Bwrdd Arthur: Arthur's Table

In Malory’s “Le Morte Darthur” Arthur sends Merlin to ask King Leodegrance of Cameliard for the hand in marriage of his daughter Guinevere:

".....said King Leodegrance, the best tidings that ever I heard, that so worthy a king of prowess and noblesse will wed my daughter. And as for my lands, I will give him, wist I it might please him, but he hath lands enow, him needeth none; but I shall send him a gift shall please him much more, for I shall give him the Table Round, the which Uther Pendragon gave me, and when it is full complete, there is an hundred knights and fifty. And as for an hundred good knights I have myself, but I faute fifty, for so many have been slain in my days.”

And so Leodegrance delivered his daughter Guinevere unto Merlin, and the Table Round with the hundred knights......" [Book III, Chapter 1]

The Table Round
The Round Table was introduced to Arthurian legend by the Norman poet Robert Wace in his Roman de Brut (1155), an adaption of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Layamon soon followed with the first English version of the Brut which recalled the tale of a carpenter from Cornwall who built a huge transportable Round Table following a quarrel over seating positions. Credit for the origin of the Round Table was recognised by both these writers as belonging to the Bretons.

In the mass of Arthurian Romance that followed it came to represent the chivalric order of King Arthur’s court known as the fellowship of the Round Table. Such was esteem of the Order of the Round Table that it was emulated by the Plantagenet kings.

The Round Table top now hanging on the wall at the Great Hall at Winchester was constructed during the reign of Edward I (1272 - 1307) for a feast with chivalric tournaments, a trend that continued for centuries. In the 16th century king Henry VIII had the table repainted in Tudor colours with himself in Arthur’s place, as we see it today. 

At its inception Layamon writes of a table big enough for 1600 knights and three hundred years later Malory has the number of seats as 150. However, the Winchester Round Table has seating for only 25 knights.

At some point in the development of the Arthurian legend the Round Table became associated with topographical features. Dating the use of these features is problematic; we can only be certain of a particular features name from its first appearance in the written record. However, it is fairly certain that these names were in common usage before they were recorded.

Some of the earliest Arthurian named landscape features appear well before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia (c.1138) and the onset of Continental Romance such as the 9th century History of the Britons (Nennius) which describes the footprint of Arthur's dog, and the tomb of his son Amr. On the tour through southwest England by the Canons of Laon in 1113 records local sites known as Arthur’s Seat and Arthur’s Oven were pointed out to the visitors as they entered “Arthur Country”.

This account alone demonstrates that tales of Arthur in the landscape were well known before the onset of Arthurian Romance following Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th century chronicle. Recently historians have attempted to identify the site of Roman amphitheatres such as at Caer Leon and Chester as the Round Table, arguing that the feature would need to be of such a size to accommodate the numbers mentioned by the early chroniclers.

Yet, the Round Table as a late addition to the legend, is found in several landscape features such as the possible Neolithic henge monument at Eamont Bridge, Penrith, and hill forts such as Bwrdd Arthur (Arthur’s Table) in Clwyd and Anglesey.

Bwrdd Arthur
Situated between the village of Llanddona and the coast is Bwrdd Arthur (Arthur’s Table), the site of an Iron Age hill fort on the Welsh island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn) overlooking Red Wharf Bay. The natural defences of the flat topped hill at 164 metre (538ft) elevation were enhanced by a drystone wall of large limestone boulders with two entrances to the south and west. Roman artefacts dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries have been found on the hill indicating continued usage. It is understandable how the exposed limestone pavement covering the plateau could present the impression of a huge round table to the imaginative mind that could easily have been the meeting place for a multitude of Arthur’s gigantic knights.

Bwrdd Arthur (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust)

On the western slope lies the small now deserted church of Llanfihangel Din Sulwy, St Michael’s. There is a well here just outside the church gate but there is no information to support suggestions that it was once sacred, although we should not dismiss the possibility that it could be a lost St Michael’s Well, popular across northern Wales.

On the side of the hill at Red Wharf Bay is Llanddona beach, claimed by local legend as the place the Llanddona witches landed. No one knows where they came from, cast adrift in a small boat without rudder or paddles.

In the 19th century five Viking silver arm-rings of Hiberno-Norse type were found near Dinorben quarry below Bwrdd Arthur. These arm-rings from Red Wharf Bay are seen in a similar context to the Cuerdale hoard, Lancashire; both have been associated with the expulsion of the Vikings from Dublin in 902/903. 

