King Arthur. Wales, by contrast, remained independent of England right up until the Norman period. Was it really so illogical, then, that the real King Arthur should have been a Welsh king who was buried in Glamorgan rather than Somerset? I was beginning to think not.
Recalling memories of this article, I was quite excited as well as surprised when, out of the blue a few months later, Alan Wilson phoned me. Intrigued, I went to his house in Cardiff and there had the opportunity to see for myself the memorial stone with its inscription. To my untrained eyes, it looked genuine enough. I hazarded a guess that it was most likely a recycled Roman coffin lid, which had been reused as a makeshift tomb-marker by someone in too much of a hurry to quarry a fresh piece of stone. That fitted rather well with the legend surrounding the death of King Arthur. If chaos had followed his death, then his burial would have been a necessarily hurried affair. Under these circumstances, his remaining followers may well have made use of an old coffin lid that was lying around and scratched on it an inscription in less than perfect Latin. Such an explanation fitted the facts, but I was keen to see the church for myself.
The next time I went to Wales, Alan accompanied me to the church and showed me exactly where he and Baram believed it had once been located at the time the church was in use. This was close by the spot where, for various reasons, they trusted that Arthur still lies buried. Alan regretted greatly that for safety reasons he was not able to dig deeply enough to find his remains, but, fortunately, this church was not the only physical evidence linking this part of Wales with the Arthurian epic and he promised to show me more.
Some weeks later, I took him up on his word and he took me to see the ruins of the old abbey of Margam, which lie close to the Port Talbot Steelworks. This was belching out smoke and filling the air with an acrid stench. In front of us was a small brick building whose original purpose was not clear – a barn, stable or something else. Whatever it had been, it was now functioning as a museum; filled almost to the brim with an assortment of ancient memorial stones gathered from all around the local area.
Alan led the way in, introducing me to various large, inscribed stones that for him were like old friends. Mostly they were what are called ‘wheel crosses’, ie they terminated not in a conventional cross, as might a grave stone today, but rather in what looks more like a cartwheel. Indeed, it seems likely that this similarity was deliberate, the ‘wheel of life’ being a common symbol both for the repetition of time and for the inevitability of fate. The captions by these stones said they were all 9th century or later, but once more Alan begged to differ. ‘The theory goes that wheel crosses were invented around AD 650 in Northumbria, a petty kingdom, which at one time extended all the way from York to as far north as Edinburgh. Then, between AD 700 and 800, the idea of sculpting a cross to look like a wheel was taken from England to Ireland. In the 9th or 10th century, or so the experts tell us, this style of cross was brought back from Ireland to Wales. However, I have to tell you that this whole sequence of events is entirely wrong in almost every respect,’ he said. ‘In actuality it was the other way round. The idea of wheel crosses, along with Christianity itself, was taken from Wales to Ireland and Scotland. It was transferred from there to Northumbria. In other words, the journey of ideas was in reverse. after all, think about it! St Patrick himself was Welsh. Our histories say that he was born in Cowbridge, which, as the crow flies, is only a little over ten miles from where we now are standing. It stands to reason that these crosses are much older than people think; in his youth, St Patrick himself would have seen some of them. That would be before he was captured by pirates and was taken to Ireland. Very likely he took the wheel cross idea with him.’
‘Well, if that’s the case,’ I replied, ‘how come the archaeologists have got it so wrong? Surely they would know if they were that much older?’
‘That’s just the thing,’ Alan replied, ‘they don’t know. They don’t know the truth about these stones because they don’t know our Welsh history; they only know English history. Because they have the colossal advantage of total ignorance, they feel free to invent nonsense.’ He went on to explain how it was not really their fault that they didn’t know since real Welsh history from before the Norman Conquest is not generally taught even in Welsh schools. Educationally speaking, the period from the 5th to the very end of the 11th centuries really is a Dark Age. Yet there is no reason why this should be. The history of Britain, especially Wales, is among the best-documented in Europe for this period. There are, he said, huge numbers of texts, many of them genealogies of the royal houses and nobility, that give us a complete ‘who’s who’ for the 5th, 6th, 7th and later centuries. They tell us people’s names, family relations, titles, where they lived and much else besides. ‘The trouble is,’ he continued, ‘if you don’t know the history, then you can’t see the evidence that supports that history.’
