Owain
map Urien (Owain son of Urien) was a warrior-hero of the royal house of Rheged
in the late sixth century. He appears in
some of the poetry attributed to Taliesin, and later became a hero of medieval Arthurian
romance. What can we say about him?
Evidence
Although
his father Urien (Urbgen) is mentioned in Historia Brittonum, there is no
mention of Owain in Historia Brittonum or Annales Cambriae. More surprisingly, he also makes no
appearance in the Harleian or Gwyr y Gogledd genealogies, which terminate with
Urien as the last generation. Owain son
of Urien is known from poetry, mainly the group of poems attributed to Taliesin
and preserved in a medieval Welsh manuscript, from the Triads, a collection of
aides-memoires for poets and storytellers also preserved in medieval Welsh
manuscripts, and from the legends surrounding the conception and birth of St
Kentigern.
Genealogies
The
Harleian genealogy for Urien terminates with Urien and does not list any
offspring
[U]rbgen map Cinmarc map Merchianum map
Gurgust map Coilhen
The
Bonedd Gwyr y Gogledd genealogies (Descent of the Men of the North) contain a
very similar genealogy, also terminating at Urien
Vryen uab Kynuarch m Meirchavn m Gorust Letlvm m Keneu m Coel
In
the Bonedd Y Seint genealogies (Descent of the Saints), Owain appears as the
father of St Kentigern
Kyndeyrn m.
Garthwys, m. Owein, m. Vryen, a Denw, verch Lewdwn Lwydawc o Dinas Eidin yn y
gogled, y vam.
The
Peniarth manuscript triad mentioned below refers to “Cyndeyrn Garthwys the
chief bishop”, suggesting that Garthwys is an epithet or nickname, so this
would translate roughly as ‘Kyndeyrn Garthwys, son of Owein son of Urien, by Denw
daughter of Lewdwn.’
The Death-Song of Owain
The
soul of Owain, son of Urien […]
There
will not be found a match for the chief of the glittering west
[…]
When
Flamdwyn killed Owain, there was not one greater than he sleeping
A
wide number of Lloegyr went to sleep with light in their eyes
[…]
Owain
valiantly chastised them, like a pack of wolves pursuing sheep
Translations
vary; an alternative translation has Owain slaying Flamdwyn ‘When Owain slew
Flamdwyn it was no more to him than to sleep’.
Either version is compatible with the subject matter of the poem. If Flamdwyn killed Owain it could be a
description of the circumstances of Owain’s death, if Owain killed Flamdwyn it
could be a description of a famous earlier deed performed by Owain before he
died. It could even be both, if they
killed each other in a cataclysmic battle.
The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain
[…]
Flamdwyn
called out again, of great impetuosity
Will
they give hostages? are they ready?
Owain
answered, Let the gashing appear
They
will not give, they are not ready
And
Ceneu, son of Coel, would be an irritated lion
Before
he would give a hostage to anyone
[…]
Again,
translations vary; the phrase ‘Ceneu son of Coel’ has been translated as ‘a
whelp of Coel’, i.e. a descendant of Coel’s line. For more information on Coel, founder figure
of a number of royal genealogies, see post on Coel Hen.
Triads
Three
Fair Princes of the Island of Britain
Owain son of Urien, Rhun son of Maelgwn, Rhufawn the Radiant son of
Dewrarth Wledig.
Three
Tribal Thrones of the Island of Britain
Arthur the chief lord in Penrionyd in the north, and Cyndeyrn Garthwys
the chief bishop, and Gurthmwl Guledic the chief elder.
Others
The
story of King Urien and Modron tells how Urien Rheged came to a ford haunted by
a mysterious supernatural force that made all the locals fear to approach it.
There he found a woman washing cloaks, and lay with her. Afterwards she blessed
him and told him
“I have been fated to wash here until I should conceive a son by a
Christian. And I am daughter to the King of Annwfn, and come thou here at the
end of the year and then thou shalt receive that boy." And so he came and
he received there a boy and a girl: that is, Owein son of Urien and Morfudd
daughter of Urien.
Owain
appears as the hero of the medieval Welsh romance The Lady of the Fountain, and as an antagonist of Arthur in the medieval Welsh tale The
Dream of Rhonabwy, both in
The Mabinogion.
Life of St Kentigern
A
Life of St Kentigern, now surviving only in part, was commissioned in the
twelfth century by Herbert, Bishop of Glasgow.
It names Owain son of Urien as Kentigern’s father and recounts a legend
in which Kentigern is conceived as a result of the seduction of Kentigern’s
mother Denw (also spelled Taniu, Teneu, Thaney, and many other variations),
daughter of the King of Lothian, by Owain map Urien. For a summary, see Whiddon Green, 1998 (Part
2). A longer and slightly later Life of
St Kentigern written by the twelfth-century monk Jocelyn of Furness recounts a clearly
related tale about Kentigern’s birth (with much tut-tutting about fantastical
fables), but does not mention the name of Kentigern’s father (translation
available online).
Interpretation
Status
Owain
is clearly portrayed in the poetry as a warrior-hero, fighting and winning
battles.
The
phrases 'chief of Rheged' and ‘chieftain of the glittering west’ in The Death-Song of Owain are also
consistent with Owain having been a king in his own right. They may indicate that he was a sub-ruler of
part of Rheged (the lovely phrase ‘the glittering west’ immediately calls to
mind the Lake District, or the coastlands of Cumbria and/or Galloway, although
this is pure speculation on my part and I do not know how reliable the
translation is), or that he succeeded his father Urien as king of Rheged, or
both.
