with more stories to tell my son. (I was also proceeding in the belief that my son liked to hear me talk a lot. I did when I was nine.)
The scenery, the history, the mystery, the football (on the car radio), the good food, and watching The Guns of Navarone on the TV in our B&B made that weekend one of the best times of my life.
The day before we left for Argyll I went through the “secret” passage that led from the Advocates’ Library where I work to the National Library of Scotland. I had often used this passage before to visit the National Library to research something or other, or just to read books at random. This time, looking for more Ardrey-family connections with Argyll, I found nothing that was new to me in the gazetteers, and the dictionaries only confirmed what I had been told years before: that my name, Ardrey, was originally Ard Airigh in Gaelic and that it meant “high pasture.”
Then I found a dictionary that was new to me and everything changed.
John O’Brien, Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and Cloyne in Ireland, wrote Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla: An Irish-English Dictionary and had it privately printed in Paris in 1768. O’Brien said he compiled his dictionary,
Not only from various Irish vocabularies … but also from a great variety of the best Irish manuscripts now extant; especially those that have been composed from the 9th & 10th centuries down to the 16th, besides those of the lives of St. Patrick & St. Bridget, written in the 6th & 7th centuries. 5
It followed that O’Brien’s definitions were more likely to reflect the way words were used in the sixth century, than were modern dictionaries, written to be used by people today.
According to O’Brien, Airigh did not mean a “summer pasture” or “shieling,” as I had been told (in the first millennium summer pasture or shieling was Airghe ). The first millennium meaning of Airigh was, “Certain, particular, especiall [ sic ] …” And, in a separate entry, “A Prince, a nobleman &c. [ sic ].”
This was my Statue-of-Liberty-at-the-end-of- Planet-of-the-Apes moment. I had been a happy high-pasture Ardrey ever since I had stopped being a happy high-king Ardrey. Now everything changed again. My second name was still Ard Airigh , but it no longer meant “high pasture”—now it meant “high prince” or “high nobleman.” I was no longer fifteen years old and so I was not deluded into thinking I had become more prince-like or noble. But I knew I had become something much more important—I had become more knowledgeable.
Until then I had not been particularly interested in either the legendary or the historical Arthur, but after reading O’Brien I knew, even before I raised my head from the page, that I had evidence that the legendary Arthur was the historical Arthur Mac Aedan.
I already knew of many Ard Airigh /Ardrey place-names in Argyll, through my interest in my family’s history, and that Arthur Mac Aedan had been active in Argyll after his father became king of the Scots there in 574. I also knew that an entry in the Annales Cambriae for the previous year, 573, contained the earliest surviving reference to the mancalled Merlin and that this entry placed Merlin at, “The Battle of Arderydd,” a battle after which, it was said, “Merlin went mad.”
Until I found the Airigh entry in O’Brien, all I had was an Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, in a place where there were innumerable Ard Airigh place-names and a Merlin involved in a battle at a place called Arderydd.
Arthur and Merlin were obviously connected, but what was the connection between, say, Arthur Mac Aedan’s Dunardry hillfort, in Argyll, and Merlin’s battlefield of Arderydd, one hundred miles away on the Scotland–England border?
“Hillfort of the high pasture” and the “battle of the high pasture,” while possible, had always struck me as just too much of a coincidence to believe. Two important places—one a battle and one a fort, one
The scenery, the history, the mystery, the football (on the car radio), the good food, and watching The Guns of Navarone on the TV in our B&B made that weekend one of the best times of my life.
The day before we left for Argyll I went through the “secret” passage that led from the Advocates’ Library where I work to the National Library of Scotland. I had often used this passage before to visit the National Library to research something or other, or just to read books at random. This time, looking for more Ardrey-family connections with Argyll, I found nothing that was new to me in the gazetteers, and the dictionaries only confirmed what I had been told years before: that my name, Ardrey, was originally Ard Airigh in Gaelic and that it meant “high pasture.”
Then I found a dictionary that was new to me and everything changed.
John O’Brien, Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and Cloyne in Ireland, wrote Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla: An Irish-English Dictionary and had it privately printed in Paris in 1768. O’Brien said he compiled his dictionary,
Not only from various Irish vocabularies … but also from a great variety of the best Irish manuscripts now extant; especially those that have been composed from the 9th & 10th centuries down to the 16th, besides those of the lives of St. Patrick & St. Bridget, written in the 6th & 7th centuries. 5
It followed that O’Brien’s definitions were more likely to reflect the way words were used in the sixth century, than were modern dictionaries, written to be used by people today.
According to O’Brien, Airigh did not mean a “summer pasture” or “shieling,” as I had been told (in the first millennium summer pasture or shieling was Airghe ). The first millennium meaning of Airigh was, “Certain, particular, especiall [ sic ] …” And, in a separate entry, “A Prince, a nobleman &c. [ sic ].”
This was my Statue-of-Liberty-at-the-end-of- Planet-of-the-Apes moment. I had been a happy high-pasture Ardrey ever since I had stopped being a happy high-king Ardrey. Now everything changed again. My second name was still Ard Airigh , but it no longer meant “high pasture”—now it meant “high prince” or “high nobleman.” I was no longer fifteen years old and so I was not deluded into thinking I had become more prince-like or noble. But I knew I had become something much more important—I had become more knowledgeable.
Until then I had not been particularly interested in either the legendary or the historical Arthur, but after reading O’Brien I knew, even before I raised my head from the page, that I had evidence that the legendary Arthur was the historical Arthur Mac Aedan.
I already knew of many Ard Airigh /Ardrey place-names in Argyll, through my interest in my family’s history, and that Arthur Mac Aedan had been active in Argyll after his father became king of the Scots there in 574. I also knew that an entry in the Annales Cambriae for the previous year, 573, contained the earliest surviving reference to the mancalled Merlin and that this entry placed Merlin at, “The Battle of Arderydd,” a battle after which, it was said, “Merlin went mad.”
Until I found the Airigh entry in O’Brien, all I had was an Arthur, Arthur Mac Aedan, in a place where there were innumerable Ard Airigh place-names and a Merlin involved in a battle at a place called Arderydd.
Arthur and Merlin were obviously connected, but what was the connection between, say, Arthur Mac Aedan’s Dunardry hillfort, in Argyll, and Merlin’s battlefield of Arderydd, one hundred miles away on the Scotland–England border?
“Hillfort of the high pasture” and the “battle of the high pasture,” while possible, had always struck me as just too much of a coincidence to believe. Two important places—one a battle and one a fort, one
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