Late in the fifth millennium B.C., Britain was ruled by a Volsungr named Llyr (see 'Arthur') from his capital of Gwynfryn at the site of present day London. Volsungrs, hailing from Scandinavia, were usually described as giants by the Britons. Llyr married a Briton and had three children, only one of whom inherited Volsungr size. This was Bendigeidfran, who succeeded his father.
The reign of Bendigeidfran turned out to be catastrophic to the island, and even worse to the neighbours in what is now Ireland, an 'Atlantis' colony of Athenians from what is now Greece. Stories of 'lakebursts' during the reign of Partholon, pioneer king of the colony (said to have come from the west), indicate that he lived before 4000 B.C. He was fleeing punishment after an unsuccessful coup d'etat in which he had killed his parents, and his sins were blamed for the failure of his colony.
Partholon's people were all but annihilated in a war with giants who may have been Bendigeidfran's Volsungr warriors. The Athenian accounts say the giants came from a Hamite Atlantis colony in Africa. Perhaps these were Canaanites, Hamitic descendants of Cain, enormous people who were notorious in the Mediterranean. The story of Bendigeidfran suggests that he had alarming connections to the fallen angels, who promoted the Canaanites as a superior, partly-inhuman genetic line.
The Athenian accounts differ from the British. Partholon is named Matholwch in the British story, but there is evidence suggesting that the two were the same, or at least of the same dynasty. The Athenian accounts also date the conflict far earlier than Bendigeidfran's time, suggesting that the Britons were not yet in existence but were descended from a relative of Partholon, a man named Nemed of a later generation. Since this contradicts all archaeological evidence, I can conclude only that perhaps the archetypal descendant of Nemed, credited with founding the ancient Britons, instead joined the already existent nation.
Bendigeidfran's army was comprised of all the ablebodied men on his island, except for a handful left at Gwynfryn to assist his son Caradoc. The army crossed the two rivers which separated the islands (a topographical oddity that dates the story prior to 4000 B.C.), and confronted Partholon with a show of force. The reason for all this was the fact that Bendigeidfran's sister Bronwen (Partholon's queen) had been abused. An Athenian account mentions that Partholon took his estranged queen to a court of law and lost his case.
Hastily, an offer was made to appease Bendigeidfran. Partholon would abdicate in favour of his son Gwern, who was Bronwen's son also. But one of Bendigeidfran's men discovered that an ambush was planned. Although he thwarted the ambush, he remained dissatisfied with Bendigeidfran's acceptance of the compromise, and threw Gwern into a fire during the abdication ceremony. In the resulting conflagration, all of Bendigeidfran's men were killed except for seven who escaped.
Paralyzed from the neck down, Bendigeidfran was artificially kept alive by the egregore, or fallen angels, as a head with tubes sustaining him. To this day an artificially created or sustained life is still referred to as an egregore because of the science of the fallen angels. The story of Bendigeidfran implies that this science should have been refused, for while Bendigeidfran was kept alive with his seven surviving warriors in attendance, Britain was plunged into destitution for eighty years.
Guests of the fallen angels, in a world where 360 of our days equalled one of theirs, the seven warriors were neglecting their homeland, and their people learned to mistrust gifts from the egregore. It has been suspected that such gifts are bestowed in order to prove that ordinary humans are not morally mature enough to handle advanced technology. It has also been suspected that much of our own present-day technology has been bestowed by the egregore in order to prove this point.
As for the Athenian colony, it was wiped out except for a few families who survived in caves. The dead bodies caused a plague. When Nemed arrived on the island, he had the impression that a plague had killed all of Partholon's people. Nemed was no more fortunate than his predecessor, for he engaged in a war with giants, assumed to be the same ethnic group which had destroyed Partholon's colony. These were probably Volsungrs who had a prior claim to the island. Almost all of Nemed's people were killed, and the survivors left.
I believe that the scandalous confrontation of the islands was due to naivete on both sides. Bronwen's abuse seems to have resulted from resentments between two nations that had not yet learned diplomacy. Both colonies were in their infancy. One was destroyed, though its descendants in Greece would return to establish a third (successful) settlement. The other was impoverished, and learned a bitter lesson.
In Bendigeidfran's absence a man named Caswallon, the son of Llyr's arch rival Beli Mawr (literally 'Great King'), staged a coup d'etat and became ruler of Britain. Into this scene came a High King of the Fa, the parent nation to the Faan culture of which Britain was a part. He deposed Caswallon and built up the colony, creating a network of major roads and establishing three new strongholds. Then he returned to his kingdom in Italy, where a coup d'etat had been staged in his absence. He took with him two grandsons of Caradoc, who were probably giants and who won him back his kingdom but who wrought havoc on the mainland.
The dynasty of Beli Mawr re-established itself. This family would rule Britain until fairly late in the fourth millennium. Its last and most illustrious monarch would be Lludd Silverhand (see 'The United Kingdom'). While members of the Belian dynasty seem to have been competent rulers, they probably did not intermarry with Volsungrs. There was a growing Volsungr colony in the northern reaches of the island. As the centuries passed, this colony would become more and more resentful of intruders in a land to which, if the truth be told, the Volsungrs held the prior claim.
how the Faery lived
a fifth millennium joke
graphic courtesy of Irish National Heritage Park
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