The
fact that poetry survives about him suggests that he was of sufficient status
to support a bard. His presence in the
medieval romances and the Triads suggests that there were more poems and
stories about him that have not survived, which in turn suggests that he was
considered an important figure and a worthy hero to tell stories about. (I
should perhaps add the obvious if unromantic caveat here that it is possible
that the romances were drawing on poems and stories that were originally about
several different figures called Owain, and were only later aggregated around a
single character).
It is
not known how long Owain’s career lasted.
If he was fighting Flamdwyn when his father Urien was alive, and was
himself killed by the same Flamdwyn, that may be a tenuous indication that he
did not long outlive his father.
Parentage
The
poetry is clear that Owain was a son of Urien, who was King of Rheged some time
in the second half of the sixth century (more about Urien and Rheged in later
posts).
The
story that Owain’s mother was Modron, the daughter of the King of Annwfn
(Annwfn is the Welsh name for the Otherworld), may be no more than a late
legend, invented after Owain had become a key figure of Arthurian tales to provide
a supernatural origin suitable for a legendary hero. There may also be a possibility that it could
have slightly more prosaic roots, perhaps indicating that Owain’s mother was thought
to be non-Christian. At least some of
the Picts were non-Christian at the time of St Columba’s visit to King Bridei
in the 560s, approximately contemporary with Urien, and the early English kings
and aristocrats converted by St Augustine’s Roman missionaries in and after 597
AD were (presumably) non-Christian prior to that. Possibly there were high-status
non-Christians in other kingdoms too. It
may be that Urien married a non-Christian lady, perhaps as part of a dynastic
alliance, and that this was later developed into a supernatural liaison long
after all other details had been forgotten.
This is pure speculation on my part.
Children
The Life
of St Kentigern commissioned by Bishop Herbert dates from the twelfth century,
over half a millennium after the events, so should be treated with
caution. It is possible that the story
was invented wholesale to provide St Kentigern with a royal parentage and
suitably exotic conception story, with Owain’s name simply borrowed out of the
romances as a worthy hero to father an important saint. That said, a dynastic marriage between a
prince of Rheged (in what is now south-western Scotland/north-western England)
and a princess from the kingdom of Lothian in what is now south-eastern
Scotland) is plausible, and the date of Kentigern’s death in Annales Cambriae
does not contradict the (limited!) evidence about the likely date range for
Owain. So it is also possible that the
story contains a kernel of truth. No
other children of Owain son of Urien are mentioned in the surviving sources.
Date
Owain’s
father Urien is stated in Historia Brittonum to have fought against Theodric of
Bernicia, one of the sons of Ida of Bernicia.
Theodric’s reign is not precisely dated, but it falls somewhere between
the end of Ida’s twelve-year reign (which, according to Bede, began in 547) in
559 and the twenty-four-year reign of Aethelferth of Bernicia that began in 593
(for a discussion on the dating, see my article ‘Origins of Northumbria: Two Aethelrics?’). So Theodric ruled some time between 559 and 593. As Urien is said to have fought against
Theodric, it can be inferred that Urien was militarily active at some time in
the same period, i.e. in the second half of the sixth century. Urien and Theodric need not have been exact
contemporaries, of course; all that is needed for consistency with Historia
Brittonum is that their reigns overlapped long enough for at least one
battle.
As
Urien’s son, Owain belongs to the next generation and therefore is likely to
belong to a later period, perhaps in the last quarter of the sixth century. Urien and Owain are shown fighting together
in The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain, indicating that their fighting careers
overlapped.
Unfortunately,
Owain’s and Urien’s adversary Flamdwyn cannot be certainly identified. The name Flamdwyn is a nickname, meaning
something like ‘Firebrand’ or ‘Flamebearer’.
The next line in Owain’s death song refers to ‘the men of Lloegyr’, and
as Lloegyr is a common medieval Welsh name for the lands that became England,
this is consistent with Flamdwyn as a leader of an English kingdom. The obvious candidate is Theodric of Bernicia,
since Historia Brittonum explicitly says that he fought Urien, but it could be
another king, either of Bernicia or of another kingdom.
Taniu
and her father Lewdwn do not appear in Historia Brittonum, Annales Cambriae or
genealogies other than Kentigern’s, so they do not add any independent dating
evidence.
Annales
Cambriae enters the death of Kentigern in 612.
If Kentigern was really Owain’s son, this is also consistent with a date
for Owain in the late sixth century.
Conclusion
For
such an important figure in Arthurian legend, Owain map Urien is surprisingly
poorly recorded in historical sources (though the same could be said of Arthur
himself, so Owain is in illustrious company there). Taking the Taliesin poetry at face value, it
seems reasonable to infer that Owain son of Urien was a warrior hero in the
late sixth century, that he and his father fought at least one famous battle
against a (probably) English warlord, and that Owain ruled at least part of
Rheged, possibly only briefly. Whether
he had a non-Christian mother, and whether he also entered into a liaison or
marriage with a princess of Lothian and fathered a famous saint is open to
interpretation, though there seems no obvious reason why these would be
impossible.
Owain and Taniu's story is imagined in Kathleen Herbert’s novel Bride of the Spear (first published
under the title Lady of the Fountain),
based in part on the earlier Life of St Kentigern and The Lady of the Fountain.
Trifolium Books UK plan to bring out a new edition of Bride of the Spear in
June 2013. For more details, see the
Trifolium Books blog.
References
Life
of St Kentigern, by Jocelyn of Furness. Translated by C Whiddon Green,
available online.
The Dream
of Rhonabwy. In: The Mabinogion. Translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones.
Everyman Classics, 1989. ISBN 0-460-15097-9
The
Lady of the Fountain. In: The Mabinogion. Translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas
Jones. Everyman Classics, 1989. ISBN 0-460-15097-9.
Whiddon
Green, C. Saint
Kentigern, Apostle to Strathclyde: A critical analysis of a northern saint. 1998,
available online.
