Bedrydant, Better Known as “Peter the Fang”

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Camelot Chat! I’m your hostess, Shannon Watson; and this week, we’ll be talking about Bedrydant, Better Known as “Peter the Fang.”

Let’s get started.

The Arthurian knight known as Sir Bedivere was also called Bedwyr and Bedrydant. So many names! But was any of them Bedivere’s real name?

The short answer is, “Probably not.”

For the longer answer, keep listening.

Bedivere is the Anglicized version of the earlier Welsh name, Bedwyr.

In my research for my historical fiction novel, “The Wanderer and the Wolves,” however, the name, Bedrydant, landed differently with me.

I broke it down like this:

Bedr –that’s b-e-d-r– is the Welsh version of the name Peter. Y Dant – that’s y + dant (dant, as in dental): d-a-n-t – in Welsh means "The Fang". Run together, they render what later came to appear as a single name: Bedrydant. Or “Peter the Fang.”

There is little doubt that Sir Bedivere was a great warrior. Taken together, the Welsh Triads, English legends, and French romances all credit him as one of Arthur’s best soldiers. He ranked above Sir Tristan… and even above Sir Kay, Arthur’s foster brother. Bedivere was known as the “Battle-Diademed” and lost an arm in combat. He accompanied his king on quest and campaign, skirmishing on lonely hillsides under lowering skies and beside hotly contested fords. How blood must have run in the rivers in those days, drizzling down the banks into the water below!

All agreed that Bedivere was a handsome man.

What would he have looked like, you ask?

As he was probably at least part-Pictish, Bedivere would have worn his hair long in the back and combed back from his forehead, like his fellow warriors on the Pictish standing stones. He would have sported a mustache and a beard. He may have worn branches in his hair when he fought. In combat, chieftains wove an alder branch into their hair so their warriors could locate them in the thick of battle.

As Queen Guinevere's brother and brother-in-law to the king, Bedivere might have worn a combination of Pictish and Romano-Briton fashions. For everyday wear, he would have donned a pointed, leather Phrygian cap to warm his head in the freezing Scottish weather, baggy leather trousers, and a knee-length tunic. His shoes and belt would have been of durable cowhide, his tartan cloak woven in two colors.

But in battle, other than perhaps an animal skin, Bedivere would have fought naked, displaying tattoos to full–and terrifying–effect.

The most vivid description of a battle-mad Bedivere, consumed by the fight, comes from an early Welsh poem in The Black Book of Carmarthen. Pa Gur, or What Man? has King Arthur boasting of his own exploits and those of his warriors to his gatekeeper.

This is what he said of Bedivere, here called Bedwyr:

They fell by the hundred

Before Bedwyr of the Perfect-Sinew
On the shores of Tryfrwyd

Fighting with Garwlwyd:

Furious was his nature

With sword and shield.

Here, in the Welsh, Bedivere is Bedwyr; and he is notable, even amongst the famous warriors of Arthur’s company, for his ferocity in battle.

But all good things must end. And so, the long life of Sir Bedivere / Bedwyr / Bedrydant / Peter the Fang–whichever mysterious moniker he went by–came to a close.

Did he end his days in mourning, buried deep in some Christian monastery? Or was he interred elsewhere? Perhaps, at a site more suitable to Bedivere’s bellicose nature?

A Welsh ballad, called The Stanzas of the Graves, provides a clue. Stanzas situates Bedivere’s grave at Tryfan Hill. I believe the word Tryfan correlates with Tribruit, and, in turn, with Arthur’s famous “Battle on the River Tribruit.”

Here’s how that breaks down:

Tribruit indicates the confluence of the River Forth with the Rivers Teith and Allan, just below Stirling Castle… and right in the Borders area of Scotland. In fact, Stirling is likely to have been, or to have been near to, the northeastern point of what would have been a rectangle formed by the two walls: the Antonine and Hadrian’s Wall. The other three points of this rectangle are Carlisle on the southwest, Edinburgh on the southeast, and Dumbarton on the northwest. These four strategic points along the Borders rectangle anchored the boundaries of the north… and likely provided some sort of geographical indication of King Arthur’s realm.

So, back to Tribruit.

Trí indicates the three rivers: the Forth, the Teith, the Allan. In Latin, such a confluence would have been calledTributarius: “a natural stream flowing into a larger river.” Forth derives from Proto-Celtic, vo-rit-ia, or “slow-running.”

Both Tributarius and Forth vividly recall the geography of Stirlingshire, Scotland. They are what the Arthurian scholar, Norma Lorre Goodrich, called “the winding loops of the River Forth.”

Today, a place of verdant life. Once, the site of violent death. At the hands of a legendary warrior, Peter the Fang: “furious was his nature with sword and shield.”

And how would someone acquire a nickname like “the Fang?”

Several ideas spring easily to mind, given the violence-fueled world of Dark Age Scotland.

But first, we spar… with Vikings. Or anyway, with their Anglo-Saxon predecessors.

Because, next week, we visit the Germanic berserkers: corps of battle-mad warriors who fought as bears.

So, stay tuned for my next riveting episode: Berserkers: Revisiting Michael Crichton’s “Eaters of the Dead.”

And what do berserkers have to do with Sir Bedivere?

For the answer to that, tune in in two weeks, to my post-Halloween episode, as we howl at the moon alongside Sir Bedivere… Alias “Peter the Fang.”

If you can’t wait for more Arthurian lore till the next episode, you will find my historical fiction novel, The Wanderer and the Wolves, told from Queen Guinevere’s perspective, on Amazon.com. The link is included below. And be sure to check out my author page at ShanavereStudios.com.

Until next week: People who read live in many worlds. Books are the surest portals to those worlds. So, keep living, keep reading, and keep dreaming... till we meet again.