Some speculation about what may have inspired Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story of Arthur’s birth at Tintagel Castle.
Once upon a time, the “last King of Egypt” was Nectanebos, a royal sorcerer. While in disguise as a court astrologer in Macedonia he becomes infatuated with Olympias, queen to Philip of Macedon.
Nectanebos tells Olympias that she will mate with the Egyptian god Ammon, who is described as “white haired, with the horns of a ram above his jaws”. The first harbinger of the god is to be a serpent which slithers into Olympias’ room in the palace.
Needless to say, the god Ammon is in reality Nectanebos in disguise, and it is Nectanebos and not Philip, Olympias’ husband, who is responsible for the conception of the child who will become Alexander the Great. He later becomes the child’s tutor.[1]
The Romance of Alexander, from which this story is taken, was extremely popular in various versions in the medieval period (Ranelagh 1979).[2] All are ultimately based on a “pseudo-historical Greek narrative of Alexander, probably written in Alexandria towards the end of the 3rd century” (Engels 1998: 16). The author is known as Pseudo-Callisthenes because the work was purportedly by Aristotle’s nephew Callisthenes, a contemporary of Alexander. A Latin translation appeared in the 4th century, with a popular abridgement in the 9th and a new Latin translation in the 10th.[3]
| hero | Alexander | Arthur |
| father | Philip, king of Macedonia | Gorlois, duke of Cornwall |
| mother | Olympias | Igerna |
| real father | Nectanebos disguised as god Ammon | Uther disguised as Gorlois |
| attribute | ram’s horns, serpent body | “Pendragon” (wyvern) |
| site of palace | Pella, Macedonia | Tintagel, Cornwall |
There is no doubt that Geoffrey of Monmouth would have been aware of this popular medieval tale with its hero conceived by a shape-shifting king (complete with ram’s horns and serpent body) on a queen in her royal palace. And so when he came to write his History of the Kings of Britain in the third decade of the twelfth century he had no need to look further for an exemplar for the conception of his hero, Arthur, especially as there seemed to be no extant story of Arthur’s origins.
And perhaps he was encouraged to set the tale at Tintagel because he was reminded of the tale of Nectanebos by the proximity to Tintagel of St Nectan’s Kieve (or St Nectan’s Glen).
Following his exemplar, Geoffrey makes Uther be consumed with lust for the wife of his subject (VIII: 19). Merlin facilitates Uther’s access to Igerna at Tintagel by disguising Uther as Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, and Ulfin and Merlin himself as two of Gorlois’ men. In this way Uther begets Arthur on the unsuspecting Igerna. Meanwhile Gorlois is killed in battle elsewhere and so Uther is free to marry Igerna; both, we are told, “were linked together in no little mutual love” (VIII: 20). Arthur is born in due course.
Uther
There is no evidence that Uther existed as an identifiable individual much before Geoffrey wrote his History (though he is named in the poem Pa gur, dated to around 1100 by Sims-Williams, 1991: 41). However, medieval Welsh traditions could suggest that Geoffrey’s Uther may have evolved into a wizard figure independent of Merlin’s influence. In the medieval Welsh Triads we read that one of the Three Great Enchantments of the Island of Britain was caused by Uthyr Pendragon. He then taught this enchantment to Menw, Teirgwaedd’s son (“little son of Three Cries”).
This Menw is also known from Culhwch and Olwen where he too is a great enchanter: “should he come to a heathen land he might cast a spell over [Arthur’s men], so that none might see them and they see everyone.” Menw also casts a calming spell over a giant mastiff and transforms himself into the likeness of a bird. In the 15th century, a triad lists Menw as one of the Three Enchanter Knights of Arthur’s Court (Bromwich 1991: 215-16). These views of Uthyr and Menw as shape-shifting magicians are a far cry from Geoffrey’s portrait of Uther as a military man, but are reminiscent of the enchanter Nectanebos.
Arthur’s origins
Except for diehard romantics, observers are generally agreed that Geoffrey took a mass of disparate traditions and histories and conjured the tale of King Arthur out of these materials. Where linkages were lacking, he would have fallen back on familiar narrative patterns to fill in the gaps. While there is no exact fit between the tales of the two conceptions, as the table makes clear, the parallels are striking, nevertheless.
