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Melkin's Prophecy VI
by Steve Goodwin
On to Chapters 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Bibliography | Back to Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
ne of the earliest written sources that mentions Arthur is the collection of early Welsh tales called The Mabinogion (four branches) which, in the form that has come down to us, dates from the mid 10th century. In one of the tales, Culhwch and Olwen, we are told that Arthur is the cousin of Culhwch who has been set a quest to prove his worthiness to marry Olwen. One element of the quest is to find the elusive Mabon ap Modron, to find it, Culhwch and his companions had to search out a series of totem animals, this is an element that is much older than the rest of the tale called the Oldest Animals. The first animal they seek is the Ouzel (Blackbird) of Cilgwri which can be found somewhere in Tegeingl (Flintshire). Blake and Lloyd (2000) use the motif of the Oldest Animals and trace what they call “the myth in the landscape” from the mouth of the Dee estuary to its source at Bala (see Appendix 1). So we have the figures of Mabon, Modron and Arthur depicted in the Wirral, Flintshire and along the full course of the Dee or ‘sacred waters of the river goddess’ who is Don/Danu that pre-dates the 10th century.
As pointed out above Geoffrey of Monmouth would have been aware of these local traditions and the biblical significance of Asa, however, Geoffrey selects the title Asaph for his diocese. But the myth of St. Asaph , as we have it, was not written into history until a century after Geoffrey’s death. Asaph is introduced by Jocelyn of Furness a Cistercian monk who wrote the Life of St. Kentigern. This factious Life has Kentigern, a Scottish saint, evangelising in N.Wales where he founded a monastic order. One cold winter morning Kentigern was enjoying his daily purge, chanting the psalms naked in a cold pool, after this the boy Asaph set a fire to warm the saint and in so doing, carried burning coals from the fire without being burnt. This is Asaph’s introductory miracle.
This form of miracle is found elsewhere in accounts of British saints and appears to have been lifted from Isaiah 6:4-7 “having a live coal in his hand…Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.” Jocelyn appears to have expanded on the life of a legitimate Scottish Saint and used it as a lever to introduce Asaph, and therefore Christianity, to North Wales. An area that by the time Jocelyn had set his 6th Century tale had had many centuries of its own Celtic Christian Traditions. On this point Bartrums Classical Welsh Dictionary states that: “It is chronologically improbable that St. Kentigern could have met St. Asaph, nor is it likely that he had anything to do with the foundation of Llanelwy”. It is of interest that St.Asaph is only the English name of the diocese as the Welsh still use the earlier name of Llanelwy. So where and why did Geoffrey find the name Asaph?
The answer again is the Old Testament. In Hebrew, Asaph is a derivation of Joseph and means ‘Gods adds’. Asaph was the biblical King David’s head cantor (temple chanter or singer) and is named as one of the 3 eponymous ancestors of all temple Cantors/Levites. Asaph plays a central role in many temple rituals, “to commemorate, glorify and praise Yahweh”(1 Chon; 16). We are also told that there are 24 classes of cantor (1 Chron; 25) who “maintain a permanent ministry before the ark as each days ritual requires”. Further that “from the days of David and Asaph, there had been guilds of cantors and canticles of praise and thanksgiving to God”, and that these chants were sung “in the words of David and of Asaph the seer”(2 Chron; 29-30). David and Asaph are also linked with the writing of many of the Psalms of the Old Testament.
When we compare the above description of rituals carried out in the Temple of Jerusalem with the description found in the Triads, regarding the 3 Perpetual Harmonies, the similarities are striking. They both depict large body holy men, divided into 24 groups/classes that continually chant/sing in praise and thanksgiving to God. The similarities between Celtic, Judaic and some Eastern Christian sect has already been explored, however, these links were strengthened when I found an interesting footnote on page 52-53 of Pinkerton’s Lives of the Scottish Saints (1889). It states that Irish and British monasteries were of a great size housing thousand of monks, these were divided into 3 classes, each class having 8 bands and that this banding of monks was used to sustain “a perpetual service”. Furthermore, this same practice was used by the Acoemetae or ‘the un-resting’. This was a monastic order founded early in the 5th century by an officer of the Imperial household of Constantinople. The first monastery was founded beside the church of St. Mennas. It is of interest that this foundation was established at the same time as the British monk Pelagius who was visiting Constantinople and the Holy-land. The chanting of a ‘perpetual service’ is also alluded to in Gildas’ 6th century account of British monastic life. Finally, O’Corrain, Breatnach and Breen (1984) point out that early Celtic Christian monks “considered themselves to be Priest and Levites, as defined under Old Testament law”.
