Thirteen treasures

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘The Damsel of Sanct Grael’ (1857)

Mention cloaks that can make you invisible, dishes that fill themselves with any food you could wish for, magic cauldrons or chess pieces that move by themselves, and most 21st century listeners would think of the Harry Potter books and films.

If, however, you spoke of these objects in medieval Wales, listeners would instead think of Tri Thlws ar Ddeg Ynys Brydain, literally ‘the Three Treasures and Ten of the Island of Britain’. And instead of Harry Potter you might recall the names of Rhydderch Hael, Gwyddno Garanhir and … Arthur.

What were these magical treasures, who owned them and what stories did they conjure up?¹

Possessors and possessions

First, let us look at a basic list of ‘treasures’ as first supplied as late as the 15th century (Coe and Young 1995: 88-9, quoting Bromwich). You’ll notice that some of these appear to be fairly ordinary objects; clearly many derive their value from the status of those who possessed them.

1. The sword of Rhydderch Hael (“the Generous”).
2. The hamper of Gwyddno Garanhir (“Longshank”).
3. The drinking horn of Bran Galed (“the Niggard”).
4. The chariot of Morgan Mwynfawr (“the Wealthy”).
5. The horse halter of Clydno Eiddyn (“of Edinburgh”).
6. The knife of Llawfrodedd Farchog (“the Knight”).
7. The cauldron of Dyrnwych Gawr (“the Giant”).
8. The whetstone of Tudwal Tudclyd (“0f the people of the Clyde”).
9. The coat of Padarn Peisrudd (“Redcoat”).
10. The pot of Rhygennydd Ysgolhaig (“the Scholar”).
11. The dish of Rhygennydd Ysgolhaig (“the Scholar”).
12. The chessboard of Gwenddolau ap Ceidio (“son of Ceidio”).
13. The cloak of Arthur yng Nghernyw (“in Kernow” or Cornwall).

This particular list of Treasures (Welsh tlws “jewel, a pretty thing”) is not definitive, there being some forty manuscripts dating from the mid-15th to the 16th century which introduce variant items in their Thirteen Treasures (Roberts 1991: 86). These are

1. The mantle of Tegau Eurfron (“Goldenbreast”).
2. The coulter of Rhun Gawr (“the Giant”), owned alternatively by Tringer son of Nuddnod.
3. The stone and ring of Luned, described in the Mabinogion tale Owain, or The Lady of the Fountain.

Who are these people, the possessors of these treasures? In the absence of modern surnames, medieval personages had epithets – what the Romans called cognomens – to distinguish one from another with the same name. In addition to the patronymic or filiation (“son of”), nicknames could be descriptive (long-legged or bearded), indicative of region (eg Edinburgh or Strathclyde) or reflecting a personal quality (generosity or stinginess).

Figure 2: Kingdoms in 6th-century Northern Britain. Dunadd in Argyllshire was a centre for the Irish Scots settling on the west coast, Dal Riata. Dumbarton (Alclut) was the capital of what became Strathclyde. Edinburgh (Din Eidyn) was a centre for Manaw Gododdin, which stretched north across the Firth of Forth. Carlisle, famous in medieval Arthurian tales, was the capital of Rheged which stretched from Cumbria in England to Wigtownshire in south-west Scotland.

What is noticeable is how many of these characters are known to us from historical sources to be from Northern Britain (the Treasures are often glossed as yn Y Gogledd, “in the North”) and from the 6th century.

In particular, we find that many of these personages hail from four kingdoms: Dalriada, Strathclyde, Gododdin and Rheged, centred respectively on modern Dunadd, Dumbarton, Edinburgh and Carlisle (fig 2). Simplified genealogical tables will help to fix these figures in time and space (fig 1, below).