This kind of mysterious conception is found in the traditions of all kinds of cultures and all manner of religions (including, of course, the story of Jesus). Geoffrey may have consciously made Arthur’s origins parallel the origins of many Celtic heroes, of course (Rees and Rees 1961: 223):
(a) the advent and future greatness of the hero have been foretold (Merlin’s prophecy of the Boar of Cornwall);
(b) his advent is destined to bring death or misfortune to a presiding power (Gorlois in Cornwall, the Saxons in Britain);
(c) certain difficulties have to be overcome before his future mother can fulfil her destiny – she is closely guarded, confined in a fortress and her own resistance has to be overcome by cunning (Uther’s disguise);
(d) there is a mystery about the hero’s begetting – whether he has an earthly father or not, he is usually begotten by another, a king, a man from another ethnic group, or a supernatural being.
Igerna
Arthur’s mother has little or no personality in the History. After Geoffrey wrote, Igerna (Eigr in Welsh) starts to appear as the aunt of St Illtud, with a respectable royal ancestry herself, but little else is said of her. Did she have a real existence? Victor Canning’s novel The Crimson Chalice (1976) gives her a setting on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. This may be because a 5th or 6th century memorial tombstone on Lundy reads
… IGERNI … ITIGERNI
At first sight the initial word looks very suggestive, until we realise that it has a genitive case-ending for a masculine name. In this case, Charles Thomas suggests restoring this as CONTIGERNI (or even VORTIGERNI) FILI TIGERNI, that is “the stone of Contigernos (or Vortigernos), son of Tigernos” (Selkirk 1969). While Geoffrey may just possibly have known of the IGERNI stone on Lundy, there doesn’t seem to be a general association between Igerna and the island.
However, the name Igerna itself may ultimately be genuinely Dark Age, or even earlier. The names of St Kentigern (= Contigern) and the tyrant Vortigern (“great king”) both preserve a similar element. This element is preserved in Modern Irish tigern “lord” and both Medieval and Modern Welsh teyrn “monarch” (MacKillop 1998). Does Igerna’s name, which looks as if it might derive from a root tigern-, actually reflect her role as female ruler or queen? Or is there more?
The capture of ancient Troy by the Greeks after a long siege was viewed as the rape of Athena its patron goddess, especially when her talisman or palladium was stolen from there; it is tempting to see Tintagel as a British equivalent in Geoffrey’s narrative. Uther is told by Ulfin that there is no way into the fortress of Tintagel, and thus to Igerna, except by a narrow isthmus of rock which “three armed knights could hold”. But by Merlin’s deception – Geoffrey’s version of the wooden horse of Troy – three un-armed men gained entry without bloodshed, for when Uther, Merlin and Ulfin approached, the porter “swiftly unmade the doors, and the three were admitted”. And so “the King lay that night with Igerna”. Was Uther celebrating a sacred marriage with “the Queen”? And was this Queen the embodiment of a goddess?
Rhiannon and Pryderi
The First Branch of the Mabinogion is known as Pwyll Prince of Dyfed, after its principal protagonist. Like the other branches the tale is made up of episodes, some almost independent of each other, reflecting the way the final version has been arrived at. Pendefig Dyfed (the Prince of Dyfed) is persuaded by a ruse to swap semblances for a year with the Lord of the Celtic Underworld, Pen Annwfn, the pair taking on each other’s roles. The Prince, however, remains chaste with the wife of Pen Annwfn. To redeem an insult given to Pen Annwfn, the Pendefig Dyfed has also to battle another Underworld king (probably Pen Annwfn in yet another guise) at a ford, a contest which the Prince wins. After a year they are transformed back to their own guises of Pendefig Dyfed and Pen Annwfn.
The next episode is the successful wooing of the supernatural woman Rhiannon by Pendefig Dyfed. It is possible that this episode has suffered a dislocation and that it should have preceded the transformation episode (Gruffydd 1953 passim, especially chapter II). It then seems likely that Pen Annwfn would then have sired a child in the guise of Pendefig Dyfed on Rhiannon who by then was the Prince’s wife. This child is given various names, but Pryderi (“care”) is the one that sticks. He is later fostered by a prince called Teyrnon and his wife.
