The Mystery of Britain's Irish King [29:29]

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-11-01 19:42:54 | Updated at 2024-11-05 23:28:23 4 days ago

Transcript
	·	Britain's Irish King
0:04	·	1,500 years ago, in the west of Great Britain, we can find a reference to
0:08	·	an extremely unusual event. A man named Serygei 'Wyddel' is
0:14	·	slain in battle by a local king, who had apparently instructed his men to shackle
0:19	·	themselves to their horses before the fight, so that they wouldn't think about fleeing.
0:23	·	And while this is a bit odd on its own, what's weirder is that this story is the only mention
0:28	·	of this battle in any contemporary source, and the only mention ever of this name: Serygei.
0:37	·	Even stranger still, is his epithet, 'Wyddel', which is Welsh for 'the Irishman'.
0:44	·	An Irish king, with a name never found anywhere else, who ruled,
0:49	·	fought, and died… in Wales. Strange! Over the next millennia and a half, this
0:56	·	story would be transformed and adapted, leading to arguments over who the men involved really were,
1:01	·	where this battle really took place, or if it even really happened at all, until eventually,
1:06	·	it was almost forgotten entirely. This is the mystery of Britain's Irish king.
	·	Cadwallon
1:25	·	I am going to ask you to do a monstrous task: remember two people.
1:31	·	We've met the first one, Serygei, the Irishman. The second is his rival king,
1:36	·	Cadwallon [7], the "long arm". According to a 14th century bard, he received this epithet because his
1:44	·	arms could touch the ground when he was standing upright [2]... which I'm not sure is true.
1:50	·	Regardless, these men did apparently do battle, but the only medieval source ever mentioning this
1:55	·	is a Welsh Triad [7], a trio of short sentences designed to help a bard or poet's memory [6].
2:02	·	Basically, they were summaries, grouped with two other, similar summaries.
2:06	·	In this case, the men that fought in this battle were one of the three fettered,
2:11	·	or shackled, or torqued warbands of Britain, and they apparently fought Serygei at a place
2:17	·	known as Cerrig y Gwyddyl, the "Irishman's Rocks" on the island of Ynys Mon [7].
2:21	·	A place which is most commonly thought to be here [7][5], a field with the same name,
2:28	·	although both the rocks and the Irishman are no longer present.
2:33	·	And that's it. We have the summary, two men, a place, and nothing more.
2:39	·	And it's not unusual for these stories to be forgotten, plenty, if not the majority,
2:43	·	have been, but Cadwallon is a bit different, because he's claimed as one of the earliest
2:49	·	ancestors to the kings of what would become the most powerful kingdom in Wales [2]… you'd
2:54	·	think that would give him a bit of credit, but they didn't care about Cadwallon.
2:59	·	In the 9th century a big piece of propaganda for this kingdom, Gwynedd,
3:03	·	was produced [14]. They gave themselves a new ancestor: an apparent, and historically dubious,
3:09	·	grandfather for Cadwallon named Cunedda [18], and he was better than his grandson in every way.
3:16	·	Because while Cadwallon might have defeated an Irish king on Ynys Mon,
3:19	·	Cunedda supposedly defeated and drove out the Irish from the entire country [8][18].
3:25	·	Cadwallon was subsequently relegated to a name in a genealogy [2], his battle against an Irish
3:30	·	king was deemed chronologically impossible [8], left out of the royal origin stories, and then
3:36	·	completely forgotten by everyone. Sorry Cadwallon, maybe you should try being better next time.
3:47	·	Except… in one place. One place preserved the memory of Cadwallon and Serygei, but it wasn't
3:56	·	some village near the site of the battle, in fact it wasn't even on the same island.
4:01	·	Instead, the people of Caergybi, Holyhead in English, had a much
4:05	·	more unusual memory of these events.
	·	Caergybi
4:17	·	Near the very start of the 16th century,
4:19	·	a Welsh poet named Lewys Mon included an odd passage in one of his works.
4:25	·	He references this ancient battle between Cadwallon and the Irish,
4:28	·	a piece of history that, as we've seen, hadn't been popular for over 700 years.
