The Most Famous Celtic Myths & Legends Explained | Celtic Legends | Chronicle

[Music] Ireland an island of contrasting Beauty here on the very Fringe of Europe the rugged Atlantic Coastline gives way to a land of greenery fertility and life this is a place with an identity all of its own both physically and culturally a land of mist and Magic that Delights visitors from all over the world Ireland is a land with an ancient past an ancient Celtic past it was 1500 years ago that Saint Patrick arrived here bringing the word of Christ to a people already centuries old Saint Patrick's mission was ultimately successful and his status is secure as one of the greatest figures of Irish Legend but the arrival of Christianity did not eliminate altogether the old ways of life in Ireland the Celtic tradition lived on by reading the surviving sagas of Irish Celtic literature we can see that Saint Patrick is just one of the legendary figures of old Island the stories of great Heroes such as kahulin and Finn McCool are still told today keeping alive the Celtic tradition of The Bard [Music] these wonderful stories may be largely mythical but there are also Tales of undeniably real Celtic Heroes the struggles of this in getter Ridge and queen Boudicca also Express fully the spirit of a remarkable people it was a spirit that not even Saint Patrick could quench the man would become patron saint of Ireland was born around 389 A.D probably in the southwest of England we know that his family had connections with the early Christian church although Patrick's own account of his Boyhood revealed an early lack of interest in the Christian faith and a typically boyish neglect for his studies but when he was a youth of about 14. he was taken from his home by a gang of Irish Raiders who enslaved him on the island according to Legend Patrick spent his early days in Ireland looking after his captor's livestock it was here in the cold dark and empty nights watching over the cattle that he is said to have learned to turn to God for help and comfort in so doing the young man became committed to his faith during his time on the land Patrick began to experience Visions urging him to escape from his captivity after a period of some six years he succeeded he fled his master's Farm made his way to the coast and departed the island of Ireland by sea he traveled to what is now northern France where after calling on God for his help he returned to the land of his upbringing but he simply could not settle down he felt a strange compulsion to return to the land where he had been held captive Ireland in preparation he returned to France where he received his formal training as a priest before journeying back to the Irish Island initially his role was that of assistant to a missionary of more senior status but when his fellow Christian died on the road Patrick was ordained and charged with carrying the mission alone strangford lock he established his first church in a barn given to him by the local Lord and he began to convert the local population to Christianity it would be a difficult task since the Irish people already possessed a deep and ancient culture with a strong spiritual element they were Celts a people with their own holy men The Druids The Druids of course were enormously important accounts and their Fame has come down through history it's surprising therefore that we don't know a great deal about them history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanaga and Kat Jarman not only that but with a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at checkout what we can gather about The Druids is that they were the repository of the law in both senses law as in legal system and law as in the culture of the Celtic people we do know that The Druids conducted religious ceremonies and from what we can gather these appeared to take place in the famous Oak Groves um we do know that The Druids or part of the druidic religion centered around trees and we still have vestiges of the druidic tree alphabet which to some extent is still associated with the gallic and the gallic alphabet Patrick's Mission would bring him into direct conflict with the Druids and their followers confronted by the Christian The Druids ordered a contest of Faith a trial of powers between Patrick and the Druid magician locket MO it was Patrick who prevailed and Christianity began to establish itself in Ireland the crusading priest met resistance the matters came to our head on Easter Day in 433 A.D the Christian festival coincided with the Druid Spring Festival at this time at the instructions of The Druids all the fires in the land were extinguished to be re-lit from the one fire burning on the hill of Tara which was the royal residence and a profoundly sacred place this ancient ritual symbolized the coming of spring and The Rebirth of the land Patrick chose to affect a confrontation by lighting his own Easter fire nearby so when the high King saw this fire he was absolutely Furious and sent his officers to arrest this man but his Druid said to him your majesty if we do not put out the fire of this new religion today it will burn Forever After in this land well that's what happened and Patrick escaped because he quoted Psalms such as some trust in chariots I mean horses but we will trust in God and it was a thunderstorm and the king's horses panicked and fled and he had the king had other officers at the foot of the Mountain to arrest him but all they saw was a herd of deer and so the tradition grew that prayer called Patrick's breastplate his The Cry of the deer other well-known legends about Patrick are that he banished all the serpents representing evil from the island of Ireland he is also said to have used the three lead Shamrock as a way to explain the Trinity the concept of Father Son and Holy Ghost being one to this day the Shamrock Remains the emblem of Saint Patrick and the national flower of the Irish people [Music] significantly Patrick is also credited with bringing to Ireland the gift of writing we know that Irish literacy did begin around the time of Patrick's Ministry helping to further spread the word of Christ but the arrival of the written word achieved something else for Ireland it helped preserve the folklore of the existing native tradition [Music] thanks to the efforts of modern archaeologists we now know the origin of that tradition it stems not from Ireland but from Central Europe discoverers of ancient artifacts at locations such as halstadt in Austria have revealed the earliest secrets of the people who continued to flourish in Saint Patrick's Island over a thousand years later accounts the people of halstadt flourished around 700 BC a time when Europe was undergoing a technological Revolution across the continent iron began to replace bronze as the principal material for weapons and edged tools the iron using innovators of halstadt marked the beginning of Celtic culture and these mysterious Craftsmen are the first of the Celtic peoples there is some mystery about the origins of the cows but Scholars nowadays tend to think that they originated somewhere in the region of the Indian subcontinent and by a series of migrations moved across Europe through Spain up into northern Europe and also by a more Northerly route through Switzerland and into northern Europe that way the Celts are often portrayed as wild barbarians the antithesis of civilized people the problem we have here is that one of our major sources for studying the Celts is from the point of view of the Greek and Roman world looking outwards at the so-called barbarians this particular problem with one of our main sources which is of course Julius Caesar's own Narrative of the gallic wars it's the Greeks and the Romans who give us such words as Barbarian and civilized and it's arranged according to their cultural preoccupations and preconceptions [Applause] we do have a corrective to this which is from looking at the evidence left by the Celts themselves from the excavation of their settlements their houses their burials and from the objects in them and it's quite clear from this that the Celts by the time of Caesar were an organized sophisticated Society with a very considerable technological ability and able to produce what to our eyes appear extremely beautiful objects in the centuries that followed the halshdad people spread throughout Europe settling an area from the Southeast coast of Britain Eastward towards Austria and Switzerland and South into the Iberian Peninsula around 500 BC a more Dynamic phase of development began this period saw a renewed expansion as the Celts began a series of conquests which Consolidated their hold on Europe Celtic tribes from Switzerland and Southern Germany invaded Macedonia and Greece eventually settling in parts of the Balkans and Asia Minor in Britain they moved north and west from their initial settlement into Yorkshire and parts of Scotland and it was only a matter of time before the Celts arrived on the island of Ireland Celtic tribes also moved South into Italy famously attacking Rome itself in the year 390 BC an army of Celtic warriors carved a Roman citizen Army into bloody ruin forcing their way into what was already a great City driven into their High Citadel the Roman citizens could only watch in despair as their proud home was laid to waste faced with starvation they agreed to pay a huge Ransom in Gold to their triumphant enemy [Music] in simple terms the Romans were forced to pay the Celts to go away their defeat had been total but there was more humiliation to come as the goal was being weighed the Celtic leader brenis stepped forward and in a dramatic gesture flung his sword onto the scales with the words they victus woe to the defeated he wanted even more gold left with no other alternative the Romans had to hand over the last gold in the city was a bitter humiliation which Rome would never forget in time they would have a terrible Revenge the Romans called the Invaders the Gauls The Mists of time and the passing of the centuries have obliterated much of their history but in the 4th Century BC we know that they dominated a vast swathe of land stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and from the Baltic to the warm shores of the Mediterranean although classical writers were quick to dismiss them as Savage barbarians the Gauls enjoyed a rich and diverse culture and a clearly structured Society Celtic social organization was based on the tribe Each of which had its own distinctive name tribal identity was intimately connected with territorial integrity the Celtic tribes were jealous of their borders which defined a patchwork of petty kingdoms stood in many Celtic areas into relatively modern times the clan system in Scotland is a continuing Legacy of this tribal system within the tribe Celtic Society was a rigidly hierarchical caste system among the free Celts it was essentially three-fold Kings Nobles and free commoners but like many ancient peoples the Celts also had an underclass condemned to a life of poverty and even slavery the tribal leaders were Kings although The Druids were generally afforded higher status each King was elected by the tribal aristocracy from the kin whose predecessor although he was not necessarily one of his sons among later romanized tribes the institution of kingship was replaced by that of Chief Magistrate such magistrates ruled in conjunction with the Nobles who were often haughty and aristocratic and tended to be somewhat aloof from The Ordinary People [Applause] it was from this class of people that the legendary Celtic warriors were drawn [Music] the warriors were in many ways the embodiment of Celtic Society privileged and spoiled their sole purpose in life was fighting all Celtic social organization was geared to supporting the subjective Warfare formed an essential part of Celtic everyday life and the warriors were its personification the Celts were really famous for their spectacular courage and Bravada they mounted successful campaigns sacked Rome even assaulted Delphi but they never established an empire in the classic sense because they were more interested in the pursuit of War rather than the pursuit of Empire this lack of organization was reflected in the way in which they actually waged War to the Celts war was something of a cult and that cult was one of the individual Julius Caesar amongst others mentions the Celts as being particularly ferocious in battle but he also points out that they lack forward planning and organization therefore in order to defeat the Celts all that another Army needs to do is to outwit them and make them angry because then they will charge straight at you and eventually if they've got enough Loot on a campaign they will go home this has certain parallels throughout the whole of Celtic history in particular the campaigns mounted with the Highlanders by Montrose during the English Civil War and also for the Scottish armies during the Jacobite rebellions fighting specially single combat man-to-man was regarded as the right and proper way of life for young Heroes as we shall see this Warrior Spirit lies at the heart of the greatest stories of Irish Legend stories that are still told today sadly the military muscle of the Celtic tribes would prove inadequate against a truly organized enemy an enemy such as Julius Caesar's Road by the first century BC Celts were in retreat pressure from Rome and the German tribes of the East left only the British Isles in the territory of Gaul as free Celtic lands these garlic Celts would ultimately fall to Caesar's Legions but only after an epic struggle in which the Celts succeeded in organizing themselves into a huge single Force they were led by a man whose Deeds show that the themes of the Irish Legends are rooted in hard historical fact his name was versing their sengetrich was a young man in 52 BC possibly as young as 20. but that year he displayed military leadership far beyond his years he was a member of the arvenian tribe but he knew that the gallic Celts would have to be United to stand a chance against the Roman troops then conquering Gaul under his leadership an enormous Army was formed with tribes from all over Gaul contributing fighting men but the Rebellion started inauspiciously at a varrica the center of the bitterika tribe Caesar's Legions were triumphant according to the Roman leader himself some forty thousand inhabitants were killed camped nearby versus knew that the loss of a varicum was a real blow but that it did not mean the end of the uprising in fact it was about to gather momentum decided to attack jagovia capital of their singettrich owned tribe the other knee he deployed six of his ten gallic Legions but when he arrived he found that the Celts had positioned themselves extremely well their stronghold was a high Plateau whose southern Edge was defined by huge defensive War on the slope below their singettorich placed a Detachment of troops themselves protected by a smaller wall [Music] as a first move Caesar decided to attack this position in three Legions quickly secured this aim but In the Heat of the battle the Roman troops charged up the hill towards the main stronghold seeing what was occurring their singette Rich dispatched forces to attack from the flanks and after Fierce fighting the Romans were forced to call off the attack the Govi approved proved that the Romans could be beaten and varsingetterich was now a hero a status he never lost Gaelic tribes who had so far stayed neutral now joined with him the important adwe tribe would previously supported the Romans now join