The stories of Uther Pendragon.
First my version in The Fabled Third.
Following Laȝamon, Uther is king of Britain, the legitimate ruler who can trace his blood line back to Brutus, the founder of Britain. (Britain didn’t have Kings in the fifth century the way England did in Laȝamon’s time and Brutus was a fiction. But I’m following Laȝamon.)
In late fifth century Britain, Uther faces an impossible task, just as Vortigern did. For nearly four hundred years, Britannia was an imperial province, run by the rule of the law, protected and policed by a professional army, running on a coin economy, tied into a broader, Western Empire, and a part of trade routes that ran all the way to the East.
Traditionally the legions are withdrawn in 410. Central authority breaks down. By the mid fifth century the province was changing into something else. Whatever it was becoming, Uther has to find a way to rule.
Writing is a game of playing what if.
By the end of the sixth century the province will have disintegrated into warring kingdoms ruled by Germanic speaking ‘Kings’. Some of those ‘Kingdoms’ could be ridden across in a day. Did the Roman province fracture along old tribal lines? Did old loyalties and identities resurface? Had they ever gone away? Or did new power elites simply extend themselves to the old tribal boundaries; a river, a range of hills, a Roman road?
Why did Britain fracture into so many small kingdoms?
Gildas and Bede report three ships of Germanic warriors landed and that was the beginning of the end. How many rowers in a fifth century Anglo-Saxon ship is an unanswerable question, but the total in three ships might have been no more than 180 men and possibly only 60.
Bede calls their leaders Hengist and Horsa and puts the landing around 450 AD although that date is dodgy for several reasons.
But at the same time, just across the channel, historically, Aetius was mustering an imperial federation to fight Atilla the Hun, and the opposing armies were numbered in the tens of thousands.
Forget Hollywood and fantasy literature, no matter how good the fighting men were, 180 men would be sparrow’s fart in a thunderstorm facing even a thousand Hun cavalry.
So perhaps the answer to the question is that the absence of a force large enough to threaten everyone’s existence meant localised self-interest triumphed over ‘national issues’.
If there were raiders, they would initially be in small bands, and the damage they did would be localised. It requires an effort to imagine just how localised the world would have been. The further west, the less chance people had of experiencing armed conflict. (Except where raiders from Ireland were concerned.)
Raiders would be someone else’s problem, a rumour easily dismissed at first, leaving the untroubled locals to squabble over precedent and privilege.
As my Uther says, united, the province could see off anything except an army the size of Julius Caesar’s massive landing force in 54 BC, which consisted of over 600 ships and landed anything up to 25,000 legionaries and 2,000 cavalry.
Squabbling amongst themselves, and not helping each other, a group of 150 armed raiders becomes a potential military catastrophe for the British.
Laȝamon records that Uther and his family escaped to Brittany while Vortigern was in power, and Aetius did muster the Bretons, so it’s only a short jump to put Uther at the battle of the Catalaunian plains so the point can be made in the narrative. The other point that the battle can make, based on the fact that even today historians argue about its outcome, is that the battle doesn’t seem to have solved anything. Despite the death toll, neither side seems to have won.
Uther can win one victory after another, but sooner or later, he, or his son, will lose.
Perhaps history’s lesson is that short sighted self-interest always wins over painful long term common sense.
Uther and Ygrayne
Uther has to be hard, unsettling and calculating. He cannot be ‘nice’. Early medieval kings were not nice. They did not have modern liberal aspirations. Some of them tried to be Christian, Uther quotes Mathew 25: 35-40 or versions of it,but for most of them pride, greed, wrath, envy, and lust, seem to have been essential for the job, with gluttony a possible indulgence but sloth disastrous.
In the Grimm’s version of Rumpelstiltskin, the king threatens to have the miller’s daughter killed if she doesn’t spin straw into gold. He makes this threat three times. Then he happily marries her. Imagine marrying someone who would have signed your death warrant as casually as he signs your wedding certificate.
Uther and Ygrayne belong in a similar world where attitudes towards the body, the individual, and one’s expectations about relationships were very different. If you prefer an historical example, the last queen of Anglo-Saxon England was also the last queen of a united Wales. We don’t know if she spoke Welsh but her first marriage was dynastic and political. To strengthen an alliance with her brothers, when her Welsh husband was murdered, she married the man who probably organised his death.
Uther’s not ‘in love’ with Ygrayne any more than she is in love with him. For her, he’s the possibility of safety for herself and her daughter. Knowing her husband cannot win against Uther, her options are limited and the consequences of failure horrifying. She’s willing to use Merlin’s help, oblivious to the warning that Vortigern was given. Merlin ‘will give him anything he wants/but his price will be beyond imagining.’
For Uther, going to Tintagel is simply a way of luring Gorlois out of his fortifications onto open ground where he is easily defeated. If his plan works, there’s the bonus that marrying Ygrayne will ‘bring’ her influence amongst the western tribes. If his plan fails then he’s signed her death warrant, giving Gorlois the excuse he’s been looking for to get rid of her.
