Dark Days in York

The historic walled city of York is said to have been founded by the Romans as Eboracum in 71 AD, at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. At its prime it was the largest town in northern Britain and capital of the Roman province of Britannia Inferior.

In 208 the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus travelled to Britain, strengthening Hadrian's Wall and reoccupying the Antonine Wall during a campaign in Caledonia (modern Scotland). Following a short illness Severus died at Eboracum in 211, his body cremated outside the city walls. In 306 Constantius I became the second Emperor to die at Eboracum. His son Constantine I (Constantine the Great) was instantly proclaimed as successor by the troops based in the fortress. His bronze statue stands outside York Minster.

Constantine I

The traditional view is that the name "Eboracum" is based on a Latinisation of the native British name “Eburos” for the ancient site, "place of the yew trees”. The name was later revived as the Anglo-Saxon trading port of Eoforwic, from the Old English “eofor,” for boar, and “wic” for settlement. The usual explanation given is that the Anglo-Saxons confused the Brythonic word “ebor”, yew tree, with their own word “eofor”.

The city became the capital of the northern ecclesiastical province of the Church of England, a role it has retained with the present building of the Gothic cathedral of York Minster, the second largest in Northern Europe, dominating the city skyline, begun c.1230 and completed in 1472. The first church recorded on the site was a much more modest affair; a wooden structure was built in 627 to provide a place for the baptism of Edwin, King of Deira.

In 866 Eoforwic was captured by Ivar the Boneless, leading a large army of Danish Vikings, known as the "Great Heathen Army" to the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, and renamed the city 'Jórvík.' Excavations at Coppergate in central York by the York Archaeological Trust revealed that during the 10th century, Jórvík's trading connections reached as far as the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. The site of the excavations is now the Jorvik Viking Centre. Eric Bloodaxe, last ruler of an independent Jórvík, was finally driven from the city in 954 by Eadred, King of Wessex, in his campaign to unify England. Eric was killed and Eadred took control of the kingdom of York.

Whether Eboracum, Eoforwic, or Jórvík, call it what you will, a visit to York with its rich heritage never fails to stimulate the senses, walking the city walls being one the best ways to take in views of this rich historical tapestry.

York - city wall and Minster (Source: http://www.jorvik.co.uk)

The city walls have been convincingly described as the best in Britain, with most of the medieval walls built to encircle the city 700 years ago still intact. The tops of the walls were restored about 150 years ago to provide a public walkway, the route marked with small brass pavement studs on the ground showing a tower with battlements, providing what is claimed to be the best city walk in the country. Who could argue with that? But this city has a dark, dismal secret.

The Romans surrounded their fort with walls but little evidence of these remain today; the current walls are largely of Medieval construction, strengthened in the 1640s for the English Civil War. There are four main Medieval gateways, or bars, into the city: Bootham Bar; Monk Bar; Walmgate Bar; Micklegate Bar. The Minster sits toward the north corner, between Bootham Bar and Monk Bar. In the south corner between Walmgate Bar and Micklegate Bar are the Lesser Gateways: Fishergate Bar, Fishergate Postern and Victoria Bar. 

Just past the Guildhall some steps lead up to the Walls at Monk Bar. Outside the Walls  here is Sainbury's multi-storey car park, built on the site of York’s medieval Jewish cemetery. The area is still called Jewbury but it was long forgotten and fell in to disuse when all Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and not re-discovered until construction work began on the supermarket.

Situated between the Rivers Foss and Ouse, beyond the city walls and Fishergate Postern Tower, is Clifford Tower on the top of a steep man-made mound with extensive views across the modern city. The Foss was dammed at Fishergate Postern Tower, where the road now crosses the river. The purpose of the dam was to flood York's castle’s moats, now filled in, Clifford’s Tower, or the King's Tower as it was then known, the castle keep, being the only significant remnant of old York Castle. A stone plaque at the bottom of the steps recalls a disturbing event over 800 years ago on the hill where Clifford’s Tower now stands.

Clifford's Tower

The mound was constructed by William the Conqueror in 1068 after meeting resistance in the north. This was promptly besieged and the wooden defences were destroyed within a year.  Undeterred, in March of that year, William built another castle (Baile Hill), positioning each castle on either side of the river Ouse. Clifford's Tower on the Eastern side of the river and Baile Hill on the Western side with the foundations of York Minster laid in 1070.