Rheged	Dalriada	Strathclyde	Gododdin
	Fergus Mór d 501	Dumnagual Hen
	Domangard d 507 (son of Fergus)	Guithno Clinoch (sons of Dumnagual)
Ceidio	Gabhrán d 558 (son of Domangard)	Tutagual Tudclyd (son of Clinoch)	Clydno
Guenddolau d c 580 (son of Ceidio)	Áedan r 574-608 (son of Gabhrán)	Rhydderch Hael c 580-612 (son of Tutugual)	Cynon d c 600 (son of Clydno)
	Artúr d c 590, Eochaid Buide d 629 Bran d 598, and Conaing (sons of Áedan)	St Constantine (son of Rhydderch and Languoreth)	Mynyddog Mwynfawr

Figure 1: Dark Age Men of the North (rulers in italics, named treasure owners in bold) 

We see then that possessions of Strathclyde nobles dominate the list, with the hamper of Gwyddno (Guithno), the whetstone of Tudwal and the sword of Rhydderch (sharpened no doubt by the whetstone) owned by individuals from three successive generations.

The early Welsh poem Y Gododdin furnishes us with only allusive references, but Cynon son of Clydno is said to have been killed at the battle of Catraeth around 600, and we may assume that this Clydno is the same as Clydno Eidyn (Clydno of Din Eidyn, modern Edinburgh), making Clydno a contemporary of Tudwal of Strathclyde. Cynon fab (son of) Clydno appears later in the medieval romance Owain, where he fails to defeat the Knight of the Fountain.

The ruler of Manaw Gododdin was Mynyddog Mwynfawr (“the Wealthy”), a contemporary of Cynon according to Y Gododdin but otherwise unknown. Another northern contemporary is the historically attested Morgant Mwynfawr who fought against the Northumbrian Angles – a Morgant Hael (“the Generous”) even appears in Arthur’s retinue in the 11th-century Culhwch and Olwen – and it is possible to argue that Morgan Mwynfawr is a conflation of these two figures.

In Rheged, we have references to Gwenddolau in the early Merlin legend, where Gwenddolau’s death around 580 at the battle of Arfderydd north of Carlisle drives his vassal Myrddin mad from grief and assumed guilt. Nearby Carwinley, plausibly deriving from Caer Wenddolau (“Gwenddolau’s Fort”), argues strongly for Gwenddolau being an historical ruler of Rheged in the later 6th century.

Finally, we come to Dalriada, settled by Scots from Ireland from the late 5th century. Bran, one of the many sons of Áedan mac Gabhrán, was assassinated in 598. Could he be the skinflint Bran from the North who owned the magical horn? Another son, or possibly a grandson, of Áedan was Artúr who, with his Irish name, was mooted as the original Arthur in the 1970s by Richard Barber. The 15th-century manuscript listing the Thirteen Treasures specifically states, however, that the cloak was owned by an Arthur “in Kernow” or Cornwall. Does this reflect an interpolation in a late medieval MS, bearing in mind that most of the other historically-known figures mentioned come from Northern Britain? Or is this evidence of a genuine Arthur figure based in south-west Britain (if Kernow here is indeed Cornwall rather than in Powys, the former territority of the Iron Age Cornovii tribe)?

Of the remaining figures, only Padarn Peisrudd may be tentatively identified, possibly as St Padarn or perhaps again as a man of the North, for we know of a precursor of the 5th-century Cunedda from Manaw Gododdin called Paternus, surnamed “of the Red Robe”, who probably flourished in the late 4th century. Llawfrodedd Farfog (“the Bearded”) is in Arthur’s retinue in Culhwch and Olwen, but is not historically attested, nor are Rhygenydd Ysgolhaig and Tegau Eurfron, though the last is listed in a medieval Welsh Triad as one of Tair Rhian Ardderchog Llys Arthur, Three Excellent Maidens at the Court of Arthur, even if this is no guarantee that she was contemporary with Arthur, let alone historical.

Uther Pendragon, by Howard Pyle from ‘The Story of King Arthur and His Knights’ (1903)

Possessions

It is time now to look at the Treasures and the attributes that make them so special. We shall examine them according to type, as Brinley Roberts has done, under the headings of Vessels of Abundance, Objects of Advantage, Testing Talismans and so on (Roberts 1991: 85-88).

Vessels of Abundance
Five vessels have the kind of qualities that were famously to be assumed by the Holy Grail. Food placed in Gwyddno’s Hamper used to increase a hundredfold when opened again, Bran’s Horn supplied whatever drink was desired, and both Rhygenydd’s Pot and Dish provided whatever food was required. Finally Llawfrodedd’s Knife served, in the days before the fork was invented, twenty-four men at a meal.