Either way, he’s willing to give up the woman he does like for political reasons.
Uther in the sources.
Genesis.
While it’s just possible that the character of ‘Vortigern’ can be traced back to an historical person, it does seem most unlikely that Uther Pendragon is anything other than a fiction.
But before discussing his career, down the rabbit hole we go for any signs of an origin for his story.
Did Geoffrey invent Uther; was he already Arthur’s father in the tradition; or were there stories circulating about an Uther which he was able to use?
The impact of The History of the Kings of Britain on the Legendary History, and the story of King Arthur in particular, is difficult to underestimate. The more one considers Geoffrey and his book, the more extraordinary his achievement becomes. But while the argument over how much he borrowed and how much he invented can seem academic in the worst sense of that word, it’s a crucial for anyone trying to discern which stories pre- existed his work.
For those interested in ‘the native tradition’, whether the source pre or post-dates Geoffrey’s work is a crucial issue. But as Patrick Sims-Williams has written, for the early Arthurian poems; ‘it is rarely possible to know whether an Arthurian poem is earlier or later than Geoffrey of Monmouth.’
It is probably undeniable that stories about an Arthur were circulating in Wales long before Geoffrey (writing at the start of the twelfth century), possibly even before Nennius (writing in the ninth). But as Oliver Padel pointed out, you can tell stories about a hero and his associates without bothering with his birth, his parents or for that matter his biography.
‘Arthur is not fitted into the historical pattern of rulers’ pedigrees. He is consistently absent from the early Welsh Genealogies and is never given a patronym in the earliest Welsh texts: in lacking this attribute he stands in notable contrast with the other heroes of the Welsh Triads.’
So where did Uther come from?
Geoffrey’s work has a basic pattern: A died, B came to the throne, ruled, then died and was succeeded by C. This means that to be a legitimate ruler in the sequence, Arthur has to have a pedigree. At the very least he has to have a royal father who has to precede him in the sequence and who must rule over Britain before him. This demand of the genre Geoffrey used changes everything. The hero now needs a biography, and he needs a father.
Geoffrey identifies this character as Uther Pendragon.
Becoming King Arthur’s father.
Early Welsh poetry and prose is a subject area where Angles should fear to tread. It is the province of specialists; I’m not one.
But if we’re looking for the origin of Uther Pendragon then we have to go there. There are four broad possibilities.
1) Uther Pendragon was always Arthur’s father. This is so unlikely I’m just putting it here to be thorough.
2) Geoffrey invented him ex nihilo. (This is also highly unlikely.)
3) Uther is the result of a mis-translation.
4) An Uther Pendragon existed in the Welsh Arthurian stories but may not have been Arthur’s Father. Geoffrey made the link possibly due to option three.
1) The first option is so unlikely I won’t spend any time on it.
2)The second could not be proven, and only proven wrong if a manuscript is found that can be incontrovertibly dated before 1100. It seems unlikely.
3) The Idea that Uther might be the result of a mistranslation or creative misunderstanding was floated by Perry.
‘As to Uther Pendragon, whom Geoffrey credits with the begetting of Arthur, opinion is divided as to whether there was a tradition about him or whether his name grew out of a misunderstanding of the Welsh uthr, ‘terrible’. ‘
As an adjective, Uthr (Uthir) means: Fearful, dreadful, awful, terrible. tremendous, mighty, overbearing, cruel, wonderful, wondrous, astonishing, excellent.(GPC)
Generally in Welsh the adjective follows the noun it qualifies (not always, generally) so the meaning of something like Arthur mab uthr could be Arthur the terrible/wondrous child if uthr was read as an adjective or Arthur child/son of Uthr if uthr was read or mistaken for a proper noun.
In the world of the poems, such a misunderstanding would be easy. You can see this is something like the poem Mi a Wum.
Mi a wum lle llas Llachev
mab Arthur, uthir ig kertev
ban ryeint brein ar crev
Nerys Ann Jones translates this as:
I have been where Llachau was slain
son of Arthur, terrible in song
when ravens rushed to gore [or Croaked on Gore]
As she says, it is difficult to know whether the conventional praise uthir ig kertev applies to father, son or both. But she thinks it is unlikely uthir here refers to Arthur’s father. She writes; ‘Oliver Padel (personal correspondence) wonders whether Geoffrey of Monmouth might possibly have invented Arthur’s patronym from some phrase such as this.’
However, while I like this option, and keeping in mind the difficulty of dating these early references, an Uthur appears fully fledged as Uthir Pendragon in the poem ‘Pa Gur’ and in ‘Triad 28’.
He’s not named as Arthur’s father in either.
In ‘Pa Gur’, one of the characters with Arthur is identified as:
Mabon, son of Modron,
servant of Uthr Pendragon.
