King Arthur in Irish

Pseudo-Historical

Tradition

An Introduction to Mac Erca

DANE R. PESTANO
 © 2023 Dane R. Pestano

Second Edition
Published by Dark Age Arthurian Books 2023 Paperback
ISBN 978-0-9570002-6-1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, copied, distributed, stored in
a physical or internet retrieval system, adapted or transmitted in any form via electronic,
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First Published in 2011 by Dark Age Arthurian Books.

BIC Codes:
Medieval history (HBLC1) Folklore,
myths & legends (JFHF) British &
Irish history (HBJD1)

BISAC Codes
HISTORY / Europe / Medieval (HIS037010)
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Folklore & Mythology (SOC011000) HISTORY /
Europe / Great Britain / General (HIS015000)

All enquiries should be addressed to: [email protected]

Other books by Dane R Pestano:

Ambrosius Aurelianus and the Apocalypse of King Arthur, 2021. ISBN: 978-
0-9570002-2-3
Gildas: The Narrative Sources for the Siege of the Badonic Mount, 2022 Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9570002-4-7

This small work is dedicated to all those brilliant scholars who have done so much
work in the past to make this work a possibility and to the invention of the internet
which has made research available to one and all. Special thanks also go out to
those contributors of the Arthurian Myths and Legends, Old Irish L and Arthurnet
online discussion groups who have been very helpful.
2
 Preview Version

Contents
Preface – The story of Arthur 5
Introduction. 12
Muircertach Mac Erca 16
The Lebor Bretnach 19
The Yellow Book of Lecan 30
Ancestry 36
The Name 40
Mac Erca and Muircertach Mac Muiredaig 47
The Annals of Inisfallen and Ulster 54
The Life of Mac Erca 55
The Violent Death of Muirchertach Mac Erca 77
Conclusions 145
Appendix 147
On the Miracles of Cairnech. 147
The Ecstasy of Conn of the Hundred Battles 153
Bibliography and cited works 155

Index 167

3
 Notes to the second edition

This work has remained popular since it was first published in 2011, and so a
decision was made to update and improve it. This current edition has been re-
edited, and re-formatted, correcting the typography, punctuation and layout
that was lacking in the first edition.
Extra discussions, analysis and research have been included to reflect and
reference works published in the intervening years since 2011. Some large expansion
and discussion to the text occurs in the chapters dealing with the material in the
Lebor Bretnach, Ballymote version, concerning the ‘Miracles of Cairnech’,
including more background material on Cairnech himself, and in the chapter
on Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca where further discussions on the threefold
death and dating of the work occur.
A major improvement is in the addition of the Irish language texts of both
the above stories which are laid alongside the translations. This has meant
that those translations have been improved, corrected and missing parts
restored. Minor additions, editing and corrections occur in all the other chapters.
Also included is a map of Ireland and extra images to supplement the work. This
edition therefore contains nearly fifty extra pages compared to the first
edition, with reference to several more academic works, and a brand-new cover
design.
The second edition consists of 174 pages, with 242 academic references and
can be found on Amazon in paperback, hardback and digital formats detailed at the
end of this preview.

Below you will find a preview of the Preface and Introduction and then the
bibliography.

Dane Pestano,
UK, Sussex, April 2023.

4
 Preface
The story of Arthur

T he great King Arthur, defeater of Saxons, Picts and Scots, conqueror of

Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Gaul and the Orkneys needs no
introduction being probably the most famous ancient Briton of all time,
but as we will be comparing his life with that of certain Irish legends a brief
summary of what is known of his life and their sources would be useful.
Arthur first appears through the mists of time in the early ninth century
work the Historia Brittonum (HB) – the History of the Britons - composed
around 829AD1. This work was an accumulation of various sources bundled
together and rewritten to form a whole narrative history. The work
incorporates material concerning a chronology of ancient British events;
material on Vortigern, 2 Ambrosius Aurelianus, 3 St. Germanus 4 and St.
Patrick,5 Arthur’s battles, northern British events, the mirabilia6 and Saxon
genealogies.
In this work then, Arthur’s twelve battles7 are mentioned for the first