There is no record of Jews in England before the Norman Conquest, however, it is known that William the Conqueror brought a Jewish contingent from Rouen, in Normandy, to Britain in 1070 for the prosperity their commercial skills and incoming capital would bring to England. However, they were not permitted to own land or to participate in trades, being limited to money lending. During the 12th century Jews from Paris and elsewhere in France were settled at York making worthy contributions to the Exchequer.

Fuelled by Christian enthusiasm for the Crusades anti-Semitic feeling was running high throughout Western Europe in the 12th century, with aggression directed against Jews not just in England, but also France and Germany. Pope Gregory VIII had called Christians to arms for the Third Crusade to put Jerusalem under Christian control once more after the Crusader army was slaughtered by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. A rumour started that the new crusader-king no longer wanted to protect the non-Christian Jews of England, some even claimed there was no need to go abroad to find enemies of Christianity to kill. Yet the fate of Europe’s Jewish communities is often omitted from accounts of the Crusades.

England’s newly crowned monarch Richard I, 'The Lionheart', had “taken up the cross” and was eager to join the crusade. Rioting had spread throughout England since prominent Jews had been denied entry to Richard's coronation in 1189. One of these was Benedict of York, the wealthiest Jew in the City who was mortally wounded in the rioting at Westminster.

After rioting had engulfed the towns of Norwich, Stamford and Lincoln they began in York on 16th March 1190 with a mob attempting to burn down Benedict’s palatial house. The Jews were officially protected by the king as his feudal vassals but the entire Jewish community of York, 150 people, sought protection in the royal castle, barricading themselves into the wooden keep, where Clifford’s Tower now stands, in fear of the mob.

The royal constable was locked out of the keep and refused entry. Calling on a group of knights, he ordered the castle keep to be taken by force. The mob were encouraged by members of the local gentry who saw this as an opportunity to erase the debts they owed to the Jewish money-lenders in York. It is claimed that most of the Jews chose to commit suicide in the keep rather than fall to the hands of the mob. It is claimed that after killing their wives and children they set fire to the wooden keep and killed themselves. However, a few declined suicide only to perish in the fire, or be murdered by the mob. After the massacre the gentry proceeded to the Minster to destroy records of their loans, so absolving themselves from repayment to the king, who would acquire the property and debts owed to the murdered Jews.

The events at York were recorded in the Chronicles of the Abbey of Meaux in East Yorkshire, and Roger of Howden. The chronicler William of Newburgh described the mob who murdered the Jewish community of York as acting “without any scruple of Christian conscientiousness”.

Soon afterwards a royal inquest was held which resulted in the city receiving a heavy fine, but no individuals were ever held responsible for the loss of life at York that night. It is thought that some of them were already travelling through France to join the Crusades.

The events at York have been compared to the Siege of Masada, one of the final events in the First Jewish–Roman War, in which, according to the 1st century historian Josephus, a long siege by troops of the Roman Empire ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Sicarii rebels and their families hiding on a large hilltop in current-day Israel, in 74 AD.

Josephus  reported that when the Romans entered the fortress at the end of the siege they found it to be "a citadel of death." The Jewish rebels had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and had committed mass suicide. Masada has become a controversial event in Jewish history, with some regarding it as a place of reverence. The Jews of York were probably aware of Masada and may have seen a similar fate for themselves.

Judaism prohibits suicide, therefore it is argued that the Jews must have killed each other in turn. However, there is no archaeological evidence that Masada's defenders committed mass suicide. And what evidence is there for a mass suicide at York?

The cemetery at Jewbury is estimated to contain around a 1,000 graves, it must have been one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the country. The archaeologists discovered about 500 medieval graves during the construction of Sainbury's multi-storey carpark in the 1980s. However, none of the excavated graves at Jewbury showed any signs of violence, except one, it therefore seems unlikely that these were the bodies of the Jews massacred in Clifford's Tower in 1190. What became of their fate? At Norwich seventeen skeletons found in a well were identified as Jews murdered during this period

No physical memory was left in the city of the murders, but archaeological excavations have revealed the burnt remnants of the original wooden structure beneath the tower. For years it was believed a cherem had been placed on York, prohibiting the resettling of the city by Jews following the mass-murder in 1190.