4:34	·	One problem though, he doesn't mention Cerrig y Gwyddyl at all, instead he claims that the
4:40	·	battle was fought near Caergybi [9]. The historian Rachel Bromwich notes that
4:45	·	Lewys was from this area, so what we're seeing here is very likely a local story,
4:49	·	one that adopted a forgotten bit of history from centuries prior, and
4:52	·	moved it 1,931,208 cm north… or 12 miles [9]. And by the end of the century, we would see this
5:02	·	reinforced. In David Powel's 'Historie of Cambria' from 1584, the following passage is included:
5:09	·	"The Irish… did overrun the isle of Mon, and were driven thence by
5:13	·	Cadwallon Lawhir… who slew Serygei their king with his own hands at Llan y Gwyddyl,
5:20	·	which is the Irish church at Holyhead [46][5]". So here, we're introduced to another location,
5:26	·	the 'Church* of the Irishman', apparently the name of a church in Caergybi, and the new location of
5:32	·	Cadwallon and Serygei's fateful battle. So, these were both likely drawing on some
5:38	·	sort of local legend [9], moving this battle from Ynys Mon to Caergybi, and specifically to a church
5:44	·	named after the Irish. It was prominent enough to be featured in a book about the history of Wales,
5:50	·	which is more consideration than it ever got from the kings of Gwynedd, but unknown enough
5:54	·	for no one to question the final battle being at the previously unmentioned Llan y Gwyddyl.
6:01	·	And from here, the story would get picked up, by my count, 12 more times across the
6:07	·	next 4 centuries, which is one mention, on average, every 33.3 years, the same
6:12	·	amount that I mention my son that I hate.
	·	The 1700s
6:19	·	Now, if you've watched this channel before,
6:22	·	you won't be surprised to learn that, whilst researching this topic,
6:25	·	I got a little sidetracked asking: "How many times did this story come up,
6:29	·	where did it come up, and how much did it change over the course of approximately 400 years?"
6:34	·	And after spending an entire day researching it, I might as well tell you all about it,
6:38	·	otherwise this will all have been for nothing. …all….. for nothing…..
6:43	·	Although, this is an important question. As I said, the kings of Gwynedd didn't care about
6:47	·	this story at all, for the next four centuries it was entirely left to the folklore of a town that
6:52	·	wasn't even at the original battle site. Seeing how much Serygei's story changed can give us
6:57	·	insight not only into the local legends, but it may provide some clues into this lost event.
7:04	·	After 1584, the next time this story comes up is in an alleged account of Sir Richard Wynn
7:10	·	sometime in the 1600s that closely agrees with the 'Historie of Cambria', only adding the detail that
7:14	·	the Irish were "destroyed completely" [9]. I could then find nothing for about a century,
7:20	·	until the historian Peter Bartrum brought up a letter from 1733,
7:24	·	which mentioned that the "Bedd Serigin Wyddel" was one of the "marvels of Cybi" [5].
7:30	·	Now, "bedd" means grave, which is a very interesting detail because now Serygei
7:34	·	seems to have just been defeated at Caergybi, but apparently he had a grave, and a famous one.
7:41	·	But 42 years later is when we hit the real jackpot: 'A History of the Island of Anglesey',
7:46	·	which adds a lot of new details, some of which are a bit… questionable.
7:51	·	We're first told Cadwallon went to fight Serygei in the year 450, because these Irish had recently
7:57	·	invaded Ynys Mon and slain numerous people near a "strong fort" called Din Dryfol, at a
8:04	·	place that was now known as Cerrig y Gwyddyl. Cadwallon defeated them, and pushed them back
8:09	·	to Caergybi, where their fleet was docked, and slew Serygei with his own hands. He then built
8:15	·	a fortress, the walls currently around the church at Caergybi, which were apparently known as "Mur
8:20	·	Cadwallon", "Cadwallon's wall" [42]. The first detail that stands out is that
8:26	·	the author of this text brings back Cerrig y Gwyddyl, but instead of the site of their battle,
8:31	·	it seems to have commemorated a random slaughter. Cadwallon's actual first battle
8:43	·	location isn't named, but the final defeat is once again at the familiar Caergybi.
