The figures beneath each entry give reference numbers for the Bibliography
A village in Co. Durham, said to be haunted by Arthur's knights in the guise of chickens. Arthur's hall was once thought to have stood there.
# 156 - 753
An earthwork, modern Caynham Camp (Shropshire) which, according to the medieval HISTORY OF FULK FITZWARIN, was built by Kay.
# 156
A castle in Arthurian romance said to contain young women, either as inmates or prisoners. Duke Lianour ruled it, but seven brothers slew him and took it over. They in turn fell at the hands of three of Arthur's knights and, afterwards, the duke's daughter took charge of it. With regard to its origin, Geoffrey said that Ebraucus, King of Britain, founded the Castle of Mount Agned which later became known as the Castle of Maidens. As to its location, it may have been identified with Edinburgh which, in the Middle Ages, was known as Castellum (or Castra) Puellarum, but some of the tales place it in the vicinity of Gloucester.
# 26 - 156
The lame king, who is identical with the lord of the Castle of Wonders, would have been made whole again, if Perceval (Peredur) had asked the meaning of what he saw.
# 562
Beneath this castle on the Isle of Man are said to be giants, buried in caves by Merlin who defeated them.
# 156
On a plateau among the hills to the east of Keswick is one of the most impressive ancient stone circles in the north of England, the Castlerigg, sometimes called the 'Carles' or 'Druids Circle', ..." a dismal cirque Of Druid Stones, upon a forlorn moor." as Keats wrote in the nineteenth century. The 'cirque' consists of 38 standing stones arranged in an oval approximately 107 feet maximum diameter, with an inner rectangular setting of 10 stones. About 300 feet to the south-west is an outlier. Castlerigg, like most of the stone circles of Britain, is a calendrical marker, though in this respect it is probably unique in that instead of using a large number of specially sited standing stones outside its circle as markpoints, it makes use of the distinctive shapes of the surrounding mountains. The line of orientation in such circles is usually fixed by three single points (indicated by stones, one of which is usually an outlier, or stone free of the outer circumference of the circle) along a single sighting line.
In Castlerigg, however, there are several orientation points with only two siting points within some of the orientations, the third (necessary to mark accurately a continuation line) being fixed by distinctive points on the surrounding hills and mountains: thus, in this remarkable circle, the stones are integrated perfectly into the surrounding horizon, to mark out the rhythms of the seasons. The most important work done on stone circles in the present century is that of Professor Thom, who has personally surveyed hundreds of such sites and has come to some far-reaching conclusions about their calendrical properties. It is therefore interesting to observe that Thom himself remarks that the curious evidence of the outlier at Castlerigg yielded one of the lines which, in Thom's words 'convinced the author of the necessity to examine the calendar hypothesis in detail'.
# 702
# 562: Son of Beli; conquers Britain during Bran's absence.
#454: Welsh king. In popular memory, Cassivellaunos, the Belgic king of Catuvellauni, who had led the tribes against Caesar in 54 BC survived as Caswallawn. The 'Triads' cite him as being the suitor of Fflur, and remember him as one of the three golden shoemakers, along with Manawyddan and Llew. In 'Branwen, Daughter of Llyr', he conquers Britain in the absence of Bran, by means of his magic mantle. See: THIRTEEN TREASURES OF BRITAIN.
# 104 - 272 - 439 - 454 - 562
The cat does not play a large part in Celtic tradition but it was associated with chthonic powers and was thus funerary, also a prophetic animal. In Roman Gaul and in Irish lore there was a 'Little Cat' as a guardian of treasure; it turned into a flaming object and burned the thief to ashes. There was an island inhabited by men with cat-heads. In Celtic saga there were Monster Cats to be fought by the Hero, the cat taking the place of the Dragon. The Welsh Great Cat was born of the enchanted sow Henwen, originally a human; it could eat nine score warriors. Monster cats and sea-cats appear in Irish tradition of probably Celtic origin. In Irish myth the eldest son of a hog had a cat's head and was known as 'Puss of the Corner'.
# 454: The cat is now so domesticated it seems impossible to imagine mythical Britain being ravaged by a giant wild-cat, but so it was, until Arthur and Cai overcame it, according to an early Welsh text. Indeed the cat has not been necessarily appreciated for its virtues in British folklore where it often appears as the totem of black witches. One unpleasant form of divination among the Scottish Gaels was 'taghgairm', by which a live cat was spitted over a fire until other cats appeared to relieve its distress by answering the question set by the operator of this method. Among the Gaelic peoples it was a powerful totem of many tribes. Caithness is named from the clan of the Catti, or cat-people, while in Ireland, Fionn fought against a tribe of CAT-HEADS, possibly warriors with catskin over their helmets.
# 100 - 161 - 225 - 454
The site of one of Arthur's battles in the southern reaches of Scotland, in the area once known as Silva Caledoniae (Wood of Scotland).
# 156 - 494
A monstrous member of the cat family which appears in Welsh Arthurian poetry. The adjective Palug means 'clawing'. In the poem PA GUR, we are told that Kay went to Anglesey with a view to killing lions and was especially prepared for an encounter with Cath Palug. The poem is incomplete, but it may have told how Kay slew the beast. Welsh tradition told how the creature was produced by the pig Henwen and thrown into the sea, only to be raised by the sons of Palug on Anglesey. (Geoffrey Ashe suggests that a captive leopard, kept by a Welsh king, may have given rise to the tale.) In Continental tales we learn how Arthur slew a giant cat near Lake Bourget in the French Alps. This combat is commemorated in the local names Col du Chat (cat's neck), Dent du Chat (cat's tooth) and Mont du Chat (cat's mountain). In French the animal was called Capalu. In the ROMANEZ DE FRANCEIS (medieval romance) Arthur fought the cat Capalu in a swamp and it killed him. It then invaded England and became king. It has been suggested that we may have here an alternative tradition of Arthur's death. In BATAILLE LOQUIFER (medieval romance with limited Arthurian content) there is a youth called Kapalu, a servant of Morgan.
