the first of the last kings and a brief mention of Henry III.
The following excerpt (a version of Merlin’s famous twelfth prophecy) details and explicates the battles between red and white dragons. (In Monmouth’s text, the dragons fight beneath Vortigern’s crumbling tower.)10 This is an episode, we recall, that A. O. H. Jarman identifies with Welsh vaticination. The excerpt below exemplifies both the repetitious structure of the Prophetia Merlini and one of the Commentator’s most persistent concerns, British loss and disinheritance:
Merlyn seid … that the whight dragon schall [rise] ayen. and he schall calle to him ϸe doghter of Saxonie. Than schall oure gardeyns be replenished with straunge seede, and ϸe Reede dragon schall langwyssch and moorne in the boordis of a water.
Merlyn seide sooth. For the Englissh peple that were left o lyve aftir the greete derth and deth sent in to saxonie. where thei were boore for men wymmen and childre to stuffe cities and townes with peple a geyn. Than come the saxons and multiplied wondir thik and used the langage of hir oune contree. and chaunged the names of cities and townes and castels and held the countries baronages lord-shcippes as bretons had compaced hem be forne. And among hem that come from saxonie to Englond came ϸe noble quene sexburga with men and wymmen with ovte nombre. and arrivid in Northumbrelond. and toke the lond from Scotland in to Cornewaille for hir and for hir peple. for al that lond was desolate and voide of peple except a fewe powre bretons that were left in mountayns and in woodis. Than began saxons for to reigne. and departed the lond be twix hem and made kinges by dyuerse contries. The first was of westsex. The second of Estsex. The thrid of Estangle called Northfold and Southfold be iiij king of Merchlond with many oϸer as king of Northumbrelond & cetera. And the bretons sum of hem fled into walis. vnto ϸe boordis of the see. (ll. 125–35)
The vague symbols of what is to come, in the short space of a few lines, are transformed into a forthright historical narrative: red dragons signify the Britons driven by invaders “into Wales unto the borders of the sea.” The strange seeds in “our” gardens are said to signify the progeny of Saxon conquerors who multiply “wondrously thick.” The commentary offers an orthodox English interpretation of the two dragons’ fate, with the White Dragon standing as a figure for the English, now united with the Saxons, and the Red Dragon as the newly conquered Britons. The dragon symbolism follows the prophecy of insular devastation from famine (told in prophecy ten), the land “desolate and voide of peple”: “ϸe feeldes shall disceyve the plowman. And the peple schall suffre hungre and greete deeth, and tho ϸat be lefft o lif schall forsake ϸer natif contre … And ϸan schall bretayn be nere hand desolat” (ll. 93–95). Queen Sexburga and her people, a Saxon (re)population, come onto British territory at the invitation of the English, usefully repopulating what is here described as a nearly vacant countryside. These Anglo-Saxon bodies quickly move in on British territory (“changing the names of cities and towns and castles and taking ownership of the baronages and lordships”), gesturing in this moment to the links between territorial acquisition and linguistic change.
The image of a new people settling and (re) naming a vacant countryside is a common trope of narratives of migration and conquest. Desolation from conquest is here specifically named British: “Bretayn” was “nere hand desolat”; the vacant land offers only the trace of a “fewe powre bretons” remaining “in mountayns and in woodis.” The pleasures of Saxon repopulation contrast with an explicitly British poverty and ruin. While the commentator identifies two insular groups predating Saxon arrival, he links intense devastation only with the “few, poor Britons” left on the land. While the impoverished Britons turn inward, the English, with apparently more foresight, look across the seas for aid. This contrast between English and British will be important, and I will return to it shortly. But I wish first to note the insularity of this image of interior Britain. Hidden in the mountains, the Britons constitute a desolate yet intact interior; they occupy a remote, yet deeply intimate, insular geography, abiding in the heart of the island. A concealed remnant, they apparently do not join in the cultural mixing of Anglo-Saxon days. They constitute an insular population untouched by immigrant rulers. Yet they also signal the trace of conquest; they are the relics of a native history suffused with loss.
Despite their identification with loss, the Britons are also continually imagined as resistant to Saxon invasion. Unlike the English, they remain obdurate before Saxon seductions. Earlier in the Prophetia this resistance has been linked to impressive, male rule. Before Queen Sexburga and her people arrive, the British King Cadwall (in prophecies seven and eight) resiliently rebuffs the Saxon threat.11 Yet even, perhaps especially, at this moment of British victory loss links with resilience:
[7] Merlin seide also that ther schall be so greete tormentrie that ϸe childer schall be cut ovt of hir modir wombes. and straunge men schall be restored. And he seide soth. For king Cadwall was so sore annoyed with saxons that he thought vtterly to distroie hem. and to restore it a yet to bretayns. and he did slee man woman and childe for to performe his entencion and to enhaunce the bretons. (71–72)
Horrific loss, this time perpetrated by a British king, sponsors British restoration. Cadwall’s success and British restoration follow the most atrocious devastation. British loss and restoration are gendered here, moreover. “Strange men” are restored; women (and the children in their wombs) suffer catastrophically. The motif of the violent deaths of children ripped from their mothers’ wombs, indebted to biblical images of the Slaughter of Innocents, usually stands as testimony to tyranny. This common image of wartime loss gains poignancy through its gender strategies. It acutely expresses the horror of war through gendered images of slaughter. One obvious implication would be that the perpetrator of these deaths must be most excessively tyrannical, the fortunes he wishes to enhance as unjust as the methods used to enhance them.
In contrasting the image of victimized mothers with Cadwall’s violence the text emphasizes Cadwall’s tyranny as a function of his masculinity. A male sovereign forges restoration through a virile force of arms. Cadwall’s violence is imagined as productive for British restoration, but only temporarily and only by engendering catastrophic destruction on female reproductive bodies. This contrast resonates with the contrast between British and English we have just seen, where the English host join with Queen Sexburga and, in contrast to the insular British, offer the childless island a (re)productive future. This gendering of sovereign rule splits a British violent (male) sovereignty from a Saxon reproductive (female) one. From the long view, the point seems to be that for all Cadwall’s virile potency, British insularity, in contrast to English exogamy, is literally barren.
Yet if the commentator merely wishes to cast British insularity as impotent, he misses an opportunity to drive the point home. Indeed, following the description of slaughter in prophecy seven, the commentary seems unconscionably mild. Prophetic apocalypticism sits uneasily with the explanation that follows; in fact, the prophecy offers a gripping depth and texture to wartime loss, a texture that is then flattened out by the abstract nouns of the commentary. In place of castigations of a tyrannical victimization of the innocent, or of the uselessness of Cadwall’s unchecked aggression, the commentary forthrightly details Cadwall’s success against the Saxons. The commentary backs away from a castigation of war crimes in favor of what seems a more dispassionate historicism.
This may be because while the commentator wishes to suggest that British insularity has no future, he also remains fascinated by Cadwall’s restorative power for his people. Focusing on Cadwall’s desire to destroy the Saxons (mentioning his aggressive ambitions five different times in a single line), this ambivalent description combines desire and derision: a fascination with British resistance and a horrific image of British savagery. To be sure, the author may wish to link Cadwall to charges of tyranny; I will be arguing shortly that this commentary is not particularly pro-Welsh, despite a fascination with the fortunes of these “British” ancestors. Taken together, prophecy and commentary display horrible loss as a means to British restoration.
King Cadwall remains one of the most vivid images from the Prophetia. In prophecy eight, his dead sovereign body
