The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts. Rodney Castleden
writing poetry in Powys, long after the English had overrun his kingdom.
Rhun marched on, deep into the Gododdin (south-east Scotland), all the way to the Forth, still unopposed. After this impressive parade of military strength, he marched his great army home to Gwynedd. It was a triumph. Yet it also illustrated, just as Arthur’s career had 30 years earlier, how the British could organize brilliant and spectacular military coups de théâtre and yet fail to hold together the polity of a large kingdom. To judge from Gildas, the British disliked kings. They felt no overriding need to unite behind a powerful monarch or submit to central control. They simply did not see, even as late as 560, how dangerous the growing Anglo-Saxon colonies in the east and south-east were. The soldier’s loyalty was always to his lord, but this was a local war-band loyalty. Petty rivalries among the war-band leaders, the kings, and sub-kings, would be likely to erupt quickly, easily, and repeatedly into civil war.
The northern British poems express the spirit of the times well. The highest ethic involved the devoted loyalty of faithful warriors to their lord and his personal destiny. The idea of sacrificing or compromising that loyalty by serving an overlord ran against this sentiment. Long-term loyalty to an overking or commander-in-chief would have been alien to the rank-and-file warrior. The effect was that although British resistance to the advance of the Saxons in the sixth and seventh centuries may have been intermittently highly successful, in the end it was doomed, in the same way that resistance to the Roman invasion had been in the first century, as contemporary Roman commentators had recognized (see Myths: The History of Taliesin).
RHUN, SON OF URIEN
Rhun, son of Urien, became a cleric, settling in Gwynedd. He may have been the author of The Life of Germanus in about 630. Varying accounts of the baptism of King Edwin of Northumbria exist. One is that Rhun baptized Edwin while the latter was in exile, a boy-refugee in Gwynedd, some 15 years before Paulinus baptized the people of Northumbria. Another account (recorded by Nennius) is that Rhun baptized Edwin in 626, in Northumbria, when he was king. Both may be true, as it may have been deemed necessary to stage a repeat baptism ceremony for the king, in public, for the benefit of his subjects.
Bede’s account is different again, giving Paulinus the credit, but Bede had a political motive. Writing when he did, he may have wanted to show the first Christian Anglian king as sponsored by the Roman Church, not by the Celtic Church. A power struggle between the two had been going on since Augustine’s arrival at the end of the sixth century, and Bede would have had a strong motive for reducing the role of the British priesthood and exaggerating that of the Roman. It seems likely, then, that it was Rhun who actually wrote the account of the baptism ceremony, first hand, in 627.
RHYDDERCH HAEL
See Elidyr, Urien.
RIDERCH
See Dyfnwal, Kentigern.
ROADS
One of the things the Romans did for us was to build roads. That at least is what we have been led to believe. But what was there in the way of a road system before the Romans arrived in the Celtic west—in Gaul, in Hispania, in Britain?
Ancient trackways followed the crests of prominent hill ridges, especially where these persisted for long distances. The chalk and limestone escarpments of lowland England and northern France lent themselves to this form of communication. One advantage was that they were raised and on permeable rock, so they were drier and firmer than tracks on lower ground. Another advantage was that navigation was easier; all you had to do was to follow the crest of the ridge. Being raised up also gave better views across the landscape, so you had better opportunities to identify where you were.
There were the South Downs Way and the Pilgrims Way in Sussex and Kent, the Ridgeway in Wiltshire, the Jurassic Way in Northamptonshire and the Icknield Way in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk.
In wetlands, wooden walkways were constructed. In the Somerset Levels, around 40 wooden tracks dating from 3000 BC onward were built so that people and livestock could cross from Wedmore to the islands of Byrtle, Westhay, and Meare, and from there to the Polden Hills. These tracks were up to 2 miles (3km) long.
Some roads that we think of as Roman roads were in fact Roman surfaces added on top of pre-existing Iron Age roads. These were roads that had been built by the indigenous people. A rescue dig next to a quarry 2 miles (3km) south of Shrewsbury gave an opportunity to test a long stretch of known Roman road. The road surface was first built in 200 BC after the land was cleared by burning. The route was used for driving cattle, and their hooves churned it into mud (the Irish Gaelic word for road is bothar, which means “cow-path.”)
To improve the road, a layer of elder brushwood 15 feet (4.5m) wide was laid down, with earth on top, followed by a layer of gravel and sand, then river cobbles, which were compacted into this foundation. The result made an all-weather roadway about 16.5 feet (5m) wide. It was subsequently remade a little wider, and then remade again. The road’s surface was grooved by parallel ruts, showing that carts with a 6.5-foot (2m) wide wheelbase were being used. And all this happened before the Roman occupation, when a Roman road surface was added on top of the Iron Age road layers.
So, there were decent, dry, all-weather engineered roads in Britain—and Gaul—before the Romans arrived. Julius Caesar does not describe these roads, but he does say that the Gallic charioteers preferred to fight off-road, which means that there must have been roads.
Even in Italy, there were roads before the Romans. The Via Gabina was mentioned as early as 500 BC and the Via Latina in 490 BC, when the Etruscan king had only just been overthrown and the Roman republic was scarcely underway, yet it seems the “Roman” road system already existed.
RUADAN
The son of Birra of the Eoganachta (in Munster, Ireland). Ruadan was a huge man, said to be 12 feet (3.6m) tall. He revived the son of a British king who was drowned when one of Brendan’s ships sank in the Shannon estuary.
His monks lived an easy life, thanks to the manufacture of a “lime juice” that was evidently a distilled liqor. The easy living and the lime juice attracted many monks from other houses. Under pressure from indignant abbots, Finnian told Ruadan to stop production and practice conventional subsistence farming.
Ruadan is said to have written several books, including Against King Diarmait, The Miraculous Tree, and The Wonderful Springs of Ireland. He died at Lothra; his head was preserved in a silver reliquary until the sixteenth century. A bell that was found in a well at Lorrha was venerated as the bell he rang at Tara against King Diarmait.
Unfortunately the recipe for lime juice has not survived.
SAMSON
St. Samson was a sixth-century contemporary of Arthur. His father was a Demetian landowner and also an altrix, a companion of the king, who was at that time probably Agricola (See Aircol).
The idea that Samson should