Enemies of the One-Eyed King

Was Guallauc fighting everyone?

"They sing laments, grieve for their dragon-lord
He who fought back the great crowd of foes,
The armies of Rhun, of Nudd and of Nwython....
The lord, the one whom the whole land dreads”

Taliesin Singing of Guallauc

While I have discussed Guallauc before, I wanted to draw attention to this particular line from one of Taliesin’s songs dedicated to him. As we have deduced before, Guallauc was king of Elmet, and a descendant of Coel Hen of Northern Britain. Elmet was situated along the southern border of the Coeling led states of the Hen Ogledd, and was probably subject to many Angle incursions from the south. As part of the ‘Brigantian Hegemony’ it served as a valuable buffer to Ebrauc (Modern York), and this importance seemed to be maintained from it’s founding at the end of the 5th century, until it’s demise in 617, when it finally fell to the Deiran king, Edwin.

From the pedigrees and information gleaned from the Historia Brittonum, Guallauc was a rough contemporary of Urien of Rheged. As the son of a 5th generation Coeling he would have been born relatively late in his father, Llenneac’s floruit ~490-520. Urien is noted for being the ‘Grey-Haired lord of Catraeth” in the 580s, during his major wars against his neighbors. Guallauc much like Urien is remembered as a contemporary of Arthur, a fallacious idea, though both Urien and Guallauc were just barely of fighting age at the time of Camlann, Arthur’s final battle in 537. With their close ties of kinship to Arthwys ap Mar, a northern candidate for the Arthur that died at Camlann, it is possible that they were survivors of the battle, eventually leading to them being remembered fallaciously as direct contemporaries. Urien’s son Owain, who acts as his main battle-leader during his wars in the 580s is already an adult at the time, and his son St. Kentigern was active in the late 500s as well, further reinforcing the date of 520 for Urien, as well as Guallauc.

Yr Hen Ogledd ~600 A.D.

In the later half of the 6th century there seems to have been a fracturing of the ‘Brigantian hegemony’ founded by Coel Hen, with two major factions forming around the time of the Battle of Arfderydd (Arthuret as it is often called), 573 AD. Legend has attached many names to Arfderydd over the years, but the core of the battle established in the Annales Cambriae mentions Peredur and Gwrgi, sons of Eliffer, and Gwenddoleu, a son of Ceidio, all descended from not just Coel, but from Arthwys himself. Myrddin is also mentioned here, and is held to have been the Gwenddoleu’s bard and council. This is the first verifiable instance of intra-dynastic fighting amongst the Coeling¹, and seems to have kicked off a series of events leading to Catraeth, and the eventual collapse of Coeling authority in the Hen Ogledd².

On one side of this dynastic rift was Rheged and Elmet, with their Anglian allies in Deira, and the other was Ebrauc. The descendants of Pabo Post Prydain, who ruled kingdoms somewhere around the Pennines³ are hard to place here, and may have had no part in the squabbles while Urien was alive, though Dunaut ap Pabo is mentioned in a triad attaching him to Peredur and Gwrgi in the context of Arfderydd, possibly indicating that he sided with Ebrauc here. His brother Sawyl is largely absent from the late 6th century politics, though Sawyl’s grandson Catguallaun may play a bigger part in the North than is generally considered in the early 7th century.

"fierce Gwallawc wrought the great and renowned mortality at Catraeth"

The above quote comes from Moliant Cadwallon, a eulogy singing praises to Cadwallon of Gwynedd. Moliant Cadwallon deserves an entire article alone in it’s analysis. There is internal evidence that some of the poem may date to the era of Late-Brythonic, roughly 550-750, though there is also contradictory evidence that it was a piece of propaganda written in the 9th century. It may be that instead the text is a merging of both. An older poem regarding the northern Cadwallon (Catguallan the grandson of Sawyl), a descendant of Coel who’s floruit begins in the late 6th century, and is a contemporary of Urien of Rheged and Guallauc himself, may form the core of the praise, and thus the association with Guallauc, while the later portions were appropriated by the ruling house of Gwynedd to weave their own history into that of the Coeling. Catraeth, the battle which Guallauc is associated with in Moliant Cadwallon is often thought of through the lens of a Brythonic vs. Anglian conflict, with the Votadini (Gododdin) attacking a Deiran stronghold sometime around 600ad. John Koch’s reevaluation of the battle gives a different explanation, with Britons and Angles on both sides⁴. Urien and Guallauc, supported by Anglian Feoderati from Deira, and a coalition comprised of splinters from the Coeling (Peredur and Gwrgi of Ebrauc, Madoc of Elmet, and an unnamed son of Ceidio ap Arthwys) and possible a splinter of the Alt Clut based High-kingship north of Hadrian’s wall⁵, and their Bernician Foederati. This is further supported in one of the Taliesin poems, confirming that Guallauc was an enemy of Ebrauc (Modern York)

“Enemies were wiped out by Gwallawg.
You’re a better stockade than a pack of bears.
War by the sea from the pulse of song,
His fight was more than York’s men could endure”

Guallauc is then said to have fought the Bernicians, the account of which is found in the Historia Brittonum:

Hussa reigned seven years. Against him fought four kings, Urien, and Ryderthen, and Guallauc, and Morcant. Theodoric fought bravely, together with his sons, against that Urien. But at that time sometimes the enemy and sometimes our countrymen were defeated, and he shut them up three days and three nights in the island of Metcaut; and whilst he was on an expedition he was murdered, at the instance of Morcant, out of envy, because he possessed so much superiority over all the kings in military science.

