Post-Roman Britain

The records of  the British past were handed down through oral tradition (in the form of trained bards, who specialised in memorising such material) and only a small part of this oral tradition was ever committed to writing.

Furthermore, the distinction modern readers automatically make between history and literature was by no means so clear-cut.

Add to this all the misty problems of sources and dating, or of authors' intentions in writing their works, and the interpretation of such texts as now exist have become a formidable exercise.

This is immediately apparent when studying the first and most substantial account of Arthur's deeds in the Welsh records, an entry in the book entitled Historia Brittonum, The History of the Britons, often but apparently wrongly ascribed to a certain Nennius.

This is far from being a history; a later editor thought that the author had "piled together everything [he] could find", and what can really be discovered from it concerns the culture and traditions of the Welsh people in the late eighth and early ninth century, which is the period at which it was put together.

It is an attempt to explore the Welsh past, but its author is not writing in what would now be considered an historical manner; there is no real chronology, and little attempt is made to examine the sources critically such as can be detected in his Anglo-Saxon predecessor, Bede.

The writer is more concerned with the ideology of the present: he portrays the Welsh as a race of noble descent, capable of heroic deeds, treacherously driven out of their rightful lands by the Saxons.

All of this had considerable relevance to the political ambitions of the Welsh and the end of the eighth century, when there was a hope of a revival of their fortunes under Rhodri Mawr, king of Gwynedd, who was uniting the country peacefully.

So the Historia Brittonum is more of a record of developing tradition, drawing on heroic poetry, on legends about places and names and on oral tales, a tradition which is by no means static but which is being elaborated all the time.

But, underneath the synthesis of available material made by the author of The History of the Britons, there does appear a dimly discernible historic record which has been confirmed by, at least two brief entries in a set of year by year entries in the Annales Cambriae, the Annales of Wales [516 and 537].

Nennius' material needs to be read with care, because he cannot be entirely trusted, but there is a basis of truth within his text, that can be extracted with extreme care.

Text copyright © P L Kessler. An original feature for the History Files.