the rebels response was to take his Legions North to join with the rest of his army before heading back south towards Provincia but as the Roman troops made their Journey the leader of their opponents made the first of two decisions that would prove disastrous [Applause] vessengerage decided to Ambush the legions using three detachments of coloring he did not use his infantry and Caesar was able to see off the attack with a massive loss of Rebel lives we will never know for sure why versing getterich made this decision or whether the Romans would have been defeated had foot soldiers been deployed what we do know is that the Celtic Leader's response would also prove to be a mistake he decided to retreat to the plateau stronghold of a lazier taking 80 000 of his best troops while his Cavalry set off to raise an army from the whole of Gaul but Caesar now proved his Mastery of Siege Warfare around Elysia his men constructed an enormous siegeworks whose pits towers and ramparts prevented versing getter rich and his men from breaking out they also prevented his allies from breaking in as the besieged Celts began to run out of supplies their fellow Rebels arrived in the form of a stupendous Army possibly a quarter of a million strong by contrast the Roman Force contained just 50 000. but their siegeworks proved decisive after a number of bloody attempts to break through the defenses and relieve their leader the Celtic Army gave up the fight and broke up shortly afterwards versus surrendered though the gallic rebellion was ultimately defeated the achievement of their singettrich should not be dismissed lightly though the Celtic tribes were autonomous and lacked any Central Administration he succeeded in putting together an army which may have been the biggest ever seen in Europe at the time Caesar himself praised a worthy adversary that Superior Roman organization and Caesar's skill ultimately won through get rich himself was eventually taken to Rome and forced to take part in a triumphal procession in Caesar's honor afterwards he was ritually strangled but over two thousand years later he remains a potent symbol of rebellion and he is now accepted as the first great National figure of France across the channel in Britain that status has also enjoyed by a Celtic individual who led Fierce resistance to the Romans not a man but one of the most famous women of all history Boudicca or to use the title she enjoyed in life Queen Boudicca of the issini by ad60 much of Britain was under Roman controller influence but still the native Celts resisted the power of the legions that year the Roman Governor theodonius found himself campaigning Against The Druids in their power base of North Wales but while he was engaged there elsewhere in Britain one of his colleagues made a foolish mistake that would threaten the Roman occupation itself in the present day region of East Anglia there lived the icini tribe a client State ruled by King sasatagus when he died he named his wife boudica and his daughters as the joint heirs to half his kingdom the other half he offered to Rome hoping that this would at least maintain some Independence for his tribe but his Hope was in vain Rome chose instead to formally put the icini territory and their sheer brutality provoked outrage amongst the natives iceny settlements were looted and destroyed with many of their inhabitants carried off to slavery the iceny rulers were not spared in a fatal miscalculation the daughters of the issini queen were raped and Boudicca herself was scourged it was this more than anything that sparked the icini into Rebellion a rebellion led by the queen herself over the course of the following months Boudicca proved herself the equal love their singettrich like her fellow celt a hundred years before she gathered together an army she persuaded a neighboring tribe the trinivantes to join with the icini soon she was in a position to lead a huge force of Celtic warriors on an offensive campaign their first Target had likely defended Roman Colony populated by veteran soldiers the site of present-day Colchester had a strong symbolic value since this was where the Romans had built a great Temple to Emperor Claudius a construction despised by the natives under boudicca's leadership the colony was attacked and in just two days it was taken fired by an understandable hatred the Celtic warriors exacted a terrible and bloody Revenge appropriately it was the hated Temple of Claudius that witnessed The Last Stand of the Roman Defenders but there was nothing they could do after an orgy of Slaughter boudica emerged triumphant far away in Wales suetonius was informed of the Grim news from camelodanum at once he set off to take charge of the situation he traveled to the new Roman Port of londinium but realized that it could not be defended if as seemed likely it was attacked he ordered the city abandoned sure enough boudicca's Army arrived shortly afterwards slaughtering any who had stayed behind meanwhile sutonius was organizing his British Legions in preparation for a full-scale engagement with the rebel forces significantly he was prepared to wait for the opportunity to give battle at a location of his own Tuesday but still the Rebellion gathered speed fired by the successes of camelodanum and londinium more and more natives flocked to boudicca's cause her forces now headed Northwest along the Roman Watling Street and took verilanium present days and Albans in another bloody Conquest the Roman occupation now in real danger if the britons could defeat suetonius and his Legions the Romans might be expelled from Britain for good the decisive battle was not long in coming at a still undetermined sight in the English Midlands the two armies finally faced each other as was the case in Roman times the leaders of the opposing forces sought to inspire their troops before the battle suetonia's speech was dismissive of his foe while Queen boudica chose to motivate her troops by reminding them of the outrage and had sparked the rebellion in the first place [Applause] the formalities over the battle began the numerically Superior British forces charged the Roman positions but it was Roman tactics not strength of Manpower that proved decisive acting on the express instructions of their Commander the Roman troops maintained their position until the time came to throw their javelins with deadly effect as waves of Rebel troops drove forward the Romans advanced in a wedge formation and the British found themselves hampered in a narrow strip of land that formed the battle site as Boudicca watched in horror their troops were soon in flight the Bloodshed was appalling it is possible that as many as 150 000 perished what is certain is that boudicca's Great Rebellion was finally over knowing her likely fate if she were captured she decided to take poison her death marked the end of large-scale British resistance to the Romans but it also signaled the beginning of her Legend she is the first great figure in the history of Britain a heroine who was undeniably a celt the decades that followed boudicca's death saw Britain become a thoroughly romanized Province like Gaul before it but the Romans would never conquer the whole of the British Isles the Celtic way of life lived on the highlands of Scotland and in Ireland here the old traditions were maintained including the age-old Celtic love of Storytelling in Ireland these Tales evolved into a substantial body of poetic literature and when the arrival of Saint Patrick and Christianity brought literacy to Ireland these Tales could at last be written down and preserved this is the origin of the great stories of Irish Legend which we know today undoubtedly and unsurprisingly the most famous of these stories concerned two great warriors Finn McCool and kahuli foreign is likely to have actually existed as a historical figure sometime during the First Century A.D the stories that we now know of his life belong more to the realm of myth than that of fact but their value is not as a document of History instead they remain great achievements of literature that reveal the concerns of the people who created them story of how kuhulin acquired his name is a popular and typical example of the genre King Conor of Ulster had a sister named dexterra dra's husband was named sultan Sultan was a Border guard he was a member of the Red Branch notes that were around King Connor the king of Ulster his border post was at Dundalk it's called Dune dulgan which means the fort of delgan and the fort is just outside the modern at the moment as I'm speaking we are in the County Museum in Dundalk dexterra had a son named shaytanta her husband was not the father of the son shaytanta's father was Lou the sun god of the two-headed Anand so to him more or less drops out of the story early on shaytanta and his mother dexterra lived at Dune dogen the Border post what you see now at Dune dogen is the remains of an 18th century house on top of a 12th century anglo-norman mat that is an Earthen defensive Mound which is probably on top of an earlier Celtic defensive position which is on the high point of a ridge overlooking the castletown river shaytanta and dra were living there when shaytante was about five years old some Red Branch notes came along the road on their way North to Avan Maha the Ulster capital said to his mother who are those men she said those are Red Branch nights said I want to be a red Branch Knight his mother said Yes dear when you grow up no he said I want to be a red Branch Knight now she said the way those nights are going just up to the north he says okay I'm off to be a red bear tonight Bye Mom I'd offer he went to Amar Maha when he arrived at Aman Baker at the king's Palace in the green on the green outside the king's Palace the boy troop were playing hurling these were the boys who were in training to be Warriors up to the age of about 17. and shaytanta said well I know how to do that this is a good way to meet the boys so we ran in among them with his Hurley took the Slither the ball away from them knocked them all down and scored a goal well there were bloody noses and black eyes and broken heads and broken bones and howls and whales all over the playing field the arms Master Fergus came out and said what's all the commotion about they said he took this to throw away from us and he came in Among Us and scored a goal and ferger says what's your name little fella and he says well my name is my mother is decatura and Fergus as well then you are Connor's nephew coming to me to your uncle Connor so King Connor took shaytanta under his arm and took care of him looked after him made sure that he got arms and everything one day when Connor and the Red Branch notes were off to a feast at Cullen's house not too far away Connor stopped by the playing field and said to Hunter would you like to come along to the feast with us and shaytanta said well I'm busy playing with the boys now you go ahead and I'll follow your chariot tracks I went ahead to Colin's house I went into the house they were feasting and drinking and perhaps a bit more of the drinking the feasting when it got dark Colin said to Connor are all of your people here or are you expecting anybody else and Connor forgetting about shaytata said no we're all here why do you ask comment said because I have a ferocious guard dog and anyone who comes here after dark he will kill immediately and Connor said no we're all here let your guard dog out well little caitanta came along having finished his game with the boys came up to Colin's house the guard dog saw shaytanta had to sell the guard dog now she talked to was busy throwing his up into the air throwing the the Hurley and throwing his Javelin up after them and catching all three before they fell you saw the guard dog baking for him through the stither up into the air hit it with the Hurley knocked it into the dog's mouth down his throat all the way through the dog out the back and killed the dog Connor and Colin and The Red Badge Knights came down they ran out they were very relieved that she taught it was all right but Colin was lamenting about the death of his guard dog he said it took me a year to train and raise that dog until he's the best guard dog in all of Ireland what am I going to do for a guard dog until I can raise and train another one said well since I'm the one who killed your guard dog I will be your guard dog I will be the Hound of Cullen which is in Irish and that's how kukalan got his name form part of the Ulster cycle of Irish literature a collection of over 100 Stories full of great warriors and heroes kahulin himself is the greatest at these colorful figures a man prepared to make any sacrifice for the honor of his people as we find out in the poignant story of kahulin and his only son we're in the County Museum in Dundalk in County louth this is a representation of a cross-section of a bug the bugs preserve things for archaeologists we have a stone X for the Neolithic this looks to me to be about early or to Mid Iron Age this is a bog Road this seems to be a medieval slipper or moccasin medieval medieval on up to our beloved 20th century and the plastic milk cartons the time of the cattle raid of Cooley the toyin bokunya is set just about the time of Christ so right around this time in the Bog OTA raid and the stories of kuhalan are part of the Ulster cycle and these stories are stories about Kings and warriors not surprisingly they're quite bloody and very often tragic and to me one of the saddest stories because in my opinion something terrible happens for not a very good reason and perhaps this is the essence of tragedy one of the most tragic stories is the story of the death of kanla but in the manuscripts it's called the death of ifa's only son and this is how it happened go Holland was sent away to graduate Warrior school on the Isle of Skye this was the school of Female warrior another female Warrior named FIFA attacked skullah malcol Holland was Scottish student and guhola was defending he was in hand to hand come back with IFA and IFA got him down on his back and she was about to kill him and Kohala knew her weak point he says look look there are ifas horses and a chariot they're going over the cliff and IFA turned around to look and guhalan took advantage and got her and her back and he held his sword up to her throat he said no you will stay with me for a year you will bear me a son or I'll kill you she agreed and so she was pregnant by kohalen when kohalen left to come back to Ireland go Holland did a very strange thing something that works out very well according to the story but it seems to me a little bit silly first of all he gave IFA a gold ring and he said when the boy if it's a son is old enough to fit this ring send him to Ireland to find me and they put geish on his son gesh is a Prohibition in this case he said this is geish for him it is gay should his Taboo it's prohibited for him to give his name to any single Warrior it's also forbidden for him to refuse a fight and with that off he went back home and he married Emer According to some stories IFA heard about this and was very jealous and decided to put her own Geisha this is where the gauge came from ankana but according to the original story it was Holland's one time King Connor and the Red Branch Knights were standing around on the Strand here at Dundalk and they saw a boat come across the sea to them in this boat it was a young boy about 10 years old and he had a neat little trick he could throw his sling up into the air and trap birds and bring them down without