Faces of Arthur Index

Vortigen Studies Index

The eleventh battle: Mount Agned

Mount Breguoin has been associated with the "cellawr Brewyn" or cells of Brewyn where Urien of Rheged later fought, a site generally agreed to be the Roman fort of Bremenium at High Rochester on Dere Street. Kenneth Jackson came to this conclusion in Antiquity, XXII (1949), 48-49. Most scholars now think that the Breguoin battle was taken from the Urien poem and incorporated into the Arthurian battle-list in the _Historia Brittonum_. 

Mount Agned has hitherto escaped philological analysis. From Kenneth Jackson's time on, one original form proposed has been Angned. But this is an unknown word and has failed to produce a viable site. Most authorities agree that Agned is a corruption.

The simplest explanation for Agned as a corrupt form has been supplied by Dr. Andrew Breeze of the University of Navarre (A.C. Breeze, Pennango near Hawick and Welsh Angau 'Death' [Notes and Documents], in: Northern History 39, 2002, p. 126).  Dr. Breeze proposes as a textual emendation for Agned, MW agued.  The n > u copying error is a common one.

Dr. Breeze, drawing from Ifor Williams in Canu Aneirin, and quoting the three instances in which it is found in the Black Book of Chirk, the Book of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin, lists as possible meanings of agued "death, strait, massacre, affliction, adversity."  The note from Canu Aneirin (which I have translated from the Welsh):

“… G.M.L. [Timothy Lewis’s Glossary of Medieval Law] 9 offers ‘death’ as a meaning for acgued: the same ang- as in angeu [or angau, ‘death’]… be it agwedd from ang- ‘angau’ or from ang ‘cyfang’ [narrow], the opposite being ‘eh-ang’ [un-narrow], cf. Latin ang-ustus.”

Dr. Breeze tentatively associates Mount Agned or Agued with a place-name discussed by W.J. Watson in The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926). Watson mentions a site near Hawick in Lowland Scotland called Penango(hope) or Pennango(hope), which has not be located. Dr. Breeze renders Pennango as "Death Hill" (Pen, "Hill", + angau, "death"). He then supplies several examples of British hill-names which have death, murder, skull and the like as components.

Pennango is supposed to be approximately 4 miles SW of Hawick, near the confluence of the Allan Water and the Teviot. As it happens, near the junction of the Teviot and the Allan Water is a fort called Newbigging. To provide the complete listing from CANMORE of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland:

"Fort, Newbigging. The remains of this fort overlook the Allan Water, at Allanwater Reservoir, from a rocky knoll (750 ft. OD) at the head of a short, steep valley. This is flanked on the W by Hill Head, and on the E by a shoulder of the hill on which stands the house marked Newbigging on the OS map.

The ground above the head of the valley is rolling and has been heavily cultivated, with the result that no remains of structure survive except on the S and SE faces of the knoll which have proved too rocky for the plough. The surviving stretch of the defences is so slightly curved as to suggest at first a linear and not an enclosed work, but triple ramparts are enough in themselves to indicate that this appearance is deceptive, and there can be little doubt that this monument was, in fact, a native fort.

When complete, it must have been at least as large as is suggested by the dotted line on the OS map; this would give an internal length of some 450 ft from NE to SW with a transverse breadth of perhaps 300 ft.

The surviving defences consist of three banks of piled rubble, evidently obtained from the rock-cut ditches between them, but cultivation has flattened the bottoms of the ditches and has tapered off the ends of the banks. The outer bank is 500 ft long, and where best preserved is 27 ft thick and stands 8 ft. above the level of the ground outside and 5 ft. 8 in. above the bottom of the ditch within. The middle bank is 467 ft. long, is 23 ft. thick where measured, and stands 8 ft. 8 in. and 3 ft. 10 in. respectively above the bottoms of the ditches on its outer and inner sides. Of the inner bank only 170 ft. is left, and it stands 7 ft. 5 in. above the ditch outside it and 4 ft. 5 in. above the surface of the ground within. In every case the external height of the bank is, of course, increased by the natural slope of the ground. The knoll, which stands some 15 ft. higher than the cultivable ground to the N, has been heavily quarried and shows traces of what may have been two scooped hut floors, one about 28 ft. and the other from 30 ft. to 35 ft. in diameter.

