explanation. The anecdote reads as both informative and entertaining and shows Walter at his best in crafting border tales from his knowledge of Welsh culture. The story also educates, even if derisively, its readers in Welsh legal difference—they do things differently over there.
The next two episodes also discredit Llywelyn, though they do so not by explaining peculiar Welsh institutions but by relying on contemporary Welsh stereotypes. Llywelyn was, according to Walter, an underachieving child, one who “sat beside his father’s ashes.”100 His sister scolds him, begging him to follow the “custom of the country” (mos huius terre) to venture out on New Year’s Eve to raid, steal, or even to eavesdrop.101 Those who choose to eavesdrop have the chance to hear a prophetic saying about their future. Inspired, Llywelyn creeps up to a house and listens to a cook inside contemplating the beef chunks in his stew: “Here I have found one remarkable piece among the others, since I always send it to the bottom and place it under the others, and right away it reappears above all the other pieces.”102 Llywelyn takes himself to be this unsinkable chunk of beef, and gladdened by such a “clear omen” (manifesto pronostico), he begins his rise to becoming “the most cunning thief and the most violent raider of the property of others.”103 Political prophecy is certainly not unique to Wales, but Welsh political prophecy takes on particular significance when read in an English context.
The Welsh nursed their loss of the island of Britain by cultivating a rich body of prophetic lore that told of a national savior who would come to destroy the English and restore the sovereignty of the island to its rightful holders. Gerald of Wales was not the only one to observe that the Welsh “foretell and boast with the utmost confidence—and their entire populace wondrously holds to this hope—that soon their countrymen will return to the island, and, in accordance to the prophecies of their own Merlin, both the foreign nation and its name will perish, and the Britons will once more rejoice in their old name and privilege in the island.”104 Walter was familiar with the figure of Merlin as a prophetic figure, and his description of Llywelyn’s omen humorously undercuts Welsh pretensions.105 Not only is Llywelyn’s prophecy amusingly mundane—a pot of beef stew in the place of dragons and other allegorical beasts—but it fails to produce a great national redeemer. While Llywelyn does become an outstanding Welsh leader, in Walter’s eyes that simply means that he is the best thief and raider in a land full of thieves and raiders. This anecdote speaks to an English perception that plunder, and not noble claims to recovering the crown of the Island of Britain, is what truly motivates Welsh rulers, in spite of what their grand prophecies may say.
Walter’s description of Llywelyn’s reign bears this assumption out. He ruled peacefully, with the sole exception of “the suffering that he inflicted upon his own people.”106 Llywelyn proceeds to murder and maim any promising young man that he sees, adopting the proverb “I kill nobody, but I blunt the horns of Wales so that they do not harm their mother.”107 Sensing that his nephew Llywarch will grow to be his rival, Llywelyn finally corners him and, asking why he has fled his presence, he offers to provide guarantors in case he is afraid. Llywarch then proceeds to name as guarantors several promising young men whom his uncle has already slain. Violence and treachery were common aspects of medieval aristocratic life, but Anglo-Norman and Angevin dynastic politics were relatively tame compared to the constant bloodshed of Welsh petty kings.108 Walter’s Llywelyn therefore embodies two salient aspects of Welsh political life that would have been recognized by English readers: prophecy and violence.
Among Llywelyn’s many acts of wickedness, Walter records one noble and honorable deed. When Edward the Confessor, troubled by Llywelyn’s violent incursions into England, humbly approaches the Welsh king in a boat to discuss the situation, Llywelyn is so moved by his modesty in crossing over to him, rather than the other way around, that he does homage to his English rival. The event is at least partly based in truth, since Gruffudd ap Llywelyn did in fact pay homage to King Edward in 1056.109 But in Walter’s telling, this rapprochement becomes an opportunity to highlight two opposing myths about who is the rightful heir to the Island of Britain. At Aust Cliff and Beachley on the Severn River, the two kings meet at one of the clearest markers of division between England and Wales. Neither king wishes to cross to the other’s side, and the debate quickly turns to political theory: “Llywelyn claimed greater precedence; Edward equal rank. Llywelyn claimed that his people had taken possession [conquisissent] of all England, along with Cornwall, Scotland, and Wales from the giants, and asserted that he was the heir with the most lawful descent. Edward claimed that his own ancestors had obtained England from those who had taken possession of it [conquisitoribus].”110
Condensed into this short exchange are both Welsh and English claims to the Island of Britain. In particular, Walter relies upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, where a battle against giants lies at the very foundation of Britain.
Geoffrey’s History describes how once the Trojan refugees have landed on the fruitful and promising island, inhabited by nobody “save for a few giants,” they begin to explore the territories, “driving off to mountain caves any giants they [come] upon,” and soon thereafter Brutus names the island Britain and its people Britons after himself.111 Corineus, favoring the southwestern portion of the island, chooses Cornwall, since “there were more [giants] to be found there than in any of the districts divided amongst his companions.”112 Eventually, a frighteningly strong giant named Goemagog, leading twenty other giants, attacks Brutus and his men as they hold a feast in Totnes, the spot where they are said to have landed. After reinforcements arrive, the giants are all destroyed, except Goemagog, the last of his kind, who is spared only because Brutus desires to watch Corineus and Goemagog wrestle. It is only after Corineus kills Goemagog that the work of building and settling the island really begins, for immediately afterward Brutus surveys the whole island and decides to build Trinovantum, New Troy, which would later become London. Thus, with the Trojans now settled in their new home, the first book of Geoffrey’s History comes to a close.
As the climax of the first book of The History of the Kings of Britain, Corineus’s defeat of Goemagog cements the Trojan’s control over Britain and marks the point at which Brutus and Corineus divide the island among themselves.113 This episode is the first of several passages in the History in which divisions of Britain are explained, usually with reference to an eponymous founder.114 These passages famously foreshadow and justify many of the political, legal, and ethnic boundaries of Geoffrey’s day: the kingdoms of Wales, England, and Scotland, for example, reflect how Brutus parceled out Britain among his three sons.115 The Trojans’ skirmish with the giants over supremacy of the island thus becomes the exemplar of how British land is contested and appropriated in Geoffrey’s History. Crucially, Walter’s Llywelyn knows the history of this battle and its meaning.
While Llywelyn cites the beginning of Geoffrey’s History, Edward cites the end. If the Welsh gained Britain by conquering the giants, the English gained their territory by conquering the Welsh. The last books of Geoffrey’s History explain how the Britons lose their former territory on account of their sins. Their future looks bleak: “The Welsh, unworthy successors to the noble Britons, never again recovered mastery over the whole island, but, squabbling pettily amongst themselves and sometimes with the Saxons, kept constantly massacring the foreigners or each other.”116 As far as Edward is concerned, the English hold Britain with just as much right as the Welsh—both had it from previous peoples. This brief exchange nicely encapsulates the debate on the aim of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work, a debate that has continued into modern scholarship. Walter, typically, refuses to weigh in on behalf of either Edward or Llywelyn, since it is ultimately Edward’s personal charisma, rather than any quasi-mythical claim, that moves Llywelyn. For Walter’s courtly audience, the moral of Llywelyn and Edward’s meeting is simple: argument over English and Welsh claims to the rightful possession of Britain will end in a stalemate. The solution seems to be personal action, rather than principled debate. In particular, Walter suggests that the personal action most effective in dealing with the Welsh