Memorial plaque at Clifford's Tower

In efforts toward reconciliation it has been argued that Jews continued to live at York and built houses after the massacre at Clifford Tower up to the expulsion in 1290 under Edward I and there is no evidence of a cherem at York in any known Rabbinical text.

Today, at the foot of Clifford’s Tower, a plaque marks this dark day in York’s history. Further to the memorial plaque, in 1990, exactly eight-hundred years after the massacre, the slopes of Clifford's Tower were planted with daffodils with six pointed petals representative of the Star of David, which flower in March when the 150 souls were lost.

Next time you are in York admiring the fine medieval walls and the rich history of the city bear a thought for that dark day in March 1190.


Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

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The Tudors: Divorce and Dissolution

On this day 7th March in 1530 King Henry VIII's divorce request against Catherine of Aragon was denied by the Pope triggering a remarkable series of events that will finally conclude later this month.

The Battle for the Roses
On 22nd August 1485, Henry Tudor became King Henry VII of England upon defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, effectively bringing to an end the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York.

Marching through Wales on his way to Bosworth Field Henry flew the ancient battle standard of Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon, 7th century king of Gwynedd, the Red Dragon (Y Ddraig Goch), claiming direct descent from the noble families of Wales. The Red Dragon is indeed ancient and can be traced to the Arthurian Legend when Merlin prophesied of a battle between a red and a white dragon, the red dragon being the Britons and the white dragon representing the invading Saxons.

Henry carried the Red Dragon through London in his victory parade with the flag carried to St. Paul's Cathedral to be blessed. The arms of Cadwaladr were also prominent at his coronation. With the victory Henry became the first Tudor Monarch of England, his opponent Richard III was killed in the battle and the last king of the House of York. After the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor added his family colours, green and white, representing the Tudor House, to his Red Dragon flag, today the National flag of Wales.

In the aftermath of the battle Richard's crown was found and presented to Henry who was crowned king at the top of Crown Hill, near the village of Stoke Golding. Richard's body was stripped naked and bound over a horse and taken to Leicester where it was exhibited in a church. After two days, Richard's corpse was interred in a plain unmarked tomb within the church of the Greyfriars Friary Church.

Arthur Prince of Wales
In an effort to strengthen the Tudor claim to the throne and emphasise his family's Welsh ancestry, Henry had royal genealogists trace his lineage back to the ancient British rulers and decided on naming his firstborn son after the legendary King Arthur. Subsequently, Winchester was identified as Camelot where his wife, Elizabeth of York, was compelled to give birth to his heir.

Born at Saint Swithun's Priory (today Winchester Cathedral Priory) on 20th September 1486 Arthur was Henry and Elizabeth's eldest child with the young Prince viewed as "a living symbol" of not only the union between the House of Tudor and the House of York, but also of the end of the Wars of the Roses; he was the great hope of the newly established House of Tudor.

Before Arthur was two years old he was betrothed to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, the youngest surviving child of Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of Spain. Arthur and Catherine married on 14th November 1501 in Old St. Paul's Cathedral. After the wedding and celebrations, the young couple moved to Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border but less than six months later on 2nd April 1502 Arthur was dead, victim of an unknown ailment.

Fourteen months after Arthur's death Catherine, Princess of Wales, was betrothed to his younger brother, the future Henry VIII, who was too young to marry at the time. Canon law forbade men to marry their brother's widow but Catherine testified that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated, therefore the marriage was deemed not valid and received dispensation from the Pope. Following King Henry VII's death in April 1509, the young King's first priority was to marry Catherine in June of the same year.

Supremacy & Suppression
Frustrated by his lack of a male heir after 24 years of marriage, King Henry VIII lost interest in Catherine and became fascinated with Anne Boleyn, the Queen's lady-in-waiting. The King began to petition the Pope for an annulment claiming that the marriage was cursed as it went against the biblical teaching that a man should never marry his brother's widow. But on the 7th March in 1530 the King's request for a divorce was rejected by the Pope.