1
Dumville, David N. Histories and Pseudo-histories of the Insular Middle Ages, Variorum,
Gower Publishing Group 1990.
2
The king who invited the Saxons to Britain as mercenaries against the Picts and
Scots(Irish)
3
The last of the Romans according to Gildas, who organised British defences in the fifth
century and brought victory to the Britons over the Saxons.
4
A Bishop sent to Britain from Gaul two times (429 and again later) to quell heretical
Christian beliefs.
5
A Briton who went to Ireland of his own volition in around 456 to convert the heathen
Irish and was eventually made a Bishop and died circa 493.
6
Mythology linked to landscape and nature features.
7
The first at the mouth of the river Glein, the second, third, fourth and fifth were on
another river called Dubglas in the region of Linnuis, the sixth on the river Bassus, the
seventh in the Caledonian forest, the eighth at Guinnion fort, the ninth in the city of the
5
time, where he is said to have defeated the Anglo Saxons and won every
battle including the famous battle of Badon hill. We also get a glimpse of
the mythology that has begun to surround him as he became associated
with the landscape due to the similarity of his name to various rock
formations. Therefore, he is associated with a Neolithic tomb in Ercing in
Wales and to another stone associated with a giant mythical dog of his
called Cabal.8
In the HB Arthur is merely called in Latin a dux bellorum or miles, the
former meaning a ‘general or leader of battle’ and the latter a ‘soldier’ or
‘mounted warrior’. From this, it has been deduced that he may have been of
lower rank than the kings of the Britons he fought for, but this may not be
the case. Medieval scribes in copying ancient manuscripts often changed
the title of Rex (king) to that of Dux (General) or Comes (Count) as they
didn’t recognise the status of the petty king. This was due to the time in
which they wrote, not understanding that in the fifth and sixth centuries
the whole country would have been full of petty kings and their kingdoms,
with several kings occupying small areas that were later amalgamated
under one sovereignty. The poetic epithet of dux bellorum (leader of
battles) itself was a common enough one in Welsh poetry, suggesting, as
many scholars have done, that the Arthur battle list derived from a Welsh
poem of the seventh or eighth centuries. The HB was appended to over
many years, with some more information on Arthur included, such as
glosses to the main work. These made more of his Christian links and
offered some puzzling comments concerning his wayward youth. The Irish
then wrote their own vernacular version of the HB in the mid eleventh
century.9
The next we hear of Arthur is in the tenth century poem The Gododdin.10

Legion, the tenth on the river called Tribruit, the eleventh on the hill called Agned, and
the twelfth was on Badon Hill and it nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day from a
single assault by Arthur, and no one lay them low save he alone.
8
Meaning ‘horse’. i.e. a giant dog.
9
See main thesis below for full details.
10
Willis, David. Old and Middle Welsh in The Celtic languages, edited by Martin Ball and
Nicole Müller. London: Routledge, 117-60. He refers to the poem as old Welsh. (850-1150).
The earliest MS is C13th but Isaac, Dumville, Higham and others date it to the C10th or
C11th based on the orthography. Whether it was orally transmitted from the C7th is
unknown.
6
This poem concerning events of Britons living in what is now southern
Scotland around Edinburgh compared one of their heroes Gwawrddur to
Arthur, implying that he was not as great as Arthur even though he could
kill 300 men.11 This comparison is based on the battle list in the HB, as
Arthur was said to be able to kill 960 men in one assault.12 The poem also
shows many more borrowings from the HB so can be dated in its Arthurian
form sometime after the HB became widely read. Therefore, for this part a
tenth century date seems appropriate even though the manuscript we have
now only dates from the thirteenth century, and Koch endeavours to place
it earlier. The poem refers to a battle that took place in Scotland in the late
sixth century called Catraeth, which is mentioned in the Irish annals as
having taken place in 596 AD13 against Saxons incursions into far northern
Britain. Also in the tenth century, we find Arthur mentioned in the Welsh
Annals as having fought at Badon in the year 516 and having died in 537 in
battle, at the same time as one Medraut (Modred) but it is possible these
are later interpolations to the annals.
In around 1120 a Flemish cleric called Lambert of St Omer, in a work
entitled Liber Floridus mentions a palace of Arthur situated in Pictland,
“built with marvellous art and variety, in which the history of all his
exploits and wars are to be seen in sculpture”. These sculptures are most
likely those at the Pictish capital Forteviot as opposed to the medieval
belief that Arthur's Oven near the river Carron is meant. Soon after this in
1125, William of Malmesbury in the Gesta Regum Anglorum mentions
Arthur where he says that Arthur was the subject of “fantastic tales told by
the Bretons”.14 This is then followed by the most famous or infamous work
to mention Arthur, the ‘History of the Kings of Britain’ now known as De
Gestis Britonum, ‘The Deeds of the Britons’ (DGB) completed by Geoffrey of
Monmouth in around 1139. This expands on the legends of Arthur and
Geoffrey uses him as a figurehead to appease the British and English who
had recently been conquered by the Normans with Breton help. He does