Geoffrey would have been aware of the biblical Asaph and his central role in early Temple life. What is interesting is that Geoffrey masks one tradition by replacing it with a fictitious one that cryptically resembles the former. So what motivated Geoffrey into manipulating yet another part of British history? The answer may lie in the fact that much of his material for his politically sensitive work The History of the Kings of Britain was lifted from the regional level (N. Wales) and distorted it to fit a national canvas. If this was the case, a historical void would be created at the regional level, which in turn was filled centuries later by local saintly characters like St. Asaph, as was the case in southern Wales. As Clarke (1973) points out with regard to Geoffrey‘s introduction of St. Asaph; “It was a deliberate new creation, and its traditions and documents of ancient authority were as new.”
As suggested before, Geoffrey was caught up in power politics at the highest levels of Church and State. Following the collapse of the English state, after 1066, Canterbury found its primacy challenged by Wales and York. It was not until 1138 that Archbishop Theobald re-established dominance of Canterbury and reorganised the Church. New bishoprics were carved out in lands not wholly subdued by the Normans. One of these new dioceses later became St. Asaph. The first bishop of this new ‘see’ was Gilbert in 1143. However, his title was Bishop of Llanelwy. The Canterbury Register records the new title Ecclesia Santi Asaphi was used when Geoffrey succeeded in 1152. “In other words, the legend came in with Geoffrey” (Clarke; 1972; p.33).
By the time Geoffrey was writing his second known work The Life of Merlin (c.1150), he was about to begin a new life as a bishop. Many scholars have pointed out that Geoffrey used Merlin as a vehicle to tell his own story. Here again Clarke makes the point: “Merlin’s valedictory remark is to the effect that the spirit has closed up ‘my mouth and my book’. A possible personal explanation of this is that as Merlin refers to his resolution for a life of pious Christian devotion and an end to pagan prophecy, so Geoffrey is by analogy celebrating his own election as bishop-elect and says goodbye, in a literary or a real sense, to the Geoffrey of the prophecies which helped make his name.” (Clarke; 1973; p. )
Clarke believes there can be no stronger evidence that Geoffrey believed that he was implicated in a campaign to manipulate local ecclesiastic history. Stating that; “Brook thought it ironical that Geoffrey received the shadowy reward of St. Asaph, where he was likely never to have been in residence. But he would have known exactly where he stood, and doubtless never had any urgent intension of transferring himself from civilisation to the mountainous front-line territory where the Normans were pushing their frontier out against violent Welsh resistance.” ( Clarke; 1973; p. )
To recap the phrase; “mighty in saphat”
The place-names and local traditions of the Wirral and Flintshire can be found in tales written down more than 200 years before Geoffrey’s History.
The next phrase in the line continues; “noblest of pagans”. This element appears to be straight forward in that it implies that Abbadare or Beli, as the ‘father of the gods and man’, is therefore also the “noblest of pagans”. However, there is another interpretation of this line. The term pagan has evolved in popular culture to imply ‘devil worshipping’, un-ChristianSatanists. But originally it was a derogatory term used by the ‘educated’ town/city folk to denote ‘people of the rural districts’. Interestingly, the 5th century kingdom of Powys has the at its root word Powys which is the Welsh form of the Latin Pagenses which means ‘people of the rural district’. So if we exchange pagan for Powys we are left with “noblest of Powys”, and from the early Welsh genealogies we find that the first name in the royal house of Powys is Beli their ancestor-deity who legitimised royal lineage. We also have it from Ellis (1994) that as well as denoting a sacred tree, Bile/Beli is also used to signify a “noble worrior”.
Recap of the line “Abbadare, mighty in saphat, noblest of pagans, has fallen on sleep with 104 000 others”.
Read at its simplest means: Father Oak (Beli), mighty in judgement, noblest of Powys, is buried among many thousand. So therefore, the prophecy so far can be interpreted as: Afallach/Avalon was in the past a pagan ritual burial site, and that in the future this same place will be dominated by ‘the one God’ (Christian, Jewish and Muslims). It continues by looking back to its pagan past by describing the pagan ‘father of the gods’ (Beli = Father Oak) who was the dominant deity (as both god of life and death) and the many thousands of pagans who were buried in the area around Afallach. Remarkably, one of them burial sites still bares the name of Beli.On to part VII
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