Ricatus was a possible 11th-century king of Cornwall, although recent scholarship has cast doubt on his existence. [1] If he existed, Ricatus may have been the penultimate Cornish king. [2]
Ricatus was a possible 11th-century king of Cornwall, although recent scholarship has cast doubt on his existence. [1] If he existed, Ricatus may have been the penultimate Cornish king. [2]
The primary evidence for a king of this name is the medieval Penzance Market Cross which now stands in the grounds of Penlee House in Penzance, Cornwall, England, UK. [3] The cross dates to around 1050 AD, [1] or as early as 1007. [4] R. A. Stewart Macalister in his Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum published in 1949 stated that an inscription in a panel on the side of the cross read REGIS RICATI CRUX, translating to "Cross of King Ricatus". [1] [5]
On the basis of Macalister's reading, Susan Pearce (1978) speculated that "a native ruling family survived west of the Tamar long enough to set up the early tenth century cross, now in Penlee Gardens, Penzance, the inscription on which seems to have referred to a King Riocatus or Ricatus". [6] Writing about it in 1986, Charles Thomas said that because of the cross' late date, Ricatus could have been little more than a local ruler around Land's End. [7] However, Thomas describes the cross in greater detail in his later book on post Roman inscriptions in Western Britain, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? (1994). In this work, he describes the inscription as having "lettering so grotesque as to be unintelligible", and he relegates Macalister's reading to a footnote, where he says that it "is impossible to follow", adding that "an eleventh-century Cornish king would need a lot of explaining." [1] In 1993, Elizabeth Okasha found only a few letters of the inscription legible: "RE... + .CR-", and concluded that "there is insufficient room on the stone for [Macalister's reading of the] text, especially for the second line; in the light of the state of this text today, Macalister's reading must be treated with caution. It seems to me most inadvisable to build upon Macalister's reading of this text theories concerning the existence of early kings of Cornwall". [8] Philip Payton, in his Cornwall: A History (2004) acknowledges this, but says there was "perhaps a semblance, an echo, an assertion of Cornish kingly independence" in the far west of Cornwall less than a century before the Norman Conquest. [9]
In 1998 Thomas examined the cross again in detail and stated that the inscription actually reads RECGISI CRUX or RAEGISI CRUX meaning "the cross of Recgisi or Raegisi", [10] an Old English personal name, unrecorded elsewhere, which Thomas ascribes to the donor or benefactor of the land (a graveyard) on which the cross was originally erected. [4]
The 11th/12th century Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen refers to "Gormant the son of Ricca", saying that he was "Arthur's brother by his mother's side; the Penhynev of Cornwall was his father", a parallel to later stories of Gorlois of Cornwall. [11] This Ricca may possibly refer to Ricatus; it also occurs as a variant name for Rhitta Gawr, a giant of Welsh folklore. [12] The title Penhynev or Pennhynef means 'chief elder', [12] and the first triad of Peniarth 54 uses the same title for Caradawg Vreichvras as Arthur's chief elder at Celliwig, Cornwall. [13]
The sixteenth-century Cornish language drama Beunans Meriasek ('The Life of St Meriasek') at lines 2463–65 mentions four Cornish kings. The second is called Pygys, which may be a misreading for an earlier Rygys, the Cornish form of Ricatus. [14]
In 1980 Mullion School, Mullion, Cornwall named one of its houses, Ricat, after King Ricatus.
In the Matter of Britain, Igraine is the mother of King Arthur. Igraine is also known in Latin as Igerna, in Welsh as Eigr, in French as Ygraine, in Le Morte d'Arthur as Ygrayne—often modernised as Igraine or Igreine—and in Parzival as Arnive. She becomes the wife of Uther Pendragon, after the death of her first husband, Gorlois.
Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale that survives in only two manuscripts about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors: a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, c. 1400, and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, c. 1325. It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose tales. Lady Charlotte Guest included this tale among those she collected under the title The Mabinogion.
Dumnonia is the Latinised name for a Brythonic kingdom that existed in Sub-Roman Britain between the late 4th and late 8th centuries CE in the more westerly parts of present-day South West England. It was centred in the area of modern Devon, but also included modern Cornwall and part of Somerset, with its eastern boundary changing over time as the gradual westward expansion of the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex encroached on its territory. The spelling Damnonia is sometimes encountered, but that spelling is also used for the land of the Damnonii, later part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, in present-day southern Scotland. The form Domnonia also occurs. The name of the kingdom shares a linguistic relationship with the Breton region of Domnonée.
The Battle of Camlann is the legendary final battle of King Arthur, in which Arthur either died or was fatally wounded while fighting either alongside or against Mordred, who also perished. The original legend of Camlann, inspired by a purportedly historical event said to have taken place in the early 6th-century Britain, is only vaguely described in several medieval Welsh texts dating from around the 10th century. The battle's much more detailed depictions have emerged since the 12th century, generally based on that of a catastrophic conflict described in the pseudo-chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae. The further greatly embellished variants originate from the later French chivalric romance tradition, in which it became known as the Battle of Salisbury, and include the 15th-century telling in Le Morte d'Arthur that remains popular today.