Intriguing as this local information may be, there is no evidence of occupation at Bwrdd Arthur beyond the Roman Era making any association with a King Arthur who fought Anglo Saxons in the Dark Ages extremely doubtful. Indeed the association of the hill fort with Arthur seems late, very late. 

The Welsh antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) writes of the hill fort in his Tour of Wales, published 1781. Pennant suggests that the true name of the hill known as Bwrdd Arthur was probably Din or Dinas Sulwy, the fort of a local tribe, as identified by the church beneath the high hill known as Llanfihangel Din Sulwy. Further, there is no local folklore to support the Arthurian association.

Llanfihangel Din Sulwy

Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan sees this as “Arthurianisation of a non-Arthurian place name as an example of the persistent popularity of the Arthurian tradition in Wales” replacing the genuine native tradition.

The re-naming of topographic features with Arthurian names can be directly attributed to the persistent popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in Wales, known as the Brut tradition, in which many of Geoffrey’s misnomers were corrected by Welsh writers.

Yet belief in the authenticity of British history and Arthur as conqueror of Europe was in decline in the 15th century following Polydore Virgil’s denouncement of Geoffrey’s Historia and then followed by Hector Beocce rejecting claims that Arthur had ever conquered Scotland.

In the 16th century John Leland and William Camden both recorded sites with Arthurian associations in their respective itineraries. However, their guarded approach, particularly by Camden, led the Welsh doctor Sion Dafydd Rhys to produce a work in defence of British history according to Geoffrey. Rhys wrote of the giants of Wales and many of them killed by who else but Arthur.

In 1538 Leland recorded a monument in Denbighshire known as the "Round Table" that “…. is in the parish of Lansannan, in the side of a strong hill, a place where there be twenty-four holes, or places, in a roundel, for men to sit in…”. By the start of the 17th century local traditions had replaced the English name with the Welsh form "Bwrdd Arthur".

Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709) clearly realised the importance of recording local traditions, but sadly many of his manuscripts are now lost. In 1693 when he was asked to contribute to the latest revision of Camden’s Britannia he took a trip to Wales and added further Arthurian associations as told by the local people. One such monument was the Neolithic cromlech so named Bwrdd Arthur (alt. Gwal y Filiast) near Llandboidy in Carmenthenshire. 

Bwrdd Arthur: Gwal y Filiast

Lhuyd showed that the name Coetan Arthur (Arthur’s Quoit) was the most common name for megalithic sites associated with Arthur but with the earliest instance not recorded until 1547. Lhuyd determined that the name Coetan Arthur was used as a generic term for any large flat stone rather than a particular monument type. Yet he could not find any local traditions for an Arthurian connection at many of these sites. Indeed, the popular tradition of Arthur removing a pebble from his shoe and flinging it across the countryside to form a cromlech where it landed is not recorded until the early 19th century.

Interest in the Arthurian legend waned in the 18th century as shown by the marked drop in sites noted by the antiquarian Lewis Morris (Celtic Remains, 1757; published 1878), however he was the first to record a square earthwork known as Llys Arthur (Arthur’s Palace) in Ceredigion in 1748. This rectangular enclosure likely originated as a Roman camp, and was known locally as Cloddiau Llys, first recorded in 1574.

And finally, as late as the early 20th century another cromlech known as Bwrdd Arthur (Alt. Twlc y Filiast) at Llangynog  appeared for the first time in the inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales for Carmarthenshire, 1917. Once again we find the earlier place name replaced by an Arthurian name with no local tradition to support the association. Several Welsh cromlechs bear names associated with The Lair of the Greyhound Bitch, such as Twlc y Filiast or Gwal y Filiast, but the origin of this tale has also been lost. 

There is ample evidence of Arthurian titles replacing the original name of these ancient Welsh monuments; no doubt Welsh tourism benefited from these Arthurian associations, the numbers recorded in the inventories of the antiquarians reflected in the periodic peaks and troughs of the popularity of the Arthurian legend. 

Sources:
Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Narratives and Non-Narratives: Aspects of Welsh Arthurian Tradition, in Arthurian Literature XXI: Celtic Arthurian Material, Boydell & Brewer, 2004, pp.115-136.
Scott Lloyd, Arthurian Place-Names of Wales, in Arthur in the Celtic Languages, UWP, 2019, pp.231-244.

* * *