Rex quondam et futurus

As Bruce sat in Edinburgh in 1315, 700 years ago this year, contemplating his forthcoming campaign in Ireland, he wouldn't have known at the time that he was embarking on what would turn out to be the last genuinely meaningful project one might characterise as Arthurian in scope to be expedited in these islands. It was the last time a realistic pan-Celtic alliance was sought to limit the incursions of the Saxon. It was the last time common bonds of Celtic confraternity were invoked to summon boots on the ground and limit the impact of Saxon cupidity.

Between 1315, when campaigning began, and 1318, when Edward Bruce fell at Dundalk, the Scots opened up a second front in the First Scottish War of Independence, a second theatre of conflict against the English in Ireland, and their efforts extended to supporting the recently subdued Welsh.

English efforts to dominate Ireland had commenced with Henry II nearly 150 earlier, so the Scots were liberators. They ultimately failed in Ireland because they couldn't  impose their authority on shifting patchworks of allegiances to replicate the success they had uniting Scotland in the lead up to Bannockburn in 1314, achieved by eradicating the Comyn and Balliol supporting factions and resolving local rivalries in favour of their own supporters, for example, the ascendancy of Macdonalds and the eclipse of the Macdougalls in the Hebrides and Argyll.

Once the English consolidated their position in Ireland, and perfected the divide-and-rule tactics whose enduring consequences are felt even to this day, the last chance of a pan-Celtic alliance had passed.

The Arthur legend itself was hijacked in England by the Plantagenets who distorted it and used it to legitimise their feudal authority over a subjugated Anglo-Saxon population, a "Galfridian" (after Geoffrey of Monmouth) project which created myths such as "King" Arthur, the "rex quondam et futurus" or "once and future king" of the title of this piece from the "dux bellorum" or "war leader" of the original sources, twisting and turning an unsettling, subversive and marginal presence in the British imagination into an pillar of the establishment who would only later come to occupy the Celtic twilight where we find him today once he had ceased to be politically useful.

And so, after the Scottish Wars of Independence, Scotland may have been secure in a hard-won victory, but the components of a wider pan-Celtic polity lay scattered and subdued in Ireland and Wales, and one potential foundation myth had been taken captive and dressed up in foreign regalia. Nevertheless, the hand of destiny was to withold the crown from future Princes of Wales given the name Arthur by their parents in an attempt to grant their posterity the style Arthur II. All died before being able to ascend the throne.

This was all a very long time ago, so what is the contemporary relevance of these events? Well, the conditions for the shattered pan-Celtic alliances to be reforged are emerging once again. Ireland has long since slipped the English yoke. Despite failure to secure independence in the referendum campaign last year, Scotland is now discovering that its democratic choices within the UK are not considered legitimate by the Westminster establishment if they do not conform to what is expected and required, and so finds itself effectively being quietly ushered out of the union by those who ironically recently defended it most, one of those "you can't dump me because I'm dumping you first" situations. The individual components of pan-Celtic unity within the British Isles are once more becoming available, and meaningful pan-Celtic unity is once again becoming viable.

So as Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru and Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP talk of a "progressive alliance" it is tempting to return to the phrase at the head of this article, replace "rex" with "regina" and see the idea of Arthur return from the past in female form as Wales rediscovers its connections with Yr Hen Ogledd ("the old north").

And as MSPs sit at Holyrood, we should remember that they are a stone's throw away from the reputed burial site of Uther Pendragon, beneath Salisbury Crags, and Arthur's Seat dominates the skyline. Indeed Arthurian legend may find its origins in a version of Scottish geomancy in which the Firth of Forth corresponds to the Milky Way and Arthur's Seat corresponds to Sirius. The "resurrection" of Sirius during its heliacal rising is then the return of the once and future king.