Testing Talismans
These objects distinguished between the worthy and the unworthy. First, Tudwal’s Whetstone tested a man’s bravery, for only an opponent wounded by a brave man’s sword which had been sharpened by the whetstone would automatically die from his hurt. Tegau’s Mantle would only fit a faithful wife, a theme repeated in the tale of Caradoc (from the First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval): not only did a horn call “Blessed” change water into wine, it too was a vessel of abundance; and “no knight whose wife has deceived him or who has deceived his wife will be able to drink from this horn without spilling the wine on himself” (Arthur 1996: 80).

Padarn’s Coat would only fit a nobleman, though when the object was associated with his namesake St Padarn, the precious woven garment would only fit an ecclesiastic, while Arthur, who tried to steal the coat, was swallowed up to his chin in the ground (Coe and Young 1995: 17).

Celtic cup by Christine Bristow

The last of these testing talismans, Dyrnwch’s Cauldron, like the whetstone also sensed cowardice as it would only boil the meat of a brave man, and quickly too. This cauldron reappears in Culhwch and Olwen as the Cauldron of the steward Diwrnach, and in the 10th-century Welsh poem Preiddeu Annwn (“The Spoils of Annwfn”) where the cauldron of the Chief of the Otherworld would not boil the food of a coward, exactly like Dyrnwch’s Cauldron (Sims-Williams 1991: 54-7; Coe and Young 1995: 135-9).

Objects of advantage
Rather less pedestrian than seven-league boots, Morgan’s Chariot transported its passenger wherever he wished in the twinkling of an eye (well, quite quickly anyway: in this it resembled the flying ship Skidbladnir of Norse myth, celebrated in Hilda Lewis’ 1939 children’s classic The Ship that Flew). Clydno’s Halter, fixed to a nail at the end of a bed, conjured up whatever horse was wished for, while sometimes included in such lists was Giant Rhun’s Coulter, an object which, when placed in front of a ploughshare, turned the earth as long as was needed.

Of no particular function, but magical in themselves, were Dyrnwyn, Rhudderch’s Sword, which gave the owner his epithet of Generous because he donated it to whoever asked for it, but had no takers because the blade burst into flames whenever a nobleman drew it; and Gwenddolau’s Chessboard, made of gold, with silver pieces that played by themselves, familiar from the Harry Potter books and Through the Looking Glass but of course known from Peredur, where the hero encounters one in the Castle of Wonders.

Tenniel’s illustration of the white and black knights in combat

Another object that is sometimes listed amongst the Treasures is Luned’s Stone and Ring. Luned saved the life of Owain when he was trapped in the castle of the Knight of the Fountain by giving him a talisman: “Take this ring and put it on thy finger, with the stone inside thy hand; and close thy hand upon the stone. And as long as thou concealest it, it will conceal thee.”

There are affinities with Sauron’s Ring in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings of course, but this object somewhat duplicates the function of Arthur’s Cloak. Like Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility, it allows its wearer to see while remaining unseen. Along with a number of named possessions (his sword, spear, shield, dagger and wife) it and his unnamed ship are mentioned in Culhwch and Olwen as the only things Culhwch may not ask for as a boon. It also appears, named as Gwen, in the medieval Welsh tale The Dream of Rhonabwy, and though described as “a carpet of diapered satin” in Lady Guest’s Victorian translation, 20th-century translations make it clear that it is “a mantle of ribbed brocaded silk”, and that one of its properties “was that the man around whom it might be wrapped, no one would see him, whereas he would see every one” (Jones and Jones 1949: 145).

It is on this cloth that Arthur and Owain play a game of gwyddbwyll, a game of strategy popular before chess, while around them the action parallels the moves on the board.