Triad 28
Three great enchantments of the Island of Britain:
The enchantment of Math son of Mathonwy (which he taught to Gwydion Son of Don) and the enchantment of Uthyr Pendragon (which he taught to Menw son of Teirgwaedd) and the enchantment of Gwythelyn the Dwarf (which he taught to Coll son of Collfrewy his nephew.)
So against the idea that Geoffrey misunderstood or just seized on an idea, can be set Rachel’s Bromwich’s observation: ‘these references [to an early Uthur/Uthr/Uthyr/Uthir], taken together show that Uthyr was known in the pre-Geoffrey Arthurian tradition but they do not prove that, prior to HRB, he was known as Arthur’s father.’
Bromwich also pointed out that in the story Culhwch and Olwen, Menw m. Teirgwaedd is distinguished as a shapeshifter and speculates that Uther’s ‘enchantment’ may have been shapeshifting.
This in turn opens yet another possibility, that a shape shifting conception story involving Uther existed before Geoffrey, and the naming of the child as Arthur and the role of Merlin in Arthur’s conception are Geoffrey’s additions.
However, if Geoffrey took an Uthur Pendragon and made him Arthur’s father, he seems to have misunderstood ‘Pendragon’. He takes it literarily as ‘Head of the Dragon’ or ‘Dragon’s Head’…Bromwich was convinced that it would more likely have been ‘foremost leader’ or ‘chief of the warriors’. Dragon/draig appear in the early poetry as an accepted euphemism for ‘warriors’.
So, with mind’s spinning joyfully, we can move onto firmer ground and the story of Uther as it appears in Laȝamon.
Uther in Laȝamon
I’ve gone through the various versions of the story of Arthur’s conception in detail on the page about Ygraene on this site.
Here I just want to point out that Laȝamon's version of the conception of King Arthur erupts into the familiar patterns of the Brut. It would be much more at home as the twelfth story in The Mabinogion. It tangles the narrative in a mess of opposing assumptions. Obviously, he’s following his sources, and the moral mess is Geoffrey’s making.
It requires a conscious effort to recognise how strange and out of place it is in the Brut. Partly because the story is reasonably well-known, it’s been trotted out in print for almost a thousand years and more recently film versions have retold variations on the story. Like any story that’s slightly familiar, there’s a tendency to glide over it. We’re also so used to seeing romance in almost every story. The pining lover has been such a commonplace in literature for at least the last five hundred years. It’s hard to adjust to the idea that Laȝamon was writing before all this became commonplace.
If you take the conception story out, then Uther’s story is straightforward. He is one of the great kings of the Brut. He defeats his enemies, and he brings peace and prosperity to the kingdom. As such he exhibits the well-established characteristics of an admirable ruler.
However, it has also been well-established by the text that a king or ruler who puts personal desire before the responsibilities of his role is not a good king, and his actions usually bring disaster to himself, the woman he ‘loves’, and his kingdom.
At the same time, ‘love’ in Laȝamon is not positive. The Arthurian story in later centuries would characteristically see ‘love’ as ennobling, a positive subject for a narrative, and that adulterous love is not only acceptable, but heroic. Although Chretien wrote his ‘Arthurian Romances’ slightly earlier than most people would date the Brut, Laȝamon belongs to an earlier tradition. Locrin and Vortigern fall for ‘inappropriate women’ and their ‘love’ is not presented in a sympathetic light. Neither is Uther’s.
This makes Laȝamon’s version of the story uncharacteristically tangled. He starts by emphasising Uther’s debt to Gorlois. It is Gorlois who comes up with the idea that saves Uther and his army at Dunian. He makes small changes to his sources to emphasise how Gorlois is a devout Christian.
He exonerates Ygraene at every stage of the story. They meet at a feast, but while the audience may have made the link to Vortigern and Rowena, none of the writers do, except in the First Variant version of Geoffrey where the devil is once more present at the feast.
Beauty aside, Ygraene is everything Rowena is not.
Uther betrays Gorlois without consequence. He also betrays Ygraene, by disguising himself as her husband so he can f#ck her. It’s that brutal. But unlike Vortigern’s story, where Geoffrey, Wace and Laȝamon are explicitly critical of the man, and associate the female with the devil, there is nothing like this happening here. Our priest makes no overt criticism of Uther’s adulterous intentions.
Arthur is born, and somehow that overrides the internal morality the text has established in the previous 9,000 or so lines. From the celebration where he sees Ygraene for the first time to the Birth of Arthur, Uther behaves like a bad man and a bad king, but there is no criticism. Once Arthur is born, the story returns to its familiar patterns. Uther will live out the rest of his story as a successful and honoured King, until he is old and becomes ill. At that point his rule will begin to disintegrate, but this is due to age and illness and has nothing to do with his treatment of Gorlois or Ygraene.
Postscript.
OF all Uther’s later reincarnations, perhaps the most awful is in the film Excalibur. While Arthur is being conceived, Uther does not take his armour off. It’s impossible to tell if the actress is trying to portray sexual excitement or is just in so much discomfort that acting has become impossible.