To summarise this evidence as carefully but as briefly as possible, we find, in almost all parts of Britain beyond the range of the first Saxon conquests, but especially in West Wales, Strathclyde, and Lothian, certain place-names connecting themselves either with Arthur himself or with the early catalogue of his battles.[44] We find allusions to him in Welsh poetry which may be as old as the sixth century--allusions, it is true, of the vaguest and most meagre kind, and touching no point of his received story except his mysterious death or no-death, but fairly corroborative of his actual existence. Nennius--the much-debated Nennius, whom general opinion attributes to the ninth century, but who _may_ be as early as the eighth, and cannot well be later than the tenth--gives us the catalogue of the twelve battles, and the exploits of Arthur against the Saxons, in a single paragraph containing no reference to any but military matters, and speaking of Arthur not as king but as a _dux bellorum_ commanding kings, many of whom were more noble than himself. [Footnote 44: The late Mr Skene, with great learning and ingenuity, endeavoured in his _Four Ancient Books of Wales_ to claim all or almost all these place-names for Scotland in the wide sense. This can hardly be admitted: but impartial students of the historical references and the romances together will observe the constant introduction of northern localities in the latter, and the express testimony in the former to the effect that Arthur was general of _all_ the British forces. We need not rob Cornwall to pay Lothian. For the really old references in Welsh poetry see, besides Skene, Professor Rhys, _op. cit._ Gildas and Nennius (but not the _Vita Gildae_) will be found conveniently translated, with Geoffrey himself, in a volume of Bohn's Historical Library, _Six Old English Chronicles_. The E.E.T.S. edition of _Merlin_ contains a very long _excursus_ by Mr Stuart-Glennie on the place-name question.]