killing them now this is something that kuhalan himself used to do when he was a boy the boy came up to the shore Connor said well he's a stranger he said one of his Warriors down to find out what the boy's name was the boy of course could not give his name to a single Warrior he said I won't tell you my name the wife said well you tell me or you fight me the voice okay I'll fight you and so the warrior drew his sword Khanna took a sling put a stone in the sling him bang in the middle of the forehead and the warrior the warrior was down he said well I don't like to fight children anyway he went back up to King Connor Connor Connell Karnak the great Ulster hero down same thing happened to Conor Carnac he went back to Connor the only thing to do was to say foreign recognized something in the boy's eyes he recognized his friend Eva the White's mother in the boy's eyes and he suspected this was his son but kuhalan had no choice he was a champion of Ulster the boy refused to give his name and he had to challenge him the boy because of his geish could not reveal his name kuhalan and Kanna flat and according to one story Khanna pushed kuhalan down under the waves and kuhalan nearly drowned and the weight of pushing him down indented either the boys or kuhalun's feet into a stone which some say years ago could have been seen on the beach at Dune dock but because kohana was almost beaten by his own son who Allen had to save himself he got out his trusty guyabolica the magic spear that had the prongs the the barbed prongs inside and he killed his own son with the guy bolga and yet just play it's very touching at the end he picks up the boy's body delivers the body to to King Connor into the Red Branch Knights and he says manifest her this is what I have done for you I have killed my only son for you kahulin's love of his people is also revealed in the most famous of the stories of the Alta cycle the cattle raid of cooling here again we have a tale of great heroism and adventure with kahulin compelled once more to fight for alster in this case his enemy is from the land of connacht an enemy Keen to take one of the greatest prizes in the whole of Ulster the brown bull of Cooley but this enemy is not a man in the Celtic tradition of the powerful female Warrior kuhulin must do battle with the queen of connacht Queen Maeve we're on the top of Dune dalgan which is an Earthen defensive Mound which was built in the 12th century by the anglo-normans probably on top of an earlier Celtic defensive site dundalken means the fort of delega dalaga was a king who lived about 4 000 years ago locally this bound or mutt is called Holland's Castle or kuholen's Mount because by local tradition kuhalan lived here as a child behind me you can see the carlingford peninsula the carnival mountains the old name of that is the Cooley Hills and this is where the brown bull of Cooley was kept in the small Kingdom of Coulee story of the Bramble of Coulee is a fantastically long and involved Saga it's a story that begins with a king and queen in bed king and queen of connect lying in bed and they get into a little competition match with each other where he says I'm of a higher status than you aren't you lucky you married such a beautiful woman as me who's so rich and he says well you should be lucky that you married such a Handsome and Rich Man as me and this little bedtime competition escalates and they begin to name their wealth and the queen who's Maeve and the King whose allele get to the point where they realize they're of the same level of wealth and then alil says Ah and I have a fantastic ball fantastic yeah as as they only are in sagas and she is stumped because they're equal up to this point but he has this bull and she has no equivalent and what this means for her is that in Irish law her husband because he's the wealthier of the two can dominate her in the marriage whereas if she was a woman of equal wealth then she would be of equal status within the marriage and Maeve is not a woman who wants to be dominated by her husband Maeve was born to dominate so she is determined that she is going to get a bull that exceeds that of her husband so that she can dominate him in their marriage and she's heard tell of one in Ulster and she's going to go get it and it is the brown bull of Cooley and the whole of the Saga unfolds from that moment she is determined that she is going to get this brown bull of Cooley in Ulster and the The Saga unrolls from that and The Saga of the toy bokuli is all the adventures that happen on the way all of The Adventures of the people of Ulster trying to defend their Brown Bull and themselves against the the host of Warriors brought by Maeve to get this bull and all of the Side Stories you know all the subplots and um and digressions from it um in the end of course it all ends rather badly anyway um the bull ends up dying and but nevertheless a good time has been had by all along the way there are a number of recurring themes in the stories that make up the Ulster cycle the concept of the individual Champion that the tribe is won the importance of an individual's honor is also repeatedly emphasized as well as the ongoing need to fight for it in these Celtic stories as in Celtic life it is the skills of warfare that provide the means for social advancement even the closest of friends could be compelled to meet in battle as kahulin himself finds out in one of the saddest that all the Ulster cycle Tales this is the river that flows through the village of Rd in County Laos the Irish for Rd is Balia this means the town of the Ford of ferdia and that's its main claim to fame now I'll back up a little bit to the story of the calibrate of Cooley gohanan wanted to marry Emer 's father said no unless you go to graduate school for warriors first you put this as a condition on kuhalan because he suspected that kukalan would not survive Scott's graduate school on the Isle of Skye he hoped he wouldn't survive Gohan survived and there are other stories on that but this is where he met ferdia ferdia became his blood brother is closer than brother friend unfortunately ferdia was a fear bog from connacht and at the time of the torn the cattle raid of Cooley he was fighting on the side of Maeve in The Invasion against Ulster kohalen was the champion of Ulster defending Ulster Against The Invasion didn't want to fight each other and they refused to fight each other Queen Maeve was offering her daughter money Fame everything to ferdia and he refused to fight who Holland because they were best friends finally Maeve found his weak point she challenged his courage she said I think you're afraid to fight kohalan you're afraid he's going to kill you that got him he finally agreed to fight to kuhalan and by local tradition the fight was right here at the fort in Rd and there's a standing Stone that's been here for a long time to commemorate that event now what happened to the battle the first date kohalen and ferdia hacked and saw it at each other with their weapons neither got the better or the other at the end of the day they bowed out bound up each other's wounds they gave each other food and helped each other it's like a day they hacked at each other again was afraid he was not going to be able to beat ferdia so he told his Chariot here if tomorrow it looks as if I'm losing I want you to send me the guy bolga on the water the guy Burger is a mysterious weapon it apparently is loaded with springs and Barbs it enters the balug the stomach and when it goes into the stomach the Springs send the barbs through the person's body and there is no way to extract this weapon without killing the person so if you're hit by the guy blowing up you're dead this guy bulga was given to kuhalan and he was the only one as far as we know who ever used it the third day got a very severe wound from ferdia ferdia was about to defeat him and called for the guy bologna his charioteer sent it across the water go Holland took it with his toes and got under ferdia's defenses and put it into his belly and he killed his best friend and then he lamented well the army of the rest of Ireland came toward him and he was urged by a chariot here to get away they're going to come and they're going to kill you but Corona went on for pages and pages in The manuscript lamenting that he had killed his best friend his blood brother philia the second of the great cycles of Irish Legend is also dominated by the exploits of one amazing Warrior a man who in modern terms could be described as a superhero this is the phoenian cycle and their central figure is Finn McCool like kahulin Finn McCool was almost certainly a real historical figure who lived around the 2nd Century A.D Finn is also a great warrior but he is also a poet the leader of a group of men who's skilled with weapons are matched by their skills with words perhaps because of this many students feel that the adventures of Finn represent the greatest stories of Irish Legend somebody said once that filmmakul is everybody that filmmakul is the person all the intricate and difficult um feelings and experiences that we have as individuals fion is the most generous man who ever lived but also in some stories he's quite a mean and stingy man fion is the most noble and brave man who ever lived but in some stories he acts out the part of a coward fume is the most well-intentioned man who ever lived yet in some stories he's very vindictive and jealous so that fion is really what we are ourselves and for a thousand five hundred years Irish people and Scottish people and Max people have been Imagining the stories of Hyun makul and have been entertained by them because fion is so human and he saw multifaceted also the richness and diversity of Finn McCool's character contribute vitally to the impact of the stories which concern him in one of the best known Tales he is furious to find out that his fellow Warrior damnit has run off with gronya the King's Daughter and object of his own affections an epic story unfolds as Finn hunts down his fellowthenian only for the two men to be eventually reconciled throughout the cycle Finn's pursuit of wisdom is also emphasized it is this balance of the active and the reflective that give the stories of Finn their continuing appeal the legend of John McCool includes thin taking lots of risks to gain wisdom he's the man who as a boy put his thumb in The Cauldron of wisdom and gained wisdom and I think there's something very Eternal about that quest for wisdom is a hero who's not only a military hero but he's almost a spiritual hero you know he undergoes Transformations he undertakes quests and he has insight and wisdom in addition to the ability just to fight and I think it's a hero he's more three-dimensional than puhu and he's more three-dimensional than a lot of Heroes and I think for anybody who's a reader of stories who has an aspiration for insight and knowledge and poetry then Finn is a natural hero and the Irish culture has always been one which values learning and poetry and insight and wisdom and so fion is an eternal hero for that I think the stories of Irish Legend are one of the most vibrant and enduring legacies of the ancient people who created them when Saint Patrick arrived in Ireland it was this island and this island alone that fully retained a Celtic identity same identity that inspired versing getterich and Boudicca the identity that provides the setting for the stories of kahulan and Finn the Irish Legends there is no reason to suppose that future Generations will not find them as fascinating and inspirational as those who have already come to appreciate them across the centuries of time [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] Scotland is justifiably famous for the beauty of its landscapes for the Magnificent rivers and Glenns the forests and of course there are also the fairy tale castles it was in places like this where some of the great legendary stories of Scotland were hatched and played out this is needpath Castle here in the borders and we've come here because it represents many of the things that are good about Scotland it stands on a hill above the river Tweed and it has endured for the centuries as have many other stories we're about to explore unusually we've been spared the rain today so we can have a look at needpath Castle in all its Glory normally when tourists come to Scotland the the bypass this area and they head straight for the highlands which for them is a great shame because they miss not only some of the best landscapes in the world they also miss the roots of some of the the real stories that color Scotland's history [Music] one of the most famous figures in Scottish history is now William Wallace thanks to Hollywood who came here and made the Braveheart film Wallace has become one of the single most dominant figures on the medieval landscape of Scotland but he was certainly a character who deserved to be celebrated and in those days when there was no real such thing as a nation he probably was one of the very first Patriots I think William Wallace must be regarded as one of the great icons of Scottish history a remarkable figure by any stretch of the imagination historically he was the son of a knight but in Legend he became the Common Man The Man from Nowhere who appeared in the hour of need of his country medieval people believed in the great chain of being that everything had its correct place if you toot one piece out and inserted it somewhere else the whole chain was likely to fragment so the English accounts stress the unnaturalness of this man and what's Curious is that the Scottish nobility who should have been leading the armies at the time Wallace was leading them also distrusted him for the same reasons he was a man of low birth we know very little about the early life of William Wallace what we do know is that he was born in eldersley in the Parish of Paisley in 1270. but for the rest of the detail on his colorful life we have to rely on an epic poem which was written by a Minstrel known as blind Harry and blind Hari tells the story of William Wallace and his deeds from the time when he stepped onto the national stage in 1297 A.D the first record of Wallace in the history books is the mid-1290s when we hear the sheriff of Lanark William de hazelrig who was an Englishman and part of the English Garrison there had assaulted William Wallace's wife he subsequently murdered her Wallace took Swift and instant Revenge he murdered the Hazel rig and with some followers killed the rest of the Garrison in the town he was immediately declared an outlaw and he carried out a guerrilla campaign against what he regarded as an army of occupation William Wallace we think was typical of Scottish opinion round about early 1297. nobody likes to live in an occupied country Edward the first had conquered Scotland the year before as he thought and placed English garrisons and most of the Scottish castles it would have been fairly uncomfortable I think for people living under such a regime now this is the inspiration of Wallace he was not alone he operated in the southwest of Scotland a guy called William Douglas operated in the Southeast Andrew Murray operated in the north it looks like they were the inspiration these men for a popular resistance and we're told of the common people coming out and supporting them not surprisingly the English ruler of Scotland Edward the first would not be prepared to accept the challenge like that lightly he dispatched the Earl of Surrey with all of the English forces in Scotland to deal with the Rebellion as quickly