RCAHMS 1956, visited 1949"

Dr. Breeze himself admits, however, that there is a serious problem in equating agued with angau, in that the two words are not etymologically related. He suggests, as a way out of this problem, that one word could have been substituted for the other at a certain point in the evolution of the place-name Pennango. This may have happened as the obscure word agued dropped out of use.  Breeze points out that "If our Agued were in the Cheviots, it would have been replaced by a better-known site some twenty-five miles east of it [i.e. High Rochester]… Arthur is in any case far more likely to have fought there [Pennango]than at High Rochester, known as a battlefield of Urien in the late sixth century..."

Dr. Graham Isaac of The Univeristy of Wales, Aberystywyth, disagrees with the notion that agued could have been used as a component of a place-name.  To quote Dr. Isaac in full on this matter:

“There are two places in the Hengerdd poetry, and one in the Laws, where there seems to be a word that would be written 'angwedd' today (see Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru p. 69). The difficulty is that the contexts show clearly that it does not mean 'narrows, straits' in any geographical sense, but means rather something like 'dire straits, difficulty, anxiety' perhaps 'death'. As such it is, of course, completely unsuitable as a geographical name. (The word 'anxiety' from Latin ANXIETAS, contains the same ANG-; this is good Indo-European, nothing new there).

The poetic usages of ANGWEDD you find in Canu Aneirin line 1259 'twryf en agwed' (with an extensive note on the word p. 349), and Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar (ed. Marged Haycock), p. 166, line 18 (= BT p. 4,
line 9). They leave absolutely no room for us to think that there may have been a place called 'Angwedd'.

However, the poetic lines do open up another possibility. It has long been thought that the Arthur passage in HB represents a Latin retelling of an OW heroic poem, and with good reason (you know the arguments). Such a poem
could have had a line in it like 'galon in agued', 'the enemy in dire straits, great difficulty' (like the Canu Aneirin line 'twryf en agwed' 'a host in dire straits'). It is conceivable that an author responsible for the Harleian Recension of the HB (who may not have been entirely versed in the diction of OW heroic poetry) may have mistaken this 'agued' for a
place-name, and mistakenly placed the battle there: instead of 'the enemy in dire straits', he understood 'the enemy at Agued', easily miscopied at some point as 'Agned' as Breeze suggests. Under this interpretation, the
only location for the battle that was ever correct was Breguoin. This analysis at least solves the problem of 'Where was Agned?' with the answer, 'There never was such a place', and so no need to look for it.”

The present author would have to agree with Dr. Isaac. Firstly, the revised etymology and definition for agued no longer allows for “death” as a meaning for this word. The listings for angwedd in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru 1 and 2, respectively, are as follows (information courtesy Manon Roberts) :

1  angwedd
2  [?yr un ang- ag yn ang `cul' neu angau+gwedd]
3  eb.
5  Angau:
6  death.
7  13g. A 25. 2-3, twryf en agwed. e rac meuwed.
7  13g. LlDW 31. 18-19, ay kadarnau ohonau yr acgued edath dyun ydau. ac
emae enteu en menet.
7  14g. T 4. 8-9, yn yg yn ehag yn ygwed. yg corff yn eneit yn hagwed.

1  angwedd, hangwedd
2  [?ang2, hang+gwedd1; ansicr yw prth. agued,
8  LlI 33]
3  e.
5  ?Cyfyngder, caledi:
6  ?straits, distress.
7  13g. A 25. 2-3, twryf en agwed. e rac meuwed.
7  14g. T 4. 8-9, yn yg yn ehag yn ygwed. yg corff yn eneit yn hagwed.