11
He fed black ravens on the rampart of a fortress, though he was no Arthur.
12
See Higham, N.J. King Arthur, Myth Making and History, Routledge, 2002 who discusses
these issues.
13
‘Bellum Ratho in Druad’ Annals of Ulster.
14
Loomis, R.S. Scotland and the Arthurian Legend. Columbia University. Proceedings of the Society
1955/56.
7
this by linking Arthur to Breton descent and envisages the Bretons playing
a major role in the conquest of the Saxons as they did in helping the
Normans of William the Conqueror defeat Harold.
Also in this century are other works from the Welsh such as Culhwch and
Olwen and other fairy tales that mention Arthur from a group of works now
called the Mabinogian. It was Geoffrey’s work though which was to inspire
the later romance tales of Arthur, including as it does, mention of Merlin
and Modred and others that became linked with Arthurian legend. It is in
this work that Arthur was given a father ‘Uther’,15 whose deeds are merely a
mirror of Arthur’s. It is here we find his wife for the first time, Guinevere,
his famous sword Caliburnus, later Excalibur, his extended battles against
the Saxons (in various places Geoffrey assumes they took place), an
expanded version of Arthur’s conquest of Gaul, southern Scotland and
Ireland, his non death as he sails away to Avalon to heal his wounds and
much more.
Arthur then reappears next in a late twelfth century text called the Vita
Goeznovius which has taken material from a continental version of the HB,
which mentioned his twelve battles against the Saxons and then mentions
his conquest of Gaul and his kingship,16 which derives from Geoffrey’s DGB.
From here on in Geoffrey’s work found its way to the continent and the
French Romance writers picked up the story and incorporated their own
localised legends of Arthur mixed with Greek mythology to create a
chivalric Arthur and his knights, born to uphold late medieval moral values
and take part in the search for the Holy Grail. Other later writers then
incorporated the ‘Round Table’ to accommodate Arthur's many knights in
equal sitting and the legend of Arthur was complete.
Arthur then, after the death of Uther, as a lad of fifteen, was chosen to
lead the Britons after pulling a sword from a stone, signifying his right to

15
Meaning the ‘horrible or terrible one, or wondrous one’.
16
"[The Saxons'] arrogance was presently, as occasion presented itself, repressed then by
great Arthur king of the Britons, so that they were driven out of most of the island and
forced to serve. But when that same Arthur, after many victories which he accomplished
illustriously in British and Gaulish areas, finally called from human endeavour, [the
island] was again forcibly exposed to the Saxons. Ashe, Geoffrey. The Legend of St.
Goeznovius, (1991). "Legenda Sancti Goeznovii". Also see Lacy, Norris J. The New Arthurian
Encyclopedia, pp. 204–205, Garland, 1991.
8
rule. He moved against the Saxons, Irish and Picts fighting twelve battles
with the help of his Breton allies culminating in the great battle of Badon
where the Saxons were finally defeated and peace brought to Britain. He is
given Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake to help in his wars. He was then
threatened by the king of Gaul who called for the Britons to give tribute to
the Romans as they had done in the past. This Arthur refused and set out to
conquer Gaul instead, as many Romano British emperors had done in the
past. He was successful in this and then married Guinevere and thought all
was well but in a second campaign to Gaul he left his foster son Mordred in
control of Britain. Mordred wanted the crown for himself so traitorously
enrolled the help of the Saxons to usurp power. At this Arthur returned
from his campaigns and fought against Mordred, which culminated in the
great battle of Camlann in 53717 where Arthur killed Mordred; but Arthur,
mortally wounded, was carried off to the isle of Avalon. Arthur was now
said to sleep in a cave waiting to return to save the Britons once more in
their hour of need. Unfortunately, to stop this idea that the Britons had for
salvation from the Norman conquest, the Norman King of England decided
to orchestrate the finding of ‘Arthur's’ bones buried under Glastonbury Tor,
complete with fake inscription. Arthur was now never to return but this did
not stop his legends growing to even greater heights over the centuries.
The biggest question for those seeking Arthur now is did he actually
exist? From a scholarly viewpoint the evidence is scant to say the least, his
name18 a puzzle to etymologists19 and contemporary evidence for his very
existence is missing. Many have sought to find the original Arthur on
whom these legends have grown but no one has been able to place their
person in the right time frame. Instead we have the Roman - Lucius
Artorius Castus from the second century AD who actually fought against