8:49	·	One more oddity is that the author claims these walls around the church were built by Cadwallon,
8:54	·	but in reality they're Roman, this was a Roman fort [aw]. Granted, the author probably didn't
9:00	·	know this, but the extra detail of the walls being named after Cadwallon is very interesting. Unless
9:06	·	they're mistaken, we can assume that it was again another local story, perhaps connecting
9:11	·	our Cadwallon to this fortress, although there's always the chance that it's named after someone
9:16	·	else. The walls were restored in the 17th century [aw], they could've picked up this name then.
9:23	·	The second piece of intrigue that this author tells us are the alleged details
9:26	·	of Serygei's grave. We've seen that this tradition already existed by 1733,
9:31	·	but we're now given much more detail. Apparently, Serygei was buried in the corner
9:36	·	of this Roman fort, and a chapel, called Eglwys y Bedd, the chapel of the grave,
9:41	·	was built on top of him. According to the author, this chapel was often
9:45	·	known to the Welsh… as Llan y Gwyddyl [43]. Finally, he claims that Serygei was made a
9:51	·	saint by the Irish, but that his shrine that used to be in the chapel was carried off by
9:57	·	Irish raiders, according to a… "chronicle" [43]. [show google earth, since wind sounds playing]
10:01	·	What we've seen here then is an odd marrying of the original Triad to the local folklore first
10:06	·	brought up in the 1500s. Cerrig y Gwyddyl is the site of a defeat, but Cadwallon isn't said to have
10:12	·	fought here. When he finally vanquished him, it was in Caergybi, in Llan y Gwyddyl, which
10:18	·	this author tells us is another name for this chapel of Eglwys y Bedd, finally
10:22	·	locating this previously unspecified place.
10:29	·	We have a few more texts in the 1800s.
	·	The 1800s
10:35	·	In 1824 we see this story again, although by now it's been acknowledged
10:39	·	that the walls of Caergybi are Roman [37]. But in 1833 we got a few more interesting details.
10:45	·	In this 'History of the Island of Mona', Cadwallon for the first time since the original Triad,
10:51	·	slays Serygei at Cerrig y Gwyddyl [39]… sort of. Because 152 pages later, we're back at Caergybi.
11:01	·	The author cites a letter from 1693 claiming that the ancient name of this place was Llan y Gwyddyl,
11:08	·	and that the chapel of Eglwys y Bedd got its name because of all the Welsh and Irish
11:12	·	that died during Cadwallon and Serygei's final encounter [40]... simultaneously claiming that
11:17	·	Serygei died twice, at two separate locations. Two sources from 1844 and 1879 both compound the
11:26	·	idea of Serygei being made a saint, with the first claiming he was canonised by the
11:30	·	Irish [47], and the latter by the Welsh [41]. And strangely, a book from 1852 then again claims
11:36	·	that Serygei was slain in two locations, Cerrig y Gwyddyl [48], and Llan y Gwyddyl, although
11:41	·	they claim that Cadwallon himself founded this chapel after his victory [49].
11:47	·	Finally, for this century, we have one more major lore drop. As we saw before, Cadwallon
11:52	·	was deemed less cool and propagandistic than his historically-dubious alleged grandfather Cunedda,
11:58	·	and if Cunedda drove out all the Irish, how could his grandson have defeated an Irish king?
12:05	·	Well, the historian R. Rees, in 'An Essay on the Welsh Saints' in 1836 answers this question,
12:11	·	by saying that Cunedda just… left Ynys Mon out, that the Irish retreated there, and that Cadwallon
12:17	·	dealt the final blow [44][45].
12:24	·	Wow. That was a lot of reading, and quite the work out for a guy like me who only learnt how to read 2 weeks ago.
12:30	·	But, to summarise what we've seen: The Welsh Triads tell us, briefly,
12:35	·	of an ancient battle between king Cadwallon of Gwynedd, and Serygei "the Irishman".
12:40	·	Cadwallon apparently defeated Serygei at Cerrig y Gwyddyl on Ynys Mon, but unfortunately for him,
12:44	·	by the 9th century, no one cared. However, by the 1500s, we find that the
12:50	·	town of Caergybi, 12 miles to the north, did actually care, and that they adopted
12:55	·	Cadwallon and Serygei's battle, moving the location to the nearby Llan y Gwyddyl.