Thirteen treasures

Many of these objects have their counterparts in surviving European fairy tales, such as inexhaustible purses and caps of invisibility (the latter owned by both Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer). Despite their appearance in late medieval manuscripts, some of the Treasures were familiar, as we have seen from at least the 11th century, to judge by Culhwch and Olwen. In this we find that Culhwch’s tasks – in which he is aided by Arthur and his men – include quests to retrieve the self-same Treasures, or objects very like. Culhwch has to fetch:

• the hamper of Gwyddneu Garanhir which provided for thrice nine at a time as much food as all wanted;
• the cauldron of Diwrnach Wydel (“the Irishman”), though no magical properties are specified for it;
• the cup of Llwyr which held the best liquors;
• the horn of Gwlgawd of Gododdin;
• the harp of Teirtu which played of itself when asked;
• the containers of Gwyddolwyn the Dwarf to keep liquids warm forever;
• the vessels of Rhimon Rough-beard which kept milk from ever going sour; and so on.

The originally mundane objects listed among the Treasures were very familiar throughout the medieval period amongst all the nobility. We can still see in archaeological collections how much similar objects were prized by the aristocracy – the whetstone, bowl, sword and horn mountings from the Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo spring to mind – for their use in military display, feasting, personal adornment and leisure. Culhwch and Olwen also emphasised the essential items needed for pursuits such as hunting, and for ritualised social intercourse such as grooming, with hairdressing aided by such items as the combs, razors or shears sported by the two boars Ysgithrwyn and Twrch Trwyth, though of course these do not feature in the list of Treasures.

Why Thirteen Treasures? We know that lists of threes (“triads”) were compiled from at least the medieval period, probably as mnemonics for storytelling. Typically a formulaic opening began Tri Hael Enys Prydein (Three Generous Men of the Island of Britain) or Tri Gogyfurd Llys Arthur (Three Peers at the Court of Arthur). As the number of possible candidates for Treasures increased, the opportunity was surely taken to enlarge the list by using a feature of Welsh counting – tri ar ddeg literally translates as three-and-ten – to incorporate thirteen Treasures within the Triad lists.

When did the Treasures – with their archetypal magical properties – first become attached to their historical owners? This surely happened sometime between the late 6th century, when most of the personages were living, and the 11th, when already a magical hamper was associated with Gwyddno and possibly a wonder cloak with Arthur in Culhwch. We know that folklore was already attributing marvels to Arthur in Wales in the 10th century, as recorded in the Historia Brittonum – that is, within four centuries of his supposed death. By analogy with known folklore processes, we might guess, at a conservative estimate, that Gwyddno and his later contemporaries were being credited with owning magical objects within two or three generations of their deaths, and that some of the Treasures of Britain, situated in the North – whether or not they numbered thirteen – were being celebrated as early as the late 7th century. And the fact that an Arthur – though maybe not the Arthur – was included amongst the owners could be testament to the significance of his name and his fame at an early date.

The final treasury?

What happened to these Treasures? A 16th-century MS (Roberts 1991: 87) suggests that Myrddin managed to obtain the horn of Bran Galed and the remaining thirteen ‘royal’ treasures of the Island of Britain, taking them to the House of Glass (Tŷ Gwydr). And there, we must assume, they still remain.²

---

References

• Ross G Arthur (1996), Three Arthurian Romances: poems from Medieval France (J M Dent).
• Rachel Bromwich, A O H Jarman, Brinley F Roberts eds (1991), The Arthur of the Welsh (University of Wales Press).
• Jon B Coe and Simon Young (1995), The Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend (Llanerch Publishers).
• Patrick K Ford trans ed (1977), The Mabinogi (University of California Press).
• Charlotte E Guest transl (1849), The Mabinogion (Dover Publications edn 1997).
• A O H Jarman ed transl (1990), Aneirin: Y Gododdin. Britain’s Oldest Heroic Poem (Gomer Press).
• Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones trans ed (1949) The Mabinogion (Dent: Everyman’s Library).
• Brynley F Roberts (1991), “Culhwch ac Olwen, The Triads, Saints’Lives” in Bromwich et al (1991).
• Ann Williams, Alfred P Smyth and D P Kirby (1991), A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain (Seaby).

¹ This article was first published in Pedragon, the journal of the Pendragon Society, Vol XXXIII No 2, Winter 2005-6, and now slightly edited.

² One of Joan Aiken’s fantasies, an alternative history called The Stolen Lake, plays freely with Arthurian themes, and in fact features the Thirteen Treasures transferred to a South American museum.