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The Men of the North: the Britons of Southern Scotland Free FREE THE MEN OF THE NORTH: THE BRITONS OF SOUTHERN SCOTLAND PDF Tim Clarkson | 288 pages | 01 Feb 2011 | John Donald Publishers Ltd | 9781906566180 | English | Edinburgh, United Kingdom About Me « Senchus It has since been reprinted a number of times, becoming unavailable for only brief intervals between reprints. For an author, this is an encouraging situation to be in, and I am grateful to my publishers Birlinn of Edinburgh for keeping the book ticking over throughout the decade. I am also grateful for the many positive comments from readers and reviewers, all of which have The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland me to believe that the effort of researching and writing this book has not been in vain. On the whole, though, it seems to have been generally well-received. The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland above quote, from a Scottish historian whose opinions I value highly, captures in a nutshell my main reason for writing The Men Of The North : I saw a gap on my bookshelf and decided to have a go at filling it myself. They are far more obscure and mysterious than any of their neighbours including the supposedly enigmatic Picts and their significant role in Scottish history has frequently been overlooked. References to them in medieval chronicles are thin on the ground, leaving huge gaps in their story and forcing modern historians to scrabble around for snippets of information in less reliable sources such as poems and legends. Nevertheless, I had often wondered if the various fragments could be assembled into a more-or-less coherent narrative, a stable framework around which a chronological history might take shape. It was before I took the plunge by putting pen to paper and fingertip to keyboard. The task was as challenging as I had expected it to be, but the result was a book that I felt passed the test. The Men Of The North includes my own interpretations of certain parts of the textual evidence. This is especially true in the first half of the book, which draws data from medieval Welsh poems in which the deeds of various sixth-century North British kings and warriors are praised. Ten years later, and I can report that these interpretations remain largely unchanged. I still firmly believe that the locations of Rheged a kingdom, or part of one and Catraeth apparently the site of a battle remain unknown. I still reject the conventional notion that four North British kings joined together in a military coalition to launch a combined assault on an English royal dynasty whom they besieged or blockaded on the island of Lindisfarne. In this particular instance, I see each British king waging his own campaign independently of his alleged allies. If my views on these topics have changed at all in the past ten years, they have probably hardened rather than softened. Some of my views have, however, shifted somewhat. On page of The Men Of The Northwhile discussing the question of where the great battle of Brunanburh AD was fought, I mentioned three places as popular candidates for the battlefield. I now favour a location in Lancashire, either near the estuary of the River Ribble or further east around Burnley. This revision of my thinking is presented in detail in my second book on the Northern Britons, published in under the title Strathclyde and the Anglo-Saxons in the Viking Age. My response is that there are, as yet, no definite plans. If a second edition does appear at some point in the future, it will undoubtedly make much use of another book, an edited volume called Beyond The Gododdinpublished in by the Committee for Dark Age Studies at the University The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland St Andrews. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that no new research on the North British kingdoms of the sixth century should be regarded as complete unless the papers in Beyond The Gododdin have been consulted and cited. I recommend, in particular, two journal articles and one book chapter. Bibliographic details for these three are given in the list of references at the end of this blogpost. The past decade has seen other new publications relating to the Northern Britons, too many to list here. I must, however, mention a major archaeological report produced as part of the Galloway Picts Project. Although I remain open-minded on this claim of a Rheged connection, there can be no doubt that the report represents a big contribution to our archaeological understanding of the Northern Britons, giving us an insight into what must have been one of their principal high-status settlements. On a personal level, the biggest change in my involvement with the Northern Britons since has been my participation in a number of local heritage projects at Govan on the south side of Glasgow. Most of these projects had a connection with the Govan Stones, a collection of sculptured monuments displayed in the old parish church. The stones were carved in the ninth to eleventh centuries when Govan was a The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland of ritual and authority in the kingdom of Strathclyde. The heritage projects helped to raise awareness of the stones not only among the local community but more widely across Scotland as well as internationally. When I first came aboard inthere were some thirty monuments to be seen. Three others, thought to have been lost, were unearthed last year as I reported at this blog — see link below. Banner outside Govan Old Parish Church where the stones are displayed. I expect the next ten years will yield further new information on the Northern Britons, whether in the form of archaeological discoveries or re-interpretations of historical texts. It will be interesting to see if The Men Of The North gets left behind, like something outdated and obsolete, and whether a revision or update then becomes desirable for author and reader alike. My blogpost from on the carved stones rediscovered at Govan. Alex Woolf ed. This new book by renowned philologist Andrew Breeze is a collection of thirteen studies on battles fought in various parts of early medieval Britain. Employing his deep knowledge of place-names and primary sources, Professor Breeze proposes for each battle a geographical context that either supports or challenges previous scholarship. Most of the thirteen chapters are updated or reworked versions of articles previously published in academic journals. These three have yet to be placed on a map with any measure of The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland or consensus, despite much debate and many competing theories. In so doing, he shows that the debate is far from settled and that Bromborough is not the only place for which a strong case can be made. Less widely-known than Brunanburh is the battle of Arfderyddan event The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland with the earliest strands of the Merlin legend. Breeze supports a long-established consensus that it was fought in the vicinity of Arthuret, an ancient parish eight miles north of Carlisle. The warlord lies at the root of later legends about a fabled king whose chivalrous knights sat at the Round Table in Camelot. Many people believe — or want to believe — that the legends are rooted in fact, and that the warlord of early Welsh tradition was a real historical figure. This is the position adopted by Breeze, who suggests that the original Arthur was a Briton of the North who undertook a series of military campaigns in the early sixth century. He argues that these campaigns, a dozen of which are listed in Historia Brittonumwere fought in what are now southern Scotland and adjacent parts of northern England. He believes that their names are corrupt and garbled, requiring correction to forms that make more sense. This leads him to propose entirely new identifications. Bassas, for example, he sees as an error for Tarras, which he associates with Tarras Water in Dumfriesshire or Carstairs in South Lanarkshire Casteltarras in He sees the name Badon as an error for Braydon and locates the battlefield at Ringsbury hillfort near Braydon Forest in Wiltshire. Camlan The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland Camlann, the battle where Arthur is said to have received a mortal wound, is absent from the Historia Brittonum list but appears in the tenth-century Welsh Annals where it is entered at the year He locates the former at Bishop Auckland in County Durham, the latter at Buttington in Powys, and shows why both battles should be regarded as significant events in the story of Viking-Age Britain. Breeze puts the battlefield beside the River Went in Yorkshire, adding weight to a long-established case supported by many historians. The summaries usually begin with antiquarian musings of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before following a trail of study through to the most recent academic discussions. Breeze often acknowledges the work of independent researchers whose contributions to scholarship might otherwise be overlooked. Not everyone will agree with all of his identifications and reinterpretations, especially if they have strong views of their own on where a particular conflict was fought. But this is a book that anyone with an interest in locating The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland lost battlefields of early medieval The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland will find enlightening and thought-provoking. List of chapters: 1. The period to AD was a time when Christianity, the religion of the last Roman emperors, was gaining ground in many parts of Britain at the expense of home-grown pagan beliefs.
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