13:01	·	From the 1500s to the end of the 1800s, we're told that the local chapel of Eglwys y Bedd is
13:06	·	the mystical Llan y Gwyddyl, and that Serygei was buried underneath. We're told that he was
13:11	·	canonised by the Irish, and maybe the Welsh too, but that his shrine was lost to Irish raiders… at
13:16	·	some point. We're finally told again that Serygei did die at Cerrig y Gwyddyl… but at the same time
13:23	·	they claim that he also died at Caergybi. It's a mess really, it's what you'd expect
13:27	·	from looking at 300 years of local stories, myths, and unsubstantiated claims. It's worth
13:33	·	acknowledging that these writers from centuries ago likely had access to sources we don't have,
13:38	·	but it's also worth noting that none of them have expanded on the details of the original Triad,
13:44	·	they seem to only have information on the more contemporary local legends,
13:49	·	and while some of their claims seem reasonable, a lot of them are unfortunately completely
13:53	·	unprovable, which we'll come to later. Finally, we come to the 20th century,
13:58	·	where this story was scrutinised further, but also covered in a very important work, just before
14:04	·	mentions of Serygei stopped almost entirely, as you can see from this almost comical graph.
	·	The 1900s
14:19	·	1903, 'A Book of North Wales' by S. Baring-Gould.
14:24	·	After reading so many texts inadvertently arguing with each other over whether Cadwallon
14:28	·	won at Cerrig y Gwyddyl, or at Caergybi, it was a massive relief to finally see something different,
14:34	·	because Baring-Gould claimed this king won several battles at Irish strongholds before
14:40	·	pushing the them back to Caergybi, and the example he gives is a battle at Din Sylwy [32]… over here,
14:48	·	all the way to the east. Of course by "reliving",
14:52	·	I mean massively confusing. I spent ages trying to find where else had this battle been mentioned,
14:58	·	or been called an Irish fortress? I couldn't find anything, and the reason
15:02	·	for that will become clear in a few minutes. Moving on for now, the rest of the details are
15:07	·	mostly what we've seen already. Cadwallon slays Serygei by his own hand in Llan y Gwyddyl, which
15:12	·	was constructed on the spot that he died [32]. Baring-Gould calls the Welsh "freaky"
15:16	·	for glorifying an enemy commander, compares this to the glorification of the Boers [32], and says
15:21	·	that the walls of Caergybi are so uncouth that they cannot possibly have been Norman, or Roman,
15:26	·	so therefore must have been Welsh [34]... rude! Finally, he claims that this beautiful depiction
15:34	·	on the church is of Serygei holding a short sword [34]. Unfortunately this isn't provable, it could
15:43	·	be him, although no one else has ever mentioned this, and I think he might be holding a trowel.
15:49	·	Or at least that's what I first thought, because towards the end of my research I found a book
15:54	·	from 1913 that was quite critical of some elements of the local legend,
15:59	·	particularly of those brought up in the 'History of the Island of Anglesey', and they also claimed
16:04	·	that this was a statue of Serygei [35]. Asides from that, they also question if Serygei
16:09	·	was actually ever made a saint, there aren't any other references to him in Wales, and apparently
16:14	·	the Irish don't ever mention him either [35], and in another blow they point out that the author of
16:18	·	the original claim that Serygei had a shrine that was carried off by Irish raiders, never specifies
16:23	·	where he got this information from, casting doubt on the entire idea of him being canonised [35].
16:30	·	Their criticism of the 1775 source is great, but seeing another claim that this statue was
16:34	·	Serygei caught me off guard, because I wasn't expecting to find an actual depiction of him,
16:38	·	let alone two claims of one… until I noticed the author of the book… S. Baring-Gould [35].
16:46	·	Nice try, he almost got me, but in the end Mr Baring-Gould is still the only person to
16:51	·	ever claim that this statue is Serygei. Finally, we come to the last text I want
16:58	·	to mention, and the last major appearance Serygei and his story ever really made.
