[darkagebritain] Re: Pharaoh and Ffaraon Dande
- From: "Kevin Bowman" <kbowman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <darkagebritain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:32:55 -0500
Recently I started thinking about the various connections between
Vortigern and the Egyptian Pharaoh.
The oldest reference to such a connection surely comes up in Gildas,
Ch.23:
Latin:
"uos propensius morte, cum abessent, tremebant, sponte, ut ita dicam,
"sub unius tecti culmini inuitabant: =91stulti principes=92, ut dictum =
est,
"=91taneos dantes pharaoni consilium insipiens=92.
English Translation:
"The men whom, when absent, they feared more than death, were invited=20
"by them of their own accord, so to say, under the cover of one roof:
"Foolish princes of Zoan, as is said, giving unwise counsel to Pharaoh.=20
We see a similar reference, presumably to Vortigern but obscure, in the
Gwarchan Maeldderw
"20 Dyssyllei trech tram anon,
"Disgleiryawr ac archawr tal achon;
"Ar rud dhreic fud pharaon,
"Kyueillyaur en awel adawavn.
"Trengsyd a gwydei, neb a'e eneu
"Y ar orthur teith tith, a thedyt.
...
Here is Isaac's translation of the poem:
"Let them demand the virtue of fame for the great army!
"the champion used to look past a young girl,
"the dazzling one, and the one who required due payment for his lineage;
"in the presence of the spoils of the Pharaoh's red dragon,
"companions (will?) depart in the breeze.
"Those who fell perished, those with their heads
"in the way of the hammerer with a horse's gait, and the blade of his
"axe.
Isaac's notes on this text state with regard to the appearance of the
word pharaon:
"I am interpreting the syntax as a poetic transformation of what
"would normally be expressed in the word order (also modernizing
"orthography) ar fudd draig rudd Ffaraon. As Williams notes the 'red
"dragon of Pharaoh' is suggestive of a reference to the story of the
"dragons of Dinas Emrys in Nan Gwynant, Snowdonia, as told in HB and
"Cynfranc Ludd a Llefelys.
And, of course, Ifor Williams was correct. The reference is suggestive.
There is no reference to Vortigern as "Pharaoh" in the HB, but there is
in Lludd a Llefelys (in the Mabinogian) in which Dinas Emrys is said to
have been called formerly Dinas Ffaraon Dande (translated as the Fort of
the Flaming Pharaoh).=20
"Lludd wrapped a sheet around [the dragons] and locked in a stone chest
"in the most secure place he could find in Eryri and thereafter the
"place was called Dinas Emreis though before it had been Dinas Ffaraon
"Dandde
That name is again suggestive of Vortigern's fiery end in the HB:
Latin:
"et iterum guorthigirnus usque ad arcem guorthigirni, quae est
"in regione demetorum iuxta flumen teibi, ignominiose abscessit.
"et solito more sanctus germanus eum secutus est et ibi ieiunus
"cum omni clero tribus diebus totidemque noctibus causaliter
"mansit et in quarta nocte arx tota mediae circa noctis horam
"per ignem missum de caelo ex improuiso cecidit ardente igne
"caelesti; et guorthigirnus cum omnibus, qui cum eo erant, et
"cum uxoribus suis defecit. hic est finis guorthigirni, ut in
"libro beati germani repperi.
Translation:
"Again Vortigern ignominiously flew from St. Germanus to the
"kingdom of the Dimet=E6, where, on the river Towy, he built a
"castle, which he named Cair Guothergirn. The saint, as usual,
"followed him there, and with his clergy fasted and prayed to
"the Lord three days, and as many nights. On the third night,
"at the third hour, fire fell suddenly from heaven, and totally
"burned the castle. Vortigern, the daughter of Hengist, his other
"wives, and all the inhabitants, both men and women, miserably
"perished: such was the end of this unhappy king, as we find
"written in the life of St. Germanus.
Finally there is Triad 95:
Three People who broke their hearts from Bewilderment:
Branwen daughter of Llyr,
and Caradog son of Bran,
and Ffaraon Dandde.
The presumption one encounters is that the later, probable references to
Vortigern derived ultimately from Gildas Biblical allusion in the DEB. =20
What puzzles me about all of this is that Gildas's allusion to the
Pharaoh and the Princes of Zoan is a seeming toss-off. It's not all
that powerful a metaphor and it only occurs once. Bede doesn't adopt
it. Yet, there seems to be a fairly strong oral tradition associating
Vortigern with the title Pharaoh. It is hard to imagine this genuinely
arises from popular reception of Gildas' difficult text.
I wonder if it would not make more sense to hypothesize that the
association between Vortigern and the title "Pharaoh" actually predated
Gildas. Then, when Gildas made the Biblical allusion to the Pharaoh and
the princes of Zoan, then he was engaging in a clever multi-tiered
literary conceit. =20
One might note that Gildas draws distinct parallels between Ambrosius
and Moses in the DEB. Perhaps that too involved Gildas borrowing from
an earlier tradition or source in which Ambrosius played Moses to
Vortigern's Pharaoh (of course a different Pharaoh from the one who
followed the advice of the Princes of Zoan). =20
Or, perhaps Vortigern genuinely called himself "Pharaoh." Perhaps
Ffaraon has some British-Celtic cognate that made the title more
appealing than one might imagine. Or maybe his enemies called him
"Pharaoh."
This is all just speculation, but I am convinced that there must be more
to the connection between Vortigern and the Pharaoh than can derive from
Gildas' single allusion.
Any thoughts?
Kevin A. Bowman
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