ARMES PRYDEIN, HYWEL DDA, AND THE REIGN OF EDMUND OF WESSEX

PAR

Andrew BREEZE

This paper discusses two pieces of Welsh historical material concerning the reign of Edmund of Wessex (939-46). The first is the political poem Armes Prydein ‘The Prophecy of Britain’; the second, a reference to a Welsh king’s support of Edmund’s Scottish campaign of 945. The two items are here discussed separately, but it will be seen they both shed fight on Anglo-Welsh relations in Edmund’s reign.

Armes Prydein is a Welsh poem (written as a prophecy) of some two hundred lines, surviving in the fourteenth-century Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 2, a collection of early Welsh poetry known as the Book of Taliesin1. Armes Prydein describes the oppression which the Welsh suffer from the English, particularly in demands for tribute. It also foretells in violent terms how the English will be expelled from Britain through a military alliance of Welsh, Irish, Dublin Norse, Strathclyders, Scots, Cornish, and Bretons. The poem has long been accepted as of the tenth century2 .

The first part of this paper argues (a) that the poem can be dated to late 940, and (b) that it was written as a response to Edmund of Wessex’s humiliating capitulation to Olaf Guthfrithson at Leicester early in 940. Armes Prydein should therefore be of interest as showing the thinking of a Welsh opposition group, fiercely hostile to the official Welsh policy of friendship with England, and looking for assistance to places beyond Wales, including Brittany.

The second piece of Welsh evidence, discussed in the latter part of this paper, is the account of Edmund of Wessex’s Scottish campaign of 945 as reported in the Flores Historiarum of the thirteenth-century chronicler Roger of Wendover. This mentions support for the campaign from the Welsh under a mysterious king ‘Leolin’ of Dyfed. It is argued below that ‘Leolin’ is Hywel Dda himself, whose name has suffered textual corruption. Identification of Hywel’s name in this unique source for 945 thus furthers our understanding of Edmund of Wessex’s reign.