as they could they met together on the banks of the fourth in a battle which has become famous in Scottish history the Battle of staddling bridge as he was known and Wallace came together at Sterling in the center of Scotland their armies combined and there the approaching Army of Edward under the general ship of Surrey approached them to cross the river forth at the one bridge at Sterling it was an old wooden rickety bridge and the heavy English Cavalry had to cross this bridge two by two side by side the Scots Army waiting in the woods on the Abbey Hill overlooking the bridge kept her nerve and when the order was given they swooped down and massacred the English army who found it very difficult to maneuver in the marshy ground around the bridge some of the knights trying to turn and flee back across the bridge causing more chaos but they were out flanked by Wallace's Force who fell upon them the victory was complete and Scotland was for the moment free of the tyrannical English rule of Edward the Scottish victory at Sterling Bridge was a sensational and unexpected boost for the morale of Wallace and his men and at first it looked as if they would be able to free the whole of Scotland but what Wallace hadn't reckoned with was the intervention of Edward the first who was to become known as The Hammer of the Scots Legend has it that about five miles west from here William Wallace with a band of his followers were surprised by an English force and forced to flee the area here of course was then governed by the Fraser family the last of the Fraser family here as a Simon Fraser was taken at the Battle of Dunbar in 1296 and forced to then swear allegiance to Edward the first shortly after this Fraser then went to France as a night bonnaret and fought for Edward the first in his French Wars Fraser returned to this area and became sheriff off tracker and attic Forest during this period certain people wrote that were the first suggesting that Fraser's heart wasn't actually in the employee of English he was a bit of a nationalist Fraser shortly after this proved this by changing completely to the Scottish side now Edward was not only a first-class ruler he was also a great politician a Statesman and above all he was a soldier who knew the craft of soldier ship and he knew what had to be done on the battlefield Edward marched North with his own Army and he engaged Wallace and his forces in the Battle of Falkirk it's really quite hard to assess the methods of warfare used at this time one of the Mysteries is this had been at peace with England and virtually everybody else for a hundred years so whether they acquire the military expertise which allowed them to resist the English the shelter was used at folkat which is the battle that Wallace lost it's more of defensive I think it's been compared to a hedgehog with a kind of semicircle and Spears sticking out close ranks and archers between the spears the idea was the spears would protect the defending troops against the cavalry charge The Archers would do a damage as well at the Battle of Folker in 1298 the Scottish Army under the general ship of Wallace alone were mainly spearmen formed into sheltons or fallacies the first charge was repulsed but Edward was a Wily Soldier and brought up his archers and The Archers reigned their deadly arrows upon the sheltons many of the Scots fell dead the ranks were broken the Cavalry came into charge and finish off the job Wallace indeed was lucky to escape with his life he had to flee to France where he tried to enlist the help of the French King everyone of course was back in charge but Wallace came back to Scotland tried to regenerate a guerrilla campaign unfortunately he was betrayed by one of his own countrymen Sir John Monteith who gave the brave Wallace up to Edward the first who in typical fashion had no mercy he had Wallace taken to London where he was hung drawn and quartered as a lesson to all Scots that there were not under any circumstances to trifle with the will of England I think it's quite possible that the wars of Independence might never have come about had it not been for the actions of William Wallace the problem was that many of the Scottish Aristocrats including Robert Bruce the Future King had Estates in England they did not want to jeopardize the possession of these Estates by taking on the might of Edward the first the proper rulers of the kingdom are not doing their Duty the common man will come forth and usurp their Authority and that remains an extremely powerful idea right down through the centuries shortly after the execution of William Wallace another man strolled onto the stage of Scottish history and this time there would be no mistakes this was Robert Bruce the man who was the become the most famous King of Scotland and Bruce was able to unite the whole country behind him and win the independence of the nation although it's now Associated as a Scottish name Bruce actually was a Norman name from de Bruce and Bruce came from a Norman family but by the 1290s they were very much a part of the Scottish nobility the area at that time was governed or ruled by a Sir Simon Fraser the frasers of course were Norman Knights he fought with Bruce and Legend has it at the Battle of manfinn he placed Bruce buck and his horse three times when he had been unhorsed now imagine a face had not happened the course of history would have been changed Robert was one of the claimants to the throne but that claim along with those of 12 others was dismissed and the nobleman of Scotland decided to appoint Edward the first as guardian of Scotland the nobleman of the time being practical fellows signed what was called the ragman's role Bruce then was very much involved in the politics of the time but he had for himself a long-term view which was the Throne of Scotland the switching of Allegiance in the late 13th early 14th century is fairly easy to understand you could see the Nobles as a sort of international fraternity who moved back and forward over boundaries and borders quite happily and they didn't necessarily have a commitment to a concept to an idea it's very interesting that in 1304 when Edwards bombarding Sterling Castle and he asks them on whose authority did he hold this Castle against me Edward the first they say we hold on behalf of the Lion that's the first abstraction of kingship that you get in the British Isles they're having to formulate new ways of articulating their political aspirations what's happening in this very interesting period is that people are working out their ideas and their identities and their commitments for the first time against a very tricky background so they're reacting to present contingencies and redefining themselves in the process in the Medieval World you were only ever going to be a king if you had the strength and the ability to protect your position sometimes physically Bruce and common were two Rivals for the throne but at the same time they were also occasional allies and the Bruce clearly decided at some stage that he had to be read of common there are accusations of treachery on both sides we'll never know what the truth is but what certainly did happen is that when the two men met together in a chapel near Dumfries the Bruce Drew is dagger unmurthered common as you would expect he was excommunicated for such a heinous sin as a murder in a chapel but with the politics of the day the Archbishop was still prepared to Crown Bruce as King of Scotland which happened on Palm Sunday in 1306. the family of common were out to settle the score and the people of Scotland weren't sure about this man who had murdered his opponent in a church of all places the English sent an army to confront Bruce's small army at methven near the town of Perth and Bruce was very lucky to escape with his life after that he left Scotland Shores and the legend tells that he went to take refuge on an island off the coast of Ireland it was known as raffan Island and it was there that we hear the tale of Bruce and the spider and that Legend is about Bruce sitting in the cave hiding thinking well will this ever happen will I ever be King when he saw the spider spinning its web trying and trying again to make the complete circle of the wave and finally the spider succeeded so Bruce thought yes well one day I might succeed and I might be King of Scotland but I must keep trying I must try again the first reference to Bruce and the spider comes in Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a grandfather 1830. there's not a trace of it before that there is a legend from the 17th century which Associated a spider with the black Douglas Robert brissie's famous sidekick but no association between Bruce and the spider what we have here is a great example of instant legend or the invention of tradition the Spider story is a sort of metaphor inserted very much later for whatever happened when Bruce was away taking a thing to himself what he seems to have decided upon was avoid conventional Warfare avoid pitch battles we'll never beat the English on their own terms and so he actually adopted Guerrilla tactics from then on and it was very very successful now the story could well be apocryphal but it is a an inspiring Legend which is endured down through the centuries but in 1307 there did come a turning point for the Bruce in that Year Edward the first died ironically on his way with his own Army to come to Scotland and teach Bruce a lesson at the age of 68 even the Hammer of the Scots was so worn out by his ears in the saddle that he died at Barrow on sands on his way North to fight the Scots this gave Bruce the reason space he needed and he began to take the war to the English it was even better news for Bruce in that the successor to Edward the first the new King Edward II was by no means the soldier and the Statesman that his father had been people have come to the conclusion that because this King Light Art and painting had a male favorite and ostensibly neglected his wife he must therefore have been a homosexual and that has become the accepted view of Edward II and I'm not sure that the evidence actually stands up to the kind of scrutiny a great number of Kings have had confidence and favorites right through to Charles the first and Beyond in addition homosexuality could be punished by being burned alive at the stake and even the king wouldn't have been able to escape that kind of Retribution with Edward absent from the stage the Bruce was able to gradually win over the whole of Scotland one by one the castles and towns fell from English rule back into the hands of the Scots until finally in 1314 only one Castle remained in the hands of the English this was the castle of Sterling overlooking the plane of Bannockburn so Hugh de cressingham the governor of studling Castle had agreed to surrender to the Bruce if he was not relieved by midsummer's day 1314. now even the king of questionable strength and vigor such as Edward II couldn't afford to ignore a challenge like that if he lost Sterling he lost Scotland and to try and make sure that didn't happen he assembled one of the greatest armies ever to leave England it was led by a powerful Vanguard of knights there was a huge body of men at arms and of course there were the famous long woman they were to meet on the field at Bannockburn it came to pass in 1314 the battle to end all battles in Scottish terms was fought the army of Edward II was very much stronger in terms of numbers but Bruce had made preparations for the coming of the English army he had took up a very strong defensive position he had dug pits in these pits he had put spiked poles to trap the cavalry and he waited patiently for the English army to advance the Battle of Bannockburn was Bruce's defining moments and one of the reasons for his success in that battle was his ability to prepare not only his army but also the ground on which they would fight he chose the river forth to define the boundary of the battlefield and he knew the English had to come and relieve Sterling Castle he knew the road they would be approaching and as a consequence of that he was able to spend time preparing defensive positions on the battlefield those defensive positions took the form of a number of pits which were dug across the projected path of any English cavalry charge and a number of fiendishly horrible devices known as coal drops which were metal spikes that were strewn across the path of any projected cavalry charge in the hope that they would stick into the Hooves by doing so Bruce was able to spend time drilling the man getting his army to act in a cohesive fashion and preparing the terrain that was very unusual on a medieval Battlefield and it paid dividends in the Battle of Bannockburn instead of awaiting the English attack he launched his own children in an attack against the English Cavalry this was certainly throwing a spanner in the works and certainly not the kind of thing that Edward II would have expected by his ability to use the river to define the battlefield the Bruce was able to pen the English army into a fairly Compact and fairly narrow piece of ground they couldn't use their arches as they'd done at Falkirk because the archers were behind not only the Cavalry but the billmen who were in the second rank this meant that the Scots infantry were free from the dangers of the arrowstone and decimated them at Falkirk and also in the Battle of Mervin so what we had here was a general who was able to decide not only his tactics also how he was going to use the field to his own advantage some of the English archers did actually manage to take up a position on the flank and begin to cause casualties among the Scots infantry with their Arrow fire from the flank and the Bruce had had enough wisdom to keep back the tiny reserve a Cavalry that he did have only 500 men lightly armored on small horses but they were to prove absolutely decisive at that point because it was then that he released his small Force recovery to disperse the English archers and keep the battle going in favor of the Scots the English Cavalry Advanced but could only Advance very slowly because they had a very limited section of dry land in which they could advance that attack was repulsed easily by the Scottish Spearman and then the next day the Spearman beat off the English army as the English army returning to flee the reinforcements or the camp followers came into the battle and the route was complete the English medal the king himself was lucky to escape but his wife and daughter were taken prisoner and ransomed for a great price was undoubtedly a colossal Victory there's no question about it probably the most spectacular victory in Scottish history as such has never been forgotten by certain sections of the Scottish community Scottish national party for example still holds annual rallies at Bannockburn I suppose it's seen as a cane of a shrine of Scottish independence or whatever but it didn't really achieve very much as a battle the whole point of fighting a battle was hey to get rid of the English which they succeeded in doing B to get the English to recognize the legitimacy of Bruce's title to be king of Scots yet to read all the way through England to hit the king at Westminster so they could run around the north of England until the cows came home it would never affect the attitudes of the the home county mentality sadly the battlefields of Britain haven't benefited from the kind of protection that a field like Gettysburg has had for example in the states they've been encroached by modern developments and in bannockburn's