17
From the tenth century Welsh Annals. Geoffrey of Monmouth made the date 545 for
reasons given in my 2021 work.
18
In various sources as Arthur, Artus, Arcturus, Arturius, Arturus and Artuir.
19
I have suggested a new etymology derived from Goidelic for the name ‘Arthur’ in
Ambrosius Aurelianus and the Apocalypse of King Arthur, Dark Age Arthurian Books,
2021.
9
the Britons as a suggestion;20 or Riothamus a fifth century British leader
who fought in 470 AD against the Goths of Euric in Gaul and lost;21 or Artuir
Mac Aedan22 an insignificant Arthur of Irish descent who died in the late
sixth century, as well as others such as Arthur Ap Pedr, of the seventh
century.
What no one has been able to do is find legends concerning an Arthur
like person that fits him into his correct time frame of the late fifth to the
mid sixth century; that has him fight the Saxons, Irish and Picts and assume
power over them all including the Danes and the Orkneys. That has him
conquer the Gauls twice, has a wife Guinevere, has him raised by a druid,
has special weapons and is not initially a king of the Britons. Not only this,
but no one has been able to link such a person to an historical king living in
the sixth century whose name could represent the name Arthur. What this
current work sets out to do is present exactly those requirements in the
form of annals and legends hidden for hundreds of years, some still
awaiting translation. This material is brand new to the subject of
Arthuriana and has never been presented before. This work therefore is an
introduction to Arthuriana of this fascinating and rather brutal character of
Irish history, pseudo-history and mythology.
I will start first with an introduction to the character of Mac Erca and to
the sources in which he appears. I will then discuss his name, family and
background and then move onto his battles. After this the main story of his
life and deeds will then be presented as a narrative work, and then the
story of his mythical threefold death at the hands of the fairy woman Sin
(Sheen) follows.

20
Littleton, C. Scott, Malcor, Linda, From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the
Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail, New York,
Garland, 2000
21
Ashe, Geoffrey. "A Certain Very Ancient Book: Traces of an Arthurian Source in Geoffrey
of Monmouth's History", Speculum. 1981
22
For an essay on the problems of this Artuir see Zeigler, Michelle, Artur Mac Aedan of
Dalriada, Heroic Age, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 1999.
http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/1/haaad.htm
10
 Introduction

s late as 1999 Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, author of ‘The Celtic Tradition’

A when summarising the paucity of Irish material concerning King
Arthur wrote “it is clear that there was no early, indigenous, Irish Arthurian
tradition” and “Arthurian material in Irish is rare, late and derivative.”23
Then in 2004 Ann Dooley in the introduction to her paper, Arthur Of the
Irish: A Viable Concept? wrote these words:

“Arthur never figured in medieval Irish tradition in any significant way;

indeed, it is precisely because whatever traces may be recovered of an
Arthurian tradition in Ireland are presumed to carry for an Irish scene
none of the same configurations, developments and cultural concerns
as in Britain, that these Arthurian markers have never seriously been
revised or considered. For reasons that are as much political as
historical, Arthur is only of minor interest to Irish scholars and a study
of Arthuriana will be presumed to yield no insights for the course of
Ireland’s own distinctive cultural or political history.”24

Ann then goes on to detail many associations between Arthurian legends

with those of Irish works and her paper is a great introduction to the Irish
Arthurian subject. This lack of interest and lack of evidence for an Irish

