Qualla: Battle of Arfderydd https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Battle of Arfderydd https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd Battle of Arfderydd: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd/ There is a moment in the older Welsh poetry - not the polished Arthurian romances of the later Middle Ages, but the earlier, stranger material of the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Welsh Triads - when a bard called Myrddin runs into the Caledonian Forest with his wits broken and a golden torque still glinting at his neck. He has just survived a battle in which his lord was killed. The poetry says the ravens screamed over blood. He hides among apple trees and talks to the air. He is, several centuries before the legend takes the shape we know, the rough origin of Merlin. The fight he survived was the Battle of Arfderydd, dated by the Annales Cambriae to AD 573, and according to the fourteenth-century chronicler John of Fordun it took place on the plain between Liddel and Carwannok - identified by the Victorian Celticist W. F. Skene as the area around Arthuret, just north of Longtown in modern Cumbria.

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/b/battle-of-arfderydd-wp/gcvb-battle-of-arfderydd-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Arfderydd: A King Called Gwenddoleu https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd/ The two armies meeting at Arfderydd belonged to Brittonic kingdoms of what is now southern Scotland and northern England - the world the Welsh later called Yr Hen Ogledd, the Old North. The defeated lord was Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio, a king whose name survives only in fragments of po...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/b/battle-of-arfderydd-wp/gcvb-battle-of-arfderydd-a-king-called-gwenddoleu.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Arfderydd: The Three Futile Battles https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd/ The same Welsh Triads list Arfderydd as one of the Three Futile Battles of the Island of Britain - alongside the Battle of Camlann, where Arthur fell, and the legendary Battle of the Trees. Futile not because nothing happened, but because so much was lost for so little gain. The ...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/b/battle-of-arfderydd-wp/gcvb-battle-of-arfderydd-the-three-futile-battles.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Arfderydd: Myrddin Goes Into the Forest https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd/ The story that has carried Arfderydd through fourteen centuries belongs to the bard rather than the king. Myrddin Wyllt - 'Myrddin the Wild' - is described in the poems as having worn a golden torque at the battle and then fled, mad with grief and terror, into the Caledonian Fore...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/b/battle-of-arfderydd-wp/gcvb-battle-of-arfderydd-myrddin-goes-into-the-forest.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Arfderydd: Looking for the Plain https://qualla.com/battle-of-arfderydd/ If you stand near Arthuret church today, west of Longtown, you are looking at flat farmland threaded by the River Esk as it bends toward the Solway. There is no monument; there is no plaque large enough to do the story justice. The plain looks ordinary. Yet this part of Cumbria -...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/b/battle-of-arfderydd-wp/gcvb-battle-of-arfderydd-looking-for-the-plain.mp3 0:06 5 full