Owain Ddantgwyn
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Owain Ddantgwyn is the popularly recognised form of the name of a prince of North Wales, probably a King of Rhos in the late 5th century. Next to nothing is known of him, yet in recent years he has become widely accepted in some quarters as a possible candidate for a so-called 'real' King Arthur.
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[edit] Extant Records
The correct modern spelling of Owain's name is Owain Danwyn (Owen White-Teeth). He appears in various ancient Welsh genealogies as the son of Einion Yrth and the father of Cynlas Goch. One of these is given the title, 'Pedigree of (the Kings of) Rhos. According to the Bonedd y Saint, he was also the father of SS. Einion Frenin (the King), Seiriol, Meirion and possibly others. Other than these genealogies, no documentary evidence exists concerning his life.
[edit] Arthurian identification
A small number of investigative historians have conjectured that Owain could be the original of a ‘real’ King Arthur:
This theory has been chiefly proposed by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman in their book, King Arthur: The True Story (1992). They suggest that 'Arthur' was a title and identify its recipient as Owain from a passage in De Excidio Britanniae. Its contemporary author, Gildas, refers (in Latin) to Owain’s son, Cynlas, literally as "guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the bear". 'Bear' in Brythonic is 'Arth', so Phillips and Keatman take this to infer that 'the Arthur' was Cynlas’ predecessor, known from the genealogies to be Owain. They go on to claim that Owain ruled in Powys.
The idea is expanded by Mick Baker on The History Files.[1] He adds that Owain was probably the uncle who was, according to Gildas, murdered by Maelgwn Gwynedd (whom he compares to Mordred); he lived in North Wales where there are three sites called 'Camlan' (being the site of Arthur's terminal battle with Mordred); and his father was called Yrth (compare Uther).
[edit] References
It should be noted that the word 'Arthur' is phoneticaly similar to the Welsh Arth yr meaning 'Bear of', it could well be that the name 'Arther' is mearly a Anglisised version of a title possibly 'Arth yr Cymry or 'Bear of the Welsh', (reading that the Welsh word for Welsh has very different meanings than the simple English word)