As an example of this, he took me over to a very large memorial stone that stood about eight feet high, topped by a giant, lopsided wheel. The carving was somewhat crude, but at the foot of the stone you could still discern figures, probably representing the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. A label near it informed us that it was ‘10th century’ and that it originally stood near the church in Margam Village. Written in Latin on the stone, with a few gaps where letters had worn away, was an inscription. Reconstructed it read: CUNOBELIN P[O]SUIT HANC CRUCM P[RO] [A]NIMA RI …, which translates as ‘Conbelin raised this cross for the soul of Ri …’
Alan was put out by the statement that the stone was 10th century. He pointed out that not just anyone raised a stone cross such as this in ancient times. He explained: ‘This stone actually tells us that it was raised by someone called Cunobelin, which is the Latinized form of the Welsh name Cynfelyn. It would have cost a lot of money to have this cross carved, and not just anyone would have been allowed the privilege of raising it. Yet there is no record of any king, nobleman or important churchman going by the name Conbelin or Cynfelyn living in Glamorgan during the 10th century. If there is, then I haven’t seen it. However, if we go back in time, to the 5th or 6th centuries, then there are several potential candidates. One of them was a brother or uncle of King Maurice, the father of King Arthur. You look it up.’
Leaving the Cross of Cunobelin, he beckoned me over to a smaller stone, shaped like a pillar and about four feet in height. It had evidently once stood on top of Margam Mountain and must at one time have had an upper part, probably also shaped as a wheel. All that was left now was the memorial’s shaft, but this too carried an inscription. Because it was deeply carved, it was as legible as if it had been written yesterday. It read: BODVOC – HIC IACIT – FILIUS CATOTIGIRNI PRONEPUS ETERNALI VEDOMAU.
This translates as: Here lies Bodvoc, the son of Catotigern, the great grandson of the eternal [G]uedo the great. ‘This Stone’, said Alan, ‘almost certainly dates back to the 5th or 6th century.’ He explained how Catotigirn, or Catigern as he is more usually called in Welsh genealogies, was the second son of Vortigern, the King who, in AD 449, invited Hengest, his brother Horsa and their retinue of Saxon warriors to settle in Kent in return for their help in fighting the Picts. This, as far as the ancient Britons were concerned, was to have disastrous consequences. For once the Saxons had dealt with the Picts, they rebelled against their hosts. Along with his brother Vortimer, Catigern resisted this first Saxon invasion. However, to the sorrow of the Britons, he fell in the Battle of Aylesford in AD 455 while fighting hand-to-hand with Horsa, who also died. This means that the Bodvoc Stone was probably raised as a memorial at some time in the late 5th or early 6th centuries and not the 10th. It was from the era of King Arthur.
Over the following year, I came back to Wales on numerous occasions, and Wilson and Blackett showed me more sites. By this time we had agreed to co-author a book that would bring together their myriad of researches into the lost history of Britain and, specifically, the real story of King Arthur. This book was eventually published in 1998 and called The Holy Kingdom.
I researched the names on the Bodvoc stone further and discovered the identity of his great-grandfather: ‘Vedo the Great’. It turned out that Vortigern’s father was called Guitaul or Gwidawl depending on source. Vedo was clearly another variant form of this name, the ‘V’ being pronounced then as a ‘U’ or ‘W’ today with the same sound as if it had a ‘G’ as a prefix. A comparison would be the French name ‘Guillaume’ which became ‘William’ in English. Given these circumstances and that this Guitaul was of royal descent from a family who ruled over the Gloucester area (near where Vortigern came from), there could be little doubt that he was the great-grandfather listed on the stone. The absence of any mention of Vortigern, Bodvoc’s grandfather, could be explained by the simple fact that, as the reviled traitor who invited the Anglo-Saxons to settle in Britain, he was an ancestor you didn’t want to brag about.
Looking at this stone, I felt a rush of excitement, for it is not oft en you see the evidence of the Arthurian epoch written on stone. However, as I was about to discover, this was just the start: the Bodvoc Stone was not the end of my journey but the beginning.