Devon (England) -- Antiquities; Devon (England) -- History
But, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth himself, Totnes town could not
have been intended by him as the scene of the landing of Brutus. It was
when Brutus was “holding a solemn festival to the gods, in the port
where they had at first landed,” that he and his followers were attacked
by Goemagot and his party. There it was that Goemagot and Corinæus had
that famous wrestling bout, which ended in Corinæus running with his
gigantic foe to the next shore, and throwing him off a rock into the
sea. There is no sea at Totnes, no tall craggy cliff; and for Corinæus
to have run with his burden from Totnes to the nearest point of Start or
Tor Bay would have been a feat worthy even of a Hercules.
We are not surprised to find, therefore, that Totnes has her
rivals—Dover, set up by the Kentish folk, and Plymouth,[3] each claiming
to be the scene of the combat between Corinæus and Goemagot, and
claiming, therefore, incidentally, also to be the port in which Brutus
landed. I do not know that we can trace either tradition very far into
antiquity. They do not occur in the chronicles, where, indeed, the very
name of Plymouth is unknown. The earliest reference to that locality has
been generally regarded as the Saxon Tamarworth. I am not at all sure,
however, that Plymouth is not intended by Geoffrey’s “Hamo’s Port,”
which he assumes to be Southampton. Geoffrey, indeed, says that
Southampton obtained the “ham” in its name from a crafty Roman named
Hamo, killed there by Arviragus; but if the identification is no better
than the etymology, we may dismiss it altogether. On the other hand, the
name of the estuary of the Tamar is still the Hamoaze—a curious
coincidence, if it goes no further. There is nothing in the story of
Hamo itself to indicate Southampton or preclude Plymouth; only a few
references to Hamo’s Port occur in Geoffrey. One of these, where Belinas
is described as making a highway “over the breadth of the kingdom” from
Menevia to Hamo’s Port, may rather seem to point to Southampton; but
there is no positive identification, even if we assume the story to be
true. Again, “Maximian the senator,” when invited into Britain by
Caradoc, Duke of Cornwall, to be King of Britain, lands at Hamo’s Port;
and here the inference would rather be that it was on Cornish territory.
And so when Hoel sent 15,000 Armoricans to the help of Arthur, it was at
Hamo’s Port they landed. It was from Hamo’s Port that Arthur is said to
have set sail on his expedition against the Romans—a fabulous story,
indeed, but still helping to indicate the commodiousness and importance
of the harbour intended. It was at Hamo’s Port that Brian, nephew of
Cadwalla, landed on his mission to kill the magician of Edwin the King,
who dwelt at York, lest this magician might inform Edwin of Cadwalla’s
coming to the relief of the British. After he had killed Pellitus, Brian
called the Britons together at Exeter; and it would be fair to infer
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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