23
Barron, W. R. J. ed., The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English
Life and Literature, University of Wales Press, 1999. She points out the earliest reference
to Arthur in Irish material is by Fionn O Dalaigh who died in 1387.
24
Lloyd-Morgan, C. Ed., Arthurian Literature XXI: Celtic Arthurian Material: v. 21 2004.
11
Arthur has been the received opinion of scholars for generations, long
before Lloyd-Morgan and following.
The Dal Riadic Artuir Mac Aedan is the closest anyone has come to an
Irish source for Arthur, and was most recently suggested by Maney (2004),25
who pointed out that the source of the Historia Brittonum battle list of
Arthur may have had a Strathclyde origin. Most commentators though
dismiss Artuir as the origin for the stories of Arthur as he was such an
insignificant character and his father Aedan, a famous warrior of the time,
would surely have entered Arthurian lore. The time period is also wrong for
Artuir who exists in the late sixth century, a time at which recordable
history was verifiable and hence there would have been little doubt about
him. Lastly, the Irish annals show that Artuir’s entry in them was added
much later using the late seventh century Life of St. Columba by Adamnan
as a source and hence the note of his death is unreliable.
More recently in 2007 Tom (Caitlin) Green in Concepts of Arthur26 has no
conception of an Irish Arthurian figure beyond comparing the Arthur
legend with that of the mythical Irish hero Finn or Fionn. She suggests that
the Arthurian legend came about in a similar way to that of the legends of
Finn in Ireland. This may indeed hold some truth but overlooks the fact
that the Irish did know of an ‘Arthur’ and had their own traditions and
legends concerning him. However, they called him by a name completely
different to what anyone would expect. For this reason the Irish Arthur has
lain hidden; his legends scattered throughout Irish manuscripts, waiting for
the pieces to fall into place and the story of this forgotten ‘Irish’ hero
revealed and told again for the first time in hundreds of years. Not only do
the Irish have legends about an Arthur figure, but also, contrary to the
Welsh material, the Irish actually link him to a confirmed historical sixth
century king! Even more astounding than this is that his descendants
through his sons’ daughter become kings of Saxon Northumbria in the
seventh century!
It is generally known that pseudo-historical works such as the ninth
century Historia Brittonum (HB) and the Welsh Annals owe a great deal too

25
Maney Laurence J, Looking for Arthur in all the Wrong Places, Proceedings of The Harvard
Celtic Colloquium 2004/2005.
26
Tempus Publishing, 2007. An excellent summary of Arthurian study and theories.
12
Irish influence in their conception and construction.27 The fact that there is
so much Irish influence on such works has been frustrating for those
seeking a reason as to why Arthur is not present or features very rarely in
early Irish literature, especially from the ninth century when the HB
coagulated some Arthurian legend into its pages and would have been well
read in Ireland. In fact, by the eleventh century the Irish had written their
own version of the HB and called it the Lebor Bretnach - ‘The Book of the
Britons’. In this collection of manuscripts was a legend, so weird and so
outlandish,28 that it was relegated to the appendix when the Irish HB was
examined and published by Todd and Herbert in 1848.29 This tale of St.
Cairnech once occupied a place in the Ballymote version of the Irish HB
detailing events from an Irish perspective following Roman withdrawal
from Britain to the mid sixth century. Van Hamel in 1932 restored its
position in his edition to its proper place, but its significance has been
overlooked. It was in this discarded tale that the key to finding the Irish
Arthur lay. In these tales St. Cairnech is made to be identical to the British
St. Carannog or Carantoc, both having the same feast day of May 16th.
Carantoc, in his Vita, is one of the few saints to be associated with King
Arthur.
Ann Dooley’s study of the story of St. Cairnech suggests that it is possible
that this tale was originally part of the Irish HB compiled by Gilla
Coemain30 in the mid eleventh century, although it is not certain that he
wrote the story itself.31 Dooley suggests that an eleventh century date would
fit in with the local politics of Brega and Tethba in Ireland of the time,32 but
I will suggest it has earlier provenance. As this current work is an
introduction, I will not expand too much on the political, social and
historical events of the ninth to eleventh centuries that may have

27
Dumville, David. Histories and Pseudo-Histories of the Insular Middle Ages. Variorum,
Gower Publishing Group, 1990 and St Patrick A.D. 493-1993 Dumville et al, Boydell Press
1993.
28
Todd called it ‘On the Miracles of Cairnech’.
29
Todd, J.H. and Herbert, A. The Irish Version of the Historia Brittonum of Nennius’, Irish
Archaeological Society Dublin, Dublin, 1848.
30
Died circa 1072
31
Ibid Dooley Pg. 12
32
Ibid Dooley Pg. 12
13
influenced these tales or delve into the many possibilities these tales
engender apart from some footnote suggestions. Dooley did know of this
Irish hero and described his story in her work, but she did not take the idea
to its more obvious conclusion. So now enjoy the forgotten story of the
Irish Arthur in all his violent glory, at the correct time in history and in all
the right places………

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14
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