Apologies to all for the lack of blogging but this has mainly been due to me being very busy with a European arena tour. I have recently, however, been back at the ebook - King Arthur, Folklore, Fact & Fiction - and have been beavering away at getting it ready. I hope I can get it out by Christmas but there are many factors that could get in the way.
In the meantime, I am going to post segments of the ebook in PDF form for a limited time and will start to do so soon. I’ll begin with sections of the chapter on the Historia Brittonum.
Watch this space.
August Hunt
November 4, 2012 at 11:13 pm
I missed you comment on Caddon Water, which you posted long ago. My apologies.
From the Scottish place-name expert Alan James of BLITON:
“Yes, Nicolaisen included Caddon Water among the *cal-eto- river-names (cf my *cal- entry in BLTION, though on reflection I should have included it with the *cal-ed- group rather than ‘Calne’ types). The final syllable is probably OE -denu added by Northumbrian English, though a secondary suffix isn’t impossible. It is a very common hydronymic formation; *cal-ed- does indeed occur in ethnic names too (“hard men”), including Caldedones, but as this is a river there seems to me no need to invoke any ethnic name.”
I had discounted this long ago, along with several other caleto- names in the Highlands and the Lowlands. Myrddin is placed nowhere near Caddon Water; all the sites we know for him, and the new sites I’ve identified for him, place this figure much further west, south and northwest It is plain that the Welsh tradition has merely relocated Caledonia of the Highlands to the Lowlands, or perhaps has rather “extended” Caledonia to the Lowlands. We must think of Caledonia as a fairly large forested area in the central Lowlands. A firmer fix seems to me impossible.
My Arthurian researches have long been completed, and I have no plans to return to the subject.
Good luck to you with your new book.
August Hunt
P.S. You make a comment about Chester as well, “correcting” me for saying it is in North Wales, when in reality in this modern day and age it is across the Dee in England. I was, of course, thinking of the Chester of the Romano-British period, when it was, in fact, on the northwestern border of the Cornovii kingdom in north Wales. The distinction is not really important and is, essentially, quibbling. Everyone knows where it is or can easily check any map to find it.