case Housing Development right onto the battlefield and also the landscape has been changed by the Advent of modern farming techniques behind me here we've got the river Tweeds which can represent for us the river fourth that was going to give the English army so many problems particularly during the retreat opposite we've got the mature trees similar to the kind of features of the new park which hid the Scottish Army so effectively on the days before the battle then across here we've got a flat plane which stretches from the river it hasn't been changed by modern farming techniques it hasn't been intensively cropped by animals and as such we can see the the tusaki nature of the ground and you can appreciate just how difficult it would be for Cavalry to make progress across ground like this there are a number of things that can trap the ankles and break legs of horses towering over this landscape we have the castle of needpath now need path is obviously a much smaller Castle than Sterling but you do get a feel almost of the battlefield in miniature and what the main features were in 1320 the Scots did the Nobles Barnes freeholders and the community of the realm of Scotland they sent a letter to the pope of the day really asking the pope to put pressure on the English king to recognize Bruce's title a declaration of Scottish independence and there are some very very interesting ideas in this document they actually say if Robert Bruce should ever submit our kingdom to the king of England or the English we will remove him and set up another better able to govern Us in his place and he had no intentions of removing Robert Bruce but they're trying to show if Robert even hints at stepping out of line they're going to remove him so what's that that is the earliest statement of the contractual theory of monarchy in European history they're saying the king is answerable to his subject the next section of the Declaration of our birth goes on to say and this is quoted all over the place but it's still good it's very moving for so long as a hundred of us remain alive we shall Never Surrender it is not for riches nor for Glory nor for honors that we fight but for Freedom alone which no honest man will lose but with life itself if if fun was to prove Scotland's greatest day in its military history the blackest day was to come almost 200 years later at the Battle of flooding on that day in a field in the north of England 10 000 scotsmen lost their lives under the leadership of King James IV in many respects James could have been a greater King than the Bruce he was a cultured man and he understood the need for education in a changing world this was the time of the Renaissance and James was very much a Renaissance King he established Scotland's third University at Aberdeen for example and he was terrifically interested in the fields of literature and Art and Science for him the application of science came very much in the exploration of gunpowder he was fanatical about artillery and its employment on the battlefield unfortunately the artillery was to let him down on the day of his greatest trial James IV of Scotland came to the throne in 1488 following the untimely death of his father much trade was carried out between Scotland and the low countries and France in terms of culture he set up the third University in Scotland in Aberdeen the College of Surgeons in Edinburgh set up a printing press encouraged writing and literature and so did a lot of good for the education of Scots and Scotland his brother-in-law Henry VII of England had formed the holy league with the King of Spain and the Doge of Venice and their aim was to attack the power of Louis the King of France no there had been an ancient alliance between France and Scotland called the old Alliance which went back to the 13th century but Louis knowing that James was a very gallant and chivalrous gentleman decided that it would be better if his wife the queen wrote to James seeking his assistance this she did with all Pomp and Circumstance and with her letter she sent a lovely Turquoise Ring unfortunately James was not the kind of man who could resist the call to chivalry like that and he brought together a great Army of Scotland and invaded England it was a big mistake on James's part and the Scots Army came disastrously unstuck when they moved into England in order to support the French in September 1513. the Battle of flodden was an unmitigated disaster for the Scots and the famous image of the sole survivor returning to Edinburgh still haunts the Scots today James himself is alleged to have been forewarned by an apparition the famous blue man who appeared to him before the campaign Atlanta where the King was praying this man came to the church knocking on the door insisting that he saw the king the man wearing a blue cloak it has said had been sent by his mother with a warning a dire warning to the king that he should not set out in this journey because it would be very very dangerous both for him and his companions furthermore his mother I told him to give the king the message that the king should not take the advice of women whether it's true or not or whether it's been embroidered over the years it certainly was a legend that was prevalent at the time of the battle all right [Applause] it was said that there wasn't a single family in the whole of Scotland that was left untouched by the disaster that flooded so great were the casualties that they were lamenting throughout the land [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the legend of Robin Hood is an enduring tale Scotland has its own version of that in the legend of Rob Roy I think the thing that appeals to people about Rob Roy is much the same as that which appeals about Robin Hood the fact that he's what's called a social Bandit an outlaw who defends his community against alien or Elite influencers Rob Roy first of all came from an outlawed Clan the McGregors who've been outlawed as a result of the exercise of state power in the 1590s he was associated with the Jacobite risings and that opposition to the union in 1715 and 1719. he was also associated with the ability to act autonomously in defiance of authority in Scotland we have our own version of Robin Hood and his name is Rob Roy McGregor and he lived here in this area called belveder behind me is the curtain burn which Flows Down The Loft vile and passes by the Ale House where Rob Roy used to drink not 300 yards from here he drove cattle to markets in the South down to England and as he reached his late teens he was installed on a farm not far from here on the Southern Shores of Loch Boyle later in 1693 he was married to Mary McGregor of Cromer and it was here in this Glenn that he started his married life as well as farming and droving he engaged in a little what we call lifting or reeving that was stealing cattle and reselling them at that time Rob's business was doing very well and he arranged to borrow some money from a wealthy landowner the Duke of Montrose sadly all did not go to plan Rob gave the money to his trusted Lieutenant the man disappeared suited the money Rob Roy was declared bankrupt and in his absence his wife and children were evicted from the property on the shores of Loch Lomond Rob took revenge of Montrose by stealing his cattle stealing his rent and in some cases stealing the rent that the tenants the poor tenants had paid to his factor and then giving the money back to the tenants many dramatizations of Rob Roy were put on from the 1820s onwards I think there were 30 or 40. my memory says the right dramatizations of Rob Roy in the 19th century he was very much a figure taken up as a result of Scott's novel and yet another was called Rob Roy for a reason because Robert already had a status on which Scott was drawing so I think we can say that Scott was a great publicity agent for Rob Roy Rob became implicated in the political struggles of the time the struggle to replace the Stewart kings on the throne of Scotland he was given a pardon towards the end of his life and he ended his days here further up The Glen at envelope Larry he had a dispute with a neighbor called James McLaren over a field at Inverness marching down the Glen with a force of about a hundred men but when he came to the western side of the barn at the bottom near the lock there was a force of 300 waiting to meet him thinking upon this and being quite a sensible man in his old age he thought this is not the day for a fight because we're sadly outnumbered but he felt that all these warrior-like men having come together they should have some fighting at least so they decided to fight a duel and there was Rob being the man he was putting himself forward for the fight the other side put forward a young Champion a young steward they fought and the agreement had been First Blood and eventually the young man got the better of Rob and gave him a Nick on the arm but that wound was the end of him it went septic but before he died mclareness neighbor with whom he had had the dispute heard he was dying and came to gloat at Rob on his Deathbed raw party was coming called for his wife to dress him in his best plate bring him his sword and his gun and when McLaren came in he was aghast to see Rob looking as Fierce as ever nowhere near death he thought so he made his groveling apologies and left hurriedly when he did die he was buried down here at the cemetery at the churchyard there was a huge funeral hundreds of people came and the funeral bill came to over 400 pounds Rob's estate was valued at 146 pounds so even in death poor Mary that long-suffering wife had to work with the help of her sons to pay off the debt for the funeral the story of Rob Roy goes beyond the bounds of his locality the west of Scotland and pasture that they're spread throughout Scotland even in aberdeenshire that their caves which were associated with Rob Roy and these is a function of Storytelling not of history and it's very interesting that that such a powerful folk Mythos mythologist built up around somebody who was a historical figure and died no more than 260 odd years ago what we do know for certain is that Rob Roy was present at some of the biggest battles of the Jacobite Wars he fought at the Battle of sheriff Muir in 1715 and he was also present on the ill-fated Campaign which led to the Battle of Glenn shield in 1719. by 1745 the cause that Rob Roy had gone out to support should have been dead and buried but there was one last act to be played in the tragedy and that tragedy would be led by the son of the old Pretender Charles Edward Stewart Charles Edward Stewart is better known to Scottish history as Bonnie Prince Charlie Prince Charles Edward Stewart was born in 1720 in Rome he was the son of the old Pretender to the throne of Scotland his father was in turn the son of the deposed King King James II of Scotland and England who'd been deposed in what was called The Glorious bloodless revolution in 1688. the powers that be the British government of the time felt that they should have a Protestant King so they invited Prince William of Orange in the Netherlands and his Queen Mary to become king and queen of Britain they came to the throne but there was a movement called the Jacobite movement who were Keen to have the Stewart family line restored to the throne the Clans and other supporters whom General cope and the government Army counted on as coming out to support the government simply didn't do it there was relatively little interest even from opponents of the Jacobite cause and actually standing up and fighting against them there was a good deal of passive sympathy with the jacobites among those who weren't prepared to support them and effectively the rest of the political Nation sat on their hands indeed it's arguable that that was the case in England too at least while the jacobites were marching South the religious landscape had also changed Scotland was very much a Protestant country and for many the stewards represented a return to the old Catholic religion and as such they couldn't command the popular support in what was very much a presbyterian country in 1719 a great storm had destroyed the Spanish Fleet which had been brought together to support an attempt to buy the nominal head of Scotland James III to regain the throne in 1744 another great storm wrecked the French Fleet that had been brought together in support of a claim by his son Charles Edward Stewart there were never enough people who were prepared to support the cause and when the French help that had been promised failed to materialize really the whole Expedition should have been canceled then and quite a few of the the wiser Highland Chiefs knew that the end had really come nonetheless Charles was able to persuade them to continue on in the cause and the ill-fated rebellion of 1745 was the consequence you've arrived with just seven men they were known as the seven men of murder in August 1745 he arranged to raise the standard at glenfinen that morning he was rolled up a lock to the point at the top of lock Shield where he had put out the word for the Highlanders to gather at first they came in dribs and drabs there weren't many there but by the end of the day Cameron of lockheel had come with over 500 men and so the tally at the end of the day was almost a thousand he marched South with this Army Gathering men and support as he went and in no time at all he'd reached Edinburgh he took Edinburgh quite easily he defeated the army of the government under Johnny cope at the Battle of Crescent pans and the famous tune hey Johnny cope are you walking yet are you awake yet General cope became a byword for the Jacobite Army after the Jacobite Army left Edinburgh it split into two columns one column actually ended up here between people's under castle and camped overnight and route to England and it's also recorded that the local populants were much put out by this now this column was commanded by Sir George Murray contained most of the artillery we're talking about a considerable number of men iron horses the officers themselves probably took bullets in the town itself but the man would have been left to rough it down in the spot area by the river the river of course providing water for the horses and the men it was then that Charles real master plan was unfolded despite the fact that he had claimed the Throne of Scotland and actually had his father proclaimed as James VII of Scotland he decided that his real Mission Lee in winning the Throne of England and that's when things really went wrong Lord Murray proved himself to be an excellent Commander at Preston pans and it was his ability that glued together the Jacobite Army but money was no fool and he agreed to march on England only on the condition that they would receive French help the prince by this stage must have known that no French help was ever going to materialize but nonetheless he allowed the Army to embark on its March into England probably in the hope that what he saw as his English subjects would raise up an arms to help him once again this didn't happen other than a Motley collection of volunteers that they picked up and formed into what was optimistically known as the Manchester regiment the English population were at best indifferent to the jacobites and certainly large sections were openly hostile the advanced as far as Darby just 120 miles north of London but when they got to Derby they hesitated they had a council of war and Charlie was advised that he should turn back but in London they were making arrangements to move the king