17:04	·	The 1912 publication 'A History of Wales' by John Edward Lloyd, a man
17:08	·	nicknamed the "father" of Welsh history [19]. Lloyd's work is different to everything we've
17:13	·	seen so far, because this was a proper historical book with sources and citations and analysis,
17:18	·	rather than local stories with unsubstantiated claims, and of all the claims made over the
17:23	·	centuries, Lloyd relays very, very few of them. He brings the story back to the original Triad,
17:30	·	one of the very few authors who did, by telling us that, according to tradition,
17:34	·	Cadwallon completed the conquest of North Wales from the Irish, that he shackled his men to their
17:39	·	horses so that "victory and death" were the only outcomes, and finally that he defeated
17:44	·	Serygei at… Cerrig y Gwyddyl, not Caergybi [38]. Sweeping away the evolving tale that we've just
17:50	·	seen woven over the past 300 years. He does, however, reconcile one of the
17:56	·	oldest details I mentioned, Llan y Gwyddyl, an unspecified chapel near Caergybi that was
18:01	·	eventually claimed as an alternate name for the local chapel of Eglwys y Bedd.
18:06	·	Lloyd notes that in the parish of Tywyn, 55 miles to the south, there is a stone circle
18:11	·	with the name "Eglwys y Gwyddyl" - "chapel of the Irishman". He reasons that, if these stones can be
18:18	·	known as an Irish chapel… who's to say that our "Irishman's Rocks" and "Church of the Irishman"
18:23	·	aren't two names for the same place [38]? The source he cites also makes a very unusual
18:29	·	point that I'd never heard before, the author here claims that apparently it's quite common
18:34	·	in Wales to name "traces of ancient houses or walls" after the Irish [36]. And while
18:39	·	that isn't very specific, I think I found what he was talking about, because while there are a few
18:44	·	examples of medieval structures being named after the Gwyddel… the vast majority of the
18:49	·	objects bearing their names...
18:51	·	are ancient.
	·	The Irishman's Monuments
18:57	·	Cerrig-y-Gwyddyl [5], Cerrig-Gwyddyl [5], Craig-y-Gwyddyl, Crugyn Gwyddel
18:59	·	[23], Tomen-y-Gwyddel [24], Bryn-y-Gwyddel, Bedd-y-Gwyddel,
19:03	·	Eglwys-y-Gwyddelod [20], Eglwys-y-Gwyddelod 2 [22], Muriau'r Gwyddelod [25],
19:07	·	and Irish Joe's Cafe in Rhyl
19:09	·	… wait.
19:14	·	All across Wales we can find
19:16	·	ancient monuments named after the Irish. Although looking at this map I think
19:20	·	you'll be able to see a very interesting pattern. There are only 2 in south Wales,
19:25	·	2 in Powys, one in Ceredigion, and 5 in Gwynedd. What's even more strange is that this isn't all of
19:32	·	them, because there are 7 more that are not only named after the Irish, but that all have the same
19:37	·	name: Cytiau'r Gwyddelod, "Irishman's huts". And of these 7 Irishman's huts,
19:44	·	all of them are located in western Gwynedd [27][29][21], and 3 of them
19:48	·	are found in the vicinity… of Caergybi [9]. These huts are a series of roundhouses that
19:54	·	are at least 2,500 years old [26][30]. There are the remains of 20 to the west of the town today,
19:59	·	but there could have once been as many as 50 [26][30], not to mention the ones found
20:03	·	to the south [29] and the east [27]. And these circular huts are the reason
20:07	·	why Baring-Gould thought Din Sylwy was an Irish fortress! Do you remember when I said
20:12	·	we'd come back to that? Well after I spent ages trying to find where he got this from,
20:17	·	I eventually discovered it was his own theory. He claimed that there are faint traces of these
20:22	·	cytiau within the ancient fort, and despite the various Roman-era findings, he believed
20:27	·	that it must date to the post Roman Irish [33]. You may not be surprised to learn that that isn't
20:32	·	considered very historically accurate nowadays. There is apparently a circular structure inside,
20:38	·	but the place was full of Roman artefacts, and Iron-age one [28], meaning the fort was
20:42	·	very likely built by the Britons, not the Irish, and that Cadwallon probably didn't
20:46	·	besiege an Irish king here.