# 104 - 156
The Cat of the Sidhe: a fairy cat. Highlanders believed that the Cait Sith was really a transformed witch not a fairy. The King of this otherworldly company of cats was called Big Ears and he would appear to answer questions set by a dinner engaged in taghairm - the roasting of a cat over fire. See: CAT.
# 100 - 454
(c h'vah)
# 562: Chief Druid of Ulster. Wedded to Maga, wife of Ross the Red; his spell of divination overheard by CuChulain; draws Deirdre's horoscope; casts evil spells over Naisi and Deirdre.
# 454: The druid of Conchobar mac Nessa and his father. He prophesied that the boy who took arms on a certain day would outstrip all of Ireland's heroes. CuChulain heard him and 'took valour' as a warrior that day, although he was but a boy. Cathbad also foretold the sorrow which Deirdriu would cause Conchobar and the whole of Ulster.
# 166 - 266 - 454 - 548 - 562
All affairs, public and private, were subject to the Druids authority, and the penalties which they could inflict for any assertion of lay independence, like the medieval interdicts of the Catholic Church, on popular superstition alone, were enough to quell the proudest spirit. Here lay the real weakness of the Celtic polity.
# 562
This Celtic goddess of war's name means Battle-Crow. Inscriptions have been found to her in Europe, but she is undoubtedly associated with Badh or Bodh, the Irish battle-goddess.
# 389 - 454
A son of Vortigern.
# 156 - 243
is the central epic of the Ulster cycle. The oldest version goes back probably to the eighth century. The tale opens with the famous 'Pillow Talk' a racy dialogue between Queen Medb of Connacht and her hen-pecked husband, Ailill. The queen, on finding that her possessions equal those of her husband, except for one bull, the White-Horned of Connacht, determines to make up the deficiency by gaining possession of the most famous bull in Ireland, the Donn of Cooley, which is the property of Daire, a chieftain of Ulster. When Medb learns that she cannot obtain the Donn as a loan, she determines to take the animal by force and gathers an army to invade Ulster. Owing to the temporary debility of all the adult warriors of Ulster, the seventeen-year-old CuChulain undertakes to oppose Medb's host single-handed. When Medb hears of CuChulain, she inquires about him from the Ulster exiles in her army and learns of his boyish exploits. As the result of an agreement between Medb and CuChulain, the Ulster champion meets at a ford on the border of the two provinces a single Connacht warrior each day over a period extending from Samhain (the beginning of winter) till the beginning of spring. The men of Connacht finally succeed in invading Ulster and carrying off the Donn of Cooley, but they are later defeated by the Ulstermen, now restored to their normal strength. The Donn of Cooley, after slaying the WhiteHorned of Connacht, returns to his native district and utters mad bellowings of triumph till his heart bursts and he dies. In spite of obvious imperfections, 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley' is a splendid example of an epic in the making. It shows many evidences of literary artistry and is not without passages of marked power and impressiveness. The combat between CuChulain and his friend Ferdiad is one of the most famous passages in early Irish literature.
# 166
'The Cattle Raid of Froech' has a peculiar title. Froech's 'cattle raid' is nothing more than the recovery of his own cattle ( and his wife) from beyond the Alps; moreover, this exploit, which has a late look to it, is tacked on to the main tale, which could better have been called 'The Wooing of Findabair'. And the tale itself is unusual, for it is a mythological story - and with the personae of the Mythological Cycle - pressed into the service of the Ulster Cycle, as a preliminary tale to 'The Cattle Raid of Cuailnge'. It begins in the realm of the Sidhe, with Froech going to ask presents of his aunt, Boand (compare Froech's cattle with the hounds of Arawn in 'Pwyll Lord of Dyved': white animals with red ears are always from the otherworld); immediately, the setting shifts to the heroic warrior-world of Connachta, though Froech returns to the Sidhe for healing after his battle with the water monster.
The theme of 'The Cattle Raid of Froech', that of the young hero who must win his love away from her unwilling father, appears also in 'The Wooing of Etain' and 'The Dream of Oengus'; it is a degraded form of the familiar regeneration motif. The mythic - actually folkloric, in this manifestation - pattern imposes an uncharacteristic degree of villainy on Ailill and Medb. (Also uncharacteristic is the dominance of Ailill - elsewhere in the Ulster Cycle it is Medb who is the strong partner.) The version in Gantz's 'Early Irish Myths and Sagas', however, is neither mythic nor heroic so much as literary and psychological. More attention is paid to motivation here than in any other early Irish story: Medb is guilt-stricken at having neglected Froech's retinue, Findabair refuses to elope with Froech but admonishes him to bargain for her, Froech rejects the bride price as excessive even for Medb, Ailill tricks Froech into entering the water monster's lake and seems to regret the ruse only because Froech survives it, Findabair asserts her independence of her father after he has accused her of giving her ring (and by implication herself) to Froech. Even the dialogue is unusually subtle. Oddly, though, Froech's lie about how he received the ring is never challenged - is this an extraordinarily ironic touch, or did the storyteller simply forget that Findabair actually does give Froech the ring? - and Findabair, even after producing the ring on the salmon platter, is not allowed to go away at once with Froech.
# 236
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