Early Literature
An eponymous king of Lothian appears in both early Latin and Welsh sources. An early fragmentary Life of St Kentigern contains a Leudonus of Leudonia as the maternal grandfather of Saint Kentigern, also known as Mungo. In this text Leudonus becomes enraged when he discovers his daughter, Kentigern's mother Teneu, has been impregnated by Owain mab Urien, and has her thrown from a cliff. However, with divine protection she survives the ordeal and goes to Saint Serf's community, where she gives birth to Kentigern.
Welsh sources call this same character Lewdwn or Llewdwn Lluydauc (Llewdwn of the Hosts). Geoffrey of Monmouth seems to recall this earlier figure in the king he called Lot or Loth in his Historia Regum Britanniae. Although his sources are obscure, his choice of name is probably based on its similarity to "Lodonesia", a typical Latinized name for Lothian. This toponymical connection parallels Geoffrey's association of King Leir with Leicester and Coel with Colchester, and William of Malmesbury's assertion that Gawain was king of Galloway; in the Middle Ages no principle of historiography was more solidly established than the idea that places took their names from persons.
Geoffrey's Lot is one of three brothers who each rule a part of northern Britain: Lot rules Londonesia or Lothian, while his brothers Urien (the father of Owain, both generally reckoned historical kings of Rheged) and Angusel rule over Mureif (Moray) and "Scotland", respectively. Lot is first mentioned as a loyal vassal to Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, in the king's wars against Octa, the Saxon King of Kent. When Uther falls ill, he marries his daughter Anna to Lot and entrusts them with the oversight of the kingdom. Lot and Anna have two sons, Gawain and Mordred. When Uther's son Arthur takes up the kingship, he helps Lot and his brothers regain their territories, which have fallen to the Saxons. Lot is also the heir to the kingdom of Norway, as nephew to the previous king Sichelm; with Arthur's aid he takes the kingdom from the usurper Riculf. Lot later leads one of Arthur's armies in his war with Emperor Lucius of Rome.
Read more about this topic: King Lot
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or literature:
“Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)