In Taliesin’s poem “The Spoils of Annwn“, the structure that Arthur, the narrator and three companies of men enter is originally referred to as “Caer Sidi”, which is translated (by some) at first as “The Fortress of the Mound”, then as “Elf’s Castle”.
This is because the word ‘caer’ means a fortification or castle of some kind, while the word ‘sidi’ was a prehistoric mound, barrow or tumulus, or a place where the Fairy Folk were believed to dwell. Some translations speak of ‘Caer Sidi’ as “The Fortress of the Zodiac” on the reasoning that the modern Welsh word for zodiac is ‘sidydd’, but there is apparently some doubt that the word was in use roughly 1,000 years ago, when The Spoils of Annwn may have been written. As I understand it, the word ‘zodiac’ is Greek and means ‘the circle of life’ or ‘the circle of animals’, whereas one Latin word for star is ‘sidus’, which may be the origin of the Welsh ‘sidydd’, although I’m uncertain about this.
On balance, it seems highly unlikely to me that ‘Caer Sidi’ meant ‘Fortress of the Zodiac’ in the mind of the original poet, but if it did, then one particular location springs to mind, and that place is Stonehenge. The astronomical aspects of Stonehenge have been written about and discussed at great length here on Eternal Idol, as have the ancient astronomer-priests who used the monument and also their descendants the Druids, who had such a well-documented fascination with celestial bodies. I’ve also written extensively about the Druid links and connections with Stonehenge, so then we have to ask if the notion of Stonehenge as some kind of “Fortress of the Zodiac” could possibly have been known to a bard such as Taliesin.
At the risk of repeating myself, it’s clear that Geoffrey of Monmouth was intimately familiar with details of the construction of Stonehenge, something that occurred at least 3,500 years before he wrote his famous account, so as Geoffrey was a churchman, it doesn’t seem remotely unlikely to me that a bard such as Taliesin would have heard of Stonehenge as a place connected with a study of the stars.
But what of the ‘fortress’ part? In his diary entry of 22 July, 1654, the diarist John Evelyn recorded “Now we were arrived at Stonehenge, indeed a stupendous monument, appearing at a distance like a castle…”, but we need not rely on the written word alone. The picture below shows Stonehenge with outsize trilithons that bring to mind the ramparts of a castle, probably on account of the impression the scene made upon the artist…
…while this picture, in a similar vein, exaggerates the size of the stones, to give the impression of ruined watchtowers or ramparts.
Stranger still, the picture below shows, what is to the very best of my knowledge, a castle in the background that never existed…
…while there’s still another that shows a non-existent castle in the proximity of Stonehenge. Artistic licence? Almost certainly, but it demonstrates that something about the make-up of Stonehenge led diarists and artists to conceive of it as a fortification or castle, while some artists even went so far as to place a castle or other fortification in the landscape.
It wasn’t only diarists and artists that thought of Stonehenge in such a way, because the initial impression of Colonel Hawley or Professor Atkinson (I forget which) was that Stonehenge was some kind of fortified camp. Whoever it was later changed their mind, but the fact remains that the ruins impressed themselves upon a professional observer as a fortified place of some kind, so it would not surprise me if this were a lasting impression that a mediaeval bard formed of Stonehenge, while this view would have been reinforced if they had been aware of Stonehenge’s connection with kings, as detailed by the aforementioned Geoffrey of Monmouth.
So, it is not at all difficult to perceive Stonehenge as the “Fortress of the Zodiac”, but the question remains as to whether this is how a mediaeval bard would have viewed the site. For my part, I don’t subscribe to the idea that ‘Caer Sidi’ actually means “Fortress of the Zodiac”, so I’ll move on to the concept that ‘Caer Sidi’ simultaneously meant “Fortress of the Mound” and/or “Fortress of the Fairy Folk”.
The fortress part is self-explanatory, so what of a mound? Earlier this year, it transpired that a large mound did indeed once exist at Stonehenge, most probably before the stone structure came into being, while this mound is marked on the diagram below as a large blue dot.
Not only did a mound exist there, but it appears to have predated the earth and wooden monuments on the site, while the later sarsens appear to have been built into the mound. The photograph below shows the 2008 excavation as carried out by Professors Darvill and Wainwright; from Alex Down’s estimation, their trench was virtually in the centre of the now-flattened mound, so we can see modern equipment where once stood a truly ancient hummock or knoll. The word ‘sidi’ seems to mean ‘mound’ and ‘fairy folk’ at one and the same time, so as ‘Stonehump’ or the mound as marked by the blue dot on the diagram above was and remains an integral part of the site, then Stonehenge seems to qualify as “Caer Sidi” or “The Fortress of the Mound” to perfection.
Even though a mound and the fairy folk are synonymous in the words ‘sidi’ and ‘gorsedd’, there is still more material to suggest that a mediaeval bard may have viewed Stonehenge as a haunted by the entities that we would call fairies, while they doubtless had an even greater hold over the minds of our ancestors than they do even today.
A 2003 feature in the ever-sober and highly academic publication British Archaeology carried a suggestion that the axe engravings at Stonehenge may have represented mushrooms, while one of the observations goes even further towards suggesting (in a highly veiled an cautious manner, of course) that Stonehenge was “Caer Sidi” or a “Fairy Fortress” – “One of many other theories suggests that the carvings, and Stonehenge itself, represent sacred or ceremonial mushrooms, reminiscent of a fairy ring.” Ah, to be able to refer to such a strange notion being aired in such a scholarly journal makes me proud to be British, but there’s more to the matter than that.
Would a mediaeval bard have seen the axe carvings at Stonehenge and discerned them as the mushrooms of a fairy ring? Well, I personally don’t see them in this way, but through the eyes of someone who was already looking at a “Fortress of the Mound” around a thousand years ago, it’s not at all difficult to see how the axes could easily have been perceived as mushrooms, but there may well have been even more tangible proof of the Fairy Folk at Stonehenge.
I don’t have the figures to hand for the amount of flint arrowheads found at Stonehenge itself over the years, but they’ve been discovered in large numbers in recent times on the excavations at Durrington Walls and we know of at least one man pierced by such weapons when Stonehenge was being built. In mediaeval times, these weapons were known as elf-bolts or elf-arrows, which were used to by the Fairy Folk to attack cattle and sometimes humans.
In a previous post entitled Strange Maps of Hell, there was much discussion of agricultural practises in the Stonehenge landscape, so it seems a certainty that these flint arrowheads would have come to light on a regular basis around Stonehenge in mediaeval times, as well as in the monument itself as a result of burrowing animals and stones being dislodged, perhaps. I suggest that everything about Stonehenge – from the notions of fortresses, mounds, fairy folk and mushrooms to elf-bolts being scattered in the immediate vicinity – identifies it with “Caer Sidi”, while it’s not unthinkable that it was also the “Fortress of the Zodiac”.
And with that, M’lud, I conclude my case for Stonehenge being the “Caer Sidi” mentioned in Taliesin’s poem “The Spoils of Annwn”, so I would invite my Learned Friends to call witnesses for the Defence and Prosecution, so to speak, (all under the terms of the CDA).
My warm and grateful thanks to Hugo Jenks for the still from his video, to Alex Down for the photographs and to Juris Ozols of MOJO for the Stonehenge and Stonehump diagrams.