from town and it was at that time our national anthem God saved the King was penned because there was such a fear that these wild Highlanders would come and take the town Murray and the other chiefs were prepared to allow the charade of an invasion to progress as far as Derby but by then we knew the Army had to be turned for home having done so they were able to forge together a victory over the forces of Holly who were pursuing them into Scotland But ultimately they were once again forced to retreat this time to Inverness the Highland capital even at Inverness they were still pursued by William Duke of Cumberland Second Son of George II Cumberland was on a personal mission to ensure they would never again be a Jacobite rebellion in Scotland and as such he used the government forces to ruthlessly suppress the Highland Army in the Battle of Culloden in April 1746. Cumberland and his men an army of about nine thousand strong were camped at nern not far from Inverness and the prince heard of this he also heard it was cumberland's birthday and he reckoned that Cumberland would be entertaining his army to a night of celebration in honor of his birthday so they planned a night raid a night Attack under approach the guard was alerted and the attack was aborted the troops hungry and tired now made their way back to Claude Moore the next morning the government Army marked stopped the Highlander stood in tight ranks against them was a highly regimented Army of 9 000 troops mostly regular troops but believe it or not there were some Scots fighting in that side as well those Scots who took the government side there was some confusion in the Jacobite ranks as opposed to the giving of orders the command to charge was not passed and the English artillery wrote havoc [Music] in the space of 45 minutes the battle was lost the order had been given to the government troops to spare No Quarter the wounded were killed for they lay Bonnie Prince Charlie though escaped in the battle as part of his Escape he was disguised once as an Irish maid and was assisted in this part of the escape by one Flora McDonald Charles and Flora a very poignant pair a young woman doing her Duty as she sees it to protect and sucker her prince from the threat of arrest and death it is innocent and therefore very much closer to a fairy story than these things so often are but it also has a very powerful symbolic resonance that it makes a very good counterpart to a male oriented military campaign that when he falls on hard times it's a woman who suckers and rescues him and so on it gives a kind of domestic Aura to the public political side of the earlier part of the Jacobite Rising one of the things that's very important is that in 18th century Jacobite political rhetoric political discourse Scotland indeed Ireland too but Scotland was portrayed as a woman a woman who would only be restored to fertility when her King came back this to draw an ancient Celtic mythology and her land is made fertile again therefore Flora with a good name for that kind of symbolism stood in very effectively for Scotland as a whole receiving Charles into a bosom and that meant in a way that you could portray the essence of the land with its feminine Essence remain true to the stewards after the battle the prince rather ungraciously told his followers to fend for themselves or he himself tried to escape back into Exile into France the famous incidents where he had to dress as a woman and hide in the Heather are all very well documented but if we look at the evidence I'm afraid the prince's later Behavior certainly doesn't reflect well on him as a man he doesn't appear to have shown much gratitude for the people who had lost everything and the support of the Stewart cause Charles remains a controversial figure he became a Scottish icon despite the fact of his mixed Scottish English Polish ancestry and the fact that he was born in Rome and the fact that Lord Elko one of his supporters said there you go you cowardly Italian as he was led off the battlefield of colon despite all these things Charles first of all cultivated Scottish identity all his army were uniformed in Taunton and for himself he appointed a Garrett tutor who is in fact one of the foremost garlic Poets of the day and so it was a very shrewd move because that was more free publicity and on the route South you march on foot at the head of his army as if he were a great Chieftain of old more in a Finn McCool than an 18th century claimant to a throne [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] in that time the Saxon strengthened in multitude and grew in Britain under death of Angus oxar his son passed from the northern part of Britain to the kingdom of the kintish men and from him arose the kings of the candiesmen then Arthur fought against them in those days with the kings of the britons but he himself was leader of the battles [Music] through 14 centuries the shadowy but powerful figure of Arthur has been distorted by Poets chroniclers politicians and Kings the image has been used for entertainment and even propaganda from a Romano British warlord fighting the Saxon Invaders he had been turned in an ironic twist into the most English of Kings epitomizing the full flowering of medieval chivalry so there are two authors the armor-plated king enthroned in Camelot at his Round Table surrounded by goodly Knights and fair ladies dispensing Justice and defending the weak and oppressed and the real Arthur a military commander a capable strategist and Diplomat as he would have needed to be in such turbulent times it's possible he may not even have been of noble birth making it easier for him to stand aside from the tribal differences and the squabbles of petty kingdoms he was instead a man who could command a large highly mobile force of Cavalry and infantry Crossing all tribal Frontiers making all territories his Battlefield against the Saxon foe after the death of Uther Pendragon the leaders of the britons assembled from their various provinces in the town of silchester and there suggested to debrisius the Archbishop of the city of the legions that as their King he should count Arthur the son of Uther necessity urged them on for as soon as the Saxons heard of the death of Uther they invited their own countrymen over from Germany appointed colgrin as their leader and began to do their utmost to exterminate the britons they had already overrun all that section of the island which stretches from the river Humber to the Sea named caithness lamented the sad state of his country he called the other Bishops to him and bestowed the crown of the Kingdom upon Arthur Arthur was a young man only 15 years old but he was of outstanding courage and generosity and his inborn goodness gave him such Grace that he was loved by almost all the people but how could this highly successful British General have become the fanciful king of medieval Legend the answer lies partly with Jeffrey of Monmouth a Welsh cleric of Breton descent who was responsible for bringing Arthur to a wider audience by writing his history of the kings of Britain in 1136 this work properly titled the Historia Reagan Britannia was written in Latin and can be fairly described as one of the most influential books on Arthur well Jeffrey of Mammoth was a fibber I'm afraid has his name betrays he um was a monk at Monmouth and then he moved to Oxford and he was so keen on the Arthurian story that he was actually nicknamed Arthur Jeffrey Arthur and he was a real author fanatic and he wrote this book which was published in the sense that manuscript editions were published in 1139 and it purports to be a history of Britain from the day that the first settler Brutus so Trojan landed in Britain at top Ness and they used to show his footprint there about the time just before the Trojan War and came right up to about the end of the um 7th Century A.D and he gives you conversations between prehistoric monarchs from the brawn what would have been the Bronze Age or the early Iron Age and every adventure and in every age he knows what's going on but it's a marvelous read and that's what made it um perhaps the greatest best seller of the Middle Ages and I think he was doing the job of our job as he saw it he had you do sense a twinkle in his eye when you're reading it at one point he says that um an eagle on the walls of Gloucester uttered a prophecy he said which I would tell you if I believed it was true well later on he goes and tells you so uh I don't think he cared if you believed or not and I'm he may have been surprised at the extent to which people believed it Jeffrey's history of the kings of Britain might have seemed on the face of it a serious attempt to record British history and more particularly to portray an accurate picture of Arthur drawn from many reliable sources after all Jeffrey was a Churchman who had received an excellent education for his time but it would seem that Jeffrey entered the church in order to further his literary Ambitions and not because of any religious seal having no recognized archaeological authorities to hold him in check Jeffrey was free to create an Arthur in the image of his own Royal patrons whenever I have chance to think about the history of the kings of Britain on those occasions when I have been turning over a great many such matters in my mind it has seemed a remarkable thing to me that apart from such mention of them as gilders and bead at each maid in a brilliant book on the subject I have not been able to discover anything at all on the Kings who lived here before the Incarnation of Christ or indeed about Arthur and all the others who followed on after the Incarnation yet the Deeds of these men were such that they deserved to be praised for all time at what is more these Deeds were handed joyfully down in oral tradition just as if they had been committed to writing by many peoples who had only their memory to rely on Jeffrey obviously felt little or no need to depict Arthur as he'd encountered him in the writings of the 8th Century chronic leninius thus his Arthur dresses and acts exactly as a 12th century Monarch and his descriptions of warfare and the social scene are based on his own experience Jeffrey's intention as far as we can tell was not to deceive but to entertain he was as enthralled by the Enigma of Arthur as many before him had been with true Celtic exaggeration he romanticized Arthur in a way that had never before been so blatant also successful that success was to spark off the development of a legendary Arthur at a time when I was giving a good deal of attention to such matters Walter archdeacon of Oxford a man skilled in the art of public speaking and well informed about the history of foreign countries presented me with a certain very ancient book written in the British language this book a track of the composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative set out all the Deeds of these men from Brutus the first king of the britons down to cadwalida the son of cadwallow at Walton's request I have taken the trouble to translate the book into Latin although indeed I have been content with my own expressions and my own homely style and I have gathered no gaudy flowers of speech in other men's Gardens if I added all my page with high flown rhetorical figures I should have bored my readers for they would have been forced to spend more time discovering the meaning of my words than in following the story in the eight centuries that have passed since Jeffrey of Monmouth completed his great work other writers and Poets have been inspired to compose new Tales of Arthur adding fashionable elements such as courtly love and deeds of heroism based on a code of medieval chivalry cretienda tries the French poet writing just 30 years after Jeffrey added the important new ingredients of the Grail and many new Knights as part of Arthur's Court notably sir Lancelot he is also responsible for naming Arthur's stronghold as Camelot a name he may have borrowed and corrupted from the Roman name for Colchester camelodanum Robert de Boron writing around 1200 introduced the concept of The Sword in the Stone and in the generations that followed author after author added to the story embroidering and inventing culminating in Saint Thomas Mallory's mordatha and nearer to the present Tennyson's ideals of the king these are all celebrations of an Arthur many times removed from the man who United the British against the Heathen Saxons there was undoubtedly an Arthur long before Jeffrey wrote and he'd picked up a real character and so are some of the others for instance Guinevere appears in Welsh stories which are certainly older than Jeffrey of Mammoth as Gwen Hoover and some of the knights appear too like K and bedevere who are Kai and bidwear but Lancelot doesn't unfortunately he comes clearly from a French story is written at the end of the 12th century slightly later there that again includes very old myths of the Lady of the Lake and so forth the The Sword and the stone I'm sure is old urn must represent an ancient myth which you find in other cultures the round table I think must also go back to very old ideas to me the most striking episode and the one which most people remember which I'm sure is very much older and that is the mysterious birth of Arthur which people will remember when um Uther Pendragon is disguised by Ellen's magic as the husband of the Beautiful igerno on tintagel and he sleeps with her that night and that night is begotten the infant Arthur News later born and becomes king oh well that's a very old story much older than Jeffrey of Monmouth before Jeffrey romanticized and popularized him Arthur was a name heard in songs and folk tales remembered and passed on around the winter fire sites are those in whom the Celtic blood still ran strong Small Wonder then perhaps that his story was so helpful and so flattering to Henry the first and to his bastard son Robert what better ancestor for a Norman King to claim than Arthur most renowned and heroic of all the kings who ruled before the Saxons after all in Jeffrey's time it was generally believed by folk that Arthur had actually been anointed and crowned King of England a mere 600 years before Arthur himself put on a leather jack worthy of worthy of the golden helmet with a Crest carved in the shape of a dragon and across his shoulders a circular Shield called pridwen on which there was painted and likeness of the Blessed Mary Mother of God which forced him to be thinking perpetually of her he girded on his pillar sword called caliburn which was forged in the Isle of Avalon but who was the real Arthur in truth hardly anything of him is known and prior to the 12th century his name occurs so rarely in manuscripts and historical records that it is difficult to understand how his Fame has endured there are only a handful of references to Arthur the earliest being a fleeting acknowledgment of his skill in battle which occurs in a 6th Century poem by anarin called egodadin he fed black Ravens on the ramparts of the fort although he was no Arthur the warrior referred to in these lines having reduced vast numbers of the enemy to carry on is nevertheless deemed by the poet as unable to match Arthur's reputation it's extraordinary to think that anarin may have written these words within one or two generations of Arthur's lifetime the cordovan is a North British poem that's to say it was written in a language um similar to Modern Welsh and which a modern Welshman can impart I still understand um probably in the second half of the sixth century when people spoke a