In Trevor Rowley's 'The Welsh Border', I found a passage, translated from
Nennius, that's new to me:
'In the district of Ergyng there is a tomb near the well which is called the
Eye of Amr: and the name of the man who is buried in the tump was Amr. He
was the son of Arthur the knight and he [the knight] slew him [the son] and
buried him there.' (p. 73)
(The quote continues with the fairly familiar folkloric assertion that the
size of the tump varies each time anyone tries to measure it.)
Rowley continues:
'The brook called Amyr is believed by some to be known as Gamber, and the
eye, or source of the brook, is the round pool a few yards north of the
building of the farmhouse known as Gamber Head Farm. From the pool the
Gamber has its origin, and it is the boundary for half a mile between the
parishes of Much Birch and Much Dewchurch. The tumulus in which Amyr the son
of Arthur was buried was traditionally believed to be a place named Wormelow
Tump, of which nothing now remains beyond the name.' Ergyng, he notes, is a
part of Herefordshire that continued to be basically Welsh during the
Anglo-Saxon period (later, Welsh-culture Herefordshire is known as
Archenfield, from Ariconium).
Is Amr is the name now usually spelt Emyr? This seems to mean 'ruler, king,
lord', and so may be more generic than personal?
Jonathan Sant's 'The Healing Wells of Herefordshire' notes the Eye of Amr
under Much Birch. He links the well with Arthurian legend, somewhat vaguely,
and identifies Amr with Mordred. The source in Nennius is hidden in the
parenthetical 'some say'; but several point seem to go missing in this
approach.
A quick Google produced the basic information (hopefully accurate) that
Nennius was writing in North Wales, probably around the start of the ninth
century. Welsh nationalism was stirring, at a time when Danish raids on
England were becoming seriously disruptive. {King Coenwulf of Mercia, father
of St Kenelm, campaigned in north-eastern Wales between 816 and 821.}
Whatever sources the writer drew on, they seem to have been a mix of what we
would call history with legend. Nennius provides the earliest written record
of Arthur, whose story has been endlessly embroidered ever since, including
the Mordred strand.
Rowley's quote is a very, very early literary record of a 'significant'
well, in England or Wales, being linked to some kind of story - we can't
tell how genuine - cf. Simon Schama's 'Landscape and Memory'. (I have to
trust scholars for the 9th C dating, assuming that Amr isn't a later
medieval addition.) Amr seems to belong to legend, or history-as-legend,
rather than being a saint, or a simple land-holder.
While this relates to a Welsh approach to labelling landscape features, I
wonder if we shouldn't bear it in mind, and exercise caution in assuming
that 'x's well', in an early text, must refer to an otherwise untraced
saint. It also suggests a category of well regarded as 'significant' in
local culture, maybe numinous, but not quite 'holy' in a spiritual sense.
Janet and Colin Bord note in 'Sacred Waters' (p. 51) that the standard Welsh
term for the source of a stream is 'llygad', otherwise 'eye'; thus Nennius
is simply translating the word into Latin (oculus). Neither Rowley nor Sant
explains this - perhaps they assume knowledge I didn't have. (The Bords have
a plausible explanation of the dual meaning of the Welsh word, that such a
water source was regarded as 'the eye of God'; is it then fanciful to refer
to Emyr = ruler?)
I can find little else about the Eye of Amr in what reference books I have,
yet it seems highly significant because of its documented early date. Am I
missing something? (Or is it regarded just as an attempt to explain the name
'Gamber' or an earlier version?)
Christine B.
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