20:52	·	But what we can say for certain,
20:54	·	is that there is a prevailing mythology across Wales, particularly in western Gwynedd,
20:59	·	that associates several ancient stone monuments with the Irish, and Cerrig-y-Gwyddyl, whatever
21:05	·	these 'stones' once were, is no exception. This isn't a story you can read about, it's one
21:11	·	that I found accidentally while researching this topic [36][9] and spending the day going through
21:15	·	archeological databases, but it is there. And it is especially dense around Caergybi,
21:22	·	right where local tradition would claim Cadwallon slew Serygei, right where the Irish king of
21:27	·	Ynys Mon was supposedly defeated, and buried.
21:36	·	Is this why these stories became connected? The
	·	Ynys Mon
21:39	·	Irish king dying in the town surrounded by the Irishman's huts? Maybe, or maybe not,
21:46	·	we don't know. And to be honest, we can't know. The details, as we've seen, are extremely difficult to parse.
21:55	·	The historian Rachel Bromwich points
21:57	·	out the connection to these Irishman's huts, but she also says that the location of Caergybi is
22:02	·	a "probable enough" site for the battle [9]. A historian in 1904 theorised that Serygei was
22:07	·	a corrupted Norse name, and that this story must be from way later, and just… randomly
22:12	·	connected to an otherwise unknown 5th century king [10]. The modern historians Bartrum and
22:17	·	Bromwich both disagree with this though [10][5], with the former stating that there probably is a
22:21	·	historical basis for this story, and the latter suggesting that Serygei was instead some sort
22:25	·	of corrupted Irish name, which would make sense, although as I said at the very start, this is the
22:30	·	only time this name has ever occurred, we have no idea what it originally was in Irish [5].
22:37	·	And it's no wonder that even the name of Cadwallon's opponent was forgotten,
22:40	·	because as I've already said, none of the details of this story survive. In the minds
22:45	·	of the 9th century kings of Gwynedd, Cadwallon's historically dubious grandfather did all the work,
22:50	·	driving out the Irish, giving Gwynedd a totally unbiased claim to the entire country [18], and
22:54	·	leaving these people as nothing more than the apparent creators of these ancient monuments.
23:01	·	This does, of course, disagree with a lot of historical evidence… actually any historical
23:06	·	evidence. It's completely chronologically possible that Cadwallon fought an Irish king
23:11	·	around the year 500, according to Bromwich [8], as inscribed stones have been found across Wales
23:16	·	bearing Irish names that continued into the 6th century [8][17], both in Latin,
23:20	·	and in the old Irish alphabet Ogham [11]. In fact, according to the historian T.
23:25	·	Charles-Edwards, their presence on Ynys Mon is particularly noticeable,
23:29	·	where we have four definite Irish inscribed names, and no definite Welsh ones [12][13].
23:37	·	The Irish were prominent in Wales, both here in Gwynedd and beyond, despite what their kings would
23:42	·	have you believe. They left inscribed stones [13], they left place names [14], and in the south,
23:46	·	they even had an entire dynasty [16][14][17], so it's not at all out of the question that at around
23:51	·	the year 500, a Welsh king could have fought and defeated an Irish one on Ynys Mon [8][5].
