Gwenddoleu

Gwenddoleu fab Ceidiaw [ gwen'ðolei vaːb 'keidjau ], also Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio , († 573 ) was a British king from the region of Arfderydd , a few kilometers north of Carlisle . According to Welsh mythology, he was the lord and patron of the poet Myrddin Lailoken (Merlin).

Life

In the post-Roman period of Britain , Gwenddoleu ruled in Arfderydd near Hadrian's Wall . The place Carwinley is said to have been the place of his castle Caer Wenddolau (Gwenddoleu's Burg).

According to tradition, Gwenddoleu was either a usurper or a true descendant of Coel Hen , the ruler of Hen Ogledd in southern Scotland along the Roman border to the north. Almost nothing is known about his rule, only his death in the Battle of Arfderydd in 573 C.E. Z. is mentioned in the Annales Cambriae . It was one of the many skirmishes by British kings for rule over former Roman Britain after the Roman legions withdrew in 410 AD.

Merlin legend

Gwenddoleu does not appear in the Arthurian sagas , but his advisor Myrddin was a literary model for the character of Merlin in the later Arthurian novel . In the Vita Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth it is said that Myrddin Lailoken fought in battle, lost his mind at the sight of Gwenddoleus' death and fled to the Caledonian forests, where he lived on as a hermit. This battle is also mentioned several times in the Trioedd Ynys Prydein ("The Triads of the Isle of Britain"), which apparently played an important role in the Welsh tradition. Here he is once mentioned as one of the "three faithful hosts of the island of Britain", in another triad one of the three fighting bulls of the island of Britain . However, these texts are lost and can only be rudimentarily reconstructed from passages in other reports. He is also mentioned in the Englynion y Clyweid ("The Proverbs of the Wise").

literature

• Bernhard Maier : Lexicon of Celtic Religion and Culture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 466). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-46601-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bernhard Maier: Lexicon of the Celtic religion and culture . Pp. 24, 155.
2. ↑ Baring-Gould / Fisher: The Lives of the British Saints: The Saints of Wales, Cornwall and Irish Saints, Kessinger Publishing, 2005, Volume 3, p. 183. ( Online in the Google Book Search)