In Arthurian legend, Gorlois of Tintagel was the Duke of Cornwall. He was the first husband of King Arthur's mother Igraine and the father of her daughters, Arthur's half-sisters. Her second husband was Uther Pendragon, the High King of Britain and Arthur's father, who marries her after killing him.
The history of Cornwall goes back to the Paleolithic, but in this period Cornwall only had sporadic visits by groups of humans. Continuous occupation started around 10,000 years ago after the end of the last ice age. When recorded history started in the first century BCE, the spoken language was Common Brittonic, and that would develop into Southwestern Brittonic and then the Cornish language. Cornwall was part of the territory of the tribe of the Dumnonii that included modern-day Devon and parts of Somerset. After a period of Roman rule, Cornwall reverted to rule by independent Romano-British leaders and continued to have a close relationship with Brittany and Wales as well as southern Ireland, which neighboured across the Celtic Sea. After the collapse of Dumnonia, the remaining territory of Cornwall came into conflict with neighbouring Wessex.
The Artognou stone, sometimes erroneously referred to as the Arthur stone, is an archaeological artefact uncovered in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It was discovered in 1998 in securely dated sixth-century contexts among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, a secular, high status settlement of sub-Roman Britain. It appears to have originally been a practice dedication stone for some building or other public structure, but it was broken in two and re-used as part of a drain when the original structure was destroyed. Upon its discovery the stone achieved some notoriety due to the suggestion that "Artognou" was connected to the legendary King Arthur, though scholars such as John Koch have criticized the evidence for this connection. The stone is on display at the Royal Cornwall Museum.
The culture of Cornwall forms part of the culture of the United Kingdom, but has distinct customs, traditions and peculiarities. Cornwall has many strong local traditions. After many years of decline, Cornish culture has undergone a strong revival, and many groups exist to promote Cornwall's culture and language today.
Madron is a civil parish and village in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Madron is named after Saint Madern's Church. Its annual Trafalgar Service commemorating the death of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was started on 27 October 1946, following a local tradition that his death was first announced on British soil in the Union Hotel, Penzance.
Twrch Trwyth, is a fabulous wild boar from the Legend of King Arthur, of which a richly elaborate account of its hunt described in the Welsh prose romance Culhwch and Olwen, probably written around 1100.
Roughly 400 known ogham inscriptions are on stone monuments scattered around the Irish Sea, the bulk of them dating to the fifth and sixth centuries. Their language is predominantly Primitive Irish, but a few examples record fragments of the Pictish language. Ogham itself is an Early Medieval form of alphabet or cipher, sometimes known as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet".
Gulval is a village in the civil parish of Penzance, in Cornwall, England. Although historically a parish in its own right, Gulval was incorporated into the parishes of Ludgvan, Madron and Penzance in 1934, and is now considered to be a suburb of Penzance. Gulval still maintains its status as an ecclesiastical parish and parts of the village church date back to the 12th-century. Together with Heamoor, Gulval still retains its status as an electoral ward. The ward population at the 2011 census was 4,185.
St Ewe is a civil parish and village in mid-Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, which is believed by hagiographers to have been named after the English moniker of Saint Avoye. The village is situated approximately five miles (8 km) southwest of St Austell.
Celliwig, Kelliwic or Gelliwic is perhaps the earliest named location for the court of King Arthur. It may be translated as 'forest grove'.
Celtic inscribed stones are stone monuments dating from 400 to 1000 AD which have inscriptions in Celtic or Latin text. These can be written in Ogham or Roman letters. Some stones have both Ogham and Roman inscriptions. The stones are found in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man, and parts of western England. Most seem to be grave-markers or memorials to a dead individual.
Christianity in Cornwall began in the 4th or 5th century AD when Western Christianity was introduced as in the rest of Roman Britain. Over time it became the official religion, superseding previous Celtic and Roman practices. Early Christianity in Cornwall was spread largely by the saints, including Saint Piran, the patron of the county. Cornwall, like other parts of Britain, is sometimes associated with the distinct collection of practices known as Celtic Christianity but was always in communion with the wider Catholic Church. The Cornish saints are commemorated in legends, churches and placenames.
Caradoc Vreichvras was a semi-legendary ancestor to the kings of Gwent. He may have lived during the 5th or 6th century. He is remembered in the Matter of Britain as a Knight of the Round Table, under the names King Carados and Carados Briefbras.
Presented below is an alphabetical index of articles related to Cornwall:
Robert Williams (1810–1881) was a Welsh Anglican clergyman and Celtic scholar.