The political and legal debate continued for six years with Catherine seeking not only to retain her position as the King's true and legitimate wife but also that of her daughter Mary, insisting that she and Arthur, her first husband and Henry's brother, did not consummate their marriage and therefore were not truly husband and wife.

By 1533 Anne Boleyn was pregnant forcing Henry to act; his solution was to reject the power of the Pope in England and instruct the Archbishop of Canterbury to grant the annulment. The subsequent divorce led to the Reformation in England and schism with Rome with Henry then declaring that he, not the Pope, was supreme head of England's church through the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534.

In 1536 Henry began the legal process in which the monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, would be disbanded through the First Act of Suppression (1536) and the Second Act of Suppression (1539). During this period around 800 religious houses were either demolished or disbanded.

One such was Greyfriars Friary Church, Leicester, the last known location of the body of Richard III. With the demolition of the church and the site levelled following its dissolution in 1538 Richard's tomb appeared to be lost forever.

The Return of the King
The search for Richard's body began in August 2012. The archaeological excavation was led by the University of Leicester Archaeological Services and Leicester City Council with the Richard III Society.

By comparing historical maps the search located the foundations of the Friary Church where Richard's body had been hastily buried in 1485, located beneath a modern-day city centre car park. On the first day of the dig a human skeleton belonging to a man in his thirties was uncovered. The remains showed signs of severe injuries and had several unusual physical features, most notably a severe curvature of the back. DNA analysis has matched the remains to descendants of Richard's sister Anne of York concluding beyond reasonable doubt that the skeleton was that of Richard III.

Richard's remains will be re-interred in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015.



Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Pictures: Wikimedia commons

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Brân - Celtic god of Hades

Brân fab Llyr/Bendigeidfran is the central character of the Second Brânch of the Mabinogi, which traditionally bears the name of his sister, Brânwen ferch Llyr. Brân Bendigeid, “Blessed Raven” is a Celtic sea-deity, the son of Llyr, associated with the early Celtic cult of the head and and possibly with the Morrigan, the goddess of battle, strife, and sovereignty who also appears in the form of a crow. The Morrigan can appear as both a single goddess and as a trio of deities with Badb (Crow), and either Macha (also Crow) or Nemain (Frenzy). There is ample evidence that the concept of a raven goddess of battle was not limited to the Irish Celts.

In the Mabinogi
In the distant mythological past, Brân is a giant and king of Britain. His sister Brânwen is betrothed to Matholwch, king of Ireland. Matholwch is insulted when his horses are mutilated so Brân presents a gift of a magic cauldron to the Irish king. Matholwch takes Brânwen back to Ireland with him. When Brân hears Brânwen is being mistreated by her husband’s people he musters the hosts of Britain for an expedition to Ireland. He leaves his son Caradawg as officer in charge of the Island of the Mighty while he embarks to Ireland.

In the bloody war that ensues, Irish warriors are revived by being thrown into the peir dadeni (cauldron of rebirth) resurrected but without the power of speech. Ultimately Brân succeeds in rescuing Brânwen but in the midst of the fighting, there is an obscure traditional utterance in which Brân is called 'Morddwyd Tyllion' this is clear reference to his fatal wound (pierced thighs). The fighting ends when the Irish and the army of the Island of the Mighty have all but annihilated each other; only seven of Brân's party survive and return to Harlech. He tells his followers how to deal with the situation by decapitating him:

‘And take the head,’ he said, ‘and bring it as far as the
White Mound (Gwynfryn) in London, and bury it
with its face towards France. And you will be a long
while on the way. In Harlech you will be seven years
engaged in feasting, with the birds of Rhiannon
singing above.’

The following 87-year Otherworldly feast is referred to in the tale by the peculiar traditional name 'yspydawt urdawl benn' (hospitality of the noble head), during which Brân’s head remains alive, uncorrupted, and as good a companion as ever. The Otherworld feast comes to an end when one of Brân’s retinue opens the door facing south, towards Cernyw (Cornwall) and Aber Henfelen. They must now end their sojourn in the Otherworld, take the head  and bury it at the White Mound. The Third Brânch (the Mabinogi of Manawydan), opens with Brân’s head interred as a talisman preventing the incursion of foreign oppression.