language the ancestor of present-day Welsh from the river from the channel up to the river fourth in Scotland and it tells about a king minthalg of Edinburgh whose Army set forth 300 of them and marched All the Way South to catrick in Yorkshire and fought a glorious battle against the English Invaders and there they were killed but they died gloriously as in The Charge of the Light Brigade and then this poem was written to commemorate them it's a source of much controversy amongst Welsh Scholars but I think the general agreement is that their the nucleus of it was a real poem written by a poet called an iron in the 6th century and the interesting part from an ethereum point of view is that it does at one point actually mention Arthur although the first mention of Arthur may have been in igotidin there is an earlier record of 5th Century Britain but Arthur's name does not appear in it it was written by the monk gilders in about the year 540 and in it he denounces the rulers of his time and explains how Britain came to be in such a sorry state its title is the ruin of Britain and it's an outright attack on the wickedness of the authorities and clergy of his day and in the preface to the work he tracks down the causes of that wickedness in so doing he provides a unique account of 5th Century Britain a backdrop to the rise of Arthur yet one from which Arthur was strangely absent this angry old monk took a dim view of the squabbling of the local British rulers and he felt with some justification no doubt that their lack of moral fiber had both led to the supremacy of the Heathen Saxon Invaders and been punished by it he likened the British plight to that of the Israelites and he saw their predicament as divine retribution gildas was a northerner possibly a picked born on the wrong side of the Roman Frontier but lived most of his life in the South and in that fact melee the answer to his silence about Arthur as a picked he may have had no love for a commander who spent his time driving back the picks who'd been a thorn in the British side for Generations in fact the picks had often allied with the Saxons and the Irish causing yet more trouble for the British a guild house was a mclaric writing in the 6th century and so he is unique and extraordinary from an arthurium point of view because there is somebody whom no historian doubts was actually writing and we do have his writing from them about the sometime in the first half of the sixth century but what's disappointing is that he doesn't mention Arthur this has been taken by some historians to disparage the whole Arthurian story and to say well if the one person living at the time who wrote about it in some depth and who was lived within the time of people who would have actually known him and doesn't mention him then how can anyone suggest he lived he seems quite clearly for reasons which I didn't think we'll ever know not to be able to tell you about certain things for example it's an absolutely undoubted fact that the Anglo-Saxon Invaders were in possession of a very large part of Eastern and Southern in Britain at this time yet you wouldn't know that from gildest so it's not extraordinary that he doesn't mention something very important he doesn't tell you about the kings of North Britain who are reigning at that time he's writing under some political stress it seems to me that's quite clear and that he and that he could very easily have a reason for not writing about Arthur up until the early 400s Britain had been prosperous and sophisticated a true Roman province in which all free-born britons were Roman citizens and proud to be so British Society was headed by landed gentry in whose veins ran the blood of celt Roman and in some instances a mixture of other nationalities from the Roman World there was a thriving Agricultural and industrial economy due to Roman efficiency and organization which had controlled the province of Britain for just under four centuries the breathtaking spectacle of a horde belonging to a prosperous Romano British family of the time was recently uncovered in Suffolk the Exquisite workmanship and richness of the jewelry and the household items revealed bear witness that the owners of this treasure were living in style none of this changed immediately when Rome severed its links with Britain in the year 410. when the Roman Emperor honorius told Britain to look to its own defenses the former Province was remarkably successful in doing just that at least for a generation gilders attributes this continuing peace to the reign of a supreme ruler he names as vortigen and this expression is not a name or even a title but is thought to have been a description rather like a nickname as in the Celtic tongue it means Overlord or High King he became High King of Southern Britain in about 425. at first vortigian did better than other Petty rulers who had sprung up all over the country after the break with Rome his nickname indicates that he had the support of the poorer classes as well as the aristocracy from whom he came otherwise he would be known by a Roman name so it seems that because he could call upon the allegiance of such a large cross-section of the population he maintained Authority for almost a generation but even vortigen with his widespread support could not gather enough military strength to counter the ever-increasing pressures of all his Frontiers had the idea unwise as it later turned out of employing a bunch of violent judish mercenaries led by Two Brothers called hengist and horser then came three Keels driven into Exile from Germany in them were the brothers horser and angist vortigan welcomes them then and handed over to them the island that in their language is called fanet vortigen earned himself the undying hatred of the British for his mistake these mercenaries were allowed to settle and within 20 years or so were abusing their hosts hospitality and then rebelled against their British Masters in the Revolt of 441. gildas goes on to say all their inhabitants bishops priests and people were moaned down together while swords flashed and Flames crackled horrible it was to see the foundation stones of towers and high walls thrown down there was no burial save in the ruins of the houses or in the bellies of the beasts and birds indeed excavations encaseda by Norwich have revealed 36 charred bodies from that terrible time found in the remains of a burnt out building Silent Witness to the ferocity of their judish attackers others had fled never to return had let the Saxons in by the back door and would never be forgiven for it In fairness he had little choice in the matter beset on all sides with no other hope of Defense the practice of hiring German mercenaries was by no means a new one indeed the Romans had themselves done it and there is much archaeological evidence for settlements of Angles and Saxons under Roman rule in Britain by Arthur's time the word Saxon had come to mean a multitude of Germanic settlers and indeed the modern word sassenact is still used by the Scots today as a derogatory term for the English incomers so this is the world that Arthur grew up in a world in which the Saxon expansion threatens still further a Britain destabilized without the protective cloak of Rome the great country houses and Estates of Southern Britain were left to the wind and the rain large-scale farming and Industry ran slowly down as the roads that the Romans had built became more and more unsafe the Dark Ages some Emma said to me sometimes unconsciously conveys the idea of its being almost always mid-winter it really means a period of which we don't know very much it is also a period after the Roman occupation when the legionary forces were withdrawn at the end of the at the beginning of the fifth century when Britain was left to her own devices and when we know that eventually the ancestors of the English who were Heathen barbarians overtook and clearly ruined most of the island the Roman fortresses were destroyed and the Villas some fell into Decay but what we don't know is exactly how long this process took and there's great disagreement among archaeologists and historians in my own view very briefly based on Bottom now the latest discoveries is that that some form of Roman tradition did continue for a considerable time probably maybe two or three generations um it probably quite likely I think into the sixth century and gildas whom I mentioned earlier talks about people with um Roman ranks about Rick Torres rulers judges and so forth we find an inscription of him five the 540 in North Wales which refers to the the cons the Consular date at which the king died so there were a lot of Raymond tradition went on most of the towns and cities deteriorated some decayed some were stripped bare others simply disappeared it was truly the beginning of Britain's Dark Age Petty Warlords sprang up all over Britain and inevitably the tribal violence which had Lane dormant under centuries of Roman rule erupted with a new vigor leaders Rose and fell at an astonishing rate and the rule of law was no longer respected more and more people fled to the towns and cities as supplies failed some choosing migration to Northern Gaul others preferring to seek refuge in the newly refortified strongholds of their ancestors famine and plague claimed many one such deserted Roman city is described in the earliest known Anglo-Saxon poem snaps roof trees Towers Fallen the work of the Giants the stone Smith's moldareth Grimes scourth gate Towers rhyme on mortar shattered the shower Shields roofs ruined age under eight them and the wielders and the rights Earth grip holds them gone long gone fast engraves grasp while 50 Fathers and Sons have passed wall stood gray lichen Redstone Kings fell often the first serious historical documents in which Arthur is named were compiled meticulously by a Welsh monk in banga North Wales he's known to us as nenius and he was not the author of these documents we might say he was the editor but he himself admits in his prefers to his history of the britons in about 829 that his method of working was haphazard I ninnius disciple of elvada have taken the trouble of writing down a few fragments which refute the stupidity of the British race of which they are accused because their learned men had no knowledge and had not written in books any record of that island of Britain but I have made a heap of all that I could find both in the Roman annals and in The Chronicles of the Holy fathers that is Jerome eusebius Isadore and prosper and also from the annals of the Irish and Saxons and from the traditions of our elders like gilders before him nenius was a monk but he had few literary aspirations and he confined himself to arranging the assortment of ancient documents in what he thought was their true historical order whether he was as gripped by the figure of Arthur is not recorded but by the 9th century when nenius compiled the documents he had found Arthur had become a folk hero especially in nanius's Native Wales amongst those documents the two most important are the annals of Wales and nenius's history of the britons the annals are thought to contain accounts from 5th and 6th Century history copied down at around 800. so they may have been altered at any time by Monk copyists censoring or adding to text as they saw fit people are very curious and often ask people like myself who are studying this period what sort of evidence there is well in a sense there's very little the direct sources used by historians are very few and we've made we've canvassed most of them the only one we haven't done I haven't mentioned so far is the history of the britons which used to be attributed to ninius which is the most important which was written in the year 829 in its present form but there's actually very little as the mention in the godothan there are other early Welsh verses there's a Welsh poem and about geraint the prince of Devon which is later than Arthur's time but mentions Arthur so there's not a great deal but what there is is highly suggestive and there are other ways of examining the evidence there is a archeology doesn't really tell us very much unfortunately it tells us a great deal about the conditions of life to some extent about political conditions because we can fortresses have been excavated and so on but we don't really for the most part know who in those fortresses and we don't really know whether Arthur lived in one or another but what we do have is the history of the britons which in the year 800 records Arthur's 12 great battles most of the sites are not very easy in fact none of them is identified for certain that to my mind is a bit of an argument for saying they're genuine because it seems to me a forger would have been picked on and known and well-known sites of the period he doesn't and to the extent that they can be satisfactorily identified they do appear the sort of places you might expect battles at the beginning of the 6th Century in those days the Saxons increased in numbers and grew stronger in Britain but at him guess death his son went from the northern part of Britain to the kingdom of Kent and from him arose the kings of Kint then Arthur fought against those men in those days with the kings of the britons but he was the leader of battles the first battle was in the mouth of the river which is called glein the second and third and fourth and fifth on another river which is called dub glass and is in the region linawis the sixth battle on the river called bassas the seventh battle was in the forest of Caledon that is the eighth battle was at the Fort of guinean in which Arthur carried the image of the Blessed Mary ever virgin on his shoulders and the pagans were put to flight and there was a great Slaughter of them by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the grace of the Blessed Mary the Virgin his mother the ninth battle was fought in the city of the legion he fought the tenth battle on the shore of the river which is called tribrow it the 11th battle was on the mountain called agned the 12th battle was at Baden Hill where 960 men perished at one charge of Arthurs and no one killed them save he himself and in all the battles he was Victor and they when they were defeated in all the battles sent for help to Germany and their numbers were ceaselessly added to and they brought Kings from Germany to rule over those in Britain [Music] it's clear from nenius's account that Arthur was an experienced military campaigner and nanius always refers to him using the Latin word for Soldier miles pronounced melees rather than calling him King it's even possible that Arthur may not have been a name but an epithet as vortigen was some have claimed the name Arthur stems from the Roman name Artorias a Roman officer called artorius Justice served in Britain in the 3rd century but Arthur is not an unusual Celtic name at this time either another suggestion which historians have advanced some for some time is um that the fact that a number of um dynasties of the time of Kings whose genealogies have been preserved tend to uh call their sons Arthur this is in the January two three generations after the time when Arthur would have lived which again suggests that there was a famous Arthur after whom they wish to name their sons and it's interesting too to me that um most of these kings are in the north of Britain where I suspect um that the real Arthur lived possibly based on the Roman legionary Fortress at York something that Arthur and Ambrosius mentioned by gildas were one and the same Jeffrey of Monmouth invented a