There is a parallel with an Irish medieval tale of the conception of Mongán the Fair. The King of Ulster is tricked into agreeing to swap guises with the Irish god Manannán, and in return for the Ulster king winning a battle against the King of Lochlann [4] Manannán will get to sleep with the Ulster king’s wife. The child Mongán thus gets to be identified as son of either father according to which tradition was recounted. How this Irish tale might relate to the Welsh story and to the tale of Arthur’s conception is complex, but the common elements of putative fathers, transformations and battle are summarised in Table 2.
| Child | Mongán Finn (“the fair”) | Pryderi (“care”), alias Gwri Golden Hair | Arthur |
| Mother | Fiachna’s wife | Rhiannon, wife of Pendefig Dyfed | Igerna, Gorlois’ wife |
| Mortal father | Fiachna Finn, King of Ulster | Pwyll, Pendefig Dyfed (“Prince of Dyfed”) | Gorlois, duke of Cornwall |
| Super-natural father | Manannán mac Lir | Pen Annwfn | Uther Pen-dragon |
| Battle with | King of Lochlann (Other-world) or Scotland | Hafgan, a king in Annwfn | (Gorlois) |
| Where | Over the sea | At a ford | At fort of Dimilioc, near sea |
What exactly seems to be happening here? A clue can be found in some of the names of the dramatis personae. Firstly, Rhiannon: her name derives from the Celtic *Rigatona meaning Queen Goddess, and comparative mythology suggests that she is related to Epona, the Celtic horse goddess.
Next, the name of the character Teyrnon (who fosters the infant Pryderi and who appears to be Pen Annwfn in yet another guise) derives from Celtic *Tigernonos, “the Great King, the God King”. As Gruffydd points out, an –onos (masculine) or –ona (feminine) termination in Celtic names is the “usual mark of a divinity” (Gruffydd 1953: 98-100), and so we see that a divine or semi-divine child is the offspring of Rigatona-Rhiannon, the Goddess Queen, and Tigernonos-Teyrnon, the God King.
In the corresponding story of the conception of Arthur we have our hero as the offspring of Igerna (*Tigerna?), the Lady or Queen, and of Pendragon, the Chief Ruler. In both cases a mortal male spouse – Pendefig Dyfed in the Mabinogion tale and Gorlois (perhaps related to gwr,”man” in Modern Welsh) – is duped, and a battle near or over the water (symbolising a boundary with the Otherworld) is fought.
Did Geoffrey know a version of the Rhiannon tale? I suspect his choice of names for his principal characters is suggestive. Did he know a version of The Romance of Alexander? It is more than likely, given what we know of both Geoffrey’s erudition and his eclecticism. Was there a genuinely British tale of the conception of Arthur at Tintagel by Uther on Igerna? Ah, that we may never know.
Select Bibliography
L J Engels. “Alexander the Great” in Willem P Gerritsen & Anthony G van Melle eds (1998), A Dictionary of Medieval Heroes (The Boydell Press).
Sebastian Evans, transl (1963). Geoffrey of Monmouth: History of the Kings of Britain (Dent).
Patrick K Ford, transl ed (1977). The Mabinogi and other medieval Welsh tales (University of California Press).
W J Gruffydd (1953). Rhiannon: an inquiry into the first and third branches of The Mabinogi (University of Wales Press).
Chris Lovegrove (1980). “King Arthur’s Tintagel” Pendragon XIII No 4, 21-23.
E L Ranelagh (1979). The Past We Share (Quartet).
A & B Rees (1961). Celtic Heritage (Thames & Hudson).
A Selkirk (1969). “Lundy”, Current Archaeology 16.
P Sims-Williams. “The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems” in R Bromwich et al (1991), The Arthur of the Welsh (University of Wales Press).
Notes
[1] Parts of this paper have previously appeared in Lovegrove (1980).
[2] Ranelagh (1979) includes an extract from The Romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes translated by Albert M Wolohojian (Columbia University Press).
[3] Laurence Harf-Lancner transl ed (1994). Le Roman d’Alexandre (Paris: Livre de Poche, Librairie Générale Française). I am grateful to W M S Russell for these details on the Romance‘s availability in the medieval period
[4] Lochlann is the Irish Otherworld over the sea, often identified with Scandinavia or Scotland.
First published in the journal of the Pendragon Society, Pendragon Vol XXXII No 4 Summer 2005. Until 2009 it pursued Arthurian Studies: history & archaeology; legend, myth & folklore; literature, the arts & popular culture.
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