This has often been held to be a coalition of these four kings, though some doubt has been cast on that by recent scholarship. Either way, it is clear here that Guallauc and Urien are both considered enemies of the Bernician Angles, not necessarily the Deirans. Ryderthen is Rhydderch Hael of Alt Clut, and Morcant, likely Rhydderch’s brother, possibly King of Gododdin are also interestingly given as enemies of the Bernicians. This could be the result of a break in cohesion post-Catraeth, with the Bernicians taking the opportunity to edge into Brythonic territory.

This alliance, whether it included all four kings, or just the Coeling, would break down upon Urien’s assassination. With Urien gone, Guallauc was likely the eldest of the Coeling and may have wanted to assert himself as overlord of the remaining scions of Coel, and seemingly made an enemy of Urien’s son Elffin:

Gwallog, horseman of battle, planned
To make battle in Yrechwydd
Against the attack of Elphin.

-From a Poem Attributed to Llywarch Hen.

There is a slight possibility that this is actually a reference to Elffin ap Gwyddno, a figure seen in the Pedigrees of Alt Clut, though there is reason to doubt the truth of said pedigree as there seems to be some corruption, and Yrechwydd is likely what has generally been referred to as ‘South Rheged’ and as such the association with Urien’s son Elffin makes more sense.

This brings us back to the initial quote from one of the Talien praise poems:

Can we then Locate Rhun, Nudd and Nwython? Nudd and Nwython are fairly easy, Nudd being Nudd Hael, one of the ‘Tri-Hael’ found in the pedigrees of Alt Clut, very consistent with Guallauc’s position amongst the Coeling. Nwython as well is a figure that features in the pedigrees of Alt Clut, and is associated with the Picts, by way of his son Gwid, who is the ancestor of a string of Pictish High-Kings in the early 7th century. Rhun ap Urien immediately comes to mind, but there are other possibilities. Rhun ap Maelgwn of Gwynedd is of course a possibility, and a contemporary of Guallauc, though there is little evidence of conflict between Gwynedd and Elmet, though the supposed ‘northern invasion’ of Gwynedd comes to mind, when the Tri-Hael of Alt Clut supposedly invaded Gwynedd after their cousin Elidyr died attacking Rhun. Another possibility is the Rhun ap Neithon mentioned in the pedigrees of the Isle of Man. Rhun was certainly a popular name at the time, even amongst Guallauc’s kin. Another Coeling, the son of Einion ap Mar⁶, Rhun Ryfeddfawr carries the name, and was contemporary with Guallauc, being the father of the aforementioned Rhun ap Maelgwn’s wife Perweur. Unfortunately this doesn’t help narrow it down much, and the Rhun here may stay unidentified, but the mention in such close proximity to two men of Ceretic of Alt Clut’s dynasty it would make sense that this Rhun may be related to them as well forming a complete triad.

Guallauc it would seem made an enemy of almost everyone around him eventually, fighting his own kin in Ebrauc, opposing the Alt Clut High-kingship North of Hadrian’s wall, then the Bernicians, and even the sons of his former ally Urien. He is rightly remembered by Taliesin:

1. There is an earlier hint of a dynastic squabble during the early life of Arthyws ap Mar, with a possible interpolation of Garbanion, a son of Coel as high-king after Arthwys’ father Mar. This could be a dynastic intrusion via violence, or could very well just be that Garbanion was the eldest descendent of Coel, and Arthwys was still far too young to rule.

2. ‘The Old North’ in English. Generally used to refer to the Brythonic kingdoms of Northern Britain, outside of Wales. The Kingdoms of the Coeling: Ebrauc, Elmet, Rheged, The Pennines, possibly Bryneich, and the Non-Coeling kingdoms of Alt Clut and Gododdin (and various other petty-kingships and splits).

3. They likely pushed into what was at one point the southern portion of Rheged after Urien’s death.

4. https://www.arthwys.com/p/a-look-at-catraeth

5. https://www.arthwys.com/p/alt-clut-the-other-kings-in-the-north

6. Einion’s father is variously listed as either Ceneu ap Coel, Mar ap Ceneu, or Maeswig Gloff ap Ceneu. This importantly reinforces that Maeswig and Mar are probably two names for the same man. The shortened version of this pedigree gives an unsatisfactory chronology, and it is likely that the longer version featuring Mar/Maeswig is correct.