Llyn Teyrn. Strolled past this lake, in agreeable company, on the way up to Snowdon from Pen y Pass last week. Jonah Jones in his readable book on The lakes of North Wales poses the question "Is it legend or history that connects King Arthur with Llyn Teyrn, 'lake of the Monarch'?" However that may be what is certain is that Snowdonia and its lakes was the area where hard-pressed Celtic chieftains held out for generations against increasing pressures from the east." Whether or not this part of Snowdonia, and in particular the slopes of Lliwedd and Bwlch y Saethau (the Pass of the Arrows), were really the scene of the great battle which ended in the deaths of Mordred and Arthur, is highly speculative. And no one who has browsed the pages of Peter Bartrum's Welsh Classical Dictionary needs to be reminded that in the early period the links between myth, legend, history and topography are nothing if not speculative.

Having said that, some bits of speculation would appear to be more extravagant than others. And into that class might be put the notion, advanced on a certain website, that Llyn Teyrn means "Tyrant's Lake" in Welsh. The Welsh word teyrn no doubt derives, as does the English word tyrant, from the Latin and Greek, but it doesn't have the same dark and baleful connotations. The word is neutral, and simply means king, or monarch. Teyrnas means kingdom, teyrnasaidd has positive connotations, meaning noble, and teyrngarwch means loyalty. As between English and Welsh there may be (or there were then) different cultural connotations as regards governance. The Welsh word for prince, for example, is tywysog, i.e. a man who leads or guides in a consensual manner rather than who rules with a rod of iron or with a mailed fist. Bid ben bid bont, runs the old Welsh proverb - "let him who would be a leader be a bridge." And in fact there are conflicting cultural connotations within English itself. The historian Christopher Hill reminds us that the Levellers and other 17th century radicals liked to cultivate the idea (or perhaps the myth) that prior to the Norman conquest there had been in existence a much more wholesome, home-grown, democratic Saxon way of organizing society. In other words, prior to the invasion of greedy French speaking aristos and thugs from continental Europe we had been much better off, and certainly much better governed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_yoke, which quotes lines from Walter Scott's Ivanhoe

'Norman saw on English oak.
On English neck a Norman yoke;
Norman spoon to English dish,
And England ruled as Normans wish;
Blithe world in England never will be more,
Till England's rid of all the four.

Perhaps a residue of this feeling still exists, and helps explain the deep-seated hostility of many English people to the perceived encroachment of European institutions and indeed to the EU in general. The Celtic nations and other ethnic minorities, no strangers to political, economic and cultural encroachment, are perhaps inclined to take a more nuanced view of it...