blood tie between Ambrosius and Arthur by making Arthur the son of Uther Pendragon who was supposed brother to Ambrosius but there is no historical evidence for this and no way of knowing who Arthur's parents were or where he was born it's a commonly held belief that Arthur took up the struggle against the Invaders where Ambrosius left off unusually gilders names Ambrosius where he'd kept Silence about other figures notably Arthur of Ambrosius he said their leader was Ambrosius a gentleman who perhaps alone of the Romans had survived the shock of this notable storm certainly his parents who had worn the purple were slain in it it's plain that both Ambrosius and Arthur shared a strong desire to rid Britain at the Heathen Invaders or at least to stem the tidal wave of eager Germanic pictish and Irish settlers perhaps Ambrosius invented Arthur with his authority and passed him the torch to Bear onwards into the darkness [Music] knowing nothing about his background or descent we can only assume that he must have come from a British family of some importance the influence of Rome was still very strong in such noble families Arthur May well have spoken in the local Celtic dialect a type of primitive Welsh but he would also have had a working knowledge of Latin as a matter of course what he looked like and how old he was when he took up the fight we cannot know one thing can be said with certainty he was a British military commander who appeared on the scene in the latter half of the 5th Century and succeeded in curbing the Saxon incursions and in parts of Britain actually halting their Advance altogether the battles mentioned by nenius took place over a wide area of Britain roughly stretching from strathclyde eastwards to northumbria or possibly even to Lincolnshire and from Chester to some point Southwest where Baden Hills or a British Victory so overwhelming that it subdued the Saxons for the following 50 years as gilders puts it Baden was not the least Slaughter of the Hang dogs and also almost the last only two battle sites of The Twelve mentioned by nenius have been tentatively identified but the important fact is that they indicate the scope and reach of the military force of which Arthur may have been the leader such a force with its ability to respond to threats from all over Mainland Britain would have Cavalry as its main component the resounding defeat he inflicted on the Saxons at Baden demonstrated superbly that in a pitched battle Cavalry had the edge over foot soldiers the tradition of Cavalry had been inherited from the Romans whose most effective troops in the Twilight of Rome's power had been their light or fast strike cavalry the Celts themselves had a reputation for superb horsemanship indeed they had sold their services as auxiliary Cavalry the length and breadth of the old Empire and Rome had learned much from them now the wheel turned again and all of that knowledge and experience passed once more into Arthur's hands it's safe to assume that he along with Ambrosius revived the use of Cavalry as a hammer with which to break the enemy ranks we might get a better idea of Arthur's strategy if we could identify the battle sites because they really are I think the most tantalizing clue and it may be that the day will come when one of the sites is properly excavated and if we find evidence of a battle contemporary then I think we would obviously be very near but we wouldn't know for instance whether the battles occurred in successive years or all in the space of one campaign or ever a time of the whole of Arthur's lifetime so we wouldn't know much um it's it's from the early Welsh poetry we know how the battle was fought it was some there were various stylized um there was considerable use of of Cavalry as I say the Nobles prided themselves rather like medieval knights so there is a resemblance but there's nothing unusual about using Cavalry in fact Cavalry it was usual among the britons at that time and I don't believe and there's no evidence to suggest that this was imitating as was suggested in the Oxford history of England the armored Knights the cataphracti of the late Roman Empire I don't think so this was an aristocratic form of warfare from these some Hill forts where they've had their horses and I think as much as anything it reflects the um aristocratic Prejudice of The Poets who are not who are writing for their kings and are writing about what they wish to know about just as um medieval minstrels write about the adventures of Lancelot and Gawain riding out in armor but it doesn't mean that everyone did it just means that the audience wanted to hear about that but it does still reflect an aspect of the Warfare but there is mention in the poems Illusions some that's not their prime interest in ordered movements of troops and there is an expression forming the battle pen which does give the impression of a forming up a Phalanx maybe of men with Spears and Shields and it'd be inconceivable that there wasn't some sort of discipline in order and indeed that the king like Arthur who carved a name for himself and if it was he won the great victory at Mount Bardon and didn't make use of them the Superior Tactics to his adversaries equally the adversaries were obviously very formidable indeed or we wouldn't be speaking English at this interview in contrast to Arthur's highly mobile and disciplined men the Saxons mostly fought on foot as indeed they continued to do right up to the Battle of Hastings they had no apparent strategy because they had no sense of central leadership small bands of Saxons in one Community would be loyal to one Chief but fought mainly for the love of it with the added incentive of Rich rewards if they won military discipline was not their strong suit and their War gear varied according to their means unlike the British under Arthur for whom uniformity and consistency of equipment particularly horse harness would have been essential in a large Force particularly Cavalry standardization of essential items of equipment would have been the only practical way to make the most of horses and Men such a demand would have been met by a cottage industry of Craftsmen armorers leather workers and perhaps even field surgeons as well as the more obvious baggage train of cooks and Quartermasters the logistics of directing soap complicated a piece of military Machinery indicates that Arthur must have been as capable a diplomat as he was a soldier for to keep his men and horses fully effective vast resources would have been needed it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the church with its great wealth was one of Arthur's Main benefactors but whether it did so willingly or with a little prompting is hard to say certainly in the first few centuries following Arthur's lifetime the record-keeping clergy seemed to have been unwilling to give him any credit as Guild is silence on the subject of Arthur May perhaps bear Witness well as I've said earlier that the the direct sources are very sparse and for the most part unfortunately not that satisfactory they require an enormous amount of discussion and evaluation but I suppose if I were to look for a parallel it would not be back in the Imperial Room and past uh nor in the Knights of the Middle Ages but it would be in what was going on in in Gaul across the channel at this time which is far better documented because people were writing uh letters and so forth which have survived and there we do see I would think a rather similar picture to Britain for example um you have a northern Gall a Roman leader sayagrius who is still acting as a Roman officer though he's now cut off completely from Rome itself we're having the letters in the fifth century of sidonius and other people long correspondence has survived of these Roman Aristocrats are living on in their Villas sometimes um perfectly peacefully and and in on good terms with the local Gothic king or Frankish King writing corresponding even acting on their behalf there's a description of a gaulish land law landowner young and dashing man called hectidius who with I think a handful of Horsemen I forget the number of dozen rides through the whole of a Gothic besieging Army in order to relieve a city in southern Gaul so if you read those sources which are accessible then I think that gives perhaps a more clear impression of what was going on in Britain than the speculation which from much later sources which have survived in this country and one has to remember too that uh historically what happened in Gaul seems to be happening on another planet because we read that as a separate part of history but the real author or the real people who lived at that time the real Kai and bedouke and bedevier knew what was going on to some extent they talked with Merchants delivering wine at ports on the southern and western coasts they themselves must occasionally have traveled there the whole enormous historical events can can and must have taken place of which we know nothing and I think therefore again studying the history of Gaul which is so much better documented does give one a much um fairer and more a clear picture whilst British resources ensured that each man had the Bare Essentials there must have been a fair amount of looting and opportunists stealing so that as time passed at least the higher ranks of each side would have had items such as chain mail helmets and possibly even swords which had been taken from the enemy Arthur's men may have if they took Rome as their model carried long straight Cavalry swords or spears or both they may have carried Shields but even if they didn't they would almost certainly have worn body armor of either chain mail leather armor or scale the latter is vulnerable to Upward thrust Not A wise choice of armor for a Cavalry man before Grant the enemies scourge I saw white horses tensed red after the war cry bitter the grave I Saw The Clash of Swords men in Terror bloody heads before garant the Great his father's son I saw Spurs and men who did not flinch from Spears who drank their wine from glass that glinted I saw Arthur's Heroes who cut with steel the emperor ruler of our labor th grind to a slain Heroes of the land of Dove night before they were slain they slew under the thigh of garite Swift charges long their leg wheat their fodder red swooping like milk white Eagles when geraint was born Heaven's Gate stood open Christ granted all our prayer lovely to behold the glory of Britain of course Arthur would have had more than just Cavalry at his disposal the units of foot soldiers he commanded would have been a mixture of the descendants of old soldiers who had served under the regular Roman army volunteers from The Villages and farms and in the remaining British control towns any such Town militia that could be spared and were acceptable to the Duke's balorian the war leader or leader of battles as Arthur is often called the weapon of choice for an average foot soldier on the British side is likely to have been the spear because swords were expensive to produce they remained almost exclusively the weapons of the nobility or those fortunate enough to acquire them on the field of battle shields were the principal form of protection for these poorer British folk who couldn't possibly afford body armor let alone iron helmets but unlike the professionally produced and finished Shields of the earlier Roman troops these would have been edged with Rawhide and possibly painted in crude copies of the patterns of the Roman Legions iron Helms were rare in the Saxons ranks too even amongst nobility Spears were the most common weapon on both sides in contrast to the sword very little skill or training is needed to use the spear effectively enough to injure or to kill very few actual weapons have been found from this time that can be said to be definitely British one reason for this may be that the britons being mostly Christians had abandoned the practice of bearing their weapons with their dead whereas the Saxons very much still a pagan and Warrior Society still persisted in consigning their most treasured possessions including their swords Spears male shirts and helmets to the Grave an old domini 516 to 518 the Battle of Baden in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the britons were victorious the aim of such a huge infantry Army pushing so far into British territory must surely have been to overcome and destroy the main British Cavalry Force which was after all the only thing standing between them and Mastery of all Britain and also to wipe out the British base the Saxon Army was composed of the armies of Kent and of the South and West Saxons under the overall leadership of Ale and was for those days an enormous force of warriors Arthur's Cavalry was probably no more than a thousand and if it was a Siege the hard-pressed Cavalry needed a steep hill for the dismounted Warriors to hold against the greater numbers of the Saxons and there are many such Hills outside bath and on one of these Hills Arthur triumphed at Baden Arthur crushed the Saxons so thoroughly that it was to take them decades to recover he created by brute force a breathing space for his fellow britons for a while at least they need not fear the ravages of the Saxon Sea Wolves Arthur had won a piece and could expect to enjoy the Acclaim of the people though he was never a king he did more than any king of Britain had ever done although many of them were of no blood descent than he was he was nevertheless 12 times designated Commander peace may have brought Arthur rewards as well as the Gratitude of the British for a warlord of his stature it would be quite natural for him to seek a permanent stronghold an ancient Hill Fort at South Cadbury in Somerset last inhabited at the time of the Roman Invasion had been shown by archaeologists to have been re-fortified at the end of the 5th Century when Arthur's military career was at its peak in the center of this hill Fort stood a great feasting Hall with a lofty thatched roof and gabled at each end was this the Camelot of Legend where Arthur celebrated his greatest victories history is so far silent [Music] an Old Dominion 539 the battle of kamlan in which Arthur and modred perished and there was a plague in Britain an island [Music] Arthur got his peace and perhaps was able to enjoy it for a short while the Saxon threat had been warded off and the country could once again flourish but the old hostilities resurfaced between the petty Chieftains civil war broke out and Arthur may have been drawn into it Legend says he and his son died at each other's hands in a fatal power struggle yet men say in parts of England that King Arthur is not dead but had by the will of our Lord Jesus into another place and men say that he shall come again I will not say it shall be so but rather will I say that here in the world he changed his life but many men say there is written upon his tomb this verse here lies Arthur The Once and Future King [Music] foreign

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 393,267

Keywords: Charlemagne era, Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries, Chronicle channel, Ireland history, ancient beliefs, ancient tales, civilization development, educational content, enduring stories, folk tales, folkloric characters, heritage preservation, historical accounts, history exploration, legends explained, medieval folklore, medieval society, myth origins, mythical stories, mythological figures, old myths exploration

Id: 7OHtVbVPXRA

Length: 158min 39sec (9519 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023