Secondly, while one could make a good case for Pennango being Mount Agued from a strictly geographical sense, to assume that an earlier agued component – which is unlikely to have existed at all in a place-name context and whose meaning is close to that of L. angustia and not to a word for “death” – was later replaced by Welsh angau, seems highly improbable.  To see Pennango as Mount Agued, therefore, we would need evidence for a Pen-agued at Newbigging.  And this we do not have.

What we appear to have in “Mount Agued” is a confused reference to a battle at Mount Breguoin/Bremenium where the enemy found itself  “in dire straits”.  If so, we would have four, and possibly five battles having been fought by Arthur on Dere Street: York, Binchester, Devil’s Brook, High Rochester and the Caledonian Wood.

The argument against Bremenium/High Rochester as an Arthurian battle, which relies upon the presence of gellawr brewyn, the “cells of Bremenium”,  in the Urien battle poem list, ignores the very real possibility that more than one battle could have been fought at Bremenium at different times.  Bremenium is situated in a very strategic position, essentially guarding the pass over which Dere Street crosses the Cheviots.  It is also true that Urien’s Brewyn could just as easily have been borrowed from the Arthurian battle-list as the other way around. 

The following on the Bremenium Roman fort is from http://www.roman-britain.org/places/bremenium.htm:

The Roman fort at High Rochester is approached from the A68 through the grounds of the Brigantium Archaeological Reconstruction Centre. Almost the entire defensive circuit of the fort is preserved, with the remains of the western gateway being particularly fine also evidence of several periods of rebuilding in the western interval-tower of the south side. The ditches are well preserved to the north and east, outside which the line of Dere Street marches north-west, passing the temporary camps at Redesdale, visible across the Sills Burn from the fort’s western ramparts.

Between the ramparts the fort measures around 440 ft north-south by about 420 ft east-west, giving an occupation area of about 4¼ acres (c.134 x 128 m; c.1.7 ha).

"High Rochester. A squarish oblong fort of 4 acres; very thick stone rampart with clay core, stone inner buildings; on the north, remains of as many as thirteen ditches; on east and south, four; on west, uncertain, but six ditches curve round N.W. angle (personal observation)." (Collingwood, p. 44)

The host in AGWED: Mount Agned as Catterick?

While it may well be that Agued/Agned is merely an error for Bregouin or a poetic name for the latter, there is a third and better identification for this Arthurian battle site.  Dr. Isaac mentions above the ‘Twrf yn angwedd’ of the _Gwarchan Tudfwlch_, a poem appended to the _Gododdin_.  This use of angweddor agued is one of only three extant instances of the word in early Welsh literature and the sole example of agued being used in the context of a battle description.    

What is surprising about the _Gwarchan Tudfwlch_ example is that the phrase is preceded by two lines that copy part of a line found in Strophe 25 of the _Gododdin_ proper:

Arf anghynnull,

Anghyman ddull,

Twrf yn angwedd [text: twryf en agwed]…

Arf anghynnull, anghyman ddull…

Now, in the case of the _Gododdin_ line, the poet Aneirin is referring to Graid son of Hoywgi’sprowess at the disastrous battle of Catraeth, Roman Cataractonium, modern Catterick on Dere Street in Yorkshire.  The Battle of Catraethis, of course, the subject of the _Gododdin_ poem.

The hero Tudfwlch hailed from the region of Eifionydd in Gwynedd, but he fought and died at Catraeth.  While he engaged in military actions in his homeland (the _Gwarchan’s_ ‘Dal Henban’ is almost certainly modern Talhenbont at Llanystumdwy in Eifionydd), it is probable that the lines borrowed from the _Gododdin_ are meant to indicate that the following ‘Twrf yn angwedd’, “a host in distress”, is a reference to the British army at Catraeth.  Dr. Isaac (via personal correspondence) agrees with this assessment:

“Phrases like twrf yn angwedd are characteristically used in early Welsh poetry to set up a general atmosphere of warrior violence, but, to judge from the final lines of the poem, it would ssem to be primarily concerned with the 'Battle of Catraeth'.”

