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Elizabeth's Welsh Inheritance: The Legend of Madoc's Discovery of the New World
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10644 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
2,990 Words |
| Author
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David Powell
David Powell is a historian and free-lance writer living in
the United Kingdom. |
In 1979, a small monument near the Spanish-built Fort Morgan in Mobile Bay, Alabama, was destroyed by a hurricane. The plaque--erected by the Virginia Cavalier Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on November 10, 1953--made an extraordinary claim. It read, "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh Language."
The saga of Madoc has had an extraordinary tenacity over the centuries. Supposedly the prince set sail across the uncharted ocean in search of . . . who knows what? On his return to Wales he reported the discovery of a new land. He and other brave Welsh colonists then set forth on a second journey, never to be heard from again.
The allure of Madoc's journey is felt today. In July 1992 Welsh documentary maker Russell Isaac, tracing Madoc's supposed exploration of the Alabama and Ohio rivers (as far north as modern Louisville), commented that interest in America was comparable to that found in Wales. But most historians have dismissed Madoc either as a Celtic myth, like Camelot and the voyages of Saint Brendan, or as an Elizabethan contrivance.
The low point for belief in Madoc was in the late nineteenth century when Welsh historians, trying to purge their subject of folklore and legend, denied his very existence. The main thrust of their criticism was that a voyage across the Atlantic in a small boat was impossible. In the twentieth century, we know better. We have knowledge of innumerable recent Atlantic crossings by small craft and are aware of Vinland and the Icelandic sagas. We also have evidence from the twelfth century that, while not giving proof to the story, at least puts Madoc into a historical context that makes the kernel of his achievement not only possible but understandable.
Madoc was not Prince of Wales in the modern sense but a prince of Gwynedd, a tiny and impoverished principality in North Wales that was threatened by implacable Norman armies. Madoc was one of twelve sons, by various women, sired by Owain Gwynedd, who had been excommunicated by Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. The bards might harp songs in praise of the heroic days of King Arthur, but Owain's death produced only squalid fratricide in the struggle for the throne. How could Madoc have mounted his expedition in the midst of such a disintegrating society? And how seriously should we treat the claim?
The first widely reported
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