It is evident from the Mabinogi account that Brân is a supernatural figure; his head has the ability to live on after its decapitation; it talks, sings and can prophesy to its companions in an Otherworldy feast that lasts 87 years.

In the Book of Taliesin
In the Second Brânch tale, Taliesin is named as one of the seven who returned from Ireland with Brân’s head. Among the mythological poetry in Llyfr Taliesin, in the poem Song Before the Sons of Llyr, there are allusions to two episodes in Brân’s story which interestingly use the same words as the Mabinogi tale:

A battle at the feast over joyless beverage,
A battle against the sons of Llyr in Ebyr Henfelyn. 

I have been with Brân in Ireland.
I saw when Morddwydtyllon was killed 

Complete is my chair in Caer Siddi,
No one will be afflicted with disease or old age that may be in it.
Manawyddan and Pryderi know it  

The narrator, Taliesin, was one of the seven survivors named along with Manawyddan, Pryderi, and four others in the Mabinogi of Brânwen. Clearly, the poem and the tale of Brânwen are closely related texts, referring to the same event, confirming the old and traditional status of elements of the Mabinogi text.

In the Welsh Triads 
The burial of Brân’s head is recorded in the Triads of the Island of Britain (Trioedd Ynys Prydein) as one of the Three fortunate concealments of the Island of Britain. The following translation is based on the Red Book version (Llyfr Coch Hergest):

The head of Bendigeidfran son of Llyr, which was
concealed in the White Hill in London, with its
face towards France; and so long as it remained as it
was laid there, no Saxon oppression (gormes) would
ever come to this island. 

Brân's severed head is also described as one of Three Unfortunate Disclosures because Arthur declared that he needed no talisman to protect his own country and dug up the head. However, we are not told what he did with it.

In Ancient Greek History
Brân's story is well known in traditional accounts, as we have seen, featuring in the Mabinogi, The Book of Taliesin and the Triads of the Island of Britain. John Koch has equated Brân's story with the famous historical Gaulish chieftain Brennos (Brennius), together with Akichorios, who led a Celtic offensive in the Balkans and attacked Macedonia and Greece in the 3rd century BC.

At the beginning of 279 BC the Gaulish chieftain Bolgios’s army annihilated the detachment of the Macedonian ruler Ptolemy Keraunos, opening the way into Greece for Brennos to follow with a force comprising 152,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. Brennos continued south. By the autumn of 279 BC he had reached and passed the strategic pass at Thermopylae. Brennos then attacked Delphi with 65,000 men. It seems the winter forced the Gauls to retreat; a miraculous snowstorm sent by Apollo saved the Delphic sanctuary from the onslaught of the Gauls. Brennos, gravely wounded, retreated to the north, where he rejoined Akichorios’s forces but, unable to stand the pain of his wounds, he took his own life by stabbing himself.

The episode of Brennos’s death has been compared with the voluntary beheading of the wounded Brân after the great invasion of Ireland in the Mabinogi; Diodorus Siculus (22.9) has the wounded Brennos command his surviving followers to kill him.

Some of the treasure taken from Delphi by Brennos’s Gauls was deposited, as an offering to their god, in the sacred pools of the Volcae Tectosages at Tolosa (Toulouse) in south-west Gaul. The treasure was then raised out of the ritual pools by the Roman general Caepio when the area was conquered in 106 BC, and considered comparable with the talismanic deposition of Brân’s severed head which protected Britain from foreign conquest.

In Medieval Welsh Legendary History
In Brut y Brenhinedd, the Welsh versions of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, the legendary prehistoric British king called Hely by Geoffrey appears as Beli, and the
conquerors of Rome whom Geoffrey called Brennius and Belinus have the Welsh names Brân and Beli. However, Beli may derive from the Old Celtic name, which is attested as both Bolgios and Belgius, and was borne by the chieftain who led the Gauls’ invasion of Macedonia in 280–279 BC.

