Kingdoms shaped by ancient myth
The medieval rulers of England and Scotland scoured the chronicles to bolster the legitimacy of their lineage, and in turn shaped the political destiny of the islands of Great Britain, writes
What made the mythic wanderings of an Egyptian queen, a prophecy by the goddess Diana and the death of a giant called Gogmagog crucial to the politics of medieval Britain?
The answer begins with King Edward I of England sending his abbots into the bowels of their libraries to find histories that would bolster his claim to Scottish overlordship. They emerged with the ‘Brut’ chronicle, written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which begins with the foundation of Britain by a Trojan called Brutus and ends with the arrival of the first Saxons. Translated into vernacular prose and verse, it remained a widely accepted regnal history of Britain – at least by the English and Welsh – until well into the 16th century. It came to be known as the ‘Brut’ chronicle because of the legendary character of Brutus, who gives Britain his name.
Great grandson of the same Aeneas to flee the ruins of Troy in Virgil’s Aeneid, Brutus is a Trojan. Exiled from Italy for killing his father, he seeks a homeland in the Mediterranean. He picks up other refugees of the Trojan war and discovers an island with a deserted temple to the goddess Diana. Brutus sacrifices a white hart before a statue of the goddess and a wondrous thing occurs.
Here is the episode in my own retelling of the Brut legend: That night Brutus dreamed that he saw the statue of Diana come to life, swelling in the fire’s silver fumes to a vast and terrible size, swaying like a tree in the wind. Her shoulders were muscular from the draw of the bow, and her face glared after some distant quarry. As her lips parted, he heard her speak. Her voice was like flames in the canopy: ‘Brutus! Beyond Gaul is an island. Giants live there now,
But it will become your home. There you will build a New Troy And found a royal line
To rule the round circle of the earth.’
And as she cried her prophecy, she flung out her hand to the west, to the place where, just hours before, the sun had extended its last beams. Rousing the men, he shared the vision. They were excited. They returned to the ships determined. ‘Who’s afraid of a few far-off giants?’ they said, as the spirit of Diana grew cold.
So Brutus sails to Albion, where Corineus, Brutus’ closest friend, kills the leader of the giants, Gogmagog, along with all his kin. Brutus then settles down to rule the newly-named Britain, formerly ‘Albion’, with his wife Ignoge, a Greek princess, and sires three sons. It is here that King Edward I would have started paying close attention.
The three legendary sons’ names were Albanac, Kamber and Locrin. They inherit three territories of Britain: Albany, Kambria and Loegria. In later years the territories come to be known as Scotland, Wales and England. Locrin, the ruler of England, was the eldest, making him natural overlord of his brothers in the eyes of Edward I. Treating the Brut myth as history, English king saw himself as a successor of Locrin and so believed he inherited a right to sovereignty in Britain.
However it wasn’t long before the Scots began advertising their own origin myth. It survives in two medieval chronicles, The Chronicle of the Scottish Nation by John of Fordun (died c.1384) and the 15th century Scotichronicon by Walter Bower (died 1449), and derives from a much older Irish legend.
According to both texts, the founders of the Scotti (a medieval Latin word for the Irish) were a couple by the name of Gaythelos and Scota: an exiled Greek prince and the daughter of the Pharoah, Rameses II. They are forced into exile with the rest of the aristocracy after the uprising of the Israelites.
My retelling goes: Thus it was that while Moses and Aaron sought the Promised Land, Scota and Gaythelos took their people west. They sailed away from Africa, having rested in Algeria, and sailed down the Mediterranean, through the Pillars of Hercules, until they were south of the Bay of Biscay. Full of the eagerness of youth, Gaythelos and Scota moored their ships in Spain and, finding themselves ill-received by the people of that land, hurried to build a fortified town in which to live. They called it Brigantia.
The site was chosen for its coastal hill, on which they constructed a watchtower. Some claim the tower, which has never fallen, was the work of Hercules, or of the Romans, but it was built by Scota and Gaythelos. In Brigantia, years passed and the exiles found no peace, suffering constant attack from their neighbours. Gazing across the ocean from his tower, Gaythelos longed now, as he had in his father’s court, for freedom. Meanwhile Scota saw how every day their power dwindled. These people are the cream of Egypt and Greece, she thought; they were born for more than this.
So Gaythelos sends scouts out into the ocean, whence they return with news of an empty island to the North. The island becomes Hibernia, later Ireland, named, along with Iberia, after Hyber, Scota and Gaythelos’ son. Scota gives her name to the Scotti and Gaythelos to the Gaels. In later years, their descendants settle the northern parts of Britain and form the Scottish nation. In the medieval record, independence of foreign subjugation is an essential theme. From his deathbed, Gaythelos exhorts his sons to colonise the empty island and never to accept foreign rule: ‘Do not submit to oppression; it would be better to die. Go. For there is nothing more precious than a nation that has
It wasn’t long before the Scots began advertising their own origin myth, surviving in two chronicles
chosen to serve its own king, who rules by hereditary right.’
In 1320, during the reign of Robert the Bruce, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed by Scottish barons. As readers will know, it asserted Scotland’s right to selfgovernment.
Here is a portion of Alan Borthwick’s translation: [The Scots] journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage peoples, but nowhere could it be subdued by any people, however barbarous. Thence it came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to its home in the west . . .
Referring to the Scots’ later migration from Ireland to northern Britain, it continues: In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken by a single foreigner.
The Scota and Gaythelos myth turned Egypt, Spain (especially the Tower of Hercules in ‘Brigantia’, today the town of A Coruña) and Ireland into stepping stones to Scotland that bypass southern Britain, cutting out Brutus altogether, rendering the English claim to ancient overlordship obsolete. And so both the English and Scottish shaped myths to serve their political ambitions and these myths in turn shaped the present.