Bamburgh, King Arthur and a British name.

Project Director, Graeme Young, responds to one of our followers request for more information about the name of Bamburgh. Where did it come from, what preceded it and who coined the name, are just some the points up for discussion.

Bamburgh, King Arthur and a British name. 

Someone emailed me last week to ask about the British name for Bamburgh and the mythic connection of the castle to King Arthur. It occurred to me that the subject might make a good blog entry, so here are a few thoughts on the subject.

There has been an identification of Bamburgh with the fortress of ‘Joyous Garde’, in the medieval King Arthur tradition since at least the Vulgate cycle of AD 1215. Sir Thomas Malory certainly knew of the tradition when he wrote Morte d’Arthur (c. 1470), though he was unable to decide if it was the castle of Bamburgh or Alnwick! The legend, for those unfamiliar with it, tells of how Lancelot captured the fortress from its original, wicked owner single handed, and took it for his own. It is certainly easy to see how a recorded early British name for Bamburgh, Din Guayrdi or Din Guoaroy could have been imagined as the progenitor of the ‘Garde’ element of the name. Din, of course, meaning fortress in Welsh.

Bamburgh Castle (Britain Express)

That said, the Arthurian legends that we know today are very much a product of the age of courtly love, which began in the 12th century, and although inspired by them have only a limited connection to the genuinely early legends preserved in Wales. Its very difficult, therefore, to make much of a case for or against the preservation of a historical element in the Arthur legends, particularly those that we do not have in earlier forms, and harder still to bring Bamburgh into them. There does seem to be a northern element to some of the earliest records, particularly with regard to place names, but sadly most legends that place Sir Lancelot to the fore, tend to be later. Personally, whenever someone mentions King Arthur I always think of the way the Historian Michael Wood ended an essay on the subject. Its a quote from the Hollywood Western The Man who shot Liberty Valance, ‘When the legend becomes a fact, print the Legend’.

When we consider Din Guoaroy as a British name for the fortress of Bamburgh, we no longer stand on such shifting sand. The name is mentioned twice (in two variations) in the Historia Brittonum of Nennius. Firstly, it describes how Ida connected Din Guayrdi to Bernicia, a line which some have corrected to joining Deira to Bernicia. Deira is the southern part of what would later be Northumbria, then centred on York and the wolds. Ida is traditionally seen as the first of his line to rule from Bamburgh and may have been a famous figure of legend in later times. However, this is an early date to see the two kingdoms connected and may, in fact, reflect the use of some hindsight.

The name Bernicia was later used for all Northumbria north of the Tees, but may have had narrower origins. It has been proposed that Bernicia translates as ‘Land of the Mountain Passes’  so could fit well with a kingdom centred on County Durham and south Northumberland from which Roman roads extend north over the Cheviots, westwards through the Tyne Gap and from the Tees, across the Stainmore Pass. In addition there is clear archaeological evidence for Anglo-Saxon settlement in this area a generation or two earlier than in north Northumberland and the Bamburgh area. This makes it quite possible for Din Guayrdi (Bamburgh and its hinterland) to be joined to Bernicia by Ida in the middle 6th century to form a wider kingdom. In fact, it is quite possible that Ida, and his deeds, were the subject of a lost epic. There are extraordinary surviving examples of such poems about the British kings of Rheged (thought to be centred in Cumbria and the western borders), who were broad contemporaries with Ida and his successors, in Welsh medieval literature. So some of the information we have in later texts could have come from a living oral tradition.

Map of territories in the 6th century, as suggested through interpretation of the textual evidence.

The second Historia Brittonum reference is the clincher, for the name’s association with Bamburgh, as it describes how King Aethelfrith gave Din Guoaroy to his wife Bebba. And that it is from her name that Bebbanburh (later Bamburgh), derived its English name. Bebba’s burh, meaning Bebba’s fortress.

It is important to remember though, that the Historia Brittonum was compiled in the 9th century, three hundred years after the events in Northumbria that it describes. In a recent article Andre Breeze has suggested that the British version could simply be the name that contemporary Welsh scribes used for Bamburgh. Its always good to challenge assumptions that are based on limited evidence, and it is quite conceivable that he is right. This may be an area in which archaeology can help: if we find evidence of continuity of settlement from the Roman period to the Anglo-Saxon  period, as described in Bede, through our excavation that would make the preservation of a genuinely early name much more likely. We would be able to demonstrate that the site is occupied in the right period. In fact anything that archaeology can tell us about the 6th century is important and adds to our understanding of the formation of the Northumbria that we have come to know in the pages of Bede. Sadly, in historical terms, this period seems to live more intensely in myth than in history, where it is mostly a series of figures half glimpsed through the fog of time. We should reach these archaeological levels on site in the next few years, so lets hope we can add some real substance and insights to this fascinating time.

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