Another Brennos (of the Senones) was a Gaulish leader who marched at the head of assembled Celtic warbands c. 390 BC, that routed the Roman army eleven miles from Rome. The recurrence of the name Brennus raises the suggestion that it was a title rather than a proper name. However, the Welsh name Brân could be related to Gaulish Brennos, but is not its exact equivalent. Geoffrey probably saw the name 'Brennius' as a Latinisation of 'Brân' and muddled the two accounts.

The Raven
The story of Brân in the Mabinogi is well known for the 'talking head' episode when, after being fatally wounded, Brân orders his retinue to severe his head and take it with them. The head continues to talk and remains uncorrupted until one of the party break a taboo and open a window to the south. The head is then buried at Bryn-Gwyn, the White Mound, said to be the site of the Tower of London, however, the Tower's association with the raven is a late tradition. Nearby Tower Hill, described as the“blood-stained ground to the north-west of the Tower,” maybe a better candidate where there is archaeological evidence of a Bronze Age settlement and, later, the site of many public executions. According to Geoffrey the 'White Mound' is the burial place of Brutus.

There seems to have been a cult of the head at the site of St Paul's with numerous animal skulls found there when the building of the present cathedral began in 1675 AD, architect Sir Christopher Wren, discovered remains of a pagan Stag Goddess temple in the foundations of the previous Cathedral which had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. This was possibly the site of the pagan temple at Ludgate Hill, reputedly destroyed by the Saxons in 597.

Koch suggests that the Roman Saxon Shore fort of Brâncaster in Norfolk, may have been the site of the original interment of Brân's head. Recorded in the Notitia Dignatatum under the Romano-British name as “Brânodunum” meaning the 'fort of Brân'. It seems more than coincidence that a fort of the litus Saxonicus should be named after a supernatural protector defending the land from foreign oppression (gormes) as reflected in the Triads; the White Mound in London would hardly be in the first line of defence against overseas invaders.`

Anne Ross informs us that birds and heads are associated with each other concerning the Irish war raven goddesses. In O'Mulconry's Glossary, from the Yellow Book of Lecan, the name of the goddess Macha is described as “a crow, or it is one of the three Morrigana. Mesrad Machae, Machae's Mast, that is the heads of men after their slaughter.” Ross adds that the heads of the dead would thus appear to be this bird-goddesses' due, i.e. the dead were more than just food for crows; the spirits of the fallen belonged to the Morrigana.

Koch has drawn attention to a similar reference in Y Goddodin. Crows and ravens feature heavily in Welsh poetry depictions of battlefields. This is typically seen as the act of consuming carrion but can equally imply the presence of a deity collecting souls of the fallen. Koch translates the following stanza (A.24) of Y Gododdin as:

The hero with the protective shield under its polychrome boss,
(with movement like a colt),
was tumult on slaughter's high ground, was fire,
His spears were readied, they were [like] the sun,
He was food for ravens, he was spoils for Brân.

The final line of this stanza makes it quite clear that the dead were not just food for carrion birds but the property of Brân; he was the Celtic god of Hades.

Koch adds that in pre-Christian times, Brennos functioned as the Brittonic god of death, comparable to the Irish Donn and the Dis Pater of the Gauls as reported by Julius Caesar. This supernatural role fits perfectly with Brân's living decapitation and the 87 year Otherworld feast of the noble head.

Significantly, in the Mabinogi of Brânwen the gathering in Ireland is referred to as Gwledd Brân, (The feast of Brân): there is strong argument for presenting Brân as a Celtic psychopomp, guiding the souls of the dead heroes of the battlefield to the glorious afterlife.


Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Sources:
Anne Ross, Celtic Pagan Britain, Academy Chicago, 1996.
Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein (The Triads of the Island of Britain), University of Wales Press, Third Edition, 2006.
Mary Jones, Celtic Literature Collective, Song Before the Sons of Llyr from Llyfr Taliesin (The Book of Taliesin).
John T. Koch, Brân, Brennos: an instance of Early Gallo-Brittonic history and mythology, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies (CMCS) 20, 1990.
John T. Koch, Celtic Culture, ABC-CLIO, 2006.
John T. Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text and Context from Dark-Age North Britain, Celtic Studies Publications, 1997.
Angelique Gulermovich Epstein, War Goddess: The Morrígan and her Germano-Celtic Counterparts (Dissertation).

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