The sword that was in the van in taming the brothers of Caw of the Wall.
They crave with longing for a portion of your cause
And for refuge in the manliness of Arthur.
They long for your coming in a hundred fortresses.
A hundred manors long for your assurances.
They long for your coming in a hundred schools.
A hundred chieftains long for your coming:
The great and mighty sword that supported them.
They look for your best judgements of merit,
The restoration of principalities.
Your sayings are remembered, soothing the aggressive.
The eloquence of the bards is not great enough:
Toiling for weeks with the eagerness of beavers,
With the names of men and war-bands to compare you.
Above the eagles, above the fear of disorder,
I am the one who is with the great Warrior.
I am the bard, the bagpiper. I am with the Creator;
Seventy musicians create the great rhapsody of the first power…
The Leader of Heaven has left the nation without a roof.
“Caw of the Wall” seems an odd phrase. The Life of Cadoc tells us that Caw (Cauus) lived in southern Scotland, not far from Hadrian’s Wall; he was the father of Gildas.
In another poem, The Dream of Rhonabwy, Arthur is described as sitting with Gwarthegydd, another son of Caw.
Other evidence confirms that Arthur and Caw were contemporaries, so the ode was written at the right time to have been for Arthur. If it is his eulogy, it tells us a great deal about the way he was regarded at the time of his death. The final image is the most telling of all: “The Leader of Heaven has left the nation without a roof.”
GABRAN
See Bridei.
GAMES
Celtic chiefs undoubtedly played board games and maybe their subjects did too.
Gaming pieces made out of wood have not survived, but a set made out of glass was found in a royal grave at Welwyn Garden City, just north of London. It consisted of a set of 12 white marbles and an opposing set of 12 black marbles, both highly decorated. The wooden game board was 2 feet (0.6m) square and badly decayed. This was a game similar to Ludo, and it was designed for two players. Although Ludo itself was patented in the nineteenth century, it was based on a very old board game.
Dice have been found at other sites, but in the Welwyn grave there were six fragments of beads and bracelets, which may have been thrown to determine the number of moves each player made.
GENEALOGY
Kings and princes were entitled to their privileges by birthright, in other words according to who their mothers and fathers were. They therefore had a strong vested interest in establishing and committing to memory their family trees. No doubt these were transmitted orally for countless centuries and written down only from about the seventh century AD onward, when the process of Christianization made written records much commoner (See Writing). The lack of interference from the Romans in Ireland has meant that more in the way of Irish genealogy has survived.
King lists were drawn up and doubtless recited on special occasions by bards. These were designed to establish the king’s entitlement to his position, and doubtless flattering connections with long-dead heroic figures were added as a matter of course. A considerable amount of invention is involved in some of them. The powerful Irish chiefs of the Middle Ages wanted to be descended from Celtic gods, or from Egyptian pharaohs. But sometimes the names of heroes and kings follow one another in a credible sequence that recurs in other genealogies, and this corroboration inspires more confidence.
According to bardic sources, Slaine the Firbolg was the first High King of Ireland. From the time of his accession to the year 1, there were 107 High Kings: nine Firbolgs, nine Tuatha dé Danann, and 89 Milesians. After the rebellion in the first century AD, the High Kingship was reinstated, and after that there was an unbroken line of 81 High Kings until Rory O’Connor who, in 1175, surrendered his overlordship to Henry II of England.
The texture of the bardic genealogies often shows a shift from the mythic to the historic. Conaire Mor was the son of the bird god Nemglan; by contrast Ollamh Foola, the eighteenth High King, who came to the throne in 714 BC, is said to have provided Ireland with its first law code, which has a more historic ring to it.
GERAINT
A Dumnonian (Cornish) king who was born in about 480 and a contemporary of King Arthur. His pedigree survives. He was Geraint (or Gerontius in Latin), son of Erbin, son of Kynoar, son of Tudwaol, son of Gorwaor, son of Gaden, son of Cynan, son of Eudaf Hen, and known as Geraint Llyngesog, the “Fleet-owner.”
He was married first to Gwyar, daughter of Amlawdd Wledig, by whom he had four children: Selyf, Cyngar, Iestyn, and Cado. He then married Enid, daughter of Ynywl, Lord of Caerleon. Geraint himself was the son of Erbin, who held lands in both south-east Wales and Dumnonia. Early sources name both Geraint and his son and heir Cado or Cato as “rulers who ruled with Arthur.” This supports the idea that there were several Cornish sub-kings, with Arthur as their overking.
The poem Geraint may be a genuine sixth-century poem. It is an elegy for the warriors who fell at the Battle of Llongborth, written in the wake of one of Arthur’s battles (see Funeral Odes). Llongborth means “Port of the Warships” and is thought to be the westernmost of the Saxon Shore Forts: Portchester, at the head of Portsmouth Harbor, a likely location for the battle with the Saxons:
In Llongborth I saw spurs
and men who did not flinch from spears,
who drank their wine from glass that glinted.
In Llongborth I saw Arthur,
heroes who cut with steel,
the emperor, ruler of our labour.
In Llongborth, Geraint was slain,
heroes of the land of Dyfnant,
and before they were slain they slew.
GIFTS
Celtic