iscuit or iscuid which would also be spellings of the word for a shield.[1] This seems to shew that there was a Welsh tradition as to Arthur’s personal appearance at one of his great battles. The other entry is remarkable as representing the death of Arthur and Medraut or Medrod (the Modred and Mordred of the romances) as an ordinary event of war.
The next two passages to be cited occur in the Mirabilia usually associated with the Historia Brittonum; and most of them are probably to be referred to the same date as the Historia itself.[2] The words in point read as follows:—
Est aliud miraculum in regione quæ dicitur Buelt. Est ibi cumulus lapidum, et unus lapis superpositus super congestum, cum vestigio canis in eo. Quando venatus est porcum Troit,[3]impressit Cabal, qui erat canis Arthuri militis, vestigium in lapide, et Arthur postea congregavit congestum lapidum sub lapide in quo erat vestigium canis sui, et vocatur Carn Cabal. Et veniunt homines et tollunt lapidem in manibus suis per spacium diei et noctis, et in crastino die invenitur super congestum suum.
Est aliud miraculum in regione quæ vocatur Ercing. Habetur ibi sepulchrum juxta fontem qui cognominatur Licat Amir, et viri nomen, qui sepultus est in tumulo, sic vocabatur. Amir[4]filius Arthuri militis erat, et ipse occidit eum ibidem, et sepelivit. Et veniunt homines ad mensurandum tumulum; in longitudine aliquando sex pedes, aliquando novem, aliquando quindecim. In qua mensura metieris eum in ista vice, iterum non invenies eum in una mensura; et ego solus probavi.
The Porcus Troit occupies a great place, as Twrch Trwyth, in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen, where Cabal[5] also occurs in its ordinary Welsh form of Cavall; but the lesson these two
- ↑ In later Welsh the words are ysgwydd, “a shoulder,” and ysgwyd, “a shield.”
- ↑ This is Zimmer’s view in his Nennius Vindicatus, p. 115.
- ↑ Stevenson seems to have found two readings of this word, namely, Troit and Troynt, and he selected for his text the latter, which is gibberish: see his Nennius, p. 60. In Welsh literature the word has the two forms Trwyd and Trwyth.
- ↑ The same manuscript E, which reads Troit, and is supposed by Stevenson to have been written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, reads here amirmur; but, as was to be expected, he inserted in his text a vox nihili, namely Anir: Amirmur=Amir mur “the Great Amir,” and in the Liber Landavensis, Amir is written Amyr; but a man’s name Amhyr occurs also in that manuscript, while the name of Arthur’s son in question is given as Amhar in the Welsh romance of Gereint and Enid: I do not recollect meeting with it elsewhere.
- ↑ It is to be noticed that Cabal with its b and single l belongs to the same school of orthography as the ninth century triplets beginning with Noigrucosam: see Skene’s Four anc. Books of Wales, ii. 2.