	·	Serygei \| Sirigi
24:02	·	But that's all we can really know, that the Irish were here,
24:07	·	and that the kings of Gwynedd soon made their home
24:09	·	on this island for the next 700 years [18]. Cadwallon apparently had his court here in
24:15	·	northern Ynys Mon [2], and the chief court of the kings of Gwynedd would be here at
24:19	·	Aberffraw [15], to the south. Cadwallon's alleged son, king Maelgwn, also apparently possessed the
24:25	·	Roman fort at Caergybi [3]. His great-great-great grandson was buried on this island, and his
24:31	·	gravestone rests in a church that was rebuilt and named after his son, Cadwallon's alleged
24:37	·	great-great-great-great-great grandson [1]. Gwynedd's link to this island was also
24:43	·	strengthened in their own 9th century propaganda, where Cunedda not only drove the Irish out of
24:48	·	all of Wales, but his almost certainly mythical sons also founded numerous kingdoms in the area,
24:54	·	covering what was at the time all of Gwynedd… giving them an ancestral claim
24:58	·	to almost all of their lands... except for the territories known as Arfon,
25:03	·	and the island of Ynys Mon [14][18]. Their hold was clearly strong enough here, that they saw no
25:09	·	need to fabricate some sort of ancient claim. So, did Cadwallon conquer Ynys Mon from an
25:16	·	Irish king? It seems so, at the very least it's plausible [9][5]. Was there
25:21	·	a battle at Cerrig-y-Gwyddel? Probably, but was it at this field? We don't know,
25:26	·	there was a Cerrig-Gwyddyl on the eastern side of the island [5], and the original location
25:31	·	easily also could've just been lost. By the 16th century, Cadwallon had also
25:36	·	supposedly slain Serygei at Llan y Gwyddyl in Caergybi, but we don't know where this came
25:40	·	from. Is it a lost detail from the original story? Was it really just an alternate name
25:45	·	for Cerrig-y-Gwyddel? Bartrum points out that in a 13th century genealogy, the battle takes
25:51	·	place at Llam y Gwyddyl, "Irishman's leap", and he suggests that Llan y Gwyddyl was just a later
25:58	·	mistake [5]. If that's the case, then where's Llam y Gwyddyl? Where did this detail come from?
26:04	·	Was this a place near Caergybi, where the tale then could've easily been adopted by the locals,
26:09	·	or was Llan y Gwyddyl really a local chapel, allowing the two names to easily conflate?
26:15	·	We don't know, we can't know, in fact… we might never know,
26:20	·	this is a story from 1,500 years ago, it's a miracle we know anything about it at all.
26:35	·	All we can say then is that Cadwallon probably slew an Irish king named Serygei at a place called
	·	Maelgwn
26:41	·	Cerrig-y-Gwyddel somewhere on Ynys Mon. Were there more battles? Almost certainly,
26:54	·	the existence of this Triad proves that there was a story that needed to be remembered,
26:59	·	but whatever that story was, has been forgotten. Maybe there was a final encounter at Caergybi,
27:05	·	and while Serygei probably wasn't slain there, and he almost certainly wasn't buried underneath
27:09	·	Eglwys y Bedd, for a very long time, to a lot of people, this story was important,
27:13	·	and that's worth something. Cadwallon's alleged son held this fortress [3], who's
27:18	·	to say that his father's final victory wasn't in the Roman walls of Caergybi?
27:25	·	We don't know exactly what happened to king Cadwallon. The rulers of Gwynedd claimed him
27:29	·	as their ancestor, and according to them his successor was a man named Maelgwn,
27:34	·	who they claimed was his son, but as I've alluded to throughout the video, history
27:39	·	can be a lot more complicated than that [2]. In the mid-6th century, a monk wrote an angry
27:45	·	sermon, blaming the Briton's problems on their violent and tyrannical kings,
27:50	·	which included Maelgwn, who the monk claimed had come to the throne at a young age…
27:55	·	by killing his mother's brother [4]. Was Cadwallon really Maelgwn's father,
28:02	·	or was he his uncle [31]? Was Maelgwn's ancestry rewritten to include descent from a known figure,
28:08	·	the man who conquered Ynys Mon, rather than whoever his real father was? Or was
28:13	·	Maelgwn really his son? Did Cadwallon's unknown brother-in-law just rule upon his death until
28:18	·	Maelgwn took the throne from him? We don't know. All we have on Cadwallon is essentially a blurb,
28:25	·	the kings of Gwynedd were happy to claim descent from him, happy to claim that his
28:28	·	potentially murderous nephew was really his son, and happy to rule from the island he conquered,
28:34	·	but his story, his legend, wasn't good enough, except for the people of Caergybi.
28:42	·	These Roman walls contain a church today, dedicated to the eponymous St Cybi,
28:47	·	who was given the fortress in the 6th century by king Maelgwn [3]. Cadwallon's supposed son,
28:53	·	at the site of his supposed victory. And in 1748, having gone disused for many years,
29:03	·	Eglwys y Bedd was partially torn down [34].
29:07	·	Thank you for watching.