Part of the Roman fort at Catterick was built on the rising ground above the River Swale known as Thornbrough Hill.  From English Heritage’s Record of Scheduled Monuments:

The late first century Roman fort and later rebuildings were sited on the high ground on the south bank of the River Swale, on the western side of the A1. All three forts occupied the same general area, but varied slightly in orientation and dimensions, although all appear to have been approximately 2ha in area, with the earliest possibly up to 2.6ha. The buildings and yards of Thornbrough farm overlie the north eastern quadrants of the forts. Although probably mainly occupied by auxiliary troops, artefacts show that Catterick also accommodated both legionaries and cavalry at various times. Earthworks to the south of Thornbrough include those of the southern defences of the last fort. A modern field boundary may also preserve the line of a Roman wall, stones of which can be seen on the surface, these also being included in the monument. Between the forts and Catterick Road to the south, geophysical survey has indicated the buried remains of a field system together with a scatter of possible buildings and small industrial areas which are also all included in the monument. The main civilian settlement lay to the east of the forts, laid out either side of Dere Street. Aerial photographs and geophysical survey suggest that the settlement had a planned layout with a grid pattern of roads and building plots. In 1958-59 a strip about 60m wide through the western half of this area was subjected to rescue excavation in advance of the building of the A1 Catterick Bypass. This uncovered substantial well-preserved remains of buildings and associated features. In places some stone buildings survived to over 2m in height. This high level of survival will remain on either side of the A1, for example Roman remains can be identified within the upper 4m of the sides of the road cutting. The sides of this road cutting are thus also included in the monument. The defensive stone wall that surrounded the civilian settlement on the south bank of the Swale by the early fourth century enclosed an area nearly 250m by 230m. Part of this wall, on the eastern side of the town and marked on the 1:10,000 map, was restored by Sir William Lawson in the 19th century and, along with the exposed Roman stonework, is included in the scheduling. Another exposed section of walling can be seen running roughly parallel and 30m south of the river between the A1 and the dismantled railway line. The Roman settlement was not confined to within this walled area and extended beyond, mainly as a ribbon development along Dere Street. Excavation evidence suggests that this more extensive area of settlement was first established in the second century but possibly abandoned in the third century. Part of this area at least was then used as a cemetery in the fourth century. Excavation evidence also indicates that a scatter of small industrial areas and native British style farmsteads lay outside the main area of settlement.

Drawing by Jessica Mothersole (Agricola's Road into Scotland: The Great Roman Road from York to the Tweed.
London: John Lane Bodley Head, 1927) showing Thornbrough Hill in relation to the Roman fort at Catterick.

Arthur is mentioned in Line 972 of the _Gododdin_ , and whether this is an interpolation or not, it is generally thought to be one of the earliest occurrences of the name in the written records:

He fed black ravens on the rampart of a fortress

Though he was no Arthur.

Among the powerful ones in battle, In the front rank, Gwawrddur was a palisade. 

Are we to see as a coincidence Arthur’s being mentioned in the context of the Battle of Catraethwhen it is in this same battle, alone among all battles of the period, that a host finds itself in “agwed”?  I think not.

There are two possible ways to read this passage on Arthur in the _Gododdin_.  First, the hero Gwawrddur, while a great warrior, was not nearly as great as Arthur.  This is the standard interpretation.  But let us suppose that what is really meant is that Arthur had fought at Catterickas well, a generation earlier, only he proved more powerful than Gwawrddurand won a victory over the Saxons on Thornbrough Hill.

In this context, the Arthurian Mount Agned of the _Historia Brittonum_  isan anachronistic reference to the hill at Cataractonium, where the British army of Gwawrddur’stime found itself in “distress” or “dire straits” just prior to its annihilation by the Saxon foe.

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From Glein to Camlann is Copyright © 2006, August Hunt. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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